Being-in-the-world-with: Presence Meets Social And Cognitive Neuroscience

In this chapter we will discuss the concepts of “presence” (Inner Presence) and “social presence” (Co-presence) within a cognitive and ecological perspective. Specifically, we claim that the concepts of “presence” and “social presence” are the possible links between self, action, communication and culture. In the first section we will provide a capsule view of Heidegger’s work by examining the two main features of the Heideggerian concept of “being”: spatiality and “being with”. We argue that different visions from social and cognitive sciences – Situated Cognition, Embodied Cognition, Enactive Approach, Situated Simulation, Covert Imitation - and discoveries from neuroscience – Mirror and Canonical Neurons - have many contact points with this view. In particular, these data suggest that our conceptual system dynamically produces contextualized representations (simulations) that support grounded action in different situations. This is allowed by a common coding – the motor code – shared by perception, action and concepts. This common coding also allows the subject for natively recognizing actions done by other selves within the phenomenological contents. In this picture we argue that the role of presence and social presence is to allow the process of self-identification through the separation between “self” and “other,” and between “internal” and “external”. Finally, implications of this position for communication and media studies are discussed by way of conclusion

Egocentric Spatial Representation in Action and Perception

Neuropsychological findings used to motivate the “two visual systems” hypothesis have been taken to endanger a pair of widely accepted claims about spatial representation in visual experience. The first is the claim that visual experience represents 3-D space around the perceiver using an egocentric frame of reference. The second is the claim that there is a constitutive link between the spatial contents of visual experience and the perceiver’s bodily actions. In this paper, I carefully assess three main sources of evidence for the two visual systems hypothesis and argue that the best interpretation of the evidence is in fact consistent with both claims. I conclude with some brief remarks on the relation between visual consciousness and rational agency

Cognitive science and epistemic openness

Recent findings in cognitive science suggest that the epistemic subject is more complex and epistemically porous than is generally pictured. Human knowers are open to the world via multiple channels, each operating for particular purposes and according to its own logic. These findings need to be understood and addressed by the philosophical community. The current essay argues that one consequence of the new findings is to invalidate certain arguments for epistemic anti-realism

Grounding Mental Content

GROUNDING MENTAL CONTENT Christine Young, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2012 Beliefs and desires’ functions as bases for action are essential for their contents. A belief can only be a basis for a particular action if it is about the object targeted by that action. Whether a belief can legitimately play that role for an action depends on its intentional relation with the world. However, one can have beliefs about objects which do not exist. The intentionality of empty beliefs cannot be construed as a relation between these beliefs and external objects. Yet without this belief-object connection, they can still function legitimately as bases for action. How is this possible? What we need is an adequate account of how a belief’s intentionality is grounded. But perhaps grounding does not have to take the form of an intentional relation between a token belief and its referent. It can be more indirect and complex, so that beliefs’ functions as bases for action are not jeopardized by non-existence of their referents. One thing seems undeniable. One can only have beliefs about particular objects, if one interacts with the world. The question is: how are beliefs grounded in such interactions? This is the central question for my dissertation. This essay has four chapters. In the first chapter, I consider the idea that all empty thoughts can be grounded in object-dependent thoughts in subject-world interactions. The arguments I will consider are Gareth Evans's in Varieties of Reference. I will argue that these arguments do not succeed. In the second section, I will consider a materialist proposal: thoughts are grounded in virtue of causal properties of subject-world interactions. For this section, I will examine Dretske's functionalism in Explaining Behavior. I will argue that intentionality cannot arise from causal structures. In the third chapter, I will present my own positive view. The main ideas are: 1) intentionality of token beliefs or desires is grounded in the subject's representational capacities, 2) these capacities are grounded in how their development actualize the subject's intentional potential. The final chapter presents application of my positive views to contemporary debates

Three essays on the nature of consciousness

You and I are conscious. So are most humans and higher mammals. However, things like tables, chairs, rocks, and other inanimate objects are not. Though there is something it is like to be me, there is nothing it is like to be a table. But what is it to be conscious? What is this property that we have but that inanimate objects lack? This is the question my dissertation seeks to answer. I begin by noting an asymmetry in our epistemic access to qualia––roughly those qualities that we are immediately aware of in conscious experience. I argue that at least some of these qualities are spatial qualities and, moreover, spatial qualities that are not typically instantiated by subjects or the internal states of subjects. The moral is that, in general, being conscious must consist in being related to certain qualities that are not ‘in the heads’ of conscious subjects. Consciousness extends beyond the bounds of skin and skull. My view is that only two theorists can adequately explain this: the intentionalist and the naïve realist. Roughly, the intentionalist thinks that to have a perceptual experience is to phenomenally represent the world as being some way, whereas the naïve realist thinks that to have a perceptual experience is, at least sometimes, to simply perceive the world. Though many hold that we must choose between these theories, I show that this is false. All positive naïve realist theses admit of intentionalist precisification. In this way, we may be both intentionalists and naïve realists. Once we find our footing as intentionalists who embrace naïve realism, we face a further question: What is the place of consciousness in nature? Answering this question is harder than generally acknowledged since phenomenal representation has peculiar representational limits. Just as there are things that cannot be pictorially or diagrammatically represented, there are things that cannot be phenomenally represented. One cannot, for example, phenomenally represent color without phenomenally representing space. But extant theories that ‘reduce’ phenomenal representation to naturalistic ingredients fail to respect these limits. We must, therefore, embrace a non-reductive theory of consciousness.Philosoph

How the Brain Makes Up the Mind: a heuristic approach to the hard problem of consciousness

A solution to the “hard problem” requires taking the point of view of the organism and its sub- agents. The organism constructs phenomenality through acts of fiat, much as we create meaning in language, through the use of symbols that are assigned meaning in the context of an embodied evolutionary history. Phenomenality is a virtual representation, made to itself by an executive agent (the conscious self), which is tasked with monitoring the state of the organism and its environment, planning future action, and coordinating various sub-agencies. Consciousness is not epiphenomenal and serves a function for higher organisms that is distinct from unconscious processing. While a strictly scientific solution to the hard problem is not possible for a science that excludes the subjectivity it seeks to explain, there is hope to at least informally bridge the explanatory gulf between mind and matter

Can Science Explain Consciousness?

For diverse reasons, the problem of phenomenal consciousness is persistently challenging. Mental terms are characteristically ambiguous, researchers have philosophical biases, secondary qualities are excluded from objective description, and philosophers love to argue. Adhering to a regime of efficient causes and third-person descriptions, science as it has been defined has no place for subjectivity or teleology. A solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness will require a radical approach: to take the point of view of the cognitive system itself. To facilitate this approach, a concept of agency is introduced along with a different understanding of intentionality. Following this approach reveals that the autopoietic cognitive system constructs phenomenality through acts of fiat, which underlie perceptual completion effects and “filling in”—and, by implication, phenomenology in general. It creates phenomenality much as we create meaning in language, through the use of symbols that it assigns meaning in the context of an embodied evolutionary history that is the source of valuation upon which meaning depends. Phenomenality is a virtual representation to itself by an executive agent (the conscious self) tasked with monitoring the state of the organism and its environment, planning future action, and coordinating various sub- agencies. Consciousness is not epiphenomenal, but serves a function for higher organisms that is distinct from that of unconscious processing. While a strictly scientific solution to the hard problem is not possible for a science that excludes the subjectivity it seeks to explain, there is hope to at least psychologically bridge the explanatory gulf between mind and matter, and perhaps hope for a broader definition of science

Natürliches und künstliches Bewusstsein

Based on results from evolutionary psychology, we discuss important functions that can be served by consciousness in autonomous robots. These include deliberately controlled action, conscious awareness, self-awareness, metacognition, and ego consciousness. We distinguish intrinsic intentionality from consciousness, but argue it is also important to understanding robot cognition. Finally, we explore the Hard Problem for robots (i.e., whether they can experience subjective awareness) from the perspective of the theory of protophenomena.En s’appuyant sur les résultats de la psychologie évolutionniste, nous examinons les différentes fonctions importantes que puisse remplir la conscience dans les robots autonomes : action contrôlée, prise de conscience, conscience de soi, métacognition, conscience du moi. Nous distinguons l’intentionnalité intrinsèque de la conscience, mais soutenons également l’importance de la compréhension de la cognition robotique. Enfin, nous étudions le « Hard Problem » concernant les robots, c’est-à-dire la question de savoir s’ils peuvent connaître une prise de conscience subjective, dans une perspective de la théorie du protophénomène.Ausgehend von Erkenntnissen der Evolutionären Psychologie untersucht dieser Beitrag wichtige Funktionen, die das Bewusstsein autonomer Roboter ausfüllen kann. Gemeint sind willkürlich kontrolliertes Handeln, bewusstes Wahrnehmen, Eigenwahrnehmung, Metaerkenntnis sowie Bewusstsein des eigenen Selbst. Der Verfasser unterscheidet zwischen intrinsischer Intentionalität und Bewusstsein, führt jedoch das Argument ins Feld, dass es ebenso wichtig sei, die Erkenntnisweise eines Roboters zu verstehen. Abschließend wird, aus dem Blickwinkel der Theorie von den Protophänomenen, das für Roboter „schwierige Problem” untersucht, d.h. die Frage, ob sie zu subjektiver Wahrnehmung fähig sind

Mental content : consequences of the embodied mind paradigm

The central difference between objectivist cognitivist semantics and embodied cognition consists in the fact that the latter is, in contrast to the former, mindful of binding meaning to context-sensitive mental systems. According to Lakoff/Johnson's experientialism, conceptual structures arise from preconceptual kinesthetic image-schematic and basic-level structures. Gallese and Lakoff introduced the notion of exploiting sensorimotor structures for higherlevel cognition. Three different types of X-schemas realise three types of environmentally embedded simulation: Areas that control movements in peri-personal space; canonical neurons of the ventral premotor cortex that fire when a graspable object is represented; the firing of mirror neurons while perceiving certain movements of conspecifics. ..