Core theoretical and methodological commitments for a structuralist science of phenomenal experience are articulated in sufficient detail to define a substantive, actionable research program. I argue that phenomenal experience is characterized by geometric, group-theoretic, and dynamic structure. Intuitively, these structures correspond to phenomenal quality spaces, perceptual constancies, and...
Abstract This study introduces a novel methodology for consciousness science. Consciousness as we understand it pretheoretically is inherently subjective, yet the data available to science are irreducibly intersubjective. This poses a unique challenge for attempts to investigate consciousness empirically. We meet this challenge by combining two insights. First, we emphasize the role that...
This paper examines the implications of the Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies for contemporary philosophy and psychology. Part I analyzed Johannes Peter Müller's canonical formulation of the Doctrine, arguing that it follows from empirical results combined with methodological principles. Here, I argue that these methodological principles remain valid in psychology today, consequently, any...
The Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies has been and continues to be enormously influential in the physiology, psychology, and philosophy of perception. In simple terms, the Doctrine states that we directly perceive in the first instance the activity of our nerves, rather than properties in the external world. The canonical early statement of the Doctrine by the physiologist Johannes Peter...
Embodied, enactive cognitive science has traditionally rejected computationalism and its compatriot, representationalism. I argue that this rejection is too hasty, and places undo weight on intuitions about simple dynamical systems, such as the Watt Governor. I suggest instead that enactivists should consider cognition analogous to more complex, functional dynamical systems, such as analog...
Modern computationalism unites two distinct ideas: the first that reasoning, more generally mental activity, may be decomposed into simple, formal steps; the second that these simple steps may be functionally realized by a physical system. These two ideas follow separate trajectories in the pre-history of the computational mind. This chapter surveys the mechanization of psychological phenomena,...