Murat Aydede

The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition

Since its inception some fifty years ago, cognitive science has seen a number of sea changes. Perhaps the best known is the development of connectionist models of cognition as an alternative to classical, symbol-based approaches. A more recent - and increasingly influential - trend is that of dynamical-systems-based, ecologically oriented models of the mind. Researchers suggest that a full understanding of the mind will require systematic study of the dynamics of interaction between mind, body, and world. Some argue that this new orientation calls for a revolutionary new metaphysics of mind, according to which mental states and processes, and even persons, literally extend into the environment. This is a state-of-the-art guide to this new movement in cognitive science. Each chapter tackles either a specific area of empirical research or specific sector of the conceptual foundation underlying this research.

Fodor on concepts and Frege Puzzles

Fodor characterizes concepts as consisting of two dimensions: one is content, which is purely denotational/broad, the other the Mentalese vehicle bearing that content, which Fodor calls the mode of presentation (MOP), understood “syntactically.” I argue that, so understood, concepts are not interpersonally shareable; so Fodor’s own account violates what he calls the Publicity Constraint in his (1998) book. Furthermore, I argue that Fodor’s non-semantic solution to Frege cases succumbs to the problem of providing interpersonally applicable functional roles for MOPs. This is a serious problem because Fodor himself has argued extensively that if Fregean senses or meanings are understood as functional/conceptual roles, then they can’t be public, since, according to Fodor, there are no interpersonally applicable functional roles.

Some Foundational Problems in the Scientific Study of Pain

This paper is an attempt to spell out what makes the scientific study of pain so distinctive from a philosophical perspective. Using the IASP definition of ‘pain’ (1986) as our guide, we raise a number of questions about the philosophical assumptions underlying the scientific study of pain. We argue that unlike the study of ordinary perception, the study of pain focuses from the very start on the experience itself and its qualities, without making deep assumptions about whether pain experiences are perceptual. This in turn puts scientific explanation in a curious position due to pain’s inherently subjective epistemic nature. The reason for this focus on the experience itself and its qualities, we argue, has to do with pain’s complex phenomenology involving an affective/motivational dimension. We argue for the scientific legitimacy of first‐person phenomenological studies and attempts to correlate phenomenology with neural events. We argue that this methodological procedure is inevitable and has no anti‐physicalist ontological implications when properly understood. We end the paper by commenting on a discussion between two prominent pain scientists in the field, Don Price and Howard Fields, about the need to distinguish more dimensions in the phenomenology of pain and how to classify them vis‐à‐vis the recent scientific findings. Our interest in this discussion is not only to introduce some clarifications but also to show how “neurophenomenology” has already been shaping the scientific research and to back our claim about why this methodology is inevitable with an example.

Are Frege cases exceptions to intentional generalizations

Let’s assume there are psychological generalizations that the folk rely upon in explaining and predicting the behavior of their fellows. Let’s further assume these generalizations are intentional, in that they do their explanatory and predictive work by attributing to the subjects in their domain intentional mental states such as beliefs, desires, and the like. Then we can define a broad intentional psychology as one that adverts only to broad, viz. purely denotational/truth-conditional, mental contents in its generalizations; so the sentences expressing its generalizations should be transparently read. A narrow psychology is one that is not so restricted. Accordingly, the sentences expressing narrow generalizations will contain opaque contexts, indicated by ‘that’-clauses (‘believes that ...’, ‘desires that ...’, and the like). Here is an example of the sort of generalization we have in mind:

Computation and functionalism : Syntactic theory of mind revisited

This question has been haunting people working in the field since the publication of a paper by Stich in 1978 in which he gave his celebrated ‘‘autonomy argument’’. Then, as everybody knows, came Fodor’s notorious ‘‘Methodological Solipsism’’ in 1980, in which he argued for the formality condition: namely, thought processes are causal sequences of symbol tokenings in one’s language of thought (LOT), and the causal processes are sensitive only to the syntactic/formal properties of its symbols. Hence, he argued against what he called a ‘‘naturalistic psychology,’’ i.e. a psychology whose laws essentially advert to broad semantic properties of mental states they cover. The alternative, rationalist psychology, according to Fodor, was to advert only to formal characteristics of symbols, of which Fodor conceived as narrow computational roles of LOT symbols. Stich’s 1983 book, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science, was the culmination of the worries. He turned these into a sustained argument against the possibility of a scientific intentional psychology (along with the common sense belief-desire psychology), and at the same time, for a syntactic way of doing psychology, i.e., for his Syntactic Theory of Mind (STM). He defended an eliminativist stance: STM involves the elimination of all intentional idioms proposed to be used in a scientific enterprise, hence it envisions a scientific psychology free of semantics. STM has been around for almost two decades now. It has generated a lot of discussion because it has usually been taken to articulate the paradox alleged to underlie the LOTH,

Is the Experience of Pain Transparent? Introspecting Phenomenal Qualities

I distinguish between two claims of transparency of experiences. One claim is weaker and supported by phenomenological evidence. This I call the transparency datum. Introspection of standard perceptual experiences as well as bodily sensations is consistent with, indeed supported by, the transparency datum. I formulate a stronger transparency thesis that is entailed by (strong) representationalism about experiential phenomenology. I point out some empirical consequences of strong transparency in the context of representationalism. I argue that pain experiences, as well as some other similar experiences like itches, tickles, orgasms, hedonic valence, etc., are not transparent in this strong sense. Hence they constitute empirical counterexamples to representationalism. Given that representationalism is a general metaphysical doctrine about all experiential phenomenology for good reasons, I conclude that representationalism about phenomenal consciousness is false. Then, I outline a general framework about how the introspection of phenomenal qualities in perceptual experience works in light of the transparency datum, but consistent with the rejection of strong transparency. The result is a form of qualia realism that is naturalist and intentionalist (weak representationalist), and has close affinities to the adverbialist views developed in the latter part of the last century. I then apply this framework to pain experiences and their bodily locations.

Critical comments on Williams and Craig’s recent proposal for revising the definition of pain

W&C’s desire to highlight the importance of psychosocial aspects of pain is laudable from the standpoint of assessment and treatment, and we agree that the IASP’s definition needs revising. However, the IASP’s definition is a taxonomic definition and as such it is not the appropriate vehicle for this emphasis. The purpose of a taxonomic definition of pain is to express the conditions required to pick out all and only pains. Any non-pain experience which is included and any pain experience which is excluded by a definition of pain provides good reasons to reject that definition. According to W&C’s proposed revision, something is a pain if, and only if, it is a “distressing experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage with sensory, emotional, cognitive and social components”. Each of the condition cited by W&C is proposed to be individually necessary and jointly sufficient for something to be a pain experience. We think that there are plenty of experiences that satisfy all the conditions but are not pains, and there are many that are clearly pains but do not satisfy all the proposed conditions.

The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition: Frontmatter

Since its inception some fifty years ago, cognitive science has seen a number of sea changes. Perhaps the best known is the development of connectionist models of cognition as an alternative to classical, symbol-based approaches. A more recent - and increasingly influential - trend is that of dynamical-systems-based, ecologically oriented models of the mind. Researchers suggest that a full understanding of the mind will require systematic study of the dynamics of interaction between mind, body, and world. Some argue that this new orientation calls for a revolutionary new metaphysics of mind, according to which mental states and processes, and even persons, literally extend into the environment. This is a state-of-the-art guide to this new movement in cognitive science. Each chapter tackles either a specific area of empirical research or specific sector of the conceptual foundation underlying this research.

The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition: Index

Since its inception some fifty years ago, cognitive science has seen a number of sea changes. Perhaps the best known is the development of connectionist models of cognition as an alternative to classical, symbol-based approaches. A more recent - and increasingly influential - trend is that of dynamical-systems-based, ecologically oriented models of the mind. Researchers suggest that a full understanding of the mind will require systematic study of the dynamics of interaction between mind, body, and world. Some argue that this new orientation calls for a revolutionary new metaphysics of mind, according to which mental states and processes, and even persons, literally extend into the environment. This is a state-of-the-art guide to this new movement in cognitive science. Each chapter tackles either a specific area of empirical research or specific sector of the conceptual foundation underlying this research.

The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition: Contributors

Since its inception some fifty years ago, cognitive science has seen a number of sea changes. Perhaps the best known is the development of connectionist models of cognition as an alternative to classical, symbol-based approaches. A more recent - and increasingly influential - trend is that of dynamical-systems-based, ecologically oriented models of the mind. Researchers suggest that a full understanding of the mind will require systematic study of the dynamics of interaction between mind, body, and world. Some argue that this new orientation calls for a revolutionary new metaphysics of mind, according to which mental states and processes, and even persons, literally extend into the environment. This is a state-of-the-art guide to this new movement in cognitive science. Each chapter tackles either a specific area of empirical research or specific sector of the conceptual foundation underlying this research.