ISSN 1756-8765
13 papers in the library · 117 citations · publishing 2010-2026
Topics in Cognitive Science July 2, 2026 Kristina Šekrst
This paper argues that fungal mycelial networks exhibit minimal cognition through memory-integrated adaptive regulation. Drawing on cybernetic and enactivist frameworks, I develop a non-representational account of memory as the organism's capacity to modulate behavior based on temporally extended environmental coupling. I propose four operational criteria for minimal cognition: feedback-guided...
Topics in Cognitive Science May 26, 2026 Ethan Hurwitz, Jon G. Dean, Caren M. Walker
Psychedelic drugs have shown promise as a novel therapeutic for a variety of health conditions, yet the mechanisms underlying their clinical benefits remain unclear. A leading hypothesis suggests that psychedelics may enhance cognitive flexibility, a trait impaired in many of these conditions. While existing data from self-report and qualitative-interview studies support this hypothesis, data...
Topics in Cognitive Science April 30, 2025 Roope Oskari Kaaronen 5 citations
This manuscript documents a systematic ethnomycological analysis of ethnographic archives. Focusing on texts describing human-fungi interactions, I conduct a global, cross-cultural review of mushroom use, covering 193 societies worldwide. The study reveals diverse mushroom-related cultural practices, emphasizing the significance of fungi beyond culinary value to include domains such as rituals,...
Topics in Cognitive Science April 1, 2025 Kara Weisman, Tanya Marie Luhrmann
Phenomenal experiences of immaterial spiritual beings-hearing the voice of God, seeing the spirit of an ancestor-are a valuable and largely untapped resource for the field of cognitive science. Such experiences, we argue, are experiences of the mind, tied to mental models and cognitive-epistemic attitudes about the mind, and thus provide a striking example of how, with the right combination of...
Topics in Cognitive Science November 27, 2023 Joanna Rączaszek-leonardi 7 citations
Over the past several decades, research in the cognitive sciences has foregrounded the importance of active bodies and their continuous dependence on the changing environment, strengthening the relevance of dynamical models. These models have been steadily developed within the ecological psychology approach to cognition, which arguably contributes to the "ecological turn" we are witnessing...
Topics in Cognitive Science 2017 Pete Mandik 20 citations
I argue against a class of philosophical views of color perception, especially insofar as such views posit the existence of color sensations. I argue against the need to posit such nonconceptual mental intermediaries between the stimulus and the eventual conceptualized perceptual judgment. Central to my arguments are considerations of certain color illusions. Such illusions are best explained...
Topics in Cognitive Science October 1, 2015 Katie Glaskin
This article draws on the ethnography of Aboriginal Australia to argue that perceptual openness, extending from waking life into dreaming experience, provides an important cognitive framework for the apprehension of dreamt experience in these contexts. I argue that this perceptual openness is analogous to the "openness to experience" described as a personality trait that had been linked with...
Topics in Cognitive Science 2014 Stuart Hameroff
Cognitive decisions are best described by quantum mathematics. Do quantum information devices operate in the brain? What would they look like? Fuss and Navarro () describe quantum lattice registers in which quantum superpositioned pathways interact (compute/integrate) as 'quantum walks' akin to Feynman's path integral in a lattice (e.g. the 'Feynman quantum chessboard'). Simultaneous alternate...
Topics in Cognitive Science October 1, 2012 Julian Kiverstein 72 citations
There is substantial disagreement among philosophers of embodied cognitive science about the meaning of embodiment. In what follows, I describe three different views that can be found in the current literature. I show how this debate centers around the question of whether the science of embodied cognition can retain the computer theory of mind. One view, which I will label body functionalism,...
Topics in Cognitive Science 2012 Michael Silberstein, Anthony Chemero
The complex systems approach to cognitive science invites a new understanding of extended cognitive systems. According to this understanding, extended cognitive systems are heterogenous, composed of brain, body, and niche, non-linearly coupled to one another. This view of cognitive systems, as non-linearly coupled brain-body-niche systems, promises conceptual and methodological advances. In...
Topics in Cognitive Science April 1, 2011 Myrto I. Mylopoulos
Abstract Mandik (2010) defends a motor theory of control consciousness according to which nonsensory states, like motor commands, directly contribute to the awareness we have of ourselves as being in control of our actions. Along the way, he argues that his theory is to be preferred over Prinz’s (2007) sensory imagery theory, which denies that nonsensory states play any direct role in the...
Topics in Cognitive Science July 1, 2010 William Bechtel
Although philosophy has been only a minor contributor to cognitive science to date, this paper describes two projects in naturalistic philosophy of mind and one in naturalistic philosophy of science that have been pursued during the past 30 years and that can make theoretical and methodological contributions to cognitive science. First, stances on the mind-body problem (identity theory,...
Topics in Cognitive Science March 8, 2010 Pete Mandik 13 citations
Control consciousness is the awareness or experience of seeming to be in control of one's actions. One view, which I will be arguing against in the present paper, is that control consciousness is a form of sensory consciousness. In such a view, control consciousness is exhausted by sensory elements such as tactile and proprioceptive information. An opposing view, which I will be arguing for, is...