Cognition, Semantics and Philosophy: Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on Cognitive Science

337 Pages·1992·10.17 MB·English

by  Luis Aguado Aguilar (auth.)

COGNITION, SEMANTICS AND PHILOSOPHY
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES
Founded by Wilfrid S. Sellars and Keith Lehrer
Editor:
KEITH LEHRER, University ofA rizona
Managing Editor:
LOIS DAY, University ofA rizona
Board of Consulting Editors:
JONATHAN BENNETT, Syracuse University
ALLAN GIBBARD, University of Michigan
ROBERT STALNAKER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ROBERT G. TURNBULL, Ohio State University
VOLUME 52
COGNITION, SEMANTICS
AND PHILOSOPHY
Proceedings of the First International Colloquium
on Cognitive Science
Editedby
JESUS EZQUERRO
and
JESUS M. LARRAZABAL
University ofthe Basque Country,
San Sebastian, Spain
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.
ISBN 978-94-010-5153-8 ISBN 978-94-011-2610-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-2610-6
Printed on acid-free paper
AlI Rights Reserved
© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally pubIished by Kluwer Academic PubIishers in 1992
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1992
No pact of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanicaI,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
INTRODUCTION xi
CHAPTER 1: ANIMAL COGNITION AND HUMAN COGNITION:
A NECESSARY DIALOGUE Luis Aguado Aguilar 1
I. Introduction 1
II. Characterization of Comparative Cognition 2
III. Cognitive Modules and Evolution 3
IV. Two Goals of Comparative Research:
General Processes and Evolutionary Sequences 6
V. Consciousness and Cognition 10
VI. Conclusions 16
CHAPTER 2: USER MODELLING IN KNOWLEDGE-BASED
SYSTEMS M. Felisa Verdejo 23
I. Introduction 23
II. Situations of Interactive Communications 24
III. The Content of the User Model 29
IV. Characteristic Dimensions of a User's Model 31
V. Domain-Knowledge: Shallow Versus Deep Modelling 32
VI. Modelling Intentions 36
VII. Building a User's Model 39
VIII. Learner's Model 40
IX. Conclusion 43
CHAPTER 3: CHANGING BELIEFS RATIONALLY: SOME
PUZZLES Dorothy Edgington 47
I. Background 47
II. A Justification of Generalized Conditionalisation 52
III. The Judy Benjamin Problem 55
IV. An Apparent Counterexample to Simple
Conditionalisation 60
V. The Three Prisoners 63
vi
VI. Judy Benjamin Again: The Strong Strategy 65
VII. Independence 67
CHAPTER 4: ON THE REPRESENTATION OF LINGUISTIC
INFORMATION M. Teresa Espinal 75
I. Introduction 75
II. The Modularity Hypothesis 77
III. Grammar, Pragmatics and Modularity 80
IV. Interdisciplinarity in the Analysis of Linguistic
Information 84
V. Disjunct Adverbials Pragmatically Oriented Towards
the Speaker or Hearer 85
VI. On The Representation of Disjunct Constituents: A
Multidimentional Approach 96
VII. Conclusions 101
CHAPTER 5: MODELLING MEMORY FOR MODELS
Keith Stenning 107
I. Introduction 108
II. Two Senses of "Model" 111
III. Models in Working Memory 113
IV. Representations for Syllogistic Reasoning 119
V. Distributed Bindings and Syllogistic Reasoning 124
CHAPTER 6: ON THE STUDY OF LINGUISTIC PERFORMANCE
Victor Sanchez de Zavala 129
I. A Proposal for "Cognitive Science" and
A Specification of it 132
II. Current Situation in Linguistic Performance Theory 134
III. Some Issues Regarding Research Programs on
Linguistic Performance 146
IV. Appendix 151
CHAPTER 7: PARTIALITY AND COHERENCE IN CONCEPT
COMBINATION Nick Braisby, Bradley Franks and
Terry Myers 179
I. Introduction 179
II. Flexibility and Specificity 180
vii
III. Sense Selection 181
IV. Sense Generation 187
V. Partiality, Coherence and Concept Combination 193
VI. Conclusions 205
CHAPTER 8: THE LABYRINTH OF ATTITUDE REPORTS
Daniel Quesada 209
I. Mental States 210
II. Semantic Contents 212
III. Attitude Reports as Explanations 213
IV. The Crimmins-Perry Theory 215
V. Reports and Reporting 219
VI. Two Kinds of Attitude Reports 221
VII. Reporting and Explaining 226
CHAPTER 9: AUNTY'S OWN ARGUMENT FOR THE LANGUAGE
OF THOUGHT Martin Davies 235
I. Introduction: Aunty and the Language of Thought 235
II. The Threat of Regress 236
III. First Stage: Systematic Cognitive Processes 241
IV. First Stage: From System to Syntax 246
V. Second Stage: The Structure of Thought 249
VI. Second Stage: Concepts and Inference 254
VII. Two Objections to the Second Stage 256
VIII. Conceptualised Thought and the Connectionist
Programme 260
IX. An Invitation to Eliminativism? 265
CHAPTER 10: COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND SEMANTIC
REPRESENTATIONS Jean-Francois Le Ny 273
I. Cognitive and Other Sciences as Using
Representations 274
II. Natural and Rational Representations 276
III. Sources of Variability in Representations 278
IV. Use of Prescriptive Rules 281
V. Description of Natural Representations 282
VI. Token Representations, Long Term Memory
Representations, and the Notion of Activation 285
viii
VII. Cross-Compatibility with Neurobiology and
Artificial Intelligence 287
VIII. Conclusion 289
CHAPTER 11: ANCHORING CONCEPTUAL CONTENT:
SCENARIOS AND PERCEPTION Christopher Peacocke 293
I. Scenarios Introduced 293
II. Scenarios: Consequences and Comparisons 299
III. A Further Level of Content: An Application 306
IV. Spatial Reasoning and Action 314
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank Kluwer Academic Publishers for their
patience in helping to put this volume together. We also would like to
thank our colleagues in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of
Science of the University of the Basque Country for helping to organize
the Colloquium. Financial support came form the Ministerio de
Educaci6n y Ciencia (Madrid), Departamento de Educaci6n (Gobiemo
Vasco), Diputaci6n foral (Guipuzkoa), Kutxa Guipuzkoa-Donostia and
the University of the Basque Country. Many thanks. Finally, thanks also
to our friend Paul Horwich. He helped to contain our linguistic bugs.
ix
INTRODUCTION
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
in whose name or title we can find the expression " ... Cognitive Science"
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. Still, some progress has been
made and nowadays there seems to be some tacit agreement concerning
what a suitable cognitive science ought to do, that is, to study "the mind"
without confining itself to being a science of the brain, but also to do this
job in a tangible, manageable and as exact as possible way.
No doubt, philosophy has had a lot to do with this state of the
art, both in the good and in the bad features. Frequently it is claimed that
philosophy does not bring forth results, at least in the way that one of the
empirical sciences does. However, what philosophy actually has done, and
should do, is to frame topics, problems and questions, to offer views, to
analyze approaches, to point out what can be important, telling why. 1
And in doing all these things, philosophy has sometimes made mistakes,
but has had successes as well. The mistakes have come out mainly, in our
view, when philosophy has neglected its role of metadiscourse, trying to
supplant and, in some cases, to exclude, the substantive research relevant
to accounting for the cognitive phenomena worked out by scientific
xi