Desire is commonly spoken of as a state in which the desired object seems good, which apparently ascribes an evaluative element to desire. I offer a new defence of this old idea. As traditionally conceived, this view faces serious objections related to its way of characterizing desire's evaluative content. I develop an alternative conception of evaluative mental content which is plausible in its own right, allows the evaluative desire theorist to avoid the standard objections, and sheds interesting new light on (...) the idea of evaluative experience. (shrink)

Daniel Dennett's distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations was fundamental in establishing the philosophical foundations of cognitive science. Since it was first introduced in 1969, the personal/subpersonal distinction has been adapted to fit different approaches to the mind. In one example of this, the ‘Pittsburgh school’ of philosophers attempted to map Dennett's distinction onto their own distinction between the ‘space of reasons’ and the ‘space of causes’. A second example can be found in much contemporary philosophy of psychology, where Dennett's (...) distinction has been presumed to be equivalent to Stephen Stich's distinction between doxastic and subdoxastic states. Both these interpretations of the personal/subpersonal distinction, and also Dennett's own philosophical views of the mind, go beyond the personal/subpersonal distinction itself. They each involve supplementing the distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations with metaphysical claims about the relationship between the two kinds of explanation and the entities they posit. (shrink)

In this paper, I claim that the personal/subpersonal distinction is first and foremost a distinction between two kinds of psychological theory or explanation: it is only in this form that we can understand why the distinction was first introduced, and how it continues to earn its keep. I go on to examine the different ontological commitments that might lead us from the primary distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations to a derivative distinction between personal and subpersonal states. I argue that (...) on one of the most common metaphysical interpretations of the explanatory distinction, talk of a distinction between personal and subpersonal states simply makes no sense. When people insist on applying the personal/subpersonal terminology to psychological states, I allow that they are often making a genuine distinction, but one that it is best understood in terms of Stich's (1978) distinction between doxastic and subdoxastic states. I end the paper by considering some other common misinterpretations of the personal/subpersonal distinction, such as those involving consciousness, normativity, or autonomy. (shrink)

Many philosophers subscribe to the view that philosophy is a priori and in the business of discovering necessary truths from the armchair. This paper sets out to empirically test this picture. If this were the case, we would expect to see this reflected in philosophical practice. In particular, we would expect philosophers to advance mostly deductive, rather than inductive, arguments. The paper shows that the percentage of philosophy articles advancing deductive arguments is higher than those advancing inductive arguments, which is (...) what we would expect from the vantage point of the armchair philosophy picture. The results also show, however, that the percentages of articles advancing deductive arguments and those advancing inductive arguments are converging over time and that the difference between inductive and deductive ratios is declining over time. This trend suggests that deductive arguments are gradually losing their status as the dominant form of argumentation in philosophy. (shrink)

We argue that the core social being system is unlike other core systems in that it participates in frequent, widespread learning. As a result, the social being system is less constant throughout the lifespan and less informationally encapsulated than other core systems. This learning supports the development of the precursors of bias, but also provides avenues for preempting it.

Predictive approaches to the mind claim that perception, cognition, and action can be understood in terms of a single framework: a hierarchy of Bayesian models employing the computational strategy of predictive coding. Proponents of this view disagree, however, over the extent to which perception is direct on the predictive approach. I argue that we can resolve these disagreements by identifying three distinct notions of perceptual directness: psychological, metaphysical, and epistemological. I propose that perception is plausibly construed as psychologically indirect on (...) the predictive approach, in the sense of being constructivist or inferential. It would be wrong to conclude from this, however, that perception is therefore indirect in a metaphysical or epistemological sense on the predictive approach. In the metaphysical case, claims about the inferential properties of constructivist perceptual mechanisms are consistent with both direct and indirect solutions to the metaphysical problem of perception (e.g. naïve realism, representationalism, sense datum theory). In the epistemological case, claims about the inferential properties of constructivist perceptual mechanisms are consistent with both direct and indirect approaches to the justification of perceptual belief. In this paper, I demonstrate how proponents of the predictive approach have conflated these distinct notions of perceptual directness and indirectness, and I propose alternative strategies for developing the philosophical consequences of the approach. (shrink)

The “received wisdom” in contemporary analytic philosophy is that intuition talk is a fairly recent phenomenon, dating back to the 1960s. In this paper, we set out to test two interpretations of this “received wisdom.” The first is that intuition talk is just talk, without any methodological significance. The second is that intuition talk is methodologically significant; it shows that analytic philosophers appeal to intuition. We present empirical and contextual evidence, systematically mined from the JSTOR corpus and HathiTrust’s Digital Library, (...) which provide some empirical support for the second rather than the first hypothesis. Our data also suggest that appealing to intuition is a much older philosophical methodology than the “received wisdom” alleges. We then discuss the implications of our findings for the contemporary debate over philosophical methodology. (shrink)

The neural vehicles of mental representation play an explanatory role in cognitive psychology that their realizers do not. In this paper, I argue that the individuation of realizers as vehicles of representation restricts the sorts of explanations in which they can participate. I illustrate this with reference to Rupert’s (2011) claim that representational vehicles can play an explanatory role in psychology in virtue of their quantity or proportion. I propose that such quantity-based explanatory claims can apply only to realizers and (...) not to vehicles, in virtue of the particular causal role that vehicles play in psychological explanations. (shrink)

The past twenty years have seen an increase in the importance of the body in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. This 'embodied' trend challenges the orthodox view in cognitive science in several ways: it downplays the traditional 'mind-as-computer' approach and emphasizes the role of interactions between the brain, body, and environment. In this article, I review recent work in the area of embodied cognitive science and explore the approaches each takes to the ideas of consciousness, computation and representation. Finally, (...) I look at the current relationship between orthodox cognitive science and the study of mental disorder, and consider the implications that the embodied trend could have for issues in psychopathology. (shrink)

There is a strong appetite in ‘the wild’ (i.e., beyond the academy) for public philosophy. There are myriad forums available, from magazines and online publications to podcasts and YouTube videos, for those who wish to engage in philosophy in a non-academic context. For academic philosophers, this has raised methodological and metaphilosophical questions like: ‘what is the best way to engage in public philosophy?’ and ‘what are our aims when we engage in public philosophy?’ But what do ‘the public’ want? If (...) public philosophy is philosophy written for a public audience, what is it, exactly, that it can or might do for them? Several answers have been proposed by philosophers, but less attention has been paid to how the public themselves might answer that question. The aim of this essay is to try and put together at least the beginning of an answer. In June 2022 we put out a survey in the hope of eliciting views from ‘the public’ on issues relating to the nature and aims of both philosophy (more generally) and public philosophy. In doing so, our aim was to take a ‘democratic’ approach to answering the question: What is public philosophy? (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between several ideas about the mind and cognition. The hypothesis of extended cognition claims that cognitive processes can and do extend outside the head, that elements of the world around us can actually become parts of our cognitive systems. It has recently been suggested that the hypothesis of extended cognition is entailed by one of the foremost philosophical positions on the nature of the mind: functionalism, the thesis that mental states are defined by their functional (...) relations rather than by their physical constituents. Furthermore, it has been claimed that functionalism entails a version of extended cognition which is sufficiently radical as to be obviously false. I survey the debate and propose several ways of avoiding this conclusion, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing the hypothesis of extended cognition from the related notion of the extended mind. (shrink)

El presente capítulo tiene la finalidad de describir las diferencias entre un tiempo objetivo de aprendizaje y la temporalidad de la experiencia de aprendizaje. Para esto, cuestiona el paradigma actual de la cognición orientada al procesamiento de la información, donde el tiempo de aprendizaje de la interacción en el aula está susbsumido a un a priori que anticipa el devenir espontáneo de la interacción. En respuesta a lo anterior, proponemos más bien el paradigma contemporáneo de la ecología cognitiva que refuta (...) la idea representacionalista de la cognición y se abre a la dimensión de lo posible que emerge de las interdependencia cerebro-mente-entorno. (shrink)

Introduction to Special Issue of Review of Philosophy and Psychology. Overview of the central issues in cognitive architecture, epistemology, and ethics surrounding cognitive penetrability. Special issue includes papers by philosophers and psychologists: Gary Lupyan, Fiona Macpherson, Reginald Adams, Anya Farennikova, Jona Vance, Francisco Marchi, Robert Cowan.

Philosophers concerned with what would be good for a person sometimes consider a person’s past desires. Indeed, some theorists have argued by appeal to past desires that it is in the best interests of certain dementia patients to die. I reject this conclusion. I consider three different ways one might appeal to a person’s past desires in arguing for conclusions about the good of such patients, finding flaws with each. Of the views I reject, the most interesting one is the (...) view that prudential value is, at least partly, concerned with the shape of a life as a whole. (shrink)

Theories of well-being are typically divided into subjective and objective. Subjective theories are those which make facts about a person’s welfare depend on facts about her actual or hypothetical mental states. I am interested in what motivates this approach to the theory of welfare. The contemporary view is that subjectivism is devoted to honoring the evaluative perspective of the individual, but this is both a misleading account of the motivations behind subjectivism, and a vision that dooms subjective theories to failure. (...) I suggest that we need to revisit and reinstate certain features of traditional hedonism, in particular the idea that felt experience plays a role that no theory of welfare can afford to ignore. I then offer a sketch of a theory that is subjective in my preferred sense and avoids the worst sins of hedonism as well as the problems generated by the contemporary constraints of subjective theorists. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences are not immediately responsive to reasons. You see a stick submerged in a glass of water as bent no matter how much you know about light refraction. Due to this isolation from reasons, perception is traditionally considered outside the scope of epistemic evaluability as justified or unjustified. Is perception really as independent from reasons as visual illusions make it out to be? I argue no, drawing on psychological evidence from perceptual learning. The flexibility of perceptual learning is a (...) way of responding to new epistemic reasons. The resulting perceptual experiences are epistemically evaluable as justified or unjustified. (shrink)

Desire satisfaction theorists and attitudinal-happiness theorists of well-being are committed to correcting the psychological attitudes upon which their theories are built. However, it is not often recognized that some of the attitudes in need of correction are evaluative attitudes. Moreover, it is hard to know how to correct for poor evaluative attitudes in ways that respect the traditional commitment to the authority of the individual subject's evaluative perspective. L. W. Sumner has proposed an autonomy-as-authenticity requirement to perform this task, but (...) this article argues that it cannot do the job. Sumner's proposal focuses on the social origins of our values and overlooks the deep psychological roots of other evaluative attitudes that are just as problematic for welfare. If subjective theories of welfare are to be at all plausible they may need to abandon or modify their traditional commitment to the authority of the individual subject. (shrink)

According to a traditional picture, perception and belief have starkly different epistemic roles. Beliefs have epistemic statuses as justified or unjustified, depending on how they are formed and maintained. In contrast, perceptions are “unjustified justifiers.” Core cognition is a set of mental systems that stand at the border of perception and belief, and has been extensively studied in developmental psychology. Core cognition's borderline states do not fit neatly into the traditional epistemic picture. What is the epistemic role of these states? (...) Focusing on the core object system, the author argues that core object representations have epistemic statuses like beliefs do, despite their many prototypically perceptual features. First, the author argues that it is a sufficient condition on a mental state's having an epistemic status as justified or unjustified that the state is based on reasons. Then the author argues that core object representations are based on reasons, through an examination of both experimental results and key markers of the basing relation. The scope of mental states that are subject to epistemic evaluation as justified or unjustified is not restricted to beliefs. (shrink)

Perception provides us with access to the external world, but that access is shaped by our own experiential histories. Through perceptual learning, we can enhance our capacities for perceptual discrimination, categorization, and attention to salient properties. We can also encode harmful biases and stereotypes. This article reviews interdisciplinary research on perceptual learning, with an emphasis on the implications for our rational and normative theorizing. Perceptual learning raises the possibility that our inquiries into topics such as epistemic justification, aesthetic criticism, and (...) moral knowledge should include not only an examination of cognition but also of perception. (shrink)

This unpublished article was written around 2009 for a journal special issue of a journal which never materialized. In 2018, the article was rewritten and published in the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability. It can be found on PhilPapers as Drayson and Clark (2018), 'Cognitive Disability and the Embodied, Extended Mind'.

The dominant approach to assessing decision-making capacity in medicine focuses on determining the extent to which individuals possess certain core cognitive abilities. Critics have argued that this model delivers the wrong verdict in certain cases where patient values that are the product of mental disorder or disordered affective states undermine decision-making without undermining cognition. I argue for a re-conceptualization of what it is to possess the capacity to make medical treatment decisions. It is, I argue, the ability to track one’s (...) own personal interests at least as well as most people can. Using this idea, I demonstrate that it is possible to craft a solution for the problem cases—one that neither alters existing criteria in dangerous ways (e.g. does not open the door to various kinds of abuse) nor violates the spirit of widely accepted ethical constraints on decision-making assessment. (shrink)

Our perceptual systems are not stagnant but can learn from experience. Why is this so? That is, what is the function of perceptual learning? I consider two answers to this question: The Offloading View, which says that the function of perceptual learning is to offload tasks from cognition onto perception, thereby freeing up cognitive resources (Connolly, 2019) and the Perceptual View, which says that the function of perceptual learning is to improve the functioning of perception. I argue that the Perceptual (...) View better explains data from infants and animals, and better accounts for learned tasks that only perception could perform. (shrink)

What kinds of mental states can be based on epistemic reasons? The standard answer is only beliefs. I argue that perceptual states can also be based on reasons, as the result of crossmodal interactions. A perceptual state from one modality can provide a reason on which an experience in another modality is based. My argument identifies key markers of the basing relation and locates them in the crossmodal Marimba Illusion (Schutz & Kubovy 2009). The subject’s auditory experience of musical tone (...) duration is based on the reason provided by her visual representation of the length of the musician’s gesture and other stored perceptual principles. (shrink)

Do epistemic and aesthetic values ever conflict? The answer might appear to be no, given that background knowledge generally enhances aesthetic experience, and aesthetic experience in turn generates new knowledge. As Keats writes, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ (Keats, 1996). Contra this line of thought, I argue that epistemic and aesthetic values can conflict when we over-rely on aesthetically enhancing background beliefs. The true and the beautiful can pull in different directions, forcing us to choose between flavours of normativity.

Modular approaches to the architecture of the mind claim that some mental mechanisms, such as sensory input processes, operate in special-purpose subsystems that are functionally independent from the rest of the mind. This assumption of modularity seems to be in tension with recent claims that the mind has a predictive architecture. Predictive approaches propose that both sensory processing and higher-level processing are part of the same Bayesian information-processing hierarchy, with no clear boundary between perception and cognition. Furthermore, it is not (...) clear how any part of the predictive architecture could be functionally independent, given that each level of the hierarchy is influenced by the level above. Both the assumption of continuity across the predictive architecture and the seeming non-isolability of parts of the predictive architecture seem to be at odds with the modular approach. I explore and ultimately reject the predictive approach’s apparent commitments to continuity and non-isolation. I argue that predictive architectures can be modular architectures, and that we should in fact expect predictive architectures to exhibit some form of modularity. (shrink)

Many models of cognitive ability and disability rely on the idea of cognition as abstract reasoning processes implemented in the brain. Research in cognitive science, however, emphasizes the way that our cognitive skills are embodied in our more basic capacities for sensing and moving, and the way that tools in the external environment can extend the cognitive abilities of our brains. This chapter addresses the implications of research in embodied cognition and extended cognition for how we think about cognitive impairment (...) and rehabilitation, how cognitive reserve mitigates neural impairment, and the distinction between medical and social models of disability. (shrink)

How does the philosophical debate between naive realism and intentionalism relate to the psychological debate between ecological theories and constructivist theories? The participants in each debate take themselves to be doing something distinctive, but I show that characterizing the distinction is difficult: the theories in both debates use inference to the best explanation to draw contingent conclusions about the constitutive nature of perception. I argue that both debates concern the metaphysics of perception, and that philosophers of perception are wrong to (...) think that constructivist and ecological theories are engaged in a distinct and non-metaphysical task. (shrink)

Agricultural innovation happens at different scales and through different streams. In the absence of a common global research agenda, decisions on which innovations are brought to existence, and through which methods, are taken with insufficient view on how innovation affects social relations, the environment, and future food production. Mostly, innovations are considered from the standpoint of economic efficiency, particularly in relationship to creating jobs for technology-exporting countries. Increasingly, however, the realization that innovations cannot be successful on their technical prowess alone (...) calls for a broader investigation. (shrink)

This paper considers how cognitive architecture impacts and constrains the rational requirement to respond to reasons. Informational encapsulation and its close relative belief fragmentation can render an agent’s own reasons inaccessible to her, thus preventing her from responding to them. For example, someone experiencing imposter phenomenon might be well aware of their own accomplishments in certain contexts but unable to respond to those reasons when forming beliefs about their own self-worth. In such cases, are our beliefs irrational for failing to (...) respond to our own reasons? Or are they excused on grounds of the reasons’ inaccessibility? I argue that in such cases, the rational status of the belief that fails to respond to reasons is modulated by the degree of encapsulation of the system that produces it. Yet because our cognitive systems are rarely perfectly encapsulated, our failures to respond to reasons are almost always irrational to some degree. (shrink)

There are two distinct approaches to Bayesian modelling in cognitive science. Black-box approaches use Bayesian theory to model the relationship between the inputs and outputs of a cognitive system without reference to the mediating causal processes; while mechanistic approaches make claims about the neural mechanisms which generate the outputs from the inputs. This paper concerns the relationship between these two approaches. We argue that the dominant trend in the philosophical literature, which characterizes the relationship between black-box and mechanistic approaches to (...) Bayesian cognitive science in terms of the dichotomy between instrumentalism and realism, is misguided. We propose that the two distinctions are orthogonal: black-box and mechanistic approaches to Bayesian modelling can each be given either an instrumentalist or a realist interpretation. We argue that the current tendency to conflate black-box approaches with instrumentalism and mechanistic approaches with realism stems from unwarranted assumptions about the nature of scientific explanation, the ontological commitments of scientific theories, and the role of abstraction and idealization in scientific models. We challenge each of these assumptions to reframe the debates over Bayesian modelling in cognitive science. (shrink)

In this article I explore various facets of Nozick’s famous thought experiment involving the experience machine. Nozick’s original target is hedonism—the view that the only intrinsic prudential value is pleasure. But the argument, if successful, undermines any experientialist theory, i.e. any theory that limits intrinsic prudential value to mental states. I first highlight problems arising from the way Nozick sets up the thought experiment. He asks us to imagine choosing whether or not to enter the machine and uses our choice (...) (or rather the choice he assumes most people will have) as evidence against experientialist theories. But for this strategy to succeed it must be possible to distinguish between self-interested and non-self-interested reasons for declining to enter the machine, and there is no obvious way to do this without begging the question against the hedonist. In successive sections I then (a) consider a common misconception of Nozick’s conclusion (that he thinks machine life is the worst life), (b) consider different intuitions about what is important to well-being but missing from machine life, and finally (c) explain what “the experience requirement” is, and describe its relationship to debates about experientialist theories. (shrink)

Fictionalists propose that some apparently fact-stating discourses do not aim to convey factual information about the world, but rather allow us to engage in a fiction or pretense without incurring ontological commitments. Some philosophers have suggested that using mathematical, modal, or moral discourse, for example, need not commit us to the existence of mathematical objects, possible worlds, or moral facts. The mental fictionalist applies this reasoning to our mental discourse, suggesting that we can use ‘belief’ and ‘desire’ talk without committing (...) to the existence of beliefs and desires as mental entities. Most arguments for mental fictionalism are based on two key suppositions: first, that there are ontological concerns about mental entities; and second, that these ontological concerns justify a fictionalist interpretation of mental discourse. This paper challenges both suppositions and argues that the standard arguments for mental fictionalism are substantially weaker than arguments for other forms of fictionalism in the philosophical literature. (shrink)

Synthetic foods advocates offer the promise of efficient, reliable, and sustainable food production. Engineered organisms become factories to produce food. Proponents claim that through this technique important barriers can be eliminated which would facilitate the production of traditional foods outside their climatic range. This technique would allow reducing food miles, secure future supply, and maintain quality and taste expectations. In this paper, we examine coffee production via biobased means. A startup called Atomo Coffee aims to produce synthetic coffee with the (...) aim of saving ‘the taste of coffee’ from the effects of climate change. This decontextualisation of coffee production ignores the current and historical contributions of coffee farmers in two ways: the traditional varieties in taste of coffee and their cultural significance, and the potential shade-grown coffee plantations have in capturing carbon. In addition, synthetic coffee may lead to the loss of agricultural biodiversity and the removal of resources away from production systems that provide a safe space for tropical flora and fauna. How should the ‘taste of coffee’ be owned? We investigate the property regimes under which we could consider owning the taste of coffee as a ‘synthetic’ agrobiodiversity to help identify rights and responsibilities. Building on this analysis, we consider dimensions of responsible innovation and social justice to help guide synthetic foods as an agricultural innovation. (shrink)

In an effort to produce new and more sustainable technologies, designers have turned to nature in search of inspiration and innovation. Biomimetic design (from the Greek bios, life, mimesis, imitation) is the conscious imitation of biological models to solve today's technical and ecological challenges. Nowadays numerous different approaches exist that take inspiration from nature as a model for design, such as biomimicry, biomimetics, bionics, permaculture, ecological engineering, etc. This variety of practices comes in turn with a wide range of different (...) promises, including sustainability, increased resilience, multi-functionality, and a lower degree of risk. How are we to make sense of this heterogeneous amalgam of existing practices and technologies, and of the numerous promises attached to them? We suggest that a typology of biomimetic approaches would provide a useful hermeneutic framework to understand the different tensions that pull this variegated landscape in different directions. This is achieved through a critical analysis of the literature in different fields of biomimetic design and the philosophy of biomimicry, in order to derive conceptual and normative assumptions concerning the meaning and value of the imitation of nature. These two dimensions are then intersected to derive an analytical grid composed of six different biomimetic types, which enable the classification of existing and possible biomimetic approaches, practices, and technologies according to their specific conceptual assumptions and guiding norms. (shrink)

Explicit knowledge is consciously accessible to the knower: the person can introspect what it is that they know and articulate it in the form of a statement (Dummett 1991, Davies 2015, Thompson 2023). If a person possesses some knowledge which they are unable to articulate to themselves or others, this knowledge is said to be implicit rather than explicit. Standard examples of implicit knowledge include a speaker’s knowledge of language, or practical knowledge such as how to ride a bike. The (...) concept of implicit knowledge, however, raises challenging philosophical questions. This piece explores some of the different ways in which cognitive psychology can attempt to explain implicit knowledge and considers how these scientific explanations relate to the more traditionally philosophical questions about the concept of implicit knowledge. (shrink)

Medical ethics would be better if people were taught to think more clearly about well-being or the concept of what is good for a person. Yet for a variety of reasons, bioethicists have generally paid little attention to this concept. Here, I argue, first, that focusing on general theories of welfare is not useful for practical medical ethics. I argue, second, for what I call the “theory-without-theories approach” to welfare in practical contexts. The first element of this approach is a (...) focus on examining important and relatively uncontroversial constituents of welfare as opposed to general theories. The second key element is a framework for thinking about choice in relation to welfare, a framework I refer to as “the mild objectivity framework.” I conclude with illustrations of the way in which the “theory without theories approach” can improve thinking in medicine. (shrink)

In her impressive book, looking at the philosophy and science of well-being, Anna Alexandrova argues for the strong claim that we possess no stable, unified concept of well-being. Instead, she thinks the word “well-being” only comes to have a specific meaning in particular contexts, and has a quite different meaning in different contexts. I take issue with (1) her claim that we do not possess a unified, all-things-considered concept of well-being as well as with (2) her failure to consider why (...) we might want a unified concept. I grant that Alexandrova is probably correct that the word “well-being” is used differently in different contexts. But this only shows that one word can come to be used to express different concepts. Moreover, noting that several concepts exist that are picked out by “well-being” doesn’t establish that we lack altogether a notion of all-things-considered well-being. I believe we have such a concept, even though it is not always the concept in play. Moreover, I think we need such a concept. The conceptual muddles Alexandrova highlights—muddles that result from a single word being used to express multiple ideas—remind us how important it is to be able to distinguish different concepts from one another, as well as how important it is to periodically remind ourselves of how various forms of specialist dialogue relate back to the broader, more general notion of “well-being.”. (shrink)

The biological brain creates a mind, and the mental mind creates a brain. Learn how the brain creates consciousness and how it generates momentaneous time moments. Discover how at each moment in Time, our body runs the whole program of Evolution. Neuroscience and Philosophy.

The biological Brain createst the mental Mind. Today our collective Mind becomes so fascinated by its source, the Brain, that all sciences incorporate neuro models in their concepts to increase global brainpower with technology. The most significant discovery is probably technology. We learn how the Brain creates consciousness and how the Brain generates momentaneous Time. Discover how at each moment in Time, our body runs the whole program of Evolution. What we know about the Brain is phantasy from the Mind.

Two very different forms of externalism about mental states appear prima facie unrelated: Williamson’s (1995, 2000) claim that knowledge is a mental state, and Clark & Chalmers’ (1998) extended mind hypothesis. I demonstrate, however, that the two approaches justify their radically externalist by appealing to the same argument from explanatory generality. I argue that if one accepts either Williamson’s claims or Clark & Chalmers’ claims on considerations of explanatory generality then, ceteris paribus, one should accept the other. This conclusion has (...) implications for philosophy of mind, epistemology, and cognitive science. (shrink)

This commentary considers Audi’s treatment of four fundamental topics in the epistemology of perception: inference, the basing relation, the metaphysics of reasons and grounds, and the relationship between knowledge and justification.

El presente estudio aborda el nacimiento como problema filosófico desde una perspectiva intersubjetiva y corporeizada derivada del análisis del Cuerpo y el Otro presente en la Fenomenología de la Percepción de Merleau-Ponty. A partir de lo anterior, se discuten las limitaciones que tendría la coexistencia (Mitdasein) de Heidegger y la Otredad de Lévinas enmarcada en la relación del rostro en su intento de aproximarse a una filosofía del nacimiento desde una perspectiva de mundo compartido (madre-padre-hijo). Además, se plantea la necesidad (...) de incorporar al problema filosófico sobre el nacimiento tres etapas: embarazo-nacimiento-puerperio, ya que estas son fundamentales para ilustrar de manera profunda la dimensión relacional y corporeizada de este proceso que exhibe temporalidad e historicidad. (shrink)

In some situations, we attribute intentional mental states to a person despite their inability to articulate the contents in question: these are implicit mental states. Attributions of implicit mental states raise certain philosophical challenges related to rationality, concept possession, and privileged access. In the philosophical literature, there are two distinct strategies for addressing these challenges, depending on whether the content attributions are personal-level or subpersonal-level. This paper explores the difference between personal-level and subpersonal-level approaches to implicit mental state attribution and (...) investigates the relationship between the two approaches. It concludes by highlighting the methodological and metaphilosophical commitments which can result in different perspectives on the relative priority of personal-level and subpersonal-level theories. (shrink)

El presente estudio tiene como finalidad describir las tendencias contemporáneas de las ciencias cognitivas para abordar el fenómeno del significado matemático. A partir de esto, comienza una critica a los paradigmas innatistas, neurocentristas y constructivistas de la cognición matemática. El marco de la crítica a las ideas contenidistas del significado en las teorías innatas y constructivistas se fundamenta den la idea del significado como un bucle dinámico que emerge de las interdependencias cerebro-mente-entorno irreductible a un nivel sobre otros. Aquí el (...) cuerpo, las metáforas conceptuales y los entornos educativos ecológicos como STEAM proporcionan instancias para un significado corpóreo, situado, anti-representacionalista y enmarcado en el ciclo de percepción-acción. (shrink)

Explanations in psychology are described as personal when they attribute psychological phenomena to the person, as when we attribute beliefs and thought processes to each other, for example. By contrast, explanations in psychology are described as subpersonal when they attribute psychological phenomena below the level of the person, as occurs when scientists describe parts of the brain as representing or evaluating, for example. The practice of subpersonal psychology raises a number of philosophical issues: whether it is acceptable to attribute psychological (...) phenomena to parts of persons, for example, and whether such attributions can yield any explanatory benefit. Even those who endorse subpersonal psychology do not necessarily agree on what this entails: there are several distinct ways of understanding the relationship between subpersonal psychology and personal psychology, which depend in part on how the ontological commitments of subpersonal explanations are understood. (shrink)

We examine Sophie Gibb’s emergent property-dualist theory of mental causation as double-prevention. Her account builds on a commitment to a version of causal realism based on a powers metaphysic. We consider three objections to her account. We show, by drawing out the implications of the ontological commitments of Gibb’s theory of mental causation, that the first two objections fail. But, we argue, owing to worries about cases where there is no double-preventive role to be played by mental properties, her account, (...) which solely affords mental properties a double-preventive role, is incomplete and vulnerable to a causal exclusion objection. We propose a friendly modification to her theory of mental causation that is consistent with her theory’s ontological commitments. Specifically, we sketch an account on which mental properties have a more pronounced causal-structuring role that is not exhausted by the role Gibb assigns them as double-preventers. The result is a novel emergentist theory of mental causation. (shrink)

We provide a novel articulation of the epistemic peril of p-hacking using three resources from philosophy: predictivism, Bayesian confirmation theory, and model selection theory. We defend a nuanced position on p-hacking: p-hacking is sometimes, but not always, epistemically pernicious. Our argument requires a novel understanding of Bayesianism, since a standard criticism of Bayesian confirmation theory is that it cannot represent the influence of biased methods. We then turn to pre-analysis plans, a methodological device used to mitigate p-hacking. Some say that (...) pre-analysis plans are epistemically meritorious while others deny this, and in practice pre-analysis plans are often violated. We resolve this debate with a modest defence of pre-analysis plans. Further, we argue that pre-analysis plans can be epistemically relevant even if the plan is not strictly followed—and suggest that allowing for flexible pre-analysis plans may be the best available policy option. (shrink)

The article seeks to elucidate the status of transcendence in the historiography of secularization through the perspective of collective memory. It discusses two typological models dealing with the basic metaphysical problem concerned with the presence and meaning of transcendence in real human existence. According to the first, the historical reality of secularization causes a break from the collective memory whose roots are in religion. In contrast, the second model considers that despite the deep transformations in the status of religion in (...) a reality of secularization, an experience of historical continuity may also occur there. These models denote the two poles in the argument about the meaning and value of history for modern people. The article suggests a phenomenological analysis of the two models and criticizes their deficiencies. Finally, the “tension model” is outlined as a third alternative that aims at overcoming the binary situation created by the first two in favor of a perspective that necessitates and contains both immanence and transcendence. (shrink)

The widely accepted approach in scholarly literature on Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition emphasizes its political meaning and implications while neglecting its ontological dimensions. Against this trend, in this article I seek to uncover the implicit ontology that underlies her conception of the human condition. This human ontology appears to be comprised of five realms – the private, the public, intimacy, the social and the self. While Arendt explicitly bases her conception upon the first two, the paper shows that the (...) remaining three, although not defined as realms, are explored by her as such. These appear as autarchic contexts of human activity, which are not supposed to refer to each other. The problematic of this split between the different realms is widely discussed in the paper. Yet, the split of the self from the two pivotal realms – the private and the public – acquires a special interest, for it undermines the entire project of the human condition. (shrink)