Topics in Cognitive Science
October 1, 2012
Julian Kiverstein
72 citations
Philosophers of embodied cognitive science disagree on the meaning of embodiment. The debate centers on whether the field can retain the computer theory of mind. One view, body functionalism, sees the body as linking external problem-solving resources with internal biological machinery, supporting computational circuits that realize cognition. Body enactivism argues that no computational account can explain the role of commonsense knowledge in everyday practical engagement. The author attempts a reconciliation of these opposing views.
Topics in Cognitive Science
January 1, 2017
Pete Mandik
20 citations
Color illusions are best explained by high-level, conceptualized knowledge about object identity, lighting conditions, and material composition, not by nonconceptual mental intermediaries called color sensations. The author argues against philosophical views that posit such sensations between the stimulus and perceptual judgment. These illusions do not require appealing to nonconceptual mental links in the causal chain leading to conceptualized color discriminations.
Topics in Cognitive Science
November 27, 2023
Joanna Rączaszek-leonardi
7 citations
Ecological psychology, enactivism, and interactivism have the potential to transform perspectives on cognition and action by restoring their relevance to humans as persons. However, neither the mainstream information-processing approach nor the dynamics-oriented perspective explains how human language and symbolic thought arise from continuous agent-environment interaction. Treating dynamical and computational hypotheses as mutually exclusive leads to reductionism that hinders this challenge. Complementary descriptions, as proposed by Michael Polanyi and Howard Pattee, are needed to understand that cognizing systems are governed by both physical laws and emergent historical constraints. Some proposed solutions may ease the tension between these approaches and improve understanding of their interrelation.
Topics in Cognitive Science
April 30, 2025
Roope Oskari Kaaronen
5 citations
A global, cross-cultural review of ethnographic archives covering 193 societies reveals diverse mushroom-related cultural practices beyond culinary uses, including rituals, medicine, folklore, and fire-making. The analysis highlights how mushroom foraging involves human cognition but also exposes a lack of detail in descriptions of human-mushroom relations. Ethnomycology receives limited attention, largely due to Western mycophobic biases, underscoring the need for expanded research to better understand past and present human encounters with fungi.
Topics in Cognitive Science
July 2, 2026
Kristina Šekrst
Fungal mycelial networks display minimal cognition through memory-integrated adaptive regulation. Memory is defined as the capacity to modulate behavior based on past environmental interactions without requiring neural substrates or symbolic representations. Four criteria for minimal cognition are proposed: feedback-guided behavior regulation, maintenance of internal viability, structural modulation from past interactions, and plasticity enabling anticipatory adaptivity. Empirical evidence shows fungi meet all criteria: directional regrowth toward previously encountered resources after displacement, stress priming across cell divisions, directional persistence in constrained environments, and transgenerational memory via spore imprinting. These findings challenge representationalist assumptions, showing cognition can emerge from morphodynamic, biochemical, and electrophysiological processes in radically different material substrates.
Topics in Cognitive Science
April 1, 2025
Kara Weisman, Tanya Marie Luhrmann
Hearing the voice of God or seeing an ancestor's spirit are experiences of the mind, tied to mental models and cognitive-epistemic attitudes about the mind. With the right combination of these, one's own thoughts and inner sensations can be experienced as coming from somewhere or someone else. Results from a large-scale study of U.S. adults (N = 1779) support the theory that spiritual experiences are facilitated by a dynamic interaction between mental models and cognitive-epistemic attitudes: a person is more likely to hear God speak if they have the epistemic flexibility and cultural support to shift temporarily away from a mundane model of mind into a more 'porous' way of thinking. This lays a foundation for considering how such interactions might also facilitate fiction writing and scientific discovery.
Topics in Cognitive Science
October 1, 2015
Katie Glaskin
In Aboriginal Australian contexts, perceptual openness that extends from waking life into dreaming provides a cognitive framework for understanding dream experiences. This cultural orientation resembles the personality trait of openness to experience, which has been linked to dream recall frequency. Identifying perceptual openness at a cultural rather than individual level reveals how cultural differences shape perception, indicating cognitive diversity. Given the connection between dreams and creativity suggested by anecdotal evidence and research, a cultural orientation toward perceptual openness likely influences creativity realized through dreams. However, such creativity cannot be separated from the relational context in which dream material is elaborated and understood.
Topics in Cognitive Science
January 1, 2014
Stuart Hameroff
Cognitive decisions are best described by quantum mathematics, and this paper argues that quantum information devices may operate in the brain. It describes how quantum lattice registers, in which superpositioned pathways interact through 'quantum walks' similar to Feynman's path integral in a lattice (the 'Feynman quantum chessboard'), can reduce or collapse to select a particular pathway in a cognitive decision. The paper shows that these quantum walks are conceptually identical to 'topological qubits' in brain neuronal microtubules, as described in the Penrose-Hameroff 'Orch OR' theory of consciousness.
Topics in Cognitive Science
January 1, 2012
Michael Silberstein, Anthony Chemero
Extended cognitive systems are best understood as complex, non-linearly coupled brain-body-niche systems, not as representational or computational entities. This view explains extended cognition without invoking representations or computation, and it treats cognition and conscious experience as a single phenomenon, thereby dissolving philosophical puzzles about qualia and the hard problem of consciousness. These systems are relational and dynamical, with interactions among heterogeneous parts across multiple spatial and temporal scales.
Topics in Cognitive Science
April 1, 2011
Myrto I. Mylopoulos
A motor theory of control consciousness holds that nonsensory states, such as motor commands, directly contribute to the awareness of being in control of one's actions, contrary to a sensory imagery theory that denies such a role. Mandik (2010) defends this motor theory and argues it is preferable to Prinz's (2007) sensory imagery theory. This paper contends that Mandik's criticisms of Prinz's theory fall short, yet still finds reasons to favor the motor theory over the sensory imagery theory. The argument suggests that nonsensory states play a direct role in generating control consciousness.
Topics in Cognitive Science
July 1, 2010
William Bechtel
Philosophy has historically played a minor role in cognitive science, but three naturalistic philosophical projects from the past 30 years offer theoretical and methodological contributions. First, stances on the mind-body problem—identity theory, functionalism, and heuristic identity theory—inform how cognitive science relates to neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience. Second, analyses of mental representations, especially new approaches to how representations have content, help clarify the relation between cognitive agents and their environments. Third, accounts of mechanistic explanation in philosophy of science provide perspective on cognitive science's explanatory project and may offer normative guidance for integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives when understanding a given mechanism.