The received view in the philosophy of cognitive science is that cognition is (largely explained by) a kind of digital computation, and computation requires representation. Therefore, if neurocognitive systems are computational, they manipulate digital representations of some sort. According to this received view, representations are unobservable entities posited by successful …
The modern computational theory of cognition began after Alan Turing (1936) published his mathematical theory of computation in terms of what are now known as Turing machines. Contrary to a popular misconception, however, it wasn’t Turing who turned his machines into a model of cognition. That step was taken by …
In my previous post, I mentioned that mechanistic explanations are functional. What I mean by that is that mechanisms and their component parts have functions and such functions contribute to mechanistic explanation because, by performing their functions, components contribute to the activities of the whole mechanism. The notion of function …
Thanks to Dan Burnston and Nick Byrd for this opportunity to introduce Neurocognitive Mechanisms: Explaining Biological Cognition (OUP 2020). This book is the culmination of my main research program over the last 20+ years; it offers a comprehensive foundation for the science of biological cognition. In these posts, I’ll outline …
The Brains Blog is thrilled to feature Gualtiero Piccinini this week, focusing on their new book, Neurocognitive Mechanisms: Explaining Biological Cognition (Oxford). Gualtiero is, of course, the original founder of the Brains Blog! So we welcome Gualtiero back for a triumphant homecoming. You can find each post in one place …
By Jonathan Gilmore Peter Langland-Hassan’s Explaining Imagination is a bracing attack on what approaches orthodoxy in the study of the imagination – that, in its myriad roles in explanations of human thought and behavior, it is a sui generis cognitive attitude. Dissenting from the consensus, Langland-Hassan argues that invocations of …
By Alon Chasid Peter Langland-Hassan’s Explaining Imagination (hereafter: EI) presents a reductive thesis: imagining is not a sui generis mental state or attitude, but one of the basic folk- psychological attitudes such as beliefs, judgments (i.e., occurrent beliefs), desires, intentions, etc., or combinations thereof. At first sight, this novel thesis …
