Nicholas Shea
Biographic Data
| ID | 989603 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicholas Shea |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicholas |
| FAMILY NAME | Shea |
| SIGNATURE | SHEA N |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2032-5705 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 73 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Response to Trevor de Clercq (2025)
Overview of Concepts at the Interface (2024, OUP)
The book was very nearly called Thinking With Concepts. Thinking is a completely familiar, everyday activity, but there is not so much work, in either philosophy or psychology, on thinking as such
Metacognition of Inferential Transitions
A reasoning process is more than an unfolding causal chain. Although some thoughts cause others in virtue of their contents, paradigmatic cases of personal-level inference involve something more, some appreciation that the conclusion follows from the premises. Both first-order processes and second-order beliefs have proven problematic or inadequate to account for the phenomenon. Thus, here I argue for an intermediate position, according to which …
Diversity in Music Corpus Studies
Moving beyond content‐specific computation in artificial neural networks
A basic deep neural network (DNN) is trained to exhibit a large set of input–output dispositions. While being a good model of the way humans perform some tasks automatically, without deliberative reasoning, more is needed to approach human‐like artificial intelligence. Analysing recent additions brings to light a distinction between two fundamentally different styles of computation: content‐specific and non‐content‐specific computation (as first …
Organized representations forming a computationally useful processing structure
Peter Godfrey-Smith recently introduced the idea of representational ‘organization’. When a collection of representations form an organized family, similar representational vehicles carry similar contents. For example, where neural firing rate represents numerosity (an analogue magnitude representation), similar firing rates represent similar numbers of items. Organization has been elided with structural representation, but the two are in fact di…
Metacognitive Development and Conceptual Change in Children
There has been little investigation to date of the way metacognition is involved in conceptual change. It has been recognised that analytic metacognition is important to the way older children (c. 8–12 years) acquire more sophisticated scientific and mathematical concepts at school. But there has been barely any examination of the role of metacognition in earlier stages of concept acquisition, at the ages that have been the major focus of the dev…
Descending Bass Schemata and Negative Emotion in Western Song
A descending bass line coordinated with sad lyrics is often described as evoking the "lament" topic—a signal to listeners that grief is being conveyed (Caplin, 2014). In human speech, a similar pattern of pitch declination occurs as air pressure is lost ('t Hart, Collier, & Cohen, 1990) which—coordinated with the premise that sad speech is lower in pitch (Lieberman & Michaels, 1962)—suggests there may be a cognitive-ecological association between…
Millicent Weber
Consciousness, Concepts and Natural Kinds
We have various everyday measures for identifying the presence of consciousness, such as the capacity for verbal report and the intentional control of behavior. However, there are many contexts in which these measures are difficult (if not impossible) to apply, and even when they can be applied one might have doubts as to their validity in determining the presence/absence of consciousness. Everyday measures for identifying consciousness are parti…
Representation in Cognitive Science
In their constructive reviews, Frances Egan, Randy Gallistel and Steven Gross have raised some important problems for the account of content advanced by Nicholas Shea in Representation in Cognitive Science . Here the author addresses their main challenges. Egan argues that the account includes an unrecognised pragmatic element; and that it makes contents explanatorily otiose. Gallistel raises questions about homomorphism and correlational informa…
Representation in Cognitive Science
The representational theory of mind (RTM) has given us the powerful insight that thinking consists of the processing of mental representations. Behaviour is the result of these cognitive processes and makes sense in the light of their contents. There is no widely accepted account of how representations get their content – of the metaphysics of representational content. That question, usually asked about representations at the personal level like …
Content in Simple Signalling Systems
Our understanding of communication and its evolution has advanced significantly through the study of simple models involving interacting senders and receivers of signals. Many theorists have thought that the resources of mathematical information theory are all that are needed to capture the meaning or content that is being communicated in these systems. However, the way theorists routinely talk about the models implicitly draws on a conception of…
Neural Signaling of Probabilistic Vectors
Recent work combining cognitive neuroscience with computational modeling suggests that distributed patterns of neural firing may represent probability distributions. This article asks, what makes it the case that distributed patterns of firing, as well as carrying information about (correlating with) probability distributions over worldly parameters, represent such distributions? In examples of probabilistic population coding, it is the way infor…
Inherited Representations are Read in Development
Recent theoretical work has identified a tightly constrained sense in which genes carry representational content. Representational properties of the genome are founded in the transmission of DNA over phylogenetic time and its role in natural selection. However, genetic representation is not just relevant to questions of selection and evolution. This article goes beyond existing treatments and argues for the heterodox view that information generat…
Naturalising Representational Content
This paper sets out a view about the explanatory role of representational content and advocates one approach to naturalising content – to giving a naturalistic account of what makes an entity a representation and in virtue of what it has the content it does. It argues for pluralism about the metaphysics of content and suggests that a good strategy is to ask the content question with respect to a variety of predictively successful information proc…
Developmental Systems Theory Formulated as a Claim about Inherited Representations
Developmental systems theory (DST) is often dismissed on the basis that the causal indispensability of nongenetic factors in evolution and development has long been appreciated. A reformulation makes a more substantive claim: that the special role played by genes is also played by some (but not all) nongenetic resources. That special role can be captured by Shea's ‘inherited representation’. Formulating DST as the claim that there are nongenetic …
Methodological Encounters with the Phenomenal Kind
Block's well-known distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness has generated a large philosophical literature about putative conceptual connections between the two. The scientific literature about whether they come apart in any actual cases is rather smaller. Empirical evidence gathered to date has not settled the issue. Some put this down to a fundamental methodological obstacle to the empirical study of the relation be…
The Vegetative State and the Science of Consciousness
Consciousness in experimental subjects is typically inferred from reports and other forms of voluntary behaviour. A wealth of everyday experience confirms that healthy subjects do not ordinarily behave in these ways unless they are conscious. Investigation of consciousness in vegetative state patients has been based on the search for neural evidence that such broad functional capacities are preserved in some vegetative state patients. We call thi…
Varieties of Meaning
Book Review| January 01 2009 Varieties of Meaning R. G. Millikan, Varieties of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. xi + 242 pp. Nicholas Shea Nicholas Shea Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2009) 118 (1): 127–130. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2008-036 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Nicholas Shea; Varieties of Meaning. The…
Consumers Need Information
The success of a piece of behaviour is often explained by its being caused by a true representation (similarly, failure falsity). In some simple organisms, success is just survival and reproduction. Scientists explain why a piece of behaviour helped the organism to survive and reproduce by adverting to the behaviour’s having been caused by a true representation. That usage should, if possible, be vindicated by an adequate naturalistic theory of c…
Does Externalism Entail the Anomalism of the Mental
In ‘Mental Events’ Donald Davidson argued for the anomalism of the mental on the basis of the operation of incompatible constitutive principles in the mental and physical domains. Many years later, he has suggested that externalism provides further support for the anomalism of the mental. I examine the basis for that claim. The answer to the question in the title will be a qualified ‘Yes’. That is an important result in the metaphysics of mind an…
Ruth Millikan's On Clear and Confused Ideas
Consumers Need Information
The success of a piece of behaviour is often explained by its being caused by a true representation (similarly, failure falsity). In some simple organisms, success is just survival and reproduction. Scientists explain why a piece of behaviour helped the organism to survive and reproduce by adverting to the behaviour’s having been caused by a true representation. That usage should, if possible, be vindicated by an adequate naturalistic theory of c…
Naturalising Representational Content
This paper sets out a view about the explanatory role of representational content and advocates one approach to naturalising content – to giving a naturalistic account of what makes an entity a representation and in virtue of what it has the content it does. It argues for pluralism about the metaphysics of content and suggests that a good strategy is to ask the content question with respect to a variety of predictively successful information proc…
Content in Simple Signalling Systems
Our understanding of communication and its evolution has advanced significantly through the study of simple models involving interacting senders and receivers of signals. Many theorists have thought that the resources of mathematical information theory are all that are needed to capture the meaning or content that is being communicated in these systems. However, the way theorists routinely talk about the models implicitly draws on a conception of…
The Vegetative State and the Science of Consciousness
Consciousness in experimental subjects is typically inferred from reports and other forms of voluntary behaviour. A wealth of everyday experience confirms that healthy subjects do not ordinarily behave in these ways unless they are conscious. Investigation of consciousness in vegetative state patients has been based on the search for neural evidence that such broad functional capacities are preserved in some vegetative state patients. We call thi…
Methodological Encounters with the Phenomenal Kind
Block's well-known distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness has generated a large philosophical literature about putative conceptual connections between the two. The scientific literature about whether they come apart in any actual cases is rather smaller. Empirical evidence gathered to date has not settled the issue. Some put this down to a fundamental methodological obstacle to the empirical study of the relation be…
Inherited Representations are Read in Development
Recent theoretical work has identified a tightly constrained sense in which genes carry representational content. Representational properties of the genome are founded in the transmission of DNA over phylogenetic time and its role in natural selection. However, genetic representation is not just relevant to questions of selection and evolution. This article goes beyond existing treatments and argues for the heterodox view that information generat…
Developmental Systems Theory Formulated as a Claim about Inherited Representations
Developmental systems theory (DST) is often dismissed on the basis that the causal indispensability of nongenetic factors in evolution and development has long been appreciated. A reformulation makes a more substantive claim: that the special role played by genes is also played by some (but not all) nongenetic resources. That special role can be captured by Shea's ‘inherited representation’. Formulating DST as the claim that there are nongenetic …
Neural Signaling of Probabilistic Vectors
Recent work combining cognitive neuroscience with computational modeling suggests that distributed patterns of neural firing may represent probability distributions. This article asks, what makes it the case that distributed patterns of firing, as well as carrying information about (correlating with) probability distributions over worldly parameters, represent such distributions? In examples of probabilistic population coding, it is the way infor…
Ruth Millikan's On Clear and Confused Ideas
Does Externalism Entail the Anomalism of the Mental
In ‘Mental Events’ Donald Davidson argued for the anomalism of the mental on the basis of the operation of incompatible constitutive principles in the mental and physical domains. Many years later, he has suggested that externalism provides further support for the anomalism of the mental. I examine the basis for that claim. The answer to the question in the title will be a qualified ‘Yes’. That is an important result in the metaphysics of mind an…
Consumers Need Information
The success of a piece of behaviour is often explained by its being caused by a true representation (similarly, failure falsity). In some simple organisms, success is just survival and reproduction. Scientists explain why a piece of behaviour helped the organism to survive and reproduce by adverting to the behaviour’s having been caused by a true representation. That usage should, if possible, be vindicated by an adequate naturalistic theory of c…
Varieties of Meaning
Book Review| January 01 2009 Varieties of Meaning R. G. Millikan, Varieties of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. xi + 242 pp. Nicholas Shea Nicholas Shea Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2009) 118 (1): 127–130. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2008-036 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Nicholas Shea; Varieties of Meaning. The…
The Vegetative State and the Science of Consciousness
Consciousness in experimental subjects is typically inferred from reports and other forms of voluntary behaviour. A wealth of everyday experience confirms that healthy subjects do not ordinarily behave in these ways unless they are conscious. Investigation of consciousness in vegetative state patients has been based on the search for neural evidence that such broad functional capacities are preserved in some vegetative state patients. We call thi…
Developmental Systems Theory Formulated as a Claim about Inherited Representations
Developmental systems theory (DST) is often dismissed on the basis that the causal indispensability of nongenetic factors in evolution and development has long been appreciated. A reformulation makes a more substantive claim: that the special role played by genes is also played by some (but not all) nongenetic resources. That special role can be captured by Shea's ‘inherited representation’. Formulating DST as the claim that there are nongenetic …
Methodological Encounters with the Phenomenal Kind
Block's well-known distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness has generated a large philosophical literature about putative conceptual connections between the two. The scientific literature about whether they come apart in any actual cases is rather smaller. Empirical evidence gathered to date has not settled the issue. Some put this down to a fundamental methodological obstacle to the empirical study of the relation be…
Inherited Representations are Read in Development
Recent theoretical work has identified a tightly constrained sense in which genes carry representational content. Representational properties of the genome are founded in the transmission of DNA over phylogenetic time and its role in natural selection. However, genetic representation is not just relevant to questions of selection and evolution. This article goes beyond existing treatments and argues for the heterodox view that information generat…
Naturalising Representational Content
This paper sets out a view about the explanatory role of representational content and advocates one approach to naturalising content – to giving a naturalistic account of what makes an entity a representation and in virtue of what it has the content it does. It argues for pluralism about the metaphysics of content and suggests that a good strategy is to ask the content question with respect to a variety of predictively successful information proc…
Neural Signaling of Probabilistic Vectors
Recent work combining cognitive neuroscience with computational modeling suggests that distributed patterns of neural firing may represent probability distributions. This article asks, what makes it the case that distributed patterns of firing, as well as carrying information about (correlating with) probability distributions over worldly parameters, represent such distributions? In examples of probabilistic population coding, it is the way infor…
Representation in Cognitive Science
The representational theory of mind (RTM) has given us the powerful insight that thinking consists of the processing of mental representations. Behaviour is the result of these cognitive processes and makes sense in the light of their contents. There is no widely accepted account of how representations get their content – of the metaphysics of representational content. That question, usually asked about representations at the personal level like …
Content in Simple Signalling Systems
Our understanding of communication and its evolution has advanced significantly through the study of simple models involving interacting senders and receivers of signals. Many theorists have thought that the resources of mathematical information theory are all that are needed to capture the meaning or content that is being communicated in these systems. However, the way theorists routinely talk about the models implicitly draws on a conception of…
Metacognitive Development and Conceptual Change in Children
There has been little investigation to date of the way metacognition is involved in conceptual change. It has been recognised that analytic metacognition is important to the way older children (c. 8–12 years) acquire more sophisticated scientific and mathematical concepts at school. But there has been barely any examination of the role of metacognition in earlier stages of concept acquisition, at the ages that have been the major focus of the dev…
Descending Bass Schemata and Negative Emotion in Western Song
A descending bass line coordinated with sad lyrics is often described as evoking the "lament" topic—a signal to listeners that grief is being conveyed (Caplin, 2014). In human speech, a similar pattern of pitch declination occurs as air pressure is lost ('t Hart, Collier, & Cohen, 1990) which—coordinated with the premise that sad speech is lower in pitch (Lieberman & Michaels, 1962)—suggests there may be a cognitive-ecological association between…
Millicent Weber
Consciousness, Concepts and Natural Kinds
We have various everyday measures for identifying the presence of consciousness, such as the capacity for verbal report and the intentional control of behavior. However, there are many contexts in which these measures are difficult (if not impossible) to apply, and even when they can be applied one might have doubts as to their validity in determining the presence/absence of consciousness. Everyday measures for identifying consciousness are parti…
Representation in Cognitive Science
In their constructive reviews, Frances Egan, Randy Gallistel and Steven Gross have raised some important problems for the account of content advanced by Nicholas Shea in Representation in Cognitive Science . Here the author addresses their main challenges. Egan argues that the account includes an unrecognised pragmatic element; and that it makes contents explanatorily otiose. Gallistel raises questions about homomorphism and correlational informa…
Moving beyond content‐specific computation in artificial neural networks
A basic deep neural network (DNN) is trained to exhibit a large set of input–output dispositions. While being a good model of the way humans perform some tasks automatically, without deliberative reasoning, more is needed to approach human‐like artificial intelligence. Analysing recent additions brings to light a distinction between two fundamentally different styles of computation: content‐specific and non‐content‐specific computation (as first …
Organized representations forming a computationally useful processing structure
Peter Godfrey-Smith recently introduced the idea of representational ‘organization’. When a collection of representations form an organized family, similar representational vehicles carry similar contents. For example, where neural firing rate represents numerosity (an analogue magnitude representation), similar firing rates represent similar numbers of items. Organization has been elided with structural representation, but the two are in fact di…
Metacognition of Inferential Transitions
A reasoning process is more than an unfolding causal chain. Although some thoughts cause others in virtue of their contents, paradigmatic cases of personal-level inference involve something more, some appreciation that the conclusion follows from the premises. Both first-order processes and second-order beliefs have proven problematic or inadequate to account for the phenomenon. Thus, here I argue for an intermediate position, according to which …
Diversity in Music Corpus Studies
Response to Trevor de Clercq (2025)
Overview of Concepts at the Interface (2024, OUP)
The book was very nearly called Thinking With Concepts. Thinking is a completely familiar, everyday activity, but there is not so much work, in either philosophy or psychology, on thinking as such
Psychology (15 works) · Epistemology (14 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Cognitive science (10 works) · Mathematics (8 works) · Cognition (7 works) · Cognitive psychology (7 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (6 works) · Artificial Intelligence (5 works)