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From: gh@utai.UUCP (Graeme Hirst)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Annual meeting, Society for Philosophy and Psychology
Message-ID: <422@utai.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Apr-85 16:07:27 EST
Article-I.D.: utai.422
Posted: Thu Apr 11 16:07:27 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Apr-85 16:45:07 EST
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Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
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PROGRAM AND ABSTRACTS FOR MEETING OF SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY AND
PSYCHOLOGY
University of Toronto
Wednesday May 15 - Saturday May 18, 1985
For information about the program [note that there may still be
room for some discussants or speakers], the usenet address for
the Program Chairman, Stevan Harnad, is:
bellcore!princeton!mind!srh
or write to: Stevan Harnad, Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 20 Nas-
sau Street, Suite 240, Princeton NJ 08540
For information about local arrangements, write to: David Olson,
McLuhan Center, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, CANADA, M5S 1A1
For information about the Society and attendance, write to: Owen
Flanagan, Secretary/Treasurer, Society for Philosophy & Psycholo-
gy, Philosophy Department, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02181
Program follows [participant lists are in several cases only par-
tial; other contributors will also be on the program]:
Workshop (2 full sessions)
Ia & Ib. Artificial Intelligence Versus Neural Modeling in
Psychological Theory
Participants include: D. Ballard, P. Churchland, P.C. Dodwell,
J. Feldman, A. Goldman, S. Grossberg, S.J. Hanson, A. Newell, R.
Schank.
Symposia (11)
II. Category Formation
Participants include: S. Harnad, M. Lipton, R. Jackendoff, N.
Macmillan, R. Millikan, R. Schank.
III. Unconscious Processing
Participants include: T. Carr, P. Kolers, A. Marcel, P. Merikle,
W. Savage, A. Treisman.
IV. Memory and Consciousness
Participants include: K. Bowers, M. Moscovitch, D. Schacter, A.
Marcel, R. Lockhart, E. Tulving.
V. New Directions in Evolutionary Theory
Participants include: E. Balon, O. Flanagan, A. Rosenberg, M.
Ruse, E. Sober, W. Shields.
VI. Paradoxical Neurological Syndromes
Participants include: M. Gazzaniga, A. Kertesz, A. Marcel,
O.Sacks.
VII. The Empirical Status of Psychoanalytic Theory
Participants include: M. Eagle, E. Erwin, A. Grunbaum, J. Mas-
ling, B. von Eckardt, R. Woolfolk.
VIII. The Scientific Status of Parapsychological Research
Participants include: J. Alcock, K. Emmett, R. Hyman, C. Honor-
ton, R.L. Morris, M. Truzzi.
IX. The Reality of the "G" (General) Factor in the Measurement
and Modeling of Intelligence
Participants include: D. Detterman, P. Hertzberg, A. Jensen, W.
Rozeboom.
X. The Ascription of Knowledge States to Children: Seeing,
Believing and Knowing
Participants include: D. Olson & J. Astington, J. Perner & H.
Wimmer, M. Taylor & J. Flavell, F. Dretske, S. Kuczaj.
XI. Psychology, Pictures and Drawing
Participants include: J. Caron-Prague, S. Dennis, J. Kennedy, D.
Pariser, S. Wilcox, J. Willats, S. Brison
XII. Interpretation Versus Explanation in Cognitive and Social
Theory
Participants include: R. DeSousa, A. Grunbaum, S. Harnad, R. Ni-
choloson, A. Rosenberg, E. Sullivan, R. Woolfolk.
Contributed Paper Sessions (4):
XIII. Perception and Cognition
To What Extent Do Beliefs Affect Apparent Motion (M. Dawson, R.
Wright) (discussant: P. Kolers)
Images, Pictures and Percepts (D. Reisberg, D. Chambers) (discus-
sant: W. Savage)
What the First Words Tell Us About Meaning and Cognition (A. Gop-
nik)
XIV. Induction and Information
Beyond Holism: Induction in the Context of Problem-Solving (P.
Thagard, K. Holyoak) (discussant: C.F. Schmidt)
The Semantic of Pragmatics (M.A. Gluck, J.E. Corter) (discussant:
D. H. Helman)
About Promises (J. Astington)
XV. Evolution of Cognitive and Social Structures
Is Decision Theory Reducible to Evolutionary Biology? (W.E. Coop-
er)
Human Nature, Love and Morality: The Possibility of Altruism (L.
Thomas)
On How to Get Rid of the Craftsman (B. Dahlbom)
XVI. Inferences About the Mind (chairman: J. Poland)
The Puzzle of Split-Brain Phenomena (S.C. Bringsjord) (discus-
sant: R. Puccetti)
The Mark of the Mental (R. Puccetti) discussant: L. Alanen
Natural Teleology (S. Silvers)
SYMPOSIUM ABSTRACTS FOLLOW:
I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE VERSUS NEURAL MODELING IN PSYCHOLOGI-
CAL THEORY
The issues will be discussed at two levels, a practical one (P)
and a foundational one (F). At the practical level the following
two questions will be considered: (P1) Is psychological theory-
building more successful with or without constraints from neuros-
cientific evidence and neuroscientific considerations? (P2) Are
the current differences between models that are neurally motivat-
ed (which tend to be statistical, connectionistic, and lately,
parallel) and models that are not neurally motivated (which tend
to be symbol/sentence manipulative) fundamental differences, and
is one approach more promising than the other?
At the foundational level the questions will be: (F1) What are
the data that psychological theory should account for (behavioral
performance? cognitive competence? real-time topography and exe-
cution? neural activity?)? (F2) Is a successful functional theory
of higher cognitive performance and competence necessarily
"implementation-independent" (i.e., independent of the architec-
ture of the mechanism that embodies it)? Tne issues will be dis-
cussed in the context of actual current work in modeling.
II. CATEGORY FORMATION
Categorization is a fundamental human activity. It is involved in
everything from operant discrimination to perceptual recognition
to naming to describing. Five different approaches to categori-
zation now exist more or less in parallel: (1) The nativist ap-
proach, which holds that there are few, if any, nontrivial induc-
tive categories, and hence that most categories are preformed
[see Symposium V]; (2) the statistical pattern recognition and
multidimensional scaling approach, which computer-models category
formation probabilistically; (3) the artificial intelligence ap-
proach, which models categorization with symbol-manipulation
rules; (4) the natural category approach, which investigates
categorization through reaction time studies and typicality judg-
ments and developmentally; (5) the categorical perception ap-
proach, which investigates categorization through discrimination
and identification studies. These approaches will be presented
and the interaction will aim at a synthesis.
III. UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSING
It is undeniable that most cerebral information processing is un-
conscious. Not only are vegetative functions such as posture and
respiration (as well as automatized, overlearned skills) uncons-
ciously controlled by the brain, but even the basic processes
underlying higher cognitive activity are unavailable to conscious
introspection: No one knows "how" he actually adds two and two,
retrieves a name, recognizes a face. This is what makes cognitive
modeling a nontrivial enterprise. But apart from these basic cog-
nitive processes (about which our ignorance is sufficient to
demonstrate that that they are not conscious), there are some
kinds of processes that are at least normally accompanied by some
awareness of their occurrence. These include the detection,
discrimination and identification of verbal and perceptual in-
puts. New data indicate that even these activities may sometimes
occur without introspective awareness of their occurrence. This
new look at "subliminal perception" and related phenomena in a
contemporary psychophysical, information processing framework
will examine the evidence, methodological criteria and theoreti-
cal interpretations of the newer findings. [See also Symposium
VI.)
IV. MEMORY AND CONSCIOUSNESS
The symposium will examine the distinction between memory (the
consequence of some experience) and remembering (the awareness of
past events), which involves consciousness of a past experience.
The distinction involves the relation between mental processes
that reasonably decribe the performance of intelligent systems
(whether animals, people or machines), that is, "subpersonal"
cognitive psychology, and the intentional mental activities and
states of conscious human adults: "intentional psychology."
V. NEW DIRECTIONS IN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
Among the current developments in evolutionary theory and their
implications for psychology that will be discussed are: (1) The
"new preformationism," arising chiefly from develomental biology,
according to which there are substantial structural constraints
on the variation on which selection can operate; this implies
that there are structures and functions that cannot be regarded
as having been shaped by random variation and selection by conse-
quences but rather as having arisen from boundary conditions on
biological structures. The issue is particularlly relevant to
questions about the origins of cognitive and linguistic struc-
tures [Symposium II]. (2) Current sociobiological theory has be-
come concerned with cognitive questions, in particular, the ex-
istence of "cognitive primitives" on which selection would
operate in a way that is analogous to its effects on traits coded
by genes: Is this "gene-culture co-evolution" and its new unit,
the "culturgen" just overinclusive curve-fitting or is there a
real empirical phenomenon here? (3) In general, are the kinds of
assumptions and inclusive-fitness calculations that characterize
sociobiological theorizing (and that have been critically re-
ferred to as "just-so stories") a reasonable explanatory handicap
or signs of taking the wrong theoretical direction? In particu-
lar, when is a conscious, cognitive explanation of a behavior
[Symposium III] preferable to an unconscious, fitness-related
one?
VI. PARADOXICAL NEUROLOLOGICAL STATES
This symposium will consider neurological states that (based on
their symptoms and inferences from their symptoms) are very hard
to imagine "being in." These include: (1) "blindsight," i.e., the
loss of all conscious visual experience, but with the retention
of "visual" information (e.g., object location); (2) the anosag-
nosias and attentional disorders, i.e., the apparent unawareness
and denial of dramatic neurological deficits such as loss of
large portions of the visual field or of body sensation; (3)
deconnection phenomena such as alexia without agraphia (intact
vision with the loss of all ability to read but the retention of
the ability to write) or the split-brain patient's ability to
match but inability to name out-of-sight objects grasped with the
left hand; (4) various memory disorders such as the ability to
acquire cognitive information and skills with complete inability
to remember the episodes in which they were acquired [cf. Sympo-
sium IV]; (5) confabulations arising from these paradoxical
states (i.e., the unusual way patients rationalize having these
deficits). The clinical phenomenology of these paradoxical states
will be decsribed and then they will be discussed in terms of
current philosophical, psychological and neurological theories of
cognition and consciousness.
VII. THE EMPIRICAL STATUS OF PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
The empirical status of psychoanalytic theory will be considered
in terms of the following questions: (1) Is psychoanalytic theory
testable? (2) If so, how much of it is testable, and, in particu-
lar, what parts? (3) How is it testable (clinically? experimen-
tally? epidemiologically?)? (4) How much of psychoanalytic theory
has actually been tested in these ways, and was the theory sup-
ported by the evidence? (5) Are future tests of psychoanalytic
theory likely to yield outcomes that support the theory, and is
this theory the best one to use to guide future research? (6) Is
the proportion of psychoanalytic theory that is testable compar-
able to the proportions of other scientific theories that are te-
stable, or is evidence disproportionately remote from or ir-
relevant to psychoanalytic theory? (7) Is testability irrelevant
to some kinds of theoretical understanding? (8) Is psychoanalytic
theory based on adequate views of conscious and unconscious
processes and explanation? These questions will be discussed by
clinicians, experimentalists and methodologists of science.
VIII. THE SCIENTIFIC STATUS OF PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH
In parapsychology there appears to be a chronic polarization of
rival views in a way that only occurs occasionally and briefly at
the frontiers of other kinds of scientific research. The polari-
zation consists of those who accept the validity of the reported
phenomena and of the theoretical framework accounting for them
and those who do not. The following questions will be considered:
(1) Is the polarization merely a prejudice, or are there objec-
tive characteristics that set this field of research apart? (2)
Are there special problems with furnishing replicable positive
evidence in this area? (3) Are there logical problems with the
theoretical framework in which the research is undertaken? (4)
Are there statistical problems with the data-analysis and the
underlying assumptions? (5) Is there any possibility of resolu-
tion, or will the field always continue to split among believers
and nonbelievers, and if the latter, (6) what does that imply
about the scientific validity of this domain of inquiry? These
questions will be discussed, in the context of representative
current experimental work in parapsychological research, by
parapsychologists, skeptics and (as yet) uncommitted methodolo-
gists.
IX. THE REALITY OF THE "G" (GENERAL) FACTOR IN THE MEASUREMENT
AND MODELING OF INTELLIGENCE
When intelligence tests are factor-analyzed (i.e., the structure
of their correlations with one another is reduced to a small
number of underlying variables), one general, overall factor al-
ways emerges, along with a number of special factors peculiar to
some groups of tests and not others. The general ("g") factor has
been interpreted as a unitary measure of general intelligence.
Some have challenged the reality of "g" on the grounds that indi-
vidual test items (and indeed entire tests) are so constructed as
to correlate with one another, and hence the overall positive
correlation factor is built in; moreover, it is argued that it is
fallacious to think in terms of an underlying, one-dimensional
unitary intelligence. Others have argued that "g" is an empirical
finding after all, because even tests constructed and validated
to measure the special abilities (e.g., verbal versus spatial
skills) have high "g" loadings, and indeed the more discriminat-
ing tests (the ones that are more sensitive to and predictive of
individual differences) tend to have the higher "g" loadings. The
technical and conceptual problems of measuring, validating and
modeling human cognitive capacities will be discussed in the con-
text of the interpretation of "g."
X. THE ASCRIPTION OF KNOWLEDGE STATES TO CHILDREN: SEEING,
BELIEVING AND KNOWING
Considerable discussion in cognitive science surrounds the issue
of the ascription of beliefs to animals, machines and young chil-
dren. Opinions range from that of Davidson, who argues that one
cannot have beliefs unless one has a concept of belief, to that
of Searle, who argues that "only someone in the grip of a philo-
sophical theory would deny that dogs and children have beliefs."
Recent research on children's ascription of beliefs to others and
to themselves in the interpretation of visual events may cast
some light on this question.
XI. PSYCHOLOGY, PICTURES AND DRAWING
The past decade has seen considerable interest in theory of dep-
iction and allied theories of drawing. Current theories are
technically well constructed, significant in themselves and, in
addition, have important implications for neighboring areas of
psychology. Yet they are often distinct in the assumptions they
make about perception, communication and the environment. The
present symposium draws together philosophers, educators and
psychologists who have developed theories about pictures, percep-
tion and drawing. Assumptions will be reviewed and implications
will be discussed.
XII. INTERPRETATION VERSUS EXPLANATION IN COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL
THEORY
The following questions will be considered: (1) What is an expla-
nation, and is "scientific" explanation an atypical case or a
paradigmatic one? (2) What is the role of testability and falsi-
fiability in explanation? (3) What is the role of considerations
of satisfyingness, coherence, elegance and other subjective cri-
teria in explanation? (4) Are there different explanatory metho-
dologies in the natural sciences and ther "human" sciences? (5)
Is there an objective way to choose among rival interpretations?
(Should there be? Is there one in the case of rival scientific
theories?) (6) Is there anything objective to replace the outmod-
ed "positivistic" stereotype? Pro and antihermeneuticists will
participate and the discussion will focus on the role of in-
terpretation in psychological and social scientific theory.
PROVISIONAL TIMETABLE
Wed am: VII vs. XIII (parallel sessions)
Wed pm: III vs. XIV
Wed eve: VI
Thurs am: II
Thurs pm: Ia
Thurs eve: Ib
Fri am: IV vs. XVI
Fri pm: II vs XV
Fri eve: (presidential address and business meeting)
Sat am: V vs. XI
Sat pm: VIII vs X
Sat eve: XII
--
\\\\ Graeme Hirst University of Toronto Computer Science Department
//// utcsri!utai!gh / gh.toronto@csnet-relay / 416-978-8747