Representing Geometry: Perception, Concepts, and Knowledge
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1 the Mind-Body-Body Problem Robert
1 The Mind-Body-Body Problem Robert Hanna and Evan Thompson∗ Theoria et Historia Scientiarum: International Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies 7 (1) (2003): 23-42. From the point of view of Husserl’s ontology, the traditional mind-body problem looks hopelessly simplistic. Not only must we deal with relations between mind— indeed consciousness, soul [psyche], spirit [human personhood]—and body. We must address different aspects of the body itself as living organism and as material thing. This body-body problem is suppressed in a Cartesian ontology that reduces the body to a mechanism in the sense of seventeenth-century physics, as Descartes sought to reduce all of physics to mechanics. —David Woodruff Smith1 It seems to me that post-Kripke, the most promising line of attack on the mind- body problem is to see whether any sense can be made of the idea that mental processes might be physical processes necessarily but not analytically. —Thomas Nagel2 ∗ We gratefully acknowledge the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson, which provided a grant for the support of this work. E.T. is also supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the McDonnell Project in Philosophy and the Neurosciences. 1 See David Woodruff Smith, “Mind and Body,” in The Cambridge Companion to Husserl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 323-393, at p. 358. 2 Thomas Nagel, “The Psychophysical Nexus,” in Paul Boghossian and Christopher Peacocke (eds.), New Essays on the A Priori (Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 433-471, at p. 434. -
Developmental Dynamics: Toward a Biologically Plausible Evolutionary Psychology
Psychological Bulletin Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 2003, Vol. 129, No. 6, 819–835 0033-2909/03/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.129.6.819 Developmental Dynamics: Toward a Biologically Plausible Evolutionary Psychology Robert Lickliter Hunter Honeycutt Florida International University Indiana University Bloomington There has been a conceptual revolution in the biological sciences over the past several decades. Evidence from genetics, embryology, and developmental biology has converged to offer a more epigenetic, contingent, and dynamic view of how organisms develop. Despite these advances, arguments for the heuristic value of a gene-centered, predeterministic approach to the study of human behavior and development have become increasingly evident in the psychological sciences during this time. In this article, the authors review recent advances in genetics, embryology, and developmental biology that have transformed contemporary developmental and evolutionary theory and explore how these advances challenge gene-centered explanations of human behavior that ignore the complex, highly coordinated system of regulatory dynamics involved in development and evolution. The prestige of success enjoyed by the gene theory might become a evolutionary psychology assert that applying insights from evolu- hindrance to the understanding of development by directing our tionary theory to explanations of human behavior will stimulate attention solely to the genome....Already we have theories that refer more fruitful research programs and provide a powerful frame- the processes of development to genic action and regard the whole work for discovering evolved psychological mechanisms thought performance as no more than the realization of the potencies of the genes. Such theories are altogether too one-sided. -
Magnitudes: Metaphysics, Explanation, and Perception
Christopher Peacocke Magnitudes: Metaphysics, Explanation, and Perception || Christopher Peacocke: Columbia University, [email protected] 1 Magnitudes: Exposition of a Realistic Ontology I am going to argue for a robust realism about magnitudes, as irreducible ele- ments in our ontology. This realistic attitude, I will argue, gives a better meta- physics than the alternatives. It suggests some new options in the philosophy of science. It also provides the materials for a better account of the mind’s relation to the world, in particular its perceptual relations. As a preliminary, let us distinguish between magnitude-types, magnitudes, and magnitude-tropes. Magnitude-types are generic kinds of magnitudes. Dis- tance is one magnitude-type, whose instances are more specific distances, such as the distance measured by one meter, and the distance measured by ten miles. Gravitational mass is another magnitude-type, whose instances include the magnitude measured by one gram, and the magnitude measured by ten pounds weight. Magnitudes come in types. Every magnitude is of some magnitude type. As Frege said, “Something is a magnitude not all by itself, but only insofar as it belongs with other objects of a class which is a domain of magnitudes” - “Etwas ist eine Grösse nicht für sich allein sondern nur, sofern es mit andern Gegenständen einer Klasse angehört, die ein Grössengebiet ist” (1998: §161:159). If we slice more finely than magnitudes, we reach magnitude-tropes. Just as we distinguish between properties and tropes, between the property of being red and this particular thing’s redness, to be distinguished from a different ob- ject’s redness, so we can equally make the parallel distinction for magnitudes. -
The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20Th Century
Review of General Psychology Copyright 2002 by the Educational Publishing Foundation 2002, Vol. 6, No. 2, 139–152 1089-2680/02/$5.00 DOI: 10.1037//1089-2680.6.2.139 The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century Steven J. Haggbloom Renee Warnick, Jason E. Warnick, Western Kentucky University Vinessa K. Jones, Gary L. Yarbrough, Tenea M. Russell, Chris M. Borecky, Reagan McGahhey, John L. Powell III, Jamie Beavers, and Emmanuelle Monte Arkansas State University A rank-ordered list was constructed that reports the first 99 of the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century. Eminence was measured by scores on 3 quantitative variables and 3 qualitative variables. The quantitative variables were journal citation frequency, introductory psychology textbook citation frequency, and survey response frequency. The qualitative variables were National Academy of Sciences membership, election as American Psychological Association (APA) president or receipt of the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, and surname used as an eponym. The qualitative variables were quantified and combined with the other 3 quantitative variables to produce a composite score that was then used to construct a rank-ordered list of the most eminent psychologists of the 20th century. The discipline of psychology underwent a eve of the 21st century, the APA Monitor (“A remarkable transformation during the 20th cen- Century of Psychology,” 1999) published brief tury, a transformation that included a shift away biographical sketches of some of the more em- from the European-influenced philosophical inent contributors to that transformation. Mile- psychology of the late 19th century to the stones such as a new year, a new decade, or, in empirical, research-based, American-dominated this case, a new century seem inevitably to psychology of today (Simonton, 1992). -
Introduction
Introduction Paul Boghossian and Christopher Peacocke 1. Identifying the A Priori An a priori proposition is one which can be known to be true without any justification from the character of the subject's experience. This is a brief, pre‐theoretical characterization that needs some refinement; but it captures the core of what many philosophers have meant by the notion. Under this intuitive characterization, propositions which are plausibly a priori include the following: the axioms, inference rules, and theorems of logic; the axioms and theorems of arithmetic, and likewise the axioms and theorems of other parts of mathematics and other sciences of the abstract; the principles of the probability calculus; principles of colour incompatibility and implication; some definitions; and perhaps some truths of philosophy itself. To say that something can be known without any justification from the character of the subject's experience is to say that there is a way of coming to know it which does not rely on any such justification. When we are considering issues about the a priori, it can often help to focus on ways of coming to know and their distinctive properties. Suppose you see someone across a restaurant, and you thereby come to believe and know ‘That's the cellist Yo‐Yo Ma.’ The way in which you come to know this may involve the following: you have a memory image of a photograph of Yo‐Yo Ma; you believe that the face you see across the restaurant is an older version of that remembered face; and you accept the content of your current perception. -
CNS 2014 Program
Cognitive Neuroscience Society 21st Annual Meeting, April 5-8, 2014 Marriott Copley Place Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts 2014 Annual Meeting Program Contents 2014 Committees & Staff . 2 Schedule Overview . 3 . Keynotes . 5 2014 George A . Miller Awardee . 6. Distinguished Career Contributions Awardee . 7 . Young Investigator Awardees . 8 . General Information . 10 Exhibitors . 13 . Invited-Symposium Sessions . 14 Mini-Symposium Sessions . 18 Poster Schedule . 32. Poster Session A . 33 Poster Session B . 66 Poster Session C . 98 Poster Session D . 130 Poster Session E . 163 Poster Session F . 195 . Poster Session G . 227 Poster Topic Index . 259. Author Index . 261 . Boston Marriott Copley Place Floorplan . 272. A Supplement of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Cognitive Neuroscience Society c/o Center for the Mind and Brain 267 Cousteau Place, Davis, CA 95616 ISSN 1096-8857 © CNS www.cogneurosociety.org 2014 Committees & Staff Governing Board Mini-Symposium Committee Roberto Cabeza, Ph.D., Duke University David Badre, Ph.D., Brown University (Chair) Marta Kutas, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego Adam Aron, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego Helen Neville, Ph.D., University of Oregon Lila Davachi, Ph.D., New York University Daniel Schacter, Ph.D., Harvard University Elizabeth Kensinger, Ph.D., Boston College Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D., University of California, Gina Kuperberg, Ph.D., Harvard University Santa Barbara (ex officio) Thad Polk, Ph.D., University of Michigan George R. Mangun, Ph.D., University of California, -
C the JOURNAL of PHILOSOPHY C
c . c THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY volume cv, no. 2, february 2008 c . c THE SITUATION-DEPENDENCY OF PERCEPTION* ow can perception give us knowledge of the world? One of the challenges in answering this question is that we always H perceive objects from a particular location, under particular lighting conditions, and similar features of the environment that de- termine the way objects are presented. Despite this fact, we can per- ceive the shape and color of objects.1 We can perceive the shape of objects although only the facing surfaces are visible, and we can perceive two same-sized objects located at different distances to be the same size. Similarly, we can perceive the uniform color of a yellow wall although parts of it are illuminated more brightly than others, and we can recognize the sound of a cello regardless of whether it is played on a street or in a concert hall. More generally, subjects can perceive the properties objects have regardless of the situational features, al- though the way an object is presented always depends on the situa- tional features. When I speak of objects without further qualification, I mean mind- independent, external objects, such as cats and tables. Let us call the properties that an object has regardless of the situational features the intrinsic properties of the object. An intrinsic property of an object is a * I am indebted to Keith Allen, Robert Audi, Stephen Engstrom, Alan Ha´jek, Benj Hellie, Anjana Jacob, James John, Uriah Kriegel, William Lycan, Mohan Matthen, Anders Nes, Gurpreet Rattan, Sydney Shoemaker, Declan Smithies, Evan Thompson, Timothy Williamson, Wayne Wu, and the members of the Australian National University philosophy of mind reading group for comments on a draft of this paper. -
Mental Imagery: in Search of a Theory
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2002) 25, 157–238 Printed in the United States of America Mental imagery: In search of a theory Zenon W. Pylyshyn Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, Busch Campus, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8020. [email protected] http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/faculty/pylyshyn.html Abstract: It is generally accepted that there is something special about reasoning by using mental images. The question of how it is spe- cial, however, has never been satisfactorily spelled out, despite more than thirty years of research in the post-behaviorist tradition. This article considers some of the general motivation for the assumption that entertaining mental images involves inspecting a picture-like object. It sets out a distinction between phenomena attributable to the nature of mind to what is called the cognitive architecture, and ones that are attributable to tacit knowledge used to simulate what would happen in a visual situation. With this distinction in mind, the paper then considers in detail the widely held assumption that in some important sense images are spatially displayed or are depictive, and that examining images uses the same mechanisms that are deployed in visual perception. I argue that the assumption of the spatial or depictive nature of images is only explanatory if taken literally, as a claim about how images are physically instantiated in the brain, and that the literal view fails for a number of empirical reasons – for example, because of the cognitive penetrability of the phenomena cited in its favor. Similarly, while it is arguably the case that imagery and vision involve some of the same mechanisms, this tells us very little about the nature of mental imagery and does not support claims about the pictorial nature of mental images. -
How a Cognitive Psychologist Came to Seek Universal Laws
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 2004, 11 (1), 1-23 PSYCHONOMIC SOCIETY KEYNOTE ADDRESS How a cognitive psychologist came to seek universal laws ROGERN. SHEPARD Stanford University, Stanford, California and Arizona Senior Academy, Tucson, Arizona Myearlyfascination with geometry and physics and, later, withperception and imagination inspired a hope that fundamental phenomena ofpsychology, like those ofphysics, might approximate univer sal laws. Ensuing research led me to the following candidates, formulated in terms of distances along shortestpaths in abstractrepresentational spaces: Generalization probability decreases exponentially and discrimination time reciprocally with distance. Time to determine the identity of shapes and, pro visionally, relation between musical tones or keys increases linearly with distance. Invariance of the laws is achieved by constructing the representational spaces from psychological rather than physical data (using multidimensional scaling) and from considerations of geometry, group theory, and sym metry. Universality of the laws is suggested by their behavioral approximation in cognitively advanced species and by theoretical considerations of optimality. Just possibly, not only physics but also psy chology can aspire to laws that ultimately reflect mathematical constraints, such as those ofgroup the ory and symmetry, and, so, are both universal and nonarbitrary. The object ofall science, whether natural science or psy three principal respects. The first is my predilection for chology, is to coordinate our experiences and to bring them applying mathematical ideas that are often ofa more geo into a logical system. metrical or spatial character than are the probabilistic or (Einstein, 1923a, p. 2) statistical concepts that have generally been deemed [But] the initial hypotheses become steadily more abstract most appropriate for the behavioral and social sciences. -
Proposal for Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind
Proposal for Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind Edited by Jonathan Cohen∗and Brian McLaughliny This volume will introduce the central debates in contemporary philosophy of mind. The volume will include ten pairs of newly commissioned essays ad- vocating opposing viewpoints | one for each of the ten topics listed below. In addition, the editors will provide a substantive introduction that will lay out the necessary background for the debates and locate the individual topics within philosophy of mind and in relation to one another. The essays will each be around 6000 to 8000 words in length, and will be accessible to upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. Consequently, we expect that the volume could be used as text for advanced courses in phi- losophy of mind. However, the essays will also represent the state of play in the areas, and will contain original argumentation by eminent philosophers, so it will also be an important text for academics working in philosophy of mind and adjoining areas. We have organized our questions under the three headings that, in our minds, structure the central debates in contemporary philosophy of mind: questions about the ontology of the mental, questions about the nature of mental content, and questions about the nature of consciousness. For many of the questions on our list, we have suggested a number of backup authors in case our first choices are unable to write the essays. Although some names appear more than once on our list (including appearances as backup authors) we would not allow more than one piece by a single author in the volume. -
Experimente Clasice in Psihologie
PSIHOLOGIE - PSIHOTERAPIE Colecţie coordonată de Simona Reghintovschi DOUGLAS MOOK Experimente clasice în psihologie Traducere din engleză de Clara Ruse Prefaţă la ediţia în limba română de Mihai Aniţei A TRei Editori SILVIU DRAGOMIR VASILE DEM. ZAMFIRESCU Director editorial MAGDALENA MÂRCULESCU Coperta FABER STUDIO (S. OLTEANU, A. RĂDULESCU, D. DUMBRĂVICIAN) Redactor RALUCA HURDUC Director producţie CRISTIAN CLAUDIU COBAN Dtp MARIAN CONSTANTIN Corectori ELENA BIŢU EUGENIA URSU Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naţionale a României MOOK, DOUGLAS Experimente clasice în psihologie / Douglas Mook; trad.: Clara Ruse. - Bucureşti: Editura Trei, 2009 ISBN 978-973-707-286-3 I. Ruse, Clara (trad.) 159.9 Această carte a fost tradusă după Classic Experiments in Psychology de Douglas Mook, Editura Greenwood Press, imprintal Grupului Editorial Greenwood, Westport, CT, U.S.A. (http://www.greenwood.com/greenwood_press.aspx) Copyright © 2004 by Douglas Mook Copyright © Editura Trei, 2009 pentru prezenta ediţie C.P. 27-0490, Bucureşti Tel./Fax: +4 021300 60 90 e-mail: [email protected] www.edituratrei.ro ISBN 978-973-707-286-3 în memoria lui Eliot Stellar, care ar fi -putut o scrie mai bine. Cuprins Prefaţă la ediţia română (de Prof.univ.dr. Mihai Aniţei)................................. 11 Prefaţă .............................................................................................................................. 15 Mulţumiri.........................................................................................................................17 -
Forthcoming in American Philosophical Quarterly
Forthcoming in American Philosophical Quarterly Scents and Sensibilia ∗ Clare Batty University of Kentucky Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all. - W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale An ongoing debate in the philosophy of perception is the one concerning how we should account for the phenomenal character—or the ‘what it is like’—of perceptual experience. Within this debate, there are those who think that qualia exist and those who do not. Qualia realists claim that there are introspectible properties of experience that play a crucial role in determining phenomenal character. Intentionalists are among those who think that there are no such properties. Intentionalism is the view that there is nothing more to the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience than its representational content—that is, the way that things in the world appear to be. In arguing that qualia do not exist, intentionalists have drawn attention to the alleged transparency of experience. Experience is said to be transparent in the sense that you ‘see right through it’ and onto the objects and properties in the external world. Qualia simply aren’t there to be found. This paper explores the notion of transparency. Most of the discussions of transparency have focused on vision, a sense modality for which transparency can seem intuitive. But most intentionalists take it that intentionalism is true for all of the sensory modalities. This is in keeping with what we can call the Unification Thesis—namely, the thesis that certain philosophical questions about perception will shake out in the same way for each of the sensory modalities.