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This paper examines the use of audience-directed or inherently communicative expressions (discourse markers and interjections) in free indirect thought representations in fiction. It argues that the insights of Banfield's (1982) no-narrator approach to free indirect style can be accommodated in a relevance theoretic framework. The result is an account in which the author's act of revealing a character's thoughts communicates a guarantee of optimal relevance--a guarantee which justifies the effort which the reader invests in deriving meta-representations of those thoughts from the evidence which the author provides. However, the reward for this effort is a meta-representation of a character's thoughts which is unmediated by the thoughts of the author who is responsible for producing the text. Using examples from fiction, I show that within this framework, the use of procedurally encoded discourse markers and interjections contribute to this sense of immediacy by imposing constraints on interpretation which leave the reader with the responsibility for deriving his own interpretations of a character's thoughts and thought processes. doi: 10.1017/S0022226709990375

Negative or destructive thought experiments known as Counter Thought Experiments that undermine are explored. It is observed that counter thought experiments deny the phenomena of the initial thought experiments.

Humans are reflective creatures capable of thoughts, feelings and emotions, but their capacity to reflect gives rise to a need to understand their lives through a reflection on what has happened. An adequate understanding of any narrative requires gaining a grasp of emotional responses at the level of the narrator and the people involved in the narrative.

Stanovich & West's claim that there are two coherent and conceptually distinct types of thinking, System 1 and System 2, is questioned. Some authors equate System 2 with intelligence whereas other do not; and some authors regard the two types of system as distinct while others regard them as lying on a continuum.

Many neuroscientists and philosophers endorse a view about the explanatory reach of neuroscience (which we will call the neuron doctrine) to the effect that the framework for understanding the mind will be developed by neuroscience; or, as we will put it, that a successful theory of the mind will be solely neuroscientific. It is a consequence of this view that the sciences of the mind that cannot be expressed by means of neuroscientific concepts alone count as indirect sciences that will be discarded as neuroscience matures. This consequence is what makes the doctrine substantive, indeed, radical. We ask, first, what the neuron doctrine means and, second, whether it is true. In answer to the first question, we distinguish two versions of the doctrine. One version, the trivial neuron doctrine, turns out to be uncontroversial but unsubstantive because it fails to have the consequence that the nonneuroscientific sciences of the mind will eventually be discarded. A second version, the radical neuron doctrine, does have this consequence, but, unlike the first doctrine, is highly controversial. We argue that the neuron doctrine appears to be both substantive and uncontroversial only as a result of a conflation of these two versions. We then consider whether the radical doctrine is true. We present and evaluate three arguments for it, based either on general scientific and philosophical considerations or on the details of neuroscience itself, arguing that all three fail. We conclude that the evidence fails to support the radical neuron doctrine. Keywords: Churchlands; classical conditioning; cognitive neuroscience; Kandel; learning; materialism; mind; naturalism; neurobiology; neuron doctrine; neurophilosophy; philosophy of neuroscience; psychology; reduction; theoretical unification

A biological neuroscientific theory must acknowledge that the function of a neurological system is to produce behaviors that promote survival. Thus, unlike what Gold & Stoljar claim, function and behavior are the province of neurobiology and cannot be relegated to the field of psychological phenomena, which would then trivialize the radical doctrine if accepted. One possible advantage of adopting such a (correctly revised) radical doctrine is that it might ultimately produce a successful, evolutionarily based, theory of mind.

Dienes' & Perner's proposals are discussed in relation to the distinction between explicit and implicit systems of thinking. Evans and Over (1996) propose that explicit processing resources are required for hypothetical thinking, in which mental models of possible world states are constructed. Such thinking requires representations in which the individuals' propositional attitudes including relevant beliefs and goals are made fully explicit.

Dienes & Perner's target article constitutes a significant advance in thinking about implicit knowledge. However, it largely neglects processing details and thus the time scale of mental states realizing propositional attitudes. Considering real-time processing raises questions about the possible brevity of implicit representation, the nature of processes that generate explicit knowledge, and the points of view from which knowledge may be represented. Understanding the propositional attitude analysis in terms of momentary mental states points the way toward answering these questions.

The notion of nonconceptual content in Dienes & Perner's theory is examined. A subject may be in a state with nonconceptual content without having the concepts that would be used to describe the state. Nonconceptual content does not seem to be a clear-cut case of either implicit or explicit knowledge. It underlies a kind of practical knowledge, which is not reducible to procedural knowledge, but is accessible to the subject and under voluntary control.

doi: 10.1017/S0140525X0700266X In The Rational Imagination, Byrne proposes a mental models account of why causal and counterfactual thinking often focus on different antecedents. This review critically examines the two central propositions of her account, finding both only weakly defensible. Byrne's account is contrasted with judgment dissociation theory, which offers a functional explanation for differences in the focus of causal and counterfactual thinking.

Tomasello et al. provide a convincing account of the origins of cultural cognition. I highlight how emotionally grounded sharing of experiences (not merely or predominantly intentions) is critical for the development of interpersonal understanding and perspective-sensitive thinking. Such sharing is specifically human in quality as well as motivation, and entails forms of self-other connectedness and differentiation that are essential to communication and symbolic functioning.

Shastri and Ajjanagadde's (S&A's) model of knoweldge representation and reflexive reasoning assumes that neurons are slow computing devices and thus cannot encode the complex structures necessary to form dynamic representations and routings into specific directions. The S&A model offers a simple solution to this by synchronizing the appropriate nodes within the neural network. Although this is an elegant solution, it should be stressed that other mechanisms inherent in a neurons capacity can be used to label and route complex representations.

Shastri and Ajjanagadde's (S&A) approach to the binding problem of neural networks is to use signal synchrony to represent variable binding within a rigid neural architecture. However, the S&A model suffers from a number of logical and literal limitations such as negation, rule learning and propositional attitudes and other modifiers. These problems point to the inability of the model to accommodate the complexity of the English language, especially within a literal context.

Shastri and Ajjanagadde's model on knowledge representation and reflexive reasoning is characterized by biological plausibility, efficient reasoning and the ability to make a number of predictions that allow psychological testing. However, the model is greatly limited by its failure to account for the learning process, making the model a strictly psychological one. A connectionist reasoning system such as the S&A model that does not take into account learning does not allow concept formation.

Shastri and Ajjanagadde's (S&A's) model on reflexive reasoning appears to offer a connectionist soloution to the binding problem of neural networks. However, a careful dissection of the S&A model shows that it is also a very classical solution to the binding problem. Its definition of binding itself, being a synchronous firing of nodules, is identical to the syntactic solution in traditional artificial intelligence systems. Therefore, the S&A model of reflexive reasoning must be viewed more as symbolic than connectionist.

Shastri and Ajjanagadde's (S&A's) model for knowledge representation and reflexive reasoning is limited by a number of weaknesses that suggest that the model is a classical artificial intelligence model, instead of the novel connectionist device it is thought to be. The most significant limitation in the S&A model is its limitation to three multiple instantations of predicates, which puts to doubt the biological plausibility of the model. This and other weaknesses suggest that the S&A model is in fact less powerful than traditional models.

Shastri and Ajjanagadde's model for knowledge representation and reflexive reasoning offers a connectionist solution to the problem of dynamic variable binding. The elegance of their model presents the possibility of a final word on this problem. However, the possibility of simpler, faster and more parallel methods still exists. It may be possible to unearth these methods if researchers endevor to construct systems to solve hard artificial intelligence problems instead on concentrating on arbitrary high-order combinations and frequent binding of novel values to variables.

Shastri and Ajjanagadde's (S&A's) model on implicit reasoning is an important and innovative contribution in the field of behavioral and brain sciences. However, their theory lacks an explanation for plausible reasoning in the inference mechanism. Moreover, their model structure lacks the ability to represent information implicitly. To make the S&A's system a more credible model of reflexive reasoning, these two problems should first be addressed.

Shastri and Ajjanagadde's (S&A's) model on knowledge representation and reflexive reasoning has greatly enriched the field of connectionist research. The model offers a variety of competing solutions to the problem of variable binding which are characterized by context-sensitivity, robustness and evidential combination. Although the S&A system lacks a learning component, the model should not be judged by the extent of its validity or fallacy. Instead the model should be recognized for its amenability to behavioral, biological and computational analysis.

Shastri and Ajjanagadde's model for knowledge representation and reflexive reasoning offers a novel solution to the binding problem by phase labeling of entities, thereby avoiding the combinatorial space requirements inherent in connecting systems within a path of a network. An analysis of this model is presented, focusing on its technical adequacy, neuroscientific plausibility and possibility of a pattern-containing alternative.