Volume 18 (2005), Issue 6
Manuscripts:
Ken Aizawa & Fred Adams
Defending Non-derived Content
Abstract: In “The Myth of Original Intentionality,” Daniel Dennett appears to want to argue for four claims involving the familiar distinction between original (or underived) and derived intentionality. Humans lack original intentionality.Humans have derived intentionality only.There is no distinction between original and derived intentionality. There is no such thing as original intentionality. We argue that Dennett's discussion fails to secure any of these conclusions for the contents of thoughts.
Mark D. Reid
Memory as Initial Experiencing of the Past
Abstract: This analysis explores theories of recollective memories and their shortcomings to show how certain recollective memories are to some extent the initial experiencing of past conscious mental states. While dedicated memory theorists over the past century show remembering to be an active and subjective process, they usually make simplistic assumptions regarding the experience that is remembered. Their treatment of experience leaves unexplored the notion that the truth of memory is a dynamic interaction between experience and recollection. The argument's seven sections examine how experience, consciousness, and the self produce memories in odd but actual situations. Examples are presented that are either actual or technologically possible, and they pose a challenge for some theories of memory. Showing that an experience and a memory must be bound by psychological continuity, the sections build upon each other to challenge aprioristic beliefs about the self and consciousness. The later sections examine the lack of available accounts of memory that acknowledge consciousness, dissociation, and "selfhood" to be matters of degree, thus rendering memory theories next to useless when trying to effectively incorporate the notions of experience and reality.
Marc van Duijn & Sacha Bem
On the Alleged Illusion of Conscious Will
Abstract: The belief that conscious will is merely "an illusion created by the brain" appears to be gaining in popularity among cognitive neuroscientists. Its main adherents usually refer to the classic, but controversial 'Libet-experiments', as the empirical evidence that vindicates this illusion-claim. However, based on recent work that provides other interpretations of the Libet-experiments, we argue that the illusion-claim is not only empirically invalid, but also theoretically incoherent, as it is rooted in a category mistake; namely, the presupposition that neuronal activity causes conscious will. We show that the illusion-claim is based on the behaviorist 'input-output' paradigm, and discuss the notions of 'self-organization' and 'self-steering' to provide an alternative perspective on the causal efficacy of conscious will. In the final sections, a tentative theoretical picture is sketched of conscious will as an instance of self-steered self-organization. We conclude that the subjective experience of conscious will is not a misguided one, but rather that the mechanisms supporting conscious will are considerably more complex than mainstream cognitive neuroscience currently acknowledges.
Christopher J. Preston
Pluralism and Naturalism: Why the Proliferation of Theories is Good for the Mind
Abstract: A number of those that have advocated for theoretical pluralism in epistemology suggest that naturalistic arguments from cognitive science can support their case. Yet these theorists have traditionally faced two pressing needs. First, they have needed a cognitive science adequate to the task. Second, they have needed a bridge between whatever scientific account of cognition they favor and the normative claims of a pluralistic epistemology. Both of these challenges are addressed below in an argument for theoretical pluralism that brings together two recent prototype-activation approaches to cognition. The paper dovetails Paul Churchland's neuro-computational approach with George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's image schematic approach, and shows how they mutually support each other in an increasingly persuasive naturalistic case for theoretical pluralism in epistemology.
Hugh J. McCann
Intentional Action and Intending: Recent Empirical Studies
Abstract: Recent empirical work calls into question the so-called 'Simple View' that an agent who A's intentionally intends to A. In experimental studies, ordinary speakers frequently assent to claims that, in certain cases, agents who knowingly behave wrongly intentionally bring about the harm they do; yet the speakers tend to deny that it was the intention of those agents to cause the harm. This paper reports two additional studies that at first appear to support the original ones, but argues that in fact, the evidence of all the studies considered is best understood in terms of the Simple View.
Svend Brinkmann
Psychology's Facts and Values: A Perennial Entanglement
Abstract: The idea of a logical and metaphysical gap between facts and values is taken for granted in much psychology. Howard Kendler has recently defended the standard view that human values cannot be discovered by psychology. In contrast, various postmodern approaches have sought to attack the fact-value dichotomy with the argument that psychological facts are inevitably morally and politically laden, and therefore relative. In this article, a third line of thought is pursued, significantly inspired by philosopher of science, Hilary Putnam. It is argued that knowledge of facts presupposes knowledge of values, and that value judgments can be objectively right. In this light, the objectivity of scientific facts is not threatened by their entanglement with values. Psychology's objects can be described accurately only with value concepts, among them 'thick ethical concepts'. Different ways in which psychological science presupposes values are outlined. Finally, it is suggested that the distinction between epistemic and moral values is rarely useful in psychology, and should not be thought of as absolute.
Mark Pestana
(A Laconic Exposition of) A Method By Which the Internal Compositional Features of Qualitative Experience Can Be Made Evident to Subjective Awareness
Abstract: In this paper I explicate a technique which can be used to make subtle relational features of experience more evident to awareness. Results of this method could be employed to diffuse one intuition that drives the common critique of functionalist-information theoretic accounts of mind that "qualia" cannot be exhaustively characterized in information theoretic-functional terms. An intuition that commonly grounds this critique is that the qualitative aspects of experience do not entirely appear in consciousness as informational-functional structures. The first section of the paper is a schematic overview of nature of the qualitative and the problem that qualia are taken to create for information theoretic-functionalist theories of mind. Section two contains a précis of the concept of different levels of functional scale in mental activity that was developed by Armstrong and the Churchlands and that is needed to interpret (possible) results of the proposed experiment. In the third section, I outline a method whereby analogies would be generated between purely relational forms, structures, configurations, etc. and purely qualitative aspects of experience. These analogies would be created by subjects through forced choice selection of presented images of structures that "most resembled" a pure quality. Repeated choices would then be shaped by a genetic program into the structural configuration that "most resembled" the pure quality. The final section of the paper explores how consistent, reliable results from the experiment would make information theoretic-functionalism more intuitively plausible in spite of the "fact" that the qualitative aspects of experience do not immediately appear as entirely relational/structural.
Book Reviews:
Joshua Knobe
Review of Johannes Roessler & Naomi Eilan (Eds.), Agency and Self-Awareness: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology
Dingmar van eck
Review of William R. Uttal, Psychomythics: Sources of Artifacts and Misconceptions in Scientific Psychology
Susan Blackmore
Review of Keith E. Stanovich, The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin
Dr. Henk bij de Weg
Review of Berent Enç, How We Act: Causes, Reasons, and Intentions
John Barresi
Review of Bernard J. Baars, William P. Banks, & James B. Newman (Eds.), Essential Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness
Roblin Meeks
Review of José Luis Bermúdez, Thinking Without Words
Julian Kiverstein
Review of Thomas Metzinger, Being No-One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity
Drew Rendall
Review of W.A. Hillix & Duane Rumbaugh, Animal Bodies, Human Minds: Ape, Dolphin, and Parrot Language Skills