Epistemology and Cognition

Description

This series will include monographs and collections of studies devoted to the investigation and exploration of knowledge, information, and data-processing systems of all kinds, no matter whether human, (other) animal, or machine. Its scope is intended to span the full range of interest from classical problems in the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology through issues in cognitive psychology and sociobiology (concerning the mental powers of other species) to ideas related to artificial intelligence and computer science. While primary emphasis will be placed upon theoretical, conceptual, and epistemological aspects of these problems and domains, empirical, experimen­ tal, and methodological studies will also appear from time to time. The present volume reflects the kind of insights that can be obtained when research workers in philosophy, artificial intelligence, and computer science explore problems of common concern. The issues here tend to fall into two broad but varied sets, namely: those concerned with content and concepts, on the one hand, and those concerned with semantics and epistemology, on the other. The collection begins with a prologue that focuses upon the relations between connectionism and alternative conceptions of nativism and ends with an epilogue that examines the significance of alternative conceptions of the Frame Problem for artificial intelligence. Because these papers are rich and diverse, they ought to appeal to a wide and heterogeneous audience. J.H.F. Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Connectionism and Three Levels of Nativism....Pages 3-31 Front Matter....Pages 33-33 Explanation and the Language of Thought....Pages 35-61 Conceptual Dependency as the Language of Thought....Pages 63-84 Functionalism and Inverted Spectra....Pages 85-100 Concepts and Conceptual Change....Pages 101-120 Beyond the Exclusively Propositional Era....Pages 121-151 Front Matter....Pages 153-153 Can Semantics Be Syntactic?....Pages 155-174 Form and Content in Semantics....Pages 175-197 Knowledge and the Regularity Theory of Information....Pages 199-222 Melancholic Epistemology....Pages 223-246 Human Understanding....Pages 247-264 Front Matter....Pages 265-265 Framing the Frame Problem....Pages 267-288 Back Matter....Pages 289-303