Experiencing organisms: from mineness to subject of experience

Many philosophers hold that phenomenally conscious experiences involve a sense of mineness, since experiences like pain or hunger are immediately presented as mine. What can be said about this mineness, and does acceptance of this feature commit us to the existence of a subject or self? If yes, how should we characterize this subject? This paper considers the possibility that, (1) to the extent that we accept this feature, it provides us with a minimal notion of a subject of experience, and that (2) the phenomenological subject of experience, as it is represented in conscious experience, is the organism. While many philosophers agree that the metaphysical subject of experience is the animal, this claim is much less widespread, maybe even counterintuitive. The argument for this claim alludes to the structure of phenomenal consciousness and to recent work in cognitive science concerning the embodied character of consciousness and cognition. To illustrate the problems of current controversies, not only several recent rejections of a subject of experience are critically discussed, but also Hume’s famous rejection of a subject is criticized making use of epistemological aspects from Kant’s philosophy of mind. The final section situates the present discussion in the context of recently popular predictive coding accounts of perception and perceptual experience.     

Individualism versus interactionism about social understanding

In the debate about the nature of social cognition we see a shift towards theories that explain social understanding through interaction. This paper discusses autopoietic enactivism and the we-mode approach in the light of such developments. We argue that a problem seems to arise for these theories: an interactionist account of social cognition makes the capacity of shared intentionality a presupposition of social understanding, while the capacity of engaging in scenes of shared intentionality in turn presupposes exactly the kind of social understanding that it is intended to explain. The social capacity in question that is presupposed by these accounts is then analyzed in the second section via a discussion and further development of Searle’s ‘sense of us’ and ‘sense of the other’ as a precondition for social cognition and joint action. After a critical discussion of Schmid’s recent proposal to analyze this in terms of plural pre-reflective selfawareness, we develop an alternative account. Starting from the idea that infants distinguish in perception between physical objects and other agents we distinguish between affordances and social affordances and cash out the notion of a social affordance in terms of “interaction-oriented representations”, parallel to the analysis of object affordances in terms of “action-oriented representations”. By characterizing their respective features we demonstrate how this approach can solve the problem formulated in the first part.     

Lost in virtual space: studies in human and ideal spatial navigation

The authors describe 3 human spatial navigation experiments that investigate how limitations of perception, memory, uncertainty, and decision strategy affect human spatial navigation performance. To better understand the effect of these variables on human navigation performance, the authors developed an ideal-navigator model for indoor navigation whose optimizing algorithm uses a partially observable Markov decision process. The model minimizes the number of actions (translations and rotations) required to move from an unknown starting state to a specific goal state in indoor environments that have perceptual ambiguity. The authors compared the model's performance with that of the human observer to measure human navigation efficiency. Experiment 1 investigated the effect of increasing the layout size on spatial way-finding efficiency and found that participants' efficiencies decreased as layout size increased. The authors investigated whether this reduction in navigation efficiency was due to visual perception (Experiment 2), memory, spatial updating strategy, or decision strategy (Experiment 3).     

Self-Images without Awareness and Projective Methods of Personality Assessment

Ss' responses to tachistoscopic exposures of self-photographs have been suggested as one approach to self-images without awareness. Sixty-three Ss completed a Q sort for themselves and after tachistoscopic exposure of their own and control photographs, for the persons in the photographs. Ss also completed the Structured-Objective Rorschach Test and Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank. The self was sorted most favorably, the control tachistoscopic exposure significantly less favorably, and the self tachistoscopic exposure significantly less favorably than the control. These differences were found to be related to sex and adjustment measured with the Rotter. The SORT correlated insignificantly with Q sort and Rotter.     

Prospects of enactivist approaches to intentionality and cognition

We discuss various implications of some radical anti-representationalist views of cognition and what they have to offer with regard to the naturalization of intentionality and the explanation of cognitive phenomena. Our focus is on recent arguments from proponents of enactive views of cognition to the effect that basic cognition is intentional but not representational and that cognition is co-extensive with life. We focus on lower rather than higher forms of cognition, namely the question regarding the intentional and representational nature of cognition found in organisms simpler than human beings, because enactivists do not deny that more sophisticated cognitive phenomena are representational and involve content. After introducing the debate on the naturalization of intentionality (Sect. 2), we briefly review different varieties of enactivism and introduce their central claims (Sect. 3). In Sect. 4 we turn to radical enactivism in order to focus on the arguments for a thoroughly non-representational, enactive account of perception and basic cognition. In particular, we discuss three major issues: First, what is supposed to replace the representational analysis of perception in a radical-enactive explanation of perception? How does the enactive explanation of perception compare to the best scientific work on the neuroscience of perception? Second, what is—on an enactive account—the function of neural processing in the brain for the generation of perception if not to produce representations? This question is especially pressing since one implication of autopoietic enactivism (accepted by radical enactivists) is that even the simplest organisms, i.e. single-celled organisms, have cognitive capacities (Sect. 5). Since they lack brains and nervous systems, enactivists must specify the (possibly) unique contribution of the brain and nervous system in those animals who have them. In Sect. 5, we evaluate the advantages of an autopoietic–enactive approach to the naturalization of intentionality and end with a suggestion how cognition may relate to intentionality and representation.

     

Phenomenal consciousness, attention and accessibility

This article re-examines Ned Block??s (1997, 2007) conceptual distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. His argument that we can have phenomenally conscious representations without being able to cognitively access them is criticized as not being supported by evidence. Instead, an alternative interpretation of the relevant empirical data is offered which leaves the link between phenomenology and accessibility intact. Moreover, it is shown that Block??s claim that phenomenology and accessibility have different neural substrates is highly problematic in light of empirical evidence. Finally, his claim that there can be phenomenology without cognitive accessibility is at odds with his endorsement of the 'same-order-theory' of consciousness.     

Anxiety and coping dispositions as predictors of the visual interaction between mother and child

Abstract

The “model of coping modes” distinguishes four dispositionally determined patterns of behavior (coping modes) which become apparent in stressful situations: repression, sensitization, nondefensiveness, and high anxiety. Following from this model, the present study is aimed at assessing associations between coping modes and children's looking behavior towards their mothers in a moderately stress-inducing laboratory setting. The visual exchange of 63 mothers and their eight- to 14-year-old children was observed during a ten-minute planning period for a Punch and Judy show which the child had to later perform. A close visual orientation toward the mother was registered for sensitizers. While repressers showed a heightened frequency of gazes at their mothers, their total time of looking was comparatively short. In high-anxious children, frequency of gazes as well as total time of looking were low.