Chemero comenta aquí dos obras Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy de Patricia Churchland y Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthless Reductive Account de John Bickle.
Aparte de la correspondiente reseña, la posición de Chemero queda reflejada en estas líneas: "For although almost most proponents of the situated, embodied cognitive science agree with Churchland and Bickle in their desire to apply results from the natural sciences to philosophical issues, they are not at all interested in reducing the mental to the neural" (p. 5).
Comienza recogiendo la observación realizada por Bechtel, Abrahamson and Graham (1999) acerca de la evolución de las ciencias cognitivas, que fue internalista hasta mediados de los años 80, a partir de este momento habría comenzado un proceso de "expansión" en dos direcciones, una descendente (o hacia abajo) hacia el cerebro, y otra hacia fuera o hacia el exterior, en el entorno ("outwards into the environment and dowards into the brain" -Bechtel et al, citado en p. 1).
Las dos obras reseñadas representan el primer movimiento, mientras que el segundo, desde cuya óptica escribe Chemero, se corresponde con la ciencia cognitiva situada y corpórea.
Tanto la obra de Churchland como la de Bickle son reduccionistas y defensoras de la de la identidad mente-cerebro. Churchland sostiene que la ciencia cognitiva es importante para la neurociencia porque indica a los neurocientíficos qué actividad mental necesita ser dilucidada. La autora también parece seguir la perspectiva tradicional de la ciencia cognitiva al entender la mente en términos de procesamiento de la información.
La posición de Bickle con respecto a la relación entre filosofía y neurociencia es aún más radical si cabe que la de Churchland, pero encuentro particularmente interesante su tratamiento -filosófico- de la tesis de la realización múltiple.
Como hemos visto, los dos libros respaldan la expansión "descendente" de la ciencia cognitiva; sin embargo, mantiene Chemero, los seguidores de la expansión "hacia fuera" deben resistirse, al menos parcialmente. En este punto es donde encontramos el la afirmación que he citado al principio: aunque la mayoría (?) de los proponentes de la ciencia cognitiva situada y corpórea comparten con Churchland y Bickle la aplicación de los resultados de las ciencias naturales a questiones filosóficas rechazan la reducción de lo mental a lo neural. De hecho, según Chemero, la característica de la ciencia cognitiva situada y corpórea es que el objeto de la explicación en psicología es el conjunto cerebro-cuerpo-entorno. ¿Cuál debería ser entonces la actitud de esta ciencia cognitiva hacia la neurofilosofía? Insistir en que lo mental no está confinado en la cabeza. Esto supone el rechazo de dos premisas fundamentales del enfoque neurofilosófico, a saber, el internalismo y el representacionalismo (sin abandonar una posición naturalista, es decir sin hacerse acreedores de los epítetos "no-brainer" o "a priori philosopher of mind" -p. 5).
Chemero considera que hay argumentos empíricos en contra del internalismo y también critica el representacionalismo (en concreto el uso de de la noción de la teoría de la emulación de Grush). Como alternativa propone la teoría de los sistemas dinámicos.
En conclusión la ciencia cognitiva situada y corpórea debe:
1) Admitir que el cerebro es importante.
2) Adoptar el modelo de sistemas dinámicos para explicar la actividad del sistema cerebro-cuerpo-entorno.
3) Abandonar por completo los argumentos basados en Tierras gemelas, qualia invertidos, o psicología marciana.
No se trata de ignorar los resultados neurocientíficos sino de mostrar que se interpretan mejor como referidos a una parte del sistema cerebro-cuerpo-entorno.
martes, 25 de septiembre de 2012
domingo, 16 de octubre de 2011
"Why There Still Has to Be a Language of Thought". Fodor (1987)
Hay traducción castellana como apéndice de Psicosemántica en Tecnos.
"Mental simulation, Tacit Theory, and the Threat of Collapse" Davies and Stone (2001)
DRAFT (to be proofread)
-Firstly, A GENERAL QUESTION: Why is (so) important the alternative between theory- theory and simulation? What is at stake?
One possible aspect of this question might be the idea of knowledge in theory-theory involving laws, generalizations, and/or formal rules. Simulation does not require knowledge in this sense.
It is clear the relevance of unconscious processes in our behaviour and even many psychologists point out how they underlie conscious mental states (and cause them, at least to some extent); the problem is whether to account for those unconscious processes in terms of (tacit) knowledge is justified. It is thought that human beings have a kind of innate unconscious system to produce language; due to this system we “know” how to use language, although we are no aware of the system itself. I think that this system is not “knowledge”, because there are different kinds of unconscious processes or unconscious mental phenomena and not all of them have to be knowledge. In my opinion, a key concept which I have not seen in these papers is memory: tacit knowledge should be something that you have stored in your memory and may be accessible. However, an innate and unconscious Universal Grammar (Chomsky) is not stored in the memory in this way. According to this criterion the ability to predict/interpret/explain the behaviour of other people could depend partly on tacit knowledge, but also on unconscious capacities not stored in memory (for example, mirror neurons and their operations). As a general rule, things that are innate are not stored in memory, but in other systems (or ways); therefore they is no (tacit) knowledge.
Possibly the notion of explicit representation somehow corresponds to the criterion based on memory, although they differ in some respects (interesting: analyzing these differences).
Explicit representation may be another controversial issue:
Does require tacit knowledge explicit representation?
The answer given by Heal is NO. But is more difficult to see why or how Davies and Stone connect this question to “the mirroning relation between causal structure and derivational structure” (it seems to me that this relation is, at least apparently, similar to the relation between syntax (causal) and semantic (inferential) in Fodor).
What does mean explicit representation? (An answer is provided in the article: language-like format, sentence-like representations).
PERSONAL AND SUBPERSONAL LEVELS
The final goal of the debate, as far as I know, concerns interpretations/predictions/explanations at the level of folk psychology[A1]. Since folk psychology runs at the personal level, this level turns out to be crucial. On the other hand, it may be uncontroversial that there are specific relations between personal and subpersonal levels (for example in so far as it is known that mental personal behaviour is connected to particular neural activity), the point is to figure out the nature of these relations and when they are relevant (autonomy, reduction, etc. –By the way, autonomy is relative, that is, concerns to a particular aspect or description, as there are actual relations-). Therefore, there are also subpersonal levels which can be considered if it is showed that they are relevant regarding the personal level. Several problems might be found in this respect: the distinction between biological (mainly neurobiological) subpersonal levels, physical - chemical levels, and psychological subpersonal levels (information processing mechanisms could be just a theory about these levels but I am not very familiar with this concept) is sometimes not taken into account.
QUESTION:
Although subpersonal levels are always unconscious, can be considered any unconscious mental state as a personal?
[A1]So, related to mindreading, to the theory of mind issue and to social cognition. But also to the computational theory of mind and AI (in Fodor explicitely).
"Beliefs and Subdoxactic States" Stich (1978)
DRAFT (to be proofread)
So far I thought that, according to functionalism, the key property of intentional mental states was, apart from intentionality itself, their causal role. However, in the Stich paper causality appears connected to subdoxactic states, while the relation between intentional states is mainly conceived in terms of inference[A1]. Moreover, Stich suggests certain link between inference and consciousness (what implies a link between intentional states, esenctialy beliefs, and consciousness), whereas in the standard cognitive-scientific view the link traditionally underlined has been between intentional states and unconscious processes (For instance, Fodor 1987).
Although the link between inference and beliefs is in general clear, sometimes the position of the author is rather confusing, for instance, he admits that “inference relation includes other states in addition to beliefs” (514). It is true that he assume the existence of “specialized and limited” (507) inferential contact between beliefs and subdoxactic states, but in other occasions he emphasizes the opposite view: the two features which distinguishes beliefs from subdoxactic states are the acces to consciousness and inferential integration.
Why is important the distinction between beliefs and sybdoxactic states? Apparently the reason, according to Stich, would be the acceptance of intuitive psychology theory (which is coherent with this distinction, unlike the theory posited by Harman). But it is a sufficient reason (or ever the only one)? (Stich also suggests the importance to identify a particular psychological state -500, also 514-515-).
In general, the article shows that the concept of inference is problematic and possibly ambiguous (see 512 and 513 –perceptual inference, computational inference, etc.). Stich claims that the use of the concept in this context is an empirical question (513-514), but a matter of definition, I think, rarely is just an empirical question.
Another interesting point is whether beliefs have to have the form of linguistic representation. In this were the case, then linguistic representation would be a criterion for beliefs (516-517).
Additional question: It is not very clear the relation between simulation and inference: the reason for neglecting the distinction, the author suggests, could be that “like Harman, many of those concerned with cognitive simulation have been so captivated with the promise of inferential accounts of the mechanisms underlying perception and thought that they have failed to note the rather special and largely isolated nature of the inferential processes between beliefs and subdoxactic states” (517).
ANOTHER QUESTION: THE NON-INFERENTIAL RELATIONS BETWEENS BELIEFS: How are interpreted in this context contradictory beliefs, inconsistency, etc.?
[A1]Could be worhty to note that Fodor posited a kind of nondemostrative inference: "the inference from like effects to like causes" (Fodor 1968, p. 627).
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