I am delighted to announce the next symposium in our series on articles from Neuroscience of Consciousness. We have two types of symposia. For primarily theoretical articles, we will have several commentators from a variety of theoretical perspectives. For novel empirical research, we will have single commentators whose goal is to bring out the theoretical challenges and import of the results. [ 7,031 more words ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/symposium-on-haun-tononi-ko…
Today—in my (alas!) last posting—I suggest some ways the account of the evolution of representational decision making laid out in my book (and sketched in outline last time on the blog) can be applied to a number of open questions in philosophy, psychology, and economics. I will focus on three questions: the extent to which decision making is intertwined with the organism’s environment, the generality of the decision rules the organism relies on, and the circumstances in which there is reason to think that organisms are altruistically motivated to help others. [ 659 more words ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/applications-of-the-account…
Why did some organisms switch from relying just on reflexive—i.e. purely perceptually-driven—interactions with the world to also employing the tools of representational decision making? What adaptive and other benefits does the reliance on representational decision making yield? Today, I sketch aspects of the answers to these questions; for more details, see chapters 4-6 of my book. To set out an account of the evolution of representational decision making, it first needs to be noted that it is widely acknowledged that representational decision making comes with a number of cognitive costs: it tends to be slower than reflexive decision making and require more cognitive resources such as concentration and attention. [ 650 more words ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/the-evolution-of-representa…
Before it is possible to begin the investigation of the evolution of representational decision making it is necessary to address three foundational issues: (1) The nature of representational decision making—what is it that we are investigating? (2) The reality of representational decision making—why think that representational decision making is a real biological trait whose evolution can be investigated? (3) The possibility of a plausible form of evolutionary psychology—how can we know anything about the evolutionary pressures on a cognitive trait? [ 667 more words ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/foundations-of-the-investig…
I want to thank John Schwenkler for inviting me to blog about my new book, Efficient Cognition—The Evolution of Representational Decision Making. I am excited to be sharing with you all the reasons why I find the evolution of representational decision making such a fascinating research project. I also look forward to reading and responding to your comments. [ 641 more words ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/efficient-cognition-the-evo…
Part 1 approached the problem of deception from a computational perspective, arguing that, in order to reason effectively about deception, an agent must be able to represent not only the beliefs and desires of a speaker but also the hierarchy of standing norms that govern her actions and speech. Deception occurs when an ulterior motive supersedes standing norms. This perspective has the advantage of correctly identifying forms of deceptive speech where the intent is not to cause a false belief, or where the utterance itself is not false, for instance, paltering. [ 1,082 more word ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/reasoning-about-deceit-2-po…
We live in an age of post-truth rhetoric, fake news, and misinformation; consequently, questions of how to accurately identify deceptive communication and to appropriately respond to it have become increasingly important. Our work examines these questions from a computational perspective, asking what representational abilities an artificial agent needs if it is to detect and reason about deception. We argue that such agents need more than a mere… [ 942 more words ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/reasoning-about-deceit-1-th…
I am pleased to announce the content that will be featured at Brains in the coming weeks: From March 19-23, Armin Schulz will contribute a series of posts on Efficient Cognition: The Evolution of Representational Decision-Making, published earlier this year by The MIT Press. From March 26-30, Edouard Machery will contribute a series of posts on Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds… [ 101 more words ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/upcoming-events-at-the-brai…
This is my last day blogging on my forthcoming book here at Brains. Thanks to all who checked in and commented and thanks for the comments you sent me via email. A big thank you also to John Schwenkler for doing such an amazing job managing this blog. On Monday, I presented a general overview of the main motivations behind the book… [ 1,291 more word ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/the-epistemology-of-percept…
On Monday, I gave a general overview of the main ideas in my forthcoming book The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence. The key idea developed in the book is that perception is constituted by employing perceptual capacities—for example the capacity to discriminate and single out instances of red from instances of blue. Perceptual content, consciousness, and evidence are each analyzed in terms of this basic property of perception. [ 1,566 more word ]
It is Monday morning and I am riding the train through the post-industrial wasteland of northern New Jersey. I gaze out of the window and, suddenly, I see a deer. Let’s call it Frederik. The next morning, I am again on the train, riding through northern New Jersey. And, again, I see a deer. Let’s call it Ferdinand. It is the same time of day. [ 1,738 more word ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/…/06/perceptual-content.aspx
PhilMiLCog 2018 University of Western Ontario Graduate Conference in Philosophy of Mind, Language, and Cognitive Science Thursday June 14 to Saturday June 16 Stevenson Hall 3101 Keynote Speakers: Sebastian Watzl (Associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, University of Oslo) Michael L. Anderson (Rotman Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Science, Western University) [ 168 more words ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/03/06/cfp-philmilcog-2018.a…
Yesterday, I gave a general overview of my project. Today, I’ll lay out the foundations Part I develops the foundations on which the rest of the book builds. Chapter 1 addresses the particular elements of perception, Chapter 2 its general elements. The phenomenon of perceptual particularity has received remarkably little attention in recent philosophical work. It is high time that this change. [ 1,579 more word ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/the-foundations-of-percepti…
Neural Mechanisms Online 2018 is a cycle of webinars (i.e. web seminars) on the philosophy of neuroscience. The speakers are several philosophers from all around the world, either junior or senior (see the calendar). The sessions are every second Friday, from 12 January to 13 July, and last two hours. In the first part of the session (45 minutes), the speaker presents her/his paper (that has been previously shared via mailing list). [ 349 more words ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/neural-mechanisms-online-20…
Many thanks to John Schwenkler for running the Brains blog and for inviting me to guest blog this week about my new book The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Perception is our key to the world. It plays at least three different roles in our lives. It justifies beliefs and provides us with knowledge of our environment. [ 1,701 more word ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/the-unity-of-perception.aspx
We are grateful to Susanna Schellenberg for blogging this week on her book The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence, forthcoming in July 2018 from Oxford University Press. To view all her posts on a single page, please click here.
http://philosophyofbrains.com/2018/…/05/now-featured-11.aspx
We are delighted to announce that the 2018 Summer Institute on Bounded Rationality will take place on June 19 – 27, 2018, at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany. The Summer Institute brings together talented young researchers and renowned scientists from around the globe and aims to spark a dialogue about decision-making under the real world constraints of limited time, information, or computational power. [ 146 more words ]
http://philosophyofbrains.com/…/2018-summer-institute-on-bo…
