koglist June 2003

koglist@maillist.ttk.hu

6 participants
11 discussions

New issues of Cognitive Systems Research

by Ron Sun

New issues of Cognitive Systems Research are now available on ScienceDirect: (If you have questions about this or other aspects of ScienceDirect, locate the Help Desk at http://www.info.sciencedirect.com/contacts.) =============================================================================== Cognitive Systems Research: Volume 4, Issue 1, Pages 1-88 (March 2003) TABLE OF CONTENTS Interrelations between the BDI primitives: Towards heterogeneous agents, Pages 1-22 Maria Fasli http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W6C-47G3MBB-1/1/7a8c45107ff3… The grounding of motivation in artificial animals: Indices of motivational behavior, Pages 23-55 Tony Savage http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W6C-47BX2VC-6/1/2fc5e4f96b8d… Problem solving: Increased planning with practice, Pages 57-76 Glenn Gunzelmann and John R. Anderson http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W6C-47GGC2Y-3/1/b7c0df3dccb8… Review of Visual Attention and Cortical Circuits J. Braun, K. Christof & J. Davis; MIT Press, 2001; ISBN 0-262-02493-4, Pages 77-80 R. Farivar http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W6C-47BX2VC-3/1/358c7eee5237… =============================================================================== Cognitive Systems Research Volume 4, Issue 2, Pages 89-165 (June 2003) TABLE OF CONTENTS Autonomous recovery from hostile code insertion using distributed reflection, Pages 89-117 Catriona M. Kennedy and Aaron Sloman http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W6C-47X1P9V-1/1/324458a57446… Modelling the dynamics of reasoning processes: Reasoning by assumption, Pages 119-136 Catholijn M. Jonker and Jan Treur http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W6C-486YV8X-2/1/bcb1616cc4e2… A temporal-interactivist perspective on the dynamics of mental states, Pages 137-155 Catholijn M. Jonker and Jan Treur http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W6C-486YV8X-1/1/e593e54a7615… Review of the Psychology of Graphic Images M. Massironi; Erlbaum, 2002, Pages 157-159 G. Kurian http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W6C-47BX2VC-4/1/b0d44e63331f… =============================================================================== See the following Web page for the submission, subscription, and other information concerning the journal Cognitive Systems Research: http://www.cecs.missouri.edu/~rsun/journal.html =================================================================== Professor Ron Sun, Ph.D James C. Dowell Professor CS Department, 201 EBW phone: (573) 884-7662 University of Missouri-Columbia fax: (573) 882-8318 Columbia, MO 65211-2060 email: rsun(a)cecs.missouri.edu http://www.cecs.missouri.edu/~rsun ===================================================================

22 years, 10 months

Tizedik Magyar Latas Szimpozium

by Jozsef Fiser

F E L H I V A S ! ! ! A Budapesti Muszaki Egyetem Kognitiv Tudomanyi Kozpontja es a Pecsi Tudomanyegyetem Termeszettudomanyi Kara szimpoziumra invital minden, a biologiai latorendszerek kutatasa es modellezese irant erdeklodot. A latas kutatas a retinaba belepo fenyinformacio elkodolasatol az ezen informacionak az agykeregben torteno kognitiv megertesig huzodo komplex folyamatot vizsgalja interdiszciplinalis modon, a neuro-tudomanyok, a kiserleti pszichologia es a szamitogepes analizis es modellezes eszkozeivel. A Tizedik Latas Szimpozium, melynek hazigazdaja iden a Pecsi Tudomanyegyetem Termeszettudomanyi Kara, kivalo lehetoseget nyujt a hallgatosag szamara hogy nemzetkozi szintu eloadasokat halljon es szemelyes kontaktust teremtsen a szakma hazai kepviseloivel. Az idei jubileumi szimpozium egyben elofutara is a jovo ev augusztusaban Budapesten megrendezesre kerulo European Conference of Visual Perception talalkozonak, ami a szakterulet legrangosabb europai konferenciaja. A szimpozium a kovetekezo formaban kerul megrendezesre. I. Cim: Tizedik Magyar Latas Szimpozium II. Idopont, idotartam, hely: 2003 augusztus 30, szombat, Pecsi Tudomanyegyetem Termeszettudomanyi Kar, Ifjusag Utja 6, Pecs III. Cel: A szimpoziumnak fo celja, hogy forumot, talalkozasi lehetoseget biztositson azon hazai es kulfoldon dolgozo kutatoknak (neuroanatomusoknak, neurofiziologusoknak, pszichologusoknak es neuralis halozatokat modellezo elmeleti szakembereknek), akik a latas kozponti idegrendszeri feldolgozasanak problemajaval kapcsolatos teruleteken dolgoznak. Figyelembe veve a tema interdiszciplinalis voltat, a szimpozium egyik fo celja, hogy megvilagitsa a kulonbozo teruleteken dolgozo kutatok es a hallgatosag elott a tradicionalisan elkulonulo kutatasi diszciplinak kozotti kapcsolatok lehetosegeit. IV. Forma: A szimpozium formaja nagyon kotetlen, nyelve magyar. Minden eloado 15-perces eloadast tart, 5-10 perces vitalehetoseggel az eloadas utan. Celunk nem a formalitas hanem, hogy minel tobb es minel kozvetlenebb parbeszedre adjunk lehetoseget. V. Resztvevok,eloadasok: A szimpoziumon szivesen latott mindenki, aki egyetert annak celjaival, es ugy erzi, hogy abba illo eloadast tudna tartani, illetve erdekli a fenti temakor. A talalkozo profiljanak megfeleloen az eloadasok a latorendszeri anatomia es fiziologia, vizualis pszichofizika, magasabb szintu latas, pszichologia, matematikai es szamitogepes modellezes temakorokbol allnak ossze, de szivesen latunk mindenkit akit altalaban a percepcio, a felismeres temakore erdekel. VI. Jelentkezes: Aki eloadast szeretne tartani a szimpoziumon, kerjuk, lepjen kapcsolatba az alabbi szervezok egyikevel: Fiser Jozsef -- fiser(a)bcs.rochester.edu Gabriel Robert -- Gabriel(a)ttk.pte.hu Felkerjuk azokat is, akik hallgatokent szeretnenek resztvenni, hogy jelezzek reszveteli szandekukat a szervezok egyikenek. Ily modon hozavetoleges kepet tudunk alkotni a varhato letszamrol, es nevreszoloan tudunk mindenkit tajekoztatni a tovabbi fejlemenyekrol. VII. Dijak, szallas: Reszveteli dij nincs. A szimpozium egy napos igy szallasra csak azoknak van szuksege akik hosszabb tartozkodast terveznek. Ilyen esetekben a szallas onkoltseges, aminek megszervezeseben a szervezok segitenek. VIII. Tarsas osszejovetel: Mint az elozo szimpoziumoknal mar megszokhattuk, iden is tervezzuk a szimpozium kotetlen vacsoraval valo zarasat. ------------------------------------------------------------------

22 years, 10 months

Cognition is Categorization

by Stevan Harnad

To be presented at UQaM Cognitive Science Summer Institute on CATEGORISATION, Montreal June 30-July 11, 2003 http://www.unites.uqam.ca/sccog/liens/program.html COGNITION IS CATEGORIZATION Stevan Harnad SUMMARY: All of our categories consist in ways we behave differently toward different kinds of things, whether it be the things we do or don't, eat, mate with, or flee from, or the things that we describe, through our language, as prime numbers, affordances, or absolute discriminables. That is also all that cognition is for -- and about. [Full text: http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003027/ ]

22 years, 10 months

The Annotation Game: On Turing (1950)

by Stevan Harnad

Harnad, Stevan (2004) The Annotation Game: On Turing (1950) on Computing, Machinery, and Intelligence. To appear in: Epstein, Robert & Peters, Grace (Eds.) The Turing Test Sourcebook: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. Kluwer. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/turing.html ________________________________________________________________________ The Annotation Game: On Turing (1950) on Computing, Machinery, and Intelligence. Stevan Harnad "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'" Turing (1950) starts on this equivocation. We know now that what he will go on to consider is not whether or not machines can think, but whether or not machines can do what thinkers like us can do -- and if so, how. Doing is performance capacity, empirically observable. Thinking (or cognition) is an internal state, its correlates empirically observable as neural activity (if we only knew which neural activity corresponds to thinking!) and its associated quality introspectively observable as our own mental state when we are thinking. Turing's proposal will turn out to have nothing to do with either observing neural states or introspecting mental states, but only with generating performance capacity (intelligence?) indistinguishable from that of thinkers like us. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/turing.html

22 years, 10 months

Science & Consciousness Review: Book review - the Ayahuasca

by Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy

Science & Consciousness Review (www.sci-con.org) has released new articles and reviews: _______________________ BOOK REVIEW Science and the Ayahuasca A book review of Benny Shanon's "The antipodes of mind" - by Bernard J. Baars And lastly, before leaving the village, I drank one cup alone. I was sitting on a balcony overlooking a garden. As the brew was having its effect, I started to sing. What poured out of my mouth was a biblical text --- the beginning of the book of Genesis. I chanted, in Hebrew, the creation of the world. And as I did so, the world was being created in front of my eyes: there was water, and then land surfaced, and trees came out of the earth and flowered, and then the world was populated with birds. I stopped there, before the creation of animals. Full text: http://www.sci-con.org/reviews/20030601.html _______________________ LATEST HEADLINES - New books from the MIT Press on consciousness related issues: - Animal Consciousness as a Test Case of Cognitive Science - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - Volume 2, 1, 2003 - Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Vol. 15, Issue 4 - May 2003 See NEWS IN BRIEF at: http://sci-con.org/more_news.html _______________________ PREVIOUS ARTICLES Workshops and seminars: * Crick and Koch's Framework for Consciousness http://www.sci-con.org/ww_framework.html * What the IDA model says about the LR situation http://www.sci-con.org/WW_IDAmodel.html Visit our archives at: http://sci-con.org/archive.html _______________________ NEW ADDRESS Science & Consciousness Review can now be found at www.sci-con.org. Soon, we will launch new features and forums for the scientific study of consciousness. Please update your links and preferences. _______________________ SEND YOUR CONTRIBUTION For students, teachers, scientists, and all other fans of consciousness... Send your news summaries to us. See more at: http://sci-con.org/author_instructions.html ___________________ Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy -- Neuropsychologist -- www.ramsoy.dk ramsoy(a)tiscali.dk Managing Editor Science & Consciousness Review www.sci-con.org Administrator Nordic Network for Consciousness Studies www.psy.au.dk/phd/nncs

22 years, 11 months

Gurven/Behavioral ecology of human food transfers: BBS Call for Commentators

by Behavioral & Brain Sciences

Below is a link to the forthcoming BBS target article, "To Give and to Give Not: The behavioral ecology of human food transfers" by Michael Gurven http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Gurven-06282002/Referees/ This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to: calls(a)bbsonline.org The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every occasion! Hence there is no need to reply except if you wish to comment, or to suggest someone to comment. If you are not a BBS Associate, please approach a current BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work to nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. An electronic list of current BBS Associates is available at this location to help you select a name: http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html (please note that this list is being updated) If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your Curriculum Vitae and BBS will circulate it to appropriate Associates to ask whether they would be prepared to nominate you. (In the meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into our database as an unaffiliated investigator.) ======================================================================= ** IMPORTANT ** ======================================================================= To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, it would be most helpful if you would send us an indication of the relevant expertise you would bring to bear on the paper, and what aspect of the paper you would anticipate commenting upon. (Please note that we only request expertise information in order to simplify the selection process.) Please DO NOT prepare a commentary until you receive a formal invitation, indicating that it was possible to include your name on the final list, which is constructed so as to balance areas of expertise and frequency of prior commentaries in BBS. To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable at the URL that follows the abstract and keywords below. ======================================================================= ======================================================================= To Give and to Give Not: The behavioral ecology of human food transfers Michael Gurven UC-Santa Barbara ABSTRACT: The transfer of food among group members is an ubiquitous feature of small-scale forager and forager-agricultural populations. The uniqueness of pervasive sharing among humans, especially among unrelated individuals, has led researchers to evaluate numerous hypotheses about the adaptive functions and patterns of sharing in different ecologies. This paper attempts to organize available cross-cultural evidence pertaining to several contentious evolutionary models-kin selection, reciprocal altruism, tolerated scrounging, and costly signaling. Debates about the relevance of these models focus primarily on the extent to which individuals exert control over the distribution of foods they acquire, and the extent to which donors receive food or other fitness-enhancing benefits in return for shares given away. Each model can explain some of the variance in sharing patterns within groups, and so generalizations that ignore or deny the importance of any one model may be misleading. Careful multivariate analyses and cross-cultural comparisons of food transfer patterns are therefore necessary tools for assessing aspects of the sexual division of labor, human life history evolution, and the evolution of the family. This paper also introduces a framework for better understanding variation in sharing behavior across small-scale traditional societies. I discuss the importance of resource ecology and the degree of coordination in acquisition activities as a key feature that influences sharing behavior. KEYWORDS: behavioral ecology, costly signaling, cooperation, food sharing, foragers, reciprocal altruism http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Gurven-06282002/Referees/ ======================================================================= ======================================================================= *** SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT *** (1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review. (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential impact!). *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Please note: Your email address has been added to our user database for Calls for Commentators, the reason you received this email. If you do not wish to receive further Calls, please feel free to change your mailshot status through your User Login link on the BBSPrints homepage, using your username and password. Or, email a response with the word "remove" in the subject line. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Barbara Finlay Editor Jeffrey Gray Editor Paul Bloom Editor Behavioral and Brain Sciences bbs(a)bbsonline.org http://www.bbsonline.org -------------------------------------------------------------------

22 years, 11 months

Gurven/Behavioral ecology of human food transfers: BBS Call for Commentators

by Behavioral & Brain Sciences

Dear Dr. Qwerty, Below is a link to the forthcoming BBS target article, "To Give and to Give Not: The behavioral ecology of human food transfers" by Michael Gurven http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Gurven-06282002/Referees/ This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to: calls(a)bbsonline.org The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every occasion! Hence there is no need to reply except if you wish to comment, or to suggest someone to comment. If you are not a BBS Associate, please approach a current BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work to nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. An electronic list of current BBS Associates is available at this location to help you select a name: http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html (please note that this list is being updated) If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your Curriculum Vitae and BBS will circulate it to appropriate Associates to ask whether they would be prepared to nominate you. (In the meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into our database as an unaffiliated investigator.) ======================================================================= ** IMPORTANT ** ======================================================================= To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, it would be most helpful if you would send us an indication of the relevant expertise you would bring to bear on the paper, and what aspect of the paper you would anticipate commenting upon. (Please note that we only request expertise information in order to simplify the selection process.) Please DO NOT prepare a commentary until you receive a formal invitation, indicating that it was possible to include your name on the final list, which is constructed so as to balance areas of expertise and frequency of prior commentaries in BBS. To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable at the URL that follows the abstract and keywords below. ======================================================================= ======================================================================= To Give and to Give Not: The behavioral ecology of human food transfers Michael Gurven UC-Santa Barbara ABSTRACT: The transfer of food among group members is an ubiquitous feature of small-scale forager and forager-agricultural populations. The uniqueness of pervasive sharing among humans, especially among unrelated individuals, has led researchers to evaluate numerous hypotheses about the adaptive functions and patterns of sharing in different ecologies. This paper attempts to organize available cross-cultural evidence pertaining to several contentious evolutionary models-kin selection, reciprocal altruism, tolerated scrounging, and costly signaling. Debates about the relevance of these models focus primarily on the extent to which individuals exert control over the distribution of foods they acquire, and the extent to which donors receive food or other fitness-enhancing benefits in return for shares given away. Each model can explain some of the variance in sharing patterns within groups, and so generalizations that ignore or deny the importance of any one model may be misleading. Careful multivariate analyses and cross-cultural comparisons of food transfer patterns are therefore necessary tools for assessing aspects of the sexual division of labor, human life history evolution, and the evolution of the family. This paper also introduces a framework for better understanding variation in sharing behavior across small-scale traditional societies. I discuss the importance of resource ecology and the degree of coordination in acquisition activities as a key feature that influences sharing behavior. KEYWORDS: behavioral ecology, costly signaling, cooperation, food sharing, foragers, reciprocal altruism http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Gurven-06282002/Referees/ ======================================================================= ======================================================================= *** SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT *** (1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review. (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential impact!). *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Please note: Your email address has been added to our user database for Calls for Commentators, the reason you received this email. If you do not wish to receive further Calls, please feel free to change your mailshot status through your User Login link on the BBSPrints homepage, using your username and password. Or, email a response with the word "remove" in the subject line. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Barbara Finlay Editor Jeffrey Gray Editor Paul Bloom Editor Behavioral and Brain Sciences bbs(a)bbsonline.org http://www.bbsonline.org -------------------------------------------------------------------

22 years, 11 months

Categorization and Abstraction

by Stevan Harnad

Summary of paper presented at conference on: "Access to the Abstract." University of Southern Denmark Odense, 30-31 May 2003 Full text: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/concrete.html There is no Concrete -- by Stevan Harnad Université du Québec à Montreal Pensar es olvidar diferencias, es generalizar, abstraer. En el abarrotado mundo de Funes no había sino detalles, casi inmediatos. Summary: We are accustomed to thinking that a primrose is "concrete" and a prime number is "abstract," that "roundness" is more abstract than "round," and that "property" is more abstract than "roundness." In reality, the relation between "abstract" and "concrete" is more like the (non)relation between "abstract" and "concave," "concrete" being a sensory term [about what something feels like] and "abstract" being a functional term (about what the sensorimotor system is doing with its input in order to produce its output): Feelings and things are correlated, but otherwise incommensurable. Everything that any sensorimotor system such as ourselves manages to categorize successfully is based on abstracting sensorimotor "affordances" (invariant features). The rest is merely a question of what inputs we can and do categorize, and what we must abstract from the particulars of each sensorimotor interaction in order to be able to categorize them correctly. To categorize, in other words, is to abstract. And not to categorize is merely to experience. Borges's Funes the Memorious, with his infinite, infallible rote memory, is a fictional hint at what it would be like not to be able to categorize, not to be able to selectively forget and ignore most of our input by abstracting only its reliably recurrent invariants. But a sensorimotor system like Funes would not really be viable, for if something along those lines did exist, it could not categorize recurrent objects, events or states, hence it could have no language, private or public, and could at most only feel, not function adaptively (hence survive). Luria's "S" in "The Mind of a Mnemonist" is a real-life approximation whose difficulties in conceptualizing were directly proportional to his difficulties in selectively forgetting and ignoring. Watanabe's "Ugly Duckling Theorem" shows how, if we did not selectively weight some properties more heavily than others, everything would be equally (and infinitely and indifferently) similar to everything else. Miller's "Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two" shows that there are (and must be) limitations on our capacity to process and remember information, both in our capacity to discriminate relatively (detect sameness/difference, degree-of-similarity) and in our capacity to discriminate absolutely (identify, categorize, name), The phenomenon of categorical perception shows how selective feature-detection puts a Whorfian "warp" on our feelings of similarity in the service of categorization, compressing within-category similarities and expanding between-category differences by abstracting and selectively filtering inputs through their invariant features, thereby allowing us to sort and name things reliably. Language does allow us to acquire categories indirectly through symbolic description ("hearsay," definition) instead of just through direct sensorimotor trial-and-error experience, but to do so, all the categories named and used in the description must be recursively grounded in direct sensorimotor invariants. Language is largely a way to ground new categories by recombining already grounded ones, often by making their implicit invariant features into explicit categories too. If prime numbers differ from primroses, it is hence only in the degree to which they happen to be indirect, explicit, language-mediated categories. Like everything else, they are recursively grounded in sensorimotor invariants. The democracy of things is that, for sensorimotor systems like ourselves, all things are just absolute discriminables: they number among those categories that our sensorimotor interactions can potentially afford, no more, no less. A primrose affords dicotyledonousness as reliably (if not as surely) as a numerosity of 6 (e.g., 6 primroses) affords factoring (whereas 7 does not). ---------------------------------------------------------------- Come to the UQÀM Summer Institute on Categorisation June 30 - July 11 2003 in Montreal http://www.unites.uqam.ca/sccog/liens/program.html

22 years, 11 months

Debrecen r�szletes

by L�szl� Nemes

Nemes László Debreceni Egyetem Orvos- és Egészségtudományi Centrum Magatartástudományi Intézet _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

22 years, 11 months

Ross & Spurrett/What to Say to a Sceptical Metaphysician

by Behavioral & Brain Sciences

Below is a link to the forthcoming BBS target article What to Say to a Sceptical Metaphysician: A Defense Manual for Cognitive and Behavioral Scientists by Don Ross and David Spurrett http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Ross-12192002/Referees/ This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to: calls(a)bbsonline.org The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every occasion! Hence there is no need to reply except if you wish to comment, or to suggest someone to comment. If you are not a BBS Associate, please approach a current BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work to nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. An electronic list of current BBS Associates is available at this location to help you select a name: http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html (please note that this list is being updated) If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your Curriculum Vitae and BBS will circulate it to appropriate Associates to ask whether they would be prepared to nominate you. (In the meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into our database as an unaffiliated investigator.) ======================================================================= ** IMPORTANT ** ======================================================================= To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, it would be most helpful if you would send us an indication of the relevant expertise you would bring to bear on the paper, and what aspect of the paper you would anticipate commenting upon. (Please note that we only request expertise information in order to simplify the selection process.) Please DO NOT prepare a commentary until you receive a formal invitation, indicating that it was possible to include your name on the final list, which is constructed so as to balance areas of expertise and frequency of prior commentaries in BBS. To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable at the URL that follows the abstract and keywords below. ======================================================================= ======================================================================= What to Say to a Sceptical Metaphysician: A Defense Manual for Cognitive and Behavioral Scientists Don Ross University of Cape Town David Spurrett University of Natal ABSTRACT: A wave of recent work in metaphysics seeks to undermine the anti-reductionist, functionalist consensus of the past few decades in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. That consensus apparently legitimated a focus on what systems do, without necessarily and always requiring attention to the details of how systems are constituted. The new metaphysical challenge contends that many states and processes referred to by functionalist cognitive scientists are epiphenomenal. It further contends that the problem lies in functionalism itself, and, that to save the causal significance of mind, it is necessary to re-embrace reductionism. We argue that the prescribed return to reductionism would be disastrous for the cognitive and behavioral sciences, requiring the dismantling of most existing achievements and placing intolerable restrictions on further work. However, this argument fails to answer the metaphysical challenge on its own terms. We meet that challenge by going on to argue that the new metaphysical scepticism about functionalist cognitive science depends on reifying two distinct notions of causality (one primarily scientific, the other metaphysical) then equivocating between them. When the different notions of causality are properly distinguished, it is clear that functionalism is in no serious philosophical trouble, and that we need not chose between reducing minds or finding them causally impotent. The metaphysical challenge to functionalism relies, in particular, on a naive and inaccurate conception of the practice of physics, and the relationship between physics and metaphysics. KEYWORDS: Mental Causation, Functionalism, Reductionism, Metaphysics, Explanation. http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Ross-12192002/Referees/ ======================================================================= ======================================================================= *** SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT *** (1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review. (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential impact!). *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Please note: Your email address has been added to our user database for Calls for Commentators, the reason you received this email. If you do not wish to receive further Calls, please feel free to change your mailshot status through your User Login link on the BBSPrints homepage, using your username and password. Or, email a response with the word "remove" in the subject line. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Shimon Edelman Associate Editor Barbara Finlay Editor Behavioral and Brain Sciences bbs(a)bbsonline.org http://www.bbsonline.org -------------------------------------------------------------------

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koglist June 2003