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The Central Problem of
Cognitive Science: The Rationalist–Empiricist Divide
Henry Plotkin, University College London
One of the oldest and most fundamental
distinctions and disputes of classical epistemology is that between
the rationalists and empiricists. In recent decades, partly due to the
increasing influence of evolutionary thought in psychology, the argument
has become central in cognitive science as well, but it will remain
empirically intractable until further advances occur in neurogenetics,
neuroscience, and how these tie in to fundamental psychological mechanisms
and processes.
Requests for reprints should be sent to
Henry Plotkin, 10 Manorcrofts Road, Egham, Surrey TW20 9LU United Kingdom.
Email: vicky.plotkin@btopenworld.com
The Concept of Innateness
and the Destiny of Evolutionary Psychology
Pierre Poirier, Luc Faucher, University
of Quebec at Montreal; Jean Lachapelle, Champlain College
According to a popular version of the
current evolutionary attitude in cognitive science, the mind is a massive
aggregate of autonomous innate computational devices, each addressing
specific adaptive problems. Our aim in this paper is to show that although
this version of the attitude, which we call GOFEP (Good Old Fashioned
Evolutionary Psychology), does not suffer from fatal flaws that would
make it incoherent or otherwise conceptually inadequate, it will nevertheless
prove unacceptable to most cognitive scientists today. To show this,
we raise a common objection to the concept of innateness, not to mount
an attack on GOFEP but to study how its proponents have attempted to
meet that challenge. The aim of this move is to show that GOFEP cannot
face the challenge without, as it were, losing its soul. There is, or
so we will argue, something deep at the heart of GOFEP that prevents
its proponents from meeting the challenge.
Requests for reprints should be sent to
Pierre Poirier, Départment de Philosophie, Université du Québec à Montréal,
CP 8888, succursale centre-ville, Montréal, H3C 3P8 Canada. Email: poirier.pierre@uqam.ca
Naming and Normativity
Osamu Kiritani, Kyushu University
Evolutionary theory has recently been
applied to language. The aim of this paper is to contribute to such
an evolutionary approach to language. I argue that Kripke’s causal account
of proper names, in terms of natural selection, captures the norm of
uses of a proper name, which is to refer to the same object as past
others’ uses in a linguistic community. My argument appeals to Millikan’s
theory of direct proper functions, which captures the norms of various
functional entities in terms of natural selection.
Requests for reprints should be sent to
Osamu Kiritani, Ph.D., User Science Institute, Kyushu University, 4-9-1
Shiobaru, Minami-ku, Fukuoka 815-8540, Japan. Email: okiritan@nifty.com
Content and Action: The
Guidance Theory of Representation
Michael L. Anderson, Franklin & Marshall
College and University of Maryland, College Park; Gregg Rosenberg, University
of Georgia
The current essay introduces the guidance
theory of representation, according to which the content and intentionality
of representations can be accounted for in terms of the way they provide
guidance for action. The guidance theory offers a way of fixing representational
content that gives the causal and evolutionary history of the subject
only an indirect (non-necessary) role, and an account of representational
error, based on failure of action, that does not rely on any such notions
as proper functions, ideal conditions, or normal circumstances. Moreover,
because the notion of error is defined in terms of failure of action,
the guidance theory meets the “meta-epistemological requirement” that
representational error should be potentially detectable by the representing
system itself. In this essay, we offer a brief account of the biological
origins of representation, a formal characterization of the guidance
theory, some examples of its use, and show how the guidance theory handles
some traditional problem cases for representation: the representation
of fictional and abstract entities. Being both representational and
actiongrounded, the guidance theory may provide some common ground between
embodied and cognitivist approaches to the study of the mind.
Authors listed in alphabetical order.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Michael L. Anderson, Department
of Psychology, Franklin & Marshall College, P.O. Box 3003, Lancaster,
Pennsylvania 17604–3003. Email: michael.anderson@fandm.edu
Continuous Sticktogetherations
and Somethingelsifications: How Evolutionary Biology Re-Wrote the Story
of Mind
Robin L. Zebrowski, University of Oregon
Cognitive science is undergoing a rebirth,
overturning much of the traditional thought established by people like
Chomsky and Newell and Simon. This second-generation thought, exemplified
by people like Clark, Lakoff, and Johnson, is pursuing the same project
as the traditional thinkers, but with evolutionary considerations. This
revision of cognitive science can trace its roots back to the American
Pragmatists, while still attending to even the most recent work in neuroscience
and evolutionary psychology. If one takes this embodied, evolutionary
story seriously, we can eliminate many of the oppressive problems that
plague cognitive science, including those surrounding qualia, intelligence,
and even consciousness.
Requests for reprints should be sent to
Robin L. Zebrowski, Department of Philosophy, 1295 University of Oregon,
Eugene, Oregon 97403–1295. Email: rzebrows@uoregon.edu
The Normativity Problem:
Evolution and Naturalized Semantics
Mason Cash, University of Central Florida
Representation is a pivotal concept in
cognitive science, yet there is a serious obstacle to a naturalistic
account of representations’ semantic content and intentionality. A representation
having a determinate semantic content distinguishes correct from incorrect
representation. But such correctness is a normative matter. Explaining
how such norms can be part of a naturalistic cognitive science is what
I call the normativity problem. Teleosemantics attempts to naturalize
such norms by showing that evolution by natural selection establishes
neural mechanisms’ functions, and such functions provide the normativity
requisite for a determinate semantic content. I argue that such attempts
fail, because when specifying functions, and thus semantic contents,
that are determinate enough to enable misrepresentation, they must tacitly
appeal to human normative practices, especially the practice of giving
intentional states as reasons for actions. I present a different tactic:
using evolution by natural selection to avoid rather than solve the
normativity problem. Representations’ semantic contents and their intentional
targets are irreducibly normative. Semantics and intentionality are
constituted within human normative practices. However, evolution by
natural selection can be used to naturalistically explain the transition
from a world without human beings and human normative practices — and
thus without any distinction between thoughts that may be called “correct”
or “incorrect” — to a world in which such human practices and distinctions
are commonplace.
Requests for reprints should be sent to
Mason Cash, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, University of Central Florida,
Orlando, Florida 32816-1352. E-mail: mcash@ucf.edu
Using the World to Understand
the Mind: Evolutionary Foundations for Ecological Psychology
Alan C. Clune Sam Houston State University
In this paper I argue that when behaviorism
began to wane and cognitivism became the more dominant framework in
psychology, ecological psychology was also strongly suggested at two
different levels. First, ecological psychology, considered in light
of evolutionary theory, promised to handle three serious philosophical
challenges to behaviorism. Second, this ecological approach promised
to explain several anomalies in behavioral research. Ecological psychology,
then, although largely overlooked, was and still is a viable alternative
to internalist frameworks — such as cognitivism — as a fruitful framework
for studying behavior.
Requests for reprints should be sent to
Alan C. Clune, Sam Houston State University, Department of Psychology
and Philosophy, Box 2447, Huntsville, Texas 77341–2447. Email: clunea@yahoo.com
New Physical Foundations
for Cognitive Science
Stephen W. Kercel, University of New England
Why should the subject of physics arise
in a paper ostensibly concerned with cognitive science and evolutionary
biology? If we were advocating a new physics of life and mind simply
because we cannot devise an explanation of brain function within the
framework of conventional physics, it would appear to reveal a fundamental
flaw in the paradigm that we are discussing. If cognition is a biological
process, and if biology is ultimately reducible to physics, should not
physics be sufficient to entail it? In fact, avoiding such an appearance
of being “unscientific” motivates many brain scientists to find a way
at all costs to couch their explanations of brain behavior in terms
of the traditional concepts of physics. Curiously, they do so while
failing to appreciate that the fundamental need for new physics is postulated
not by the students of the processes of life and mind, but rather by
some of the world’s most renowned physicists. In the present paper,
I will use the expression “old physics” to include nineteenth century
classical physics, general and special relativity, traditional quantum
mechanics and chaotic dynamics. I subsume all of these under the umbrella
of old physics because, in spite of their differences, they share a
set of metaphysical presuppositions. I will argue that some of these
suppositions are deeply flawed and that these flaws render old physics
insufficient to portray reality coherently, and that abandoning these
flawed concepts may provide new and viable theoretical foundations for
both biology and cognitive science.
Requests for reprints should be sent to
Dr. Stephen W. Kercel, 2 Brian Drive, Brunswick, Maine 04011. Email:
kercel1@suscom-maine.net
The Evolution of a Cognitive
Architecture for Emotional Learning from a Modulon Structured Genome
Stevo Bozinovski and Liljana Bozinovska,
South Carolina State University
The paper addresses a central problem
in evolutionary biology and cognitive science; evolution of a neural
based learning phenotype from a structured genotype. It describes morphogenesis
of a neural network-based cognitive system, starting from a single genotype
having a modulon control structure. It further shows how such a system,
denoted as GALA architecture, growing its own recurrent axon connections,
can further develop into various structures capable of learning in different
learning modes, such as advice learning, reinforcement learning, and
emotion learning. The paper particularly considers the emotion learning
systems and their motivational structure. A simulation experiment is
provided to illustrate the theoretical issues discussed.
Requests for reprints should be sent either
to Stevo Bozinovski, Ph.D., AI/Robotics/Biocybernetics Laboratory, Department
of Mathematics and Computer Science, South Carolina State University,
Orangeburg, South Carolina 29117, or to Liljana Bozinovska, M.D. Ph.D.,
Neuroscience and Electrophysiology Laboratory, Department of Biological
and Physical Sciences, South Carolina State University, Orangeburg,
South Carolina 29117. Email: sbozinovski@scsu.edu or lbozinov@scsu.edu
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