Papers

Intentionality and mental representation

• Neurosemantics: A Theory (book in progress):
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  • Chapter 1: Discussion of my a posteriori strategy and the nature of representation in models.
  • Chapter 2: Presentation of the SINBAD theory of the cerebral cortex.
  • Chapter 3: Demonstration of how SINBAD networks develop into genuinely representational models. Application of the theory to equivocal representation, misrepresentation, empty representation, and twin cases.
  • Chapter 4: Representata as sources of correlation, a solution to the problem of teleological indeterminacy, useful vs. true representation, objectivity.
  • Chapter 5: The non-representational use of representations in the brain in occurrent belief (i.e. judgement) and occurrent desire, Swampman, propositional content, the non-occurrent attitudes, inference and psychological explanation.
  • Chapter 6: SINBAD representation as a kind of mental representation, summary & conclusion.
• On thinking of kinds: a neuroscientific perspective
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• Models in the Brain
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Concepts

• Empiricism regained?
  (Critical notice of Furnishing the Mind, by Jesse Prinz, MIT Press 2002)
  To appear in Metascience (with reply from Prinz)
  Prinz presents a theory of concepts (construed as mental particulars) based upon classical imagism - he calls it "proxytype theory". There is much to admire about the book. It is extremely well informed, thoroughly interdisciplinary, and ingenious. However there is a central flaw in Prinz's account of concept individuation that seriously impairs his explanations of categorization and intentional content.
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• Empiricist word learning
  (With Oleg Favorov; Commentary on Paul Bloom's How Children Learn the Meanings of Words)
  Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24(6), 2001, p. 1117
  At first, Bloom's theory appears inimical to empiricism, since he credits very young children with highly sophisticated cognitive resources (e.g. a theory of mind and a belief that real kinds have essences), and he also attacks the empiricist's favoured learning theory, namely associationism. We suggest that, on the contrary, the empiricist can embrace much of what Bloom says.
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• Concept Acquisition: How to get something from nothing (talk format)
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Consciousness and qualia

• The autonomic nervous system and Dretske on phenomenal consciousness (talk format)
  (with C. B. Martin)
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• Explaining the "inhereness" of qualia representationally: Why we seem to have a visual field
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Metaphysics

• The dispositional/categorical distinction
  (under revision for The Philosophical Quarterly)
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• Critical Notice of Mumford's Dispositions (warning: 47pp!)
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Neuroscience and neural networks

• SINBAD: A neocortical mechanism for discovering environmental variables and regularities hidden in sensory input
  (with Oleg Favorov)
  To appear in Biological Cybernetics
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• The new associationism: a neural explanation for the predictive powers of cerebral cortex
  (with Oleg Favorov)
  Brain and Mind 2(2), 2001, pp. 161-194.
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• The cortical pyramidal cell as a set of interacting error backpropagating dendrites: A mechanism for discovering nature's order
  (with Oleg Favorov, Tracy Hester, Doug Kelly, & Mark Tommerdahl)
  In Computational Models for Neuroscience: Human Cortical Information Processing, (2003). Robert Hecht-Nielsen and Thomas McKenna (eds.), Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. 25-64.
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