References for Philosophical issues in Cognitive Science

Computational models of the mind: Theory

• Kitcher, P. (1988). Marr's computational theory of vision. Philosophy of Science, 55, 1-24. The first part of this article provides an accurate description of Marr's theory, which has been extremely influential in the field of computational neuroscience. The second part addresses philosophical issues and requires certain background in philosophy.

Philosophy, theory of action

• Goldman, A. (1990). Action and free will. In D. N. Osherson Kosslyn, S. M., & Hollerbach, J. M. (Eds.), Visual Cognition and Action: An Invitation to Cognitive Science (pp. 320-340). Cambridge: MIT Press. 1) Mental states are physical states (brain states). 2) Physical states do not have free will, they are fully determined by the existing conditions 3) Humans have free will. Each of these three statements is appealing, but it seems impossible to hold the three of them. Goldman examines this puzzle.

Consciousness

• Churchland, P. M. (1988). Matter and Consciousness. Cambridge: MIT Press.  Chapter 2. An introduction to philosophy of mind. It is brief, well written and assumes no previous knowledge. Churchland is one of the leading figures in the field.

• Farber, I. B., Churchland, P. S. (1995). Consciousness and the neurosciences: Philosophical and theoretical issues. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Eds.), The cognitive neurosciences (pp. 1295-1306). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Is my dog conscious? Is my roommate conscious after drinking her 8th beer? Am I conscious when I sleep? Is verbal report a good measure of consciousness? These questions address different aspect of  consciousness.  Farber and Churchland show the answer depends on the meanings of the term, and propose a classification.   Very good paper, but a little more challenging than Matter and Consciousness.

Clark, A. (1999) An embodied cognitive science? Trends in Cognitive Science, 3, 9, 345-351