Vol 4 (1998)
Table of Contents
Book Reviews
| Higher-Order Thought Rendered Defenseless Review of Consciousness and Self-Consciousness: A Defense of the Higher-Order Thought Theory of Consciousness by Rocco Gennaro Full Text |
| Drew McDermott |
| Another Linguistic Turn? Review of Language, Thought and Consciousness: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology by Peter Carruthers Full Text |
| Lawrence Kaye |
| Simple Conscious Percepts Require Complex Unconscious Processing Review of Indirect Perception By Irvin Rock Full Text |
| Bruce Bridgeman |
| Defining Awareness by the Triangular Circuit Of Attention Full Text |
| David LaBerge |
| Five Enigmas Regarding LaBerge's (1997) Triangular-Circuit Theory of Attention and Self-Referential Theory of Awareness Full Text |
| Nelson Cowan |
| Learning to Work Together:Review of Consciousness In Philosophy And Cognitive Neuroscience, Antti Revonsuo and Matti Kamppinen (Eds.) Full Text |
| W.F.G. Haselager |
| A Forlorn Hope: Psychoanalysis in Search of Scientific Respectability Review of The Evolution of the Emotion Processing Mind by Robert Langs Full Text |
| Christian Perring |
| The Visual Brain in Action Full Text |
| A.David Milner |
| Aware Brains, Unaware Subjects Full Text |
| Burkhart Fischer |
| A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animats and Humans: Review of Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again by Andy Clark Full Text |
| Anthony Chemero |
| From Real Patterns to Prospective Quacks: Review of Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds by Daniel Dennett Full Text |
| Joao Teixeira |
| Facilitation, Inhibition, and the Advantage of Two Connections Full Text |
| Kyle R. Cave |
| The Missing Link: Commentary on LaBerge's Triangular Circuit Full Text |
| James Newman |
| Memory's Fragile Power Review of Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past by D.L. Schacter. Full Text |
| Dr C. P. Beaman |
| Animal Cognition: Theory and Evidence Review of Species of Mind: The Philosophy and Biology of Cognitive Ethology by Colin Allen and Marc Bekoff Full Text |
| William S. Robinson |
| What Is Consciousness? Review of The Science of Consciousness by Max Velmans (ed.) Full Text |
| Patrice Terrier |
| Cognitive Science and its Discontents Review of Two Sciences of Mind by S. O' Nuallain, P. McKevitt and E. Mac Aogain (Eds.) Full Text |
| Massimo Marraffa |
Articles
| Animal Subjectivity Summary Full Text |
| Peter Carruthers |
| Carruthers, P. (in press). Natural theories of consciousness. European Journal of Philosophy |
| Functionalism, Causation, and Causal Relevance Summary Full Text |
| Kirk Ludwig |
| This paper argues that functional states, and states defined in terms of them, cannot be causally relevant to the output or state transitions in terms of which those functional states are defined, or to intervening mechanisms or to anything to which their output is in turn causally relevant. Functional states therefore cannot be correctly invoked in what I call "simple causal explanations". Explanations which cite functional states are instead a species of explanation by appeal to dispositional properties. Functionalists about the mental are therefore committed either to denying that ordinary explanations of behavior by appeal to mental states are simple causal explanations or to denying that they are true. Special difficulties for functionalism arise in the case of conscious mental states. |
| Re-Examining the Role of Consistency: The Cornerstone, not Simply an Important Factor Summary Full Text |
| Patrice Terrier |
| Despite the important role of the consistency concept in various theoretical frameworks of memory research and its influence on practical investigations it remains unclear as to whether consistency has been firmly grounded as a explanatory factor. Consistency does not determine either a cognitive load or the development of automaticity. However, it does explain the nature of empirical facts that are subsumed by these terms. Consistency is not a psychological factor involved in many important and highly related topics of consciousness research including, implicit learning, and implicit memory. Rather it is the way human beings relate their various mental experiences. |
| Constructing the Relational Mind Summary Full Text |
| John G. Taylor |
| The "relational mind" approach to the inner content of consciousness is developed in terms of various control structures and processing strategies and their possible neurobiological identifications in brain sites. This leads naturally to a division of consciousness into a passive and an active part. A global control structure for the "single strand" aspect of consciousness is proposed as the thalamo-nucleus reticularis thalami-cortex coupled system, which is related to experimental data on the electrical stimulation of awareness. Local control, in terms of excitatory transfer from pre-processing sites to posterior working memory regions, is supported by data on subliminal perception timing and disambiguation of poorly defined percepts. The inner content of consciousness is understood as arising from the resulting relational features between inputs and stored pre-processing and episodic memories. Strong analogies are drawn between emergent properties of the model and suggested properties of "raw feels", supporting the thesis that working memories are the initial sites for the emergence of phenomenal awareness, and the frontal lobes for its further adumbration in terms of higher cognitive processing, including the creation of self. |
| Control of Conscious Contents in Directed Forgetting and Thought Suppression Summary Full Text |
| Tony Whetstone, Mark D. Cross |
| Directed forgetting is a successful method for thought control whereas thought suppression is notoriously ineffective. We tested a specific hypothesis about what difference between the two paradigms causes the difference in outcomes. Both paradigms instruct participants to suppress certain thoughts, but in thought suppression experiments participants are also told to report intrusions of unwanted thoughts. We added a condition to the typical directed forgetting experiment that instructed participants to report intrusions. When participants tried to forget a word list but also reported intrusions, forgetting did not occur. The results are important for understanding control of conscious contents and have implications for practicable applications of individual thought control. |