Neurofenomenologia: zaproszenie do dyskusji

No more than a few years ago could open an article concerning neurophenomenology with a statement describing recent rediscovery of the problem of consciousness by the cognitive sciences and pointing to the fact that right now, explaining conscious experience in neuroscientific or computational terms poses the greatest challenge for those sciences. Today however, constatations of this sort start to sound like trivial descriptions of a universally recognized state of affairs. The question of “how the water of the physical brain is turned into a wine of consciousness” is now among the mainstream problems of cognitive science

Action guidance is not enough, representations need correspondence too: A plea for a two-factor theory of representation

The aim of this article is to critically examine what I call Action-Centric Theories of Representation (ACToRs). I include in this category theories of representation that (1) reject construing representation in terms of a relation that holds between representation itself (the representational vehicle) and what is represented, and instead (2) try to bring the function that representations play for cognitive systems to the center stage. Roughly speaking, according to proponents of ACToRs, what makes a representation (that is, what is constitutive of it being a representation) is its being functionally involved in preselecting or guiding the actions of cognitive systems. I intend to argue that while definitely valuable, ACToRs are underconstrained and thus not entirely satisfying, since there exist structures that would count as representations according to ACToRs, but which do not play functional roles that could be nontrivially or in an explanatorily valuable way classified as representing something for a cognitive system. I outline a remedy for this theoretical situation by postulating that a fully satisfying theory of representation in cognitive science should have two factors; i.e., it should combine the pragmatic, action-oriented aspect present in ACToRs with an element that emphasizes the importance of the relation holding between a representational vehicle and what is represented

Un-debunking ordinary objects with the help of predictive processing

Preprint artykułu, który ukaże się w czasopiśmie: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (ISSN 0007-0882) w 2021 roku.Debunking arguments aim to undermine common sense beliefs by showing that they are not explanatorily or causally linked to the entities they are purportedly about. Rarely are facts about the etiology of common sense beliefs invoked for the opposite aim, that is, to support the reality of entities that furnish our manifest image of the world. Here I undertake this sort of un-debunking project. My focus is on the metaphysics of ordinary physical objects. I use the view of perception as approximate Bayesian inference to show how representations of ordinary objects can be extracted from sensory input in a rational and truth-tracking manner. Drawing an analogy between perception construed as Bayesian hypothesis testing and scientific inquiry, I sketch out how some of the intuitions that traditionally inspired arguments for scientific realism also find application with regards to proverbial tables and chairs

Perceptual justification in the Bayesian brain: A foundherentist account

Preprint artykułu zaakceptowanego do druku w czasopiśmie SyntheseIn this paper, I use the predictive processing (PP) theory of perception to tackle the question of how perceptual states can be rationally involved in cognition by justifying other mental states. I put forward two claims regarding the epistemological implications of PP. First, perceptual states can confer justification on other mental states because the perceptual states are themselves rationally acquired. Second, despite being inferentially justified rather than epistemically basic, perceptual states can still be epistemically responsive to the mind-independent world. My main goal is to elucidate the epistemology of perception already implicit in PP. But I also hope to show how it is possible to peacefully combine central tenets of foundationalist and coherentist accounts of the rational powers of perception while avoiding the well-recognized pitfalls of either

Just how conservative is conservative predictive processing?

Predictive Processing (PP) framework construes perception and action (and perhaps other cognitive phenomena) as a matter of minimizing prediction error, i.e. the mismatch between the sensory input and sensory predictions generated by a hierarchically organized statistical model. There is a question of how PP fits into the debate between traditional, neurocentric and representation-heavy approaches in cognitive science and those approaches that see cognition as embodied, environmentally embedded, extended and (largely) representation-free. In the present paper, I aim to investigate and clarify the cognitivist or ‘conservative’ reading of PP. I argue that the conservative commitments of PP can be divided into three distinct categories: (1) representationalism, (2) inferentialism, and (3) internalism. I show how these commitments and their relations should be understood and argue for an interpretation of each that is both non-trivial and largely ecumenical towards the 4E literature. Conservative PP is as progressive as conservatism gets

The rational role of the perceptual sense of reality

Artykuł zaakceptowany do publikacji w czasopiśmie Mind & Language. Link do publikacji: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/mila.12445 Preprint artykułu.Perceptual experience usually comes with “phenomenal force”, a strong sense that it reflects reality as it is. Some philosophers have argued that it is in virtue of possessing phenomenal force that perceptual experiences are able to non-inferentially justify beliefs. In this article, I introduce an alternative, inferentialist take on the epistemic role of phenomenal force. Drawing on Bayesian modeling in cognitive science, I argue that the sense of reality that accompanies conscious vision can be viewed as epistemically appraisable in light of its rational etiology

The Evidence of the Senses: A Predictive Processing-Based Take on the Sellarsian Dilemma

Traditional foundationalist empiricist projects in epistemology postulated that sensory states of the subject are epistemically basic, in that they are capable of conferring justification on mental representations of the world without themselves needing to be (inferentially) justified by any antecedent representational states. This sort of view faces a seemingly hopeless dilemma, whose recognition is usually attributed to Wilfrid Sellars. If we treat sensory states as brute stimulations devoid of intentional content, then it is hard to see how the senses could provide subjects with anything that could possibly feature in justification-conferring relations with representational states. If we treat them as contentful, then in order to justify contentful states, sensory states themselves would presumably need to be justified by other representational states; but if this is so, they are not able to play a properly foundational epistemic role. In the article, I use the Predictive Processing (PP) view of perception in order to sketch a possible resolution of the Sellarsian dilemma. I draw on PP in order to show how sensory states could actually serve a normative role that is recognizably similar to the one envisioned by traditional empiricists. To do this, I first distinguish representational from non-representational posits of PP and subsequently focus on the role that PP ascribes to sensory or “driving” signal. In particular, I argue that (1) the driving signal plays a role of a non-representational, contentless detector; at the same time, (2) it serves as an “impartial” or “theory-neutral” tribunal against which contentful internal models are actively tested and updated. Drawing on Anil Gupta’s work, I discuss the epistemic involvement of the sensory signal in perceptual inference and show how the signal provides conditional justification (i.e. justification that is conditional on the justification or rationality of prior knowledge) to perceptual hypotheses. Then I discuss the role the sensory signal plays in perceptual learning. I employ the notion of “epistemic convergence” to sketch out how the sensory signal could provide perceivers with unconditional justification (i.e. one that is not relativized to the justification of prior knowledge). If this approach is right, the Sellarsian dilemma seems to be averted. We can see how the senses can be at the same time silent (i.e. contentless) and capable of playing a sort of foundational epistemic role

Predictive processing, implicit and explicit

Preprint artykułu, który ukaże się w pracy zbiorowej: R. Thompson (ed). Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Implicit Cognition. Routledge