Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Philosophy, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 122-123). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from file title page. Andrea Scarantino, Eddy Nahmias, committee co-chairs; Erin McClure, committee member. Electronic text (68 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Jan. 7, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-68).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Düsseldorf. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. [173]-183) and indexes.

The study of cognition has suggested different views of what a system needs to perform computations. A strong computationalist approach aims at producing and preserving true statements through syntactic recombinations of elements. AJternately a more action-oriented approach stresses the environment in which the system is placed and the structure that this may provide in performing computation. What is at issue is that the strong computationalist view depends on a particular view of symbols that are decontextualised and function primarily syntactically, in the service of pragmatic goals. It is argued that some of the lessons learned from embodied cognition, in the form of epistemic and strategic action, can aid the ways in which symbols are supposed to function in dialogue. In so doing, attention is turned away from the reification of speech both in the fonn of text manipulation and transcript and begins to look at the environment, situatedness, function and properties of speech. Consequently, language comes to embody some of the ways in which we manage our interaction with the world and other agents, making it a little more than an artefact but a little less than a complete and disembodied picture of rational cognition. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban,2003.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-126). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Syracuse University, 2008. / "Publication number: AAT 3333576."

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 92-96).

This thesis presents a defense of the view that externalism cannot be a theoretical basis of a mentalistic causal-explanatory science, even though such a theoretical basis is implicitly or explicitly adopted by many cognitive scientists. Externalism is a theory in philosophy of mind which states that mental properties are relations between the core realizers of an individual&rsquo / s mental states (such as brain states) and certain things that exist outside those realizers (such as what the content of a mental state corresponds to in the actual world.) After clarifications regarding the term &ldquo / externalism&rdquo / and reviewing the history and the various forms of the externalist theory, it is argued that the properties offered by externalist theories as mental properties have no causal influence on behavior, and therefore cannot causally explain it. The argument is largely based on a method of comparing the causal powers of entities which are identical in all respects except their mental properties (as construed by externalism), and the conclusions are supported by metaphysical reflections on causation, dispositions, relational properties and historical properties. Objections to the defended view are considered and refuted. The thesis is written in the style of modern analytic philosophy.

It has been argued that there are physically different ways of instantiating mental properties, the nature of which is the subject matter of cognitive science. This claim has been known as the Multiple Realizability Thesis (MRT). It has been suggested that the MRT shows that a reduction of mental properties to physical properties is impossible, as there cannot be one-to-one correspondences of mental properties to the properties of the brain. Moreover, it has been argued that the latter point shows that physical explanations are not relevant to the explanations of cognitive science, as they would lack the generality of psychological explanations. This thesis will try to explain from which assumptions of a traditional cognitive science perspective the MRT follows. It will also discuss several responses that have been introduced against both the MRT and the anti-reductionist conclusions that are assumed to follow from it. The responses include a challenge to the scientific status of cognitive science. According to this challenge, the MRT entails that the subject matter of cognitive science, namely mental properties, lack a similarity in the physical level, hence an instance of a mental property is not informative about another instance. While discussing these theories, a revision of the MRT will be proposed. According to this revision, the MRT is compatible with the assumption that there could be an underlying similarity between different physical realizers of a given mental property. It will be argued that by means of this revision, both the challenge to the scientific status of cognitive science, and the argument for the irrelevance of physical explanations will fail.

Title from title page of PDF (University of Missouri--St. Louis, viewed February 24, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-30).