Call for Commentaries: Cognitive Control

I'm blogging to call to your attention a call for commentaries for a special issue on Cognitive Control in the journal Topics in Cognitive Science. Issue editor Rick Cooper (R.Cooper_AT-SIGN_bbk.ac.uk) should be contacted for further info, and much more info is available at the website http://sideshow.psyc.bbk.ac.uk/rcooper/cognitive_control/

Here are a few details:

The issue will debate whether cognitive activity is controlled by special-purpose control systems/processes, or whether controlled behaviour is an emergent property of the cognitive system. The issue will consist of an introduction, five target articles, and up to twenty short commentaries and responses.

Commentaries are sought which clearly and explicitly address issues raised in the introduction or target articles in the context of the topic description. Ideally, commentaries will be integrative (e.g., by drawing on more than one target, or by relating a field not covered in the target articles to one that is) and will advance the debate outlined in the topic description. Commentaries will normally be limited to 1500 words (including references) and all commentaries will be peer- reviewed.

Submission of a commentary does not guarantee publication. All submissions will be handled through the journal's web-based submission system (http://www.editorialmanager.com/topics/default.asp).

The target articles are (see website for abstracts):

• Topic Introduction: Cognitive Control: Componential or Emergent? (Richard P. Cooper)
• Target Article 1: The Evolution of Cognitive Control (Dietrich Stout)
• Target Article 2: Language and the development of cognitive control (Lucy Cragg and Kate Nation)
• Target Article 3: Control Consciousness (Pete Mandik)
• Target Article 4: Computational models of performance monitoring and cognitive control (William H. Alexander and Joshua W. Brown)
• Target Article 5: Towards an Ontology of Cognitive Control (Agatha Lenartowicz, Donald Kalar, Eliza Congdon and Russell Poldrack)

Should you wish to contribute a commentary or nominate someone else whom you think would be appropriate to contribute such a commentary please email Rick Cooper at (R.Cooper_AT-SIGN_bbk.ac.uk) to obtain access to the full target articles and for submission instructions.

Color-Consciousness Conceptualism: Full Video

Here's the full video of my talk for Consciousness Online. All the commentaries and responses are available here: [link]

Consciousness Online is now...Online

Everybody, freak out now. Because...

Richard Brown sez:

I am pleased to announce that the Second Annual Online Consciousness Conference has officially begun:

http://consciousnessonline.wordpress.com .

I hope you will join for the next two weeks (February 19th-March 5th) for what promises to be a very exciting conference.

The Mind Network

This sounds pretty freakin' cool:

This is to announce the launch of the Mind Network, a new UK network for
Philosophy of Mind & Cognitive Science

http://mindcogsci.net/

The aim of the Mind Network is to foster a community of UK researchers in
philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and to build links with the wider
international community.

The Mind Network will organise regular, mobile, UK workshops. The idea is
to get researchers in philosophy of mind and cognitive science in one place
on a regular basis to present papers, discuss their work, and have a good
time.

The first meeting will take place Saturday 20 March 2010 in the Faculty of
Philosophy, Oxford. The speakers are:

* Andy Clark (Edinburgh)
* Matt Soteriou (Warwick)
* Lisa Bortolotti (Birmingham) & Phil Gerrans (Oxford, Adelaide)

There is no registration fee and lunch will be provided. Please sign up
before 13 March 2010 by email to: nancy.patel@philosophy.ox.ac.uk.

Full details are posted on the website (http://mindcogsci.net/).

The Mind Network is organised by Tim Bayne, Stephen Butterfill, Tim Crane,
Nick Shea, and Mark Sprevak

We have blast-off

The papers for CO2, the second online consciousness conference, are now online. Check 'em out: link. Organizer Richard Brown sez: the conference will start noonish EST on Feb 19. Spread the word.

The papers:

1. Matthew Conduct –Naive Realism without Disjunctivism about Experience
2. Keith Frankish –Qualia: The Real Thing?
3. Philip Goff –Ghosts and Sparse Properties
4. Dan Llyod –The Neural Correlates of Temporality: Default Mode Variability and State-Dependent Temporal Awareness
5. Pete Mandik –Color Consciousness Conceptualism
6. Joeseph Neisser –Correlates. Causes, and the Neurobiology of Consciousness
7. Adam Pautz –Why Consciousness Can’t Just be in the Head: A New Argument against Biological Theories
8. Stephane Savanah –The Concept Possession Hypothesis of Self-Consciousness
9. Carolyn Suchy-Dicey –Inductive Skepticism and the Methodological Argument
10. Brian Talbot –The Irrelevance of Folk Intuitions to the ‘Hard Problem’ of Consciousness

Cognitive Science: Critiques and Challenges

Here's the last little chunklet for now. I'm grateful for the feedback I've been receiving on these draft bibliographies on the philosophy of cognitive science.

CRITIQUES AND CHALLENGES
Most work critical of cognitive science focuses on specific challenges, but Coulter (1982) and Thagard (2008) serve as discussions of many of the main challenges.

Coulter, J. (1982). Theoretical problems of cognitive science. Inquiry. 25 (1) 3-26.
A discussion of several of the main theoretical problems facing cognitive science from a broadly Wittgensteinian perspective.

Thagard, P. (2008). Cognitive Science. In E. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/cognitive-science
One of the sections is a brief overview of the main lines of critique of cognitive science.


CONSCIOUSNESS
Much of the concern about the adequacy of cognitive science to account for consciousness overlaps with concerns in the philosophy of mind about consciousness and its place in nature as conceived of scientifically. See the Oxford Online Bibliography *CONSCIOUSNESS *. One of the classic articulations of this sort of concern is Nagel (1974). Much of the general sorts of worry about the adequacy of physicalism in accounting for consciousness is gathered together in the widely discussed Chalmers (1996). An excellent and accessible discussion of the philosophy of consciousness as influenced by Chalmers can be found in Alter and Howell (2009). One of the most widely discussed attempts to give a cognitive scientific account of consciousness is Dennett (1991). See Dennett (1990) for a concise presentation for may of Dennett’s main considerations. For an excellent overview of the main problems of consciousness as well as an accessible presentation of a representational theory of consciousness, see Tye (1995). For excellent overviews of the main issues and theories, see van Gulick (2009) and Kriegel (2006).

Alter, T. A., & Howell, R. (2009). A Dialogue on Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
A concise and accessible overview of the main positions and problems in the current philosophical discussions of consciousness.
Chalmers, D. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
A highly influential and widely discussed critique of the adequacy of physicalism for consciousness.

Dennett, D. C. (1990). Quining qualia. In W. Lycan (Ed.), Mind and Cognition (pp. 519-548). Oxford: Blackwell.
A concise overview of Dennett’s skepticism about qualia.

Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
A widely discussed attempt to give a cognitive scientific account of consciousness.

Kriegel, U. (2006). Consciousness, Theories of. Philosophy Compass, 1(1), 58-64.
An excellent overview of the main philosophical theories of consciousness.

Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review, 83, 435-450.
A classic exposition of the worry that science may be inadequate for the subjective experience of consciousness.

Tye, M. (1995). Ten Problems of Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Terrific and accessible overview of the main problems of consciusness as well as a defense of a materialistic solution to those problems.

Van Gulick, R. (2009). Consciousness. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/consciousness/
A terrific overview of the main issues concerning consciousness.

EMBODIMENT
For a classic defense of the embodied approach, see Varela et al (1991). For a defense of a modest embodiment thesis, see Clark (1997). For a defense of a self-described radical version, see Chemero (2009). Bourget and Chalmers (2009) is a frequently updated online bibliography on embodiment and situated cognition. Many of the entries contain abstracts and links to the full text of articles. See also the closely related entries under * ANTIREPRESENTATIONALISM AND DYNAMIC SYSTEMS *.

Bourget, D. and Chalmers, D. (2009). “PhilPapers: Embodiment and Situated Cognition”. http://philpapers.org/browse/embodiment-and-situated-cognition.
A frequently updated online bibliography, many entries of which contain abstracts and links to full text of articles.

Chemero, A. (2009). Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
A defense of a nonrepresentational, dynamical, ecological, embodied cognitive science.

Clark, A. (1997). Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
A highly readable defense of a modest version of the embodied approach.

Varela, F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience: MIT Press.
A now classic defense of embodied cognition.

ANTIREPRESENTATIONALISM AND DYNAMIC SYSTEMS
The now classic source of the antirepresentational dynamic systems approach is due to van Gelder (1995). See also the anthology Port and van Gelder (1995). For criticisms of the antirepresentational dynamic systems approach, see Eliasmith (2001), Glymour (1997), and Grush (1997). For work on positions similar to the antirepresentational dynamic systems approach, see also the closely related articles under *EMBODIMENT*.


Eliasmith, C. (2001). Attractive and in-discrete: A critique of two putative virtues of the dynamicist theory of mind. Minds and Machines, 11 417-442.
A criticism of the dynamic systems theory approach to cognitive science.

Glymour, C. (1997). Goethe to van Gelder: Comments on ‘Dynamical Systems’ Models of Cognition [Electronic Version]. Retrieved June 5, 2008, from Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000139/
A rather cutting attack on the dynamical systems approach to cognitive science.

Grush, R. (1997). Review of Port and van Gelder's Mind as Motion. Philosophical Psychology, 10(2), 233-242.
A highly critical appraisal of the dynamic systems movement in cognitive science.

Port, R. & van Gelder, T. (1995). Mind as Motion: Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition: MIT Press.
An anthology of articles exploring the antirepresentational dynamic systems approach to cognitive science.

van Gelder, T. (1995). What might cognition be if not computation? Journal of Philosophy, 92, 345-381.
A now classic philosophical defense of the antirepresentational dynamic systems approach.


AI SKEPTICISM
Skepticism about the feasibility of artificial intelligence (AI), has as its classic philosophical expositions, Dreyfus (1992) and Searle (1980). Searle’s famous Chinese Room argument is in Searle (1980) and various replies to it are reviewed in Cole (2009). One source of worry about the adequacy of AI approaches to cognition has to do with what has come to be known as the Frame Problem. See Shanahan (2009) for a review. For a sympathetic philosophical treatment of AI, see Haugeland (1989). An excellent anthology covering many of the main positions concerning AI is Haugeland (1997). Bourget and Chalmers (2009) is a frequently updated online bibliography on the question: Can machines think? Many of the entries contain abstracts and links to the full text of articles.

Bourget, D. and Chalmers, D. (2009). “PhilPapers: Can Machines Think?”. http://philpapers.org/browse/can-machines-think.
A frequently updated online bibliography, many entries of which contain abstracts and links to full text of articles.

Cole, D. (2009). The Chinese Room Argument. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/chinese-room/
An excellent overview of the main responses to Searle’s famous Chinese Room argument.

Dreyfus, H. L. (1992). What Computers Still Can't Do. (3rd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
A classic source of AI skepticism.

Haugeland, J. (1989). Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
A sympathetic philosophical treatment of AI.

Haugeland, J. (Ed.). (1997). Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, and Artificial Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
An excellent anthology covering the main positions concerning AI.

Searle, J. R. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, 417-457.
A classic source of AI skepticism, containing Searle’s famous Chinese Room argument.

Shanahan, M. (2009). The Frame Problem. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/frame-problem/
An accessible review of the Frame Problem.