Cognition and Perception

The conceptual dichotomy of Erklaren and Verstehen (explaining vs. understanding) has a revealing dual status. On the one hand, it has something of an antiquated air to it, as we loosely associate its origins with the work of Wilhelm Dilthey and other nineteenth-century German philosophers who are not widely read any more, at least not within contemporary Anglo-American history and philosophy of the human sciences. At the same time, however, remnants of the dichotomy still come up in various guises and in various areas of contemporary philosophy and philosophy of science. One example is the long-standing debate over the logical status of action explanations (“reasons vs. causes”) in philosophy of mind (Davidson 1980), and associated issues of “teleological explanations” and the explanatory status of laws of nature in the philosophy of the human sciences (Dray 1957; Hempel 1965; von Wright 1971). Another is the question of whether the subject matter of the social sciences requires a special type of interpretative, hermeneutic, or perhaps even empathetic, “access” (Collingwood 1946; Winch 1964; Taylor [1971] 1985). More recently, there has been renewed interest in the question of how to explicate our capacity to interpret another person’s actions (see the recent suggestion that the “theory-theory” vs. “simulation theory” distinction is similar to some aspects of the Erklaren/Verstehen distinction) (Kogler and Stueber 2000). And within mainstream analytical philosophy of the social sciences, one of the central topics has long been the question of whether social facts/events can be reduced to the explanations of the actions of individuals (e.g., Kincaid 1997), raising questions about the units at which explanatory and/or interpretive efforts ought to be directed. (“individualism” vs. “holism”). This question can be traced back to early twentieth-century debates in economics and other emerging social sciences (Udehn 2001).

This chapter concerns a distinction within philosophy of mind and cognitive science between conceptual and nonconceptual ways in which a person may mentally represent the world. The thought that perception is nonconceptual—that its character is concept independent—is also motivated by an empirically plausible expectation of a certain ontogenetic and the phylogenetic continuity in nature. Nonconceptualism about perception is, thus, motivated by the thought that perception is, and must be, a more primitive capacity than, and therefore also independent of, the concepts employed by our more intellectually demanding cognitive capacities. Fodor presents an assortment of the arguments in support of the informational encapsulation, or cognitive impenetrability, of perception. Mental states are widely considered to have representational content: they represent the world, one's body, or one's other mental states as being some way or another. As such, mental states are semantically evaluable.

In this article we question the utility of the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content in cognitive science, and in particular, in the empirical study of visual perception. First, we individuate some difficulties in characterizing the notion of "concept" itself both in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Then we stress the heterogeneous nature of the notion of nonconceptual content and outline the complex and ambiguous relations that exist between the conceptual/nonconceptual duality and other pairs of notions, such as top---down/bottom-up and modular/nonmodular. Finally we look in greater detail at the proposal developed by Jacob and Jeannerod (Ways of seeing. The scopes and limits of visual cognition. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), who apply the notion of nonconceptual content to empirical research on visual perception. After reconstructing their point of view on concepts, we try to reject their major arguments in support of the conceptual/nonconceptual distinction, i.e. the compositionality of thought and the fineness of grain of percepts.

If we are to solve the central problems in the philosophy of science, Paul Churchland argues, we must draw heavily on the resources of the emerging sciences of the mind/brain. In "A Neurocomputational Perspective, "Churchland illustrates the fertility of the concepts and data drawn from the study of the brain and from the study of artificial networks that model the brain. These concepts bring an unexpected coherence to scattered issues in the philosophy of science, new solutions to old philosophical problems, and new possibilities of science itself. "A Neurocomputational Perspective "collects the most influential of Churchland's recent essays in the philosophy of mind, and introduces a number of ground breaking new essays in the philosophy of science. The essays in part 1 form a systematic treatment of the major problems in the philosophy of mind, as seen from the perspective of the philosophy of science and also from the perspective of computational neuroscience and connectionist AI. The nature of mental representations, of sensory qualia, of psychological explanation and of human self understanding all receive significant new treatment, and Churchland reaffirms his well known position that our "folk psychology" must eventually be reduced, perhaps to a mature cognitive neurobiology, or else be displaced by some new framework that does cohere with emerging theories of brain function. In part 2, Churchland provides a coherent and unified alternative conception, in neurocomputational terms of the many issues central to the philosophy of science. These include the nature of theories, the theory-ladenness of perception, the nature of conceptual unification and theoretical simplicity, thenature of paradigms, the kinematics and dynamics of conceptual change, the nature of abductive inference, and the nature of explanatory understanding. Collectively these present a new conception of science. Paul M. Churchland is Professor of Philosophy and member of the Cognitive Science Faculty at the University of California at San Diego. A Bradford Book.

One of the most prominent developments in 20(superscript th) century western philosophy was the outburst of analytical philosophy. Not only can we find its influence within the fields of linguistic analysis, the philosophy of science and the philosophy of the mind, we can also see its impact in the study of political philosophy. Quentin Skinner stands out as one of the most important theorists. Besides making clear the implication of speech-act theory in Skinner's methodology, the purpose of this article is to respond to a common critique of Skinner: namely that Skinner seems to overemphasize the importance of the author's intention to restore the meaning of texts, since this accentuation of intention leads to a seemingly unacceptable conclusion that the literal meaning of the texts itself is non-essential. The author of this article, however, tries to argue that this critique is based on a misunderstanding of Skinner's idea. Since, for Skinner, meaning is a cluster concept which contains several levels of significance, it would be far from enough to merely focus on the literal meaning of any text. To fully understand a work, it is necessarily to take into account the author's intention.

Volume I: 1. Idealist Origins: 1920s and Before by Martin Davies and Stein Helgeby.- 2. John Anderson Arrives: 1930s by Mark Weblin.- 3. The Influence of Wittgenstein: 1940s by Graeme Marshall.- 4. Reconstruction and Enthusiasm by Brian F. Scarlett.- 5. Political Polarisation: 1960s by John Burnheim and Paul Crittenden.- 6. Turbulent Times: 1970s by Aubrey Townsend.- 7. Achievements of the 1980s by Lynda Burns.- 8. The Canberra Plan and the Diversification of Australasian Philosophy: 1990s by John Quilter.- 9. Philosophers in Schools: 2000s by Graham Oppy. Volume II: 10. From Conventionalism to Scientific Metaphysics by Brian Ellis.- 11. Metaphysics by John Bigelow.- 12. Epistemology by Stephen Hetherington.- 13. Philosophy of Language by Frederick Kroon with Appendix: The University of Melbourne, Philosophy of Language, and the Oxford Connection by Denis Robinson.- 14. Philosophy of Religion in Australasia: Philosophy of Religion in Australia by Peter Forrest and Philosophy of Religion in New Zealand by John Bishop & Ken Perszyk.- 15. Aesthetics and Philosophy of Music in Australasia: Aesthetics in Australasia: 1945-2005 by Ismay Barwell and Philosophy of Music in Australasia by Justine Kingsbury.- 16. Moral Philosophy in Australasia by Justin Oakley.- 17. Environmental Philosophy by Freya Matthews.- 18. Feminist Philosophy by Catriona Mackenzie.- 19. Black Swan: A History of Continental Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand by Robert Sinnerbrink & Matheson Russell.- 20. Logic by Ross Brady & Chris Mortensen.- 21. History and Philosophy of Science by Brian Ellis, Rod Home, David Oldroyd, Robert Nola, Howard Sankey, Keith Hutchison, Neil Thomason, John Wilkins, John Forge, Philip Catton & Ruth Barton.- 22. Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science since 1980 by Elizabeth Schier & John Sutton.

Nonconceptualists maintain that there are ways of representing the world that do not reflect the concepts a creature possesses. They claim that the content of these representational states is genuine content because it is subject to correctness conditions, but it is nonconceptual because the creature to which we attribute it need not possess any of the concepts involved in the specification of that content. Appeals to nonconceptual content have seemed especially useful in attempts to capture the representational properties of perceptual experiences, the representational states of pre‐linguistic children and non‐human animals, the states of subpersonal visual information‐processing systems, and the subdoxastic states involved in tacit knowledge of the grammar of a language. Nonconceptual content is also invoked in the explanation of concept possession, concept acquisition, sensorimotor behaviour, and in the analysis of the notion of self‐consciousness. The notion of nonconceptual content plays an important role in many discussions about the relationships between perception and thought.

In the late middle ages, chemistry was the science and technology closest to philosophy, the material realization of the method of analysis and synthesis. No longer. Contemporary philosophy is concerned with many sciences—physics, psychology, biology, linguistics, economics—but chemistry is not among them. Why not? Every discipline has particular problems with some philosophical coloring. Those in quantum theory are famous; those in psychology seem endless; those in biology and economics seem more sparse and esoteric. If, for whatever reason, one’s concern is the conceptual or theoretical problems of a particular science, there is no substitute for that science, and chemistry is just one among others. Certain sciences naturally touch on substantive areas of traditional philosophical concern: quantum theory on metaphysics, for example, psychology on the philosophy of mind, and economics and statistics on theories of rationality. In these cases, there is a special interest in particular sciences because they may reform prior philosophical theories or recast philosophical issues or, conversely, because philosophy may inform these subjects in fundamental ways. That is not true, in any obvious way, of chemistry. So what good, then, what special value, does chemistry offer contemporary philosophy of science? Typically philosophical problems, even problems in philosophy of science, are not confined to a particular science. For general problems—problems about representation, inference, discovery, explanation, realism, intertheoretic and interdisciplinary relations, and so on—what is needed are scientific illustrations that go to the heart of the matter without requiring specialized technical knowledge of the reader. The science needed for most philosophy is familiar, not esoteric, right in the middle of things, mature and diverse enough to illustrate a variety of fundamental issues. Almost uniquely, chemistry fits the description. In philosophy of science, too often an effort gains in weight and seriousness merely because it requires mastery of an intricate and arcane subject, regardless of the philosophical interest of what it says. Yet, surely, there is something contrived, even phony, in illustrating a philosophical point with a discussion of the top quark if the point could be shown as well with a discussion of the ideal gas law.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the concept of contextual emergence as well as its selected applications in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In the first section the author presents the general assumptions of the emergentist model of reality. He stresses that the concept of emergence can be applied to the description of various levels of organization of nature: one of these levels is that of mental-cognitive processes, analyzed within the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In the subsequent sections, he introduces the definitions of contextual emergence and systemic causation and he points to their selected applications to mental-cognitive systems. In the concluding part, he presents the ideas of Gerald Edelman and Michael Gazzaniga on the role of contextual explanations as well as the concepts of emergence in the philosophy of biology and cognitive neuroscience. He also indicates the possibility of incorporating the concept of contextual emergence into active externalism and the extended cognition theory.

Colyvan, M., S. Linquist, W. Grey, P. Griffiths, J. Odenbaugh, and H. P. Possingham. 2009. Philosophical issues in ecology: recent trends and future directions. Ecology and Society 14(2): 22. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03020-140222

The perception/cognition distincton: Challenging the representational account

Notes on Contributors

This volume represents a contribution to the philosophy of economics with a distinctive point of view. The contributors to the volume have not by and large taken up the general and abstract issues that have usually occupied philosophers in their discussions of the philosophy of economics in the past. Instead, they have selected particular areas of economics and have probed these areas for the philosophical and methodological issues that they raise: for example, the mean­ing of causal ascriptions in econometrics, the reliability of large economic models, the status of the assumptions of rationality that go into the public goods argu­ment, the explanatory import of equilibrium analysis, and the role of experiment in economics. The primary essays are written by philosophers, who were invited to concentrate on philosophical issues that arise at the level of the everyday theoretical practice of working economists. Commentary essays have been pro­vided by working economists, who were asked to respond to the philosophical arguments from the standpoint of their own disciplines. The volume thus repre­sents something of an “experiment” in the philosophy of science, striving as it does to explore methodological issues across two research communities. The fruits of the experiment are available for the reader’s own assessment; but it is the editor’s judgment that these exchanges between philosopher and economist have been fruitful indeed.

This book guides readers by gradual steps through the central concepts and debates in the philosophy of science. Using concrete examples from the history of science, Kent W. Staley shows how seemingly abstract philosophical issues are relevant to important aspects of scientific practice. Structured in two parts, the book first tackles the central concepts of the philosophy of science, such as the problem of induction, falsificationism, and underdetermination, and important figures and movements, such as the logical empiricists, Thomas Kuhn, and Paul Feyerabend. The second part turns to contemporary debates in the philosophy of science, such as scientific realism, explanation, the role of values in science, the different views of scientific inference, and probability. This broad yet detailed overview will give readers a strong grounding whilst also providing opportunities for further exploration. It will be of particular interest to students of philosophy, the philosophy of science, and science.

This book guides readers by gradual steps through the central concepts and debates in the philosophy of science. Using concrete examples from the history of science, Kent W. Staley shows how seemingly abstract philosophical issues are relevant to important aspects of scientific practice. Structured in two parts, the book first tackles the central concepts of the philosophy of science, such as the problem of induction, falsificationism, and underdetermination, and important figures and movements, such as the logical empiricists, Thomas Kuhn, and Paul Feyerabend. The second part turns to contemporary debates in the philosophy of science, such as scientific realism, explanation, the role of values in science, the different views of scientific inference, and probability. This broad yet detailed overview will give readers a strong grounding whilst also providing opportunities for further exploration. It will be of particular interest to students of philosophy, the philosophy of science, and science.