Cognitive Science 1

Christopher Suhler (Nanyang Technological University), Liam Kavanagh
Philosophers and other cognitive scientists sometimes find themselves embroiled in debates over the precise bounds (or defining "mark") of cognition. Animating these debates is the belief that precisely defining 'cognition' will be a boon to understanding and inquiry. We argue, however, that such definitional projects misconstrue the true value of high-level scientific concepts like cognition, which lies primarily in supporting association and semantic priming, rather than categorization and deduction. Combined with well-established work in cognitive psychology on the non-classical structure of natural concepts, this perspective suggests that researchers should be cautious about expending substantial effort attempting to precisely define 'cognition'.

Manolo Martínez (Universitat de Barcelona)
Information is widely perceived as essential to the study of communication and representation; still, theorists working on these topics often take themselves not to be centrally concerned with "Shannon information", as it is often put, but with some other, sometimes called "semantic" or "nonnatural", kind of information. This perception is wrong. Shannon's theory of information is the only one we need. I intend to make good on this last assertion by canvassing a fully (Shannon) informational answer to the metasemantic question of what makes something a representation, for a certain important family of cases. This answer and the accompanying theory, which represents a significant departure from the broadly Dretskean philosophical mainstream, will show how a number of threads in the literature on naturalistic metasemantics, aimed at describing the purportedly non-informational ingredients in representation, actually belong in the same coherent, purely information-theoretic picture.

Arieh Schwartz (University of California, Davis)
Recent analyses of memory (Robins, 2016; Cheng & Werning, 2016; Michaelian, 2016; Bernecker, 2017) propose accuracy as one of the necessary conditions for a mental state to count as memory. This paper shows that the accuracy condition on memory implies Disjunctivism about seeming to remember, and distinguishes several types of Disjunctivism that could be in play. The causal argument, a standard objection to Disjunctivism (Robinson, 1985; Burge, 2005, 2011), is used to demonstrate that Reductive Ontological Disjunctivism about memory is untenable. The discussion highlights the lack of clarity about whether recent memory taxonomies are epistemic, nonreductively ontic, or reductively ontic.

Corey Maley (University of Kansas)
Analog computation has been neglected in the philosophical literature. The received view is that analog computation essentially involves the manipulation of continuous variables. Careful attention to the theory and practice of analog computation reveals that there is more to analog computation, given the presence of numerous discontinuous variables. I argue that providing an account of analog computation is important both for a more general, complete account of computation that includes digital, analog, and perhaps others as species, in turn giving those interested in computational explanation more resources when making claims about the computational capacities of natural systems. Given that continuity is not sufficient to account for analog computation, I invoke a recent theory of analog representation, and argue that it fits with how analog computation actually worked. I explain what it is that makes analog computation "analog," and what it is that makes analog computation "computation."

Alison Springle (University of Pittsburgh)
According to orthodox representationalism, perceptual states are representational in the sense of having constitutive truth, veridicality, or accuracy conditions. Burge (2010) justifies realism about perceptual representations posited by perceptual science on the basis of their explanatory ineliminability. I clarify his argument, including the controversial role of the constancies and their relationship to representational function. I argue that the constancies don't do the work Burge wants them to, but that his realist strategy may vindicate an unorthodox version of representationalism.