Several current debates in cognitive science and philosophy of mind turn on the nature of cognition. For one, influential comparative psychologists have argued that the distinction between cognition and mere association---which has played a central role in the methodology of the discipline since its inception---is increasingly untenable and should be rejected. For another, the "extended cognition" debate now turns on whether there is a "mark of the cognitive" which shows that cognitive processes do not extend beyond the brain. Finally, longstanding philosophical problems (such as the problems of mental causation and mental content) correspond to practical challenges that organisms face every day: How are organisms able to organize their minds such that their mental states reliably cause behaviors appropriate to their contents? / I argue that the key to understanding cognition lies in the brain's capacity to detect its own representational errors. To cognize is not just to be capable of representing the world, but also to be capable of improving one's representation of that world by rationally responding to evidence of error. Close engagement with the cognitive neuroscience of learning reveals a distinctive kind of error-correction learning focused on the mammalian medial temporal lobe and its functional analogues in other classes. This neural story suggests a series of reforms of psychological practice in the face of its current conceptual challenges. Furthermore, the account has significant philosophical benefits in making sense of the purported normative character of cognition, in that the brain's ability to represent is grounded in its ability to continually improve its causal contact with the contents of its representations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CHENGCHI/U0003456443 |
| Creators | Buckner, Cameron. |
| Publisher | Indiana University. |
| Source Sets | National Chengchi University Libraries |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Rights | Copyright © nccu library on behalf of the copyright holders |
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