Predictive minds can think: addressing generality and surface compositionality of thought

Rappe, Sofiia (2022): Predictive minds can think: addressing generality and surface compositionality of thought. In: Synthese, Bd. 200, Nr. 1

Abstract

Predictive processing framework (PP) has found wide applications in cognitive science and philosophy. It is an attractive candidate for a unified account of the mind in which perception, action, and cognition fit together in a single model. However, PP cannot claim this role if it fails to accommodate an essential part of cognition-conceptual thought. Recently, Williams (Synthese 1-27, 2018) argued that PP struggles to address at least two of thought's core properties-generality and rich compositionality. In this paper, I show that neither necessarily presents a problem for PP. In particular, I argue that because we do not have access to cognitive processes but only to their conscious manifestations, compositionality may be a manifest property of thought, rather than a feature of the thinking process, and result from the interplay of thinking and language. PaceWilliams, both of these capacities, constituting parts of a complex and multifarious cognitive system, may be fully based on the architectural principles of PP. Under the assumption that language presents a subsystem separate from conceptual thought, I sketch out one possible way for PP to accommodate both generality and rich compositionality.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie und Religionswissenschaft
• Themengebiete: 100 Philosophie und Psychologie > 100 Philosophie
• ISSN: 0039-7857
• Sprache: Englisch
• DFG: Gefördert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - 491502892