This paper offers a critical review of the notion of a “singular cognitive role”, which is central to some recent theories of singular thought. According to those theories, whether a thought is singular depends on the role it plays in the subject’s cognitive activity. We compare the two most developed accounts of this type: Crane’s :21–43 2011, The Objects of Thought2013) and Jeshion’s. Both theories aim to capture the notion of a singular cognitive role (...) in terms of mental files. We argue that Jeshion’s theory is much more promising as it provides a more detailed and non-circular characterization of the mental files responsible for singular thinking. We examine the prospects for enhancing that account in light of three major concerns about it present in the literature. First, we discuss whether the weakest aspect of the whole proposal, i.e. the condition for the initiation of mental files, can be replaced without debilitating the rest of the theory. Second, we examine Goodman’s : 437–461 2014, The Philosophical Quarterly2015) argument against mental file theories of singular thought and show that it does not affect Jeshion’s account. Third, we argue against Sawyer :264–283 2012) that Jeshion’s notion of a singular cognitive role is in strong opposition to acquaintance-based theories of singular thought and cannot be incorporated into any of them. Thus, the paper concludes that Jeshion’s proposal, despite its shortcomings, is currently the most promising account of a singular cognitive role. (shrink)

Phantasia is viewed as a unified concept in Aristotle. When the metaphoric meaning of ‘phantisizing’ is excluded, the causal account for all imagination is the same: all phantasiai are motions in the soul caused by sense-perceptions. These are sensory images or imprints that can exist independently from their original source. Their history may be different, and their character and value may vary. Aristotle’s insistence on their sensory nature indicates that he saw them as a unitary phenomenon in the soul, as (...) sensory appearances. (shrink)

The question of the cognitive role of fictionality is this: what is the correct cognitive attitude to take to p, when it is fictional that p? We began by considering one answer to this question, implicit in the work of Kendall Walton, that the correct response to a fictional proposition is to imagine that proposition. However, this approach is silent in cases of fictional incompleteness, where neither p nor its negation are fictional. We argue that that Waltonians (...) should embrace a pluralistic account of the cognitive role of fictional incompleteness: in some cases of fictional incompleteness, we are permitted to resolve the incompleteness during our engagement with the target fiction, and in other cases, we are obliged not to resolve the incompleteness. But though pluralism is accommodated by Walton’s wider account of fictionality, it puts tension on his motivating idea that fictionality stands to the imagination as truth stands to belief. And so we develop a rival conception of the cognitive role of fictionality that is built around a different analogy: on this evidentialist approach, (known) fictionality stands to the imagination as evidence stands to credence. (shrink)

The paper refers to the contribution of myth to Plato’s cognitive theory. Primarily, it is epigrammatically pointed out the existing difference between Mythos and Logos, on the one hand, and Plato’s attitude towards the myths as well as their use and incorporation into his cognitive model, on the other hand.

In “Freedom and Resentment,” P. F. Strawson argues that the “profound opposition” between the objective and reactive stances is quite compatible with our rationally retaining the latter as important elements in a recognizably human life. Unless he can establish this, he has no hope of establishing his version of compatibilism in the free will debate. But, because objectivity is associated so intimately with the rationally conducted explanation of action, it is not clear how the opposition of these stances is compatible (...) with the rationality of the reactive attitudes. More to the point, it is not clear how an intellectual activity like shifting from the reactive to the objective stance can dispel reactive attitudes without thereby also rationally disqualifying them. I solve this puzzle by drawing on the idea that one cognitive component of emotions is the rationally optional “shift of attention.” a feature which in turn helps to explain a lot about the role reactive emotions can play in the fixation of belief. (shrink)

The original book chapter does not have an abstract. However, I have written an abstract for this repository: Religious life encompasses a wide diversity of situations for which the emotional tone is on a continuum from extreme euphoria to extreme dysphoria. In this book chapter, we propose the novel hypothesis that euphoria and dysphoria have distinctly separate functional consequences for religious evolution and survivability. This is due to the differential cognitive states that are created in euphoric and dysphoric situations. (...) Based on readings from religious studies and cognitive psychology, we propose that euphoria in religion is conducive to social bonding and situations needing lateral thinking and creativity; whereas dysphoria in religion is conducive to situations where precision and analogical reasoning are necessary. (shrink)

Focusing on the 'today'/'yesterday' case, I argue that Perry is wrong in accounting for and explaining indexical belief states in terms of Kaplanian characters and in taking these states to be internal (narrow) mental states inside the subject's mind. It is shown that this view is at odds with Perry's own reliance on remembering a past day as a necessary condition for retaining a belief about it. As a better tool for explaining appropriate indexical beliefs, I offer an alternative which (...) is neo-Fregean in that it takes senses or modes of presentation as playing only a cognitive, not a semantic role. It, however, takes remembering a past day as necessary for retaining a belief about it, rather than keeping track of time as urged by Evans. I also consider unfeasible Evans's further requirement which he takes over from Frege: that in order to retain a belief about a certain past day we need to think of it now under the same mode of presentation as we did on that very day. (shrink)

I provide an account of the cognitive attitude of trust that explains the role trust plays in the planning of rational agents. Many authors have dismissed choosing to trust as either impossible or irrational; however, this fails to account for the role of trust in practical reasoning. A can have therapeutic, coping, or corrective reasons to trust B to ${\phi}$ , even in the absence of evidence that B will ${\phi}$ . One can choose to engage in (...) therapeutic trust to inspire trustworthiness, coping trust to simplify one’s planning, or corrective trust to avoid doing a testimonial injustice. To accommodate such types of trust, without accepting doxastic voluntarism, requires an account of the cognitive attitude of trust broader than belief alone. I argue that trust involves taking the proposition that someone will do something as a premise in one’s practical reasoning, which can be a matter of believing or accepting the proposition. I defend this account against objections that it (i) provides insufficient rational constraints on trust, (ii) conflates trust and pretense of trust, and (iii) cannot account for the rationality of back-up planning. (shrink)

Traditionally, cognitive values have been thought of as a collective pool of considerations in science that frequently trade against each other. I argue here that a finer-grained account of the value of cognitive values can help reduce such tensions. I separate the values into groups, minimal epistemic criteria, pragmatic considerations, and genuine epistemic assurance, based in part on the distinction between values that describe theories per se and values that describe theory-evidence relationships. This allows us to clarify why (...) these values are central to science and what role they should play, while reducing the tensions among them. (shrink)

Peter Auriol argues that sensation and intellection are both passive and active. They are passive insofar as they involve the reception of species or impressions of extra-mental objects. They are active insofar as both senses and intellect process these species and produce an intentional object. The way in which the senses and the intellect receive and process their own impressions is quite different, though. While perception is beyond our control, Auriol claims that the imagination, and the activity of the agent (...) and possible intellect depend on an act of the will. His idea is that the will pushes the intellect to focus on one of the impressions it receives from external objects, so that the corresponding impression is allowed to be imprinted in the intellect itself and the relevant concept formed. This paper examines the role that Auriol attributes to the will in our intellectual cognition, inasmuch as it is able to determine both (i) what kind of impressions can be picked and then embedded into the mind and, (ii) consequently, which concepts the intellect will form. My view is that, by envisioning the intellect and the will as already interacting during the process of concept formation, and not just during that of choice-making, Auriol provides an account of the intellect and the will strongly integrated with one another, thus offering a unitary vision of our cognitive life. (shrink)

Cumulative technological culture can be defined as the progressive diversification, complexification, and enhancement of technological traits through generations. An outstanding issue is to specify the cognitive bases of this phenomenon. Based on the literature, we identified four potential cognitive factors: namely, theory-of-mind, technical-reasoning, creativity, and fluid-cognitive skills. The goal of the present study was to test which of these factors—or a combination thereof—best predicted the cumulative performance in two experimental, micro-society conditions differing in the nature of the (...) interaction allowed between participants. The task was to build the highest possible tower. Participants were also assessed on the four aforementioned cognitive factors in order to predict cumulative performance and attractiveness. Our findings indicate that technical-reasoning skills are the best predictor of cumulative performance, even if their role may be restricted to the specific technological domain. Theory-of-mind skills may have a facilitator role, particularly in the Communication condition. Creativity can also help in the generation of novel ideas, but it is not sufficient to support innovation. Finally, fluid cognition is not involved in cumulative technological culture. Taken together, these findings suggest that domain-specific knowledge remains critical for explaining cumulative technological culture. (shrink)

It has been suggested that the enterprise of developing mechanistic theories of the human cognitive architecture is flawed because the theories produced are not directly falsifiable. Newell attempted to sidestep this criticism by arguing for a Lakatosian model of scientific progress in which cognitive architectures should be understood as theories that develop over time. However, Newell's own candidate cognitive architecture adhered only loosely to Lakatosian principles. This paper reconsiders the role of falsification and the potential utility (...) of Lakatosian principles in the development of cognitive architectures. It is argued that a lack of direct falsifiability need not undermine the scientific development of a cognitive architecture if broadly Lakatosian principles are adopted. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the Lakatosian concepts of positive and negative heuristics for theory development and of general heuristic power offer methods for guiding the development of an architecture and for evaluating the contribution and potential of an architecture's research program. (shrink)

The role of cognitive control mechanisms in reducing interference from emotionally salient distractors was investigated. In two experiments, participants performed a flanker task in which target-distractor affective compatibility and cognitive load were manipulated. Differently from past studies, targets and distractors were presented at separate spatial locations and cognitive load was not domain-specific. In Experiment 1, words and faces, were used respectively as targets and distractors, whereas in Experiment 2, both targets and distractors were faces. Findings showed (...) interference from distractor processing only when cognitive load was high. The present findings indicate that, when targets and distractors are presented at different spatial locations, cognitive control mechanisms are involved in preventing interference from positive or negative distractors. The role of stimulus valence and type is also discussed with regard to different patterns of interference observed. (shrink)

Shaun Gallagher argues that we need a new philosophy of nature that accommodates the insights of existential phenomenology. On his view existential phenomenology needs a philosophy of nature that is holistic, relational, and non-reductionist. I argue that his reasoning is based on a misunderstanding of the difference between the manifest image and the scientific image. The reasons why we should prefer a non-reductionist philosophy of nature are internal to the historical development of the scientific image itself. We have good reasons (...) for preferring enactivism over cognitivism as a research program for the cognitive sciences, but compatibility with the manifest image is not one of those reasons. (shrink)

Successful behavior requires actively acquiring and representing information about the environment and people, and manipulating and using those acquired representations flexibly to optimally act in and on the world. The frontal lobes have figured prominently in most accounts of flexible or goal-directed behavior, as evidenced by often-reported behavioral inflexibility in individuals with frontal lobe dysfunction. Here, we propose that the hippocampus also plays a critical role by forming and reconstructing relational memory representations that underlie flexible cognition and social behavior. (...) There is mounting evidence that damage to the hippocampus can produce inflexible and maladaptive behavior when such behavior places high demands on the generation, recombination, and flexible use of information. This is seen in abilities as diverse as memory, navigation, exploration, imagination, creativity, decision-making, character judgments, establishing and maintaining social bonds, empathy, social discourse, and language use. Thus, the hippocampus, together with its extensive interconnections with other neural systems, supports the flexible use of information in general. Further, we suggest that this understanding has important clinical implications. Hippocampal abnormalities can produce profound deficits in real-world situations, which typically place high demands on the flexible use of information, but are not always obvious on diagnostic tools tuned to frontal lobe function. This review documents the role of the hippocampus in supporting flexible representations and aims to expand our understanding of the dynamic networks that operate as we move through and create meaning of our world. (shrink)

This study examined the role of individuals’ cognitive flexibility and self-monitoring in shaping their workplace advice network centrality. Drawing on advice network generation theory, we hypothesized a positive relationship between cognitive flexibility and advice network centrality, and a moderation effect of self-monitoring on this relationship. Then, we collected two time-points data from insurance salesmen to test the hypotheses. As predicted, cognitive flexibility was positively associated with advice network centrality. Furthermore, this positive relationship was only significant for (...) low self-monitoring individuals, but not for high self-monitoring individuals. These findings indicated that individuals with high cognitive flexibility were more likely to have central positions in the advice network; however, this effect was attenuated as their self-monitoring increased. (shrink)

The cognitive phenomenology debate centers on two questions. (1) What is an apt characterization of the phenomenology of conscious thought? And (2), what role does this phenomenology play? I argue that the answers to the former question bear significantly on the answers to the latter question. In particular, I show that conservatism about cognitive phenomenology is not compatible with the view that phenomenology explains the constitution of conscious thought. I proceed as follows: To begin with, I analyze (...) the phenomenology of our sensory experiences and argue for a _weak phenomenal holism_ (WPH) about sensory phenomenology. Next, I explore how WPH can be integrated into the competing accounts of cognitive phenomenology. I argue that, given WPH, conservatism turns out to reduce phenomenal character to a merely concomitant phenomenon that has no explanatory power when it comes to the constitution of conscious thoughts. In contrast, liberalism is explanatorily more powerful in this respect. Finally, I propose a new version of liberalism that explains how phenomenology constitutes conscious thoughts and fits best with WPH. (shrink)

De nombreuses études sur l'apprentissage des langues étrangères montrent que l'apprenant est incapable d'atteindre le niveau d'un locuteur natif. Des phénomènes de fossilisation et de nativisation demeurent, même à un niveau très avancé (Selinker & Lamendella, 1980 ; Selinker & Lakshamanan, 1992 ; Andersen, 1983 ; Narcy-Combes, 2005). Cet article met en évidence le rôle limitatif des représentations cognitives chez l'apprenant dans un contexte où il est possible d'isoler chronologiquement la construction des représentations cognitives et celle d'une première langue. Ce (...) contexte est celui de la surdité profonde prélinguistique, et plus spécifiquement celui de l'oralisme : l’acquisition de la langue y est différée de quelques mois ou années sans qu'il n'y ait de système linguistique préalable puisque les oralistes sont tenus à l'écart des langues signées. Les jeunes sourds développent des représentations cognitives dans leurs premières années de vie, préalablement à l'accès à une première langue. Or, des études expérimentales (ex. Vinter, 2000) montrent que les sujets sourds ont une approche inhabituelle du spatial et du temporel, approche pouvant être mise en rapport avec l'absence de perception auditive. Du fait des liens entre perception sensorielle et conception (ex. Talmy, 1988 & 2000), les représentations cognitives des sujets sourds relativement à l'espace et au temps seraient donc spécifiques. La langue orale produite par ces sujets à l'adolescence présente quant à elle des caractéristiques inhabituelles dans les domaines de la langue qui sont liés à l'espace et au temps, et ce, aussi bien chez les anglophones que chez les francophones dont les productions orales ont été analysées (ex. Vincent-Durroux, 2009 & 2008). Les représentations cognitives influent donc sur l'appropriation de la langue par les sourds. La discussion porte sur le fait que, dans le contexte de l'apprentissage de langues étrangères par des entendants, les représentations cognitives sous-jacentes à la langue maternelle pourraient avoir un rôle limitatif et ainsi expliquer la persistance des phénomènes de fossilisation et de nativisation. (shrink)

In philosophy, a debate can live forever. Nowhere is this more evident than in ethics, a field that is fueled by apparently intractable dilemmas. To promote the wellbeing of many, may we sacrifice the rights of a few? If our actions are predetermined, can we be held responsible for them? Should people be judged on their intentions alone, or also by the consequences of their behavior? Is failing to prevent someone’s death as blameworthy as actively causing it? For generations, questions (...) like these have provoked passionate arguments and counterarguments, but few clear answers. Here, we offer a psychological account of why philosophical dilemmas arise, why they resist resolution, and why scientists should pay attention to them. Building on a family of recent proposals (Cushman & Young, 2009; Greene, 2008; Sinnott- Armstrong, 2008), we argue that dilemmas result from conflict between dissociable psychological processes. When two such processes yield different answers to the same question, that question becomes a “dilemma”. No matter which answer you choose, part of you walks away dissatisfied. This explanation of philosophical dilemmas has an important payoff for psychological research, and we discuss two specific cases in which it has yielded promising results. In each case, social neuroscience has played an important role in distinguishing the psychological processes responsible for producing a dilemma. This, we suggest, is no accident; cognitive neuroscientific methods are particularly well-suited to dissociating independent psychological processes (Henson, 2006). Consequently, philosophers’ dilemmas provide a reliable guide toward productive cognitive neuroscience by identifying the contours of distinct psychological process. The research we review below focuses particularly on moral dilemmas, which is our own area of expertise. The psychological processes that contribute to moral judgment are of interest in their own right, and play a central role in social cognition.. (shrink)

Behavioral Finance is an evolving field that studies how psychological factors affect decision making under uncertainty. This study seeks to find the influence of certain identified behavioral financial biases on the decision-making process of investors in developing countries. This research examines the moderating effect of Information asymmetry on the two most important and commonly used cognitive biases, namely Anchoring bias and Optimism bias and decision making and investigates whether Risk perception mediates the relationship between them or not. Quantitative research (...) has been conducted using a structured questionnaire for data collection. After completing the pilot study, a questionnaire was designed and sent to investors via online channels. Data has been collected from 317 real estate investors. Mediation analysis has been performed using model 4 and moderation analysis by applying model 15 of Process Macros for the interaction effect. The study investigated that both cognitive biases have a significant positive effect on investors’ decisions and Risk perception also significantly mediates the relationship between them. Consistency with other studies suggests that Information asymmetry has a significant moderating effect. The proposed conceptual model provides insight into how investors’ decisions are influenced by behavioral biases in the real estate sector and enhances the understanding of cognitive biases in the real estate sector. This study is recommended for real estate investors and policymakers of emerging and developed countries. The current study is the first of its kind, focusing on cognitive biases on investment decisions with mediating role of Risk perception and the moderating effect of Information asymmetry. (shrink)

This book is about the interweaving between cognitive penetrability and the epistemic role of the two stages of perception, namely early and late vision, in justifying perceptual beliefs. It examines the impact of the epistemic role of perception in defining cognitive penetrability and the relation between the epistemic role of perceptual stages and the kinds of cognitive effects on perceptual processing. The book presents the argument that early vision is cognitively impenetrable because neither is (...) it affected directly by cognition, nor does cognition affect its epistemic role. It also argues that late vision, even though it is cognitively penetrated and, thus, affected by concepts, is still a perceptual state that does not involve any discursive inferences and does not belong to the space of reasons. Finally, an account is given as to how cognitive states with symbolic content could affect perceptual states with iconic, analog content, during late vision. (shrink)

The cognitive science student deserves our sympathy. It is difficult to think of another area of study where there is so much disagreement amongst the constituent parts, and even within those parts themselves -- neuroscience, AI, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, quantum and evolutionary theory. To illustrate this difficulty for the erstwhile student, imagine cognitive science as a collection of ball games with mind/brain/ consciousness as the ball. Instead of being able to concentrate on the one game as one might (...) expect to in another subject, the student is faced with a disparate range of disciplines. Some participants maintain it is only they who are playing the real game and that other games should be assimilated to their own. Then there are theorists who like to borrow from a number of games to create their own, whilst others suggest there is no common ground at all between games. We could go on further with this part of the analogy but let us now focus on the ball. Notice how it changes shape, material, size and playing surface from one game to the next -- football, hockey, squash, golf, tennis. Yet at least here the balls are round, the surface solid. How about badminton, rugby and water polo? Hardly surprising then that a cognitive science student needs to have special skills to cope with this confusion. (shrink)

This paper, like its companion explores some ways in which, on the one hand, normative theorizing about causation and causal reasoning and, on the other, empirical psychological investigations into causal cognition can be mutually illuminating. The paper carries out this exploration in connection with a variety of topics—the role of information about the presence of a “physical connection” between cause and effect in causal judgment, the role of “proportionality” in choosing the appropriate “level” of explanation, and the (...) class='Hi'>role of mechanism information in causal judgment. (shrink)

On standard readings of Grice, Gricean communication requires (a) possession of a concept of belief, (b) the ability to make complex inferences about others’ goal-directed behaviour, and (c) the ability to entertain fourth order meta-representations. To the extent that these abilities are pre-requisites of Gricean communication they are inconsistent with the view that Gricean communication could play a role in their development. In this paper, I argue that a class of ‘minimally Gricean acts’ satisfy the intentional structure described by (...) Grice, but require none of abilities (a)-(c). As a result, Gricean communicative abilities may indeed contribute to the development of (a)-(c) – in particular, by enabling language development. This conclusion has important implications for our theorising about cognitive development. (shrink)

The evolution of the human brain has resulted in the emergence of higher-order cognitive abilities, such as reasoning, planning and social awareness. Although there has been a concomitant increase in brain size and complexity, and component diversification, we argue that RNA regulation of epigenetic processes, RNA editing, and the controlled mobilization of transposable elements have provided the major substrates for cognitive advance. We also suggest that these expanded capacities and flexibilities have led to the collateral emergence of psychiatric (...) fragilities and conditions. (shrink)

In our dynamic social world, a premium is placed on the individual's ability to innovate and to change . Yet traditional role theory has difficulty accounting for innovation, leaving unanswered the question of how individual level negotiations affect social-structural processes . This study addresses this tension by linking role theory with social cognition. By positioning behavior and cognition as two interrelated continuums, I stretch the meaning of role enactment to include 4 role typologies. I utilize these (...) typologies as a heuristic to chart the processes through which individuals adapt to and affect a role performance over time. I conclude by outlining how sociocognitive role typologies aid social researchers in accounting for individual efficacy in response to social-structural situations. (shrink)

A pragmatic (communication-discursive) cognitive sociology beyond observationism (Luhmann, Turner, Conein) and individualistic reductionism (Esser, Boudon) as a way to do sociology as a critical theory and as a positive science is proposed, drawing on the Habermasian theory of communicative action and its radical continuation in Luhmann's concept of the (cognitive) autopoiesis of social systems.

This paper will interpret Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and materialization as a theory of identity, and so put it into dialogue with a phenomenological account of habit formation. The goal is to argue that identity is developed already at a bodily level and that this takes place via the processes of habit formation. The constitution of subjectivity, in other words, requires at the most basic level some kind of bodily performativity. What follows intends to draw out the concept of (...) ‘the body’ in Butler’s work, the role of which is surprisingly meagre given her clear favour of language signification in the elaboration of her theory of performativity. Alternatively, this paper will provide a phenomenology of habit formation that re-introduces the body not as thematic materiality, but as lived materiality. The body will therefore be conceived as something which is already skilful and creative, sensitive and vulnerable, and ultimately, as Butler anticipates, responsive to the intertwinement of individual and social aspects of identity formation. In this regard, I will argue for a performative theory of (bodily) habitual identity. (shrink)

Extant literature suggested that executive cognitive ability is a critical perspective to answering why and how enterprises perform business model innovation. However, the effect of executive cognitive ability on business model innovation is still insufficiently explored. Drawing on entrepreneurial bricolage theory, we developed a moderated mediation model which takes entrepreneurial bricolage as the mediating mechanism and environmental dynamics as the moderating mechanism to explain how executive cognitive ability influences business model innovation. We collected the data of 316 (...) executives of Chinese start-ups through questionnaires for the model test. Results showed that new venture executives' cognitive ability significantly positively affects business model innovation by mediating with entrepreneurial bricolage. Environmental dynamism positively moderates the effect of executives' cognitive ability on business model innovation. Moreover, environmental dynamism positively moderates the mediating role of entrepreneurial bricolage in executive cognitive ability and business model innovation. This study broadens the research scope of entrepreneurial bricolage theory from the perspective of cognitive ability and provides ideas for new ventures' business model innovation. (shrink)

When confronted with unfair contributions in an argumentative discourse, participants evaluate these contributions negatively and show emotional and verbal reactions. These reactions may be crucial for further discourse and may depend on cognitive evaluation. In order to investigate the relationship between cognitive, emotional and verbal responses to unfair contributions, such contributions were embedded in argumentational episodes and presented to participants in written, auditory or role play modality. The application of a path model relating indicators of cognitive, (...) emotional and verbal reactions, demonstrated that the intensity of emotional reactions depends on evaluative cognitions, whereas verbal confrontativeness merely depends on the offender’s perceived awareness. The results are discussed with respect to methodological and theoretical issues. (shrink)

During the last decade, the ontogeny of tool making has received growing attention in the literature on tool-related behaviors. However, the cognitive demands underlying tool making are still not clearly understood. In this cross-sectional study of 52 Turkish preschool children from 3 to 6 years of age, the roles of executive function (response inhibition), ability to form hierarchical representations (hierarchical structuring), and social learning were investigated with the hook task previously used with children and animals. In this task, children (...) needed to bend a pipe cleaner to fetch a small bucket with a sticker out of a tall jar. This study replicated earlier findings that preschoolers have great difficulty in tool innovation. However, social learning facilitates tool making, especially after 5 years of age. Capacities to form hierarchical representations and to inhibit prepotent responses were significant positive predictors of tool making after social learning. (shrink)

Since the emergence of our species at least, natural selection based on genetic variation has been replaced by culture as the major driving force in human evolution. It has made us what we are today, by ratcheting up cultural innovations, promoting new cognitive skills, rewiring brain networks, and even shifting gene distributions. Adopting an evolutionary perspective can therefore be highly informative for cognitive science in several ways: It encourages us to ask grand questions about the origins and ramifications (...) of our cognitive abilities; it equips us with the means to investigate, explain, and understand key dimensions of cognition; and it allows us to recognize the continued and ubiquitous workings of culture and evolution in everyday instances of cognitive behavior. Taking advantage of this reorientation presupposes a shift in focus, though, from human cognition as a general, homogenous phenomenon to the appreciation of cultural diversity in cognition as an invaluable source of data. (shrink)

Dreyfus and Dreyfus’ influential phenomenological analysis of skill acquisition proposes that expert performance is guided by non-cognitive responses which are fast, effortless and apparently intuitive in nature. Although this model has been criticised for over-emphasising the role that intuition plays in facilitating skilled performance, it does recognise that on occasions a form of ‘detached deliberative rationality’ may be used by experts to improve their performance. However, Dreyfus and Dreyfus see no role for calculative problem solving or deliberation (...) when performance is going well. In the current paper, we draw on empirical evidence, insights from athletes, and phenomenological description to argue that ‘continuous improvement’ among experts is mediated by cognitive control in three distinct sporting situations. We conclude by arguing that Sutton et al. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 42, 78–103 ‘applying intelligence to the reflexes’ approach may help to elucidate the process by which expert performers achieve continuous improvement through analytical/mindful behaviour during training and competition. (shrink)

This commentary argues that theories of cognitive control risk being incomplete unless they incorporate social/emotional factors. Social factors very likely played a critical role in the evolution of human cognitive control abilities, and emotional states are the primary regulatory mechanisms of cognitive control.

has a more specific role to play in the development of Of course, the conclusion to draw is not that innateness innate cognitive structure. In particular, a common claim claims are trivially false or that they cannot be character-.

This paper supports the basic integrity of the folk psychological conception of consciousness and its importance in cognitive theorizing. Section 1 critically examines some proposed definitions of consciousness, and argues that the folk- psychological notion of phenomenal consciousness is not captured by various functional-relational definitions. Section 2 rebuts the arguments of several writers who challenge the very existence of phenomenal consciousness, or the coherence or tenability of the folk-psychological notion of awareness. Section 3 defends a significant role for (...) phenomenal consciousness in the execution of a certain cognitive task, viz., classification of one's own mental states. Execution of this task, which is part of folk psychologizing, is taken as a datum in scientific psychology. It is then argued that the most promising sort of scientific model of the self-ascription of mental states is one that posits the kinds of phenomenal properties invoked by folk psychology. Cognitive science and neuroscience can of course refine and improve upon the folk understanding of consciousness, awareness, and mental states generally. But the folk-psychological constructs should not be jettisoned; they have a role to play in cognitive theorizing. (shrink)

We agree with Rachlin's aim to account for altruism within existing theory. However, his argument is implicitly dependent on social and cognitive constructs that are explicitly identified in other social-psychological theories. The account does not advance theory beyond available constructs (e.g., self-categorizations, motives, values, role-identities, and social structure), and Rachlin's implicit use of these strains the behaviorist account.

The article analyzes the role of theories of embodied cognition for the development of emotion research. The role and position of emotions changed as philosophy developed. In classical and modern European philosophy, the idea of the “primacy of reason” prevailed over emotions and physicality, emotions and affective life were described as low-ranking phenomena regarding cognitive processes or were completely eliminated as an unknown quantity. In postmodern philosophy, attention focuses on physicality and sensuality, which are rated higher than (...) rational principle, mind and intelligence. Within the framework of this approach, there is a recently emerged theory of embodied cognition, which allows to take a fresh look at the place of emotions in the architecture of mental processes – thinking, perception, memory, imagination, speech. The article describes and analyzes a number of empirical studies showing the impossibility of excluding emotional processes and the significance of their research for understanding the architecture of embodied cognition. However, the features of the architecture of embodied cognition remain unclear, and some of the discoveries of recent years (mirror neurons or neurons of simulation) rather raise new questions and require further research. The rigorously described and clear architecture of the embodied cognition can grow the theoretical basis that will allow to advance the studies of learning processes, language understanding, psychotherapy techniques, social attitudes and stereotypes, highlight the riddle of consciousness and create new theories of consciousness or even create an anthropomorphic artificial intelligence that is close to “strong artificial intelligence.”. (shrink)

Questions about the function of consciousness have long been central to discussions of consciousness in philosophy and psychology. Intuitively, consciousness has an important role to play in the control of many everyday behaviors. However, this view has recently come under attack. In particular, it is becoming increasingly common for scientists and philosophers to argue that a significant body of data emerging from cognitive science shows that conscious states are not involved in the control of behavior. According to these (...) theorists, nonconscious states control most everyday behaviors. Andy Clark does an admirable job of summarizing and defending the most important data thought to support this view. In this paper, I argue that the evidence available does not in fact threaten the view that conscious states play an important and intimate role in the control of much everyday behavior. I thereby defend a philosophically intuitive view about the functions of conscious states in action. (shrink)

Despite the promise to boost human potential and wellbeing, enhancement drugs face recurring ethical scrutiny. The present studies examined attitudes toward cognitive enhancement in order to learn more about these ethical concerns, who has them, and the circumstances in which they arise. Fairness-based concerns underlay opposition to competitive use—even though enhancement drugs were described as legal, accessible and affordable. Moral values also influenced how subsequent rewards were causally explained: Opposition to competitive use reduced the causal contribution of the enhanced (...) winner’s skill, particularly among fairness-minded individuals. In a follow-up study, we asked: Would the normalization of enhancement practices alleviate concerns about their unfairness? Indeed, proliferation of competitive cognitive enhancement eradicated fairness-based concerns, and boosted the perceived causal role of the winner’s skill. In contrast, purity-based concerns emerged in both recreational and competitive contexts, and were not assuaged by normalization. (shrink)

Several psychological experiments have suggested that concepts can influence perceived color (e.g., Delk and Fillenbaum in Am J Psychol 78(2):290–293, 1965, Hansen et al. in Nat Neurosci 9(11):1367–1368, 2006, Olkkonen et al. in J Vis 8(5):1–16, 2008). Observers tend to assign typical colors to objects even when the objects do not have those colors. Recently, these findings were used to argue that perceptual experience is cognitively penetrable (Macpherson 2012). This interpretation of the experiments has far-reaching consequences: it implies that the (...) way we think of objects determines how we see them, thus threatening the role of perception in justifying beliefs. In this paper, I show that the psychological findings can be accounted for without admitting cognitive penetrability. An underestimated but key feature of the experiments is that observers had to judge colors in borderline cases, in conditions of reduced acuity, or on the basis of color-concepts instead of matching. Such judgments are sensitive to the form of bias that Tversky and Kahneman (Science 185:1124–1131, 1974) have termed ‘anchoring’. Adopting a suggestion from Raffman (Philos Rev 103(1):41–74, 1994), I argue that the way subjects in the experiments think of the objects could affect their color judgments without altering their color experiences. (shrink)

Most of this work is concerned with two theories that underlie cognitive science; theories which I call "the representational theory of intentionality" and "the computational theory of cognition" . While the representational theory of intentionality asserts that mental states are about the world in virtue of a representation relation between the world and the state, the computational theory of cognition asserts that humans and others perform cognitive tasks by computing functions on these representations. CTC draws upon a rich (...) analogy between the mind and digital computers, portraying cognizers as receiving input and generating outputs . ;Since researchers within cognitive science--especially within cognitive psychology, computer science, and philosophy of mind--share a common theoretic background in their adherence to the combination of RTI and CTC, what I call "computationalism" most of the work done in philosophy of mind has been aimed at either refuting or further articulating these two theories. This work is strongly within that tradition. ;RTI and CTC combine to create an explanatory framework for explanation in cognitive science. In this work, I seek to delineate the exact structure of this framework, to determine its components and their overall relationships. In my mind, this involves making implicit aspects of computational explanation explicit, providing an overall rationale for the various components and their relationships, and defending that rationale against criticism. ;In particular, the project of this work is to argue that computationalist explanations of cognition within cognitive science need to make appeals to both representation and knowledge; to distinguish the respective roles of knowledge and of representation in an overall picture of computational explanations, and to develop and argue for definitions of representation and knowledge that would allow those concepts to play their respective roles within computational explanations in cognitive science. ;The first half of this work , therefore, is devoted to theories of representation, especially to the need for, and role of representation in computational explanations. The first half of the work culminates in chapter three with a definition of representation and a picture of the structure of computational explanations. The second half of the project then becomes to generate a definition of knowledge that defines knowledge in non-epistemic language amenable to computationalism and that carries the epistemic burdens placed upon knowledge by its use in computational explanations, as well as to offer a limited defence of that definition within the framework of traditional epistemology. (shrink)

Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI) systems (also known as AI “chatbots”) are among the most promising examples of the use of technology in mental health care. With already millions of users worldwide, CAI is likely to change the landscape of psychological help. Most researchers agree that existing CAIs are not “digital therapists” and using them is not a substitute for psychotherapy delivered by a human. But if they are not therapists, what are they, and what role can they play in (...) mental health care? To answer these questions, we appeal to two well-established and widely discussed concepts: cognitive and affective artifacts. Cognitive artifacts are artificial devices contributing functionally to the performance of a cognitive task. Affective artifacts are objects which have the capacity to alter subjects’ affective state. We argue that therapeutic CAIs are a kind of cognitive-affective artifacts which contribute to positive therapeutic change by (i) simulating a (quasi-)therapeutic interaction, (ii) supporting the performance of cognitive tasks, and (iii) altering the affective condition of their users. This sheds new light on why virtually all existing mental health CAIs implement principles and techniques of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy — a therapeutic orientation according to which affective change and, ultimately, positive therapeutic change is mediated by cognitive change. Simultaneously, it allows us to conceptualize better the potential and limitations of applying these technologies in therapy. (shrink)