Athanassios Raftopoulos | University of Cyprus (original) (raw)
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— Any discussion concerning representations in cognitive psychology and science assumes that ment... more — Any discussion concerning representations in cognitive psychology and science assumes that mental representational contents are carried by brain representational vehicles. Recently Sedivy attacked the view that mental contents are carried by vehicles. Sedivy relies on Dennett's work to argue that mental contents cannot be carried by vehicles because the former cannot be independently individuated whereas the latter are, by definition, independently individuated by means of their semantic properties. In this paper, I claim that mental contents are carried by neural vehicles and that Sedivy misunderstands Dennett's work on the relation between the mental and the neural by confounding the algorithmic and the computational level of description. I analyze connectionist representations that Dennett favors and which are the most amenable to Sedivy's concerning the context dependency of contents on which Sedivy builds her arguments, and argue that in connectionism, there is a clear cut distinction between contents and vehicles that carry these contents.
Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia, Dec 30, 2020
Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia, Apr 30, 2020
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2016
Firestone & Scholl (F&S) examine, among other possible cognitive ... more Firestone & Scholl (F&S) examine, among other possible cognitive influences on perception, the effects of peripheral attention and conclude that these effects do not entail cognition directly affecting perception. Studies in neuroscience with other forms of attention, however, suggest that a stage of vision, namely late vision, is cognitively penetrated mainly through the effects of cognitively driven spatial and object-centered attention.
Model-based reasoning refers to the sorts of inferences performed on the basis of a knowledge con... more Model-based reasoning refers to the sorts of inferences performed on the basis of a knowledge context that guides them. This context constitutes a model of a domain of reality, that is, an approximative and simplifying to various degrees representation of the factors that underlie, and the interrelations that govern, the behavior of this domain.
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Mar 1, 2006
Journal of Cognition and Development, Feb 1, 2004
Developmental psychologists have been preoccupied with the shape or form of development since the... more Developmental psychologists have been preoccupied with the shape or form of development since the early days of developmental psychology. One of their main concerns has been to specify the developmental function of the characteristics (i.e., behaviors, traits, abilities, processes, etc.) that are of interest to them. This is equivalent to saying that they try to specify how a given characteristic varies with age (Wohlwill, 1973). Underlying this concern are some fundamental ontological assumptions about the nature of development and some methodological assumptions about the science of development. The main ontological assumption underlying developmental theories is that the direction of development is known. That is, it is assumed that development is teleologically driven to an ultimate end that is equated with an, ideally, error-free state of functioning of every possible characteristic that may be considered. For most characteristics, this state is thought to be attainable in early adulthood. Therefore, development, under this assumption, is a process of growth or expansion and successive states during its course are just increasingly closer approximations to this ideal. This assumptionunderliesalldevelopmental theories.Forexample, in languagedevelopment, it is taken for granted that, with age, people know more words and use longer and more complex sentences, in accordance with the rules of grammar and syntax. The ultimate aim of language development is error-free communication that would map an underlying universal linguistic competence (Bowerman, 1982; Chomsky, 1972). In cognitive development it is taken for granted that, with age, people can unJOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT, 5(1), 89–95 Copyright © 2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Philosophical Psychology, Oct 1, 2010
ABSTRACT Dartnall claims that visual short-term memory (VSTM) stores nonconceptual content (NCC),... more ABSTRACT Dartnall claims that visual short-term memory (VSTM) stores nonconceptual content (NCC), in the form of compressed images. In this paper I argue against the claim that NCC can be stored in VSTM. I offer four reasons why NCC cannot be stored in visual memory and why only conceptual information can: (1) NCC lasts for a very short time and does not reach either visual short-term memory or visual long-term memory; (2) the content of visual states is stored in memory only if and when object-centered attention modulates visual processing and this modulation signifies the onset of the conceptualization of that content; (3) only categorical high-level information that characterizes conceptual content and not metric and precise iconic information that characterizes NCC can be stored in visual memory for long periods; and (4) if NCC were stored in visual memory then this would allow recognitional judgments pertaining to NCC—one could recognize the precise shade of a color that one had seen before. However NCC does not allow such recognitional judgments.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Aug 1, 2015
Studies in applied philosophy, epistemology and rational ethics, 2016
Hintikka (1997, 1998) argues that abduction is ignorance-preserving in the sense that the hypothe... more Hintikka (1997, 1998) argues that abduction is ignorance-preserving in the sense that the hypothesis that abduction delivers and which attempts to explain a set of phenomena is not, epistemologically speaking, on a firmer ground than the phenomena it purports to explain; knowledge is not enhanced until the hypothesis undergoes a further inductive process that will test it against empirical evidence. Hintikka, therefore, introduces a wedge between the abductive process properly speaking and the inductive process of hypothesis testing. Similarly, Minnameier (2004) argues that abduction differs from the inference to the best explanation (IBE) since the former describes the process of generation of theories, while the latter describes the, inductive, process of their evaluation. As Hintikka so Minnameier traces this view back to Peirce’s work on abduction. Recent work on abduction (Gabbay and Wood 2005) goes as far as to draw a distinction between abducting an hypothesis that is considered worth conjecturing and the decision either to use further this hypothesis to do some inferential work in the given domain of enquiry, or to test it experimentally. The latter step, when it takes place, is an inductive mode of inference that should be distinguished from the abductive inference that led to the hypothesis. In this paper, I argue that in real scientific practise both the distinction between a properly speaking abductive phase and an inductive phase of hypothesis testing and evaluation, and the distinction between testing an hypothesis that has been discovered in a preceding abduction and releasing or activating the same hypothesis for further inferential work in the domain of enquiry in which the ignorance problem arose in the first place are blurred because all these processes form an inextricable whole of theory development and elaboration and this defies and any attempt to analyze this intricate process into discrete well defined steps. Thus, my arguments reinforce Magnani’s (2014) view on abduction and its function in scientific practise.
Philosophical Psychology, Jul 10, 2014
ABSTRACT Toribio argues against my thesis that the cognitive penetrability (CP) of the content of... more ABSTRACT Toribio argues against my thesis that the cognitive penetrability (CP) of the content of early vision is a necessary and sufficient condition for this content to be nonconceptual content (NCC)–the MET (mutually entailing thesis). Her main point is that MET presupposes a non-standard, causal interpretation of NCC that either trivializes NCC or fails to engage with the contemporary literature on NCC, in which the property of being nonconceptual is not construed in empirical but in constitutive terms. I argue that Toribio's arguments presuppose views of NCC that clash with important themes in the nonconceptualist literature, and that constitutive considerations concerning NCC are inextricably linked with causal considerations since the latter are required to address the concerns that led philosophers to postulate NCC.
Metascience, Oct 11, 2012
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Jun 1, 2015
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2001
Synthese, Aug 4, 2007
Abstract Constructivism undermines realism by arguing that experience is mediated by concepts, an... more Abstract Constructivism undermines realism by arguing that experience is mediated by concepts, and that there is no direct way to examine those aspects of objects that belong to them independently of our conceptualizations; perception is theory-laden. To defend realism ...
— Any discussion concerning representations in cognitive psychology and science assumes that ment... more — Any discussion concerning representations in cognitive psychology and science assumes that mental representational contents are carried by brain representational vehicles. Recently Sedivy attacked the view that mental contents are carried by vehicles. Sedivy relies on Dennett's work to argue that mental contents cannot be carried by vehicles because the former cannot be independently individuated whereas the latter are, by definition, independently individuated by means of their semantic properties. In this paper, I claim that mental contents are carried by neural vehicles and that Sedivy misunderstands Dennett's work on the relation between the mental and the neural by confounding the algorithmic and the computational level of description. I analyze connectionist representations that Dennett favors and which are the most amenable to Sedivy's concerning the context dependency of contents on which Sedivy builds her arguments, and argue that in connectionism, there is a clear cut distinction between contents and vehicles that carry these contents.
Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia, Dec 30, 2020
Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia, Apr 30, 2020
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2016
Firestone & Scholl (F&S) examine, among other possible cognitive ... more Firestone & Scholl (F&S) examine, among other possible cognitive influences on perception, the effects of peripheral attention and conclude that these effects do not entail cognition directly affecting perception. Studies in neuroscience with other forms of attention, however, suggest that a stage of vision, namely late vision, is cognitively penetrated mainly through the effects of cognitively driven spatial and object-centered attention.
Model-based reasoning refers to the sorts of inferences performed on the basis of a knowledge con... more Model-based reasoning refers to the sorts of inferences performed on the basis of a knowledge context that guides them. This context constitutes a model of a domain of reality, that is, an approximative and simplifying to various degrees representation of the factors that underlie, and the interrelations that govern, the behavior of this domain.
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Mar 1, 2006
Journal of Cognition and Development, Feb 1, 2004
Developmental psychologists have been preoccupied with the shape or form of development since the... more Developmental psychologists have been preoccupied with the shape or form of development since the early days of developmental psychology. One of their main concerns has been to specify the developmental function of the characteristics (i.e., behaviors, traits, abilities, processes, etc.) that are of interest to them. This is equivalent to saying that they try to specify how a given characteristic varies with age (Wohlwill, 1973). Underlying this concern are some fundamental ontological assumptions about the nature of development and some methodological assumptions about the science of development. The main ontological assumption underlying developmental theories is that the direction of development is known. That is, it is assumed that development is teleologically driven to an ultimate end that is equated with an, ideally, error-free state of functioning of every possible characteristic that may be considered. For most characteristics, this state is thought to be attainable in early adulthood. Therefore, development, under this assumption, is a process of growth or expansion and successive states during its course are just increasingly closer approximations to this ideal. This assumptionunderliesalldevelopmental theories.Forexample, in languagedevelopment, it is taken for granted that, with age, people know more words and use longer and more complex sentences, in accordance with the rules of grammar and syntax. The ultimate aim of language development is error-free communication that would map an underlying universal linguistic competence (Bowerman, 1982; Chomsky, 1972). In cognitive development it is taken for granted that, with age, people can unJOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT, 5(1), 89–95 Copyright © 2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Philosophical Psychology, Oct 1, 2010
ABSTRACT Dartnall claims that visual short-term memory (VSTM) stores nonconceptual content (NCC),... more ABSTRACT Dartnall claims that visual short-term memory (VSTM) stores nonconceptual content (NCC), in the form of compressed images. In this paper I argue against the claim that NCC can be stored in VSTM. I offer four reasons why NCC cannot be stored in visual memory and why only conceptual information can: (1) NCC lasts for a very short time and does not reach either visual short-term memory or visual long-term memory; (2) the content of visual states is stored in memory only if and when object-centered attention modulates visual processing and this modulation signifies the onset of the conceptualization of that content; (3) only categorical high-level information that characterizes conceptual content and not metric and precise iconic information that characterizes NCC can be stored in visual memory for long periods; and (4) if NCC were stored in visual memory then this would allow recognitional judgments pertaining to NCC—one could recognize the precise shade of a color that one had seen before. However NCC does not allow such recognitional judgments.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Aug 1, 2015
Studies in applied philosophy, epistemology and rational ethics, 2016
Hintikka (1997, 1998) argues that abduction is ignorance-preserving in the sense that the hypothe... more Hintikka (1997, 1998) argues that abduction is ignorance-preserving in the sense that the hypothesis that abduction delivers and which attempts to explain a set of phenomena is not, epistemologically speaking, on a firmer ground than the phenomena it purports to explain; knowledge is not enhanced until the hypothesis undergoes a further inductive process that will test it against empirical evidence. Hintikka, therefore, introduces a wedge between the abductive process properly speaking and the inductive process of hypothesis testing. Similarly, Minnameier (2004) argues that abduction differs from the inference to the best explanation (IBE) since the former describes the process of generation of theories, while the latter describes the, inductive, process of their evaluation. As Hintikka so Minnameier traces this view back to Peirce’s work on abduction. Recent work on abduction (Gabbay and Wood 2005) goes as far as to draw a distinction between abducting an hypothesis that is considered worth conjecturing and the decision either to use further this hypothesis to do some inferential work in the given domain of enquiry, or to test it experimentally. The latter step, when it takes place, is an inductive mode of inference that should be distinguished from the abductive inference that led to the hypothesis. In this paper, I argue that in real scientific practise both the distinction between a properly speaking abductive phase and an inductive phase of hypothesis testing and evaluation, and the distinction between testing an hypothesis that has been discovered in a preceding abduction and releasing or activating the same hypothesis for further inferential work in the domain of enquiry in which the ignorance problem arose in the first place are blurred because all these processes form an inextricable whole of theory development and elaboration and this defies and any attempt to analyze this intricate process into discrete well defined steps. Thus, my arguments reinforce Magnani’s (2014) view on abduction and its function in scientific practise.
Philosophical Psychology, Jul 10, 2014
ABSTRACT Toribio argues against my thesis that the cognitive penetrability (CP) of the content of... more ABSTRACT Toribio argues against my thesis that the cognitive penetrability (CP) of the content of early vision is a necessary and sufficient condition for this content to be nonconceptual content (NCC)–the MET (mutually entailing thesis). Her main point is that MET presupposes a non-standard, causal interpretation of NCC that either trivializes NCC or fails to engage with the contemporary literature on NCC, in which the property of being nonconceptual is not construed in empirical but in constitutive terms. I argue that Toribio's arguments presuppose views of NCC that clash with important themes in the nonconceptualist literature, and that constitutive considerations concerning NCC are inextricably linked with causal considerations since the latter are required to address the concerns that led philosophers to postulate NCC.
Metascience, Oct 11, 2012
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Jun 1, 2015
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2001
Synthese, Aug 4, 2007
Abstract Constructivism undermines realism by arguing that experience is mediated by concepts, an... more Abstract Constructivism undermines realism by arguing that experience is mediated by concepts, and that there is no direct way to examine those aspects of objects that belong to them independently of our conceptualizations; perception is theory-laden. To defend realism ...
The history of science shows that for each scientific issue there may be more than one models tha... more The history of science shows that for each scientific issue there may be more than one models that are simultaneously accepted by the scientific community. One such case concerns the wave and corpuscular models of light. Newton claimed that he had proved some properties of light based on a set of minimal assumptions, without any commitments to any one of the two models. This set of assumptions constitutes the geometrical model of light as a set of rays propagating in space. We discuss this model and the historical reasons for which it had the head-primacy amongst the relevant models. We argue that this model is indispensable in structuring the curriculum in Optics and attempt to validate it epistemologically. Finally, we discuss an approach for alleviating the implicit assumptions that students make on the nature of light and the subsequent interference of geometrical optics in teaching the properties of light related to its wave-like nature
Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 1-4 August 2001, Edinburgh, Scotland, pp. 260-265
In this paper, we examine the importance of scaffolding the environment and the role of cognitiv... more In this paper, we examine the importance of scaffolding
the environment and the role of cognitive readiness in
young childrens’ construction of operational definitions
in magnetism. We discuss various resource constraints
and the conceptual background of preschoolers. Then we
present an experimental study of 165 children aged 4-6
who took part in an extended structured intervention in
which they were guided to construct two operational
definitions of a magnet. The two definitions differed with
regard to the cognitive demands imposed upon the
children attempting to construct them. The construction
of the second operational definition required cognitive
abilities that the construction of the first did not. Our
results demonstrate that children older than 5 years are
mostly able to construct both definitions while younger
children are able to construct only the first one. Based on
this result, we discuss the issue of cognitive readiness
and its role in learning. Additionally, by teaching one
experimental group of older children the second
definition directly and observing their limited success to
construct it, we argue for the necessary role of
scaffolding the conceptual structure of the curriculum
materials to achieve learning.