Information in the Brain: from Metaphor to Truth, 2025
Despite explicit warnings of Shannon to tread carefully when applying Information Theory to field... more Despite explicit warnings of Shannon to tread carefully when applying Information Theory to fields for which it was not designed, contemporary neuroscientists adopting the framework of Information Theory have fallen right into the traps Shannon and others cautioned against. What makes the neuroscientist more than anyone prone to fall prey to confusion is that neuroscience looks back on a
Review of: "[Paper removed, will be broken down to two different projects] Big Data, Granger Causality Analysis, and the Undecidability Property of Neuroimaging
This paper addresses the issue of what it is for something to be identifiable as a representation... more This paper addresses the issue of what it is for something to be identifiable as a representation. The inquiry will proceed in a number of steps. First, it will be pointed out how, in cognitive science literature, we find a tendency to conflate the idea that something can be seen as a representation with the idea that something is, as a matter of fact, identifiable as a representation. Second, it will be argued that the notion of internal representation cannot, and should not, be divorced from an understanding of what it means for an external object to qualify as a representation. In the third step, it will be argued that all representation involves a socio-normative or prescriptive element, and that factual identification of an object as a representation is impossible outside this prescriptive context. The conclusion argues that we should give up on the idea of discovering structures in brains that can be identified as representations.
Whereas authors used to conceive of representational content as something that has conditions of ... more Whereas authors used to conceive of representational content as something that has conditions of satisfaction, in contemporary philosophy of perception it has become customary to explicitly equate content with such conditions. I call this position the Content as Accuracy Conditions View, or CACV for short. This paper argues that this shift in how satisfaction conditions are being conceived of is ill-motivated. Moreover, it renders the general idea that there is content in perception untenable. In the second half of this paper, by examining the moon illusion, I will present an original argument to show why we have as yet no reason whatsoever to think that perceptual experience has accuracy conditions and, therefore, accuracy evaluable content.
This article tries to offer a different perspective on the issue of what it means for some physic... more This article tries to offer a different perspective on the issue of what it means for some physical structure to be a representation. In the first sections, it will be shown how and why this issue is still far from settled. This will be done by emphasizing the—what I will call—metaphysically promiscuous character of representation. For although representations are typically assumed to be some sort of physical objects or structures, on closer inspection, the notion of representation is used in such a variety of ways that its fundamental metaphysical status is far from obvious. Proceeding from these observations, it will be argued that, even though “representation” pre-theoretically indeed often picks out objects, their representational status is best not understood in terms of their physical properties or their causal-functional profile. It will be argued that, what it means for some physical structure to be—as a matter of fact—a representation, only first becomes intelligible in rel...
On representation hungry cognition (and why we should stop feeding it)
Synthese, 2019
Despite the gaining popularity of non-representationalist approaches to cognition, it is still a ... more Despite the gaining popularity of non-representationalist approaches to cognition, it is still a widespread assumption in contemporary cognitive science that the explanatory reach of representation-eschewing approaches is substantially limited. Nowadays, many working in the field accept that we do not need to invoke internal representations for the explanation of online forms of cognition. However, when it comes to explaining higher, offline forms of cognition, it is widely believed that we must fall back on internal-representation-invoking theories. In this paper, I want to argue that, contrary to popular belief, we don’t yet have any compelling reason for assuming that non-representationalist theories are, as a matter of necessity, limited in scope. I will show that Clark and Toribio’s influential argument in terms of ‘representation-hungry’ cognition is, for various reasons, flawed. On closer inspection, we’ll see that the argument from representation-hunger (ARH) is, on the one hand, built on an inconsistent notion of representation and, on the other hand, on a conflation of the explanandum with the explanans. I will suggest that, on closer inspection, the ARH seems to be getting its appeal mainly from the unscientific principle that “like causes like”.
Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte, 2016
Keijzers artikel opent met de vraag wanneer cognitie nu eindelijk een gewoon object van natuurwet... more Keijzers artikel opent met de vraag wanneer cognitie nu eindelijk een gewoon object van natuurwetenschappelijk onderzoek wordt. Dat Keijzer hierover zijn beklag doet is begrijpelijk. Het is vandaag nog steeds onduidelijk wat nu het eigenlijke onderzoeksobject van de zogenaamde cognitieve wetenschap is. Iedereen zal het erover eens zijn dat dat 'cognitie' is, maar er is geen consensus over wat dat dan precies betekent. Het gebrek aan eensgezindheid betreft echter niet alleen de vraag wat cognitie precies is. Zelfs over de vraag of het gebrek aan een conceptuele consensus als problematisch moet gezien worden, zijn de meningen verdeeld. Volgens sommige onderzoekers is het voldoende dat we ons bij de demarcatie van cognitie door onze intuïties laten leiden. Deze meta-intuitië wordt door Keijzer zelf echter niet gedeeld: 'Zolang cognitie iets is wat we "op het zicht" moeten herkennen blijft het een ongrijpbaar fenomeen [...].' Bovendien zou het gebrek aan een duidelijke begripsbepaling de 'opbouw van een cumulatieve kennisstructuur' in de weg staan. ２ De identificatie van cognitie Keijzer doet daarom een voorstel tot begripsafbakening 'voorbij de intuïties', een voorstel dat voorschrijft hoe we cognitie als een wetenschappelijke term zouden moeten gebruiken om een empirisch terrein af te bakenen waar de cognitieve wetenschappen zich op zouden moeten richten. Volgens dit voorstel is cognitie 'een wijd verspreid biologisch verschijnsel dat bestaat uit de systematische organisme-omgevingsinteracties waarmee organismen hun externe bestaansvoorwaarden manipuleren.' 201
Uploads
Papers by Farid Zahnoun