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  1. (1 other version)The science of belief: A progress report.Nicolas Porot & Eric Mandelbaum - forthcoming - WIREs Cognitive Science 1.
    The empirical study of belief is emerging at a rapid clip, uniting work from all corners of cognitive science. Reliance on belief in understanding and predicting behavior is widespread. Examples can be found, inter alia, in the placebo, attribution theory, theory of mind, and comparative psychological literatures. Research on belief also provides evidence for robust generalizations, including about how we fix, store, and change our beliefs. Evidence supports the existence of a Spinozan system of belief fixation: one that is automatic (...)
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  2. Success Semantics, Reinforcing Satisfaction, and Sensory Inclinations.Howard Nye & Meysam Shojaeenejad - 2023 - Dialogue:1-12.
    Success semantics holds, roughly, that what it is for a state of an agent to be a belief that P is for it to be disposed to combine with her desires to cause behaviour that would fulfill those desires if P. J. T. Whyte supplements this with an account of the contents of an agent's “basic desires” to provide an attractive naturalistic theory of mental content. We argue that Whyte's strategy can avoid the objections raised against it by restricting “basic (...)
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  3. Grounding Functionalism and Explanatory Unificationism.Alexios Stamatiadis-Bréhier - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (4):799-819.
    In this essay, I propose a functionalist theory of grounding (functionalist-grounding). Specifically, I argue that grounding is a second-order phenomenon that is realized by relations that play the noncausal explanatoriness role. I also show that functionalist-grounding can deal with a powerful challenge. Appeals to explanatory unificationism have been made to argue that the success of noncausal explanations does not depend on the existence of grounding relations. Against this, I argue that a systematization involving functionalist-grounding is superior to its anti-relational counterpart.
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  4. Theorizing the Normative Significance of Critical Histories for International Law.Damian Cueni & Matthieu Queloz - 2022 - Journal of the History of International Law 24 (4):561-587.
    Though recent years have seen a proliferation of critical histories of international law, their normative significance remains under-theorized, especially from the perspective of general readers rather than writers of such histories. How do critical histories of international law acquire their normative significance? And how should one react to them? We distinguish three ways in which critical histories can be normatively significant: (i) by undermining the overt or covert conceptions of history embedded within present practices in support of their authority; (ii) (...)
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  5. Everything and More: The Prospects of Whole Brain Emulation.Eric Mandelbaum - 2022 - Journal of Philosophy 119 (8):444-459.
    Whole Brain Emulation has been championed as the most promising, well-defined route to achieving both human-level artificial intelligence and superintelligence. It has even been touted as a viable route to achieving immortality through brain uploading. WBE is not a fringe theory: the doctrine of Computationalism in philosophy of mind lends credence to the in-principle feasibility of the idea, and the standing of the Human Connectome Project makes it appear to be feasible in practice. Computationalism is a popular, independently plausible theory, (...)
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  6. Ramsification and the Ramifications of Prior's Puzzle.Justin D'Ambrosio - 2021 - Noûs 55 (4):935-961.
    Ramsification is a well-known method of defining theoretical terms that figures centrally in a wide range of debates in metaphysics. Prior's puzzle is the puzzle of why, given the assumption that that-clauses denote propositions, substitution of "the proposition that P" for "that P" within the complements of many propositional attitude verbs sometimes fails to preserve truth, and other times fails to preserve grammaticality. On the surface, Ramsification and Prior's puzzle appear to have little to do with each other. But Prior's (...)
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  7. A solution to the many attitudes problem.Bob Beddor - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (9):2789-2813.
    According to noncognitivism, normative beliefs are just desire-like attitudes. While noncognitivists have devoted great effort to explaining the nature of normative belief, they have said little about all of the other attitudes we take towards normative matters. Many of us desire to do the right thing. We sometimes wonder whether our conduct is morally permissible; we hope that it is, and occasionally fear that it is not. This gives rise to what Schroeder calls the 'Many Attitudes Problem': the problem of (...)
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  8. A tese da mente estendida à luz do externismo ativo: Como tornar Otto responsivo a razões?Eros Moreira de Carvalho - 2020 - Trans/Form/Ação 43 (3):143-166.
    The extended mind thesis claims that some mental states and cognitive processes extend onto the environment. Items external to the organism or exploratory actions may constitute in part mental states and cognitive processes. In Clark and Chalmers’ original paper, ‘The Extended Mind’, this thesis receives support from the parity principle and from the active externalism. In their paper, more emphasis is given to the parity principle, which is presented as neutral regarding the nature of cognition. It would be advantageous to (...)
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  9. Varieties of Cognitive Integration.J. Adam Carter & Jesper Kallestrup - 2019 - Noûs (4):867-890.
    Extended cognition theorists argue that cognitive processes constitutively depend on resources that are neither organically composed, nor located inside the bodily boundaries of the agent, provided certain conditions on the integration of those processes into the agent’s cognitive architecture are met. Epistemologists, however, worry that in so far as such cognitively integrated processes are epistemically relevant, agents could thus come to enjoy an untoward explosion of knowledge. This paper develops and defends an approach to cognitive integration—cluster-model functionalism—which finds application in (...)
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  10. On Ordered Pluralism.Matthieu Queloz - 2019 - Australasian Philosophical Review 3 (3):305-11.
    This paper examines Miranda Fricker’s method of paradigm-based explanation and in particular its promise of yielding an ordered pluralism. Fricker’s starting point is a schism between two conceptions of forgiveness, Moral Justice Forgiveness and Gifted Forgiveness. In the light of a hypothesis about the basic point of forgiveness, she reveals the unity underlying the initially baffling plurality and brings order into it, presenting a paradigmatic form of forgiveness as explanatorily basic and other forms as derivative. The resulting picture, she claims, (...)
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  11. Towards a pluralist theory of singular thought.Michele Palmira - 2018 - Synthese 195 (9):3947-3974.
    This paper investigates the question of how to correctly capture the scope of singular thinking. The first part of the paper identifies a scope problem for the dominant view of singular thought maintaining that, in order for a thinker to have a singular thought about an object o, the thinker has to bear a special epistemic relation to o. The scope problem has it is that this view cannot make sense of the singularity of our thoughts about objects to which (...)
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  12. The Swapping Constraint.Henry Ian Schiller - 2018 - Minds and Machines 28 (3):605-622.
    Triviality arguments against the computational theory of mind claim that computational implementation is trivial and thus does not serve as an adequate metaphysical basis for mental states. It is common to take computational implementation to consist in a mapping from physical states to abstract computational states. In this paper, I propose a novel constraint on the kinds of physical states that can implement computational states, which helps to specify what it is for two physical states to non-trivially implement the same (...)
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  13. Self-Consciousness and Reductive Functionalism.Arvid Båve - 2017 - Philosophical Quarterly 67 (266):1-21.
    It is argued that although George Bealer's influential ‘Self-Consciousness argument’ refutes standard versions of reductive functionalism (RF), it fails to generalize in the way Bealer supposes. To wit, he presupposes that any version of RF must take the content of ‘pain’ to be the property of being in pain (and so on), which is expressly rejected in independently motivated versions of conceptual role semantics (CRS). Accordingly, there are independently motivated versions of RF, incorporating CRS, which avoid Bealer's main type of (...)
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  14. Responsibility and vigilance.Samuel Murray - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (2):507-527.
    My primary target in this paper is a puzzle that emerges from the conjunction of several seemingly innocent assumptions in action theory and the metaphysics of moral responsibility. The puzzle I have in mind is this. On one widely held account of moral responsibility, an agent is morally responsible only for those actions or outcomes over which that agent exercises control. Recently, however, some have cited cases where agents appear to be morally responsible without exercising any control. This leads some (...)
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  15. Embodied Functionalism and Inner Complexity: Simon’s 21st-Century Mind.Robert D. Rupert - 2016 - In Roger Frantz & Leslie Marsh (eds.), Minds, Models and Milieux: Commemorating the Centennial of the Birth of Herbert Simon. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 7–33.
    This chapter argues that Simon anticipated what has emerged as the consensus view about human cognition: embodied functionalism. According to embodied functionalism, cognitive processes appear at a distinctively cognitive level; types of cognitive processes (such as proving a theorem) are not identical to kinds of neural processes, because the former can take various physical forms in various individual thinkers. Nevertheless, the distinctive characteristics of such processes — their causal structures — are determined by fine-grained properties shared by various, often especially (...)
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  16. From Aristotle’s Teleology to Darwin’s Genealogy: The Stamp of Inutility, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 (pdf: Contents, Introduction).Marco Solinas - 2015 - Palgrave-Macmillan.
    Starting with Aristotle and moving on to Darwin, Marco Solinas outlines the basic steps from the birth, establishment and later rebirth of the traditional view of living beings, and its overturning by evolutionary revolution. The classic framework devised by Aristotle was still dominant in the 17th Century world of Galileo, Harvey and Ray, and remained hegemonic until the time of Lamarck and Cuvier in the 19th Century. Darwin's breakthrough thus takes on the dimensions of an abandonment of the traditional finalistic (...)
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  17. The Tale of Bella and Creda.Scott Sturgeon - 2015 - Philosophers' Imprint 15.
    Some philosophers defend the view that epistemic agents believe by lending credence. Others defend the view that such agents lend credence by believing. It can strongly appear that the disagreement between them is notational, that nothing of substance turns on whether we are agents of one sort or the other. But that is demonstrably not so. Only one of these types of epistemic agent, at most, could manifest a human-like configuration of attitudes; and it turns out that not both types (...)
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  18. The Causal Role Argument against Doxasticism about Delusions.Kengo Miyazono & Lisa Bortolotti - 2014 - Avant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies (3):30-50.
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  19. O Livre-Arbítrio em John R. Searle: Uma Contraposição do Naturalismo Biológico ao Fisicalismo e ao Funcionalismo.Daniel P. Nunes - 2014 - Dissertation, Universidade de Caxias Do Sul
    This dissertation aims to examine whether John Searle’s biological naturalism is a more viable alternative to current physicalist and functionalist positions in dealing with the issue of free will. Thus, my strategy is to identify the assumptions of these lines of thought and their philosophical consequences. In order to accomplish this goal the concept of intrinsic intentionality is taken as a guide. I begin by defining what is meant by free will and go on to broadly characterize physicalist and functionalist (...)
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  20. The functionalist's body.Robert D. Rupert - 2014 - Avant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 5 (2):258-268.
    Interview with professor Robert D Rupert.
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  21. Superfunctionalizing the Mind. [REVIEW]Saray Ayala - 2010 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy (1).
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  22. (1 other version)Truth, Ramsification, and the Pluralist's Revenge.Cory Wright - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (2):265–283.
    Functionalists about truth employ Ramsification to produce an implicit definition of the theoretical term _true_, but doing so requires determining that the theory introducing that term is itself true. A variety of putative dissolutions to this problem of epistemic circularity are shown to be unsatisfactory. One solution is offered on functionalists' behalf, though it has the upshot that they must tread on their anti-pluralist commitments.
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  23. Reduction in real life.Peter Godfrey-Smith - 2008 - In Jakob Hohwy & Jesper Kallestrup (eds.), Being Reduced: New Essays on Reduction, Explanation, and Causation. New York: Oxford University Press.
    The main message of the paper is that there is a disconnect between what many philosophers of mind think of as the scientific practice of reductive or reductionist explanation, and what the most relevant scientific work is actually like. I will sketch what I see as a better view, drawing on various ideas in recent philosophy of science. I then import these ideas into the philosophy of mind, to see what difference they make.1 At the end of the paper I (...)
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  24. (1 other version)Computation and Functionalism: Syntactic Theory of Mind Revisited.Murat Aydede - 2005 - In G. Irzik & Güven Güzeldere (eds.), Turkish Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science. Springer.
    I argue that Stich's Syntactic Theory of Mind (STM) and a naturalistic narrow content functionalism run on a Language of Though story have the same exact structure. I elaborate on the argument that narrow content functionalism is either irremediably holistic in a rather destructive sense, or else doesn't have the resources for individuating contents interpersonally. So I show that, contrary to his own advertisement, Stich's STM has exactly the same problems (like holism, vagueness, observer-relativity, etc.) that he claims plague content-based (...)
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  25. On the functionalization of pluralist approaches to truth.Cory Wright - 2005 - Synthese 145 (1):1–28.
    Traditional inflationary approaches that specify the nature of truth are attractive in certain ways; yet, while many of these theories successfully explain why propositions in certain domains of discourse are true, they fail to adequately specify the nature of truth because they run up against counterexamples when attempting to generalize across all domains. One popular consequence is skepticism about the efficaciousness of inflationary approaches altogether. Yet, by recognizing that the failure to explain the truth of disparate propositions often stems from (...)
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  26. (1 other version)Functionalism, Computationalism, & Mental States.Gualtiero Piccinini - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 35 (4):811-833.
    Some philosophers have conflated functionalism and computationalism. I reconstruct how this came about and uncover two assumptions that made the conflation possible. They are the assumptions that (i) psychological functional analyses are computational descriptions and (ii) everything may be described as performing computations. I argue that, if we want to improve our understanding of both the metaphysics of mental states and the functional relations between them, we should reject these assumptions.
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  27. The self-consciousness argument: Why Tooley's criticisms fail.George Bealer - 2001 - Philosophical Studies 105 (3):281-307.
    Ontological functionalism's defining tenet is that mental properties can be defined wholly in terms of the general pattern of interaction of ontologically prior realizations. Ideological functionalism's defining tenet is that mental properties can only be defined nonreductively, in terms of the general pattern of their interaction with one another. My Self-consciousness Argument establishes: ontological functionalism is mistaken because its proposed definitions wrongly admit realizations into the contents of self-consciousness; ideological functionalism is the only viable alternative for functionalists. Michael Tooley's critique (...)
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  28. Two views of realization.Robert A. Wilson - 2001 - Philosophical Studies 104 (1):1-31.
    This paper examines the standard view of realization operative incontemporary philosophy of mind, and proposes an alternative, generalperspective on realization. The standard view can be expressed, insummary form, as the conjunction of two theses, the sufficiency thesis andthe constitutivity thesis. Physicalists of both reductionist and anti-reductionist persuasions share a conception of realization wherebyrealizations are determinative of the properties they realize and physically constitutive of the individuals with those properties. Centralto the alternative view that I explore here is the idea that (...)
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  29. Fregean equivocation and ramsification on sparse theories: Response to McCullagh.George Bealer - 2000 - Mind and Language 15 (5):500-510.
    This paper begins with a brief summary of the Self-consciousness Argument, developed in the author’s paper “Self-consciousness.” (This argument is designed to refute the extant versions of functionalism -- American functionalism, Australian functionalism, and language-of-thought functionalism.) After this summary is given, two thesis are defended. The first is that the Self-consciousness Argument is not guilty of a Fregean equivocation regarding embedded occurrences of mental predicates, as has been suggested by many commentators, including Mark McCullagh. The second thesis is that the (...)
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  30. What is a Hand? What is a Mind?Mohan Matthen - 2000 - Revue Internationale de Philosophie (214):653-672.
    Argues that biological organs, including mental capacities, should be identified by homology (not function).
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  31. Functionalism and self-consciousness.Mark McCullagh - 2000 - Mind and Language 15 (5):481-499.
    I offer a philosophically well-motivated solution to a problem that George Bealer has identified, which he claims is fatal to functionalism. The problem is that there seems to be no way to generate a satisfactory Ramsey sentence of a psychological theory in which mental-state predicates occur within the scopes of mental-state predicates. My central claim is that the functional roles in terms of which a creature capable of self-consciousness identifies her own mental states must be roles that items could play (...)
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  32. Self-consciousness.George Bealer - 1997 - Philosophical Review 106 (1):69-117.
    Self-consciousness constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to functionalism. Either the standard functional definitions of mental relations wrongly require the contents of self-consciousness to be propositions involving “realizations” rather than mental properties and relations themselves. Or else these definitions are circular. The only way to save functional definitions is to expunge the standard functionalist requirement that mental properties be second-order and to accept that they are first-order. But even the resulting “ideological” functionalism, which aims only at conceptual clarification, fails unless it incorporates (...)
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  33. (2 other versions)What is functionalism?Ned Block - 1996 - In Donald M. Borchert (ed.), [Book Chapter]. MacMillan.
    What is Functionalism? Functionalism is one of the major proposals that have been offered as solutions to the mind/body problem. Solutions to the mind/body problem usually try to answer questions such as: What is the ultimate nature of the mental? At the most general level, what makes a mental state mental? Or more specifically, What do thoughts have in common in virtue of which they are thoughts? That is, what makes a thought a thought? What makes a pain a pain? (...)
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  34. Causal relevance and thought content.Kirk A. Ludwig - 1994 - Philosophical Quarterly 44 (176):334-353.
    It is natural to think that our ordinary practices in giving explanations for our actions, for what we do, commit us to claiming that content properties are causally relevant to physical events such as the movements of our limbs and bodies, and events which these in turn cause. If you want to know why my body ambulates across the street, or why my arm went up before I set out, we suppose I have given you an answer when I say (...)
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  35. Physicalist thinking and conceptions of behaviour.Jennifer Hornsby - 1986 - In Philip Pettit (ed.), Subject, Thought, And Context. NY: Clarendon Press.
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  36. Mind and anti-mind: Why thinking has no functional definition.George Bealer - 1984 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 9 (1):283-328.
    Functionalism would be mistaken if there existed a system of deviant relations (an “anti-mind”) that had the same functional roles as the standard mental relations. In this paper such a system is constructed, using “Quinean transformations” of the sort associated with Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. For example, a mapping m from particularistic propositions (e.g., that there exists a rabbit) to universalistic propositions (that rabbithood is manifested). Using m, a deviant relation thinking* is defined: x thinks* p iff (...)
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  37. An inconsistency in functionalism.George Bealer - 1978 - Synthese 38 (July):333-372.
    This paper demonstrates that there is an inconsistency in functionalism in psychology and philosophy of mind. Analogous inconsistencies can be expected in functionalisms in biology and social theory. (edited).
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