Technology vs. science: The cognitive fallacy

There are fundamental differences between the explanation of scientific change and the explanation of technological change. The differences arise from fundamental differences between scientific and technological knowledge and basic disanalogies between technological advance and scientific progress. Given the influence of economic markets and industrial and institutional structures on the development of technology, it is more plausible to regard technological change as a continuous and incremental process, rather than as a process of Kuhnian crises and revolutions.     

Mind, self, and consciousness as discourse

The present paper argues for the essential relationship between discourse and the human mind. Drawing upon the critical insights from a range of social sciences including Cultural Psychology and Discourse Studies, I outline in the first part of the paper a discursive account of the mind—of cognition, emotion, self and consciousness and the like: the human mind is constituted in text and talk which are situated in cultural and historical context. The discursive account is based on a social constructionist view of the human cultural world as meanings constructed primarily through linguistic communication in order to accomplish interactional purposes. The central argument here will be that our thinking and feeling are discursive by nature and in origin. Specifically, our minds are (a) derived from, (b) constrained by, (c) utilized in (d) modelled upon, (e) distributed through, and (f) begun with discourse. In the second part, I try to show how, in modern Western linguistics, metaphors from the natural sciences have come to define, and become part of, “the human mind” itself.     

At the root of embodied cognition: cognitive science meets neurophysiology

Recent experimental research in the field of neurophysiology has led to the discovery of two classes of visuomotor neurons: canonical neurons and mirror neurons. In light of these studies, we propose here an overview of two classical themes in the cognitive science panorama: James Gibson's theory of affordances and Eleanor Rosch's principles of categorization. We discuss how theoretical perspectives and neuroscientific evidence are converging towards the current paradigm of embodied cognition. From this perspective, we discuss the role of action and simulation in cognitive processes, which lead to the perceptual recognition of objects, and actions and to their conceptual categorization.     

Perception,Body, and the Sense of Touch: Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind

In recent philosophy of mind, a series of challenging ideas have appeared about the relation between the body and the sense of touch. In certain respects, these ideas have a striking affinity with Husserl’s theory of the constitution of the body. Nevertheless, these two approaches lead to very different understandings of the role of the body in perception. Either the body is characterized as a perceptual “organ,” or the body is said to function as a “template.” Despite its focus on the sense of touch, the latter conception, I will argue, nevertheless orients its understanding of tactual perception toward visual objects. This produces a distorted conception of touch. In this paper, I will formulate an alternative account, which is more faithful to what it is like to feel.

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Phenomenology and philosophy of science

This article examines human systemic condition and its evolved cultural organization from the perspective of information. The aim is to discuss general, tentative hypotheses on the nature and role of information in human systems. As a framework, the article considers information as the underlying parameter of growth on the general evolutionary trajectory. Information growth experienced an unprecedented increase at the appearance of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, which, as is well known, implies the trajectory's close relation to our species. This has led to the notion of post-organic evolutionary era in which humankind, through cultural evolutionary means, is in the process of supplanting biological determinants. Development, understood generally as victory over nature, has always been the measure by which our species has defined its success; humankind persists in faith in technical solutions to all problems.     

The fantasy of third-person science: Phenomenology, ontology and evidence

Dennett’s recent defense in this journal of the heterophenomenological method and its supposed advantages over Husserlian phenomenology is premised on his problematic account of the epistemological and ontological status of phenomenological states. By employing Husserl’s philosophy of science to clarify the relationship between phenomenology and evidence and the implications of this relationship for the empirical identification of ‘real’ conscious states, I argue that the naturalistic account of consciousness Dennett hopes for could be authoritative as a science only by virtue of the very phenomenological evidences Dennett’s method consigns to the realm of fiction. Thus heterophenomenology, qua scientific method, is incoherent.

First-person science of consciousness: Theories,methods, applications

First-person science, one of the traditional forms of psychological enquiry, has significant contributions to make to psychological theory-building as it can add an in-depth understanding to phenomena that are difficult to access from a third-person perspective. At the same time, first-person enquiry is widely considered to be an anachronistic and unreliable mode of research. This view is debatable in itself, however. In a recent theme-call we sought to compile different views and perspectives on various facets of first-person enquiry and in the following provide a brief synopsis of the papers published under this theme-call.     

Apical dendrite activity in cognition and consciousness

The ongoing steady nature of consciousness in everyday life implies that the underlying neural activity possesses a high level of stability. The prolonged cognitive events of sustained attention, imagery, and working memory also imply high stability of underlying neural activity. This paper proposes that stabilization of neural activity is produced by apical dendrite activity in pyramidal neurons within recurrent corticothalamic circuits, and proposes that the wave activities of apical dendrites that stabilize ongoing activity constitute the subjective impressions of an attended object and the entire sensory background. The cortical minicolumn, as the functional unit of the cortex, is separated into an axis consisting of layer 5 pyramidal neurons and a surrounding shell consisting of layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons. It is proposed that apical dendrites of the axis generate sensory impressions, and basal dendrites of the shell process the brief-lasting input-output identifications of objects that give rise to ideas.     

The extended cognition thesis: Its significance for the philosophy of (cognitive) science

While the extended cognition (EC) thesis has gained more followers in cognitive science and in the philosophy of mind and knowledge, our main goal is to discuss a different area of significance of the EC thesis: its relation to philosophy of science. In this introduction, we outline two major areas: (I) The role of the thesis for issues in the philosophy of cognitive science, such as: How do notions of EC figure in theories or research programs in cognitive science? Which versions of the EC thesis appear, and with which arguments to support them? (II) The potentials and limits of the EC thesis for topics in general philosophy of science, such as: Can naturalism perhaps be further advanced by means of the more recent EC thesis? Can we understand “big science” or laboratory research better by invoking some version of EC? And can the EC thesis help in overcoming the notorious cognitive/social divide in science studies?     

A model of the hierarchy of behaviour, cognition, and consciousness

Processes comparable in important respects to those underlying human conscious and non-conscious processing can be identified in a range of species and it is argued that these reflect evolutionary precursors of the human processes. A distinction is drawn between two types of processing: (1) stimulus-based and (2) higher-order. For 'higher-order,' in humans the operations of processing are themselves associated with conscious awareness. Conscious awareness sets the context for stimulus-based processing and its end-point is accessible to conscious awareness. However, the mechanics of the translation between stimulus and response proceeds without conscious control. The paper argues that higher-order processing is an evolutionary addition to stimulus-based processing. The model's value is shown for gaining insight into a range of phenomena and their link with consciousness. These include brain damage, learning, memory, development, vision, emotion, motor control, reasoning, the voluntary versus involuntary debate, and mental disorder.     

Systema Temporis: A time-based dimensional framework for consciousness and cognition

This study uses a combined categorical-dimensional approach to depict a hierarchical framework for consciousness similar to, and contiguous with, factorial models of cognition (cf., intelligence). On the basis of the longstanding definition of time consciousness, the analysis employs a dimension of temporal extension, in the same manner that psychology has temporally organised memory (i.e., short-term, long-term, and long-lasting memories). By defining temporal extension in terms of the structure of time perception at short timescales (<100 s), memory and time consciousness are proposed to fit along the same logarithmic dimension. This suggests that different forms of time consciousness (e.g., experience, wakefulness, and self-consciousness) are embedded within, or supported by, the ascending timescales of different modes of memory (i.e., short-term, long-term, etc.). A secondary dimension is also proposed to integrate higher-order forms of consciousness/emotion and memory/cognition. The resulting two-dimensional structure accords with existing theories of cognitive and emotional intelligence.