Cognition, Semantics and Philosophy: Proceedings of the First International Colloqium on Cognitive Science(52 Philosophical Studies Series)

THE PLACE OF PHILOSOPHY IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE During the last few years, many books have been published and many meetings have been held on Cognitive Science. A cursory review of their contents shows such a diversity of topics and approaches that one might well infer that there are no genuine criteria for classifying a paper or a lecture as a contribution to Cognitive Science. It is as though the only criterion is to have appeared in a book or in the programme of a meeting or title we can find the expression " . . . Cognitive Science" in whose name or something like that. Perhaps this situation is due to the (relative) youth of the field, which is seeking its own identity, still involved in a process of formation and consolidation within the scientific community; but there are actually deep disagreements about how a science of the mind should be worked out, including how to understand its own subject, that is, "the mind. "While for some the term makes reference to a set of phenomena impossible to grasp by any scientific approach, for others "the mind" would be a sort of myth, and the mental terms await elimination by other more handy and empirically tractable terms.

Table of Contents:
1: Animal Cognition and Human Cognition: A Necessary Dialogue.- I. Introduction.- II. Characterization of Comparative Cognition.- III. Cognitive Modules and Evolution.- IV. Two Goals of Comparative Research: General Processes and Evolutionary Sequences.- V. Consciousness and Cognition.- VI. Conclusions.- 2: User Modelling in Knowledge-Based Systems.- I. Introduction.- II. Situations of Interactive Communications.- III. The Content of the User Model.- IV. Characteristic Dimensions of a User’s Model.- V. Domain-Knowledge: Shallow Versus Deep Modelling.- VI. Modelling Intentions.- VII. Building a User’s Model.- VIII. Learner’s Model.- IX. Conclusion.- 3: Changing Beliefs Rationally: Some Puzzles.- I. Background.- II. A Justification of Generalized Conditionalisation.- III. The Judy Benjamin Problem.- IV. An Apparent Counterexample to Simple Conditionalisation.- V. The Three Prisoners.- VI. Judy Benjamin Again: The Strong Strategy.- VII. Independence.- 4: On the Representation of Linguistic Information.- I. Introduction.- II. The Modularity Hypothesis.- III. Grammar, Pragmatics and Modularity.- IV. Interdisciplinarity in the Analysis of Linguistic Information.- V. Disjunct Adverbials Pragmatically Oriented Towards the Speaker or Hearer.- VI. On The Representation of Disjunct Constituents: A Multidimentional Approach.- VII. Conclusions.- 5: Modelling Memory for Models.- I. Introduction.- II. Two Senses of “Model”.- III. Models in Working Memory.- IV. Representations for Syllogistic Reasoning.- V. Distributed Bindings and Syllogistic Reasoning.- 6: On The Study of Linguistic Performance.- I. A Proposal for “Cognitive Science” and A Specification of it.- II. Current Situation in Linguistic Performance Theory.- III. Some Issues Regarding Research Programs on Linguistic Performance.- IV. Appendix.- 7: Partiality and Coherence in Concept Combination.- I. Introduction.- II. Flexibility and Specificity.- III. Sense Selection.- IV. Sense Generation.- V. Partiality, Coherence andConcept Combination.- VI. Conclusions.- 8: The Labyrinth of Attitude Reports.- I. Mental States.- II. Semantic Contents.- III. Attitude Reports as Explanations.- IV. The Crimmins-Perry Theory.- V. Reports and Reporting.- VI. Two Kinds of Attitude Reports.- VII. Reporting and Explaining.- 9: Aunty’s Own Argument for the Language of Thought.- I. Introduction: Aunty and the Language of Thought.- II. The Threat of Regress.- III. First Stage: Systematic Cognitive Processes.- IV. First Stage: From System to Syntax.- V. Second Stage: The Structure of Thought.- VI. Second Stage: Concepts and Inference.- VII. Two Objections to the Second Stage.- VIII. Conceptualised Thought and the Connectionist Programme.- IX. An Invitation to Eliminativism?.- 10: Cognitive Science And Semantic Representations.- I. Cognitive and Other Sciences as Using Representations.- II. Natural and Rational Representations.- III. Sources of Variability in Representations.- IV. Use of Prescriptive Rules.- V. Description ofNatural Representations.- VI. Token Representations, Long Term Memory Representations, and the Notion of Activation.- VII. Cross-Compatibility with Neurobiology and Artificial Intelligence.- VIII. Conclusion.- 11: Anchoring Conceptual Content: Scenarios And Perception.- I. Scenarios Introduced.- II. Scenarios: Consequences and Comparisons.- III. A Further Level of Content: An Application.- IV. Spatial Reasoning and Action.