The physical mandate for belief-goal psychology

This article describes a heuristic argument for understanding certain physical systems in terms of properties that resemble the beliefs and goals of folk psychology. The argument rests on very simple assumptions. The core of the argument is that predictions about certain events can legitimately be based on assumptions about later events, resembling Aristotelian ‘final causation’; however, more nuanced causal entities (resembling fallible beliefs) must be introduced into these types of explanation in order for them to remain consistent with a causally local Universe

Cognitive Computation sans Representation

The Computational Theory of Mind (CTM) holds that cognitive processes are essentially computational, and hence computation provides the scientific key to explaining mentality. The Representational Theory of Mind (RTM) holds that representational content is the key feature in distinguishing mental from non-mental systems. I argue that there is a deep incompatibility between these two theoretical frameworks, and that the acceptance of CTM provides strong grounds for rejecting RTM. The focal point of the incompatibility is the fact that representational content is extrinsic to formal procedures as such, and the intended interpretation of syntax makes no difference to the execution of an algorithm. So the unique 'content' postulated by RTM is superfluous to the formal procedures of CTM. And once these procedures are implemented in a physical mechanism, it is exclusively the causal properties of the physical mechanism that are responsible for all aspects of the system's behaviour. So once again, postulated content is rendered superfluous. To the extent that semantic content may appear to play a role in behaviour, it must be syntactically encoded within the system, and just as in a standard computational artefact, so too with the human mind/brain - it's pure syntax all the way down to the level of physical implementation. Hence 'content' is at most a convenient meta-level gloss, projected from the outside by human theorists, which itself can play no role in cognitive processing

Dennett's compatibilism considered

My basic concern in this thesis is to examine the details behind Dennett's attempt to reconcile the notions of mechanism and responsibility. In the main this involves an examination of how he tries to secure a compatibilism between mechanistic and intentional explanations by developing a systematised conception of intentional explanation. I begin by briefly discussing the various notions needed for understanding what is at stake in the area and where the orthodoxy on the matter lies. As such the first three sections of the work are not focussed on Dennett's work itself and playa stage-setting role for the deeper work to follow. These notions include the likes of the rationale behind attributing moral responsibility, agency and action, mechanism and mechanistic explanation, and intentional explanation. I suggest that the basic intuition regarding mechanism and responsibility is such that the two are seen to be incompatible with each other. The main reason for this lies in an intuition that mechanism undermines intentional explanation and so renders the notion of action largely empty. Action, I show, is at the heart of our attribution of responsibility and is dependent on intentional explanation. Having presented these issues, I turn to the details of Dennett's 'intentional systems theory'. I argue that Dennett attempts to avoid the intuition that mechanism is incompatible with responsibility by developing a specialised account of intentional explanation. Dennett calls it the intentional stance. r highlight the two important features of this intentional stance, namely rationality and intentionality. r show that Dennett's position on rationality and intentionality is such that it does allow him to secure an explanatory compatibilism between mechanism and his sort of intentional explanation. I argue, however, that his sort of intentional explanation does not fulfil our requirements for ascribing agency or moral responsibility. This is accomplished in part by developing alternative conceptions of the two notions. Out of this I develop a different sort of intentional stance, which I call the folk stance. I show finaIly that Dennett's compatibilist move is incapable of being applied to the folkstance from which we do in fact make attributions of responsibility, and so conclude thatDennett fails to make the case for reconciling mechanism and responsibility

Folk Theory of Mind: Conceptual Foundations of Social Cognition

The human ability to represent, conceptualize, and reason about mind and behavior is one of the greatest achievements of human evolution and is made possible by a “folk theory of mind” — a sophisticated conceptual framework that relates different mental states to each other and connects them to behavior. This chapter examines the nature and elements of this framework and its central functions for social cognition. As a conceptual framework, the folk theory of mind operates prior to any particular conscious or unconscious cognition and provides the “framing” or interpretation of that cognition. Central to this framing is the concept of intentionality, which distinguishes intentional action (caused by the agent’s intention and decision) from unintentional behavior (caused by internal or external events without the intervention of the agent’s decision). A second important distinction separates publicly observable from publicly unobservable (i.e., mental) events. Together, the two distinctions define the kinds of events in social interaction that people attend to, wonder about, and try to explain. A special focus of this chapter is the powerful tool of behavior explanation, which relies on the folk theory of mind but is also intimately tied to social demands and to the perceiver’s social goals. A full understanding of social cognition must consider the folk theory of mind as the conceptual underpinning of all (conscious and unconscious) perception and thinking about the social world

Intentionality and neuroscience

Most, if not all of us, are in practice mental realists: We explain and predict each other's actions by invoking the attribution of mental states. It is characteristic for many mental states to have intentional content, i.e. for thoughts, desires, intentions or emotions to be about dinner, meetings, sunshine, stock markets, elections, and so on. Intentional contents are assigned on the basis of a rational assessment of behavioral (and other) evidence. Many of us also wish to adhere to the notion that invoking intentional mental states does not imply having to commit to dualism, to a ghostly realm of minds and souls which exists over and above the physical world. Specifically, it is widely believed that the investigation of the brain is integral to explaining how the mind works, and that our mental states fundamentally depend on what happens in our brains. At the same time, it is not all that clear that matters of the mind are in any ontological or explanatory way identical to matters of the brain. Hence, it is prudent to neither adopt the notion that mental states are unrelated to the physical, nor that they can be reduced to the physical. Rather, a moderate position between dualism and reductionism is warranted. This book both gives a comprehensive account of the way explanation by mental state works and of how representational/intentional properties are related to matters of the brain, i.e. to matters described by physics, chemistry and biology. The former, which takes up the first part of the book, is rooted in major accounts of a scientific model of explanation by mental states as delineated by recent analytic philosophy, such as Davidson's, Dennett's, Cummins's or Fodor's. The latter, which takes up the second part, involves an inquiry into current empirical studies investigating matters of neural representation and the theoretical frameworks which – sometimes openly, sometimes tacitly – come with it. It not only yields a unified account of representation in cognitive and neuroscience, but also relates cognitive and neural representation to mental intentionality, and ultimately endorses the investigation of cognition by neuroscientific methods as a way of establishing a translation manual between mind and brain state descriptions. Specifically, recent “mindreading” or braincomputer-interface studies are considered as examples for this ongoing endeavor. Building on Quine's and Davidson's theories of interpretation, it is shown that such correlational studies in cognitive neuroscience satisfy their criteria for empirically specifying meaning by way of holistic truth theories, thereby producing localized translations. These translations are non-reductive, since they are bound to irreducible principles underlying the ascription of intentional content, but at the same time, they establish strong semantic bonds between mind and brain, honoring widely shared views about a strong constitutional link between brain and mind

Folk Psychology and the Bayesian Brain

Whilst much has been said about the implications of predictive processing for our scientific understanding of cognition, there has been comparatively little discussion of how this new paradigm fits with our everyday understanding of the mind, i.e. folk psychology. This paper aims to assess the relationship between folk psychology and predictive processing, which will first require making a distinction between two ways of understanding folk psychology: as propositional attitude psychology and as a broader folk psychological discourse. It will be argued that folk psychology in this broader sense is compatible with predictive processing, despite the fact that there is an apparent incompatibility between predictive processing and a literalist interpretation of propositional attitude psychology. The distinction between these two kinds of folk psychology allows us to accept that our scientific usage of folk concepts requires revision, whilst rejecting the suggestion that we should eliminate folk psychology entirely

The Primacy of Knowledge: A Critical Survey of Timothy Williamson's Views on Knowledge, Assertion and Scepticism

The following thesis discusses a range of central aspects in Timothy Williamson’s so-called «knowledge-first» epistemology. In particular, it adresses whether this kind of epistemological framework is apt to answer the challenges of scepticism

A Theory of Vicarious Liability for Autonomous-Machine-Caused Harm

The possibility of autonomous-machine-caused harm generates doctrinal and theoretical challenges for assigning tort liability. With emergent capabilities, autonomous machines disrupt the structure of interpersonal rights and duties in tort law, framed by conditions of foreseeability and proximate causation. Where algorithmic processes are unintelligible, self-modifying, and unpredictable, the concern goes, algorithmic harms will be untraceable to tortious human agency. As a result, their costs will simply lie where they fall—on faultless victims. This outcome would be unfair and objectionable: A failure of tort’s mechanisms of corrective justice means faultless victims would disproportionately bear the accident costs of autonomous machines. This article suggests that the doctrinal form of vicarious liability is a promising strategy to ground tort liability for autonomous-machine-caused harm. Human or corporate deployers should be held liable for tortious harm caused by autonomous machines in the course of deployment. In this account, autonomous machines constitute a novel legal category as pure legal agents without legal personhood. In reconceiving vicarious liability—and the legal classification of autonomous machines—the article seeks to promote commonsensical liability outcomes for autonomous-machine-caused harm, consistent with tort’s doctrinal and theoretical structure of corrective justice