Although debate is a richly structured and prevalent form of discourse, it has received little sc... more Although debate is a richly structured and prevalent form of discourse, it has received little scholarly attention. Logicians have focused on the structure of individual arguments-how they divide into premises and conclusions, which in turn divide into various constituents. In contrast, I focus on the structure of sets of arguments, showing how arguments are themselves constituents in high-level dialectical structures. I represent debates and positions by graphs whose vertices correspond to arguments and whose edges correspond to two inter-argument relations: "dispute" and "support," respectively. On this basis I develop a theory of the structure of debate.
In this chapter the basic idea of the book is presented in an intuitive way, using the metaphor o... more In this chapter the basic idea of the book is presented in an intuitive way, using the metaphor of a world-model that experience “moves through.” This metaphor illuminates an explanatory dimension of phenomenology, whereby what we actually experience is informed by what expect to be the case in a given part of the world. Qualifications and simplifying assumptions are stated, and the project is related to existing efforts to formalize phenomenological structures.
Forthcoming in G. Stanghellini et al. (eds.): Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology... more Forthcoming in G. Stanghellini et al. (eds.): Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology. Oxford University Press, 2016No abstract availabl
While the cognitivist school of thought holds that the mind is analogous to a computer, performin... more While the cognitivist school of thought holds that the mind is analogous to a computer, performing logical operations over internal representations, the tradition of ecological psychology contends that organisms can directly "resonate" to information for action and perception without the need for a representational intermediary. The concept of resonance has played an important role in ecological psychology, but it remains a metaphor. Supplying a mechanistic account of resonance requires a non-representational account of central nervous system (CNS) dynamics. We present a series of simple models in which a reservoir network with homeostatic nodes is used to control a simple agent embedded in an environment. This network spontaneously produces behaviors that are adaptive in each context, including (1) visually tracking a moving object, (2) substantially above-chance performance in the arcade game Pong, (2) and avoiding walls while controlling a mobile agent. These results ma...
Phenomenology and The Cognitive Sciences, Feb 11, 2023
Lopes (2021) has argued against my use of neural networks and dynamical systems theory in neuroph... more Lopes (2021) has argued against my use of neural networks and dynamical systems theory in neurophenomenology. Responding to his argument provides an opportunity to articulate a pluralist approach to neurophenomenology, according to which multiple theoretical frameworks-symbolic, dynamical systems, connectionist, etc.-can be used to study consciousness and its relationship to neural activity. Each type of analysis is best suited to specific phenomena, but they are mutually compatible and can inform and constrain one another in non-trivial ways. I use historical and conceptual arguments to elaborate on this type of pluralism as it applies to cognitive science, phenomenology, and neurophenomenology.
While the cognitivist school of thought holds that the mind is analogous to a computer, performin... more While the cognitivist school of thought holds that the mind is analogous to a computer, performing logical operations over internal representations, the tradition of ecological psychology contends that organisms can directly "resonate" to information for action and perception without the need for a representational intermediary. The concept of resonance has played an important role in ecological psychology, but it remains a metaphor. Supplying a mechanistic account of resonance requires a non-representational account of central nervous system (CNS) dynamics. We present a series of simple models in which a reservoir network with homeostatic nodes is used to control a simple agent embedded in an environment. This network spontaneously produces behaviors that are adaptive in each context, including (1) visually tracking a moving object, (2) substantially above-chance performance in the arcade game Pong, (2) and avoiding walls while controlling a mobile agent. These results may represent a useful step towards a mechanistic grounding of resonance and a view of the CNS that is compatible with ecological psychology.
Embodied approaches to cognition see abstract thought and language as grounded in interactions be... more Embodied approaches to cognition see abstract thought and language as grounded in interactions between mind, body, and world. A particularly important challenge for embodied approaches to cognition is mathematics, perhaps the most abstract domain of human knowledge. Conceptual metaphor theory, a branch of cognitive linguistics, describes how abstract mathematical concepts are grounded in concrete physical representations. In this paper, we consider the implications of this research for the metaphysics and epistemology of mathematics. In the case of metaphysics, we argue that embodied mathematics is neutral in the sense of being compatible with all existing accounts of what mathematical entities really are. However, embodied mathematics may be able to revive an older position known as psychologism and overcome the difficulties it faces. In the case of epistemology, we argue that the evidence collected in the embodied mathematics literature is inconclusive: It does not show that abstract mathematical thinking is constituted by metaphor; it may simply show that abstract thinking is facilitated by metaphor. Our arguments suggest that closer interaction between the philosophy and cognitive science of mathematics could yield a more precise, empirically informed account of what mathematics is and how we come to have knowledge of it.
Progress in psychology and the cognitive sciences is often taken to vindicate physicalism and cas... more Progress in psychology and the cognitive sciences is often taken to vindicate physicalism and cast doubt on such extravagant metaphysical theses as dualism and idealism. The goal of this paper is to argue that cognitive science has no such implicationsrather, evidence from cognitive science is largely (but not wholly) irrelevant to the mind-body problem. Our argument begins with the observation that data from cognitive science can be modeled by supervenience relations. We then show that supervenience relations are neutral, by showing how they can be coherently interpreted in physicalist, idealist, and dualist terms. We distinguish several types of supervenience relation, and show that each coheres better with some positions on the mind-body problem than the other. Since these variants of supervenience are not empirically equivalent, there is a possibility that data from cognitive science will end up supporting some positions on the mind-body problem more than others. It is in this sense that cognitive science is mostly, but not wholly, neutral. Keywords Metaphysical neutrality • Mind-body problem • Supervenience • Determination • Cognitive science • Neural correlates of consciousness K.-C. Chen and J. Yoshimi have contributed equally to this work.
Lopes (2021) has argued against my use of neural networks and dynamical systems theory in neuroph... more Lopes (2021) has argued against my use of neural networks and dynamical systems theory in neurophenomenology. Responding to his argument provides an opportunity to articulate a pluralist approach to neurophenomenology, according to which multiple theoretical frameworks—symbolic, dynamical systems, connectionist, etc.—can be used to study consciousness and its relationship to neural activity. Each type of analysis is best suited to specific phenomena, but they are mutually compatible and can inform and constrain one another in non-trivial ways. I use historical and conceptual arguments to elaborate on this type of pluralism as it applies to cognitive science, phenomenology, and neurophenomenology.
Although debate is a richly structured and prevalent form of discourse, it has received little sc... more Although debate is a richly structured and prevalent form of discourse, it has received little scholarly attention. Logicians have focused on the structure of individual arguments-how they divide into premises and conclusions, which in turn divide into various constituents. In contrast, I focus on the structure of sets of arguments, showing how arguments are themselves constituents in high-level dialectical structures. I represent debates and positions by graphs whose vertices correspond to arguments and whose edges correspond to two inter-argument relations: "dispute" and "support," respectively. On this basis I develop a theory of the structure of debate.
In this chapter the basic idea of the book is presented in an intuitive way, using the metaphor o... more In this chapter the basic idea of the book is presented in an intuitive way, using the metaphor of a world-model that experience “moves through.” This metaphor illuminates an explanatory dimension of phenomenology, whereby what we actually experience is informed by what expect to be the case in a given part of the world. Qualifications and simplifying assumptions are stated, and the project is related to existing efforts to formalize phenomenological structures.
Forthcoming in G. Stanghellini et al. (eds.): Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology... more Forthcoming in G. Stanghellini et al. (eds.): Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology. Oxford University Press, 2016No abstract availabl
While the cognitivist school of thought holds that the mind is analogous to a computer, performin... more While the cognitivist school of thought holds that the mind is analogous to a computer, performing logical operations over internal representations, the tradition of ecological psychology contends that organisms can directly "resonate" to information for action and perception without the need for a representational intermediary. The concept of resonance has played an important role in ecological psychology, but it remains a metaphor. Supplying a mechanistic account of resonance requires a non-representational account of central nervous system (CNS) dynamics. We present a series of simple models in which a reservoir network with homeostatic nodes is used to control a simple agent embedded in an environment. This network spontaneously produces behaviors that are adaptive in each context, including (1) visually tracking a moving object, (2) substantially above-chance performance in the arcade game Pong, (2) and avoiding walls while controlling a mobile agent. These results ma...
Phenomenology and The Cognitive Sciences, Feb 11, 2023
Lopes (2021) has argued against my use of neural networks and dynamical systems theory in neuroph... more Lopes (2021) has argued against my use of neural networks and dynamical systems theory in neurophenomenology. Responding to his argument provides an opportunity to articulate a pluralist approach to neurophenomenology, according to which multiple theoretical frameworks-symbolic, dynamical systems, connectionist, etc.-can be used to study consciousness and its relationship to neural activity. Each type of analysis is best suited to specific phenomena, but they are mutually compatible and can inform and constrain one another in non-trivial ways. I use historical and conceptual arguments to elaborate on this type of pluralism as it applies to cognitive science, phenomenology, and neurophenomenology.
While the cognitivist school of thought holds that the mind is analogous to a computer, performin... more While the cognitivist school of thought holds that the mind is analogous to a computer, performing logical operations over internal representations, the tradition of ecological psychology contends that organisms can directly "resonate" to information for action and perception without the need for a representational intermediary. The concept of resonance has played an important role in ecological psychology, but it remains a metaphor. Supplying a mechanistic account of resonance requires a non-representational account of central nervous system (CNS) dynamics. We present a series of simple models in which a reservoir network with homeostatic nodes is used to control a simple agent embedded in an environment. This network spontaneously produces behaviors that are adaptive in each context, including (1) visually tracking a moving object, (2) substantially above-chance performance in the arcade game Pong, (2) and avoiding walls while controlling a mobile agent. These results may represent a useful step towards a mechanistic grounding of resonance and a view of the CNS that is compatible with ecological psychology.
Embodied approaches to cognition see abstract thought and language as grounded in interactions be... more Embodied approaches to cognition see abstract thought and language as grounded in interactions between mind, body, and world. A particularly important challenge for embodied approaches to cognition is mathematics, perhaps the most abstract domain of human knowledge. Conceptual metaphor theory, a branch of cognitive linguistics, describes how abstract mathematical concepts are grounded in concrete physical representations. In this paper, we consider the implications of this research for the metaphysics and epistemology of mathematics. In the case of metaphysics, we argue that embodied mathematics is neutral in the sense of being compatible with all existing accounts of what mathematical entities really are. However, embodied mathematics may be able to revive an older position known as psychologism and overcome the difficulties it faces. In the case of epistemology, we argue that the evidence collected in the embodied mathematics literature is inconclusive: It does not show that abstract mathematical thinking is constituted by metaphor; it may simply show that abstract thinking is facilitated by metaphor. Our arguments suggest that closer interaction between the philosophy and cognitive science of mathematics could yield a more precise, empirically informed account of what mathematics is and how we come to have knowledge of it.
Progress in psychology and the cognitive sciences is often taken to vindicate physicalism and cas... more Progress in psychology and the cognitive sciences is often taken to vindicate physicalism and cast doubt on such extravagant metaphysical theses as dualism and idealism. The goal of this paper is to argue that cognitive science has no such implicationsrather, evidence from cognitive science is largely (but not wholly) irrelevant to the mind-body problem. Our argument begins with the observation that data from cognitive science can be modeled by supervenience relations. We then show that supervenience relations are neutral, by showing how they can be coherently interpreted in physicalist, idealist, and dualist terms. We distinguish several types of supervenience relation, and show that each coheres better with some positions on the mind-body problem than the other. Since these variants of supervenience are not empirically equivalent, there is a possibility that data from cognitive science will end up supporting some positions on the mind-body problem more than others. It is in this sense that cognitive science is mostly, but not wholly, neutral. Keywords Metaphysical neutrality • Mind-body problem • Supervenience • Determination • Cognitive science • Neural correlates of consciousness K.-C. Chen and J. Yoshimi have contributed equally to this work.
Lopes (2021) has argued against my use of neural networks and dynamical systems theory in neuroph... more Lopes (2021) has argued against my use of neural networks and dynamical systems theory in neurophenomenology. Responding to his argument provides an opportunity to articulate a pluralist approach to neurophenomenology, according to which multiple theoretical frameworks—symbolic, dynamical systems, connectionist, etc.—can be used to study consciousness and its relationship to neural activity. Each type of analysis is best suited to specific phenomena, but they are mutually compatible and can inform and constrain one another in non-trivial ways. I use historical and conceptual arguments to elaborate on this type of pluralism as it applies to cognitive science, phenomenology, and neurophenomenology.
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