Cognitive Metaphysics

Decock, Lieven

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01700

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…An important point is that the relevant change is a single event: identity arises from temporally separated phenomenal references to a single neuronal process, namely the initial condition. In contrast, purely neurophysiological sequential processes can only yield impressions of close resemblance: recurrent cortical processes (see Lamme, 2006 ), repeated retrievals from memory, classifications (Catenacci Volpi et al, 2014 ), similarity above a certain threshold (Decock, 2018 ) or references to attractor networks (Mozer, 2009 ; Catenacci Volpi et al, 2014 ; Orpwood, 2017 ) cannot explain “identity.”…”

Section: Theoretical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inattentive Perception, Time, and the Incomprehensibility of Consciousness

Krüger¹

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Cerebral energy supply is insufficient to support continuous neuronal processing of the plethora of time-constant objects that we are aware of. As a result, the brain is forced to limit processing resources to (the most relevant) cases of change. The neuronally generated world is thus temporally discontinuous. This parallels the fact that, in all relevant microscopic fundamental equations of nature, temporal change plays a dominant role. When a scientist calculates a “solution” to such an equation, integration over time is an essential step. The present Hypothesis expresses that the step from neuronal activity to phenomenal content of consciousness is reflective of a (phenomenal) “solution:” the main source of the incomprehensibility of consciousness is proposed to result from the introduction of phenomenal time-constant entities. These are “filled-in” via integration, even though neuronal data only exists for changes to these entities. In this way, a temporally continuous picture of the world phenomenally appears. Qualia are “initial conditions,” which are required for integration and cannot be deduced from present data. Phenomenal “identity” (vs. “high similarity”) is related to qualia. Inattentive visual perception, which is only rarely investigated, offers insights into these relationships. Introspectively, unattended vision appears rich because percepts are cumulated over long time spans, whereas attentive perception relies purely on present neuronal signals. The present Hypothesis is that a brief neuronal activity can signify long-lasting and constant phenomenal content of consciousness. Experimental support is presented that comes from discrepancies between neuronal activity and perception: transient neuronal responses to sustained stimuli, “filling-in,” change blindness, identity vs. close resemblance.

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Section: Theoretical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inattentive Perception, Time, and the Incomprehensibility of Consciousness

Krüger¹

2022

Front. Psychol.

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“…Artists are free to use or ignore perspective, to be realistic or abstract. However, perspective convergence and foreshortening is not just a convention (Decock, 2018). It describes the behavior of light.…”

Section: Perspective Compressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flying-Gallop and Foreshortening: Winner Circle

Kennedy

Mastandrea

Juricevic

et al. 2019

Empirical Studies of the Arts

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“…In other words, while there seem to be ways of coercion between count and mass, rose denotes countable objects, and before abstracting to some hypothesized common denominator, one might rather consider formalizing the mechanisms of coercion as part of a general theory of polysemy. Correspondingly, given the importance of the structure of the (if only perceptual) world, and recent widespread interest both in cognition and in what there is or can be (experienced) (Carstensen 2011, Decock 2018, Zlatev 2016, one should start there and then build or modify formal systems accordingly.…”

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confidence: 99%

Paul M. Pietroski: Conjoining Meanings. Semantics Without Truth Values

Carstensen¹

2019

Zeitschrift Für Sprachwissenschaft

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There is an enormous range of theories of meaning in linguistics and philosophy, and most notably, there is still a wide gap between logical and (especially cognitive) linguistic approaches. With his monograph Conjoining Meanings (henceforth CM), Paul M. Pietroski sets out to join the communities and to bridge this gap with an "internalist semantics" approach to meaning that is cognitive in the Chomskyan sense, but rooted in modern logic. In Chapter 0 "Overture", Pietroski introduces the core assumptions of CM treated in more depth in later chapters. He starts by saying that human natural languages (which he calls "Slangs") are generative procedures that connect meanings with pronunciations. Continuing with what meanings are not, he rejects both the notion 'meanings are concepts' (i. e., to identify meanings and concepts) and 'meanings are extensions' (or corresponding/equivalent truth-conditional conceptions, i. e., the propositional and Davidsonian stances according to Speaks 2018). Instead, Pietroski proposes to view meanings as instructions for how to access simple concepts or build complex concepts. As to semantic composition, he notes that Frege's functor-argument apparatus and derivatives like type-theoretic Lambda calculus are much too powerful to model human meaning composition. The alternative he then previews is based on a restricted kind of predication (only classificatory monadic concepts of type ⟨M⟩ and relational dyadic concepts of type ⟨D⟩) with corresponding compositional operations (M-junction, D-junction). Chapter 1 elaborates on the linguistic reasons for assuming a mentalist, generative, non-extensional approach, where meaning is neither based on extensions or representations of extensions, nor on relations to truth values (contrary to Lewisian, Davidsonian, and also Montagovian approaches). To exemplify his points, Pietroski uses linguistic ambiguities, Putnam's "water" case, and Liar sentences. Chapter 2 introduces concepts as "composable mental symbols that can be used to think about things" (p. 77) based on predicates which Pietroski shows can be motivated by classical logic (cf. 3.1) but differ from those in other current accounts. He argues that monadic predicates should not be regarded as truth-Open Access.

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Cognitive Metaphysics

Cited by 7 publications

References 83 publications

Inattentive Perception, Time, and the Incomprehensibility of Consciousness

Inattentive Perception, Time, and the Incomprehensibility of Consciousness

Flying-Gallop and Foreshortening: Winner Circle

Paul M. Pietroski: Conjoining Meanings. Semantics Without Truth Values

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