Corey J. Maley

The Metaphysics of Mind and the Multiple Sources of Multiple Realizability

Different structures can have the same function. The wings and feet of insects, birds and bats have different structural properties, yet they perform the same functions. Many important concepts and explanations in the special sciences depend on the idea that the same function can be performed by different structures. For instance, in biology, although both homologous and analogous structures of a given type have the same function, only homologous structures of that type have a common evolutionary history. These observations undergird the concepts of homologous and analogous structures and the distinction between them: we cannot make sense of this important biological distinction in any other way. Similar considerations seem to be true of psychology. Different structures might well have the same psychological function, particularly across species. The eye of an octopus might be quite different from the eye of a human being, although both have the same function.

Toward Analog Neural Computation

Computationalism about the brain is the view that the brain literally performs computations. For the view to be interesting, we need an account of computation. The most well-developed account of computation is Turing Machine computation, the account provided by theoretical computer science which provides the basis for contemporary digital computers. Some have thought that, given the seemingly-close analogy between the all-or-nothing nature of neural spikes in brains and the binary nature of digital logic, neural computation could be a species of digital computation. A few recent authors have offered arguments against this idea; here, I review recent findings in neuroscience that further cement the implausibility of this view. However, I argue that we can retain the view that the brain is a computer if we expand what we mean by “computation” to include analog computation. I articulate an account of analog computation as the manipulation of analog representations based on previous work on the difference between analog and non-analog representations, extending a view originally articulated in Shagrir (Stud Hist Philos Sci 41(3):271–279, 2010). Given that analog computation constitutes a significant chapter in the history of computation, this revision of computationalism to include analog computation is not an ad hoc addition. Brains may well be computers, but of the analog kind, rather than the digital kind.

Closed Loops in Neuroscience and Computation: What It Means and Why It Matters

We compare the computational power of different classes of computational systems and relate it to whether they contain closed loops. Adding closed loops to the architecture of computational systems increases their computational power. Different computational models are apt for capturing the computational power of different classes of neural systems. We argue that while ordinary Turing machines (TMs) are a poor model for a kind of feedback that the closed-loop approach to neuroscience highlights, suitably modified TMs are a better fit.

From Phenomenology to the Self-Measurement Methodology of First-Person Data

Ruth Millikan argues that there is no “legitimate phenomenology of experience”: that there is no method—not even a fallible or partially reliable one—for accurately describing our experiences in the first-person. The reason is that there is no method for checking that the ideas we think we have about experience are about anything at all. Like phlogiston, there may be no such things as the properties we take experience to have.