Title of Dissertation: THE EXPLANATORY ROLE OF INTENTIONAL CONTENT IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE Andrew Charles Knoll, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Dissertation directed by: Professor Georges Rey, Department of Philosophy This work argues that intentional content plays at least two explanatory roles in cognitive science. First, it allows cognitive states to be type-individuated independently of their rela...

The neglect syndrome has been defined as a failure to report, respond or orient to novel or meaningful stimuli presented to the side opposite of a brain lesion when this failure can not be attributed to elemental sensory (e.g., hemianopia) or motor (hemiplegia) deficits. This failure to report, respond or orient can be induced by attentional, representation-memory, and intentional deficits. The...

Deliberate control of an entertainment robot presents a special problem in balancing the requirement for intentional behavior with the existing mechanisms for autonomous action selection. We propose that the intentional biasing of activation in lower-level reactive behaviors is the proper mechanism for realizing such deliberative action. In addition, we suggest that directed intentional bias ca...

The complex systems approach to cognitive science invites a new understanding of extended cognitive systems. According to this understanding, extended cognitive systems are heterogenous, composed of brain, body, and niche, non-linearly coupled to one another. In our previous work, we have argued that this view of cognitive systems, as non-linearly coupled brain-body-niche systems, promises conc...

David Scheel, P. Godfrey-Smith, S. Linquist, S. Chancellor, M. Hing, and M. Lawrence Marine & Environmental Sciences, Alaska Pacific University, Anchorage, AK, USA; Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia, and CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY, USA; Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada; Department of Biological Sciences, University o...