Philosophy and Theoretical Cognitive Science

+ Samuel Murray, Zachary C Irving, and Kristina Krasich (2022) "The Scientific Study of Passive Thinking: The Methodology of Mind-Wandering Research" in De Brigard and Sinnott-Armstrong (Eds.) Philosophy & Neuroscience MIT Press

The science of mind-wandering has rapidly expanded over the past 20 years. During this boom, mind-wandering researchers have relied on self-report methods, where participants rate whether their minds were wandering. This is not an historical quirk. Rather, we argue that self-report is indispensable for researchers who study passive phenomena like mind-wandering. As a case study, we consider purportedly "objective" methods that measure mind-wandering with eye tracking and machine learning. These measures are validated in terms of how well they predict self-reports, which means that purportedly objective measures of mind wandering retain a subjective core. Mind-wandering science cannot break from the cycle of self-report. Skeptics about self-report might conclude that mind-wandering science has methodological foundations of sand. We take a rather more optimistic view. We present empirical and philosophical reasons to be confident in self-reports about mind-wandering. Empirically, these self-reports are remarkably consistent in their contents and behavioural and neural correlates. Philosophically, self-reports are consistent with our best theories about the function of mind-wandering. We argue that this triangulation gives us reason to trust both theory and method.

+ Zachary C Irving (2021) "Drifting and Directed Minds" Journal of Philosophy

Perhaps the central question in philosophy of action is this: what ingredient(s) of bodily action are missing in mere behavior? But what is an analogous question for mental action? I ask this: what ingredient(s) of active, goal-directed thought are missing in mind-wandering? I argue that the missing ingredient is guidance. My unique starting point motivates unified new accounts of four central features of mental action. First is the causal basis of mental action. Mind-wandering allows us to tease apart two causes of mental action: guidance and motivation. Second is the experiential character of mental action. Goals are rarely objects of awareness; rather, goals are “phenomenological frames” that carve experience into felt distractions and relevant information. Third is the scope of mental action: intentional mind-wandering involves a unique form of “meta-control,” wherein one is actively passive. Fourth is the reality of mental action: I offer a novel response to mental action skeptics such as Strawson.

+ Zachary C Irving and Aaron Glasser (2019) "Mind-Wandering: A Philosophical Guide" Philosophical Compass

Philosophers have long been fascinated by the stream of consciousness – thoughts, images, and bits of inner speech that dance across the inner stage. Yet for centuries, such 'mind-wandering' was deemed private and thus resistant to empirical investigation. Recent developments in psychology and neuroscience have reinvigorated scientific interest in the stream of thought. Despite this flurry of progress, scientists have stressed that mind-wandering research requires firmer philosophical foundations. The time is therefore ripe for the philosophy of mind-wandering. Our review begins with a foundational question: What is mind-wandering? We then investigate the significance of mind-wandering for general philosophical topics, namely, mental action, intro- spection, and the norms of thinking and attention.

+ Jessica Andrews-Hanna, Kieran Fox, Zachary C Irving, Nathan Spreng, and Kalina Christoff (2018) "The Neuroscience of Spontaneous Thought: An Evolving, Interdisciplinary Field" in Christoff and Fox (Eds.) Oxford Volume on Spontaneous Thought And Creativity Oxford University Press

An often-overlooked characteristic of the human mind is its propensity to wander. Despite growing interest in the science of mind-wandering, most studies operationalize mind-wandering by its task-unrelated contents, which may be orthogonal to the processes constraining how thoughts are evoked and unfold over time. In this chapter, we emphasize the importance of incorporating such processes into current definitions of mind-wandering, and proposing that mind-wandering and other forms of spontaneous thought (such as dreaming and creativity) are mental states that arise and transition relatively freely due to an absence of constraints on cognition. We review existing psychological, philosophical, and neuroscientific research on spontaneous thought through the lens of this framework, and call for additional research into the dynamic properties of the mind and brain.

+ Zachary C Irving and Evan Thompson (2018) "The Philosophy of Mind-Wandering" in Christoff and Fox (Eds.) Oxford Volume on Spontaneous Thought And Creativity Oxford University Press

This chapter provides an introduction to the philosophy of mind-wandering. It begins with a philosophical critique of the standard psychological definitions of mind-wandering as task-unrelated thought or stimulus-independent thought. Although these definitions have helped bring mind-wandering research onto center stage in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, they have substantial limitations. They do not account for the dynamics of mind-wandering, task-unrelated thought that does not qualify as mind-wandering, or the ways in which mind-wandering can be task-related. The chapter reviews philosophical accounts that improve upon the current psychological definitions, in particular an account of mind-wandering as "unguided thinking." It critically assesses the view that mind-wandering can be defined as thought lacking meta-awareness and cognitive agency, as well as the view that mind-wandering is disunified thinking. The definition of mind-wandering as unguided thinking not only is conceptually and phenomenologically precise, but also can be operationalized in a principled way for empirical research.

+ Zachary C Irving (2018) "Attention Norms in Siegel’s The Rationality of Perception" Ratio.

Can we be responsible for our attention? Can attention be epistemically good or bad? Siegel tackles these under-explored questions in "Selection Effects", a pathbreaking chapter of The Rationality of Perception. In this chapter, Siegel develops one of the first philosophical accounts of attention norms. Her account is inferential: patterns of attention are often controlled by inferences and therefore subject to rational epistemic norms that govern any other form of inference. Although Siegel’s account is explanatorily powerful, it cannot capture a core attention norm in cognitive science: one should balance between explora- tory and exploitative attention. For central cases of exploratory attention such as mind-wandering, child-like, and creative thinking are non-inferential. Siegel’s view classifies them as "normative freebies" that are not subject to epistemic evaluation. We’re therefore left with a dis- junctive conclusion: either Siegel’s inferentialist theory of attention norms is incomplete or cognitive scientists are wrong about the norms that govern attention.

+ Kalina Christoff, Caitlin Mills, Jessica R. Andrews-Hanna, Zachary C Irving, Evan Thompson, Kieran C. R. Fox, Julia W.Y. Kam (2018) “Mind-wandering as a scientific concept: Cutting through the definitional haze” Trends in Cognitive Science" Trends in Cognitive Science

The recent surge of scientific research into mind-wandering has occurred amidst a definitional haze. ‘Mind-wandering’ has been used to refer to a wide range of mental phenomena, from attentional lapses to purposeful, task-unrelated planning; from free-flowing thought and creative idea generationto highly constrained, perseverative rumination. Should we continue to group these disparate phenomena under the umbrella of ‘mind-wandering’ despite the lack of scientific consensus on what mindwandering is and what it is not? Or should we treat ‘mind-wandering’ as a scientific concept in need of a rigorous theoretical definition that distinguishes it from other types of thought?

+ Zachary C Irving (2018) "Psychology Off Tasks: Self-Report in the Sciences of Dreaming and Mind-Wandering" Journal of Consciousness Studies

How do you measure something so elusive as a dream or mind-wandering? I follow Windt and defend an old fashioned answer. Scientists can––indeed, they must––measure dreams with introspective self-reports, which have been in use since the inception of dream research. Yet this raises a question: what is self-report so central in research on dreams and mind-wandering? I con- sider and reject an obvious answer: dream reports are methodolgically necessary because dreams are conscious experiences. I provide an alternative, action-theoretic, explanation for the special role of dream reports. Because the onset of dreaming is not under voluntary control, subjects cannot perform voluntary experimental tasks that initiate dreaming. In lieu of experimental tasks, dream researchers rely on self-report. Dream reporting is part of a broader methodological movement that I call 'task-free psychology', whose practitioners use self-report to study passive processes like dreaming and mind-wandering. Although task-free psychology holds promise, I argue that it faces a unique problem of causal inference: without tasks, it's unclear how psychologists can perform the interventions necessary to determine the effects of dreaming or mind- wandering. Drawing on action theory and interventionist theories of causation, we can better understand the motivations and limits of task-free psychology, as well as ways that the field can progress.

+ Kalina Christoff, Zachary C Irving, Kieran Fox, Nathan Spreng, and Jessica Andrews-Hanna (2016) “Mind-Wandering as Spontaneous Thought: A Dynamic Framework” Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Most research on mind-wandering has characterized it as a mental state with contents that are task unrelated or stimulus independent. However, the dynamics of mind-wandering––how mental states change over time––have remained largely neglected. Here, we introduce a dynamic framework for understanding mind-wandering and its relationship to the recruitment of large-scale brain networks. We propose that mind-wandering is best understood as a member of a family of spontaneous-thought phenomena that also includes creative thought and dreaming. This dynamic framework can shed new light on mental disorders that are marked by alterations in spontaneous thought, including depression, anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

+ Zachary C Irving (2016) "Mind-Wandering is Unguided Attention: Accounting for the 'Purposeful' Wanderer" Philosophical Studies

Although mind-wandering occupies up to half of our waking thoughts, it is seldom discussed in philosophy. My paper brings these neglected thoughts into focus. I propose that mind-wandering is unguided attention. Guidance in my sense concerns how attention is monitored and regulated as it unfolds over time. Roughly speaking, someone’s attention is guided if she would feel pulled back, were she distracted from her current focus. Because our wandering thoughts drift unchecked from topic to topic, they are unguided. One motivation for my theory is what I call the "Puzzle of the Purposeful Wanderer". On the one hand, mind-wandering seems essentially purposeless; almost by definition, it contrasts with goal-directed cogni- tion. On the other hand, empirical evidence suggests that our minds frequently wander to our goals. My solution to the puzzle is this: mind-wandering is purposeless in one way––it is unguided––but purposeful in another––it is frequently caused, and thus motivated, by our goals. Another motivation for my theory is to distinguish mind-wandering from two antithetical forms of cognition: absorption (e.g. engrossment in an intellectual idea) and rumination (e.g. fixation on one’s distress). Surprisingly, previous theories cannot capture these distinctions. I can: on my view, absorption and rumination are guided, whereas mind-wandering is not. My paper has four parts. Section 1 spells out the puzzle. Sections 2 and 3 explicate two extant views of mind-wandering––the first held by most cognitive scientists, the second by Thomas Metzinger. Section 4 uses the limitations of these theories to motivate my own: mind-wandering is unguided attention.

+ Michael Arsenault and Zachary C Irving (2013) "Aha! Trick Questions, Independence, and the Epistemology of Disagreement" Thought: A Journal of Philosophy

We present a family of counter-examples to David Christensen’s Independence Criterion, which is central to the epistemology of disagreement. Roughly, independence requires that, when you assess whether to revise your credence in P upon discovering that someone disagrees with you, you shouldn't rely on the reasoning that lead you to your initial credence in P. To do so would beg the question against your interlocutor. Our counter-examples involve questions where, in the course of your reasoning, you almost fall for an easy-to-miss trick. We argue that you can use the step in your reasoning where you (barely) caught the trick as evidence that someone of your general competence level (your interlocutor) likely fell for it. Our cases show that it's permissible to use your reasoning about disputed matters to disregard an interlocutor’s disagreement, so long as that reasoning is embedded in the right sort of explanation of why she finds the disputed conclusion plausible, even though it's false.

+ Zachary C Irving (2011) "Style, But Substance: On Graphical versus Numerical Representation in Scientific Practice" Philosophy of Science

In practice, scientists must convey data in a "representational style" (e.g., as a numerical array or visual representation). Various authors seek to explain the epistemic role of scientific visual representation in terms of formal conventions (e.g., Goodman, Perini, and Kulvicki). Goodman also tends to dismiss the epistemic relevance of human cog- nition. My position is that visual conventions are nonarbitrary, in that they play to scientists' cognitive abilities and limitations. My account draws on Perini's formal analysis, scientific case studies, and empirical literature on global pattern detection in neurotypicals, autistics, and dyslexics.