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Consciousness and intentionality are perhaps the two central phenomena in the philosophy of mind. Human beings are conscious beings: there is something it is like to be us. Human beings are intentional beings: we represent what is going on in the world. Correspondingly, our specific mental states, such as perceptions and thoughts, very often have

this memory as in principle unlimited, but of course any actual machine has a finite memory. Now any computer with a finite amount of explicit storage can be simulated by a machine with a much larger CPU and no explicit storage, that is no registers and no tape. The way the simulation works is by using the extra states as a form of implicit memory. So, in principle, we could be simulated by a machine with no explicit memory at all. Consider, for example, the finite automaton diagrammed in Figure 7. The table shows it as having three states. The states, S 1 ', S 2 ', and S 3 ', are listed across the top. The inputs are listed on the left side. Each box is in a column and a row that specifies what the machine does when it is in the state named at the top of the column, and when the input is the one listed at the side of the row. The top part of the box names the output, and the bottom part of the box names the next state. This is what the table says: when the machine is in S 1 , and it sees a 1, it says "1", and goes to S 2 . When it is in S 2 , if it sees a 1' it says "2" and goes into the next state, S 3 . In that state, if it sees a 1' it says "3" and goes back to S 1 . When it sees nothing, it says nothing and stays in the same state. This automaton counts "modulo" three, that is, you can tell from what it says how many ones it has seen since the last multiple of three. But what the machine table makes clear is that this machine need have no memory of the sort that involves writing anything down. It can "remember" solely by changing state. Some theories based on neural network models (Volume IV, Ch 3) assume that we are such machines. Figure 7: Finite automaton that counts "modulo" three Suppose, then, that we are digital computers with explicit repesentations. We cou...

This paper addresses a problem about epistemic warrant. The problem is posed by philosophical arguments for externalism about the contents of thoughts, and similarly by philosophical arguments for architecturalism about thinking, when these arguments are put together with a thesis of first person authority. In each case, first personal knowledge about our thoughts plus the kind of knowledge that is provided by a philosophical argument seem, together, to open an unacceptably ‘non-empirical ’ route to knowledge of empirical facts. Furthermore, this unwelcome prospect of transferring a ‘non-empirical’ warrant from premises about our own mental states and about philosophical theory to a conclusion about external environment or internal architecture seems to depend upon little more than the possibility of knowledge by inference. (The use of the scare-quoted term ‘non-empirical ’ is explained a couple of paragraphs further on.) Introducing the Problem For the purposes of this introduction to the problem, externalism about some mental property is the thesis that whether a person (or other physical being) has that property depends, not only on conditions inside the person’s skin, but also on the person’s

This thesis aims to develop a psychologically plausible account of concepts by integrating key insights from philosophy (on the metaphysical basis for concept possession) and psychology (on the mechanisms underlying concept acquisition). I adopt an approach known as informational atomism, developed by Jerry Fodor. Informational atomism is the conjunction of two theses: (i) informational semantics, according to which conceptual content is constituted exhaustively by nomological mind–world relations; and (ii) conceptual atomism, according to which (lexical) concepts have no internal structure. I argue that informational semantics needs to be supplemented by allowing content-constitutive rules of inference (“meaning postulates”). This is because the content of one important class of concepts, the logical terms, is not plausibly informational. And since, it is argued, no principled distinction can be drawn between logical concepts and the rest, the problem that this raises is a general one.

Abstract: I present an account of mental representation based upon the ‘SINBAD’ theory of the cerebral cortex. If the SINBAD theory is correct, then networks of pyramidal cells in the cerebral cortex are appropriately described as representing, or more specifically, as modelling the world. I propose that SINBAD representation reveals the nature of the kind of mental representation found in human and animal minds, since the cortex is heavily implicated in these kinds of minds. Finally, I show how SINBAD neurosemantics can provide accounts of misrepresentation, equivocal representation, twin cases, and Frege cases. 1.

[I]f you could know a priori that you are in a given mental state, and your being in that state conceptually or logically implies the existence of external objects, then you could know a priori that the external world exists. Since you obviously can’t know a priori that the external world exists, you also can’t know a priori that you are in the mental state in question. 1 Let us call someone who combines an externalist view of mental content with a doctrine of privileged self-knowledge a compatibilist.... [I]f compatibilism were true, we would be in a position to know certain facts about the world a priori, facts that no one can reasonably believe are knowable a priori. 2 1. Kylie’s Puzzle On summer afternoons in Canberra, the baking sun reflects off Lake Burley Griffin, and the water shimmers. Up behind the university, in the botanical gardens, a cascading stream of water helps to maintain the humidity of the rainforest gully. These are just a couple of Kylie’s thoughts on the subject of water, her water thoughts. Amongst Kylie’s many other thoughts that involve the concept of water are these: that there is water in the

Philosophy of mind today is a sprawling behemoth whose tentacles reach into virtually every area of philosophy, as well as many subjects outside of philosophy. Of course, none of us would have it any other way. Nonetheless,

If you want a philosophically diligent exposition of a theory, something that has got through review by conventional peers, go elsewhere (Honderich, 2004). If you want an understanding made more immediate by brevity and informality, read on. The theory is a Radical Externalism about the nature of consciousness. If it is not a complete departure from the cranialism of most of the philosophy and science of consciousness, it is a fundamental departure. You are seeing this page. What does that fact come to? What is that state of affairs? The natural answer has a lot in it, about the page as a physical thing, whatever one of those is, and about your retinas and your visual cortex. It also has in it philosophy and science about the relation between a neural process and your consciousness. So there is more to your seeing the page than your consciousness of it. Is there some mistake in that remark? Some mistake in saying that

Language engineers often point to tight connections between their systems ’ linguistic representations and accumulated sensor data as a sign that their systems really mean what they say. While we believe such connections are an important piece in the puzzle of meaning, we argue that perceptual grounding alone does not suffice to explain the specific, stable meanings human speakers attribute to each other. Instead, human attributions of meaning depend on a process of societal grounding by which individual language speakers coordinate their perceptual experience and linguistic usage with other members of their linguistic communities. For system builders, this suggests that implementing a strategy of societal grounding would justify the attribution of bona fide linguistic meaning to a system even if it had little perceptual experience and only modest perceptual accuracy. We illustrate the importance and role of societal grounding using an implemented dialogue system that collaboratively identifies visual objects with human users.