Search results for "Piste"

Modeling Developmental Processes in Psychology

2013

In the present article I suggest first that modeling in psychology can be described as an interactive process between a phenomenon under study (reality) and different levels of theoretical conceptualizations that vary in respect to how directly they can be related to empirical observations and at what level of generalization they operate. Then, I give three examples of my own work concerning building theories and testing models. Next, I discuss some caveats scientists face when building theories and models on the basis of their observations. Finally, I make a few conclusions on the basis of the article. peerReviewed

Phenomenal transparency and cognitive self-reference

2003

A representationalist analysis of strong first-person phenomena is developed (Baker 1998), and it is argued that conscious, cognitive self-reference can be naturalized under this representationalist analysis. According to this view, the phenomenal first-person perspective is a condition of possibility for the emergence of a cognitive first-person perspective. Cognitive self-reference always is reference to the phenomenal content of a transparent self-model. The concepts of phenomenal transparency and introspection are clarified. More generally, I suggest that the concepts of “phenomenal opacity” and “phenomenal transparency” are interesting instruments for analyzing conscious, self-represen…

J. Michael Dunn on Information Based Logics

2016

This book celebrates and expands on J. Michael Dunn’s work on informational interpretations of logic. Dunn, in his Ph.D. thesis (1966), introduced a semantics for first-degree entailments utilizing the idea that a sentence can provide positive or negative information about a topic, possibly supplying both or neither. He later published a related interpretation of the logic R-mingle, which turned out to be one of the first relational semantics for a relevance logic. An incompatibility relation between information states lends itself to a definition of negation and it has figured into Dunn's comprehensive investigations into representations of various negations. The informational view of sema…

Receptive Reason: Alexander of Aphrodisias on Material Intellect

2010

AbstractAccording to Alexander of Aphrodisias, our potential intellect is a purely receptive capacity. Alexander also claims that, in order for us to actualise our intellectual potentiality, the intellect needs to abstract what is intelligible from enmattered perceptible objects. Now a problem emerges: How is it possible for a purely receptive capacity to perform such an abstraction? It will be argued that even though Alexander’s reaction to this question causes some tension in his theory, the philosophical motivation for it is a sound one. Rather than a calculation of actualities and potentialities, the doctrine of receptivity is supposed to explain how human beings come to grasp universal…

Epistemic modality in professional communication

2018

Commentary on Jakab's “Ineffability of Qualia”

2000

Zoltan Jakab has presented an interesting conceptual analysis of the ineffability of qualia in a functionalist and classical cognitivist framework. But he does not want to commit himself to a certain metaphysical thesis on the ontology of consciousness or qualia. We believe that his strategy has yielded a number of highly relevant and interesting insights, but still suffers from some minor inconsistencies and a certain lack of phenomenological and empirical plausibility. This may be due to some background assumptions relating to the theory of mental representation employed. Jakab's starting assumption is that there is no linguistic description of a given experience such that understanding t…

Shallow Reductionism and the Problem of Complexity in Psychology

2008

In his recent book The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, Fodor argues that computational modeling of global cognitive processes, such as abductive everyday reasoning, has not been successful. In this article the problem is analyzed in the framework of algorithmic information theory. It is argued that the failed approaches are characterized by shallow reductionism, which is rejected in favor of deep reductionism and nonreductionism.

1. Recognition And Social Ontology: An Introduction

2011

One of Hegel's big ideas is that creatures with a self-conception are the subjects of developmental processes that exhibit a distinctive structure. Call a creature 'essentially self-conscious' if what it is for itself, its self- conception, is an essential element of what it is in itself. How something that is essentially self-conscious appears to itself is part of what it really is. This chapter shows how the tripartite account of erotic awareness can be used in a natural way to build a notion of recognition that satisfies these twin philosophical constraints on the interpretation of Hegel's notion of self-consciousness in terms of recognition. Doing so it clarifies the nature of the trans…

Comments on “Information Systems as a Social Science” by R.K. Stamper

2000

Ronald Stamper’s paper presents a well-written and systematic account of the subjectivist and social-constructivist view of information system concepts, which is enjoyable to read. It should be read by anyone interested in theoretical discourse around information system phenomena.

Technition: When Tools Come Out of the Closet

2020

People are ambivalently enthusiastic and anxious about how far technology can go. Therefore, understanding the neurocognitive bases of the human technical mind should be a major topic of the cognitive sciences. Surprisingly, however, scientists are not interested in this topic or address it only marginally in other mainstream domains (e.g., motor control, action observation, social cognition). In fact, this lack of interest may hinder our understanding of the necessary neurocognitive skills underlying our appetence for transforming our physical environment. Here, we develop the thesis that our technical mind originates in perhaps uniquely human neurocognitive skills, namely, technical-reas…