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Plato's Camera: How the Physical Brain Captures a Landscape of Abstract Universals

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Abstract

A noted philosopher draws on the empirical results and conceptual resources of cognitive neuroscience to address questions about the nature of knowledge. In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation—or "takes a picture"—of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures.
... This work is greatly influenced by "Plato's Camera: How the Physical Brain Captures a Landscape of Abstract Universals" by Paul M. Churchland [1]. In his work, Churchland has distinctly pointed out a possibility of how the neural system in the human body "manage to generate a 'language space,'". ...
... Since this symbol is a high dimensional space with an unknown shape that changes dramatically depending on the perspective we look at it, we shall conveniently call it the vector space of a language, or V L for short. 1 An important concept of vectoring is the projection. Since we are not able to observe the V L space as a whole, we project V L into a subspace with a potentially lower dimension in order to understand it better. ...
... 2 Words, being the basic element in nearly all other research programs about similar topics, are just a set (since we are using a plural form of word) of vectors, and aren't much different from utterances or phrases, which are also some set of vectors in V L . 1 We say that a language is represented as a vector space VL. I believe it is not that relevant to formally define the vector space in a mathematics fashion, since it is still difficult for us to understand what elements in this vector space stand for. ...
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Recent breakthroughs in large language models (LLM) have stirred up global attention, and the research has been accelerating non-stop since then. Philosophers and psychologists have also been researching the structure of language for decades, but they are having a hard time finding a theory that directly benefits from the breakthroughs of LLMs. In this article, we propose a novel structure of language that reflects well on the mechanisms behind language models and go on to show that this structure is also better at capturing the diverse nature of language compared to previous methods. An analogy of linear algebra is adapted to strengthen the basis of this perspective. We further argue about the difference between this perspective and the design philosophy for current language models. Lastly, we discuss how this perspective can lead us to research directions that may accelerate the improvements of science fastest.
... Para responder a los tres problemas anteriores llevo a cabo una presentación de las dos versiones existentes del realismo estructural cognitivo: la conexionista de Paul M. Churchland (Churchland 2012) y la predictivista de Majid D. Beni (Beni 2019) -ambas con importantes elementos corporizados-, y contextualizo las motivaciones para explorar estas alternativas en el espacio de posturas. Como parte de la reconstrucción que ofrezco, propongo hacer una distinción entre realismo estructural cognitivo fuerte y débil. ...
... Por otra parte, a diferencia de Churchland (2012), en la exposición de Beni (2019) no hay un planteamiento siquiera esquemático de cómo su propuesta podría aplicarse metodológicamente a la filosofía de la ciencia (por ejemplo, en reconstrucción de teorías, o episodios de cambio científico). Tampoco hay una incorporación explícita de cómo intervienen las representaciones lingüísticas en la actividad científica, y como hace notar elúnico comentario a Beni (2019) en la literatura (Jones 2020), no hay un camino claro para incorporar los elementos sociales de la actividad científica. ...
... Tampoco hay una incorporación explícita de cómo intervienen las representaciones lingüísticas en la actividad científica, y como hace notar elúnico comentario a Beni (2019) en la literatura (Jones 2020), no hay un camino claro para incorporar los elementos sociales de la actividad científica. Si bien Beni considera que REC-PPC es una versión de REC-C, la arquitectura que propone es suficientemente distinta como para tener al menos un mapa para incorporar las conjeturas presentes en la visión de Churchland (2012). En trabajos posteriores (e.g. ...
... Para responder a los tres problemas anteriores llevo a cabo una presentación de las dos versiones existentes del realismo estructural cognitivo: la conexionista de Paul M. Churchland (Churchland 2012) y la predictivista de Majid D. Beni (Beni 2019) -ambas con importantes elementos corporizados-, y contextualizo las motivaciones para explorar estas alternativas en el espacio de posturas. Como parte de la reconstrucción que ofrezco, propongo hacer una distinción entre realismo estructural cognitivo fuerte y débil. ...
... Por otra parte, a diferencia de Churchland (2012), en la exposición de Beni (2019) no hay un planteamiento siquiera esquemático de cómo su propuesta podría aplicarse metodológicamente a la filosofía de la ciencia (por ejemplo, en reconstrucción de teorías, o episodios de cambio científico). Tampoco hay una incorporación explícita de cómo intervienen las representaciones lingüísticas en la actividad científica, y como hace notar elúnico comentario a Beni (2019) en la literatura (Jones 2020), no hay un camino claro para incorporar los elementos sociales de la actividad científica. ...
... Tampoco hay una incorporación explícita de cómo intervienen las representaciones lingüísticas en la actividad científica, y como hace notar elúnico comentario a Beni (2019) en la literatura (Jones 2020), no hay un camino claro para incorporar los elementos sociales de la actividad científica. Si bien Beni considera que REC-PPC es una versión de REC-C, la arquitectura que propone es suficientemente distinta como para tener al menos un mapa para incorporar las conjeturas presentes en la visión de Churchland (2012). En trabajos posteriores (e.g. ...
Article
Este artículo ofrece una reconstrucción de las tesis principales del realismo estructural cognitivo en filosofía de la ciencia, para examinar sus compromisos teóricos y la viabilidad de estos. Con esta finalidad, se analiza de manera crítica la versión conexionista de P.M. Churchland y la versión de procesamiento predictivo de M.D. Beni. Posteriormente, se identifican las tesis centrales y se propone una distinción entre realismo estructural cognitivo fuerte y débil. Finalmente, se abordan algunos de sus problemas y desarrollos potenciales.
... An emerging view is that representations are dynamic neural activation patterns distributed over disparate areas of the brain which are proximately or ultimately based on processes in the brain's sensimotor areas generated by interaction with the environment (Barsalou, 2017;Conway & Pisoni, 2008;Pulvermũller, 2013;Thomson & Piccinini, 2018), and that a hierarchy of association areas or 'convergence zones' integrates activations from the various sensimotor and other association areas to generate increasingly abstract representations (Anderson, 2010;Barsalou, 2016aBarsalou, , 2016bBarsalou, , 2017Binder, 2016;Binder et al., 2005;Binder et al., 2009;Binder et al., 2016;Fernandino et al., 2016;Wilson-Mendenhall et al., 2013). Such association areas provide a plausible implementation mechanism for the question of how sensory input is integrated in the mind so as to generate abstract concepts Churchland, 2012;Ryder, 2004). ...
... Applied to cognition, the idea is that there is a homomorphism between the spatial and temporal structures of the mind-external environment and their representation in the head of the cognitive agent which is causally generated by the agent's interaction with the environment. This idea was proposed in Antiquity (Moisl, 2020) and, more recently, by Mach and von Helmholtz, cited above; current examples are (Adams & Aizawa, 2017;Bartels, 2006;Churchland, 2012;Gallistel, 1990Gallistel, , 2008Gallistel & King, 2009;Gładziejewski & Miłkowski, 2017;Garagnani & Pulvermüller, 2016;Isaac, 2013;Matheson & Barsalou, 2018;Morgan & Piccinini, 2017;Neander, 2017;Piccinini, 2018;Piccinini & Bahar, 2013;Piccinini & Scarantino, 2011;Rescorla, 2009;Rupert, 2008;Shagrir, 2018;Shea, 2007Shea, , 2014Shea, , 2018 Ch.5; Thomson & Piccinini, 2018). ...
... On the assumption that the brain and only the brain implements human cognition, and given the neuroscientific evidence for homomorphism with the environment outlined above, it adopts Searle's position that 'any mechanism capable of producing intentionality must have causal powers equal to those of the brain'. It is inspired mainly by Ryder's neurosemantics (Ryder, 2004) and Churchland's neurobiologically grounded account of cognition as articulated in (Churchland 2012), and comprises the collection of interacting artificial neural networks (ANN) shown in Figure 1; numbers of units are for illustration only, and the component subnets are standard Multilayer Perceptrons (MLP) and Simple Recurrent Networks (SRN), for the architecture and training of which see (Haykin, 2008) and (Goodfellow & Bengio;. For convenience, the model is henceforth referred to as 'S'. ...
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This paper proposes a model for implementation of intrinsic natural language sentence meaning in a physical language understanding system, where 'intrinsic' is understood as 'independent of meaning ascription by system-external observers'. The proposal is that intrinsic meaning can be implemented as a point attractor in the state space of a nonlinear dynamical system with feedback which is generated by temporally sequenced inputs. It is motivated by John Searle's well known (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3: 417–57, 1980) critique of the then-standard and currently still influential computational theory of mind (CTM), the essence of which was that CTM representations lack intrinsic meaning because that meaning is dependent on ascription by an observer. The proposed dynamical model comprises a collection of interacting artificial neural networks, and constitutes a radical simplification of the principle of compositional phrase structure which is at the heart of the current standard view of sentence semantics because it is computationally interpretable as a finite state machine.
... An emerging view is that representations are dynamic neural activation patterns distributed over disparate areas of the brain which are proximately or ultimately based on processes in the brain's sensimotor areas generated by interaction with the environment (Barsalou, 2017;Conway & Pisoni, 2008;Pulvermũller, 2013;Thomson & Piccinini, 2018), and that a hierarchy of association areas or 'convergence zones' integrates activations from the various sensimotor and other association areas to generate increasingly abstract representations (Anderson, 2010;Barsalou, 2016aBarsalou, , 2016bBarsalou, , 2017Binder, 2016;Binder et al., 2005;Binder et al., 2009;Binder et al., 2016;Fernandino et al., 2016;Wilson-Mendenhall et al., 2013). Such association areas provide a plausible implementation mechanism for the question of how sensory input is integrated in the mind so as to generate abstract concepts Churchland, 2012;Ryder, 2004). ...
... Applied to cognition, the idea is that there is a homomorphism between the spatial and temporal structures of the mind-external environment and their representation in the head of the cognitive agent which is causally generated by the agent's interaction with the environment. This idea was proposed in Antiquity (Moisl, 2020) and, more recently, by Mach and von Helmholtz, cited above; current examples are (Adams & Aizawa, 2017;Bartels, 2006;Churchland, 2012;Gallistel, 1990Gallistel, , 2008Gallistel & King, 2009;Gładziejewski & Miłkowski, 2017;Garagnani & Pulvermüller, 2016;Isaac, 2013;Matheson & Barsalou, 2018;Morgan & Piccinini, 2017;Neander, 2017;Piccinini, 2018;Piccinini & Bahar, 2013;Piccinini & Scarantino, 2011;Rescorla, 2009;Rupert, 2008;Shagrir, 2018;Shea, 2007Shea, , 2014Shea, , 2018 Ch.5; Thomson & Piccinini, 2018). ...
... On the assumption that the brain and only the brain implements human cognition, and given the neuroscienti c evidence for homomorphism with the environment outlined above, it adopts Searle's position that 'any mechanism capable of producing intentionality must have causal powers equal to those of the brain'. It is inspired mainly by Ryder's neurosemantics (Ryder, 2004) and Churchland's neurobiologically grounded account of cognition as articulated in (Churchland 2012), and comprises the collection of interacting arti cial neural networks (ANN) shown in Figure 1; numbers of units are for illustration only, and the component subnets are standard Multilayer Perceptrons (MLP) and Simple Recurrent Networks (SRN), for the architecture and training of which see (Haykin, 2008) and (Goodfellow & Bengio;. For convenience, the model is henceforth referred to as 'S'. ...
Preprint
Full-text available
This paper proposes a model for implementation of intrinsic natural language sentence meaning in a physical language understanding system, where 'intrinsic' is understood as 'independent of meaning ascription by system-external observers'. The proposal is that intrinsic meaning can be implemented as a point attractor in the state space of a nonlinear dynamical system with feedback which is generated by temporally sequenced inputs. It is motivated by John Searle's well known (1980) critique of the then-standard and currently still influential Computational Theory of Mind (CTM), the essence of which was that CTM representations lack intrinsic meaning because that meaning is dependent on ascription by an observer. The proposed dynamical model comprises a collection of interacting artificial neural networks, and constitutes a radical simplification of the principle of compositional phrase structure which is at the heart of the current standard view of sentence semantics because it is computationally interpretable as a finite state machine.
... In the second half of the twentieth century, cognitive science in general and linguistics in particular were dominated by the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM), whereby the mind is seen as a Turing Machine whose program is cognition (Rescorla 2020). Its dominance in recent decades has been challenged by neural (Churchland 2012) and dynamical systems (Metzger 2017) approaches to cognitive theory, but with respect to meaning in particular the most fundamental challenge has come from a philosophical thought-experiment formulated by the philosopher John Searle (1980) and subsequently developed by him (Searle 1984(Searle , 1989(Searle , 1990(Searle , 2002(Searle , 2010). Searle's initial aim was to counter the claim by 'strong' artificial intelligence that it is possible to construct machines with human-level intelligence by basing their design on CTM, but he subsequently extended the implications of the experiment to the philosophical foundations of CTM itself, arguing that it cannot in principle offer a complete theory of cognition. ...
... The second is based on the observation that nonlinear response to input and output latency in individual neurons together with pervasive feedback connectivity among biological neurons and neural assemblies make the brain a physical nonlinear dynamical system capable of behaviours characteristic of such systems, ranging from fixed-point through periodic and fractal to chaotic. The mathematical theory of dynamical and complex systems has consequently been proposed as an alternative or at least an adjunct to CTM (Churchland 2012;Metzger 2017;Port & van Gelder 1995;Ward 2001). ...
... Influential examples of neural cognitive modelling are Ryder's SINBAD (Ryder 2004), which combines ANN architecture with teleological functionality to learn representations of environmental regularities via sensory input the structure of which becomes homomorphic with the environment over time, and State Space Semantics, which Paul and Patricia Churchland have developed over several decades and which is comprehensively stated most recently in Churchland (2012); for critiques see (Fodor & Lepore 1996 and for defenses (Laakso & Cottrell 2000;Shea 2018). ...
Chapter
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A long-standing problem in linguistics and cognitive science more generally is how natural language expressions come to possess, and how artificially intelligent systems can be endowed with, intrinsic meaning. There is a long tradition in Western thought whereby the meanings of linguistic expressions are their significations of mental concepts, and concepts are representations of the mind-external environment causally generated by the cognitive agent's interaction with that environment. This paper outlines this tradition with the aim of providing the intellectual context in which cognitive models with intrinsic meaning can be constructed.
... In the second half of the twentieth century, cognitive science in general and linguistics in particular were dominated by the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM), whereby the mind is seen as a Turing Machine whose program is cognition (Rescorla 2020). Its dominance in recent decades has been challenged by neural (Churchland 2012) and dynamical systems (Metzger 2017) approaches to cognitive theory, but with respect to meaning in particular the most fundamental challenge has come from a philosophical thought-experiment formulated by the philosopher John Searle (1980) and subsequently developed by him (Searle 1984(Searle , 1989(Searle , 1990(Searle , 2002(Searle , 2010). Searle's initial aim was to counter the claim by 'strong' artificial intelligence that it is possible to construct machines with human-level intelligence by basing their design on CTM, but he subsequently extended the implications of the experiment to the philosophical foundations of CTM itself, arguing that it cannot in principle offer a complete theory of cognition. ...
... The second is based on the observation that nonlinear response to input and output latency in individual neurons together with pervasive feedback connectivity among biological neurons and neural assemblies make the brain a physical nonlinear dynamical system capable of behaviours characteristic of such systems, ranging from fixed-point through periodic and fractal to chaotic. The mathematical theory of dynamical and complex systems has consequently been proposed as an alternative or at least an adjunct to CTM (Churchland 2012;Metzger 2017;Port & van Gelder 1995;Ward 2001). ...
... Influential examples of neural cognitive modelling are Ryder's SINBAD (Ryder 2004), which combines ANN architecture with teleological functionality to learn representations of environmental regularities via sensory input the structure of which becomes homomorphic with the environment over time, and State Space Semantics, which Paul and Patricia Churchland have developed over several decades and which is comprehensively stated most recently in Churchland (2012); for critiques see (Fodor & Lepore 1996 and for defenses (Laakso & Cottrell 2000;Shea 2018). ...
Book
A long-standing problem in linguistics and cognitive science more generally is how natural language expressions come to possess, and how artificially intelligent systems can be endowed with, intrinsic meaning. There is a long tradition in Western thought whereby the meanings of linguistic expressions are their significations of mental concepts, and concepts are representations of the mind-external environment causally generated by the cognitive agent's interaction with that environment. This paper outlines this tradition with the aim of providing the intellectual context in which cognitive models with intrinsic meaning can be constructed.
... The further away from the female region, the more prototypically male a picture was, and different photos of the same individual were clustered in one area. This example demonstrates the richness with which an abstract concept such as masculinity-femininity can be represented by use of spatial representations along abstract quality dimensions (Churchland, 2012;O'Brien & Opie, 2004). This can also be found in modern large language models' representations (i.e., embeddings) of place names, which correspond to actual relative distances between these places (Gurnee & Tegmark, 2023). ...
... 12 A short note related to dimensionality. It has been argued that these dimensions may originate from combinations of neuronal activation, which theoretically could allow generating spaces with up to 10 100,000,000,000 dimensions (Churchland, 2012). Although carrying vast semantic information, this space would likely be useless though, as the wealth of dimensions would make it impossible to compare concepts, called the curse of dimensionality (Ganguli & Sompolinsky, 2012). ...
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Predictive processing posits that prediction-error minimization underlies all perception, action, and cognition. Yet, despite its considerable popularity and explanatory scope, it is unclear how this enables higher-level cognitive abilities, such as representing and reasoning over abstract concepts. We combine insights from predictive processing, structural representations and grounded cognition to address this issue. Predictive processing argues from the free energy principle that an anticipatory model of the person-relevant environment is simulated. Structural representations state that these representations are isomorphic to, i.e., retain the relational pattern of, the world. Building on this assembly, grounded cognition research provides four insights into how abstract concepts are represented. First, a hierarchical organization allows abstracting from specific sensory qualities. Second, language glues together sensory qualities into representations that share no intrinsic properties, and acts as a social tool. Third, metaphoric mapping allows fragments of concrete percepts to represent abstract concepts. Lastly, conceptual spaces can represent concepts by generating multi-dimensional spaces consisting of abstract quality dimensions. By transplanting these four insights to predictive processing’s (structural) hierarchical generative model, we explain higher-level cognition through detached models of perception and action simulations, isomorphic to actual behavior, in abstract conceptual spaces. This constitutes a significant expansion to life-mind continuity approaches by providing specific mechanisms for how the principles driving the emergence of life can account for the sophisticated higher-level cognition in humans. By synthesizing insights from these three literatures, we generate a coherent description of higher-level cognition under predictive processing.
... Por otra parte, a diferencia de Churchland (2012), en la exposición de Beni (2019) no hay un planteamiento siquiera esquemático de cómo su propuesta podría aplicarse metodológicamente a la filosofía de la ciencia (por ejemplo, en reconstrucción de teorías, o episodios de cambio científico). Tampoco hay una incorporación explícita de cómo intervienen las representaciones lingüísticas en la actividad científica, y como hace notar elúnico comentario a Beni (2019) en la literatura (Jones 2020), no hay un camino claro para incorporar los elementos sociales de la actividad científica. ...
... Tampoco hay una incorporación explícita de cómo intervienen las representaciones lingüísticas en la actividad científica, y como hace notar elúnico comentario a Beni (2019) en la literatura (Jones 2020), no hay un camino claro para incorporar los elementos sociales de la actividad científica. Si bien Beni considera que REC-PPC es una versión de REC-C, la arquitectura que propone es suficientemente distinta como para tener al menos un mapa para incorporar las conjeturas presentes en la visión de Churchland (2012). En trabajos posteriores (e.g. ...
Article
Este artículo ofrece una reconstrucción de las tesis principales del realismo estructural cognitivo en filosofía de la ciencia, para examinar sus compromisos teóricos y la viabilidad de estos. Con esta finalidad, se analiza de manera crítica la versión conexionista de P.M. Churchland y la versión de procesamiento predictivo de M.D. Beni. Posteriormente, se identifican las tesis centrales y se propone una distinción entre realismo estructural cognitivo fuerte y débil. Finalmente, se abordan algunos de sus problemas y desarrollos potenciales.
... Some correlations may be quite weak, and it is not at all plausible that the content of a representation is the thing it correlates with most strongly. 12 A weak correlation that only slightly raises the individuals (Churchland 1998(Churchland , 2012. Taken on its own the correspondence idea produces an implausibly liberal theory of representation (Cummins 1989, Godfrey-Smith 1994a, Shea 2013c. ...
... One measure of how similar two patterns of neural activity are is the distance between the two corresponding vectors in this state space ( Figure 5.6). Paul Churchland is the leading proponent in philosophy of the idea that similarity in neural state space is important to the way mental representations function (Churchland 2012(Churchland , 1998. Recent work analysing the distributed patterns of 12 Another obvious case to think about is predication in a natural language sentence. ...
Book
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The representational theory of mind (RTM) has given us the powerful insight that thinking consists of the processing of mental representations. Behaviour is the result of these cognitive processes and makes sense in the light of their contents. There is no widely accepted account of how representations get their content – of the metaphysics of representational content. That question, usually asked about representations at the personal level like beliefs and conscious states, is equally pressing for the subpersonal representations that pervade our best explanatory theories in cognitive science. This book argues that well-understood naturalistic resources can be combined to provide an account of subpersonal representational content. It shows how contents arise in a series of detailed case studies in cognitive science. The account is pluralistic, allowing that content is constituted differently in different cases. Building on insights from previous theories, especially teleosemantics, the accounts combine an appeal to correlational information and structural correspondence with an expanded notion of etiological function, which captures the kinds of stabilizing processes that give rise to content. The accounts support a distinction between descriptive and directive content. They also allow us to see how representational explanation gets its distinctive explanatory purchase.
... I have focused here on the NLP side of things. Other philosophers such as Churchland (2012) have placed more emphasis on developing geometrically inspired accounts such as state-space semantics to account for applications like facial recognition, especially with relation to Cottrell's (1991) face-recognition network. The evoked metasemantic image is that of a map which roughly corresponds to the area it is representing. ...
... This short-term memory enables the network to use its recent context to process new input. Churchland (2012) for instance, considers this to be an advantageous feature over feed-forward networks in that RNNs incorporate a certain dynamism. "This means that, when the network is stimulated at time t, the output it generates will not be exhaustively determined by that input" (Cain, 2016, p. 52). ...
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In this article, I describe a novel position on the semantics of artificial intelligence. I present a problem for the current artificial neural networks used in machine learning, specifically with relation to natural language tasks. I then propose that from a metasemantic level, meaning in machines can best be interpreted as radically contextualist. Finally, I consider what this might mean for human-level semantic competence from a comparative perspective.
... Churchland proposes that the fundamental unit of cognition (he is careful to specify this as occurrent or ephemeral cognition) is the "activation pattern across a proprietary population of neurons." (Churchland, 2012, p. 3) Over timeminutes, days, yearsthe accumulation of spatiotemporal activation of proprietary neurons results in the mapping out of a background, an "entire conceptual framework" upon which subsequent inputs are mapped, essentially creating an individual's representation of the world. That conceptual framework is, of course, based on other forms of data point besides just the visual. ...
Article
This paper examines the limitations of historical documentation, focusing on the lives of mill girls in Manchester, New Hampshire’s textile mills through photographic images and family memories. While photographs, like those by Lewis Hine, provide insight into the physical conditions and harsh realities faced by young workers, they do not capture the inner lives of child laborers or the broader social context shaping their experiences. The authors highlight the shortcomings of traditional archival practices, particularly the subject headings applied to Hine’s photographs, which fail to reflect the complexities of mill girls' lives. Drawing on personal perspectives from the authors—whose grandmothers worked in the mills—the paper explores the emotional and social consequences of child labor, including physical harm, cultural divides, and lasting social stratification. By applying the Proximity and Epidata model (Bonnici and O’Connor), the paper advocates for a more nuanced approach to archival research that incorporates the often-overlooked "backstories" of historical documents. This approach can foster deeper connections to artifacts and enrich our understanding of the past's ongoing impact on cultural memories. The paper presents a revised framework to better document and preserve the lived experiences of mill girls, bridging the gap between superficial historical data and the lived realities of marginalized individuals.This paper examines the limitations of historical documentation, focusing on the lives of mill girls in Manchester, New Hampshire’s textile mills through photographic images and family memories. While photographs, like those by Lewis Hine, provide insight into the physical conditions and harsh realities faced by young workers, they do not capture the inner lives of child laborers or the broader social context shaping their experiences. The authors highlight the shortcomings of traditional archival practices, particularly the subject headings applied to Hine’s photographs, which fail to reflect the complexities of mill girls' lives. Drawing on personal perspectives from the authors—whose grandmothers worked in the mills—the paper explores the emotional and social consequences of child labor, including physical harm, cultural divides, and lasting social stratification. By applying the Proximity and Epidata model (Bonnici and O’Connor), the paper advocates for a more nuanced approach to archival research that incorporates the often-overlooked "backstories" of historical documents. This approach can foster deeper connections to artifacts and enrich our understanding of the past's ongoing impact on cultural memories. The paper presents a revised framework to better document and preserve the lived experiences of mill girls, bridging the gap between superficial historical data and the lived realities of marginalized individuals.
... & Hilbert, 2021, pp. 129-30;Brown & Macpherson, 2021, p. 6), view is that it is opponent-neural states downstream from retina which underpin color-experience (for helpful discussion, see Churchland, 2005Churchland, , 2012. Nothings hangs on which account of postreceptoral color processing we adopt, so I assume the standard picture here. ...
Article
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Yablo has argued (1995) the received view in philosophy, that spectral surface reflectances (SSRs) are the causes of color-experience, is mistaken. SSRs, he says, are not commensurate with our experiences and so are not their causes. This motivated Yablo to posit sui generis, “unscientific” color properties to fill the resultant causal lacunae (cf. Watkins in Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83:33–52, 2005;Watkins in Philosophical Studies 150:123–137, 2010; Gert, in: Brown & Macpherson (eds) Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour, Routledge, 2021). This move, I argue, only works if no physical posits commensurate with our experiences exist to fill the same lacunae. And there are, today, familiar such posits: dispositions to reflect long-, medium-, and short-wavelength light (Bradley & Tye in Journal of Philosophy 98:469, 2001; cf. Koenderink in Color for the Sciences, MIT Press, 2010). Moreover, these dispositions are commensurate with our cone and opponent-neural states too, those states, more than our color-experiences, demanding paradigmatically physical causes. The above, conjoined with the platitude that colors are the causes of color-experience, motivates reducing colors to the noted (physical) dispositions.
... Yoshimi has another goal in his paper, namely, to minimize the generality of the argument by saying that it is limited to simple feed-forward networks, which I used, following Churchland (2012), as an illustrative example of the type of abstraction that awaits all artificial neural networks. Here Yoshimi shows that he has not appreciated the generality of the argument. ...
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Yoshimi has attempted to defuse my argument concerning the identification of network abstraction with empiricist abstraction - thus entailing psychologism - by claiming that the argument does not generalize from the example of simple feed-forward networks. I show that such details of networks are logically irrelevant to the nature of the abstractive process they employ. This is ultimately because deep artificial neural networks (ANNs) and dynamical systems theory applied to the mind (DST) are both associationisms - that is, empiricist theories that derive the principles of thought from the causal history of the organism/system. On this basis, I put forward a new aspect of the old argument by noting that ANNs & DST are the causal bases of the phenomena of passive synthesis, whereas the language of thought hypothesis (LOT) and the symbolic computational theory of mind (CTM) are the causal bases of the phenomena of active synthesis. If the phenomena of active synthesis are not distinct in kind from and are thus reducible to those of passive synthesis, psychologism results. Yoshimi’s program, insofar as it denies this fundamental phenomenological distinction, is revealed to be the true anti-pluralist program, by essentially denying the causal efficacy of the mechanistic foundations of active synthesis by referring phenomenology exclusively to associationism for its causal foundation.
... On this view, much or most of science aims to give us intersubjective truth-that is, truths that similar perceivers can converge on, since they have similar perceptual faculties that evolved via natural selection (and because they can construct the same or similar conceptual maps (Churchland, 2012)). And on on this view of things, if we encountered an intelligent alien species, for instance, we should in principle be able to translate our respective perceptions and scientific explanations into an invariant structure of some kind: an explanation of some kind that shows our respective perceptions and scientific explanations to be equivalent, in other words. ...
Preprint
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The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that we don't perceive reality: spacetime, objects, colors, sounds, tastes, and so forth, are all merely an interface that we evolved to track evolutionary fitness rather than to perceive truths about external reality. In this paper, I expound on his argument, then I extend it, primarily, by looking at key ideas in physics that are quite germane to it. Among the topics in physics that I discuss are black holes, the holographic principle, string theory, duality, quantum gravity, and special relativity. I discuss these ideas from physics with an eye to their relevance for Hoffman's view.
... À la suite de Kleiber (1983) (cf. Churchland 2012). La fonction des expressions linguistiques n'est pas de refléter la structure du monde mais de coordonner les cartes conceptuelles des membres d'une communauté linguistique (Brożek 2018 : 153-154). ...
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(EN/FR) This research project aims to further our knowledge of the processes Latin underwent to become the Romance languages of the Medieval period. More specifically, it examines the reorganisation of the demonstrative system which took place during the period where Late Latin was gradually evolving into Old French and Old Italian. This doctoral thesis builds on prior work in the field of socio-historical linguistics, and also on the socio-cultural history of the Latin West. It makes use of advances in digital technologies within the Humanities and Social Sciences, notably digital analysis techniques and methodology from the field of Corpus Linguistics. This research explores a little-known and under-researched type of text – Notarial Charters. It focuses on the pragmatico-semantic analysis of 6 word forms that have traditionally been considered demonstratives – the indexical expressions HIC, ISTE and ILLE, and the endophoric expressions IS, IDEM and IPSE. Phonetic and morpho-syntactic aspects of these demonstratives are considered where this allows for a better understanding of the demonstratives pragmatic-semantic properties. A digitised corpus of notarial charters from 7th-10th century Gaul and Southern Italy are analysed using a comparative approach, aided by the text analysis software TXM, developed by the CACTUS team (Corpus en diachronie, textométrie et usages), part of the research group IHRIM (UMR 5317). Our research offers a new perspective on the analysis of Latin demonstratives that takes into account the latest advances in the field of pragmatic-semantics. Numerous studies on demonstratives as a linguistic category have been carried out in recent decades, allowing us to propose new theories concerning not only the function of demonstratives synchronically, but also diachronically. Currently, this type of study is available for Old French and, to a lesser extent, Latin, especially the Late Latin found in hagiographical texts. At this time, studies of this type on Old Italian seem to be lacking. By offering a new theory on the function of Latin demonstratives with a diachronic perspective, which aligns well with similar work on Old French, we hope to provide a new theoretical framework which can be adapted for all forms of Latin across time, from Archaic Latin to Old French. The inclusion of Old Italian demonstratives in this study allows for a more complete picture of the evolution of Latin demonstratives into the demonstratives of Medieval Romance languages. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ce travail de recherche vise à mieux nous renseigner sur le processus de filiation du latin aux langues romanes, et plus spécifiquement sur la réorganisation du système démonstratif qui a lieu à l’époque du passage du latin tardif à l’ancien français et à l’ancien italien. En bénéficiant des apports et avancées de la linguistique sociohistorique mais aussi de l’histoire socio-culturelle de l’Occident latin, cette thèse exploite les acquis du tournant numérique de la recherche en SHS en s’appuyant sur les méthodologies de la linguistique de corpus et les outils d’analyse numériques. Il explore un genre textuel jusque-là mal connu et inexploité par les linguistes, à savoir les chartes notariales. La recherche est centrée sur l’analyse pragmatico-sémantique des six formes traditionnellement considérées comme des démonstratifs, les indexicaux HIC, ISTE, ILLE, et les endophoriques IS, IDEM, IPSE. La phonétique et la morphosyntaxe des démonstratifs sont prises en compte seulement quand elles permettent de mieux saisir leurs propriétés sémantico-pragmatiques. Les analyses sont menées dans une perspective comparatiste à partir d’un corpus numérique de chartes notariales rédigée en Gaule et en Italie méridionale entre le 7e et le 10e siècle. Le corpus est exploité à l’aide du logiciel TXM, développé par l’équipe Cactus (Corpus en diachronie, textométrie et usages) au sein de l’IHRIM (UMR 5317). Notre travail de recherche propose d’étudier les démonstratifs latins sous un nouveau jour en prenant en compte les derniers avancements des études sémantico-pragmatiques. De nombreuses recherches sur le démonstratif en tant que catégorie linguistique ont été menées durant les dernières décennies. Elles nous permettent de proposer de nouvelles explications concernant non seulement le fonctionnement des démonstratifs en synchronie mais aussi en diachronie longue. Nous disposons aujourd’hui de ce type de travaux sur l’ancien français et dans une moindre mesure sur le latin (notamment sur le latin tardif des textes hagiographiques). En l’état actuel, ce type d’études sur les périodes anciennes de l’italien semble faire défaut. En proposant une nouvelle explication du fonctionnement des démonstratifs dans la diachronie longue du latin qui s’accorde avec les propositions faites pour l’ancien français, nous espérons fournir un nouveau cadre théorique qui s’adapte à toute la diachronie du latin (du latin archaïque à l’ancien français) et qui permet de mieux articuler les enjeux de l’évolution des démonstratifs latins vers les démonstratifs romans puisque nous essayons d’y inclure les démonstratifs de l’ancien italien.
... See for exampleChurchland (2013) andShea (2018). 10 "The prison of the universe is personalized in the prison of the brain."(Tallis, ...
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... There are also structural resemblance/isomorphism accounts, as inOpie and O'Brien (2004),Churchland (2012),Ryder (2004),Shea (2018, Ch. 5). However, with the exception ofOpie and O'Brien (2004), these all have selectional or learning histories playing an indispensable role in content's grounding and, so, can count for our purposes as broadly teleosemantic.19 ...
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Representationalism is today the leading physicalist theory of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. And Russellian representationalism, which identifies contents with extensions, is the leading iteration of that theory. If there exist phenomenally distinct experiences as of the impossible, then these would prima facie serve as counterexamples to the theory. In order that they definitively serve as counterexamples, it needs to be that there is no plausible account of the experiences on which they decompose into constituent elements each of which is unproblematic from the perspective of the theory. The contention of this paper is that the stygian color experiences, afterimage-experiences as of maximally dark, hued surfaces, of Churchland (Churchland, Philosophical Psychology 18:527–560, 2005) serve as counterexamples to Russellian representationalism.
... Each scene is set within a larger context. Churchland refers to this as seeing "spatiotemporal particulars [within a] landscape or configuration of the abstract universals, the temporal invariants, and the enduring symmetries that structure the objective universe of [the brain's] experience" (Churchland, 2012). Any individual photograph presents an exquisite data set of "spatiotemporal particulars," but is, in and of itself largely bereft of universal particulars of either the maker or the seeker or the viewer. ...
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We look at three photographs, each made at a time of profound crisis, in order to tease out notions of proximity. Vision gives us proximity at a distance. Photographs may give us a similar proximity. Human vision depends on experience built up from individual events of seeing. Can a photograph made in a fraction of a second by someone else at some other time and some other place provide anything more than data about some surfaces in front of the lens? Can words and other images from the photographers enhance the viewer’s proximity to the original? Can we make use of the photographers’ accounts of their proximities for enhancing the understanding of individual viewers? We examine various aspects of proximity and photography in the context of images of U.S. presidents in times of crises – mechanical and conceptual restraints on photographic representation, external sources of contextualizing information, forms of proximity of the photographers to the presidents, and the strengths and weaknesses of existing metadata.
... Spor o eliminativním materialismu a statusu lidové psychologie, který probíhal především v osmdesátých a na začátku devadesátých let, již v současnosti není příliš živý a byl vystřídán jinými problémy lidové psychologie, jako je například otázka její formy. Stále je však možné se setkat i s aktuálními, ač ojedinělými, příspěvky k otázce statusu lidové psychologie a se snahou o oživení problému její případné eliminace (Churchland 2012;Rosenberg 2018). ...
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Lidová psychologie coby základ naší schopnosti vysvětlovat a předvídat jednání je významné téma filozofie mysli. Debaty, které ji obklopují, se nicméně v minulosti zaměřovaly primárně na otázky jejího statusu v rámci vědeckého zkoumání mysli a formy ji zakládajících mechanismů (teorie, simulace aj.). Relativně menší pozornost byla věnována otázce obsahu lidové psychologie – tedy tomu, které koncepty či schopnosti pod označení „lidová psychologie“ řadit. V článku se zabývám právě otázkou obsahu a možné odpovědi na otázku obsahu předloženou pluralistickým pojetím lidové psychologie. Nejdříve uvádím některé argumenty zpochybňující standardní pojetí lidové psychologie a následně představuji pojetí pluralismu rozšiřující lidovou psychologii o řadu sociálně kognitivních schopností. V závěru se krátce věnuji tomu, jaké dopady by takto šířeji pojímaná lidová psychologie mohla mít pro otázky jejího statusu a formy.
... Since this similarity space is constantly shifting due to new input, one cannot think the same thought twice. This is greeted as a realistic consequence of ANN's by Churchland (2012), since the brain is a dynamical system, and therefore cannot instantiate the same (as opposed to similar) content twice; on the other hand, for phenomenologists, this would entail psychologism (Husserl (1975) 191/2001120, Hopp, 2011. To see why, consider the following argument: ...
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Psychologism is defined as “the doctrine that the laws of mathematics and logic can be reduced to or depend on the laws governing thinking” (Moran & Cohen, 2012 266). And for Husserl, the laws of logic include the laws of meaning: “logic evidently is the science of meanings as such [Wissenschaft von Bedeutungen als solchen]” (Husserl (1975) 98/2001 225). I argue that, since it is sufficient for a theory to be psychologistic if the empiricistic theory of abstraction is employed, it follows that neural networks are psychologistic insofar as they use this theory of abstraction, which I demonstrate is the case (Husserl (1975) 191/2001 120). It’s sufficient for psychologism because, according to Husserl, the theory in question reduces one’s phenomenological ability to intend types (or universals) to one’s past history of intending tokens (or particulars), usually amalgamated in some fashion (classically via associations; recently via autoencoders) (ibid; Kelleher, 2019). Similarly dynamical systems theory entails psychologism. For dynamical systems theory ties content to the temporal evolution of a system, which, according to Husserl, violates the fact that intentionality toward validities and objectivities does not pertain to "particular temporal experience[s]" (Husserl (1975) 194/2001 121). It follows that neither the species (neural networks), nor the genus (dynamical systems), can avoid psychologism and intend objects "in specie" (ibid). After critiquing these two approaches, I proceed to give an account based on the essentialist school of cognitive psychology of how we may intend objects "in specie" while avoiding the empiricistic theory of abstraction (Keil, 1989, Carey, 2009, Marcus & Davis, 2019). Such an account preserves the type-token distinction without psychologistic reduction to the temporal evolution of a dynamical system (Hinzen, 2006). This opens the way toward a truly unifying account of Husserlian phenomenology in league with cognitive science that avoids Yoshimi's (2016) and neurophenomenology's psychologistic foundation (herein demonstrated) and builds upon Sokolowski's (2003) syntactic account of Husserlian phenomenology.
... string theory) with "philosophical" commentary that could as well have been obtained from high school chemistry or just silliness. So, in recent philosophical books, we read that scientists cannot discover theories they have not thought of (Stanford 2006), and we read that Darwin's reasoning to the theory of evolution was produced by changes in neural connections in Darwin's brain (Churchland 2012), and we read that Newton's argument for universal gravitation was really all about estimating the gravitational constant in that law (Harper 2011). ...
... 13 The demonstrative form in Potrč 2017. 14 Connectionist computational architecture is opposed to the classical computer-inspired cognitive architecture, with its atomistic representations and exceptionless logical rules taking care of their arrangements (Churchland 2012). 15 See Horgan (2016Horgan ( , 2017. ...
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Similarity spaces are standardly constructed by collecting pairwise similarity judgments and subjecting those to a dimension-reduction technique such as multidimensional scaling or principal component analysis. While this approach can be effective, it has some known downsides, most notably, it tends to be costly and has limited generalizability. Recently, a number of authors have attempted to mitigate these issues through machine learning techniques. For instance, neural networks have been trained on human similarity judgments to infer the spatial representation of unseen stimuli. However, these newer methods are still costly and fail to generalize widely beyond their initial training sets. This paper proposes leveraging prebuilt semantic vector spaces as a cheap alternative to collecting similarity judgments. Our results suggest that some of those spaces can be used to approximate human similarity judgments at low cost and high speed.
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This paper studies the learnability of natural concepts in the context of the conceptual spaces framework. Previous work proposed that natural concepts are represented by the cells of optimally partitioned similarity spaces, where optimality was defined in terms of a number of constraints. Among these is the constraint that optimally partitioned similarity spaces result in easily learnable concepts. While there is evidence that systems of concepts generally regarded as natural satisfy a number of the proposed optimality constraints, the connection between naturalness and learnability has been less well studied. To fill this gap, we conduct a computational study employing two standard models of concept learning. Applying these models to the learning of color concepts, we examine whether natural color concepts are more readily learned than nonnatural ones. Our findings warrant a positive answer to this question for both models employed, thus lending empirical support to the notion that learnability is a distinctive characteristic of natural concepts.
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This paper aims to provide a rational reconstruction of the claim of eliminative materialism (EM), espoused by Paul and Patricia Churchland. It will identify and clarify alternative understandings of that view and assess the version that is the most plausible interpretation in the light of the Churchlands' writings and contemporary discussions. The result of the analysis is that eliminativism is best understood as a methodological thesis regarding the scope and depth of the possible revision of (scientific and folk) usage of FP terms and principles. The problem is important not only, and nor primarily, for exegetical purposes. EM functions in contemporary metaphysics of mind mainly as a point of negative reference: for this reason, it is important to carefully formulate the main claim of EM so that the theorists taking part in the debate know what they actually disagree with. The careful formulation provided by this paper could show other philosophers that their position is not, in fact, as far from EM as they might have thought.
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Many philosophers claim that the neurocomputational framework of predictive processing entails a globally inferentialist and representationalist view of cognition. Here, I contend that this is not correct. I argue that, given the theoretical commitments these philosophers endorse, no structure within predictive processing systems can be rightfully identified as a representational vehicle. To do so, I first examine some of the theoretical commitments these philosophers share, and show that these commitments provide a set of necessary conditions the satisfaction of which allows us to identify representational vehicles. Having done so, I introduce a predictive processing system capable of active inference, in the form of a simple robotic “brain”. I examine it thoroughly, and show that, given the necessary conditions highlighted above, none of its components qualifies as a representational vehicle. I then consider and allay some worries my claim could raise. I consider whether the anti-representationalist verdict thus obtained could be generalized, and provide some reasons favoring a positive answer. I further consider whether my arguments here could be blocked by allowing the same representational vehicle to possess multiple contents, and whether my arguments entail some extreme form of revisionism, answering in the negative in both cases. A quick conclusion follows.
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Die Autorinnen und Autoren präsentieren in diesem Buch Argumente, die die Unmöglichkeit des Reduktionismus aus philosophischer, naturwissenschaftlicher bzw. mathematisch-logischer Perspektive zu begründen suchen. Der Reduktionismus behauptet, dass Eigenschaften auch von komplexen Systemen (bis hin zu Lebensvorgängen und menschlichem Bewusstsein) vollständig auf ihre Bestandteile zurückgeführt werden können. Diese Position ist einflussreich, aber umstritten. Im Jahr 2019 hat der Kurt Gödel Freundeskreis einen Essaywettbewerb veranstaltet, um schlagende Argumente gegen den Reduktionismus zu finden. Unter den internationalen Teilnehmern waren neben weltweit führenden Forschern auch Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler, die noch am Beginn ihrer Kariere stehen. Dieser Band versammelt die Beiträge der Preisträger und weitere ausgewählte Aufsätze. Aus dem Inhalt: · Kausalität als antireduktionistisches Hausmittel – Martin Breul · Reduktionismus im Diskurs – Hanna Hueske · Monads, Types, and Branching Time – Kurt Gödel’s approach towards a theory of the soul – Tim Lethen · The limits of reductionism: thought, life, and reality – Jesse M. Mulder · True or Rational? A Problem for a Mind-Body Reductionist – Michał Pawłowski · Why reductionism does not work – George F. R. Ellis · Physik ohne Reduktion – Rico Gutschmidt · Is there an Axiom for everything? – Jean-Yves Béziau · Unerklärliche Wahrheiten – Marco Hausmann · Gödel, mathematischer Realismus und Antireduktionismus – Reinhard Kahle Die Herausgeber Oliver Passon ist Privatdozent an der Bergischen Universität Wuppertal und lehrt Physik und ihre Didaktik. Zu seinen Hauptarbeits- und Interessensgebieten gehört die Didaktik, Geschichte und Philosophie der modernen Physik. Christoph Benzmüller ist Professor für KI/Informatik, Logik und Mathematik an der Freien Universität Berlin. Er war der erste UNA Europa Gastprofessor und er kooperiert derzeit mit einem Berliner Startup Unternehmen.
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Kurt Gödel opposed the reductionist viewpoint of logical positivism. The arguments I give below show he is correct. The reductionist explanation he opposed is doomed to failure.
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Philosophers interested in the theoretical consequences of predictive processing often assume that predictive processing is an inferentialist and representationalist theory of cognition. More specifically, they assume that predictive processing revolves around approximated Bayesian inferences drawn by inverting a generative model. Generative models, in turn, are said to be structural representations: representational vehicles that represent their targets by being structurally similar to them. Here, I challenge this assumption, claiming that, at present, it lacks an adequate justification. I examine the only argument offered to establish that generative models are structural representations, and argue that it does not substantiate the desired conclusion. Having so done, I consider a number of alternative arguments aimed at showing that the relevant structural similarity obtains, and argue that all these arguments are unconvincing for a variety of reasons. I then conclude the paper by briefly highlighting three themes that might be relevant for further investigation on the matter.
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Structural representations are increasingly popular in philosophy of cognitive science. A key virtue they seemingly boast is that of meeting Ramsey's job description challenge. For this reason, structural representations appear tailored to play a clear representational role within cognitive architectures. Here, however, I claim that structural representations do not meet the job description challenge. This is because even our most demanding account of their functional profile is satisfied by at least some receptors, which paradigmatically fail the job description challenge. Hence, the functional profile typically associated with structural representations does not identify representational posits. After a brief introduction, I present, in the second section of the paper, the job description challenge. I clarify why receptors fail to meet it and highlight why, as a result, they should not be considered representations. In the third section I introduce what I take to be the most demanding account of structural representations at our disposal, namely Gładziejewski's account. Provided the necessary background, I turn from exposition to criticism. In the first half of the fourth section, I equate the functional profile of structural representations and receptors. To do so, I show that some receptors boast, as a matter of fact, all the functional features associated with structural representations. Since receptors function merely as causal mediators, I conclude structural representations are mere causal mediators too. In the second half of the fourth section I make this conclusion intuitive with a toy example. I then conclude the paper, anticipating some objections my argument invites
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The article provides an analysis of Paul and Patricia Churchland’s eliminative materialism. I will distinguish two lines of argument in their eliminativism: one seeking to eliminate folk psychology and the second criticising Jerry Fodor’s language of thought hypothesis. Then I will closely examine the second line of argument, and show that it represents the main motive of Churchland’s work since the end of 1980s and demonstrate why the success of the argument against the language of thought hypothesis does not constitute a reason for the elimination of folk psychology. Finally, I will examine the consequences of this approach for the role of folk psychology in the study of mind and show that the weakened eliminativist position still fulfils the original aim of Churchland’s program.
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This book evaluates the potential of the pragmatist notion of habit possesses to influence current debates at the crossroads between philosophy, cognitive sciences, neurosciences, and social theory. It deals with the different aspects of the pragmatic turn involved in 4E cognitive science and traces back the roots of such a pragmatic turn to both classical and contemporary pragmatism. Written by renowned philosophers, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and social theorists, this volume fills the need for an interdisciplinary account of the role of 'habit'. Researchers interested in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, social theory, and social ontology will need this book to fully understand the pragmatist turn in current research on mind, action and society.
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