scholarly journals We Don’t Know We Have Hands and It’s Fine

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 106-116
Author(s):  
Nicolien Janssens ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Ordinary Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Claims ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Brain In A Vat

Based on the brain in a vat thought experiment, skeptics argue that we cannot have certain knowledge. At the same time, we do have the intuition that we know some things with certainty. A way to justify this intuition is given by semantic contextualists who argue that the word “knows” is context sensitive. However, many have objected to the intelligibility of this claim. In response, another approach called “moderate pragmatic contextualism” was invoked, which claims that “knows” itself is not context sensitive, but knowledge assertions are. I show, however, that to refute skepticism, moderate pragmatic contextualism rests on unjustified and implausible assumptions as well. Since no form of contextualism works as a response to skepticism, I argue that we should simply accept skepticism. However, I argue that skepticism is not a problem because skeptic pragmatic contextualism can offer a plausible explanation of why we have the intuition that our ordinary knowledge claims are true, even though they are not. I conclude that skeptic pragmatic contextualism offers the most plausible response to the brain in a vat thought experiment.

scholarly journals We Don't Know We Have Hands and it's Fine

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-117
Author(s):  
Nicolien Janssens
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Ordinary Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Claims ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Brain In A Vat

Based on the brain in a vat thought experiment, skeptics argue that we cannot have certain knowledge. At the same time, we do have the intuition that we know some things with certainty. A way to justify this intuition is given by semantic contextualists who argue that the word “knows” is context sensitive. However, many have objected to the intelligibility of this claim. In response, another approach called “moderate pragmatic contextualism” was invoked, which claims that “knows” itself is not context sensitive, but knowledge assertions are. I show, however, that to refute skepticism, moderate pragmatic contextualism rests on unjustified and implausible assumptions as well. Since no form of contextualism works as a response to skepticism, I argue that we should simply accept skepticism. However, I argue that skepticism is not a problem because skeptic pragmatic contextualism can offer a plausible explanation of why we have the intuition that our ordinary knowledge claims are true, even though they are not. I conclude that skeptic pragmatic contextualism offers the most plausible response to the brain in a vat thought experiment.

scholarly journals Brain in a Vat or Body in a World: Brainbound Versus Enactive View of Experience

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Thompson ◽  
Diego Cosmelli
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
The Body ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Living Body ◽  
The World ◽  
Neuronal Processes ◽  
Argument Proceeds ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Brain In A Vat ◽  
Embodied Agent

We argue that the minimal biological requirements for consciousness include a living body, not just neuronal processes in the skull. Our argument proceeds by reconsidering the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment. Careful examination of this thought experiment indicates that the null hypothesis is that any adequately functional “vat” would be a surrogate body, that is, that the so-called vat would be no vat at all, but rather an embodied agent in the world. Thus, what the thought experiment actually shows is that the brain and body are so deeply entangled, structurally and dynamically, that they are explanatorily inseparable. Such entanglement implies that we cannot understand consciousness by considering only the activity of neurons apart from the body, and hence we have good explanatory grounds for supposing that the minimal realizing system forconsciousness includes the body and not just the brain. In this way, we put the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment to a new use, one that supports the “enactive” view that consciousness is a life-regulation process of the wholeorganism interacting with its environment.

Could Emotions Be Modelled through Information Processing?

2015 ◽  
pp. 63-82
Author(s):  
Ebrahim Oshni Alvandi
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Environmental Variables ◽  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Processing System ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Emotional Agents ◽  
The Brain

One way to evaluate cognitive processes in living or nonliving systems is by using the notion of “information processing”. Emotions as cognitive processes orient human beings to recognize, express and display themselves or their wellbeing through dynamical and adaptive form of information processing. In addition, humans behave or act emotionally in an embodied environment. The brain embeds symbols, meaning and purposes for emotions as well. So any model of natural or autonomous emotional agents/systems needs to consider the embodied features of emotions that are processed in an informational channel of the brain or a processing system. This analytical and explanatory study described in this chapter uses the pragmatic notion of information to develop a theoretical model for emotions that attempts to synthesize some essential aspects of human emotional processing. The model holds context-sensitive and purpose-based features of emotional pattering in the brain. The role of memory is discussed and an idea of control parameters that have roles in processing environmental variables in emotional patterning is introduced.

2. Scepticism

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Nagel
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Externalism ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Brain In A Vat

When you start to get self-conscious about what you know, even the simplest fact, something you usually think you could verify at a glance, can start to seem like something you don’t really know. ‘Scepticism’ describes the historical roots of scepticism beginning with the two distinct sceptical traditions: Academic and Pyrrhonian. A central worry of both schools of ancient scepticism concerns the ‘criterion of truth’ or the rule we should use to figure out what to accept, assuming that knowledge requires not just accepting things randomly. Modern approaches to scepticism from philosopher G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell's ‘Inference to the Best Explanation’ to Hilary Putnam's Semantic Externalism and the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis are discussed.

scholarly journals The modulation of neural gain facilitates a transition between functional segregation and integration in the brain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Shine ◽  
Matthew J. Aburn ◽  
Michael Breakspear ◽  
Russell A. Poldrack
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Functional Integration ◽  
Integrated Network ◽  
Time Resolved ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Rich Club ◽  
Network Transition ◽  
Global Fluctuations ◽  
Neural Gain ◽  
The Brain

AbstractCognitive function relies on a dynamic, context-sensitive balance between functional integration and segregation in the brain. Previous work has proposed that this balance is mediated by global fluctuations in neural gain by projections from ascending neuromodulatory nuclei. To test this hypothesis in silico, we studied the effects of neural gain on network dynamics in a model of large-scale neuronal dynamics. We found that increases in neural gain pushed the network through an abrupt dynamical transition, leading to an integrated network topology that was maximal in frontoparietal ‘rich club’ regions. This gain-mediated transition was also associated with increased topological complexity, as well as increased variability in time-resolved topological structure, further highlighting the potential computational benefits of the gain-mediated network transition. These results support the hypothesis that neural gain modulation has the computational capacity to mediate the balance between integration and segregation in the brain.

scholarly journals Predictive sensorimotor control in autism

Brain ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 143 (10) ◽  
pp. 3151-3163
Author(s):  
Tom Arthur ◽  
Sam Vine ◽  
Mark Brosnan ◽  
Gavin Buckingham
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Information ◽  
Sensorimotor Control ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Motor Functioning ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Scientific Investigations ◽  
Visual Sampling ◽  
Processing Mechanisms ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Force Profiles

Abstract Autism spectrum disorder has been characterized by atypicalities in how predictions and sensory information are processed in the brain. To shed light on this relationship in the context of sensorimotor control, we assessed prediction-related measures of cognition, perception, gaze and motor functioning in a large general population (n = 92; Experiment 1) and in clinically diagnosed autistic participants (n = 29; Experiment 2). In both experiments perception and action were strongly driven by prior expectations of object weight, with large items typically predicted to weigh more than equally-weighted smaller ones. Interestingly, these predictive action models were used comparably at a sensorimotor level in both autistic and neurotypical individuals with varying levels of autistic-like traits. Specifically, initial fingertip force profiles and resulting action kinematics were both scaled according to participants’ pre-lift heaviness estimates, and generic visual sampling behaviours were notably consistent across groups. These results suggest that the weighting of prior information is not chronically underweighted in autism, as proposed by simple Bayesian accounts of the disorder. Instead, our results cautiously implicate context-sensitive processing mechanisms, such as precision modulation and hierarchical volatility inference. Together, these findings present novel implications for both future scientific investigations and the autism community.

Brain feedback and adaptive resonance in speech perception

2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 332-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Grossberg
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Speech Sounds ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Adaptive Resonance ◽  
Noisy Speech ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Speech Data ◽  
Stable Learning ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Feedback Pathways

The brain contains ubiquitous reciprocal bottom-up and top-down intercortical and thalamocortical pathways. These resonating feedback pathways may be essential for stable learning of speech and language codes and for context-sensitive selection and completion of noisy speech sounds and word groupings. Context-sensitive speech data, notably interword backward effects in time, have been quantitatively modeled using these concepts but not with purely feedforward models.

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