Cognition
September 1, 2023
Yoni Zion Amir, Yaniv Assaf, Yossi Yovel et al.
25 citations
Can one have a phenomenal experience to which one does not have access? That is, can you experience something without knowing? The dissociation between phenomenal (P) and access (A) consciousness is widely debated. A major challenge to the supporters of this dissociation is the apparent inability to experimentally demonstrate that P-without-A consciousness exists; once participants report...
Cognition
February 21, 2023
Leonard Dung, Albert Newen
The science of animal consciousness investigates (i) which animal species are conscious (the distribution question) and (ii) how conscious experience differs in detail between species (the quality question). We propose a framework which clearly distinguishes both questions and tackles both of them. This two-tier account distinguishes consciousness along ten dimensions and suggests cognitive...
Cognition
October 1, 2021
Eugen Fischer, Justin Sytsma
22 citations
In philosophical thought experiments, as in ordinary discourse, our understanding of verbal case descriptions is enriched by automatic comprehension inferences. Such inferences have us routinely infer what else is also true of the cases described. We consider how such routine inferences from polysemous words can generate zombie intuitions: intuitions that are 'killed' (defeated) by contextual...
Cognition
August 1, 2017
Aiyana K Willard, Ara Norenzayan
100 citations
The spiritual but not religious (SBNR) are a growing population in secularizing societies. Yet, we know little about the underlying psychology of this group or their belief profile. Based on an individual difference approach, we address this knowledge gap by comparing SBNR with religious and non-religious participants. In a sample of Americans (n=1013), we find that the SBNR differ from...
Cognition
2015
Ludger Van Dijk, Rob Withagen, Raoul M Bongers
65 citations
In this article, we aim to strengthen the emerging radical, non-representational, approaches to cognitive science by defusing the worries radical enactivists have with the use of information in the ecological approaches - namely the worry that information carries content. We show that Gibson's later use of the concept is meant to allow for a content-less notion of information, but that the...
Cognition
April 1, 2013
Jesse Lee Preston, Ryan S Ritter, Justin Hepler
The development of fMRI techniques has generated a boom of neuroscience research across the psychological sciences, and revealed neural correlates for many psychological phenomena seen as central to the human experience (e.g., morality, agency). Meanwhile, the rise of neuroscience has reignited old debates over mind-body dualism and the soul. While some scientists use neuroscience to bolster a...
Cognition
November 2010
Antoine Pasquali, Bert Timmermans, Axel Cleeremans
Subjective measures of awareness rest on the assumption that conscious knowledge is knowledge that participants know they possess. Post-Decision Wagering (PDW), recently proposed as a new measure of awareness, requires participants to place a high or a low wager on their decisions. Whereas advantageous wagering indicates awareness of the knowledge on which the decisions are based, cases in...
Cognition
May 2010
Sebastien Marti, Jérôme Sackur, Mariano Sigman et al.
Psychologists often dismiss introspection as an inappropriate measure, yet subjects readily volunteer detailed descriptions of the time and effort that they spent on a task. Are such reports really so inaccurate? We asked subjects to perform a psychological refractory period experiment followed by extensive quantified introspection. On each trial, just after their objective responses, subjects...
Cognition
December 1, 2005
Murray Shanahan, Bernard J. Baars
The subject of this article is the frame problem, as conceived by certain cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind, notably Fodor for whom it stands as a fundamental obstacle to progress in cognitive science. The challenge is to explain the capacity of so-called informationally unencapsulated cognitive processes to deal effectively with information from potentially any cognitive domain...
Cognition
April 1, 2001
N Block
Functionalists about consciousness identify consciousness with a role; physicalists identify consciousness with an implementer of that role. The global workspace theory of consciousness fits the functionalist perspective, but the physicalist sees consciousness as a biological phenomenon that implements global accessibility.
Cognition
April 2001
A I Jack, T Shallice
Most 'theories of consciousness' are based on vague speculations about the properties of conscious experience. We aim to provide a more solid basis for a science of consciousness. We argue that a theory of consciousness should provide an account of the very processes that allow us to acquire and use information about our own mental states - the processes underlying introspection. This can be...
Cognition
June 1, 1993
D Symons
It is adaptive for individuals to be continuously alert and responsive to external stimuli (such as the sound and odor of an approaching predator or the cry of an infant), even during sleep. Natural selection thus has disfavored the occurrence during sleep of hallucinations that compromise external vigilance. In the great majority of mammalian species, including Homo sapiens, closed eyes and...