scholarly journals Teleosemantics and the hard problem of content

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Stephen Francis Mann ◽  
Ross Pain
Keyword(s):  
Hard Problem ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Hard Problem Of Content

Going Radical

2018 ◽  
pp. 94-116
Author(s):  
Daniel D. Hutto ◽  
Erik Myin
Keyword(s):  
Research Program ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Positive Research ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Conceptual Revolution ◽  
Hard Problem Of Content

E-approaches to cognition—enactive, embodied, ecological—conceive of minds as fundamentally relational and interactive. They are often heralded as offering a new paradigm for thinking about the mental. Yet only the most radical versions of E-approaches—those that seek not to complement but to replace traditional cognitivist accounts of mind—have any prospect of ushering in a truly revolutionary rethink of the nature of cognition. This chapter considers whether such a conceptual revolution might really be in the cards. It identities the major options proposed by E-theorists, rating each in terms of degree of radicality. It reminds readers of the hard problem of content and reviews the range of options for handling it. It argues that “going radical” is one of the most attractive ways of dealing with the hard problem of content and that it is worth exploring the positive research program that going radical opens up.

Epilogue: Missing Information?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel D. Hutto ◽  
Erik Myin
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Informational Content ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Missing Information ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Positioning Systems ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Hard Problem Of Content

The epilogue takes a last look at the possibility that REC may be leaving out something explanatorily important because it says nothing about how the brain processes informational content. Focusing on a prominent case, it is demonstrated that REC has the resources to understand the groundbreaking research on positioning systems in rat brains. It is argued that rat brains can be informationally sensitive without processing informational content. No explanatory power is lost in adopting REC’s deflated explanation; but much is gained by doing so since it avoids the Hard Problem of Content. The chapter concludes by showing how REC’s proposed vision of neurodynamics is wholly compatible with its dynamical and extensive account of cognition; a vision of cognition that opens the door to broader lines of research in the cognitive sciences that taking into account the ways in which culture can permeate cognition.

scholarly journals LINGUAGEM E ENATIVISMO

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcos Silva ◽  
Iana Cavalcanti ◽  
Hugo Mota
Keyword(s):  
Representational Content ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Hard Problem Of Content ◽  
Internal Mental States

Language does not have to be held as a problem for radical enactivists. The scope objection usually presented to criticize enactivist explanations is a problem only if we have a referentialist and representationalist view of the nature of language. Here we present a normative hypothesis for the great question concerning the hard problem of content, namely, on how linguistic practices develop from minds without content. We carry representational content when we master inferential relations and we master inferential relations when we master normative relations, especially when we are introduced into frameworks of authorizations and prohibitions. Inspired by the anti-intellectualism of the later Wittgenstein and Brandom’s inferentialism, we present the hypothesis that language emerges from inferentially articulated action from normative elements and not from manipulation in internal mental states of contents fixed by reference to external things.

Continuity: Kinks Not Breaks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel D. Hutto ◽  
Erik Myin
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Scientific Naturalism ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Hard Problem Of Content ◽  
The Way

Chapter 6 sets out to show REC can allow for content-involving cognition in nature without itself falling foul of the Hard Problem of Content and without introducing unbridgeable evolutionary discontinuity or gaps in nature. Thus it crucially defuses critical concerns about REC’s NOC program in order to establish that it is a tenable way of explaining the how content-involving cognition arose and arises naturally, and where content can be found in nature. It then lays out the broad outlines of REC’s proposed explanation for the Natural Origins of Content – its NOC program that draws on Neo-Pragmatist resources and advocates the adoption of a Relaxed as opposed to Strict Scientific Naturalism. It advances a multi-storey explanation, involving kinks not breaks. This explains how content-involving cognition could have arisen through the mastery of special socio-cultural practices, providing new resources but without changing the fundamental character of cognition. Its basic sketch of how the NOC program might be pursued paves the way for further research.

Reasons to REConceive

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel D. Hutto ◽  
Erik Myin
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Environmental Factors ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Basic Cognition ◽  
Hard Problem Of Content

Chapter 2 introduces REC’s Equal Partner Principle, according to which invoking neural, bodily, and environmental factors all make equally important contributions when it comes to explaining cognitive activity. In line with that principle, it is made clear how REC can accept that cognitive capacities depend on structural changes that occur inside organisms and their brains, without understanding such changes in information processing and representationalist terms. This chapter explicates the Hard Problem of Content, aka the HPC, as basis for a compelling argument for REC. The HPC is a seemingly intractable theoretical puzzle for defenders of unrestricted CIC. A straight solution to the HPC requires explaining how it is possible to get from informational foundations that are noncontentful to a theory of mental content using only the resources of a respectable explanatory naturalism that calls on the resources of the hard sciences. It is revealed how the need to deal with the HPC can be avoided by adopting REC’s revolutionary take on basic cognition, and why going this way has advantages over other possible ways of handling the HPC.

The Hard Problem of Content

2012 ◽  
pp. 57-82
Author(s):  
Daniel D. Hutto ◽  
Erik Myin
Keyword(s):  
Hard Problem ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Hard Problem Of Content

scholarly journals The Hard Problem Of Content: Solved (Long Ago)

2015 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Miłkowski
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Double Standards ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Hard Problem Of Content

Abstract In this paper, I argue that even if the Hard Problem of Content, as identified by Hutto and Myin, is important, it was already solved in naturalized semantics, and satisfactory solutions to the problem do not rely merely on the notion of information as covariance. I point out that Hutto and Myin have double standards for linguistic and mental representation, which leads to a peculiar inconsistency. Were they to apply the same standards to basic and linguistic minds, they would either have to embrace representationalism or turn to semantic nihilism, which is, as I argue, an unstable and unattractive position. Hence, I conclude, their book does not offer an alternative to representationalism. At the same time, it reminds us that representational talk in cognitive science cannot be taken for granted and that information is different from mental representation. Although this claim is not new, Hutto and Myin defend it forcefully and elegantly.

Zombies and Dolls

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcello Massimini ◽  
Giulio Tononi
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Turing Test ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

This chapter uses thought experiments and practical examples to introduce, in a very accessible way, the hard problem of consciousness. Soon, machines may behave like us to pass the Turing test and scientists may succeed in copying and simulating the inner workings of the brain. Will all this take us any closer to solving the mysteries of consciousness? The reader is taken to meet different kind of zombies, the philosophical, the digital, and the inner ones, to understand why many, scientists and philosophers alike, doubt that the mind–body problem will ever be solved.

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