VOLUME 8 (1995), ISSUE 3

Manuscripts:

GARTH J. O. FLETCHER
Two uses of folk psychology: Implications for psychological science

• Abstract: This article describes two uses of folk psychology in scientific psychology. Use 1 deals with the way in which folk theories and beliefs are imported into social psychological models on the basis that they exert causal influences on cognition or behavior (regardless of their validity or scientific usefulness). Use 2 describes the practice of mining elements from folk psychology for building an overarching psychological theory that goes beyond common sense (and assumes such elements are valid or scientifically useful). This distinction is then applied to both common practices within psychology and the philosophical arguments concerning the scientific validity of folk psychology. Adopting a social psychological perspective, I argue that (a) the two uses are often conflated in psychology with deleterious consequences; and (b) that the arguments for the elimination of folk psychology as a basis for scientific psychology, presented by P.M. Churchland and others, are weakened by the failure to attend to this distinction.

ROBERT M. FRANESCOTTI
Higher-order thoughts and conscious experience

• Abstract: For nearly a decade, David Rosenthal has proposed that a mental state M of a creature C is conscious just in case C has a suitable higher-order thought directed toward M. While this theory has had its share of criticism in recent years, I believe that the real difficulties have been ignored. In this essay, I show that the presence of a higher order is insufficient for conscious experience, even if we suppose that the thought satisfies the constraints that Rosenthal lists (i.e. that it is assertoric in nature, that it is had occurently, and that it is non-inferentially formed). The only way Rosenthal's view could possibly yield sufficient conditions is by requiring that the higher-order thought be suitably causally related to its object. Yet, as I also show, the only causal constraint strong enough to do the job is not only ill-motivated but probably false.

ANDRÉ KUKLA
Mystery, mind, and materialism

• Abstract: McGinn claims that (1) there is nothing "inherently mysterious" about consciousness, even though (2) we will never be able to understand it. The first claim is no more than a rhetorical flourish. The second may be read either as a claim (1) that we are unable to construct an explanatory theory of consciousness, or (2) that any such theory must strike us as unintelligible, in the sense which quantum mechanics is sometimes said to be unintelligible. On the first reading, McGinn's argument is based on a false premise (the "homogeneity constraint"). On the second reading, it suffers from the shortcoming that the central notion of intelligibility is too obscure to permit any definite conclusion. I close with a brief discussion of the contemporary tendency to reject non-physicalist approaches to consciousness on a priori grounds.

JOHN BICKLE
Psychoneural reduction of the genuinely cognitive: Some accomplished facts

• Abstract: The need for representations and computations over their contents in psychological explanations is often cited as both the mark of the genuinely cognitive and a source of skepticism about the reducibility of cognitive theories to neuroscience. A generic version of this anti-reductionist argument is rejected in this paper as unsound, since (i) current thinking about associative learning emphasizes the need for cognitivist resources in theories adequate to explain even the simplest form of this phenomena (Pavlovian conditioning), and yet (ii) the most widely accepted recent theory of associative learning, which utilizes cognitivist resources, has already been reduced to a purely neurophysiological account. Psychoneural reduction of genuinely cognitivist theories is thus already an accomplished scientific fact, despite pronouncements by anti-reductionists about its conceptual impossibility or empirical implausibility. In addition, the specific form of reduction involved in this case ("combinatorial" reduction) provides a promising model for further cognitivist-to-neuroscience theory reductions.

Review Essay:

CLIFF A. HOOKER
Review of J.M. HOLLAND's Adaptation in natural and artificial systems

• Abstract: Holland is of the view that appropriately generalized genetic algorithm processes will eventually be able to supply a general theory of complex adaptive systems, and of learning in particular. But before that can happen, we need to take a "second step," we need to develop and incorporate "the mathematics that emphasizes process over end-points...rather than focusing on diced points and basins of attraction" (p. 198). Unlike those responsible for machine-run algorithms, for example, a living system is not concerned with halting, just the opposite. However the details work out, and perhaps aided by other new tools n-nets and non-standard control systems, it will be a non-linear mathematics for the self-organizing, self-designing future. And it will be a characteristic product of the age, for it will be led by, rather than leading, computer modeling.

Book Reviews:

FRANK RITTER
Review of J.A. MICHON & A. AKYÜREK's Soar: A cognitive architecture in perspective

CHRISTOPHER GAUKER
Review of RUTH MILLIKIN's White queen psychology and other essays for Alice

W. KENT WILSON
Review of ADRIENNE LEHRER & EVA FEDER KITTAY's Frames, fields, and contrasts

ROBERT M. FRANCESCOTTI
Review of JAEGWON KIM's Supervenience in mind: Select philosophical essays

JOHN BRICKE
Review of JOHN HEIL & ALFRED MELE's Mental Causation

WILLEM de VRIES
Review of ROBERTO CASATI & ACHILLE C. VARZI's Holes and other superficialities

REINALDO ELUGARDO
Review of GEORGE GRAHAM's Philosophy of mind: An introduction