Carlos Montemayor | San Francisco State University (original) (raw)

Books by Carlos Montemayor

Bloomsbury Academic, 2023

In this open access book, Carlos Montemayor illuminates the development of artificial intelligenc... more In this open access book, Carlos Montemayor illuminates the development of artificial intelligence (AI) by examining our drive to live a dignified life.

He uses the notions of agency and attention to consider our pursuit of what is important. His method shows how the best way to guarantee value alignment between humans and potentially intelligent machines is through attention routines that satisfy similar needs. Setting out a theoretical framework for AI Montemayor acknowledges its legal, moral, and political implications and takes into account how epistemic agency differs from moral agency.

Through his insightful comparisons between human and animal intelligence, Montemayor makes it clear why adopting a need-based attention approach justifies a humanitarian framework. This is an urgent, timely argument for developing AI technologies based on international human rights agreements.

Contemporary cognitive science clearly tells us that attention is modulated for speech and action... more Contemporary cognitive science clearly tells us that attention is modulated for speech and action. While these forms of goal-directed attention are very well researched in psychology, they have not been sufficiently studied by epistemologists. In this book, Abrol Fairweather and Carlos Montemayor develop and defend a theory of epistemic achievements that requires the manifestation of cognitive agency. They examine empirical work on the psychology of attention and assertion, and use it to ground a normative theory of epistemic achievements and virtues. The resulting study is the first sustained naturalized virtue epistemology, and will be of interest to readers in epistemology, cognitive science, and beyond.

In this book, Carlos Montemayor and Harry Haladjian consider the relationship between consciousne... more In this book, Carlos Montemayor and Harry Haladjian consider the relationship between consciousness and attention. The cognitive mechanism of attention has often been compared to consciousness, because attention and consciousness appear to share similar qualities. But, Montemayor and Haladjian point out, attention is defined functionally, whereas consciousness is generally defined in terms of its phenomenal character without a clear functional purpose. They offer new insights and proposals about how best to understand and study the relationship between consciousness and attention by examining their functional aspects. The book's ultimate conclusion is that consciousness and attention are largely dissociated.

Undertaking a rigorous analysis of current empirical and theoretical work on attention and consciousness, Montemayor and Haladjian propose a spectrum of dissociation—a framework that identifies the levels of dissociation between consciousness and attention—ranging from identity to full dissociation. They argue that conscious attention, the focusing of attention on the contents of awareness, is constituted by overlapping but distinct processes of consciousness and attention. Conscious attention, they claim, evolved after the basic forms of attention, increasing access to the richest kinds of cognitive contents.

Montemayor and Haladjian's goal is to help unify the study of consciousness and attention across the disciplines. A focused examination of conscious attention will, they believe, enable theoretical progress that will further our understanding of the human mind.

Minding Time: A Philosophical and Theoretical Approach to the Psychology of Time offers a theore... more Minding Time: A Philosophical and Theoretical Approach to the Psychology of Time offers a theoretical account of the most fundamental kinds of time representation, drawing on philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and biology. Recent experimental findings on creatures from bees to scrub-jays to human beings have demonstrated the complex – and astoundingly reliable – functioning of biological clocks. These clocks, Carlos Montemayor argues, make possible representations of duration that are then anchored to representations of simultaneity, and they do so independently of conscious information or representations of the self. Montemayor offers an innovative philosophical explanation of how representations of duration and simultaneity relate to the consciously experienced present moment.

Papers by Carlos Montemayor

Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Jun 12, 2018

The Whorfian hypothesis has received support from recent findings in psychology, linguistics, and... more The Whorfian hypothesis has received support from recent findings in psychology, linguistics, and anthropology. This evidence has been interpreted as supporting the view that language modulates all stages of perception and cognition, in accordance with Whorf's original proposal. In light of a much broader body of evidence on time perception, I propose to evaluate these findings with respect to their scope. When assessed collectively, the entire body of evidence on time perception shows that the Whorfian hypothesis has a limited scope and that it does not affect early stages of time perception. In particular, all the available evidence shows that the scope of language modulation is limited in the case of time perception, and that the most important mechanisms for time perception are cognitive clocks and simultaneity windows, which we use to perceive the temporal properties of events. Language modulation has distorting effects, but only at later stages of processing or with respect to specific categorization tasks. The paper explains what is the role of these effects in the context of all the available evidence on time cognition and perception. linguistic modulation with some degree of certainty. But even at this level of abstraction, the Whorfian hypothesis has received enough support from recent findings in linguistic and psychophysical studies concerning categorization tasks in bilinguals (Niemeier and Dirven, 2000; Athanasopoulos, et al., 2015), to make it not only a theoretically insightful view of language, thought, and cognition, but also a plausibly confirmed one. What exactly does the linguistic modulation of thought and perception entail? With respect to its scope, which is the focus of this paper (particularly with respect to time perception), "language modulation" has a strong and a weak reading. On one version of the strong interpretation, language determines how we represent reality in general, including space and time. This has been an influential way of interpreting the Whorfian hypothesis. For instance, Ludlow (1999) argues that Whorf is not only right in thinking that there is a close connection, perhaps a constitutive relation, between language and thought, but that Whorf's most ambitious claim is also true, namely that there is an equally strong connection between language and reality (Ludlow's book is about the metaphysics of time, based on the semantics of tense). Ludlow affirms that Whorf exaggerated the differences between natural languages, thereby favoring a universalist type of linguistic modulation that is in tension with Whorf's relativistic view. But a key aspect of the Whorfian view is preserved in Ludlow's proposal-language determines, and is deeply related to, thought and reality. This is a strong and wide-scope interpretation of the Whorfian hypothesis, specifically about the linguistic modulation of thought and cognition, according to which it ranges over all types of thoughts about, and representations of, reality. This argument is theoretically plausible because tense (the distinction between past, present and future) facilitates thinking in terms of possibilities and counterfactuals that seem indispensable to how we structure reality. Here a critical assumption is that there must be some linguistic format for representations of reality, either innate or acquired, similar to a "language of thought" that is fundamentally structured in terms of tense. A difficulty with this idea is that even Fodor (2008), who championed the "language of thought" hypothesis, argued for the encapsulation of early perceptual processing (Fodor, 1983), which entails the view that language modulation is restricted in its scope. So it is not obvious that a "language of thought" proposal must have the consequence that linguistic modulation is pervasive. The wide scope of the Whorfian hypothesis seems to be further weakened by considerations of human uniqueness since, as reviewed below, there is strong evidence for the continuity of human and animal time perception, but there is no clear evidence of continuity regarding the kind of syntactic language capacity related to tense and counterfactuals that humans have and any non-human species (Berwick and Chomsky, 2016). However, I will not pursue this syntax-based criticism concerning human uniqueness here. In what follows, I focus on the scope of the Whorfian hypothesis in time perception, independently of the specific nature of the mechanisms responsible for linguistic modulation (whether they are innate or acquired, universal or relative, syntactic, semantic or pragmatic, compositional or iconic, etc.

Frontiers in Psychology, Nov 26, 2019

How should we define inferential reasoning in high-level cognition? Can non-conscious representat... more How should we define inferential reasoning in high-level cognition? Can non-conscious representations guide or even determine high-level cognition? If so, what are the properties of such non-conscious representations? Two contemporary debates on high-level cognition center on these issues. The first concerns the possibility of cognitive penetration, or the degree and extent to which high-level cognition influences or determines low-level cognition. The second focuses on the epistemic status of conscious cognition, and on whether or not non-conscious cognition could play a similar, albeit not as fundamental, justificatory role as conscious cognition. This latter issue is at the heart of the question concerning the epistemic status of conscious awareness. This paper focuses on the epistemic standard required for inference, or inferential reasoning, to count as justificatory. The debates on the epistemic status of consciousness and cognitive penetration typically assume such a standard because high-level cognition is associated with rationality, inferentially structured thought, and the epistemic responsibility one has for the conclusions drawn through one's inferences. The paper proposes an account of inferential-attention that explains how cognitive penetration of non-phenomenally conscious cognition and perception is possible, and why there are unconscious processes that should be considered as essential components of high-level cognition. Sections "Defining Inference" and "Accuracy Constraints: The Agency-First Account of Inference" provide a theoretical framework for understanding the multiple criteria that an adequate account of inference and rational thought must satisfy. Sections "Attention: High-and Low-Level Inferential Cognition in Various Domains" and "Advantages Concerning Rule-Following and Rationality: Not Necessarily-Phenomenal Inferential Reasoning" articulate the inferential-attention account and explain how it meets the descriptive and normative criteria for epistemic responsibility and rationality. In particular, section "Attention: High-and Low-Level Inferential Cognition in Various Domains" defends an agential interpretation of inferential-attention, which offers a resolution of the tension between conservative or consciousness-based approaches to inference and liberal approaches that allow for types of unconscious or subdoxastic processes. An agency condition on inference explains how inference is a psychological process under the control of the agent, and at the same time, it satisfies the normative condition that an inference should be responsive to reasons or evidence by being cognitively available for personal level assessment and evaluation. The key is to identify this kind of epistemic agency with attention. Section "Advantages Concerning Rule-Following and Rationality: Not Necessarily-Phenomenal Inferential Reasoning" compares this inferential-attention

Timing & time perception, Apr 2, 2024

Cambridge University Press eBooks, May 3, 2017

Oxford University Press eBooks, Dec 6, 2017

This chapter examines connections between virtue epistemology and psychology. The authors’ intere... more This chapter examines connections between virtue epistemology and psychology. The authors’ interest is thus to explain, understand, and evaluate virtue theoretic forms of epistemic psychology. Section I provides a brief overview of virtue epistemology; section II then discusses the two main types of virtue epistemological theories currently on offer (responsibilism and reliabilism). Section III examines empirical challenges to responsibilism from social psychology (epistemic situationism) and some lines of response. Section IV concludes by showing that a pressing problem for virtue reliabilism, namely providing an adequate account of epistemic agency, can be resolved by utilizing recent empirical work in the psychology of attention. The authors defend an empirically informed account of epistemic agency suitable for virtue reliabilism.

Cambridge University Press eBooks, May 3, 2017

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017

The MIT Press eBooks, Apr 24, 2015

QUT ePrints (Queensland University of Technology), 2008

Consciousness, Attention, and Conscious Attention, 2015

Cambridge University Press eBooks, May 3, 2017

The Mathematical Intelligencer, 2015

Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +B... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media New York. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com". Reviews Osmo Pekonen, Editor Feel like writing a review for The Mathematical Intelligencer? You are welcome to submit an unsolicited review of a book of your choice; or, if you would welcome being assigned a book to review, please write us, telling us your expertise and your predilections.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2019

The relationship between attention and consciousness is one that is crucial for understanding per... more The relationship between attention and consciousness is one that is crucial for understanding perception and different types of conscious experience, and we commend this analysis of the topic by Pitts, Lutsyshyna, and Hillyard (2018). We have also examined this relationship closely (e.g., Montemayor & Haladjian, 2015) and would like to point out a few potential contradictions in the Pitts et al. paper that require clarification, particularly in the attempt to reconcile aspects of recurrent processing theory (RPT) with global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT).

Bloomsbury Academic, 2023

Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Jun 12, 2018

Frontiers in Psychology, Nov 26, 2019

Timing & time perception, Apr 2, 2024

Cambridge University Press eBooks, May 3, 2017

Oxford University Press eBooks, Dec 6, 2017

Cambridge University Press eBooks, May 3, 2017

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017

The MIT Press eBooks, Apr 24, 2015

QUT ePrints (Queensland University of Technology), 2008

Consciousness, Attention, and Conscious Attention, 2015

Cambridge University Press eBooks, May 3, 2017

The Mathematical Intelligencer, 2015

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2019

Psychology of consciousness, Jun 12, 2023

This paper comprehensively examines how information processing relates to attention and conscious... more This paper comprehensively examines how information processing relates to attention and consciousness. We argue that no current theoretical framework investigating consciousness has a satisfactory and holistic account of their informational relationship. Our key theoretical contribution is showing how the dissociation between consciousness and attention must be understood in informational terms in order to make the debate scientifically sound. No current theories clarify the difference between attention and consciousness in terms of information. We conclude with two proposals to advance the debate. First, neurobiological homeostatic processes need to be more explicitly associated with conscious information processing, since information processed through attention is algorithmic, rather than being homeostatic. Second, to understand subjectivity in informational terms, we must define information uniqueness in consciousness (e.g., irreproducible information, biologically encrypted information). These approaches could help cognitive scientists better understand conflicting accounts of the neural correlates of consciousness and work towards a more unified theoretical framework.

WORLD SCIENTIFIC (EUROPE) eBooks, Jul 1, 2023

The Mathematical Intelligencer, Mar 11, 2015

Philosophers and scientists alike often endorse the view that the passage of time is an illusion.... more Philosophers and scientists alike often endorse the view that the passage of time is an illusion. Here we instead account for the phenomenology of passage as a real psycho-biological phenomenon. We argue that the experience of time passage has a real and measurable basis as it arises from an internal generative model for anticipating upcoming events. The experience of passage is not representation by a passive recipient of sensory stimulation but is generated by predictive processes of the brain and proactive sensorimotor activity of the whole body. The biological basis of the passage of time has not been examined in the metaphysics of time or the epistemology of time perception from a scientific perspective. This paper proposes to remedy this omission.

The psychology of time has been a rapidly growing area of research for at least the last two deca... more The psychology of time has been a rapidly growing area of research for at least the last two decades. Experiments on how humans and animals keep track of time have produced impressive amounts of evidence. In studies with animals, findings suggest that there are non-linguistic forms of timing for action and motor control. Research on humans demonstrates that there are different stages involved in time perception and cognition, from within sense-modality and cross modal simultaneity to temporal order judgments and duration perception. A comprehensive theory of these findings requires an interdisciplinary approach, and various efforts to achieve this goal are underway, including the publication of an interdisciplinary journal exclusively devoted to timing and time perception in 2013.

Review of Philosophy and Psychology of Time

The Mathematical Intelligencer

A longstanding debate concerns whether consciousness and attention are separable. In this worksho... more A longstanding debate concerns whether consciousness and attention are separable. In this workshop philosopher Carlos Montemayor and cognitive scientist Harry H. Haladjian, authors of 'Consciousness, Attention, and Conscious Attention' (MIT Press) analyze empirical and theoretical work on attention and consciousness. They propose a spectrum of dissociation ranging from identity to full dissociation, and further discuss implications for evolution and artificial intelligence. Presenters: Carlos Montemayor and Harry Haroutioun Haladjian Consciousness and Attention Dissociation Our workshop will explore the possible dissociation between conscious awareness and perceptual attention. We recently published a book (MIT, 2015) on this issue, defending the view that there must be some degree of dissociation between consciousness and attention. We describe several degrees of dissociation, from views where attention is necessary for conscious awareness to full dissociation views in which attention and consciousness never overlap. In the workshop, we propose to identify concrete implications of these forms of dissociation. Below we specify implications for two topics of the conference and conclude by suggesting implications for other topics. Machine consciousness and artificial intelligence We propose an important implication of the Consciousness Attention Dissociation (or CAD) for artificial intelligence and machine consciousness: while simulated thinking may be thinking, simulated emotional feeling cannot be emotional feeling. A section of the workshop will be devoted to discussing this issue with focus on the Emotional Turing Test. In particular, we will discuss the view we defend in our book that attention is epistemic in nature, but phenomenal consciousness is empathic in nature. This has the implication that while machines may be able to develop sophisticated forms of attention and become intelligent in many ways that resemble human intelligence, they will lack capacities for phenomenal consciousness required for empathy. The origin and evolution of life and consciousness A discussion on the evolution of consciousness and attention will address the view that conscious attention must have evolved much more recently in our evolution than basic forms of attention, which must have appeared very early in the evolution of life. The CAD framework helps explain various possibilities regarding which forms of consciousness must be more recent and may be more independent or even dissociated from early forms of attention. There is a connection between CAD in the context of evolution and artificial intelligence. If one endorses the view that the evolution of consciousness and attention has been leading to a form of intelligence that may surpass human intelligence but lack the emotional requirements underlying empathy, then CAD could be used to explain not only the separate evolutionary history of attention and consciousness but also of attention in machines and human consciousness. Other implications of the CAD framework Other interesting implications for topics of the conference include some accounts by physicists. For instance, Henry Stapp's interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is based on von Neumann's work, and Stapp argues that consciousness is essential to the rationally guided process that probes an answer in an experiment. This process, however, could be explained exclusively in terms of rational attention without awareness (a possibility that the CAD framework justifies). If that were the case, consciousness would not be necessary to interpret Quantum Mechanics. A similar point can be made about Max Tegmark's recent distinction between computronium (which he defines as information processing) and perceptronium (which he defines as selfawareness). Also, the functional roles proposed by our framework (e.g., for empathy, as a mechanism for engagement) have implications for understanding the Causes of Consciousness. Book https://mitpress.mit.edu/index.php?q=books/consciousnessattentionandconsciousattention Psychology Today Blog https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theoryconsciousness Brains Blog http://philosophyofbrains.com/category/books/montemayorhaladjian Workshop Outline Each section with a Q/A period after a short presentation: