Philosophy

As Paul Griffiths [2002] puts it,���innateness��� is associated with different clusters of related ideas where each cluster depends on different historical, cultural and intellectual contexts. In psychology innateness is typically opposed to learning while the biological opposite of innate is 'acquired'.'Acquired'and 'learned'have different extensions. Learning is one way to acquire a character but there are others.

Emotions have puzzled and fascinated thinkers throughout history, from Plato and Aristotle to modern cognitive psychologists. Until relatively recently, the widely accepted view on emotions has been that they are only an interference on the neutral behaviour of a person. However, there has been a rapid increase in the study of the effects of emotion on cognition, popularizing the view that an adequate theory of cognition that ignores emotion is likely to prove inadequate (Eysenck, Keane, 2009).

Contemporary artificial life (also known as ���ALife���) is an interdisciplinary study of life and life-like processes. Its two most important qualities are that it focuses on the essential rather than the contingent features of living systems and that it attempts to understand living systems by artificially synthesizing extremely simple forms of them. These two qualities are connected. By synthesizing simple systems that are very life-like and yet very unfamiliar, artificial life constructively explores the boundaries of what is possible for life.

Abstract We present a model for generating a kind of neural synchrony in which the individual spike trains of one neuron or group of neurons closely match the spike trains of another. This kind of neural synchrony has been observed in animals performing auditory, visual and attentional information processing tasks. Our model is realized in a system of functionally identical, refractory spiking neurons.

Abstract This paper uses a new diagramming method, cognitive-affective mapping, to analyze the emotional changes in the 1978 Camp David negotiations that led to a breakthrough accord between Egypt and Israel. We use the technique to model the mental states of the two primary negotiators, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, based on detailed descriptions provided in Jimmy Carter's memoirs.

Model-based reasoning (MBR), including specifically the deductive variety on which I focus herein (MBRD), is promising in large part because of the intellectual bravery it reflects. The deductive reasoning carried out by today's automated theorem provers is one-dimensional: such reasoning can be reduced to standard linear and linguistic chains of inference, and such chains, as well as the manipulation thereof, can be wholly captured by computation. In short, machine deduction, as the century turns, is mere symbol manipulation.

ABSTRACT: This paper outlines a theory of how conscious emotional experience is produced by the brain as the result of many interacting brain areas coordinated in working memory. These brain areas integrate perceptions of bodily states of an organism with cognitive appraisals of its current situation. Emotions are neural processes that represent the overall cognitive and somatic state of the organism. Conscious experience arises when neural representations achieve high activation as part of working memory.

I recently argued that the position in the philosophy of mind called functionalism is undermined by the importance of recent work on parallel computation (Thagard, 1986). In reply, Krellenstein (1987) contends that parallelism does not have the philosophical significance I claimed for it. Although his contentions are plausible if one focuses on what is in principle computationally possible, they fail if one looks at real problems.

Abstract: This paper discusses Theo Kuipers' account of beauty and truth. It challenges Kuipers' psychological account of how scientists come to appreciate beautiful theories, as well as his attempt to justify the use of aesthetic criteria on the basis of a" meta-induction." I propose an alternative psychological/philosophical account based on emotional coherence.

Abstract We propose a schema that characterizes how parts constitute wholes at diverse levels of organization, ranging from the atomic to the biological to the social. This schema of tags, organizers, attachers, and communicators provides a unified understanding of the structure, function, and dynamics of organization in physics, biology, and the cognitive and social sciences.

abstract This article is a response to Elijah Millgram's argument that my characterization of coherence as constraint satisfaction is inadequate for philosophical purposes because it provides no guarantee that the most coherent theory available will be true. I argue that the constraint satisfaction account of coherence satisfies the philosophical, computational, and psychological prerequisites for the development of epistemological and ethical theories.

Conscience is the internal sense of moral goodness or badness of one's own actual or imagined conduct. The products of conscience are moral intuitions, which are the feelings that some acts are right and others are wrong. This paper offers a new theory of conscience and moral intuition as a particular kind of emotional consciousness, produced by brain processes that combine cognitive appraisal with perception of bodily states.

This article uses psychological and neural theories to illuminate the use of analogies in literary allegories. It shows how new theories of neural representation, encompassing both cognitive and emotional aspects, have the potential to make sense of many kinds of literary comparisons including allegories. The main text analyzed is George Orwell's Animal Farm, whose effectiveness is discussed using the multiconstraint theory of analogy supplemented with observations about neural functioning.

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the traditional topic of logical fallacies, both in the research literature in philosophical logic and in discussions of the teaching of informal logic. To my knowledge, however, no proposals have been made for a taxonomy of fallacies of practical reasoning, reasoning concerning what to do as opposed to reasoning concerning what to believe.

ABSTRACT This chapter describes two studies that help evaluate the combinatorial conjecture that all creativity results from combinations of mental representations. The first study examines 100 examples of great scientific discoveries, and the second looks at 100 examples of great technological inventions.

Here are some of the most important discoveries in the history of medicine: blood circulation (1620s), vaccination,(1790s), anesthesia (1840s), germ theory (1860s), X-rays (1895), vitamins (early 1900s), antibiotics (1920s-1930s), insulin (1920s), and oncogenes (1970s).

Tim Schroeder's Three Faces of Desire is an excellent contribution to naturalistic philosophy of mind in the grand tradition of Aristotle, Hume, Quine, and Patricia and Paul Churchland. He develops a rich and plausible theory of desire with strong connections both to neuroscience and to everyday cases. This theory ties desire to reward rather than just to behavioural dispositions or the experience of pleasure.

Abstract: Theoretical neuroscience, which characterizes neural mechanisms using mathematical and computational models, is highly relevant to central problems in the philosophy of psychiatry. These models can help to solve the explanation problem of causally connecting neural processes with the behaviors and experiences found in mental illnesses. Such explanations will also be useful for generating better classifications and treatments of psychiatric disorders.

Studies in Multidisciplinarity, Volume 3 Editors: Ray Paton t and Laura McNamara. 9 2006 Elsevier BV All rights reserved. 4 What is a medical theory? Paul Thagard Philosophy Department, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada 1. INTRODUCTION Modern medicine has produced many successful theories concerning the causes of diseases. For example, we know that tuberculosis is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and that scurvy is caused by a deficiency of vitamin C.