Myrto I Mylopoulos

Carleton University · Philosophy and Institute of Cognitive Science

Metacognition can improve with practice, yet the mechanisms underlying metacognitive skill learning remain unclear and lack a robust theoretical framework. We propose that metacognitive skill learning can be largely explained by the skill acquisition model advanced by Fitts (1964) and Anderson (2013). While this model has been successful in the dom...

“What is the structure of thought?” is as central a question as any in cognitive science. A classic answer to this question has appealed to a Language of Thought (LoT). We point to emerging research from disparate branches of the field that supports the LoT hypothesis, but also uncovers diversity in LoTs across cognitive systems, stages of developm...

One necessary condition on any adequate account of perception is clarity regarding whether unconscious perception exists. The issue is complicated, and the debate is growing in both philosophy and science. In this paper we consider the case for unconscious perception, offering three primary achievements. First, we offer a discussion of the underspe...

In this paper, I make a case for the modularity of the motor system. I start where many do in discussions of modularity, by considering the extent to which the motor system is cognitively penetrable, i.e. the extent to which its processing and outputs are causally influenced, in a semantically coherent way, by states of central cognition. I present...

The objective of this paper is to characterize the rich interplay between automatic and cognitive control processes that we propose is the hallmark of skill, in contrast to habit, and what accounts for its flexibility. We argue that this interplay isn't entirely hierarchical and static, but rather heterarchical and dynamic. We further argue that it...

We have all had the experience of everyday mistakes like distractedly pouring orange juice into our cereal bowl rather than the milk or inadvertently continuing on our regular route home rather than stopping at the store as we had planned. These so-called "action slips" (Reason, 1984a) are characterized as failures to execute one's intention arisin...

Some theorists have recently raised doubts about much of the experimental evidence purporting to demonstrate the existence of unconscious perception. In our 2019 article in this journal, we argued that some of these considerations are not decisive. Phillips (2021) replies thoughtfully to our paper, concluding that he is unconvinced by our arguments...

A main obstacle to the successful pursuit of long-term goals is a lack of self-control. But what is the capacity for self-control? The aim of this chapter is to contribute to an overarching theory of self-control by exploring the proposal that it is best understood as a form of hybrid skill. The authors draw on recent work on skill in the domain of...

Scientific research on consciousness is critical to multiple scientific, clinical, and ethical issues. The growth of the field could also be beneficial to several areas including neurology and mental health research. To achieve this goal, we need to set funding priorities carefully and address problems such as job creation and potential media misre...

While there seems to be much evidence that perceptual states can occur without being conscious, some theorists recently express skepticism about unconscious perception. We explore here two kinds of such skepticism: Megan Peters and Hakwan Lau's experimental work regarding the well-known problem of the criterion-which seems to show that many purport...

Ten years ago, one of us proposed a dynamic hierarchical model of intentions that brought together philosophical work on intentions and empirical work on motor representations and motor control (Pacherie, 2008). The model distinguished among Distal intentions, Proximal intentions, and Motor intentions operating at different levels of action control...

Agentive awareness is one's awareness of oneself as presently acting. Dominant accounts in cognitive science consider agentive awareness to be grounded in the states and processes underlying sensorimotor control. In this paper, I raise concerns for this approach and develop an alternative. Broadly, in the approach I defend, one is agentively aware...

A full account of purposive action must appeal not only to propositional attitude states like beliefs, desires, and intentions, but also to motor representations, i.e., non-propositional states that are thought to represent, among other things, action outcomes as well as detailed kinematic features of bodily movements. This raises the puzzle of how...

Fifty years ago, Kornhuber and Deecke first reported their discovery of the Bereitschaftspotential [1], or cortical ‘readiness potential’ (RP) (see Glossary), a slow build-up of scalp electrical potential preceding the onset of subjectively spontaneous voluntary movements (SVMs). The RP was interpreted as ‘the electro-physiological sign of planning...

Myrto Mylopoulos discusses the traditionally neglected phenomenon of action consciousness and its breakdowns in pathological conditions. She introduces a novel framework for understanding action consciousness, which parallels one that is used to discuss state consciousness. In particular, she distinguishes between first-order and higher-order theor...

A primary goal of any theory of consciousness is to provide an informative account of what makes the difference between conscious and nonconscious mental states. Typically, whether or not a given theory is successful in this regard is measured with respect to its ability to explain what it is for paradigmatically sensory states, for example, visual...

In this paper, I argue that the conscious awareness one has of oneself as acting, i.e., agentive awareness, is not a type of sensory awareness. After providing some set up in Sect. 1, I move on in Sect. 2 to sketch a profile of sensory agentive experiences (SAEs) as representational states with sensory qualities by which we come to be aware of ours...

Synesthesia is a fairly common condition in which individuals experience atypical responses (such as color experiences) in association with certain types of stimuli (such as non-colored letters). Although synesthesia has been described for centuries, only very recently has there been an explosive growth of systematic scientific examinations of this...

The neurocognitive evidence that Pickering & Garrod (P&G) cite in favor of positing forward models in speech production is not compelling. The data to which they appeal either cannot be explained by forward models, or can be explained by a more parsimonious model.

Agentive awareness is the awareness one has of oneself as acting, or as performing a particular action. Theorists distinguish between high-level (e.g., Wegner 2002), low-level (e.g., Frith 2007), and integrative approaches (e.g., Pacherie 2008) to explaining this brand of subjective awareness. In this paper, I evaluate the commitment of both low-le...

Mandik (2010) defends a motor theory of control consciousness according to which nonsensory states, like motor commands, directly contribute to the awareness we have of ourselves as being in control of our actions. Along the way, he argues that his theory is to be preferred over Prinz’s (2007) sensory imagery theory, which denies that nonsensory st...