The systematicity challenge to anti-representational dynamicism

After more than twenty years of representational debate in the cognitive sciences, anti-representational dynamicism may be seen as offering a rival and radically new kind of explanation of systematicity phenomena. In this paper, I argue that, on the contrary, anti-representational dynamicism must face a version of the old systematicity challenge: either it does not explain systematicity, or else, it is just an implementation of representational theories. To show this, I present a purely behavioral and representation-free account of systematicity. I then consider a case of insect sensorimotor systematic behavior: communicating behavior in honey bees. I conclude that anti-representational dynamicism fails to capture the fundamental trait of systematic behaviors qua systematic, i.e., their involving exercises of the same behavioral capacities. I suggest, finally, a collaborative strategy in pursuit of a rich and powerful account of this central phenomenon of high cognition at all levels of explanation, including the representational level

Structuring Thought: Concepts, Computational Syntax, and Cognitive Explanation

The topic of this dissertation is what thought must be like in order for the laws and generalizations of psychology to be true. I address a number of contemporary problems in the philosophy of mind concerning the nature and structure of concepts and the ontological status of mental content. Drawing on empirical work in psychology, I develop a number of new conceptual tools for theorizing about concepts, including a counterpart model of concepts\u27 role in linguistic communication, and a deflationary theory of concepts\u27 formal features. I also suggest some new answers to old problems, arguing, for example, that content realism is not hostage to a naturalized semantics. This dissertation can, as a whole, be read as a sympathetic re-evaluation of the language of thought hypothesis (LOT). LOT claims that thoughts are sentences in a mental language of computation, and are composed of meaningful, atomic symbols—concepts—which are individuated entirely by their formal features. Each chapter either defends various components of LOT from recent criticism, or fills in gaps in the theory. I begin the dissertation by introducing the language of thought project, and motivating and explaining each of its central components. In chapter 2, I discuss a recent competitor to atomism—neo-empiricism—and argue that it fails to meet several key desiderata on theories of concepts, and defend atomism from similar charges. In chapter 3, I argue against a view common to both philosophy and psychology: that concepts must be shareable. If true, atomism is in jeopardy. I find shareability to be unmotivated, and suggest an alternative counterpart model of concepts that does a better job of explaining the things shareability was supposed to explain. Chapter 4 takes up the question of what formal features are and how mental symbols are individuated. I develop a reductive account, arguing that formal features are certain sorts of physical properties and symbol types are sets of these properties. I turn to the topic of content in chapter 5, and defend a very strong version of content realism against recent criticism

Recursion in cognition: a computational investigation into the representation and processing of language

La recursividad entendida como auto-referencia se puede aplicar a varios constructos de las ciencias cognitivas, como las definiciones teóricas, los procedimientos mecánicos, los procesos de cálculo (sean éstos abstractos o concretos) o las estructuras. La recursividad es una propiedad central tanto del procedimiento mecánico que subyace a la facultad del lenguaje como de las estructuras que esta facultad genera. Sin embargo, tanto las derivaciones sintácticas de la gramática, que constituyen un proceso computacional abstracto, como las estrategias de procesamiento del parser, que son un proceso en tiempo real, proceden de forma iterativa, lo cual sugiere que la especificación recursiva de un algoritmo se implementa de forma iterativa. Además, la combinación de la recursividad con las unidades léxicas y las imposiciones de los interfaces con los que la facultad del lenguaje interactúa resulta en un conjunto de estructuras sui generis que no tienen parangón en otros dominios cognitivos.Recursion qua self-reference applies to various constructs within the cognitive sciences, such as theoretical definitions, mechanical procedures (or algorithms), (abstract or real-time) computational processes and structures. Recursion is an intrinsic property of both the mechanical procedure underlying the language faculty and the structures this faculty generates. However, the recursive nature of the generated structures and the recursive character of the processes need to be kept distinct, their study meriting individual treatment. In fact, the nature of both the syntactic derivations of the grammar (an abstract computational process) and the processing strategies of the parser (a real-time process) are iterative, which suggests that recursively-defined algorithms are implemented iteratively in linguistic cognition. Furthermore, the combination of recursion, lexical items and the impositions of the interfaces the language faculty interacts with results in a sui generis set of structures with which other domains of the mind bear the most superficial of relations

Bee-ing There: The Systematicity of Honeybee Navigation Supports a Classical Theory of Honeybee Cognition

The Classical theory of cognition proposes that there are cognitive processes that are computations defined over syntactically specified representations, "sentences" in a language of thought, for which the representational-constituency relation is concatenative. The main rival to Classicism is(Nonimplementational, or Radical, Distributed) Connectionism. It proposes that cognitive processes are computations defined over syntactically simple, distributed representions, for which the constituency relation is nonconcatenative. I argue that Connectionism, unlike Classicism, fails to provide an adequate theoretical framework for explaining systematically related cognitive capacities and that this is due to its necessary reliance on nonconcatenative constituency. There appears to be an interesting divergence of attitude among philosophers of psychology and cognitive scientists regarding Classicism's language of thought hypothesis. On one extreme, there are those who argue that only humans are likely to possess a language of thought (or that we at least have no evi- dence to the contrary). On the other extreme, there are those who argue that distinctively human thinking is not likely to be explicable in terms of a language of thought. They point to features of human cognition which they claim strongly support the hypothesis that human cognitive-state transition functions are computationally intractable. This implicitly suggests that the cognitive processes of simpler, nonhuman minds might be computationally tractable and thus amenable to Classical computational explanation. I review much of the recent literature on honeybee navigation. I argue that many capacities of honeybees to acquire various sorts of navigational information do in fact exhibit systematicity. That conclusion, together with the correctness of the view that Classicism provides a better theoretical framework than does Connectionism for explaining the systematicity of the relevant cognitive capacities, gives one reason in support of the claim that sophisticated navigators like honeybees have a kind of language of thought. At the very least, it provides one reason in support of the claim that the constituency relation for the mental representations of such navigators is concatenative, not nonconcatenative

Integrative (Synchronisations-)Mechanismen der (Neuro-)Kognition vor dem Hintergrund des (Neo-)Konnektionismus, der Theorie der nichtlinearen dynamischen Systeme, der Informationstheorie und des Selbstorganisationsparadigmas

Der Gegenstand der vorliegenden Arbeit besteht darin, aufbauend auf dem (Haupt-)Thema, der Darlegung und Untersuchung der Lösung des Bindungsproblems anhand von temporalen integrativen (Synchronisations-)Mechanismen im Rahmen der kognitiven (Neuro-)Architekturen im (Neo-)Konnektionismus mit Bezug auf die Wahrnehmungs- und Sprachkognition, vor allem mit Bezug auf die dabei auftretende Kompositionalitäts- und Systematizitätsproblematik, die Konstruktion einer noch zu entwickelnden integrativen Theorie der (Neuro-)Kognition zu skizzie-ren, auf der Basis des Repräsentationsformats einer sog. „vektoriellen Form“, u.z. vor dem Hintergrund des (Neo-)Konnektionismus, der Theorie der nichtlinearen dynamischen Systeme, der Informationstheorie und des Selbstorganisations-Paradigmas