This commentary questions the target articles inferences from a limited set of empirical data to support this model and conceptual scheme. Especially questionable is the attribution of internal representation properties to an assembly of cells in a discrete cortical module firing at a discrete attractor frequency. Alternative inferences are drawn from cortical cooling and cell-firing data that point to the internal representation as a broad and specific cortical network defined by cortico-cortical connectivity. Active memory, it is proposed, consists in the sustained activation of the component neuron populations of the network.

Gilead et al. present a rich account of abstraction. Though the account describes several elements which influence mental representation, it is worth also delineating how feelings, such as fluency and emotion, influence mental simulation. Additionally, though past experience can sometimes make simulations more accurate and worthwhile (as Gilead et al. suggest), many systematic prediction errors persist despite substantial experience.

The target article raises important questions about the applicability of experimental social psychology research on topics with policy implications. This commentary focuses on the importance of attending to a variety of factors to improve ecological validity as well as considering the ultimate factors shaping behavior and the role of natural categories in the stability of stereotypes and their influence.

One example of proxy failure is current antisexist and antiracist policies. One of the most popular proxy in them is the number of representatives of marginalized groups – women and nonwhite people – in power structures. Here I show that such measures do not lead to combating sexism and racism, which flourish despite their application.

Pickering & Garrod (P&G) argue that language processing in dialogue is in principle easier than in monologue. Although dialogue situations may provide more opportunities for facilitative priming, those priming mechanisms are also available in monologue situations. In both cases, the interactive alignment model calls strict modular accounts of language processing into serious question.

According to the view that humans are conscious automata, the experience of conscious will is illusory. Epistemic theories of causation, however, make room for causal will, planned behavior, and moral action.

Considered in relation to the component brain systems of appraisal-emotion interactions, dynamical systems theory blurs the divisions that seem obvious in a psychological analysis, such as between arousal, emotion, and appraisal. At the same time, the component brain mechanisms can themselves be seen to be incomplete as units of analysis, making sense only in the context of the whole organism.

Grush makes extensive use of von Holst and Mittelstaedt's (1950) efference copy hypothesis. Although his embellishment of the model is admirably more sophisticated than that of its progenitors, I argue that it still suffers from the same conceptual limitations as entailed in its original formulation.

The idea of the orderly output constraint is compared with recent findings about the representation of vowels in the auditory cortex of an animal model for human speech sound processing (Ohl & Scheich 1997). The comparison allows a critical consideration of the idea of neuronal “feature extractors,” which is of relevance to the noninvariance problem in speech perception.

Domain-general mechanisms are evolutionarily ancient, resulting from the evolution of affective cues signaling the attainment of evolutionary goals. Explicit processing is a particularly important set of domain-general mechanisms for constructing human groups – enabling ideologies specifying future goal states and rationalizing group aims, enabling knowledge of others' reputations essential to cooperation, understanding the rights and obligations of group membership, monitoring group members, and providing appropriate punishments to those who deviate from group aims.

Many commentators have raised issues concerning the idea that language evolved from manual gestures. I deal with these first, reiterating the points that speech is very different from animal vocal calls, and that cortical control over manual action provided the best platform for the evolution of intentional communication and language. I then deal with commentaries on the origins of handedness. The critical questions are whether there is indeed an evolutionary coupling between handedness and lateralized control of speech, and if there is, whether a prior lateralization of vocal control provided the nudge that gave most of us left-sided speech and right-handedness.

I argue that a dynamical framing of the emulation theory of representation may be at odds with its articulation in Grush's information-processing terms. An architectural constraint implicit in the emulation theory may have consequences not envisaged in the target article. In my view, “how the emulator manages to implement the forward mapping” is pivotal with regard to whether we have an emulation theory of representation, as opposed to an emulation theory of (mere) applied forces.

Page argues that localist models can be applied to a number of problems that are difficult for distributed models. However, it is easy to find examples where the opposite is true. This commentary illustrates the superiority of distributed models in the domain of artificial grammar learning, a paradigm widely used to investigate implicit learning.

Hurford argues that propositions of the form PREDICATE(x) represent conceptual structures that predate language and that can be explicated in terms of neural structure. I disagree, arguing that such predicates are descriptions of limited aspects of brain function, not available as representations in the brain to be exploited in the frog or monkey brain and turned into language in the human.

The proposal of Rips et al. is motivated by discontinuity and input claims. The discontinuity claim is that no continuity exists between early (nonverbal) numerical representations and natural number. The input claim is that particular experiences (e.g., cardinality-related talk and object-based activities) do not aid in natural number construction. We discuss reasons to doubt both claims in their strongest forms.