J. Christopher Maloney

Content: covariation, control and contingency

The Representational Theory of the Mind allows for psychological explanations couched in terms of the contents of propositional attitudes. Propositional attitudes themselves are taken to be relations to mental representations. These representations (partially) determine the contents of the attitudes in which they figure. Thus, Representationalism owes an explanation of the contents of mental representations. This essay constitutes an atomistic theory of the content of formally or syntactically simple mental representation, proposing that the content of such a representation is determined by the intersection of the representations correlational and control properties. The theory is distinguished from standard information-based accounts of mental content in allowing that the relevant correlations be contingent while insisting on an efferent aspect to mental content. The theory on offer allows for a natural explanation of misrepresentation, finds a niche for the notion ofnarrow content, welcomes radical first person fallibility with respect to questions of content, admits of mental ambiguity and recognizes that the future of a psychological agent is a factor in determining the content of the agents present psychological states.

Connectionism and Conditioning

First, the hook: Even if you are not a Connectionist-perhaps because you fret that Connectionism (Rumelhart and McClelland, 1986; Smolensky, 1988; Bechtel and Abrahamsen, 1989; Bechtel, 1988, 1987, 1985; and Tienson 1987) wants the conceptual resources to explain cognition generally—you may well suppose that Connectionism is sufficiently equipped gracefully and completely to explain simple learning and, certainly, conditioning. But it is not. Adequate Connectionist accounts of conditioning are not at hand, and they might be unavailable in principle. Or so I shall argue. The idea, then, that I will press is that simple learning is not so simple after all and that, as a result, it represents a serious challenge to the explanatory adequacy of Connectionism. I most assuredly do not suppose that what I have to say counts as an a priori, straight from the armchair, refutation of Connectionism. No, that is not how science, good science, is waged. Still, if Connectionism is finally to overcome its present and primary theoretical rival, it will need first to subdue conditioning before marching against general intelligence.

Methodological Solipsism Reconsidered as a Research Strategy in Cognitive Psychology

Current computational psychology, especially as described by Fodor (1975, 1980, 1981), Pylyshyn (1980), and Stich (1983), is both a bold, promising program for cognitive science and an alternative to naturalistic psychology (Putnam 1975). Whereas naturalistic psychology depends on the general scientific framework to fix the meanings of general terms and, hence, the content of thoughts utilizing or expressed in those terms, computational cognitive theory banishes semantical considerations in psychological investigations, embracing methodological, not ontological, solipsism. I intend to argue that computational psychology cannot individuate thoughts as it promises. For, semantics is fundamental in fixing an important subset of the computational relations that, according to the computational theory, are supposed both to obtain among thoughts and, thereby, to determine their identity conditions. If what I contend is correct, then contrary to what its advocates maintain, computational psychology is not preferable to naturalistic psychology as a research strategy in cognitive science.

A Role for Conceptual Role Semantics

Autumn in Bloomington, late Friday afternoon in Sycamore Hall. The visiting philosopher concludes the lecture without a word on practical reasoning. Hector, detonating his soda can, is about to pounce. Outside, beyond the leaded library window, the nearly last, mottled, mostly red maple leaf leaves the canopy and flutters into the trickling Jordan. The little stream meanders through campus hoping, after recruiting several other creeks, to find first the White River, then the Ohio and finally the Mississippi. This, that the migrating leaf might head to the Gulf of Mexico and a chance at Guatemala beyond. But whether or not it should ever arrive in the Gulf, the leaf is now, as it drifts in a tributary to a tributary to a tributary, heading for the Gulf. Remarkable that a thing so simple as a lost leaf can point to so distant and disguised a destination. Remarkable too that this leaf illustrates how the mind manages to represent.

In Praise of Narrow Minds: The Frame Problem

If you have a taste for realist doctrines, suppose that the mind is a store of real, efficacious beliefs, desires and propositional attitudes generally. Why should anyone agree that propositional attitudes exist? For much the same reasons that lead us to endorse other scientifically reputable entities. Our behavior is largely explicable by reference to the propositional attitudes we have, variation in behavior devolving from variation in propositional attitudes. This leads to two questions. First, how is it that if behavior is driven by propositional attitudes, it is typically appropriate to the circumstances of its production? And second, if variation in behavior falls to variation in propositional attitudes, what accounts for variation among propositional attitudes?

Reservations About New Wave Reduction

John Bickles (1998) lucid Psychoneural Reduction: The New Wave contributes instructively to both the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science. This careful and clear excursion into the metaphysics of mind and the philosophy of psychology fruitfully extends a familiar and powerful, even if controversial, account of theoretical reduction (Hooker, 1981; P.M. Churchland, 1981 and 1985; P.S. Churchland, 1986; Endicott, 1998) for deployment in defense of Bickles revisionary reductive physicalism. Despite my deep sympathy with reductive physicalism I will argue that Bickles inspired defense of the doctrine, resting as it does on his particular analysis of theoretical reduction, is wanting. In particular, I will take exception to Bickles accusation of property dualism lodged against nonreductive materialism and then proceed to question his own analysis of theoretical reduction. First, what is reductive physicalism? Start with dualism, the classical but now mostly forsaken dual doctrine that