Nevin & Grace (N&G) buttress their metaphor with some good props. However, it is still not clear what momentum is analogous to. If momentum is a measure of strength, then the authors should say so and tell us how to calculate it. Furthermore, if “other” behavior can be introduced into the equation (and N&G's foray into the applied world suggests that it can), it is unclear when the masses are accrued and how much is accrued to each behavior.

I defend the possibility of a functional account of the intrinsic qualities of sensory experience against the claim that functional characterization can only describe such qualities to the level of isomorphism of relational structures on those qualities. A form sensory holism might be true concerning the phenomenal, and this holism would account for some antifunctionalist intuition evoked by inverted spectrum and absent qualia arguments. Sensory holism is compatible with the correctness of functionalism about the phenomenal.

The proposition that feedback is never necessary in speech recognition is examined for utterances consisting of sequences of words. In running speech the features near word boundaries are often modified according to language-dependent rules. Application of these rules during word recognition requires top-down processing. Because isolated words are not usually modified by rules, their recognition could be achieved by bottom-up processing only.

The central claim of my original target article was a modest one (that modularity does not always hold) but it was misinterpreted as a much stronger one (that modularity never holds). Further confusions arose from multiple valid usages of the term “modularity” and the similarity of the terms “locality” and “localization.” Despite the limited nature of the claim, I maintain that it poses a stubborn problem for neuropsychology, not to be dispelled by new empirical methods or a priori reasoning.

Additional support is presented for the necessity of awareness of the CS-US relation in human autonomic conditioning. However, possible limitations and exceptions regarding this general rule are discussed. Limitations include the lack of relationship between conditioned response (CR) strength and degree of awareness, and an important exception may be the finding of conditioning with backwardly masked CSs of a biologically prepared nature.

The facial expression of pain is the end product of a complex process that is, in part, emotional. The evolutionary study of facial expression must account for the social nature of human consciousness and should address the questions of why empathy exists, the adaptive importance of empathy, and whether facial expression is a mechanism of empathy and second-person consciousness.

We suggest that the framework proposed by Vigil is useful in laboratory contexts but might come up short for in vivo social interactions. Emotions result from cost-benefits trade-offs but are not solely generated at the individual level to establish emotional social spheres. In organizational contexts, emotion expression can be a constitutive part of a professional activity, and observed sex differences might vanish.

Those who identify colours with physical properties need to say how the content of colour experiences relate to their favoured identifications. This is because it is not plausible to hold that colour experiences represent things as having the physical properties in question. I sketch how physical realists about colour might tackle this item of unfinished business.

Hoerl & McCormack claim that the temporal updating system only represents the world as present. This generates puzzles regarding the phenomenology of temporal experience. We argue that recent models of reinforcement learning suggest that temporal updating must have a minimal temporal structure; and we suggest that this helps to clarify what it means to experience the world as temporally structured.

the heuristics-and-biases approach requires a clear separation of normative and descriptive models. normative models cannot be justified by intuition, or by consensus. the lack of consensus on normative theory is a problem for prescriptive approaches. one solution to the prescriptive problem is to argue contingently: if you are concerned about consequences, here is a way to make them better.

The radical empiricist theory of the Quartz & Sejnowski target article would result in a brain that could not act. The attempt to bolster this position with computational arguments is misleading and often just wrong. Fortunately, other efforts are making progress in linking neural and cognitive development.

The Schyns et al. target article demonstrates that different classifications entail different representations, implying “flexible space learning.” We argue that flexibility is required even at the within-category level.

Four issues that build on the ideas offered by Tomasello et al. are discussed: the developmental course of shared intentionality and its relation to other developing abilities and experiences, and the conceptualization of three key features of the process: motivation, plans and the development of planning, and culture.

“Psychological relativity” means that “an observation is a relationship between the observer and the event observed.” It implies a profound distinction between “the internal first-person as opposed to the external third-person perspective.” That distinction, followed through, turns Lehar's discourse inside-out. This commentary elaborates the notion of “psychological relativity,” shows that whereas there is already a natural science of perceptual report, there cannot also be a science of perception per se, and draws out some implications for our understanding of phenomenal consciousness.

Animals detect and acquire resources through a sequence of shape changes. This process is tightly coupled to the sensory and mechanical ecology of the animal. Building physical models allow us to prescind from modeling these aspects of the environment, which may not yet be described or suitably abstracted. The significance of this hybrid of physical modeling and experimentation to the acquisition of scientific knowledge is discussed.

Shanker & King's (S&K's) dynamic systems approach converges with developments in social anthropological studies of communication which were long ago anticipated in the writings of Volosinov and Schutz. Following a review of these writings, this commentary suggests that a dynamic systems approach should distinguish communion from communication. It concludes with a remark on the evolutionary implications of the approach.

The basic concepts of motor control formulated in our target article were derived from specific experiments, a fact which is disregarded in Dalenoort's comments. A purely academic approach to motor control may not result in a clearer understanding of control concepts.

In perception science, an alternative to focusing on individual sensory systems is to describe the environment to be perceived. We focus on the emergent dynamics of human-environment interactions as an important category of the environment to be perceived. We argue that information about such dynamics is available in subtle patterns of movement variability that, of necessity, stimulate multiple sensory systems.

Humor and social dilemmas are two disparate areas that have been linked to emotions. However, they tend to have been studied apart from considerations of emotion and emotional expression. We provide an overview of how such areas might be illuminated by Vigil's socio-relational framework, and how capacity and trustworthiness are communicated in humor and social dilemmas.

Missing from Quartz & Sejnowski's (Q&S's) unique and valuable effort to relate cognitive development to neural constructivism is an examination of the global emergent properties of adding new neural circuits. Such emergent properties can be studied with computational models. Modeling with generative connectionist networks shows that synaptogenic mechanisms can account for progressive increases in children's representational power.