Jason Ford

University of Minnesota, Duluth, Philosophy, Faculty Member

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Jason Ford is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He works on the relationship between consciousness, attention and phenomenology. His Ph.D. is from the University of California, Irvine. His BA is from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Papers by Jason Ford

Robert Kirk: Zombies and Consciousness - Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, xii+235, $45, ISBN 978-0-19-922980-2

Minds and Machines, 2010

Saving Time : How Attention Explains The Utility of Supposedly Superflous Representations

Cognitive Critique, 2009

I contend that Alva Noë’s Enactive Approach to Perception fails to give an adequate account of th... more I contend that Alva Noë’s Enactive Approach to Perception fails to give an adequate account of the periphery of attention. Noë claims that our peripheral experience is not produced by the brain’s representation of peripheral items, but rather by our mastery of sensorimotor skills and contingencies. I offer a two-pronged assault on this account of the periphery of attention. The first challenge comes from Mack and Rock’s work on inattentional blindness, and provides robust empirical evidence for the semantic processing (and hence representation) of some wholly unattended stimuli. The second challenge draws on LaBerge’s theory of attention to provide a substantial advantage to peripheral representations, saving time whenever we shift the focus of our attention to something which had been in the periphery, allowing us to respond to that thing more quickly than would be possible if Noë’s account of perception were correct.

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Tye-dyed teleology and the inverted spectrum

Philosophical Studies, 2010

Michael Tye’s considered position on visual experience combines representationalism with external... more Michael Tye’s considered position on visual experience combines representationalism with externalism about color, so when considering spectrum inversion, he needs a principled reason to claim that a person with inverted color vision is seeing things incorrectly. Tye’s responses to the problem of the inverted spectrum (2000, in: Consciousness, color, and content, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA and 2002a, in: Chalmers (ed.) Philosophy of mind: classical and contemporary readings, Oxford University Press, Oxford) rely on a teleological approach to the evolution of vision to secure the grounds upon which people with normal color vision can be justly called ‘right’ and those with inverted color vision can be called ‘wrong’. I demonstrate that since the inverted spectrum thought experiment requires that both sorts of vision be behaviorally indistinguishable, no biologically acceptable concept of teleology will allow Tye to draw the distinction he needs.

Uriah Kriegel and Kenneth Williford (eds), Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness

Minds and Machines, 2009

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Helen Keller Was Never in a Chinese Room

Minds and Machines, 2010

Ford's "Helen Keller Was Never in a Chinese Room" claims that my argument in "How Helen Keller Us... more Ford's "Helen Keller Was Never in a Chinese Room" claims that my argument in "How Helen Keller Used Syntactic Semantics to Escape from a Chinese Room" fails because Searle and I use the terms 'syntax' and 'semantics' differently, hence are at cross purposes. Ford has misunderstood me; this reply clarifies my theory. Jason Michael Ford's "Helen Keller Was Never in a Chinese Room" (2010) claims that my argument in "How Helen Keller Used Syntactic Semantics to Escape from a Chinese Room" (Rapaport 2006) fails because Searle and I use the terms 'syntax' and 'semantics' differently, hence are at cross purposes. I think Ford has misunderstood me, so I am grateful for this opportunity to clarify my theory. The theory of syntactic semantics (Rapaport 1988) underlies computationalism: the claim that cognition is computable, i.e., that there is an algorithm (or a family of algorithms) that compute cognitive functions (Rapaport 1998). The theory has three parts: First, cognitive agents have direct access only to internal representatives of external objects. As Ray Jackendoff (2002, §10.4) says, a cognitive agent understands the world by "pushing the world into the mind". Therefore, both words and their meanings (including external objects serving as their referents) are represented internally in a single language of thought (LOT). For humans, this LOT is a biological neural network; for computers, it might be some kind of knowledge-representation and reasoning system (such as SNePS; see Shapiro & Rapaport 1987). 1 Second, it follows that words, their meanings, and semantic relations between them are all syntactic, where syntax is the study of relations among members of a single set (of signs, or marks, or neurons, etc.), and semantics is the study of relations between two sets (of signs, marks, neurons, etc., on the one hand, and their meanings, on the other) (cf. Morris 1938). "Pushing" meanings into the same set as symbols for them allows semantics to be done syntactically: It turns semantic relations between two sets (a set of internal marks and a set of (external) meanings) into syntactic relations among the marks of a single (internal) LOT. For example, truth tables and formal semantics are both syntactic enterprises, as are the relations between neuron firings representing signs and neuron firings representing external meanings. Consequently, symbol-manipulating computers can do semantics by doing syntax. Finally, understanding is recursive: We understand a syntactic domain (call it 'SYN 1 ') indirectly by interpreting it in terms of a semantic domain (call it 'SEM 1 '). But SEM 1 must be antecedently understood by considering it as a syntactic domain (rename it 'SYN 2 ') interpreted in terms of yet another semantic domain, which also must be antecedently understood. And so on. But, in order not to make it go on ad infinitum, there must be a base case: a domain that is understood directly, i.e., in terms of itself (i.e., not "antecedently"). Such direct understanding is syntactic understanding (Rapaport 1986b). (And perhaps it is holistic understanding; cf. Rapaport 2002.) Thus, the theory of syntactic semantics asserts that syntax suffices for semantic cognition, that cognition is therefore computable, and that computers are hence capable of thinking.

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Attention and the New Sceptics

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2008

Abstract: In response to new research into the phenomena of inattentional blindness and change-bl... more

Robert Kirk: Zombies and Consciousness

Minds and Machines, 2010

Zombies and Consciousness is a thoughtful tour of the zombie terrain (zombies are at the core of ... more Zombies and Consciousness is a thoughtful tour of the zombie terrain (zombies are at the core of recent, popular arguments in favor of Dualism). All the main positions, and the philosophers who present them, receive fair discussions. Kirk has two main goals, served by a single master argument. That argument (''Sole-Pictures'') is deployed to destroy the intuitions that make the zombie argument plausible, then extended to support his specific functionalist proposal for the necessary and sufficient conditions of phenomenal consciousness (the ''basic package'' plus ''direct activity''). Kirk presents both sides of the zombie argument well, having once been an advocate of zombies. In his words, ''I write as an exvictim: I know what it is like to have zombie fever'' (p. 39). The book is engaging, rigorous, and offers a novel theory of consciousness. It will appeal to anyone interested in philosophical approaches to phenomenal experience. The first chapter introduces the idea behind philosophical zombies. The philosophical zombie is a creature that is an exact physical and behavioral duplicate of a real person, but without the consciousness. If zombies are possible, then there must be more to consciousness than our physical features, which the zombies also possess. The second chapter traces the philosophical development of the zombie argument, and explains how it supports both Epiphenomenalism and Dualism. Kirk also introduces his preferred terminology (''strict implication'') in order to clear up the (heavily contested) terminology surrounding the types of possibility involved (are zombies logically possible? Metaphysically possible? Conceptually possible?). Kirk shows that the zombie peril is a real threat to Physicalism: if the facts and laws of physics do not strictly entail the facts of consciousness, then zombies are possible and Physicalism is false.

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Robert Kirk: Zombies and Consciousness - Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, xii+235, $45, ISBN 978-0-19-922980-2

Minds and Machines, 2010

Saving Time : How Attention Explains The Utility of Supposedly Superflous Representations

Cognitive Critique, 2009

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Tye-dyed teleology and the inverted spectrum

Philosophical Studies, 2010