Commentator’s Viewpoint

Reply to the commentators

To begin with, I would like to thank the commentators for taking their time commenting on my target paper. I find it fascinating how diverging reflections it has inspired, and how often commentators express theoretical viewpoints that are compatible or that differ, regardless of the authors’ disciplinary backgrounds. I thank Andreas Roepstorff for welcoming the article, and I do feel welcome wr...

Sensing, Objects, and Awareness: Reply to Commentators

I am very grateful to my commentators for their interest and their careful attention to A Theory of Sentience. It is particularly gratifying to find other philosophers attracted to the murky domain of preattentive sensory processing, an obscure place where exciting stuff happens. I can by no means answer all of their objections or counterarguments, and some of the problems noted derive from fai...

Paternalism, reasonableness, and neutrality: a response to commentators.

The position statement and its commentators: consensus, compromise or confusion?

The Ethics Task Force of the EAPC has done a significant job in forwarding the discussion of the relationship between palliative care and euthanasia, as the wealth of international commentary on the document surely illustrates. The position paper is commendably succinct and, in some respects, unambiguous in the views defended. Notably, the document abjures discussion of anything other than volu...

Emotion and decision-making explained: response to commentators.

One of the themes of Emotion and Decision-Making Explained (Rolls, 2014c) is that there are multiple routes to emotionrelated responses, with some illustrated in Fig. 1. Brain systems involved in decoding stimuli in terms of whether they are instrumental reinforcers so that goal directed actions may be performed to obtain or avoid the stimuli are emphasized as being important for emotional stat...

Searching for General Principles in Cognitive Performance: Reply to Commentators

Reply to Commentators 2 The commentators expressed concerns regarding the relevance and value of non-computational non-symbolic explanations of cognitive performance. But what counts as an " explanation " depends on the pre-theoretical assumptions behind the scenes of empirical science regarding the kinds of variables and relationships that are sought out in the first place, and some of the pre...

Rejoinder from sociability to solidarity: reply to commentators

© L p i I’d like to thank my commentators for their insightful and challenging replies. My aim in the paper was to stimulate creative thinking about solidarity in diverse societies, and these seven comments represent exactly the sort of constructive analyses I was hoping to prompt. I can’t address all of the issues raised by the commentators, but let me begin by emphasizing that my concern is w...