Sortal concepts, object individuation, and language

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary enterprise. This review highlights how the philosophical notion of a 'sortal'--a concept that provides principles of individuation and principles of identity - has been introduced into cognitive developmental psychology. Although the notion 'sortal' originated in metaphysics, importing it into the cognitive sciences has bridged a gap between philosophical and psychological discussions of concepts and has generated a fruitful and productive research enterprise. As I review here, the sortal concept has inspired several lines of empirical work in the past decade, including the study of object individuation; object identification; the relationship between language and acquisition of kind concepts; the representational capacities of non-human primates; object-based attention and cognitive architecture; and the relationship between kind concepts and individual concepts.     

How to build a baby: On the development of an accessible representational system

The notion of a sensorimotor stage in infancy is called into question. First, some of the recent experimental literature on cognitive development in infancy is examined to determine the kinds of representational capacity that these data require. It is concluded that most of the recent work on perceptual development and the object concept in infancy is compatible with the notion of a sensorimotor stage but that other work showing imitation, motor recognition, the acquisition of manual signs, and recall of absent objects is not, requiring, instead, a conceptual form of representation. Such a system is apparent early in development. It is suggested that there is a viable alternative to Piaget's theory that conceptual representation consists of a transformation of sensorimotor schemas into a new, more advanced code. It is proposed that an accessible conceptual system develops simultaneously and in parallel with the sensorimotor system, with neither system being derivative from the other. It is further proposed that the mechanism by which infants encode information into an accessible system consists of a process of perceptual analysis.     

Representational content and computation in the human visual system

Summary Information-processing systems can be characterized by their ability to transform systematically certain internal representational states (symbols) into one another. The presence of such an information-processing capacity calls for an explanation. How could such an explanation in principle be formulated? How is it possible to specify internal representational states and to ascribe to them certain representational contents? What has to be demonstrated by such explanations is how an information-processing capacity is actually instantiated in a system. In this paper, the outlines of an explanation by instantiation are sketched for a specific human visual capacity. In addition, some fundamental problems facing the development of this explanation will be discussed.     

Extended cognition and fixed properties: steps to a third-wave version of extended cognition

This paper explores several paths a distinctive third wave of extended cognition might take. In so doing, I address a couple of shortcomings of first- and second-wave extended cognition associated with a tendency to conceive of the properties of internal and external processes as fixed and non-interchangeable. First, in the domain of cognitive transformation, I argue that a problematic tendency of the complementarity model is that it presupposes that socio-cultural resources augment but do not significantly transform the brain??s representational capacities during diachronic development. In this paper I show that there is available a much more dynamical explanation??one taking the processes of the brain??s enculturation into patterned practices as transforming the brain??s representational capacities. Second, in the domain of cognitive assembly, I argue that another problematic tendency is an individualistic notion of cognitive agency, since it overlooks the active contribution of socio-cultural practices in the assembly process of extended cognitive systems. In contrast to an individualistic notion of cognitive agency, I explore the idea that it is possible to decentralize cognitive agency to include socio-cultural practices.     

Die deduktiv-nomologische Erkl?rung als hauptmotiv empirisch-wissenschaftlicher t?tigkeit

In this paper an attempt is made at developing the notion of a real and complete empirical explanation as excluding all forms of potential or incomplete explanations. This explanation is, however, no longer conceived as the proper aim of empirical science, for it can certainly be gleaned from recent epistemological publications that no comprehensive notion of a real and complete scientific explanation is likely to be constructed from within empirical science. Contrary to common understanding the empirical explanation, deductive-nomological as well as statistical explanation, is considered here only as motive of scientific activities, i.e., as common aim of a transcending cooperation of scientific and non-scientific social practice. Following from this the proper aim of empirical science now consists in the development of practically relevant explanatory theories.This redetermination of the aim of scientific activities of empirical science also means criticism of the unification of deductive-nomological and statistical explanations, as it has been proposed by Wolfgang Stegmüller in his pragmatisch-epistemische Wende. For both forms of empirical explanation must be referred to fundamentally different kinds of practical relevance, the former playing a more important role in the advancement of social practice. Stegmüller's development of a comprehensive probabilistic notion of empirical explanation, as tied up to pragmatic knowledge-situations, in a way already transcends a scientifically immanent determination of it, but he seems to have stopped halfway on the road to practically relevant empirical explanations. Several insufficiencies with his probabilistic notion of empirical explanation are shown up in this paper as a consequence of his abiding by pragmatic, and not penetrating to practical, knowledge-situations. The final result of it, however, consists in a clarification and a modification of the concept of deductive-nomological explanation, originally developed by Hempel and Oppenheim.     

Folk-Psychology,Psychopathology, and the Unconscious

Abstract

There is a ‘philosophers’ assumption that there is a problem with the very notion of an unconscious mental state.The paper begins by outlining how the problem is generated, and proceeds to argue that certain conditions need to be fulfilled if the unconscious is to qualify as mental. An explanation is required as to why we would ever expect these conditions to be fulfilled, and it is suggested that the Freudian concept of repression has an essential role to play in such an explanation. Notoriously this concept brings with it a further puzzle: it looks as though repression serves a purpose, and so requires an agent to execute this purpose, a repressor. Paradox is avoided only if repression is viewed in biologicalfunctional terms.The result is that the notion of the unconscious is saved from the a priori objections often levelled at it by philosophers.This still leaves considerable theoretical work to be done by psychological science.     

Exhibiting interpretational and representational validity

A natural language argument may be valid in at least two nonequivalent senses: it may be interpretationally or representationally valid (Etchemendy in The concept of logical consequence. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1990). Interpretational and representational validity can both be formally exhibited by classical first-order logic. However, as these two notions of informal validity differ extensionally and first-order logic fixes one determinate extension for the notion of formal validity (or consequence), some arguments must be formalized by unrelated nonequivalent formalizations in order to formally account for their interpretational or representational validity, respectively. As a consequence, arguments must be formalized subject to different criteria of adequate formalization depending on which variant of informal validity is to be revealed. This paper develops different criteria that formalizations of an argument have to satisfy in order to exhibit the latter’s interpretational or representational validity.     

Intellectual disability and the myth of the changeling myth

This article investigates the historical sources for the idea of the "changeling" or substitute child as an explanation for congenital intellectual disability. Pre-modern sources for this idea are elite and theological as much as popular and folkloric, nor do they refer to intellectual disability in any sense recognizable to us. Rather, both the concept of intellectual disability and the notion of a transhistorical changeling myth emerge from the historical core of modern psychology.     

Challenging the importance of vision for the development of an extrinsic spatial framework: evidence from the blind and sighted

Although connectionism is advocated by its proponents as an alternative to the classical computational theory of mind, doubts persist about its computational credentials. Our aim is to dispel these doubts by explaining how connectionist networks compute. We first develop a generic account of computation-no easy task, because computation, like almost every other foundational concept in cognitive science, has resisted canonical definition. We opt for a characterisation that does justice to the explanatory role of computation in cognitive science. Next we examine what might be regarded as the "conventional" account of connectionist computation. We show why this account is inadequate and hence fosters the suspicion that connectionist networks are not genuinely computational. Lastly, we turn to the principal task of the paper: the development of a more robust portrait of connectionist computation. The basis of this portrait is an explanation of the representational capacities of connection weights, supported by an analysis of the weight configurations of a series of simulated neural networks.     

Representation for reciprocal agent–environment interaction

Declarative modelling approaches in principle assume a notion of representation or representational content for the modelling concepts. The notion of representational content as discussed in literature in cognitive science and philosophy of mind shows complications as soon as agent and environment have an intense reciprocal interaction. In such cases an internal agent state is affected by the way in which internal and external aspects are interwoven during (ongoing) interaction. In this paper it is shown that the classical correlational approach to representational content is not applicable, but the temporal-interactivist approach is. As this approach involves more complex temporal relationships, formalisation was used to define specifications of the representational content more precisely. These specifications have been validated by automatically checking them on traces generated by a simulation model. Moreover, by mathematical proof it was shown how these specifications are entailed by the basic local properties.     

Representation and cognitive science

‘Representation’ is a concept which occurs both in cognitive science and philosophy. It has common features in both settings in that it concerns the explanation of behaviour in terms of the way the subject categorizes and systematizes responses to its environment. The prevailing model sees representations as causally structured entities correlated on the one hand with elements in a natural language and on the other with clearly identifiable items in the world. This leads to an analysis of representation and cognition in terms of formal symbols and their relations. But human perception and cognition use multiple informational constraints and deal with unsystematic and messy input in a way best explained by Parallel Distributed Processing models. This undermines the claim that a formal representational theory of mind is ‘the only game in town’. In particular it suggests a radically different model of brain function and its relation to epistemology from that found in current representational theories.     

Affordances and the Nature of Perceptual Content

Abstract

According to John McDowell, representational perceptual content is conceptual through and through. This paper criticizes this view by claiming that there is a certain kind of representational and non‐conceptual perceptual content that is sensitive to bodily skills. After a brief introduction to McDowell’s position, Merleau‐Ponty’s notion of body schema and Gibson’s notion of affordance are presented. It is argued that affordances are constitutive of representational perceptual content, and that at least some affordances, the so‐called ‘conditional affordances’, are essentially related to the body schema. This means that the perceptual content depends upon the nature of the body schema. Since the body schema does not pertain to the domain that our conceptual faculties operate upon, it is argued that this kind of perceptual content cannot be conceptual. At least some of that content is representational, yet it cannot feature as non‐demonstrative conceptual content. It is argued that if it features as demonstrative conceptual content, it has to be captured by private concepts. Since McDowell’s theory does not allow for the existence of a private language, it is concluded that at least some representational perceptual content is non‐conceptual.     

On Properties and Processes on Numerical Assignment: An Empiricist Approach

By starting from the idea of processes of numerical assignment, an explication, á la Kant, of the concept of property is proposed. In this way two results are achieved: on the one hand, the Kantian doctrine of explication is revaluated; on the other hand, the notion of property is tackled from an empiricist point of view based on the representational theory of measurement. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Temporal binding, binocular rivalry, and consciousness.

Cognitive functions like perception, memory, language, or consciousness are based on highly parallel and distributed information processing by the brain. One of the major unresolved questions is how information can be integrated and how coherent representational states can be established in the distributed neuronal systems subserving these functions. It has been suggested that this so-called "binding problem" may be solved in the temporal domain. The hypothesis is that synchronization of neuronal discharges can serve for the integration of distributed neurons into cell assemblies and that this process may underlie the selection of perceptually and behaviorally relevant information. As we intend to show here, this temporal binding hypothesis has implications for the search of the neural correlate of consciousness. We review experimental results, mainly obtained in the visual system, which support the notion of temporal binding. In particular, we discuss recent experiments on the neural mechanisms of binocular rivalry which suggest that appropriate synchronization among cortical neurons may be one of the necessary conditions for the buildup of perceptual states and awareness of sensory stimuli.     

Modality,invariance, and logical truth

Conclusion Let us sum up. We began with the question, What is the interest of a model-theoretic definition of validity? Model theoretic validity consists in truth under all reinterpretations of non-logical constants. In this paper, we have described for each necessity concept a corresponding modal invariance property. Exemplification of that property by the logical constants of a language leads to an explanation of the necessity, in the corresponding sense, of its valid sentences. I have fixed upon the epistemic modalities in characterizing the logical constants: to be a logical constant in the language of a population is to be invariant over a modality describing complete possible epistemic states of that population (or an idealized analogue thereof). The grounds for this characterization are these: (1) It leads, I believe, to an extensionally reasonable demarcation of the logical constants, including clear cases and excluding clear non-cases. It gives a principled criterion for deciding unclear cases. (2) It provides an analysis of the topic-neutrality of logic. (3) It leads to an explanation of the epistemic necessity of the logical truths in terms of the topic-neutrality of the logical constants.All the same, it is reasonable to ask, even if the suggested demarcation of logic is extensionally correct, whether it can reasonably be expected to be fundamental. The epistemic invariance of an expression is a rather striking property, one which we should want to explain. What is missing, then, is an explanation of the distinguishing epistemic properties of the constants in terms of more fundamental properties involving their understanding and use. It would be these that properly define the nature, not just the extent, of logic.     

儿童表征深度的微观变化:路线、速度及来源

以往研究表明,表征深度的发展是一个随年龄增长而单调上升的过程,但这些年龄尺度上的横断研究难以说明表征深度变化的发生过程及其机制.本研究采用微观发生法,以齿轮推断任务为材料,探讨了68名小学五年级儿童表征深度的变化路线、速度及来源.结果表明,在整个实验期间,儿童的表征深度发生了显著变化;其变化路线主要体现为从最基本的一级水平向更高级的二、三级水平的递增过程,但这种变化路线的个体间差异较大;变化速度体现出先快后慢的特点;上述变化特点与练习及自我解释、练习模式的特征以及任务难度等因素有关.     

Semantics,experience and time

The computational hypothesis, with its inherent representationalism, and the dynamical hypothesis, with its apparent absence of representations and its commitment to continuous time, stand at an impasse. It is unclear how the dynamical stance can handle representational thought, or how computationalism can deal effectively with a tightly coupled, reciprocally causative agent–environment system in continuous transformation. Underlying this dilemma is the complex relation of mind to time, a relation encoded in the word experience. We must ask if any hypothesis describes a ‘device’ capable of experience? Yet what is an intelligence and its thought without experience? Is a computational device, whether supporting a symbolic processor or connectionist net, intrinsically condemned to a zero degree of experience? What is required of a dynamical device? It is argued here that ‘semantic’ intelligence and thought rests upon experience, fundamentally upon the invariance laws defined over time within conscious perception. The structure of experience is intrinsically unavailable to the computational device, limiting it to a ‘syntactic’ intelligence. An alternative conception of a device is offered, based on Bergson conjoined with Gibson, which supports the qualitative and structural aspects of experience and the semantic. It frames a dynamical model of perception and memory in which invariance laws are intrinsic, creates a deeper notion of situatedness, and supports a concept of semantically based, representative thought founded upon perception.     

Representations in dynamical embodied agents: re-analyzing a minimally cognitive model agent

Understanding the role of 'representations' in cognitive science is a fundamental problem facing the emerging framework of embodied, situated, dynamical cognition. To make progress, I follow the approach proposed by an influential representational skeptic, Randall Beer: building artificial agents capable of minimally cognitive behaviors and assessing whether their internal states can be considered to involve representations. Hence, I operationalize the concept of representing as 'standing in,' and I look for representations in embodied agents involved in simple categorization tasks. In a first experiment, no representation can be found, but the relevance of the task is undermined by the fact that agents with no internal states can reach high performance. A simple modification makes the task more "representationally hungry," and in this case, agents' internal states are found to qualify as representations. I conclude by discussing the benefits of reconciling the embodied-dynamical approach with the notion of representation.