Brains

Challenging Neuroscience to Explain Cognition

gualtiero piccinini — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:57:00 GMT

C, R, Gallistel and A. P. King, Memory and the Computational Brain: Why Cognitive Science Will Transform Neuroscience, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

This is a rich and thought-provoking book. I cannot do it justice in a brief post so I apologize in advance for that.

Roughly speaking, the book argues that (1) many cognitive functions (such as dead reckoning of the type observed in ants and bees) require a read/write memory, and (2) neuroscience/connectionism has no room for such a read/write memory, and (3) such a read/write memory is probably stored in molecules such as RNA (as opposed to the connection strengths between neurons that are usually taken to be the memory mechanism by neuroscientists), and therefore (4) neuroscientists ought to embrace a digital computationalist theory of cognition and look for the right kind of memory mechanism in the nervous system.

Some of the thoughts the book provokes are healthy and invigorating. It challenges theorists of cognition to think hard about (i) which computing mechanisms are required for certain cognitive functions and (ii) how they can be realized in the nervous system. The book points out that there is a lot that we don't understand about how the brain fulfills various cognitive functions, and this is true. The book points out that some connectionists and neuroscientists are somewhat narrow minded about the kinds of processes and mechanisms they accept as possible explanations of cognitive functions and might benefit by thinking outside the box. The book also includes a fairly clear introduction to foundational topics such as Shannon's information theory, computation, and representation. This is all good.

But there are also plenty of problems. For one thing, the main argument of the book is unsound.

I agree with (1) (though I don't buy Gallistel and King's stronger claim that the read/write memory must be of a digital type like that of digital computers).

But (2) is just wrong. Strangely enough, Gallistel and King themselves point out that a read/write memory might be realized either as a "reverberating" neural activity (working memory) or in the connection strengths between neurons in a network (long term memory, cf. p. 285). But while they reluctantly admit that you can build a read/write memory out of accepted neural mechanisms, they offer some (unconvincing) reasons why that's not good enough and proceed to act as if those possibilities don't count. They act as though their argument goes through anyway.

Gallistel and King give no empirical evidence for (3). What's worse is that they show no awareness that (3) is an old theory that was experimentally tested in the 1950s or so, and was eventually abandoned for lack of evidence. Before trying to resurrect a molecular theory of memory, Gallistel and King should at least discuss the available evidence.

As to (4), again it's something that's been tried before: computer scientists determining that the brain must work like a digital computer and telling neuroscientists to look for the digital computing mechanisms that _must_ be there. The oldest example that I know of is an old lecture by Allen Newell to an audience of neuroscientists, in which Newell asked "where in the nervous system I can find symbols” (Gerard and Duyff 1963, p. 343). (Newell is one of the founders of classical, or "symbolic" AI. Needless to say, neuroscientist have not found the kind of symbols that Newell was asking about.) While Newell's hubris might have been understandable in the early '60s, it's a lot less understanable after 50 more years of detailed investigations of the nervous system.

By way of supporting (4), Gallistel and King draw an analogy with genes and DNA. Before Watson and Crick figured out the structure of DNA, no one knew how genes are physically realized, but that was not a good reason to reject genes. By the same token, a molecular read/write memory may well be needed for cognition, and should not be dismissed just because we don't know how it's physically realized. But the analogy breaks down at a crucial place. Before Watson and Crick (and collaborators) figured out how to investigate the structure of DNA, such structure was beyond the observational power of available experimental techniques. Not so for the nervous system. The basic structure of the nervous system was figured out a century ago, and more and more details about its working have been progressively figured out. Before Watson and Crick, genes could be treated like black boxes because no one knew how to study their molecular structure. But to suggest that today nervous systems should be treated like black boxes is neither here nor there.

Neuroscience has produced a huge amount of empirical evidence over the last decades. Any serious attempt at a theory of cognition must take this evidence seriously. Unfortunately, Gallistel and King do not. They dismiss neuroscience as associationist, antirepresentationalist, and unable to provide mechanisms with the right amount of computational power. Much of Gallistel and King's argument attacks a straw man by calling him names. In fact, most cognitive neuroscientists are representationalists, and it is not at all clear that the mechanisms countenanced by neuroscience are insufficiently powerful to explain the cognitive functions discussed in this book. And if they are, it is extremely unlikely that the right mechanisms will look anything like those suggested by Gallistel and King.

A final (minor) example of the authors' cavalier attitude. Gallistel and King cite one of my papers (among others) in support of the claim that "The neural network architecture lacks [an addressable read/write memory] because neuroscientists have yet to discover a plausible basis for such a mechanism. That lack makes the problem of variable binding an unsolved problem in neural network computation" (p. 153). But if anything, my paper entails the opposite. For as I point out in it, digital computers (which have an addressable read/write memory and can do variable binding just fine) are just one very specialized kind of neural networks. (Gallistel and King often draw a contrast between digital computers and neural networks, but they never define "neural network".)

In conclusion, this is a stimulating book, which in many ways goes in the right direction--that of developing a detailed mechanistic theory of cognition. But the way forward will require handling neuroscientific evidence and discussing issues of computational architectures more carefully and rigorously than Gallistel and King have done. Of course, working out in greater detail how Gallistel and King's arguments break down would be a very valuable exercise. I'll leave that to Alex Morgan, ok Alex?

The Identity Theory in 2-D

Richard Brown — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:28:00 GMT

(cross-posted at Philosophy Sucks!)

I plan on writing a series of posts discussing various themes that came up in discussion at the online consciousness conference over the next few weeks.

I have long been a type-type identity theorist. There was a time when I thought that I would write my dissertation defending a version of identity theory (in fact the very first talk I gave at a professional meeting was what I thought of as a 'pre-prospectus' available here: Saying "I Do" to Identity. I presented this as a poster at the ASSC in Antwerp and as a talk at the SPP in Barcelona (I called this my "European Identity Tour"))...When I approached Michael Devitt about the idea he said that people used to be interested in the identity theory but that people had moved on...it turns out that people are getting re-interested in the identity theory in the wake of work by people like Tom Polger, Chris Hill, and Ned Block. One thing that came out very clearly in the discussion is the difference between the identity theory that Block holds from the kind that I hold. The main difference concerns how we will eventually come to discover the mind-brain identities. Broadly speaking there are two different camps.

It is useful to remind ourselves of what the originators of the identity theory held. In "Is Consciousness a Brain Process?" U. T. Place says,

The answer seems to be that we treat the two sets of observations as observations of the same event in those cases where the technical scientific observations set in the context of the appropriate body of scientific theory provide an explanation of the observation of the man in the street. Thus we conclude that lightning is nothing more than a motion of electric charges, because we know that a motion of electric charges through the atmosphere, such as occurs when lightning is reported, gives rise to the visual stimulation which would lead an observer to report a flash of lightning (p. 58 in Chalmers 2002)

J.J.C. Smart in "sensations and Brain Processes" writes,

Why do I wish to resist [the suggestion that qualia are irreducibly psychial]? Mainly because fo Occam's razor. It seems to me that science is increasingly giving us a viewpoint whereby organisms are able to be seen as psyico-chemical mecanisms: it seems that even the behavior of man himself will one day be explicable in mechanistic terms...That everything should be explicable in terms of physics (together of course with the descriptions of the ways in which the parts are put together --roughly, biology is to physics as radio-engineering is to electro-magnetism) except the occurrence of sensations seems to me to be frankly unbelievable. Such sensations would be "nomological danglers," to use Feigl's expression

We can see here an emphasis on the notions of explanation and parsimony.

16 years later David Lewis and David Armstrong establish the alternative camp. Lewis puts it most clearly when he writes,

Psychophysical identity theorists often say that the identifications they anticipate between mental and neural states are essentially like various uncontroversial theoretical identifications: the identification of water with H2O, of light with electromagnetic radiation, and so on. Such theoretical identifications are usually described as pieces of voluntary theorizing as follows. Theoretical advances make it possible to simplfy total science by positing brdge laws identifying some of the entities discussed in one theory with entities discussed in another theory. In the name of parsimony, we posit those bridge laws forthwith. Identifications are made, not found.In 'An Argument for teh Identity Theory," I claimed that this was a bad picture of psychophysical identification, since a suitable physiological theory could imply psychophysical identites --not merely make it reasonable to posit them for the sake of parsimony. The implication was as follows:Mental state M=the occupant of causal role R (definition of M)Neural state N=the occupant of causal role R (by the physiological theory)Therefore Mental state M=neural state N (by transitivity of =)

Nor is this peculiar to psychophysical identifications. He goes on,

...the usual account is, I claim, wrong; theoretical identifications in general are implied by the theories that make them possible --not posited independantly. This follows from a general hypothesis about the meaning of theoretical terms: that they are definable functionally, by reference to causal roles (Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications)

In a recent paper on functional reduction Ned Block targets the Lewisian view in favor of the Place/Smart view. Here is what he says,

If we want to know why water = H2O, freezing = molecular lattice formation, heat = molecular kinetic energy, temperature = mean molecular kinetic energy, etc, we have to start with the fact that water, temperature, heat, freezing and other magnitudes form a family of causally inter-related “macro” properties. This macro family is mirrored by a family of “micro” properties: H2O, mean molecular kinetic energy, molecular kinetic energy and formation of a lattice of H2O molecules. (Of course a given level can be micro with respect to one level, macro with respect to another.) The key fact is that the causal and explanatory relations among the macro properties can be explained if we suppose that the following relations hold between the families: that water = H2O, temperature = mean molecular kinetic energy, heat = molecular kinetic energy and freezing = lattice formation. For example, why does decreasing the temperature of water cause it to freeze? Why does ice float on water? Here is a sketch of the explanation: The oxygen atom in the H2O molecule has two pairs of unmated electrons, which attract the hydrogen atoms on other H2O molecules. When the kinetic energy of the molecules decreases, (i.e. the temperature decreases) each oxygen atom tends to attract two hydrogen atoms on the ends of two other H2O molecules. When this process is complete, the result is a lattice in which each oxygen atom is attached to four hydrogen atoms.Ice is this lattice and freezing is the formation of such a lattice, which is why decreasing temperature causes water to freeze. Because of the geometry of the bonds, the lattice has an open, less dense structure than amorphously structured H2O (viz., liquid water)--which is why ice (frozen water) floats on liquid water. Suppose we reject the assumption that temperature is identical to mean molecular kinetic energy in favor of the assumption that temperature is merely correlated with mean molecular kinetic energy? And suppose we reject the claim that freezing is lattice-formation in favor of a correlation thesis. And likewise for water/H2O. Then we would have an explanation for how something that is correlated with decreasing temperature causes something that is correlated with frozen water to float on something correlated with liquid water, which is not all that we want. The reason to think that the identities are true is that assuming them gives us explanations that we would not otherwise have and does not deprive us of explanations that we already have or raise explanatory puzzles that would not otherwise arise. The idea is not that our reason for thinking these identities are true is that it would be convenient if they were true. Rather, it is that assuming that they are true yields the most explanatory overall picture. In other words, the epistemology of theoretical identity is just a special case of inference to the best explanation. (See Block, 1978a; Block, 2002; Block & Stalnaker,1999).

Block goes on to argue that the Lewis style view is incompatible with the metaphysics of physicalism. Block distinguishes between ontology and metaphysics. Ontological physicalism is just the claim that in our ontological commitment to the existence of qualia we commit ourselves only to physical entities (ontological dualists deny this). Metaphysical physicalism is the claim that qualitative properties are essentially or metaphysically physical. That is to say that all qualitative properties will share the same physical properties in so far as they are physical. the Lewis style physicalism is ontologically but nit metaphysically physicalist. This is because as it happens all of the realizers of mental states are physical but metaphysically pain is a functional state for Lewis and only contingently a physical state. Metaphysical physicalism --real physicalism in Block's view-- says that it is not contingent but necessary that pain is a physical state.

But if we adopt the 2-D framework and put the Lewisian claims in terms of it this is no longer a problem. On this kind of view the functional definition gives us the primary intension of 'pain' and the physical state gives us the secondary intension. This allows us to treat 'pain' just as we do 'water'. 'Water is H2O' has a contingent primary intension and a necessary secondary intension. So we can update Lewis view that 'pain' isn't a rigid designator as the claim that the primary intension of pain is contingent (just like 'water'). 'Pain' is still a rigid designator in the ordinary sense that its secondary intension is necessary. In all worlds considered as counter-factual pain is a brain state. However we accommodate the conceivability of Martians and disembodied minds by noting that in some worlds considered as actual pain is not a brain state (just as in some worlds considered as actual water is not H2O). This does not threaten the identity; it is the usual way that theoretical identities work. Notice also that this 2-D identity theory is a metaphysical physicalism in Block's sense and not merely an ontological physicalism.

Of course the real resistance to the 2-D Lewisian identity theory is that qualitative states are not supposed to be functionally definable. In fact Block and Chalmers often talk as though qualitative properties are definable as 'the not functionally definable properties of experience' (more on that later). If that is your view then you cannot do the Lewsian deduction of the identity. What are we to make of this? I will come back to this in the next post.

A bibliography on modularity

edouard machery — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:48:00 GMT

I have been asked to write up a commentated bibliography on modularity for a new journal by OUP. It is not meant to be exhaustive; rather it should focus on the important articles and books and organize this in meaningful sections.

Perhaps some of you will have comments and suggestions. I might have missed some articles, and it might be useful to add another section.

The paper can be read here.

Thanks,

Edouard

Congratulations

edouard machery — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:34:00 GMT

Gualtiero is too modest to announce it here, so I'll do it! Congratulations for your tenure, Gualtiero! Very well-deserved.

Edouard

HOT Damn!

Richard Brown — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:25:00 GMT

I have not been too good keeping up with the NYU Mind and Language Seminar like I had originally planned. Part of the problem was the Online Consciousness Conference (about which more later) the other part of the problem has been that I teach until 3:30 and the sessions start at 4:00. At any rate I managed to make it down yesterday for David Rosenthal's session on his "Sensory Qualities, Consciousness and Perception" which was very interesting.

The commentary by Ned Block focused on the usual issues that he has with HOTheads (i.e. eitology ad hoc, the mismatch problem, conceptual content too unconstrained, etc) though there was an interesting new objection (at least I hadn't heard Ned give it before). The mismatch problem (red first-order state/green HOT) presents the HOThead with a dilemma. Either what it is like for the person is like seeing red in which case HOT is false or it is like seeing green in which case there is no difference between having an experience and thinking that one has the experience. It is not clear why the second horn of the dilemma is supposed to be bad. If HOT theory is right then having the conscious experience os seeing blue will consist in having the appropriate HOT so the horn just restates the theory.

But building on this Block quotes this passage from pages 185 in Consciousness and Mind:

HOTs do no transfer the property of being conscious from themselves to their targets; indeed, they don't induce any change whatever in those targets. Rather, they make their targets conscious because a state's being conscious consists simply in one's being conscious of oneself as being in that state, and having a HOT is the right way of being conscious of oneself as being in a state.

Block then argued that in the case of the empty HOT --that is where one has a HOT that one is seeing green but has no first-order state at all-- there is a conscious mental state that one is not conscious of and so we have a counter-example to the transitivity principle. Block seemed to be suggesting that if we take the above quote seriously then the HOT itself is the conscious mental state and since there is no 3rd-order thought about the HOT it is itself is a counter-example to the transitivity principle or he would need to adopt the same-order view. Rosenthal replied that the HOT was not the conscious state; it was the seeing of blue that was the conscious mental state even though it was a notional state (a lot of this came up at the online conference in Pete's excellent session). Jesse asked what the NCC of the conscious state would be in this case. It surely doesn't seem like one can have a NCC for a notional state! This prompted Stephen Stich to exclaim that David was "worse than a dualist". Uriah interjected that it was a commonplace of predicate calculus that if A is F then it follows that there is a x such that x is F and this entails that if one has a conscious mental state then there is a state that has that property. David objected to this because he thinks that the conscious mental states are states of the person not individual metal states. During the discussion I asked David to return to Ned's objection because I wasn't sure what his answer to it was. If the quoted passage is correct then a conscious mental state is identical to having the suitable HOT. What reason does David have to deny that the HOT is thereby the conscious mental state? His answer was that he did not stand by the quoted passage, which seemed really odd to me. I hope to follow up with him about this...

Another very interesting theme of the discussion of was how repression works. Someone in teh audience (a nyu student named Lisa, I think) pointed to cases of repression as a possible counter-example to the transitivity principle. When one represses some thought one has to have (unconscious) knowledge of the thought that one is suppressing, which sounds like a HOT, yet the repressed thought is not thereby made conscious. David objected that this was not the way he understood repression to work. Rather than having a HOT usually what happens is that one has unconscious guilt about the repressed thought that leads to repressing it. Ned and David argued a bit about the right way that actual Fruedians talk about repression...no consensus was reached except in so far as David acknowledge that if repression worked in the way that Ned and Lisa suggested then that would be a counter-example to the transitivity principle. Another audience member (Eric) tried to press this line of attack using the implicit racism test. The idea was supposed to be that after one has taken this test and discovered that one has unconscious racist attitudes one can have the thought that one is having a racist thought with the thought not thereby becoming conscious. David at first denied this and maintained that the thought would be conscious but then he reconsidered and said that attitudes were dispositions and those aren't mental states.

The session ended with a discussion of the relation between Jesse's AIR theory and HOT theory (it was pointed out that Dave Chalmers is now calling CUNY the HOT AIR department). David gave his signature argument against attention being necessary for consciousness. in parafoveal vision the percepts at the periphery are conscious even if one is fixating and attending to some central point. This is a case of conscious experience without attention. Jesse's trademarked response is that attention can be spread over the entire scene to which David responds that at that point he doesn't know what attention is anymore. At that point the session ended.

Afterwards I asked Jesse if he thought that when we attended to something we became conscious of that thing. He said that he did. I then said that if that was the case AIR theory is an implementation of the transitivity principle and so is not really in competition with David's view. Jesse agreed that this was the case. I then suggested that we could think of the situation like this: David has argued that there are only two ways that we can become conscious of something: we either sense it or we think about it in the right way. He therefore sees only HOT and HOP. We can then see a lot of Jesse's work as arguing that there is a third way that we become conscious of something; by attending to it. He agreed...I knew it!

What is a visual stimulus?

Eric Thomson — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:20:00 GMT

Find out at my most recent consciousness post, and figure out how to decode graphs like this:

Hint: line density equals photoreceptor density, and top is bottom because images are inverted on the retina. If that doesn't make sense, check out the long version.

It's part of my eight-million post series on the neuropscyhology of consciousness.

Call for Commentaries on Cognitive Control

gualtiero piccinini — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:01:00 GMT

Rick Cooper (psychology, U London) is putting together an issue of Topics in Cognitive Science (a new journal by the Cognitive Science Society) on the fascinating topic of cognitive control. They are soliciting commentaries on the introductory paper plus five target articles, including a nice one by our Pete Mandik. If you work in this area, you might consider contacting Rick Cooper (see the dedicated webpage here for more details and contact info).

Block and Kitcher vs. Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini

carrie figdor — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:50:00 GMT

In case anyone is interested in the response by Block and Kitcher to Fodor's argument against evolutionary biology:

http://bostonreview.net/BR35.2/block_kitcher.php

Journal of Cognitive Science - Call for Papers

gualtiero piccinini — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:32:00 GMT

Call for Papers
Journal of Cognitive Science
http://cogsci.snu.ac.kr/jcs.

This is an interdisciplinary, international, peer reviewed journal, published by the Institute for Cognitive Science at Seoul National University. The editor, Chungmin Lee, is in the process of revamping the journal, gaining distribution as part of the Springer network and listing in various databases. I recently agreed to serve as their philosophy editor, so philosophy papers are definitely welcome! More information below the fold.

Aims and Scope of the Journal
The Journal of Cognitive Science (JCS) is published biannually by the Institute for Cognitive Science at Seoul National University, located in Seoul, Korea. It aims to publish research articles of the highest quality and significance within the disciplines that form cognitive science, including philosophy, psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, anthropology, and education. Submissions that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries in either themes or methods are especially encouraged.
Contributions may be in the form of articles, brief reports, reviews, or squibs. The JCS showcases quality research, encourages the exchange of ideas, and illustrates the interdisciplinary work that is the hallmark of cognitive science. Authors who have published in JCS include Paul Smolensky, Alfonso Caramazza, Dedre Gentner, Paul Thagard, and Jean-Pierre Déscles.

Editor-in-Chief
Chungmin Lee, Seoul National University

Editors
Gualtiero Piccinini, University of Missouri - St. Louis
Naomi Miyake, University of Tokyo
Koiti Hasida, Nat’l Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan
Kyoung-Min Lee, Seoul National University

The Editorial Board includes:
Adeli Hojjat, The Ohio State University
Bruno G. Bara, University of Turin
David Chalmers, Australian National University
Dedre Gentner, Northwestern University
Merrill Garrett University of Arizona
Ping Li, University of Richmond
Chen Lin, Academy of Sciences, China
Charles Ling, Western Ontario University, Ontario, Canada
Etsuko Harada, Hosei University
Paul Thagard, University of Waterloo
Peter Slezak, The University of New South Wales
Reiko Mazuka, Duke University
Li-Hai Tan, University of Hong Kong
Yasuhiro Shirai, University of Pittsburg, among others

The Advisory Editorial Board includes:
Alfonso Caramazza, Harvard University
Jean-Pierre Déscles, University of Paris – Sorbonne
Kazuhiko Kakehi, Nagoya University
Jaegwon Kim, Brown University
Géraldine Legendre, Johns Hopkins University
Jay McClelland, Carnegie Mellon University
Paul Smolensky, Johns Hopkins University
Leonard Talmy, SUNY, Buffalo, among others.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
All submissions must be in English, written clearly and in sufficient detail that referees can assess the merits of the work. Papers should be no longer than 10,000 words and should conform to the JCS style guide (For detailed guidelines with examples, visit http://cogsci.snu.ac.kr/jcs/) or one of the popular style guides, such as the APA or L&P. Papers will be received and processed as promptly as possible.
All submissions must be in English, written clearly and in sufficient detail that referees can assess the merits of the work. Papers should be no longer than 10,000 words and should conform to the JCS style guide or the modified APA or L&P. Papers will be received any time and processed as promptly as possible.
Authors should send an electronic copy (both MS Word and PDF files) of their submission to jcogsci@gmail.com or clee@snu.ac.kr.
Each submission will be sent to three international reviewers. The reviews will be forwarded to the authors, who will then have an opportunity to make revisions if warranted.

Subscription: per volume (print) $20 (individual); $50 (institution, e- also). (e-) $10.
QUESTIONS? Please direct any questions, comments or concerns to jcogsci@gmail.com. For more information visit http://cogsci.snu.ac.kr/jcs

The Latest Philosophers' Carnival

gualtiero piccinini — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:15:00 GMT

Here. Check out the prominence given to our Adam Shriver, including a link to his NY Times op-ed piece!!

Consciousness, Consciousness, & More Consciousness!

Richard Brown — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:40:00 GMT

The Online Consciousness Conference has officially begun!!

(cross-posted at Philosophy Sucks!)

I have talked about the higher-order thought theory of consciousness and introspection before here. Yesterday I attended a talk by David Rosenthal and he briefly mentioned something about introspection that got me thinking anew about these issues. Rosenthal was going through the basics of the higher-order theory and was at the part where he explains why it is that we do not find higher-order thoughts in our conscious experience. The higher-order thoughts are seldom themselves conscious. That is to say that usually it is the case that we just have the higher-order thoughts but not third-order thought about that 2nd order higher-order thought. This is what happens in introspection according to Rosenthal. It is difficult, but with training/practice we can become conscious of the HOTS. Which we can represent as follows;

(3) {I, MYSELF, THINK THAT I, MYSELF, THINK THAT I SEE RED}

/

(2) {I, MYSELF, THINK THAT I SEE RED}

/

(1) [RED*]

Here [X*] is used to stand for the first-order sensory qualities that represent the perceptible properties (non-intentionally) and via which we become conscious of those perceptible properties. {X} is used to stand for the higher-order intentional states that represent the first-order sensory states (and N-order intentional state of course) and via which we become conscious of the first-order sensory states. So when (2) occurs I am conscious of myself as seeing red and so I will be consciously seeing red. In the rare cases where (3) occurs I will be introspecting my conscious experience, which is a peculiar and unnatural thing to do. Now I have always wondered what it is supposed to be like for the person who has (3) according to the HOTT theory. Rosenthal himself says that when we introspect there is no new quality that enters into our experience so that when we introspect we just become conscious of the first-order state in an attentive, reflexive way. This is what led to my Introspective HOT Zombie problem which I previously talked about.

So, yesterday I asked whether he thought we could ever introspect the higher-order thought itself. Is it possible for us to become introspectively aware of the higher-order thought? He said no because we would then need to have a fourth-order thought like (4)

(4) {I, MYSELF, THINK THATI, MYSELF, THINK THAT I, MYSELF, THINK THAT I SEE RED}

This surprised me a bit because I had been thinking that when (3) occurred one was introspecting the higher-order thought. What came out of the conversation was that when one has (3) when is unconsciously conscious of the higher-order thought. Just like when I am consciously seeing red (i.e. when I have (2)) my HOT is not conscious so too when I introspect my introspecting HOT is not conscious. His response seems to be that in this case I am not consciously introspecting (consciously introspecting means having (4) which Rosenthal denies that we can do). But this doesn't seem right to me. When I have (2) what it is like for me is how the HOT specifies it; i.e. it is like seeing red for me. So when I have (3) shouldn't it also be the case that the what it is like for me is how the HOT specifies it? If so then it would seem to be the case that it should be like thinking that I am conscious of red. If so then I should be able to have a version of (3) that "focuses" on the thinking part in which case I would be introspecting the HOT itself. This fits more with what Rosenthal actually says about introspection (see the above linked post).

Mind Network

Mark Sprevak — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:33:00 GMT

Hi Guys, N.B. this isn't just for UK folk, we're hoping that it is also of use to a wider international community, and we're serious about building international links...

This is to announce the launch of the Mind Network, a new UK network for Philosophy of Mind & Cognitive Science

http://mindcogsci.net/

The aim of the Mind Network is to foster a community of UK researchers in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and to build links with the wider international community.

The Mind Network will organise regular, mobile, UK workshops. The idea is to get researchers in philosophy of mind and cognitive science in one place on a regular basis to present papers, discuss their work, and have a good time.

The first meeting will take place Saturday 20 March 2010 in the Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford. The speakers are:

Andy Clark (Edinburgh)
Matt Soteriou (Warwick)
Lisa Bortolotti (Birmingham) & Phil Gerrans (Oxford, Adelaide)

There is no registration fee and lunch will be provided. If you would like to come, please sign up before 13 March 2010 by email to: nancy.patel@philosophy.ox.ac.uk.

Full details are posted on the website (http://mindcogsci.net/).

Do feel free to post on the website info about upcoming conferences, seminars, workshops, etc.

The Mind Network is organised by Tim Bayne, Stephen Butterfill, Tim Crane, Nick Shea, and Mark Sprevak

Graduate Workshop on Pain

Lisa Bortolotti — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:25:00 GMT

On 11 June 2010 the Philosophy Department at the University of Birmingham (UK) will host a Graduate Workshop on Pain, sponsored by the British Society for the Philosophy of Science and supported by the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

Keynote speakers will be: Dr David Bain, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Glasgow; and Dr Stuart Derbyshire, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Birmingham.

On the event webpage you can find some information about the programme and a call for papers open to graduate students in philosophy and psychology: http://www.ptr.bham.ac.uk/news/events/pain.shtml.

Knocking Out Pain in Livestock

adam shriver — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:15:00 GMT

Hi, thanks very much to Gualtiero for allowing me to post here. Last summer, I published an article in the journal Neuroethics discussing the possibility of genetically engineering livestock that lack the affective or "suffering" component of pain. New Scientist magazine picked up on the story and this generated a little flurry of media activity. It was fun getting a lot of feedback on the paper, but as you might imagine, much of the discussion revolved around people's pretheoretical intuitions on the subject, so I've been looking forward to the possibility of getting some feedback from the Philosophy of Brains community.

Anyway, the basic idea of the article (which can be found here) is as follows: I think the question "Will we be able to get rid of intensive factory farming in the near future?" is an empirical question. It's a complicated empirical question since it ultimately depends upon many people's ethical decisions, but nevertheless there are ways of evaluating whether it is a realistic possibility. Based on the evidence I've seen, I'd say it's extremely unlikely that our society will change our habits enough in the near future to eliminate the practice of factory farming. Given this, and since factory farming is responsible for a huge amount of suffering, I argue that we ought to genetically engineering animals that lack the ability to feel pain (or rather, the ability to feel a particular component of pain).

Furthermore, I think we're actually very close to being able to do so. In order to say why, I need to briefly review some facts about the pain system in mammals. Scientists have identified two distinct pathways from nociceptors to higher brain regions. The sensory pathway (which travels from the thalamus to the primary and secondary somatosensory cortex) underlies our ability to localize pain, to estimate it's intensity, and to describe what type of a pain it is (sharp, dull, burning, etc). The affective pathway (which travels from the thalamus to the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula) underlies subjects' judgments of how unpleasant the pains are, or how much the pains are minded. Humans who have damaged affective pathways (particularly the anterior cingulate) will report that they still feel pain but no longer mind it. As such, lesioning the anterior cingulate (ACC) is used in rare cases to treat debilitating chronic pain. The role of the ACC in human pain has been further verified by fMRI studies, single-unit recordings (yes, in humans), and pharmacological interventions.

In nonhuman mammals, a similar pattern of results is observed. Rats with damage to the ACC will still show immediate reactions to noxious stimuli, but will no longer change their preferences as a result of this stimulation. Morphine, which disproportionately acts on the affective pathway in the brain, causes similar effects. Furthermore, increasing neural activation in the ACC will cause rats to avoid certain environments even in the absence of noxious stimulation, while blocking ACC activity will prevent rats from avoiding these environments even in the presence of noxious stimulation. Thus, I argued in a previous paper, it appears that the ACC plays a similar role in pain perception in other mammals as it does in humans.

But what's really interesting, from my perspective, is that researchers have been learning a huge amount about the cellular neurobiology of the ACC in recent years. Min Zhuo's lab at Toronto has identified neurons in cortical layers II/III of the ACC that change their synaptic connections as a result of painful stimulation. Blocking long-term potentiation in these neurons results in rats that show the immediate reaction to painful stimulation but lack the symptoms of chronic pain found in controls. In fact, the lab has performed several genetic knockouts on the rats that appear to selectively block the affective dimension of pain.

More research needs to be done, but given that scientists appear to be able to locate specific genes that influence the affective dimension of pain, it looks to me that creating pain affect knockouts in other mammals, such as those that are used as livestock, would not be an especially difficult endeavor. We already know what genes to look for, and have a good idea of what kinds of tests could be used to look for similar effects. Thus, I argue, we are very close to being able to create livestock that can still have an immediate reaction to pain while lacking the unpleasant sensation that seems to constitute the suffering of pain.

If we are able to do this, and if there's no indication that we will be getting rid of factory farming in the near future, shouldn't we take steps to mitigate the suffering of millions of animals every year?

Philosophers' Carnival #103

gualtiero piccinini — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:13:00 GMT

Here.

The Phenomenal Qualities Project Podcasts

Richard Brown — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 14:10:00 GMT

via Sam Coleman;

*The Phenomenal Qualities Project*

Podcasts now available on the Project website-

Featuring:
Tim Crane, David Papineau, Philip Goff
Jerry Valberg, Andreas Hutteman, Sam Coleman

on such topics as:

The nature of phenomenal concepts, perception,
consciousness and metaphysics, intentionalism,
qualia, physicalism.

Podcasts available at:
http://phenomenalqualities.wordpress.com/phenomenal-podcasts/

See also our uploaded papers, and photos from recent events.

--
-The Phenomenal Qualities Project is funded by the AHRC-

http://phenomenalqualities.wordpress.com/
For more information, or to join our mailing list
please contact Sam Coleman (S.Coleman@herts.ac.uk)

Improving on Heterophenomenology?

gualtiero piccinini — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:38:00 GMT

I've written a paper comparing and contrasting Dennett's Heterophenomenology and the "self-measurement methodology of fist-person data". The latter is an account of first-person data and their use in science that I've been articulating over the last few years. Needless to say, I argue that my account is better than Heterophenomenology, but I also try to make clear that I agree with Heterophenomenology on some important points.

Abstract: Heterophenomenology is a third-person methodology proposed by Daniel Dennett for using first-person reports as scientific evidence. I argue that heterophenomenology can be improved by making six changes: (i) setting aside consciousness, (ii) including other sources of first-person data besides first-person reports, (iii) abandoning agnosticism as to the truth value of the reports in favor of the most plausible assumptions we can make about what can be learned from the data, (iv) interpreting first-person reports (and other first-person behaviors) directly in terms of target mental states rather than in terms of beliefs about them, (v) dropping any residual commitment to incorrigibility of first-person reports, and (vi) recognizing that third-person methodology does have positive effects on scientific practices. When these changes are made, heterophenomenology turns into the self-measurement methodology of first-person data that I have defended in previous papers.

Some other pieces of my account may be found here, here, and here.

Today the new paper was accepted for a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies edited by Richard Brown. If anyone has comments, they would be very welcome. (Brown has requested the final version ASAP.)

Attention and Mental Paint

Richard Brown — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:27:00 GMT

(cross-posted at Philosophy Sucks!)

The NYU Mind and Language seminar has started up again with a really excellent line up. I hope to blog about them as they happen...

Last Monday I attended Ned Block's session on his paper Attention and Mental Paint. I have talked about an earlier version of this before. The basic idea comes from figures like figure A below. if one fixates (stares) ate the center and, while keeping one's gaze fixed, moves one's attention to an individual disk that disk will appear darker. After a bit of practice one can darken any disk one wants by moving one's attention around. Go ahead, give it a try!

Recently a psychologist, Marisa Carrasco, has run experiments trying to quantify this effect. Below is a reproduction of the stimulus. Here the two patches differ in contrast by 8% yet when one fixates on the center and attends to the 22% patch one will judge it to be the same contrast as the 28% patch.

Block wants to use these findings as the basis for an argument against both direct realism and representationism. The basic argument goes as follows.

First we focus only on two cases. The first case is when we fixate and attend to the center. In that condition subjects get the judgment about contrast right (i.e. they judge that the left patch is lower in contrast). In the second condition we fixate on the center but attend to the left patch. In that condition people get the judgment incorrect (i.e. they judge the two patches to be the same contrast.
The second step is his claim that there is no reason to think that either of the two cases above are illusionary. Both are veridical.
If both experiences are veridical then the thing that they are experiences of must differ in some property but all of the properties of the objects are the same. The only thing that has changed is that one has moved one's attention from center to right.
Therefore there must be mental paint, or non-representational features to our experience (the anti-representational conclusion) or a mental aspect of mental experience (the anti-direct realism conclusion)

a lot of the discussion at the session focused on whether or not there was an illusion at work here. Block claims that in both cases talked about above the perception is veridical. Why? His idea is that both of the experiences play the same functional role and so are accurate. The pro-illusion folk (Jesse Prinz was in this camp) argued that when you attend to something you represent that thing more veridically and so the condition where one fixates and attends to the center is illusionary (Jesse preferred 'distorted'). Block protested that one could just as well say that attention distorted, or magnified, the scene and so the fact that one has access to more information when one attends is not by itself an argument that the experience is more veridical. Some other issues came up about various responses direct realists or representationalism could make.

However, I am less interested in that issue as I am in the issue of whether there is an argument here against anything like the kind of higher-order thought theory that I am fond of (i.e. one very much like David Rosenthal's). On this kind of view we have two distinct kind of mental representations. At the first-order level we have the mental states that represent the sensible qualities. So, when I am seeing red I am in a mental state that has a property, call it red*, the represents physical red. However the kind of representation that is going one here is not intentional or conceptual. It is homomorphic. Red* is the property which is related to green* and pink* in a way that mirrors the relations between physical red, physical green, and physical pink. The starred properties can occur both consciously and unconsciously. When they occur unconsciously there is nothing that it is like for the organism in which they occur. They become conscious when I am aware of myself as being in a red* state. According to Rosenthal I do this by having a thought which deploys the concepts Red. So on this view the higher-order thought is representational in the traditional sense and it is the thing which is responsible for the phenomenology of the experience.

So is there mental pain on this view? Well, as long as one agrees that there can be unconscious sensory states with no phenomenology (a big step!) then Rosenthal's first-order sensory qualities will count as mental paint. They are not intentional and they are mental. But they do not play a role in determining the phenomenology (except in the sense that we get the concepts we deploy in the higher-order thought from them) and so if we restrict ourselves only to conscious experiences it does look like Rosenthal denies the existence of mental paint. A conscious experience of red is constituted by a 'I am seeing red' thought which is completely intentional/representational. So then does Ned's argument cut any ice against Rosenthal's account of conscious experience?

It is not clear that it does. Ned's argument gets its force from the claim that the thing being represented would have to be different because all conscious experiences are or represent just the actual properties that the object actually has. But on Rosenthal's view we have the first and second order mental states. So, one could hold that there is some change in the first-order representation of the two patches or one could hold that the first-order representations are the same in the two cases and what changes is the way in which we are conscious of them. In talking briefly about this with David he seems to think that attention changes the first-order state whereas I seemed to think it was teh content of the higher-order state which changed. But since we are talking about conscious experiences here and it is the higher-order state that accounts for the conscious phenomenology the difference has to be in the way that we are conscious of the patch in the two cases...this may be because of attention in a causal sense but it is the content of the higher-order state that has to account for the difference in the phenomenology.

reading group

Shannon Spaulding — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:10:00 GMT

Hi Folks,

I'm interested in doing a reading group on Daniel Hutto's book, "Folk Psychological Narratives." In the book Hutto challenges, and offers an alternative to, mindreading accounts of social cognition. His negative arguments against mindreading accounts (Theory Theory, Simulation Theory, and hybrid accounts) include the charge that they cannot adequately explain how we develop mental state concepts, they erroneously presuppose that social cognition is a "spectator sport," and they greatly overestimate the importance and prevalence of mindreading. His positive account includes an emphasis on embodied cognition, direct perception, and the Narrative Practices Hypothesis, Hutto's novel contribution to the debate. Hutto's arguments are interesting and formidable challenges to the standard cognitive science picture of folk psychology.

If there is enough interest, I'd love to have the reading group on Brains with Brains readers. Let me know in the comments section whether you are interested in participating in this reading group.

shannon

UPDATE: We will start the reading group at the beginning of March. If you're interested in joining the group and haven't already contacted me, email me at spaulding@wisc.edu and I'll add you to the email list.

Brains Development

Jim Virtel — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:04:00 GMT

Brains has experienced tremendous growth over the past few months. First, welcome to the many new contributors. Second, the site averages over 200 unique visitors per day -- triple the amount of traffic in September 2009. Thanks to all contributors, old and new, for increasing Brains' popularity.

There is evidence that Brains is a leading blog in its area. For one thing, it's the first link to appear when you google "philosophy of mind blog". For another thing, it was recently listed among the Top 15 Brain Blogs of the Year.

And following up on an old suggestion by Marcin Milkowski, we now have a favicon next to Brains' url!

Firefox, Opera, and Safari users should see the favicon when the page opens. Internet Explorer users may have to delete their temporary internet files in order to see it. Here is how to delete those files:

1. In the Internet Explorer Browser, click Tools, then select Internet Options.
2. In the pop-up window under Browsing History, click Delete.
3. Select the Temporary Internet files and Cookies checkboxes, then click Delete.

If you still can't see the favicon, feel free to contact me at jlv4z3 {at} umsl {dot} edu.