Action, mindreading and embodied social cognition

One of the central insights of the embodied cognition (EC) movement is that cognition is closely tied to action. In this paper, I formulate an EC-inspired hypothesis concerning social cognition. In this domain, most think that our capacity to understand and interact with one another is best explained by appeal to some form of mindreading. I argue that prominent accounts of mindreading likely contain a significant lacuna. Evidence indicates that what I call an agent??s actional processes and states??her goals, needs, intentions, desires, and so on??likely play important roles in and for mindreading processes. If so, a full understanding of mindreading processes and their role in cognition more broadly will require an understanding of how actional mental processes interact with, influence, or take part in mindreading processes.     

Recognizing Targets: Wittgenstein's Exploration of a New Kind of Foundationalism in On Certainty1

Bringing the views of Grayling, Moyal‐Sharrock and Stroll together, I argue that in On Certainty, Wittgenstein explores the possibility of a new kind of foundationalism. Distinguishing propositional language‐games from non‐propositional, actional certainty, Wittgenstein investigates a foundationalism sui generis. Although he does not forthrightly state, defend, or endorse what I am characterizing as a “new kind of foundationalism,” we must bear in mind that On Certainty was a collection of first draft notes written at the end of Wittgenstein's life. The work was unprogrammatic, sometimes cryptic. Yet, his exploration into areas of knowledge, certitude and doubt suggest an identifiable direction to his thoughts.     

Deciding as Intentional Action: Control over Decisions

Common-sense folk psychology and mainstream philosophy of action agree about decisions: these are under an agent's direct control, and are thus intentional actions for which agents can be held responsible. I begin this paper by presenting a problem for this view. In short, since the content of the motivational attitudes that drive deliberation and decision remains open-ended until the moment of decision, it is unclear how agents can be thought to exercise control over what they decide at the moment of deciding. I note that this problem might motivate a non-actional view of deciding—a view that decisions are not actions, but are instead passive events of intention acquisition. For without an understanding of how an agent might exercise control over what is decided at the moment of deciding, we lack a good reason for maintaining commitment to an actional view of deciding. However, I then offer the required account of how agents exercise control over decisions at the moment of deciding. Crucial to this account is an understanding of the relation of practical deliberation to deciding, an understanding of skilled deliberative activity, and the role of attention in the mental action of deciding.     

UNREFLECTIVE ACTION AND THE ARGUMENT FROM SPEED

Hubert Dreyfus has defended a novel view of agency, most notably in his debate with John McDowell. Dreyfus argues that expert actions are primarily unreflective and do not involve conceptual activity. In unreflective action, embodied know‐how plays the role reflection and conceptuality play in the actions of novices. Dreyfus employs two arguments to support his conclusion: the argument from speed and the phenomenological argument. I argue that Dreyfus's argumentative strategies are not successful, since he relies on a dubious assumption about concepts and reflection. I suggest that Dreyfus is committed to a minimal view of conceptuality in action.     

On Recanati’s Mental Files

Abstract

In his book Mental Files (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), Francois Recanati develops a theory of mind and language based on the idea that Fregean senses should be identified with ‘mental files’, mental representations whose primary function is to store information about objects. I discuss three aspects of Recanati’s book. The first concerns his use of acquaintance relations in individuating mental files, and what this means for ‘file dynamics’. The second concerns his comments on a theory that I have elsewhere advocated, the ‘sequenced worlds’ or ‘multi-centered worlds’ theory. The third concerns how the mental file approach handles non-doxastic attitudes like imagining.     

Wittgenstein on Understanding and Interpretation (Comments on the work of Thomas Morawetz)

Wittgenstein's distinction between understanding and interpretation is fundamental to the account of meaning in Philosophical Investigations. In his discussion of rule‐following, Wittgenstein explicitly rejects the idea that understanding or grasping a rule is a matter of interpretation. Wittgenstein explains meaning and rule‐following in terms of action, rejecting both realist and Cartesian accounts of the mental. I argue that in his effort to employ Wittgenstein's views on meaning and rule‐following, Professor Morawetz embraces the position Wittgenstein rejects. In the course of making his case for law as a “deliberative practice,” Professor Morawetz embraces interpretation as a fundamental element of human practices, thereby taking up precisely the view Wittgenstein rejects     

Weakness and compulsion: the essential difference

This paper aims to defend the common-sense view that we exempt compulsive agents from responsibility to the extent that they are unable to choose what they do and hence they cannot control their actions by their choices. This view has been challenged in a seminal paper by Gary Watson, who claimed that akratic agents lack control in the same sense but they are responsible nonetheless. In the first part of the paper, I critically examine the arguments Watson advances for this claim first in his original paper and then in some more recent works. I conclude that his account is based on the widely held assumption that both compulsive behavior and weakness of the will must be understood as a direct result of some inner motivational conflict. In the second part, I argue for an alternative understanding of the difference between weakness and compulsion. My claim is that compulsion is a cognitive rather than a motivational deficiency, since the compulsive, unlike the weak-willed, does not desire to perform the action which she actually performs. Furthermore, I argue that compulsive agents cannot control their actions by their choices because they have a distorted view of their own actional abilities. In the final part of the paper, I discuss a consequence of this account to the conditional analysis of free will as a condition of responsibility.     

Peirce on Truth as the Predestinate Opinion

Abstract: In 1878's ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear’, Peirce states that truth is the predestinate opinion, or that which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate. Later in his life, though, he would claim both (i) that truth is what would be believed if we could figure out the right method of inquiry and (ii) that, instead of affirming that truth is the predestinate opinion in 1878, he ought to have affirmed that truth is what would be believed if inquiry were carried sufficiently far. The aim of this paper is to provide an account of why the early Peirce endorses the claim that truth is the predestinate opinion and why the late Peirce is compelled to modify that position. I argue that Peirce's early statement that truth is the predestinate opinion is motivated by his theory that all mental action is of the nature of a valid inference and that the later modification of his view is partly motivated by his rejection of that theory.     

More than a feeling: Wittgenstein and William James on love and other emotions

One of the most significant features of Wittgenstein's Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology (written after he had completed most of the Philosophical Investigations) is his reflections on emotions. Wittgenstein's treatment of this topic was developed in direct response to his reading of William James’s chapter on emotions in his 1890 masterpiece, The Principles of Psychology. This paper examines the competing views of emotions that emerge in these works, both of which attempt to overcome the Cartesian dualist conception in different ways. The main point of disagreement concerns the relation between emotions and their bodily expression (e.g. the relation between grief and weeping). My interpretation focuses on Wittgenstein's remarks on the emotion of love because, I argue, it is a particularly problematic case. To elucidate his largely unexplored view of love, I draw on his remarks on understanding and criteria in the Philosophical Investigations. I argue that by examining the examples of complex emotions like love, we can arrive at a more accurate characterization of Wittgenstein's general view of mental concepts and mental phenomena.     

Mental Causation and Searle’s Impossible Conception of Unconscious Intentionality

In my article I evaluate Searle’s account of mental causation, in particular his account of the causal efficacy of unconscious intentional states. I argue that top-down causation and overdetermination are unsolved problems in Searle’s philosophy of mind, despite his assurances to the contrary. I also argue that there are conflicting claims involved in his account of mental causation and his account of the unconscious. As a result, it becomes impossible to understand how unconscious intentional states can be causally efficacious. My conclusion will be that if Searle’s conception of unconscious intentionality is to play a genuine role in the causal explanation of human action, it needs to be rethought.     

Rational Action Entails Rational Desire: A Critical Review of Searle's Rationality in Action1

Abstract

In this paper I contest Searle's thesis that desire-independent reasons for action – ‘reasons that are binding on a rational agent, regardless of desires and dispositions in his motivational set’ – are inherent in the concept of rationality. Following Searle's procedure, I first address his argument that altruistic reasons for action inhere in the concept of rationality, and then examine his argument for his more general thesis. I conclude that a viable theory of rational action would be centered, not on the concept of desire-independent reasons, but rather on the concept of rational desire.     

Interpretive sensory-access theory and conscious intentions

It is typically assumed that while we know other people's mental states by observing and interpreting their behavior, we know our own mental states by introspection, i.e., without interpreting ourselves. In his latest book, The opacity of mind: An integrative theory of self-knowledge, Peter Carruthers [2011. The opacity of mind: An integrative theory of self-knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press] argues against this assumption. He holds that findings from across the cognitive sciences strongly suggest that self-knowledge of conscious propositional attitudes such as intentions, judgments, and decisions involves a swift and unconscious process of self-interpretation that utilizes the same sensory channels that we employ when working out other people's mental states. I provide an overview of Carruthers’ book before discussing a pathological case that challenges his account of self-knowledge and mentioning empirical evidence that undermines his use of a particular kind of data in his case against introspection of conscious attitudes.     

Can There Be Full Excuses for Morally Wrong Actions?*

Most people (and philosophers) distinguish between performing a morally wrong action and being blameworthy for having performed that action, and believe that an individual can be fully excused for having performed a wrong action. My purpose is to reject this claim. More precisely, I defend what I call the “Dependence Claim”: A's doing X is wrong only if A is blameworthy for having done X. I consider three cases in which, according to the traditional view, a wrong action could be excused: duress, mental illness, and mistake. I try to show that the reasons for excusing in either case are not relevantly distinguishable from the reasons for claiming that the prima facie wrong action is not wrong all things considered.     

Personal Dualism and the Argument from Differential Vagueness

Abstract

In Causing Actions, Pietroski defends a distinctive view of the relationship between mind and body which he calls Personal Dualism. Central to his defence is the Argument from Differential Vagueness. It moves from the claim that mental events have different vagueness of spatiotemporal boundaries from neural events to the claim that mental events are not identical to neural events. In response, I argue that this presupposes an ontological account of vagueness that there is no reason to believe in this context. I further argue that Pietroski's reasons for rejecting the possibility that mental events are vaguely constituted from neural events are inadequate. I go on to show how Pietroski's Personal Dualism is ill-equipped to deal with the problem of mental causation because of its apparently necessary appeal to ceteris paribus laws.     

Drawing the boundary between low-level and high-level mindreading

The philosophical world is indebted to Alvin Goldman for a number of reasons, and among them, his defense of the relevance of cognitive science for philosophy of mind. In Simulating minds, Goldman discusses with great care and subtlety a wide variety of experimental results related to mindreading from cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology and developmental psychology. No philosopher has done more to display the resourcefulness of mental simulation. I am sympathetic with much of the general direction of Goldman’s theory. I agree with him that mindreading is not a single system based on a single mechanism. And I admire his attempt to bring together the cognitive neuroscientific discovery of mirror system phenomena and the philosophical account of pretense within a unique theoretical framework of mental simulation. To do so, Goldman distinguishes two types of mindreading, respectively, based on low-level and high-level simulation. Yet, I wonder in what sense they are really two distinct processes. Here, I will confine myself largely to spelling out a series of points that take issue with the distinction between low-level and high-level mindreading.     

Afro-communitarianism and affirmative action in South Africa: A response to David Benatar

In a 2008 article “Justice, Diversity and Racial Preference: a Critique of Affirmative Action”, published in the South African Law Journal, David Benatar argues that affirmative action in South African higher education institutions cannot be justified. In response to this argument and the views expressed in his article, I show that his conclusions depend on an individualistic, decontextualised, and dehistoricised conception of the person. I argue that if we take an Afro-communitarian understanding of the person as our starting point, Benatar's arguments fail. An upshot of my argument is that affirmative action emerges as a useful and critical measure of restorative justice in the South African context.     

Reply to Schooler: Consistent Is Not Conclusive

ABSTRACT— In this reply, I address the major issues raised by Schooler in his commentary on my article. Although we probably disagree about some points, I suspect that we are in agreement that there is empirical evidence that can be interpreted as being consistent with some aspects of the mental-exercise hypothesis. However, from my perspective, the available evidence is far from conclusive with respect to mental exercise slowing the rate of age-related mental decline, and recognition of the current state of uncertainty on this issue will likely facilitate progress in identifying the role of mental activity and other moderators of mental aging.     

Dynamical Systems Theory as an Approach to Mental Causation

Summary  Dynamical systems theory (DST) is gaining popularity in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Recently several authors (e.g. J.A.S. Kelso, 1995; A. Juarrero, 1999; F. Varela and E. Thompson, 2001) offered a DST approach to mental causation as an alternative for models of mental causation in the line of Jaegwon Kim (e.g. 1998). They claim that some dynamical systems exhibit a form of global to local determination or downward causation in that the large-scale, global activity of the system governs or constrains local interactions. This form of downward causation is the key to the DST model of mental causation. In this paper I evaluate the DST approach to mental causation. I will argue that the main problem for current DST approaches to mental causation is that they lack a clear metaphysics. I propose one metaphysical framework (Gillett, 2002a/b/c) that might deal with this deficiency.     

Light and color in a void: The analysis of a special needs child

This clinical report comes from the five year, four day a week analysis of a male child. What is special is that this treatment is of a child with marked mental retardation. I have retained this nomenclature because that is how Ricardo's parents described his mental capacity. What they meant was that he was greatly impaired in his cognition and this could be seen in Ricardo's severe cognitive, social, behavioral, and relational improprieties. I have privileged the function of psychoanalytic understanding and the role of transference to bring about modifications in this child's internal world. And I have considered the patient's psychotic mental state to be in need of psychoanalytic treatment not withstanding his psychosis's connection to his cognitive handicap. I have also added information I have received after the analysis, information that demonstrates continued integration coming from the analytic process. Owing to Ricardo's limited mental capacities, this article advances clinical information that is not often found in analyses of children. There are possibly many other children like him who nonetheless would benefit from dynamic psychoanalytic understanding. On the other hand, I shall not discuss this matter theoretically, even though some theoretic considerations are necessary. Clinical practice and the transferential relation are this report's principal material.