background, the
A set of nonrepresentational capacities that enable all representing to take place. The Background includes biological and cultural capacities, skills, stances, assumptions and presuppositions.


behaviorism
The theory according to which mental states can be analyzed in terms of observable behavior or dispositions to engage in such behavior.


causal functionalism
The view that a physical system realizes a mental state not in virtue of the particular stuff it is made of but instead in virtue of the causal relations that parts of that system bear to each other


Cartesian skepticism
Any of a class of skeptical views against empirical knowledge based on the claim that claims to empirical knowledge are defeated by the possibility that we might be deceived insofar as we might be, for example, dreaming, hallucinating, deceived by demons, or brains in vats.


cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study which attempts to further our understanding of the nature of thought.


cognize
To have access to knowledge that has the properties of knowledge in the ordinary sense, but is not necessarily accessible to consciousness or dependent on warrant or justification.


coherence
A relation among a number of elements, such as propositions or concepts, that fit together well: consistency; cohesiveness.


computation
A series of rule governed state transitions whose rules can be altered.


concept
A semantically evaluable, redeployable constituent of thought, invoked to explain properties of intentional phenomena such as productivity and systematicity. Applied to an assortment of phenomena including mental representations, images, words, stereotypes, senses, properties, reasoning abilities, mathematical functions, etc