Citations

The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there (Popper, 1963).

Popper, K. (1963). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York, London: Routledge & Kagan Paul.

There is probably no more abused a term in the history of philosophy than “representation,” and my use of this term differs both from its use in traditional philosophy and from its use in contemporary cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence.... The sense of “representation” in question is meant to be entirely exhausted by the analogy with speech acts: the sense of “represent” in which a belief represents its conditions of satisfaction is the same sense in which a statement represents its conditions of satisfaction. To say that a belief is a representation is simply to say that it has a propositional content and a psychological mode (Searle, 1983, p.12).

Searle, J. (1983). Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The egg cell ... is a universe. And if we could but know it we would feel in its minute confines the majesty and beauty which match the vast wonder of the world outside us. In it march events that give us the story of all life from the first moment when somehow out of chaos came life and living. That first tremendous upheaval that gave this earth its present contour finds its counterpart in the breaking up of the surface of the egg which conditions all its life to follow (Just, 1939).

Just, E.3. (1939). Basic Methods for Experiments on Eggs of Marine Animals. Philadelphia.: Blakiston's Son and Co..

The history of Medicine is largely the history of science and philosophy. It is not a narrative of events simply, but more a tracing of the evolution of the various branches of the sciences, the ensemble of which comprises Medicine (Gorton, 1910).

The history of Medicine is... a study of the progress of the science and art of caring for living beings in health and disease, and of ideas fundamental to them, and only incidentally of men who distinguished themselves in their advancement (Gorton, 1910).

Gorton, D.A. (1910). The History of Medicine: Philosophical and Critical, from its origins to the Twentieth Century. New York, London: G.P. Putman's Sons.

From the things that have been ascertained and investigated thus far, I believe it has been sufficiently well established that there is present in animals an electricity which we ... are wont to designate with the general term "animal." ... It is seen most clearly ... in the muscles and nerves (Galvani, 1791).

Galvani, L. (1791). De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari. Commentarius Bononiæ, ex Typographia Instituti Scientiarum.

Psychology is the Science of Mental Life, both its phenomena and of their conditions. The phenomena are such things as we call feelings, desires, cognitions, reasonings, decisions, and the like; and, superficially considered, their variety and complexity is such as to live a chaotic impression on the observer (James, 1890/1950, p.1).

James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology. Vol. 1. New York: Dover.

This chapter and the next develop a schema of neural action to show how a rapprochement can be made between (1) perceptual generalization, (2) the permanence of learning, and (3) attention, determining tendency, or the like. It is proposed first that a repeated stimulation of specific receptors will lead slowly to the formation of an "assembly" of association-area cells which can act briefly as a closed system after stimulation has ceased; this prolongs the time during which the structural changes of a representative process (image or idea) (Hebb, 1949, p. 60).

Hebb, D.O. (1949). The organization of behavior. New York: Wiley.

As is well known, cognitive science has undergone a number of stages, since its inception, which can be placed in the 1940s. It is important to have this history in mind, in schematic form, for to each stage corresponds a specific framework for the mathematics of cognitive science (Andler, 2012, p. 376).

Andler, D. (2012). Mathematics in cognitive science. In Weber, M., Dieks, D., Gonzalez, W.J., Hartmann, S., Stöltzner, M, Weber, M. (Eds). Probabilities, Laws, and Structures. Springer, Dordrecht, 2012 (ppp. 363-377).

Que nul n'entre ici s'il n'est géomètre (Platon, -428/-348).

It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards (Kierkegaard, 1843).

Kierkegaard, S. (1843). Journals IV A 164.

Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgement something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on. This intentional in-existence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits anything like it. We could, therefore, define mental phenomena by saying that they are those phenomena which contain an object intentionally within themselves. (Brentano, 1874, pp. 201-202).

Brentano, F. (1874). Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. In Linda L. McAlister (Ed.). London: Routledge (1995), pp. 88–89.

(1) Agis de telle sorte que la maxime de ton action puisse être érigée par ta volonté en une loi universelle (Kant, 1785).

(2) Agis de telle sorte que tu traites toujours l'humanité en toi-même et en autrui comme une fin et jamais comme un moyen (Kant, 1785).

(3) Agis comme si tu étais à la fois législateur et sujet dans la république des volontés libres et raisonnables (Kant, 1785).

Kant, E. (1785). Fondements de la métaphysique des mœurs. Traduction V. Delbos, Paris : Delagrave, 1960.

I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today—and even professional scientists—seem to me like someone who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth (Einstein, 1944).

Einstein, A. (1944). Letter to Robert A. Thorton. (Dec 7, 1944) EA-674, Einstein Archive, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

Philosophy of science is an old and practiced discipline. Both Plato and Aristotle wrote on the subject, and, arguably, some of the pre-Socratics did also. The Middle Ages, both in its Arabic and high Latin periods, made many commentaries and disputations touching on topics in philosophy of science. Of course, the new science of the seventeenth century brought along widespread ruminations and manifold treatises on the nature of science, scientific knowledge and method. The Enlightenment pushed this project further trying to make science and its hallmark method definitive of the rational life. With the industrial revolution, “science” became a synonym for progress. In many places in the Western world, science was venerated as being the peculiarly modern way of thinking. The nineteenth century saw another resurgence of interest when ideas of evolution melded with those of industrial progress and physics achieved a maturity that led some to believe that science was complete. By the end of the century, mathematics had found alternatives to Euclidean geometry and logic had become a newly re-admired discipline (Machamer, 2001, p. 1).

Machamer, P. (2001). A brief historical introduction to the philosophy of science. In P.K. Machamer and M. Silberstein (Eds.). Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science. Blackwell: Oxford (pp. 1-17).

Philosophical discussion of molecular and developmental biology began in the late 1960s with the use of genetics as a test case for models of theory reduction. With this exception, the theory of natural selection remained the main focus of philosophy of biology until the late 1970s. It was controversies in evolutionary theory over punctuated equilibrium and adaptationism that first led philosophers to examine the concept of developmental constraint. Developmental biology also gained in prominence in the 1980s, as part of a broader interest in the new sciences of self-organization and complexity. The current literature in the philosophy of molecular and developmental biology has grown out of these earlier discussions under the influence of twenty years of rapid and exciting growth of empirical knowledge. Philosophers have examined the concepts of genetic information and genetic program, competing definitions of the gene itself, and competing accounts of the role of the gene as a developmental cause. The debate over the relationship between development and evolution has been enriched by theories and results from the new field of “evolutionary developmental biology.” Future developments seem likely to include an exchange of ideas with the philosophy of psychology, where debates over the concept of innateness have created an interest in genetics and development. (Grush, 2001, p. 272).

Griffiths, P. (2001). Molecular and developmental biology. In P.K. Machamer and M. Silberstein (Eds.). Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science. Blackwell: Oxford (pp. 252-271).

(1) Au moment d’être admis(e) à exercer la médecine, je promets et je jure d’être fidèle aux lois de l’honneur et de la probité (Hippocrate, -460/-370).

(2) Mon premier souci sera de rétablir, de préserver ou de promouvoir la santé dans tous ses éléments, physiques et mentaux, individuels et sociaux (Hippocrate, -460/-370).

(3) Je respecterai toutes les personnes, leur autonomie et leur volonté, sans aucune discrimination selon leur état ou leurs convictions. J’interviendrai pour les protéger si elles sont affaiblies, vulnérables ou menacées dans leur intégrité ou leur dignité. Même sous la contrainte, je ne ferai pas usage de mes connaissances contre les lois de l’humanité (Hippocrate, -460/-370).

(4) J’informerai les patients des décisions envisagées, de leurs raisons et de leurs conséquences. Je ne tromperai jamais leur confiance et n’exploiterai pas le pouvoir hérité des circonstances pour forcer les consciences (Hippocrate, -460/-370).

(5) Je donnerai mes soins à l’indigent et à quiconque me les demandera. Je ne me laisserai pas influencer par la soif du gain ou la recherche de la gloire (Hippocrate, -460/-370).

(6) Admis(e) dans l’intimité des personnes, je tairai les secrets qui me seront confiés. Reçu(e) à l’intérieur des maisons, je respecterai les secrets des foyers et ma conduite ne servira pas à corrompre les moeurs. Je ferai tout pour soulager les souffrances. Je ne prolongerai pas abusivement les agonies. Je ne provoquerai jamais la mort délibérément (Hippocrate, -460/-370).

(7) Je préserverai l’indépendance nécessaire à l’accomplissement de ma mission. Je n’entreprendrai rien qui dépasse mes compétences. Je les entretiendrai et les perfectionnerai pour assurer au mieux les services qui me seront demandés (Hippocrate, -460/-370).

(8) J’apporterai mon aide à mes confrères ainsi qu’à leurs familles dans l’adversité. (Hippocrate, -460/-370).

(9) Que les hommes et mes confrères m’accordent leur estime si je suis fidèle à mes promesses ; que je sois déshonoré(e) et méprisé(e) si j’y manque (Hippocrate, -460/-370).

Hippocrate, le Grand. (-460/-370). Serment d'Hippocrate. Œuvres complètes d'Hippocrate. Traduit par Emile Littré. Paris, 1839-1861, 10 vol..

Over the past three decades, philosophy of science has grown increasingly “local.” Concerns have switched from general features of scientific practice to concepts, issues, and puzzles specific to particular disciplines. Philosophy of neuroscience is a natural result. This emerging area was also spurred by remarkable recent growth in the neurosciences. Cognitive and computational neuroscience continues to encroach upon issues traditionally addressed within the humanities, including the nature of consciousness, action, knowledge, and normativity. Empirical discoveries about brain structure and function suggest ways that “naturalistic” programs might develop in detail, beyond the abstract philosophical considerations in their favor (Bickle, 2006).

Bickle, J., Mandik, P., & Landreth, A., (2006). The philosophy of neuroscience. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

Neuroscience is an interdisciplinary research community united by the goal of understanding, predicting and controlling the functions and malfunctions of the central nervous system (CNS). The philosophy of neuroscience is the subfield of the philosophy of science concerned with the goals and standards of neuroscience, its central explanatory concepts, and its experimental and inferential methods.1 Neuroscience is especially interesting to philosophers of science for at least three reasons (Craver & Kaplan, 2011, p. 268).

Craver, C.F., & Kaplan, D.M. (2011). Towards a Mechanistic Philosophy of Neuroscience: A Mechanistic Approach. In P. French and J. Saatsi (Eds.). Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (pp. 268-292).

The point of this historical excursus is to introduce the notion of a natural philosophical background to recognizably modern, mathematics-using, experiment-generating scientific discipline. Psychology also has a natural philosophical background. Its ultimate source is again Aristotle, through his "De anima" or "On the soul". The Latin word "anima" translates the Greek "psyche", which is the root for the modern term "psychology". For reasons that remain obscure, but may have to do with the awkwardness of the noun form "animistics" as opposed to "psychology", the discipline slowly changed its name from de anima studies to psychology across the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. But the study of the functions of the mind or soul was continuous. In the early period, Aristolean psychology included the study of vital as well as sensory and cognitive functions ("soul" for Aristotle simply meant vivifying principle - through in fact Aristotle and his followers spent most of their time on the sensory and cognitive functions in the works entitled "On the soul"). Cartesian psychology, by contrast, included only the sensory, cognitive, and affective dimensions of mind: those that are available to human consciousness. This narrowing of the subject matter to the contents of consciousness took hot, and became a standard way to delimiting psychology in the eighteenth century (Hatfield, 2002, p. 211).

Hatfield, G. (2002). Psychology, Philosophy, and cognitive science reflections on the history and philosophy of experimental psychology. Mind and Language. 17(3) (pp. 207-232).

Philosophy interfaces with cognitive science in three distinct, but related, areas. First, there is the usual set of issues that fall under the heading of philosophy of science (explanation, reduction, etc.), applied to the special case of cognitive science. Second, there is the endeavor of taking results from cognitive science as bearing upon traditional philosophical questions about the mind, such as the nature of mental representation, consciousness, free will, perception, emotions, memory, etc. Third, there is what might be called theoretical cognitive science, which is the attempt to construct the foundational theoretical framework and tools needed to get a science of the physical basis of the mind off the ground – a task which naturally has one foot in cognitive science and the other in philosophy. (Grush, 2001, p. 272).

Grush, R. (2001). Cognitive Science. In P.K. Machamer and M. Silberstein (Eds.). Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science. Blackwell: Oxford (pp. 272-289).

The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning (Dewey, 1916).

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. London: Macmillan.

What follows, then, is the slow, complex and indirect answer given by a philosopher to the apparently simple question : "Whats is philosophy of education?" And, as indicated, the discussion must start with the nature of philosophy itself - for it should be obvious that individuals holding different conceptions of what constitues philosophy will give quite different accounts of philosophy of education, and sadly there do indeed exist a number of divergent views about this underlying matter (Phillips, 2010, p. 4).

Phillips, D.C. (2010). What is philosophy of education. In Richard Bailey (Ed.). The Sage Handbook of Philosophy of Education. Sage Publication. (pp. 3-19).

When finally interpreted, the genetic messages encoded within our DNA molecules will provide the ultimate answers to the chemical underpinnings of human existence (Watson, 1990).

Watson, J.D. (1990). The Human Genome Project: past, present, and future. Science, 6 April 1990; 248:44-48..

There was another major phase of split-brain research where we studied the patients as a way of getting at the other questions very much alive in neuroscience, everything from questions about visual midline overlap to spatial attention and resource allocations. At this point the split-brain patients provided a way of examining cortical-subcortical relationships, and other matters (Gazzaniga, 2011).

Gazzaniga, M.. (2011). Interview with Michael Gazzaniga. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Vol. 2, issue 1, pp. 1-8.

The last decade of the 20th century, the Decade of the Brain, has also been the Decade of Cognitive Neuroscience. It has been the decade in which the merger of cognitive psychology and neural science has begun to realize its promise. The joining of neural science and cognitive psychology is the most recent in a series of scientific unifications that have brought together the disparate subfields of biology into one coherent discipline. Almost all of the other unifications have been spearheaded by the synthetic power of molecular biology. Cognitive neuroscience is distinctive in that the important impetus has come from other sources; in particular, a large part of the impetus has come from psychology and from systems neuroscience (Albright, Kandel, & Posner, 2000, p. 612).

Albright, T.D., Kandel, E.R., Posner, M.I. (2000). Cognitive neuroscience. Current Opinion in Neurobiology. 10, pp. 612–624.

One of the great mysteries of the brain is cognitive control. How can interactions between millions of neurons result in behavior that is coordinated and appears willful and voluntary? There is consensus that it depends on the PFC, but there has been little understanding of the neural mechanisms that endow it with the properties needed for executive control. Here, we have suggested that this stems from several critical features of the PFC: the ability of experience to modify its distinctive anatomy; its wide-ranging inputs and intrinsic connections that provide a substrate suitable for synthesizing and representing diverse forms of information needed to guide performance in complex tasks; its capacity for actively maintaining such representations; and its regulation by brainstem neuromodulatory systems that provide a means for appropriately updating these representations and learning when to do so. We have noted that depending on their target of influence, representations in the PFC can function variously as attentional templates, rules, or goals by providing top-down bias signals to other parts of the brain that guide the flow of activity along the pathways needed to perform a task. We have pointed to a rapidly accumulating and diverse body of evidence that supports this view, including findings from neurophysiological, neuroanatomical, human behavioral and neuroimaging, and computational modeling studies (Miller & Cohen, 2001, p. 193).

Miller, E.K., & Cohen, J.D. (2001). An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Vol. 24, pp. 167-202.

In everyday life, visual attention is controlled by both cognitive (TOP-DOWN) factors, such as knowledge, expectation and current goals, and BOTTOM-UP factors that reflect sensory stimulation. Other factors that affect attention, such as novelty and unexpectedness, reflect an interaction between cognitive and sensory influences. The dynamic interaction of these factors controls where, how and to what we pay attention in the visual environment. In this review, we propose that visual attention is controlled by two partially segregated neural systems (Corbetta & Shulman, 2002, p. 201).

Corbetta, M., & Shulman, G.L. (2002). Control of goal-direct and stimulus-driven attention in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Vol. 84(1), pp. 201-215.

The model proposed by the authors of two cortical systems providing "vision for action" and "vision for perception", respectively, owed much to the inspiration of Larry Weiskrantz (Milner & Goodale, 2008, p.774).

Milner, A.D., & Goodale, M.A. (2008). Two visual systems re-viewed. Neuropsychologia. 46, pp. 774–785.

Relation to Functional Organization in V4 : One hint comes from the association of gamma band oscillation with hemodynamic signals. Hemodynamic signals are thought to be more closely related to local field potentials (LFPs) than to action potentials (Logothetis et al., 2001). In fact, Niessing et al. (2005) reported that optically imaged hemodynamic response strength correlated better with the power of highfrequency LFPs than with spiking activity. Optical imaging of attentional signals in V4 in monkeys has shown enhancement of the hemodynamic response during spatial attention tasks (Tanigawa and A.W.R., unpublished data). This is consistent with reported enhancements in gamma band synchrony (Fries et al., 2001) and predicts that spatial attention acts by elevating response magnitude in all functional domains within the attended locale (Figure 8A). This study also showed that feature-based attention (e.g., attention to color) may be mediated, not via enhancement of imaged domain response, but rather via enhanced correlations between task-relevant functional domains (e.g., color domains) in V4. Thus, feature attention may be mediated via correlation change across the visual field, but only within domains encoding the attended feature (Figure 8B). These differential effects of spatial and feature attention suggest that domain-based networks are dynamically configured in V4 (Roe et al., 2012, p.23).

Roe, A.W., Chelazzi, L., Connor, C.E., Conway, B.R., Fujita, I., Gallant, J.L., & Lu, H. (2012). Toward a unified theory of visual area V4. Neuron. 74 (12), pp. 12–29.

So what is visual cognition? On the large scale, visual processes construct a workable simulation of the visual world around us, one that is updated in response to new visual data and which serves as an efficient problem space in which to answer questions. The representation may be of the full scene or just focused on the question at hand, computing information on an as-needed basis (O’Regan, 1992; Rensink, 2000). This representation is the basis for interaction with the rest of the brain, exchanging descriptions of events, responding to queries. How does it all work? Anderson’s work on production systems (c.f. Anderson et al., 2004, 2008) is a good example of a possible architecture for general cognitive processing. This model has sets of ‘‘productions’’, each of them in an ‘‘if X, then Y’’ format, where each production is equivalent to the routines mentioned earlier. These respond to the conditions in input buffers (short term memory or awareness or both) and add or change values in those buffers or in output buffers that direct motor responses. This production system architecture is Turing-machine powerful and biologically plausible. Would visual processing have its own version of a production system that constructs the representation of the visual scene? Or is there a decentralized set of processes, each an advanced inference engine on its own that posts results to a specifically visual ‘‘blackboard’’ (van der Velde & de Kamps, 2006) constructing, as a group, our overall experience of the visual world? This community approach is currently the favored hypothesis for overall mental processes (Baars, 1988; Dehaene & Naccache, 2001) and we might just scale it down for visual processes, calling on multiple specialized routines (productions) to work on different aspects of the image and perhaps different locations. On the other hand, the very active research on visual attention hints that there may be one central organization for vision at least for some purposes (Cavanagh, 2011, p.1548).

Cavanagh, P. (2011). Visual cognition. Vision Research. 51, pp. 1538–1551.

Every one knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others (James, 1890, pp. 403-404).

James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology. Vol. 1. New York: Dover.

Three fundamental findings are basic to this chapter. First, the attention system of the brain is anatomically separate from the data processing systems that perform operations on specific inputs even when attention is oriented elsewhere. In this sense, the attention system is like other sensory and motor systems. It interacts with other parts of the brain, but maintains its own identity. Second, attention is carried out by a network of anatomical areas. It is neither the property of a single center, nor a general function of the brain operating as a whole (Mesulam 1981, Rizzolatti et a11985). Third, the areas involved in attention carry out different functions, and these specific computations can be specified in cognitive terms (Posner et al 1988). To illustrate these principles, it is important to divide the attention system into subsystems that perform different but interrelated functions. In this chapter, we consider three major functions that have been prominent in cognitive accounts of attention (Kahneman 1973, Posner & Boies 1971): (a) orienting to sensory events; (b) detecting signals for focal (conscious) processing, and (c) maintaining a vigilant or alert state (Posner & Petersen, 1990, pp. 26).

Posner, M.I., & Petersen, S.E. (1990). The attention system of the human brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 13, pp. 25-32.

We ran an event-related fMRI experiment using the ANT to find brain areas active for the three attentional networks. We hypothesized that a pattern of separable activity would emerge with specific attentional functions loading heavily on segregated anatomical areas. We explored the following specific hypotheses based on previous studies that have isolated each network within separate tasks on separate subjects: (1) alerting would activate the frontal and parietal areas of the right and/or left hemisphere and thalamic areas that are potentially related to norepinephrine (Coull et al., 2000, 2001; Marrocco and Davidson, 1998). [...] ; (2) orienting would activate a superior parietal region and the temporal parietal junction, with a right hemisphere bias (Corbetta et al., 2000); and (3) conflict would activate anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and a left lateral frontal bias might be suggested for the importance of dopamine for this system (Bush et al., 2000; MacDonald et al., 2000) (Fan et al., 2005, pp. 472).

Fan, J., McCandliss, B.D., Fossella, J., Flombaum, J.I., & Posner, M.I. (2005). The activation of attentional networks. Neuroimage, 26, pp. 471-479.

To summarize the conclusions : it seems that we can detect and identify separable features in parallel across a display (within the limits set by acuity, disciminability,and lateral interference); that this early, parallel, processs of feature registration mediates texture segregation and figure-ground grouping; that locating any individual feature requires in additional operation; that if attention is diverted or overloaded, illusory conjunctions may occur (Treisman et al., 1977). Conjunctions, on the other hand, require focal attention to be directed to each relavant locations; they don not mediate texture segregation, and their cannot be identified without also being spatially localized (Treisman & Gelade, 1980, pp. 131-132).

Treisman, A.M. & Gelade, G. (1980). A feature-integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology. 12, pp. 97-136.

Our model is limited to the bottom-up control of attention, i.e. to the control of selective attention by the properties of the visual stimulus. It does not incorporate any top-down, volitional component. Furthermore, we are here only concerned with the localization of the stimuli to be attended (‘where’), not their identification (‘what’) (Itti & Koch, 2000, p. 1492).

Itti, L. & Kock, C. (2000). A saliency-based search mechanism for overt and covert shifts of visual attention. Vision Research. 40, pp. 1489-1506.

First of all, what is the source that determines the location and shape of a spatially selective attentional focus? More than 10 years ago, due to the lack of detailed electrophysiological data, attention has been described as a selection or winnertakes-all process within a saliency (or master) map (Koch & Ullman, 1985; Treisman & Gelade, 1980; Wolfe, 1994). Such a map has been defined to indicate potentially relevant locations by an enhanced activity at the corresponding spatial location. In the search for the saliency map a number of brain areas have been identified. Among those are the frontal eye field (Schall, 2002; Thompson & Schall, 2000), the superior colliculus (Ignashchenkova, Dicke, Haarmeier, & Thier, 2004; Muller, Philiastides, & Newsome, 2005) and LIP (Bisley & Goldberg, 2006). However, area V4 has also been shown to reflect aspects of a saliency map (Bichot, Rossi, & Desimone, 2005; Mazer & Gallant, 2003; Ogawa & Komatsu, 2004), which suggests that saliency alone might not be a sufficient criterion for defining the source of spatial attention in the brain. In fact, we suggested a model in which the information of saliency in V4 can be task relevant immediately after the presentation of a visual scene regardless of spatial attention (Hamker, in press). This selective enhancement at intermediate levels of the cortical hierarchy could be used to guide visuomotor processes such as eye movements (Hamker & Zirnsak, 2006, p. 1371).

This paper discussed the distinction between automatic activation processes which are solely the result of past learning and processes with under current conscious control. Automatic activation processes are those which may occur without intention, without any conscious awareness and without interference with other mental activity. They are distinguished from operations performed by the conscious processing system since the latter system is of limited capacity and thus its commitment to any operation reduces its availability to perform any other operation. Many current cognition tasks were analyzed in terms of the interaction of automatic activation processes with strategies determined by task instructions. Concentration on a source of signals serves to reduce interference from outside that source. Outside signals still intrude, particularly when they are classified by the memory system as having emotional significance (Posner & Snyder, 1975, pp. 221).

Posner, M.I., & Snyder, C.R.R. (1975). Attention and cognitive control. Chapter 12 (pp. 205-223). In R. Solso (Ed.), Information processing and cognition: The Loyola symposium. Potomac: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

We have presented a theory of information processing that emphasizes the roles of automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing is learned in longterm store, is triggered by appropriate inputs, and then operates independently of the subject's control. An automatic sequence can contain components that control information flow, attract attention, or govern overt responses. Automatic sequences do not require attention, though they may attract it if training is appropriate, and they do not use up short-term capacity. [...] or memory load. Controlled processing is a temporary activation of nodes in a sequence that is not yet learned. It is relatively easy to set up, modify, and utilize in new situations. It requires attention, uses up short-term capacity, and is often serial in nature. Controlled processing is used to facilitate long-term learning of all kinds, including automatic processing (Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977, pp. 52-53).

Schneider, W., & Shiffrin, R.M. (1977). Controlled and Automatic Human Information Processing: I. Detection, Search, and Attention. Psychological Review, Vol. 84(1), pp. 1-66.

To some extent, task-set reconfiguration is endogenously (internally) driven. That is, we can adopt task-sets at will, in advance of the stimulus, and without foreknowledge of the stimulus identity other than that it will be a member of a specified class. The responsibility for this intentional component of task control is typically attributed to a special executive mechanism-the Will (James, 1890), Controlled Processing (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968; Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977), the Central Executive (e.g., Baddeley, 1986), or a Supervisory Attentional System (Norman & Shallice, 1986; Shallice, 1988, 1994bthat is widely supposed to be unitary, resource-limited, functionally distinct from the processes it organizes, and intimately associated with conscious awareness. Although the endogenous component of task-set undoubtedly exists, we refrain from making any such assumptions about it (Rogers & Monsell, 1995, p. 208).

Rogers, R.D., & Monsell, S. (1995). Costs of a predictable switch between simple cognitive tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Vol. 124, No. 2, pp. 207-231.

Psychological experiments (with adult human subjects) typically depend on their subjects' ability to adopt "at will" now one task set, now another, according to the experimenter's instructions. Very often, experiments require the subject to maintain a given task over many trials, in which the same cognitive operations are to be performed repeatedly. IN everyday activity, on the contrary, subjects often shift rapidly, and repeatedly, from one intended set of cognitive operations to another, frequently without any inmmediate external cues. We are interested in the mechanisms of voluntary control responsible for implementing these intentional shifts of set (Allport, Styles, & Hsieh, 1994, pp. 421-422).

Allport, D.A., Styles, E.A., & Hsieh, S. (1994). Shifting intentional set: Exploring the dynamic control of tasks. In C. Umilta & M. Moscovitch (Eds.), Attention and performance XV (pp. 421-452). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

One paradigm to study cognitive control is task switching, in which participants rapidly switch between two or more choice reaction-time (RT) tasks. In most circumstances, switching tasks is associated with a sizable decrement in performance (called switching cost) (Allport, Styles, & Hsieh, 1994; Biederman, 1972; de Jong, in press; Fagot, 1994; Gopher, Armony, & Greenshpan, in press; Jersild, 1927; Meiran, 1996; Rogers & Monsell, 1995; Rubinstein, Meyer, & Evans, submitted). Two explanations have been suggested for this cost. The first explanation is based on the concept of preparatory reconfiguration, presumably an organizational-executive process. The second explanation is based on the concept of task set inertia, a mechanism not necessarily related to executive processing (Meiran,Chorev & Sapir, 2000, p. 211).

Meiran, D.A., Chorev, E.A., & Sapir, S. (1994). Component processes in task switching. Cognitive Psychology. 41, pp. 211-253.

.... (James, 1890, pp. 403-404).

James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology. Vol. 1. New York: Dover.

.... (James, 1890, pp. 403-404).

James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology. Vol. 1. New York: Dover.

Metacognition of learning and remembering has been extensively studied by psychologists [1–9]. The consensus in the field is that metacognitive monitoring is inferential rather than direct, and is grounded in a variety of sensorily accessible cues. For example, a feeling of knowing can be grounded in the familiarity of the cue or recall of facts closely related to the target item, and a judgement of learning can be based on the fluency with which the item to be learned is processed. While these findings might be consistent with the claim that there is nevertheless an evolved system or ‘module’ for metacognition, in fact, there is no reason to believe that any cognitive mechanism is employed other than the same mindreading faculty that we use for attributing mental states to other people, enhanced with some acquired first-person strategies and recognition abilities [10] (Fletcher & Carruthers, 2012, p. 1366).

Fletcher, L. & Carruthers, P., (2012). Metacognition and reasoning. Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B. 367, pp. 1366-1378.

(1) Conscious perception involves more than sensory analysis; it enables access to widespread brain sources, whereas unconscious input processing is limited to sensory regions (Baars, 2002, p. 47).

(2) Consciousness enables comprehension of novel information, such as new combinations of words. (Baars, 2002, p. 48).

(3) Working memory depends on conscious elements, including conscious perception, inner speech and visual imagery, each mobilizing widespread functions. (Baars, 2002, p. 49).

(4) Conscious information enables many types of learning, using a variety of different brain mechanisms. (Baars, 2002, p. 50).

(5) Voluntary control is enabled by conscious goals and perception of results (Baars, 2002, p. 50).

(6) Selective attention enables access to conscious contents, and vice versa (Baars, 2002, p. 50).

(7) Consciousness enables access to "self": executive interpretation in the brain. (Baars, 2002, p. 50).

Baars, B. J. (2002). The conscious access hypothesis: origins and recent evidence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 6(1), pp. 47-52.

Voluntary action and free will : The hypothesis of an attentional control of behavior by supervisory circuits including AC and PFC, above and beyond other more automatized sensorimotor pathways, may ultimately provide a neural substrate for the concepts of voluntary action and free will (Posner, 1994). One may hypothesize that subjects label an action or a decision as "voluntary" whenever its onset and realization are controlled by higher-level circuitry and are therefore easily modi®ed or withheld, and as "automatic" or "involuntary" if it involves a more direct or hardwired command pathway (Passingham, 1993). One particular type of voluntary decision, mostly found in humans, involves the setting of a goal and the selection of a course of action through the serial examination of various alternatives and the internal evaluation of their possible outcomes. This conscious decision process, which has been partially simulated in neural network models (Dehaene & Changeux, 1991, 1997), may correspond to what subjects refer to as "exercising one's free will". Note that under this hypothesis free will characterizes a certain type of decision-making algorithm and is therefore a property that applies at the cognitive or systems level, not at the neural or implementation level. This approach may begin to address the old philosophical issue of free will and determinism. Under our interpretation, a physical system whose successive states unfold according to a deterministic rule can still be described as having free will, if it is able to represent a goal and to estimate the outcomes of its actions before initiating them (Dehaene & Nacache, 2001, pp. 29-30).

Dehaene, S., & Naccache, L., (2001). Towards a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness: basic evidence and a workspace framework. Cognition. 79, pp. 1–37.

Figure 1. Proposed distinction between subliminal, preconscious, and conscious processing. Three types of brain states are schematically shown, jointly defined by bottom-up stimulus strength (on the vertical axis at left) and top-down attention (on the horizontal axis). Shades of color illustrate the amount of activation in local areas, and small arrows the interactions among them. Large arrows schematically illustrate the orientation of top-down attention to the stimulus, or away from it (‘task-unrelated attention’). Dashed curves indicate a continuum of states, and thick lines with separators indicate a sharp transition between states. During subliminal processing, activation propagates but remains weak and quickly dissipating (decaying to zero after 1–2 seconds). A continuum of subliminal states can exist, depending on masking strength, top-down attention, and instructions (see Box 1). During preconscious processing, activation can be strong, durable, and can spread to multiple specialized sensori-motor areas (e.g. frontal eye fields). However, when attention is oriented away from the stimulus (large black arrows), activation is blocked from accessing higher parieto-frontal areas and establishing long-distance synchrony. During conscious processing, activation invades a parieto-frontal system, can be maintained ad libidum in working memory, and becomes capable of guiding intentional actions including verbal reports. The transition between preconscious and conscious is sharp, as expected from the dynamics of a self-amplified non-linear system [4] (Dehaene et al., 2006, p. 206).

Dehaene, S., Changeux, J.-P., Naccache, L., Sackur, J. and Sergent, C., (2006). Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: a testable taxonomy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 10 (5), pp. 204–211.

We propose a new theoretical framework for the cognitive underpinnings of perception and action planning, the Theory of Event Coding (TEC). [...] According to TEC, the core structure of the functional architecture supporting perception and action planning is formed by a common representational domain for perceived events (perception) and intended or to-begenerated events (action). (Hommel et al., 2001, pp. 849).

Hommel, B., Müsseler, J., Aschersleben, G. & Prinz, S.E. (1990). The Theory of Event Coding (TEC): A framework for perception and action planning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 24, pp. 849–937.

In this article, I argue that the two interpretations of the term focus of attention in fact point to two different functional states of information in working memory. Therefore, I propose to conceptualize working memory as a concentric structure of representations with three functionally distinct regions (see Figure 1). 1. The activated part of long-term memory can serve, among other things, to memorize information over brief periods for later recall. 2. The region of direct access holds a limited number of chunks available to be used in ongoing cognitive processes. 3. The focus of attention holds at any time the one chunk that is actually selected as the object of the next cognitive operation (Oberauer, 2000, p. 412).

Oberauer, K. (2000). Access to Information in Working Memory: Exploring the Focus of Attention. Journal of Memory and Language, 58, pp. 730-745.

Working memory is a system that provides selective access to a small set of representations for goal-directed processing. Its capacity is severely limited—we can hold only small amounts of information immediately accessible at the same time. Several hypotheses have been suggested on why working memory capacity is limited, among them the idea of a limited resource of activation (Just & Carpenter, 1992), a limit to the ability to control attention (Kane, Bleckley, Conway, & Engle, 2001), time-based decay (Page & Norris, 1998), and interference between representations held in working memory (Oberauer & Kliegl, 2001, 2006; Saito & Miyake, 2004). The purpose of this article is to investigate one such mechanism, interference, in verbal working memory. We will be concerned with two cases of interference—interference between items to be held in working memory simultaneously, and interference between memory items and representations involved in a concurrent processing task. The latter case is of interest because working memory is often studied with tasks requiring concurrent storage and processing, as for instance the family of complex span tasks (Conway et al., 2005). The term interference can refer to various mechanisms by which representations get in each other’s way. Here, we consider three of them, confusion between items, feature migration, and feature overwriting (Oberauer & Lange, 2008, pp. 730-731).

Oberauer, K. & Lange, E., (2008). Interference in verbal working memory: Distinguishing similarity-based confusion feature overwriting, and feature migration. Journal of Memory and Language, 58, pp. 730-745.

Since the time of Williams James, it has been known that selection is based on either bottom-up exogenous or top-down endogenous factors. Exogenous cues are imageimmanent features that transiently attract attention or eye gaze, independent of a particular task. Thus, if an object attribute (e.g. flicker, motion, color, orientation, depth or texture) differs significantly from a neighboring attribute, the object will be salient. This definition of bottom-up saliency has been implemented into a suite of neuromorphic vision algorithms that have at their core a topographic saliency map that encodes the saliency or conspicuity of locations in the visual field, independent of the task [18]. Such algorithms account for a significant proportion of scanning eye movements [19,20] (Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007, p. 16).

Koch, C., & Tsuchiya, N. (2007). Attention and consciousness: two distinct brain processes. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 11 (1), pp. 16–22.

A previous paper on this topic Posner(1994) argued that the mechanisms of attention form the basis for an understanding of consciousness. Since that time the study of attention has greatly advanced (Petersen and Posner, 2012; Posner, 2012). While the intervening years have provided evidence of dissociations between brain networks involved in attention and aspects of consciousness (Koch and Tsuchiya, 2007), I still believe that much can be learned about consciousness from an understanding of attention. (Posner, 2012, p. 1).

Posner, M.I. (2012). Attentional networks and consciousness. Frontiers in Psychology. 3 (64), pp. 1–4.

The current study examined whether intensive meditation can affect the distribution of limited attentional resources, as measured by performance in an attentional-blink task and scalp-recorded brain potentials. A major ingredient of meditation is mental training of attention. Such mental training is thought to produce lasting changes in brain and cognitive function, significantly affecting the way stimuli are processed and perceived. In line with this view, recent studies have reported cognitive and neural differences in attentional processing between expert meditators and novices [6,7]. (Slagter et al., 2007, pp. 1228).

Slagter, H.A., Lutz, A., Greischar, L.L., Francis, A.D., Nieuwhenhuis, S., Davis, J.M., & Davidson, R.J. (2007). Mental training affects distribution of limited brain resources. Plos Biology, 5 (6), pp. 1228-1235.

In prior work (24), ANT has been used to measure skill in the resolution of mental conflict induced by competing stimuli. It activates a frontal brain network involving the anterior cingulate gyrus and lateral prefrontal cortex (35, 36). Our underlying theory was that IBMT should improve functioning of this executive attention network, which has been linked to better regulation of cognition and emotion (22, 37) (Tang et al., 2007, pp. 17153).

Tang, Y.-Y., Ma, Y., Wang, J., Fan, Y., Feng, S., Lu, Q., Yu, Q., Sui, D., Rothbart, M.K., Fan, M., & Posner, M.I. (2007). Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104 (43), pp. 17152-17156.

Our schools may be wasting precious years by postponing the teaching of many important subjects on the ground that they are too difficult… the foundations of any subject may be taught to anybody at any age in some form (Bruner, 1960, p. 11).

Bruner, J. (1960). The Process of Education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

At the interface between neuroscience, psychology and education, neuro-education is a new inter-disciplinary emerging field that aims at developing new education programs based on results from cognitive neuroscience and psychology (Martínez-Montes, Chobert, & Besson, 2016, p. 342).

Martínez-Montes, E., Chobert, J., & Besson, M. (2016). Neuro-education and neuro-rehabilitation. Lausanne: Frontiers Media.

The aim at the moment, therefore, is to determine what limitations anatomy places to educational process, and thus to obtain a rational basis from wich to attack many of the pedagogical problems (Donaldson, 1895, p. 342).

Donaldson, H. H. (1895). The growth of the brain : A study of the nervous system in relation to education. The Contemporary Science Series. Havelock Ellis (Ed.). London: Walter Scott.

This article examines those results, interpretations, and conclusions-a set of claims that I will call the neuroscience and education argument. The negative conclusion is that the argument fails. The argument fails because its advocates are trying to build a bridge too far. Currently, we do not know enough about brain development and neural function to link that understanding directly, in any meaningful, defensible way to instruction and educational practice. We may never know enough to be able to do that. The positive conclusion is that there are two shorter bridges, already in place, that indirectly link brain function with educational practice. There is a well-established bridge, now nearly 50 years old, between education and cognitive psychology. There is a second bridge, only around 10 years old, between cognitive psychology and neuroscience. This newer bridge is allowing us to see how mental functions map onto brain structures. When neuroscience does begin to provide useful insights for educators about instruction and educational practice, those insights will be the result of extensive traffic over this second bridge. Cognitive psychology provides the only firm ground we have to anchor these bridges. It is the only way to go if we eventually want to move between education and the brain (Bruer, 1997, p. 4).

Bruer, J. T. (1997). Education and the brain : A bridge too far. Educational Researcher. Vol. 26, No. 8, pp. 4-16.

If an a-machine prints two kinds of symbols, of which the first kind (called figures) consists entirely of 0 and 1 (the others being called symbols of the second kind), then the machine will be called a computing machine (Turing, 1936, p. 232).

Turing, A.M. (1936). On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem. Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. 42(1), pp. 230-265.

The ideal computing machine must then have all its data inserted at the beginning, and must as free as possible from human interference to the very end. This means that not only must the numerical data be inserted at the beginning, but also all the rules for combining them, in the form of instructions covering every situation which may arise in the course of the computation. This the computing machine must be a logical machine as well as an arithmetic machine and must combines contingencies in accordance with a systematic algorithm (Wiener, 1948, p. 118).

Wiener, N. (1948). Cybernetics: or control and communication in the animal and the machine. Second Edition (1961). Cambridge, The MIT Press.