Memory without content? Radical enactivism and (post)causal theories of memory

Radical enactivism, an increasingly influential approach to cognition in general, has recently been applied to memory in particular, with Hutto and Peeters New directions in the philosophy of memory, Routledge, New York, 2018) providing the first systematic discussion of the implications of the approach for mainstream philosophical theories of memory. Hutto and Peeters argue that radical enactivism, which entails a conception of memory traces as contentless, is fundamentally at odds with current causal and postcausal theories, which remain committed to a conception of traces as contentful: on their view, if radical enactivism is right, then the relevant theories are wrong. Partisans of the theories in question might respond to Hutto and Peeters’ argument in two ways. First, they might challenge radical enactivism itself. Second, they might challenge the conditional claim that, if radical enactivism is right, then their theories are wrong. In this paper, we develop the latter response, arguing that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, radical enactivism in fact aligns neatly with an emerging tendency in the philosophy of memory: radical enactivists and causal and postcausal theorists of memory have begun to converge, for distinct but compatible reasons, on a contentless conception of memory traces

When Imagining Yourself in Pain, Visual Perspective Matters : The Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Simulated Sensory Experiences

© 2015 Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Cartesian critters can't remember

Descartes held the following view of declarative memory: to remember is to reconstruct an idea that you intellectually recognize as a reconstruction. Descartes countenanced two overarching varieties of declarative memory. To have an intellectual memory is to intellectually reconstruct a universal idea that you recognize as a reconstruction, and to have a sensory memory is to neurophysiologically reconstruct a particular idea that you recognize as a reconstruction. Sensory remembering is thus a capacity of neither ghosts nor machines, but only of human beings qua mind-body unions. This interpretation unifies Descartes’s various remarks (and conspicuous silences) about remembering, from the 1628 Rules for the Direction of the Mind through the suppressed-in-1633 Treatise of Man to the 1649 Passions of the Soul. It also rebuts a prevailing thesis in the current secondary literature—that Cartesian critters can remember—while incorporating the textual evidence for that thesis—Descartes’s detailed descriptions of the corporeal mechanisms that construct sensory memories

Attention, Not Self

Jonardon Ganeri presents a radically reoriented account of mind, to which attention is the key. It is attention, not self, that explains the experiential and normative situatedness of humans in the world. Ganeri draws together three disciplines: analytic philosophy and phenomenology, cognitive science and psychology, and Buddhist thought

Neurocognitive Informatics Manifesto.

Informatics studies all aspects of the structure of natural and artificial information systems. Theoretical and abstract approaches to information have made great advances, but human information processing is still unmatched in many areas, including information management, representation and understanding. Neurocognitive informatics is a new, emerging field that should help to improve the matching of artificial and natural systems, and inspire better computational algorithms to solve problems that are still beyond the reach of machines. In this position paper examples of neurocognitive inspirations and promising directions in this area are given

Proximate and ultimate factors in evolutionary thinking on art

Art is often described as an evolutionary adaptation, but not enough thought has been given to arguments in support of this claim. This can lead to a variety of explanatory issues, such as unjustly describing artmaking as an adaptation, not recognizing its complex nature, and its potentially even more complex evolutionary trajectory. This paper addresses one subject in particular, which is the conceptual distinction between ultimate and proximate levels of explanation. More specifically, this brief analysis investigates to what extent functional, adaptive explanations and proximate mechanisms might be confused, leading to strong adaptationist claims that may not be in accordance with the available evidence. In this paper, two hypotheses are discussed from this perspective, and it is argued that both of them, upon closer and more extensive analysis, might not stand the adaptationist test

Autobiographically Significant Concepts: More Episodic than Semantic in Nature? An Electrophysiological Investigation of Overlapping Types of Memory

A common assertion is that semantic memory emerges from episodic memory, shedding the distinctive contexts associated with episodes over time and/or repeated instances. Some semantic concepts, however, may retain their episodic origins or acquire episodic information during life experiences. The current study examined this hypothesis by investigating the ERP correlates of autobiographically significant (AS) concepts, that is, semantic concepts that are associated with vivid episodic memories. We inferred the contribution of semantic and episodic memory to AS concepts using the amplitudes of the N400 and late positive component, respectively. We compared famous names that easily brought to mind episodic memories (high AS names) against equally famous names that did not bring such recollections to mind (low AS names) on a semantic task (fame judgment) and an episodic task (recognition memory). Compared with low AS names, high AS names were associated with increased amplitude of the late positive component in both tasks. Moreover, in the recognition task, this effect of AS was highly correlated with recognition confidence. In contrast, the N400 component did not differentiate the high versus low AS names but, instead, was related to the amount of general knowledge participants had regarding each name. These results suggest that semantic concepts high in AS, such as famous names, have an episodic component and are associated with similar brain processes to those that are engaged by episodic memory. Studying AS concepts may provide unique insights into how episodic and semantic memory interact

Scaling Up with Radically Embodied Cognition

Radically embodied cognitive science (REC) is typically concerned with basic cognition such as perception and action. However, complex cognition or higher-order cognition is difficult to explain for REC, as these theories eschew traditional representational explanations. This leaves REC with a scaling-up problem. In this dissertation I will explore options for REC to fix its scaling-up problem. I am specifically interested in autonoetic cognition, which is the ability to remember and imagine objects and events in the way they would be experienced if they were immediately present to be perceived. I contend that a simulationist account provides many of th necessary conceptual tools for understanding autonoetic cognition from a REC perspective. Furthermore, simulationist accounts are generally useful, as they are suggestive of a way to understand the observed neural activity and can be used to make empirical predictions. I will examine different simulationist theories in order to determine whether or not they can cohere with REC and help solve the scaling-up problem. Eventually I will argue that the REC commitment to reject representations makes the scaling-up problem insurmountable at this time