Athanassios Raftopoulos
University of Cyprus, Department of Psychology, Faculty Member
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— Any discussion concerning representations in cognitive psychology and science assumes that mental representational contents are carried by brain representational vehicles. Recently Sedivy attacked the view that mental contents are... more
— Any discussion concerning representations in cognitive psychology and science assumes that mental representational contents are carried by brain representational vehicles. Recently Sedivy attacked the view that mental contents are carried by vehicles. Sedivy relies on Dennett's work to argue that mental contents cannot be carried by vehicles because the former cannot be independently individuated whereas the latter are, by definition, independently individuated by means of their semantic properties. In this paper, I claim that mental contents are carried by neural vehicles and that Sedivy misunderstands Dennett's work on the relation between the mental and the neural by confounding the algorithmic and the computational level of description. I analyze connectionist representations that Dennett favors and which are the most amenable to Sedivy's concerning the context dependency of contents on which Sedivy builds her arguments, and argue that in connectionism, there is a clear cut distinction between contents and vehicles that carry these contents.
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Firestone & Scholl (F&S) examine, among other possible cognitive influences on perception, the effects of peripheral attention and conclude that these effects do not entail cognition directly affecting... more
Firestone & Scholl (F&S) examine, among other possible cognitive influences on perception, the effects of peripheral attention and conclude that these effects do not entail cognition directly affecting perception. Studies in neuroscience with other forms of attention, however, suggest that a stage of vision, namely late vision, is cognitively penetrated mainly through the effects of cognitively driven spatial and object-centered attention.
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Model-based reasoning refers to the sorts of inferences performed on the basis of a knowledge context that guides them. This context constitutes a model of a domain of reality, that is, an approximative and simplifying to various degrees... more
Model-based reasoning refers to the sorts of inferences performed on the basis of a knowledge context that guides them. This context constitutes a model of a domain of reality, that is, an approximative and simplifying to various degrees representation of the factors that underlie, and the interrelations that govern, the behavior of this domain.
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Developmental psychologists have been preoccupied with the shape or form of development since the early days of developmental psychology. One of their main concerns has been to specify the developmental function of the characteristics... more
Developmental psychologists have been preoccupied with the shape or form of development since the early days of developmental psychology. One of their main concerns has been to specify the developmental function of the characteristics (i.e., behaviors, traits, abilities, processes, etc.) that are of interest to them. This is equivalent to saying that they try to specify how a given characteristic varies with age (Wohlwill, 1973). Underlying this concern are some fundamental ontological assumptions about the nature of development and some methodological assumptions about the science of development. The main ontological assumption underlying developmental theories is that the direction of development is known. That is, it is assumed that development is teleologically driven to an ultimate end that is equated with an, ideally, error-free state of functioning of every possible characteristic that may be considered. For most characteristics, this state is thought to be attainable in early adulthood. Therefore, development, under this assumption, is a process of growth or expansion and successive states during its course are just increasingly closer approximations to this ideal. This assumptionunderliesalldevelopmental theories.Forexample, in languagedevelopment, it is taken for granted that, with age, people know more words and use longer and more complex sentences, in accordance with the rules of grammar and syntax. The ultimate aim of language development is error-free communication that would map an underlying universal linguistic competence (Bowerman, 1982; Chomsky, 1972). In cognitive development it is taken for granted that, with age, people can unJOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT, 5(1), 89–95 Copyright © 2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
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ABSTRACT Dartnall claims that visual short-term memory (VSTM) stores nonconceptual content (NCC), in the form of compressed images. In this paper I argue against the claim that NCC can be stored in VSTM. I offer four reasons why NCC... more
ABSTRACT Dartnall claims that visual short-term memory (VSTM) stores nonconceptual content (NCC), in the form of compressed images. In this paper I argue against the claim that NCC can be stored in VSTM. I offer four reasons why NCC cannot be stored in visual memory and why only conceptual information can: (1) NCC lasts for a very short time and does not reach either visual short-term memory or visual long-term memory; (2) the content of visual states is stored in memory only if and when object-centered attention modulates visual processing and this modulation signifies the onset of the conceptualization of that content; (3) only categorical high-level information that characterizes conceptual content and not metric and precise iconic information that characterizes NCC can be stored in visual memory for long periods; and (4) if NCC were stored in visual memory then this would allow recognitional judgments pertaining to NCC—one could recognize the precise shade of a color that one had seen before. However NCC does not allow such recognitional judgments.
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Hintikka (1997, 1998) argues that abduction is ignorance-preserving in the sense that the hypothesis that abduction delivers and which attempts to explain a set of phenomena is not, epistemologically speaking, on a firmer ground than the... more
Hintikka (1997, 1998) argues that abduction is ignorance-preserving in the sense that the hypothesis that abduction delivers and which attempts to explain a set of phenomena is not, epistemologically speaking, on a firmer ground than the phenomena it purports to explain; knowledge is not enhanced until the hypothesis undergoes a further inductive process that will test it against empirical evidence. Hintikka, therefore, introduces a wedge between the abductive process properly speaking and the inductive process of hypothesis testing. Similarly, Minnameier (2004) argues that abduction differs from the inference to the best explanation (IBE) since the former describes the process of generation of theories, while the latter describes the, inductive, process of their evaluation. As Hintikka so Minnameier traces this view back to Peirce’s work on abduction. Recent work on abduction (Gabbay and Wood 2005) goes as far as to draw a distinction between abducting an hypothesis that is considered worth conjecturing and the decision either to use further this hypothesis to do some inferential work in the given domain of enquiry, or to test it experimentally. The latter step, when it takes place, is an inductive mode of inference that should be distinguished from the abductive inference that led to the hypothesis. In this paper, I argue that in real scientific practise both the distinction between a properly speaking abductive phase and an inductive phase of hypothesis testing and evaluation, and the distinction between testing an hypothesis that has been discovered in a preceding abduction and releasing or activating the same hypothesis for further inferential work in the domain of enquiry in which the ignorance problem arose in the first place are blurred because all these processes form an inextricable whole of theory development and elaboration and this defies and any attempt to analyze this intricate process into discrete well defined steps. Thus, my arguments reinforce Magnani’s (2014) view on abduction and its function in scientific practise.
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ABSTRACT Toribio argues against my thesis that the cognitive penetrability (CP) of the content of early vision is a necessary and sufficient condition for this content to be nonconceptual content (NCC)–the MET (mutually entailing thesis).... more
ABSTRACT Toribio argues against my thesis that the cognitive penetrability (CP) of the content of early vision is a necessary and sufficient condition for this content to be nonconceptual content (NCC)–the MET (mutually entailing thesis). Her main point is that MET presupposes a non-standard, causal interpretation of NCC that either trivializes NCC or fails to engage with the contemporary literature on NCC, in which the property of being nonconceptual is not construed in empirical but in constitutive terms. I argue that Toribio's arguments presuppose views of NCC that clash with important themes in the nonconceptualist literature, and that constitutive considerations concerning NCC are inextricably linked with causal considerations since the latter are required to address the concerns that led philosophers to postulate NCC.
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Abstract Constructivism undermines realism by arguing that experience is mediated by concepts, and that there is no direct way to examine those aspects of objects that belong to them independently of our conceptualizations; perception is... more
Abstract Constructivism undermines realism by arguing that experience is mediated by concepts, and that there is no direct way to examine those aspects of objects that belong to them independently of our conceptualizations; perception is theory-laden. To defend realism ...
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Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Logic, Medicine, and 15 moreDown Syndrome, Problem Solving, Humans, Analogical Reasoning, Concept Formation, Female, Male, Developmental disabilities, Adult, Public health systems and services research, Short Term Memory, Reference Values, Neuropsychological Tests, Child preschool, and Growth pattern
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Abstract Macpherson (Nous 40(1):82117, 2006) argues that the square/regular diamond figure threatens representationalism, construed as the theory which holds that the phenomenal character is explained by the nonconceptual content of... more
Abstract Macpherson (Nous 40(1):82117, 2006) argues that the square/regular diamond figure threatens representationalism, construed as the theory which holds that the phenomenal character is explained by the nonconceptual content of experi-ence. Her argument is the claim that ...
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ABSTRACT I comment on two problems in Glover's account. First, semantic representations are not always available to awareness. Second, some functional properties, the affordances of objects, should be encoded in the dorsal system.... more
ABSTRACT I comment on two problems in Glover's account. First, semantic representations are not always available to awareness. Second, some functional properties, the affordances of objects, should be encoded in the dorsal system. Then I argue that the existence of Glover's two types of representations is supported by studies on “object-centered” attention. Furthermore, it foreshadows a nondescriptive causal reference fixing process.
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ABSTRACT This paper aims to provide an explication of the meaning of ‘analysis’ and ‘synthesis’ in Descartes’ writings. In the first part I claim that Descartes’ method is entirely captured by the term ‘analysis’, and that it is a method... more
ABSTRACT This paper aims to provide an explication of the meaning of ‘analysis’ and ‘synthesis’ in Descartes’ writings. In the first part I claim that Descartes’ method is entirely captured by the term ‘analysis’, and that it is a method of theory elaboration that fuses the modern methods of discovery and confirmation in one enterprise. I discuss Descartes’ methodological writings, assess their continuity and coherence, and I address the major shortcoming of previous interpretations of Cartesian methodology. I also discuss the Cartesian method in the context of other conceptions of scientific method of that era and argue that Descartes’ method significantly transforms these conceptions. In the second part I argue that mathematical and natural-philosophical writings exhibit this kind of analysis. To that effect I examine in Descartes’ writings on the method as used in mathematics, and Descartes’ account of the discovery of the nature of the rainbow in the Meteors. Finally, I briefly assess Descartes’ claim regarding the universality of his method.
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Research Interests: Psychology and Cognition
In this chapter, I elaborate my thesis that a stage of visual processing, namely, late vision, is Cognitively Penetrated (CP). The CP of late vision results in states with hybrid, that is visual/iconic and semantic/symbolic contents. The... more
In this chapter, I elaborate my thesis that a stage of visual processing, namely, late vision, is Cognitively Penetrated (CP). The CP of late vision results in states with hybrid, that is visual/iconic and semantic/symbolic contents. The conceptual modulation of late vision notwithstanding, I argue that late vision is a perceptual stage rather than a stage of discursive thought. My main claim is that instead of discursive inferences, late vision involves pattern matching processes, and I discuss the perception of ambiguous figures to sybstantiate my claim. I also argue that early vision, too, does not involve discursive inferences and that both late and early vision involve some sort of abductive reasoning.
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In earlier work (Raftopoulos 2009), I analyzed early vision, which I claimed is a cognitively impenetrable (CI) stage of visual processing. In contradistinction, late vision is cognitively penetrated (CP) and involves the modulation of... more
In earlier work (Raftopoulos 2009), I analyzed early vision, which I claimed is a cognitively impenetrable (CI) stage of visual processing. In contradistinction, late vision is cognitively penetrated (CP) and involves the modulation of processing by cognitively driven attention. Its stages have hybrid contents, partly conceptual contents, and partly iconic analogue contents. In this chapter, I examine the processes of late vision and discuss whether late vision should be construed as a perceptual stage or as a thought-like stage. Using Jackendoff ’s (1989) distinction between visual awareness and visual understanding, I argue that the contents of late vision belong to visual awareness. In late vision an abduction or “inference” to the best explanation allows the construction of a representation that best fits a scene. Given the sparse retinal image that underdetermines both the distal object and the percept, the visual system fills in the missing information to arrive at the best explanation, that is, the percept that best fits the retinal information. I argue that late vision does not consist in propositional structures formed in cognitive areas and participate in discursive reasoning and inferences, and does not implicate discursive abductive inferences from propositionally structured premises to recognitional beliefs.
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Attention has often been likened to spotlights and filters—devices that illuminate or screen out some inputs in favor of others. This largely passive conception of attention has been gradually replaced by a more dynamic and far-reaching... more
Attention has often been likened to spotlights and filters—devices that illuminate or screen out some inputs in favor of others. This largely passive conception of attention has been gradually replaced by a more dynamic and far-reaching process. We know that attentional processes augment neural processing at all levels, and in some cases, augmenting processing within the sense organs themselves. For example, cueing object features (e.g., instructing a subject to look at a screen for a red object) modulates prestimulus activity in the visual cortex. Far from being limited to space or basic features, such attention cueing can function in surprisingly flexible and complex ways: people can be cued to attend to various objects, properties, and semantic categories and such attention appears to directly involve perceptual mechanisms. Studies of spatial attention cues presented before stimulus presentation show early modulation of perceptual processing. This phenomenon refers to the enhancement of the baseline activity of neurons at all levels in the visual cortex that are tuned to the cued location, which is called attentional modulation of spontaneous activity. The spontaneous firing rates of neurons are increased when attention is shifted toward the location of an upcoming stimulus before its presentation. Evidence also suggests that through pre-cueing of object features, feature-based attention modulates prestimulus activity in the visual cortex. The effects of pre-stimulus feature attention act either as a preparatory activity to enhance the stimulus-evoked potentials within feature sensitive areas, or they act so as to modulate stimulus-locked transients. Both effects of pre-cueing reflect a change in background neural activity. They are called anticipatory effects established prior to the presentation of the stimulus. Thus, they do not modulate processing during stimulus viewing but bias the process before it starts via the increase in the base line firing rates; they rig-up perceptual processing without affecting it on-line. Moreover, recent work on perceptual processing emphasizes the role of brain as a predictive tool. To perceive is to use what you know to explain away the sensory signal across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Perception aims to enable perceivers to interact with their environment successfully. Success relies on inferring or predicting correctly (or nearly so) the nature of the source of the incoming signal from the signal itself, an inference that may well be Bayesian. Current research sheds light on the role of attention in inferring the identities of the distal objects. Attention within late vision contributes to testing hypotheses concerning the putative distal causes of the sensory data encoded in the lower neuronal assemblies in the visual processing hierarchy. This testing assumes the form of matching predictions, made on the basis of an hypothesis, about the sensory information that the lower levels should encode assuming that the hypothesis is correct, with the current, actual sensory information encoded at the lower levels. To this aim, attention enhances the activity of neurons in the cortical regions that encode the stimuli that most likely contain information relevant to the testing of the hypothesis. In this Research Topic we aim to answer two related questions: First, what are the differences between this sort of pre-cueing effects and top-down cognitive influences on perception, and, in general, how do such attentional cuing effects relate to the broader literature on top-down influences on perception? Second, given that attention appears to change perceptual processing and that a form of attention, namely, cognitively-driven (or endogenous, or sustained) attention is a cognitive process, does attentional modulation through pre-cueing constitute cognitive penetrability of perception? Addressing these two questions will shed light on the theoretical underpinnings of cognitive penetrability and the nature of perceptual processing
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ABSTRACT Most developmental theories consider development as a process in which an organism grows from an immature (biological, behavioral, sensory, and cognitive) state to a mature one, the latter being more perfect and ‘better’. In this... more
ABSTRACT Most developmental theories consider development as a process in which an organism grows from an immature (biological, behavioral, sensory, and cognitive) state to a mature one, the latter being more perfect and ‘better’. In this paper I will argue in favor of the view that the limited resources with which the organism starts its development show positive results, in that they make possible certain kinds of learning which otherwise would be highly problematical. I will start by discussing certain limitations regarding the cognitive structure of the organism. Then, I will discuss learning and its problems in connectionism. My argument will be that the knowledge we gain from our effort to overcome these problems sheds light on the beneficial role of limited resources. Finally, I will return to the types of limitations taken up in the first part, and assess their role in the cognitive development of the organism.Copyright © 1997 S. Karger AG, Basel
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ABSTRACT tudies on the syndrome called ‘unilateral visual or spatial neglect’ have been used by philosophers in discussions concerning perceptual phenomenology. Nanay (Philos Perspect 26:235–246, 2012), based on spatial neglects studies,... more
ABSTRACT tudies on the syndrome called ‘unilateral visual or spatial neglect’ have been used by philosophers in discussions concerning perceptual phenomenology. Nanay (Philos Perspect 26:235–246, 2012), based on spatial neglects studies, argued that the property of being suitable for action (an action-property) is part of the perceptual phenomenology of neglect patients. In this paper, I argue that the studies on visual neglect conducted thus far do not support Nanay’s thesis that when patients succeed in detecting the neglected object, it’s action properties are part of their perceptual phenomenology; instead, the support the view that the patients consciously see low-level properties such as color and shape. In the first section, I discuss unilateral neglect and extinction. In the second section, I analyze Nanay’s argument. In the third section, I explain why Nanay’s thesis does not follow from the studies on visual neglect. Nanay argues that when neglect patients are cued with an action-property of an object and succeed in perceiving the object in the con- tralesional side they are phenomenally aware of an action-property of it but they are not phenomenally aware of its low-level properties. Since the patients detect the object, they must be phenomenally aware of some of its properties. Failing to see the low-level properties, the patients should be phenomenally aware is the action- property. Against this, I argue that research on spatial neglect shows that the patients come to see the low-level properties. I also explain why my discussion also supports the more general claim that the studies on neglect and extinction conducted thus far do not establish that the action-properties are part of the patients’ phenomenology. Finally, in section four, I examine a possible objection against my account. My arguments do not entail that the action properties are not part of perceptual phe- nomenology; only that the neglect studies do not establish this.
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In this chapter, I defend the thesis that early vision is Cognitively Impenetrable (CI) against very recent criticisms, some of them aimed specifically at my arguments, which state that neurophysiological evidence shows that early vision... more
In this chapter, I defend the thesis that early vision is Cognitively Impenetrable (CI) against very recent criticisms, some of them aimed specifically at my arguments, which state that neurophysiological evidence shows that early vision is affected in a top-down manner by cognitive states. This criticism comes from (a) studies on fast object recognition; (b) pre-cueing studies; and (c) imaging studies that examine the recurrent processes in the brain during visual perception. I argue that upon closer examination, all this evidence supports rather than defeats the thesis that early vision is CI, because it shows that (a) the information used in early vision to recognize objects very fast is not cognitive information; (b) the processes of early vision do not use the cognitive information that issues cognitive demands guiding attention or expectation in pre-cueing studies; and (c) the recurrent processes in early vision are purely stimulus-driven and do not involve any cognitive signals.
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Hintikka (1997, 1998) argues that abduction is ignorance-preserving in the sense that the hypothesis that abduction delivers and which attempts to explain a set of phenomena is not, epistemologically speaking, on a firmer ground than the... more
Hintikka (1997, 1998) argues that abduction is ignorance-preserving in the sense that the hypothesis that abduction delivers and which attempts to explain a set of phenomena is not, epistemologically speaking, on a firmer ground than the phenomena it purports to explain; knowledge is not enhanced until the hypothesis undergoes a further inductive process that will test it against empirical evidence. Hintikka, therefore, introduces a wedge between the abductive process properly speaking and the inductive process of hypothesis testing. Similarly, Minnameier (2004) argues that abduction differs from the inference to the best explanation (IBE) since the former describes the process of generation of theories, while the latter describes the, inductive, process of their evaluation. As Hintikka so Minnameier traces this view back to Peirce’s work on abduction. Recent work on abduction (Gabbay and Wood 2005) goes as far as to draw a distinction between abducting an hypothesis that is considered worth conjecturing and the decision either to use further this hypothesis to do some inferential work in the given domain of enquiry, or to test it experimentally. The latter step, when it takes place, is an inductive mode of inference that should be distinguished from the abductive inference that led to the hypothesis. In this paper, I argue that in real scientific practise both the distinction between a properly speaking abductive phase and an inductive phase of hypothesis testing and evaluation, and the distinction between testing an hypothesis that has been discovered in a preceding abduction and releasing or activating the same hypothesis for further inferential work in the domain of enquiry in which the ignorance problem arose in the first place are blurred because all these processes form an inextricable whole of theory development and elaboration and this defies and any attempt to analyze this intricate process into discrete well defined steps. Thus, my arguments reinforce Magnani’s (2014) view on abduction and its function in scientific practise.
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In this paper, we examine the importance of scaffolding the environment and the role of cognitive readiness in young childrens’ construction of operational definitions in magnetism. We discuss various resource constraints and the... more
In this paper, we examine the importance of scaffolding
the environment and the role of cognitive readiness in
young childrens’ construction of operational definitions
in magnetism. We discuss various resource constraints
and the conceptual background of preschoolers. Then we
present an experimental study of 165 children aged 4-6
who took part in an extended structured intervention in
which they were guided to construct two operational
definitions of a magnet. The two definitions differed with
regard to the cognitive demands imposed upon the
children attempting to construct them. The construction
of the second operational definition required cognitive
abilities that the construction of the first did not. Our
results demonstrate that children older than 5 years are
mostly able to construct both definitions while younger
children are able to construct only the first one. Based on
this result, we discuss the issue of cognitive readiness
and its role in learning. Additionally, by teaching one
experimental group of older children the second
definition directly and observing their limited success to
construct it, we argue for the necessary role of
scaffolding the conceptual structure of the curriculum
materials to achieve learning.
the environment and the role of cognitive readiness in
young childrens’ construction of operational definitions
in magnetism. We discuss various resource constraints
and the conceptual background of preschoolers. Then we
present an experimental study of 165 children aged 4-6
who took part in an extended structured intervention in
which they were guided to construct two operational
definitions of a magnet. The two definitions differed with
regard to the cognitive demands imposed upon the
children attempting to construct them. The construction
of the second operational definition required cognitive
abilities that the construction of the first did not. Our
results demonstrate that children older than 5 years are
mostly able to construct both definitions while younger
children are able to construct only the first one. Based on
this result, we discuss the issue of cognitive readiness
and its role in learning. Additionally, by teaching one
experimental group of older children the second
definition directly and observing their limited success to
construct it, we argue for the necessary role of
scaffolding the conceptual structure of the curriculum
materials to achieve learning.