Kenneth Williford

Preserved Self-Awareness following Extensive Bilateral Brain Damage to the Insula, Anterior Cingulate, and Medial Prefrontal Cortices

It has been proposed that self-awareness (SA), a multifaceted phenomenon central to human consciousness, depends critically on specific brain regions, namely the insular cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Such a proposal predicts that damage to these regions should disrupt or even abolish SA. We tested this prediction in a rare neurological patient with extensive bilateral brain damage encompassing the insula, ACC, mPFC, and the medial temporal lobes. In spite of severe amnesia, which partially affected his “autobiographical self”, the patients SA remained fundamentally intact. His Core SA, including basic self-recognition and sense of self-agency, was preserved. His Extended SA and Introspective SA were also largely intact, as he has a stable self-concept and intact higher-order metacognitive abilities. The results suggest that the insular cortex, ACC and mPFC are not required for most aspects of SA. Our findings are compatible with the hypothesis that SA is likely to emerge from more distributed interactions among brain networks including those in the brainstem, thalamus, and posteromedial cortices.

A mathematical model of embodied consciousness

We introduce a mathematical model of embodied consciousness, the Projective Consciousness Model (PCM), which is based on the hypothesis that the spatial field of consciousness (FoC) is structured by a projective geometry and under the control of a process of active inference. The FoC in the PCM combines multisensory evidence with prior beliefs in memory and frames them by selecting points of view and perspectives according to preferences. The choice of projective frames governs how expectations are transformed by consciousness. Violations of expectation are encoded as free energy. Free energy minimization drives perspective taking, and controls the switch between perception, imagination and action. In the PCM, consciousness functions as an algorithm for the maximization of resilience, using projective perspective taking and imagination in order to escape local minima of free energy. The PCM can account for a variety of psychological phenomena: the characteristic spatial phenomenology of subjective experience, the distinctions and integral relationships between perception, imagination and action, the role of affective processes in intentionality, but also perceptual phenomena such as the dynamics of bistable figures and body swap illusions in virtual reality. It relates phenomenology to function, showing the computational advantages of consciousness. It suggests that changes of brain states from unconscious to conscious reflect the action of projective transformations and suggests specific neurophenomenological hypotheses about the brain, guidelines for designing artificial systems, and formal principles for psychology.

Representationalisms, Subjective Character, and Self-Acquaintance

In this study I argue for the following claims: First, it’s best to think of subjective character as the self-acquaintance of each instance of consciousness—its acquaintance with itself. Second, this entails that all instances of consciousness have some intrinsic property in virtue of which they, and not other things, bear this acquaintance relation to themselves. And, third, this is still compatible with physicalism as long as we accept something like in re structural universals; consciousness is a real, multiply instantiable, natural universal or form, but it likely has a highly complex, articulated structure, and “lives” only in its instances. In order to make these cases, I give a characterization of subjective character that accounts for the intuition that phenomenal consciousness is relational in some sense (or involves a subject-object polarity), as well as the competing and Humean intuition that one of the supposed relata, the subject-relatum, is not phenomenologically accessible. By identifying the subject with the episode or stream of consciousness itself and maintaining that consciousness is immediately self-aware (“reflexively” aware), these competing intuitions can be reconciled. I also argue that it is a serious confusion to identify subjective character with one’s individuality or particularity. I argue that deeper reflection on the fact that consciousness has only incomplete self-knowledge will allow us to see that certain problems afflicting acquaintance theories, like the one I defend, are not the threats to certain forms of physicalism that they might seem to be. In particular, I briefly consider the Grain Problem and the apparent primitive simplicity of the acquaintance relation itself in this light.

Millikan and Her Critics

Notes on Contributors vii Foreword ix Daniel C. Dennett A Millikan Bibliography xiii Introduction 1 Dan Ryder, Justine Kingsbury, and Kenneth Williford 1 Toward an Informational Teleosemantics 21 Karen Neander Reply to Neander, by Ruth Millikan 2 Signals, Icons, and Beliefs 41 Peter Godfrey-Smith Reply to Godfrey-Smith, by Ruth Millikan 3 Millikan s Isomorphism Requirement 63 Nicholas Shea Reply to Shea, by Ruth Millikan 4 Millikan on Honeybee Navigation and Communication 87 Michael Rescorla Reply to Rescorla, by Ruth Millikan 5 Concepts: Useful for Thinking 107 Louise Antony Reply to Antony, by Ruth Millikan 6 Properties Over Substance 123 Richard Fumerton Reply to Fumerton, by Ruth Millikan 7 Millikan s Historical Kinds 135 Mohan Matthen Reply to Matthen, by Ruth Millikan 8 Millikan, Realism, and Sameness 155 Crawford L. Elder Reply to Elder, by Ruth Millikan 9 Craning the Ultimate Skyhook: Millikan on the Law of Noncontradiction 176 Charles Nussbaum Reply to Nussbaum, by Ruth Millikan 10 Are Millikan s Concepts Inside-Out? 198 Jesse Prinz Reply to Prinz, by Ruth Millikan 11 The Epistemology of Meaning 221 Cynthia Macdonald and Graham Macdonald Reply to Macdonalds, by Ruth Millikan 12 Weasels and the A Priori 241 David Braddon-Mitchell Reply to Braddon-Mitchell, by Ruth Millikan 13 All in the Family 259 Willem A. deVries Reply to deVries, by Ruth Millikan Afterword 281 Ruth Millikan References 282 Index 292

Berkeley's theory of operative language in the Manuscript Introduction

Besides, the communicating of ideas marked by words is not the chief and only end of language, as is commonly supposed. There are other ends, as the raising of some passion, the exciting to, or deterring from an action, the putting the mind in some particular disposition; to which the former is in many cases barely subservient, and sometimes entirely omitted, when these can be obtained without it, as I think doth not infrequently happen in the familiar use of language. (George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge ‘Introduction’, § 20 1 )

Berkeley's theory of meaning in Alciphron VII

In 1923 C. K Ogden and I. A. Richards, in their influential work, The Meaning of Meaning, cited with approval Berkeley’s claim, made in section 20 of the Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), that characters or sounds, even in the absence of the usually signified ideas, can produce passions in a hearer’s mind. They also provided what has proved to be a very influential gloss. ‘From the symbolic use of words’, they wrote, ‘we thus pass to the emotive’. Several scholars have maintained that in various writings, published and unpublished, Berkeley developed a theory of emotive meaning. It cannot be

Demea's a priori Theistic Proof

Humes examination of the causal maxim in 1.3.3 of A Treatise of Human Nature (hereafter T) can be considered, at least in part, a thinly veiled critique of the cosmological argument, attacking as it does the privileged status of the principle upon which that proof rests (see T 1.3.3.1-9; SBN 78-82).: As well, Humes remarks on the impossibility of demonstrating matters of fact a priori in part 3 of section 12 oAAn Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (hereafter EHU) clearly strike at the heart of the ontological argument, even if not explicitly (see EHU 12.24-34; SBN 161-5).2 Unfortunately, it is only in the very brief part 9 of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (hereafter DNR) that Hume directly discusses, at any length, the attempt to demonstrate a priori the existence of a deity (see DNR 9.1-11; 188-92).3 The argument, put forward by Demea, and Cleanthess criticism of that argument take up so little space that for ease of reference I will reproduce them before we proceed any further. Part 9 consists of eleven paragraphs, and in accordance with a now fairly common convention, I will refer to the paragraphs by number.41 reproduce only those paragraphs that will be the focus of this paper. Demeas Argument (DNR 9.3; 188-9):

I Am a Strange Loop

I Am a Strange Loop Douglas R. Hofstadter New York: Basic Books, 2007 412 pages, ISBN: 0465030785 (hbk);

Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Empirical and Conceptual Questions: Thomas Metzinger (ed.); Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2000, x + 350 pp.,

26.95 I am a strange loop is a profound meditation on what it is to be a self-aware mind. H...

52.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-262-13370-9

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