En este texto presentamos el modelo que se ha diseñado para implementar la evaluación por colegas pares en la Universidad del Rosario. Explicamos los principios que lo guían y las etapas y procedimientos para realizar esta evaluación; además, exponemos algunos aprendizajes que ha dejado su implementación en dos facultades en los últimos años, y presentamos algunos retos y desarrollos que enfrenta el modelo a futuro.

El artículo aborda el problema de la relación entre el ser humano y la técnica en el mundo actual desde una perspectiva filosófica. Volver a la concepción de la filosofía griega permite concebir hoy el quehacer filosófico como un ejercicio vital, sin fracturas entre el pensamiento y la acción. La patente plasticidad del ser humano evidencia la constitutiva apertura que determina su especificidad y, además, columbra la estrecha vinculación entre técnica, creación y cuidado a partir del acontecimiento del habitar. El (...) cuidado no puede tener lugar sin cierta promoción de un ethos cultural centrado en el miramiento, la asistencia y la preocupación por uno mismo y por el Otro. El olvido de la relación entre la creación y el cuidado conduce a un desequilibrio ethopoiético entre la condición ontológica del ser humano, como ser nacido, finito y vulnerable, y el desarrollo tecnológico, impulsado por la digitalización de la vida y el ascendente papel de las nuevas tecnologías en la sociedad. Advertir y remediar dicho desequilibrio supone repensar la originaria relación entre la creación técnica y el cuidado ético, así como la importancia de la ética para la persistencia de lo orgánico. (shrink)

Nuestro frenesí de comunicación e información hace que las cosas des- aparezcan y devengan en no-cosas, también llamadas informaciones (Han, 2021: 10). El marco ontológico presente es resultado de un desplazamiento que va del ocaso de las cosas al consumo rápido y frenético de no-cosas. En este entorno intangible el ser humano ya no maneja ninguna cosa. Las no cosas son aquellas cosas puramente intangibles, que no pueden aprehenderse con las manos. Lo único que le queda de las manos al (...) ser humano que habita este entorno son las yemas de los dedos con las que presiona las teclas para jugar con símbolos (Flusser, 2002: 107). ¿Qué efectos contrae este nuevo paradigma vital en el campo de la educación? ¿Qué significa educar en y trabajar con no-cosas? (shrink)

Quien enseña sin emancipar no solo embrutece, predicaba Joseph Jacotot, sino que también adoctrina. Pasado un siglo y medio desde entonces, el filósofo y esteta francés emérito de la Universidad de París VIII y European Graduate School Jacques Rancière, en un ejercicio característico de la filosofía de la educación, publica en 1987 El maestro ignorante a partir de la experiencia de Jacotot. A lo largo de su vida y producción literaria, Rancière reflexiona concienzudamente sobre la naturaleza del proceso de enseñanza (...) y aprendizaje humano y se pregunta: ¿es posible enseñar? ¿qué decide el alumnado en su proceso de aprendizaje? ¿Cuáles son los límites de la palabra transmitida en el aprendizaje? ¿Es la determinación del saber un ejercicio del poder? ¿Son todos los seres humanos capaces de comprender lo que otros hacen y saben? ¿Qué relación hay entre el poder del maestro y el poder de la palabra? (shrink)

"Noah and the Olive Branch" by Luis Herrera explores the profound symbolism of the olive branch in the context of human morality and existential renewal. Drawing on the biblical narrative of Noah's Ark, Herrera delves into a metaphor for peace, reconciliation, and the restoration of harmony between humanity and the natural world. The work interprets the olive branch not merely as a sign of the flood's end, but as a deeper emblem of ethical rebirth, signifying the opportunity for (...) humanity to reconstruct a more just and compassionate world after calamity. -/- Through a philosophical lens, Herrera examines the duality of destruction and creation, positing that potential for moral and spiritual growth follows great trials. The text questions the nature of divine justice and human responsibility, suggesting a call for ongoing ethical vigilance in a world perpetually on the brink of self-destruction. -/- It is a parable for man's quest for connection and reconciliation with the divine, in a violent world filled with chaos, anarchy and the antinomian pursuit of hedonistic ideals. Herrera's work resonates with contemporary concerns about cultural degradation and social fragmentation, urging a re-evaluation of our relationship with God and each other. The olive branch, in this interpretation, becomes a timeless symbol of hope, resilience, and the enduring quest for a harmonious existence. (shrink)

Essentialism is widely regarded as a mistaken view of biological kinds, such as species. After recounting why (sections 2-3), we provide a brief survey of the chief responses to the “death of essentialism” in the philosophy of biology (section 4). We then develop one of these responses, the claim that biological kinds are homeostatic property clusters (sections 5-6) illustrating this view with several novel examples (section 7). Although this view was first expressed 20 years ago, and has received recent discussion (...) and critique, it remains underdeveloped and is often misrepresented by its critics (section 8). (shrink)

El artículo pretende incidir en el vínculo entre lenguaje y cuidado. Para ello, se realiza una aproximación a la reflexión levinasiana sobre el lenguaje. La concepción antropológico-metafísica de la condición humana de Lévinas destaca la dimensión moral de la palabra y la productividad de la relación entre el decir el mundo y el don, como una de las dimensiones fundamentales que permite la apertura efectiva del Yo a la alteridad. Todo ello, nos conduce a explicitar la potencialidad de su pensamiento (...) para sentar las bases de una ética hermenéutica del cuidado del Otro. (shrink)

Our purpose is to describe the application of legitimate defense in so-called non-confrontational situations. To do this, we will conceptualize gender violence as that which against women, due to their condition as such, and we will describe the absence by the courts in the identification of this problem. Second, we will analyze the reception of Argentine and international legislation on the treatment of gender violence and the recommendations and criteria to take into account when interpreting and applying criminal law. Finally, (...) we will present the treatment of legitimate defense in contexts of gender violence, analyzing each of its elements. Our conclusions will focus on the need to address situations of gender violence based on international regulations for the application of legitimate defense in non-confrontational situations. (shrink)

SINGULARITY: 12 Precepts for Transcendental Living | © 2022 Cromwell Black Publishing House | Original work by Luis Herrera. -/- Living transcendentally is not the same as ‘having the answers to life.’ The intention with which this book is written is to help you identify the God within yourself. Religion is a guidepost, but not the answer. Philosophy is a guidepost, not the answer. People that over-identify with one group or tribe for ideological reasons invariably meet with disappointment because (...) there will always be some tenets they internally oppose and disagree with. Yet they ignore their inner voice in order to ‘fit in with the rest.’ Man is a social animal and excommunication from the tribe has been tantamount to extinction of our lineage since our days as hunters and gatherers. By living transcendentally I have learned to acknowledge, welcome and accept the space between myself and my tribe. I invite you to do the same. -/- Learning to listen to the God within, I can trust my inner voice more because there is a message spoken there, uniquely for me, that will never be printed on the pages of the Bible, or the Koran, or the Tao Te Ching, or any other book for that matter. There’s only one YOU. Others may have your name, but not your identity. They may share your birth date and hospital, but not your parents. They may share your parents, but not your name. Do you see what I’m getting at here? Therefore how can a ‘one-size fits all’ religion, education or philosophy possibly answer the question to your meaning of life? There is no the meaning of life, because there is no the life. There are infinite lives, for which infinite meanings must be furnished. Hence the importance of learning to trust yourself, your inner voice, conscience – the God within. (shrink)

Las relaciones familiares tienen una cualidad única que no se producen en otros entornos y cada familia vive diferentes prácticas que la hacen ser irrepetible; esto permite un aprender–aprender como padres e hijos, además estás relaciones tienen correspondencia con el desarrollo de los valores que se manifiesta en familia y que finalmente son transmitidos en la sociedad. La investigación se realizó a nivel nacional a 1200 niños y niñas en edades comprendidas entre 8 a 11 años, pudiendo observar con más (...) influencia de valores a la responsabilidad, amistad, orden, religiosidad y naturaleza. (shrink)

Where does the mind begin and end? Most philosophers and cognitive scientists take the view that the mind is bounded by the skull or skin of the individual. Robert Wilson, in this provocative and challenging 2004 book, provides the foundations for the view that the mind extends beyond the boundary of the individual. The approach adopted offers a unique blend of traditional philosophical analysis, cognitive science, and the history of psychology and the human sciences. The companion volume, Genes and (...) the Agents of Life, explores the theme in the biological sciences. Written with verve and clarity, this ambitious book will appeal to a broad swathe of professionals and students in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and the history of the behavioural and human sciences. You can download the table of contents here. (shrink)

Este artículo se propone analizar la reinterpretación del concepto kantiano de crítica como una actitud ética en la obra de Foucault, destacando su relevancia para la hermenéutica crítica contemporánea. Por un lado, se explora cómo la práctica del cuidado de sí se convierte en un medio para “controlar” y “limitar” el poder, permitiendo así el ejercicio constante de la libertad. Esta concepción ética implica una nueva comprensión de la libertad, no como contrapuesta al poder, sino como su antecedente. La reflexión (...) crítica sobre la libertad, la ética y la verdad ofrece la posibilidad de transformarse continuamente a través del trabajo incesante en la construcción y el cultivo de uno mismo. Por otro lado, se presenta un método filosófico crítico basado en la autorreflexión, una ética hermenéutica del cuidado de sí, que abre nuevos horizontes interpretativos para dar forma al yo. (shrink)

Explorar la posibilidad de una nueva micropolítica crítica del signo a partir de Foucault, inspirada en la genealogía nietzscheana, y examinar las políticas y estrategias de alfabetización mediática e informacional necesarias para desarrollar competencias digitales en la transformación del ecosistema mediático es una tarea fundamental del quehacer filosófico actual. La pregunta por la posibilidad de la verdad retorna en un contexto en el que el pluralismo semiótico y la conducción mediática son dos elementos que rigen y ordenan la sociedad actual, (...) sociedad que se caracteriza por la abundancia de información y la omnipresencia de los medios de comunicación como tecnologías de poder. Desgranar su significado y vínculo nos conduce directamente al estudio del poder y el signo en relación con los efectos de la verdad de la posverdad. En este marco conceptual, la obra de Foucault proporciona herramientas teóricas valiosas para afrontar esta problemática. (shrink)

La sociedad del siglo XXI ha sufrido una mutación histórica en lo que respecta a los métodos de producción y los impactos derivados de la generación de información. Este período se caracteriza por su inmersión en el entorno digital, donde los individuos, como ciudadanos, se encuentran bajo la manipulación, por un lado, de sus datos mediante técnicas de vigilancia y, por otros, expuestos a cámaras de resonancia mediática. Este panorama plantea desafíos significativos en cuanto a la manera en que interactúan (...) con la información y cómo esta afecta sus vidas. La relación entre los medios de comunicación y los acontecimientos, además, se encuentra atravesada por el concepto de interpretación, donde la capacidad de comprender y la habilidad para reconstruir narrativas son elementos que determinan la comprensión y el sentido de lo que ocurre en nuestro mundo. (shrink)

“Hay momentos en la vida en los que la cuestión de saber si se puede pensar distinto de como se piensa o percibir distinto de como se ve es indispensable para seguir contemplando o reflexionando” (Foucault, 2003, p. 8). Esta declaración foucaultiana es la que impulsa la voluntad genealógica que presenta este ensayo, así como su pretensión proyectiva para pensar hoy la educación. El momento filosófico crítico consiste en volver sobre las prácticas que día a día llevamos a cabo y (...) configuran nuestras vidas y nuestras instituciones. Este es necesario para realimentar y reorientar la savia de las instituciones, y especialmente la savia de nuestras instituciones académicas, suelo en el cual se teje la sustancia ética que posteriormente dará lugar a la articulación social. Si se aplica el elemento crítico que la actividad filosófica supone a la experiencia de la educación, entendiendo por ella la correlación dentro de una cultura entre campos de saber, tipos de normatividad y formas de subjetividad, podemos preguntarnos: qué es la educación y qué función desempeña hoy con respecto al ejercicio mismo del pensamiento en un contexto atravesado por las nuevas tecnologías y la IA. (shrink)

David Sloan Wilson has recently revived the idea of a group mind as an application of group selectionist thinking to cognition. Central to my discussion of this idea is the distinction between the claim that groups have a psychology and what I call the social manifestation thesis-a thesis about the psychology of individuals. Contemporary work on this topic has confused these two theses. My discussion also points to research questions and issues that Wilson's work raises, as well as (...) their connection to externalist conceptions of the mind familiar since the work of Putnam and Burge. (shrink)

1. The Situation in Cognition 2. Situated Cognition: A Potted Recent History 3. Extensions in Biology, Computation, and Cognition 4. Articulating the Idea of Cognitive Extension 5. Are Some Resources Intrinsically Non-Cognitive? 6. Is Cognition Extended or Only Embedded? 7. Letting Nature Take Its Course.

It is widely accepted that there is a visual field, but the analogous notion of an auditory field is rejected by many philosophers on the grounds that the metaphysics or phenomenology of audition lack the necessary spatial or phenomenological structure. In this paper, I argue that many of the common objections to the existence of an auditory field are misguided and that, contrary to a tradition of philosophical scepticism about the spatiality of auditory experience, it is as richly spatial as (...) visual experience—and in some ways even more so. By carefully considering the spatiality and boundedness of audition, along with how sounds or their sources are experienced as occurring within the surrounding acoustic environment, we can gain a better understanding of (i) our auditory experience of space and (ii) the conditions for the existence of spatial sensory fields in general in a way that does not privilege vision over the other senses. (shrink)

Philosophers of biology and biologists themselves for the most part assume that the concept of kin is progenerative: what makes two individuals kin is a direct or indirect function of reproduction. Derivatively, kinship might likewise be presumed to be progenerative in nature. Yet a prominent view of kinship in contemporary cultural anthropology is a kind of constructivism or performativism that rejects such progenerativist views. This paper critically examines an influential line of thinking used to critique progenerativism and support performativism that (...) cites cross-cultural diversity in what I will call kinmaking. I challenge several key assumptions made in moving from this appeal to ethnography to conclusions about kinship and progeneration, arguing that closer scrutiny of both the ethnographic record and inferences that draw on it in fact support progenerative views of both kinship and kinmaking. (shrink)

The computational argument for individualism, which moves from computationalism to individualism about the mind, is problematic, not because computationalism is false, but because computational psychology is, at least sometimes, wide. The paper provides an early, or perhaps predecessor, version of the thesis of extended cognition.

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 (...) the requisite,metaphysically robust notion of realization is ineliminably context-sensitive. I shall argue that the sufficiency and constitutivity theses aretypically not jointly satisfied by any one candidate realizer, and that goingcontext-sensitive in one's metaphysics is preferable to the standard view.The context-sensitive views developed here are implicit in a range ofcommon views in both the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of biology,even if they have not been explicitly articulated, and even though theyundermine other views that are commonly endorsed. (shrink)

SINGULARIDAD: 12 Preceptos para la Vida Trascendental | © 2023 Cromwell Black Publishing House | Obra original por Luis Herrera. -/- Vivir trascendentalmente no es lo mismo que 'tener las respuestas a la vida.' La intención con la que se ha escrito este libro es ayudarte a identificar a Dios dentro de ti. La religión es una señal, pero no es la respuesta. La filosofía es una señal, pero no es la respuesta. Las personas que se identifican en exceso (...) con un grupo o tribu por razones ideológicas, inevitablemente se encuentran con la decepción porque siempre habrá algunos principios con los que internamente se opongan y estén en desacuerdo. Aun así, ignoran su voz interior para 'encajar con los demás.' El hombre es un animal social y la excomunión de la tribu ha sido equivalente a la extinción de nuestra línea desde nuestros días como cazadores y recolectores. Al vivir trascendentalmente, he aprendido a reconocer, acoger y aceptar el espacio entre mí y mi tribu. Te invito a hacer lo mismo. -/- Aprendiendo a escuchar al Dios que está dentro, puedo confiar más en mi voz interior porque hay un mensaje hablado allí, único para mí, que nunca será impreso en las páginas de la Biblia, el Corán, el Tao Te Ching o cualquier otro libro. Solo hay un TÚ. Otros pueden tener tu nombre, pero no tu identidad. Pueden compartir tu fecha de nacimiento y hospital, pero no tus padres. Pueden compartir tus padres, pero no tu nombre. ¿Ves a lo que me refiero aquí? Por lo tanto, ¿cómo puede una religión, educación o filosofía 'talla única' responder a la pregunta sobre el significado de la vida? No hay un significado de la vida, porque no hay una vida. Hay vidas infinitas, para las cuales deben proporcionarse significados infinitos. De ahí la importancia de aprender a confiar en ti mismo, tu voz interior, tu conciencia, el Dios que está dentro de ti. (shrink)

This collection of original essays--by philosophers of biology, biologists, and cognitive scientists--provides a wide range of perspectives on species. Including contributions from David Hull, John Dupre, David Nanney, Kevin de Queiroz, and Kim Sterelny, amongst others, this book has become especially well-known for the three essays it contains on the homeostatic property cluster view of natural kinds, papers by Richard Boyd, Paul Griffiths, and Robert A. Wilson.

The pandemic significantly raised the stakes for the translation of bioethics insights into policy. The novelty, range and sheer quantity of the ethical problems that needed to be addressed urgently within public policy were unprecedented and required high‐bandwidth two‐way transfer of insights between academic bioethics and policy. Countries such as the United Kingdom, which do not have a National Ethics Committee, faced particular challenges in how to facilitate this. This paper takes as a case study the brief career of the (...) Ethics Advisory Board (EAB) for the NHS Covid‐19 App, which shows both the difficulty and the political complexity of policy‐relevant bioethics in a pandemic and how this was exacerbated by the transience and informality of the structures through which ethics advice was delivered. It analyses how and why, after EAB's demise, the Westminster government increasingly sought to either take its ethics advice in private or to evade ethical scrutiny of its policies altogether. In reflecting on EAB, and these later ethics advice contexts, the article provides a novel framework for analysing ethics advice within democracies, defining four idealised stances: the pure ethicist, the advocate, the ethics arbiter and the critical friend. (shrink)

Who is recognised as a philosopher and what counts as philosophy influence both the content of a philosophical education and academic philosophy’s continuing demographic skew. The “philosophical who” and the “philosophical what” themselves are a partial function of matters that have been passed over in collective silence, even if that now feels to some like a silence belonging to the distant past. This paper discusses some philosophical silences regarding race, gender, and disability in the context of reflection on philosophical education (...) and on philosophical practice in the public sphere. It focuses on Charles Mills’ writings on race, Susan Babbitt’s on race and gender, and on more collaboratively-generated work on eugenics and disability. (shrink)

El intento de estas páginas es el de seleccionar dentro de la semántica del miedo que contribuye a organizar la imagen moderna del orden político y jurídico el elemento específico del pánico, en la hipótesis de que este último constituya una diferencia que es asimismo un recurso epistémico. Dicho de un modo directo: si el miedo se presenta como una referencia constitutiva del orden, de su constitución como de su mantenimiento, el pánico parece, en cambio, cargado de un signo contrario; (...) nos habla de la disolución de un agregado dado por supuesto y es inclusivo en el perimetrar los límites y las condiciones de posibilidad. El objetivo es aquel de repasar algunos momentos de la historia del pánico buscando argumentar que el pánico es una pasión política, en el sentido de que se refiere a aquello de lo que la político está hecha, y al mismo tiempo es expresión de un límite "pasional" de la política, en tanto que define políticamente un límite interno. Respecto a tal objetivo, esta aportación no reivindica más que los caracteres de un hilvanado necesitante de un desarrollo ulterior por lo que se refiere no solo a aquello que no se incluye (y es obviamente mucho), sino también a los nudos que de forma conscientemente provisional se indican. Además, se limita a una periodizacion histórica que es de alguna manera preliminar, deteniéndose en el umbral de la fase en la cual el pánico es una palabra de un discurso disciplinar, es parte del objeto de un saber codificado (psicología, sociología, ciencia política), incluso si no desempeña necesariamente un rol apaciguador. (shrink)

Eugenic thinking involves distinguishing between sorts or kinds of people in terms of the perceived desirable or undesirable traits that those people are likely to transmit to future generations. While eugenics itself is often thought of as an ideology that generated a social movement of global influence from roughly 1900 to 1945, eugenic thinking both pre-dates this period and continues to inform a range of contemporary debates and social policies, including those concerning prenatal screening, transhumanism, population control, and disability. Various (...) sciences, including the then-nascent sciences of psychology and psychiatry, played important roles in early twentieth-century eugenics, and their legacy is reflected in contemporary eugenic thinking and policies. Understanding the history of eugenics and the role of these early sciences of cognition in that history is useful in reflecting further on ongoing forms of eugenic thinking to which the contemporary cognitive sciences are relevant. (shrink)

This volume of twelve specially commissioned essays about species draws on the perspectives of prominent researchers from anthropology , botany, developmental psychology , the philosophy of biology and science, protozoology, and zoology . The concept of species has played a focal role in both evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology , and the last decade has seen something of a publication boom on the topic (e.g., Otte and Endler 1989; Ereshefsky 1992b; Paterson 1994; lambert and Spence 1995; Claridge, Dawah, (...) and Wilson 1997; Wheeler and Meier 1999; Howard and Berlocher 1998). (shrink)

While memory is conceptualized predominantly as an individual capacity in the cognitive and biological sciences, the social sciences have most commonly construed memory as a collective phenomenon. Collective memory has been put to diverse uses, ranging from accounts of nationalism in history and political science to views of ritualization and commemoration in anthropology and sociology. These appeals to collective memory share the idea that memory ‘‘goes beyond the individual’’ but often run together quite different claims in spelling out that idea. (...) This paper reviews a sampling of recent work on collective memory in the light of emerging externalist views within the cognitive sciences, and through some reflection on broader traditions of thought in the biological and social sciences that have appealed to the idea that groups have minds. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the relationship between these kinds of cognitive metaphors in the social sciences and our notion of agency. (shrink)

The Eugenic Mind Project is a wide-ranging, philosophical book that explores and critiques both past and present eugenic thinking, drawing on the author’s intimate knowledge of eugenics in North America and his previous work on the cognitive, biological, and social sciences, the fragile sciences. Informed by the perspectives of Canadian eugenics survivors in the province of Alberta, The Eugenic Mind Project recounts the history of eugenics and the thinking that drove it, and critically engages contemporary manifestations of eugenic thought, newgenics. (...) An accessible, original work of scholarship adopting what the author calls a standpoint eugenics, this book focuses on the roots of eugenic thinking past and present. It will provoke and enrich discussions about human nature and human diversity, the social uses of biotechnology, and social policy governing future generations. You can download the preface and acknowledgements here. (shrink)

A Guide to Good Reasoning has been described by reviewers as “far superior to any other critical reasoning text.” It shows with both wit and philosophical care how students can become good at everyday reasoning. It starts with attitude—with alertness to judgmental heuristics and with the cultivation of intellectual virtues. From there it develops a system for skillfully clarifying and evaluating arguments, according to four standards—whether the premises fit the world, whether the conclusion fits the premises, whether the argument fits (...) the conversation, and whether it is possible to tell. (shrink)

This is a critical response to "Defending Eugenics", published in MBR in 2018.

This paper offers an overview of "the species problem", arguing for a view of species as homeostatic property cluster kinds, positioning the resulting form of realism about species as an alternative to the claim that species are individuals and pluralistic views of species. It draws on taxonomic practice in the neurosciences, especially of neural crest cells and retinal ganglion cells, to motivate both the rejection of the species-as-individuals thesis and species pluralism.

This open-access editorial discusses confronting silences in different disciplinary contexts, such as science and technology studies, cultural anthropology, and philosophy. It has a focus on race and concludes with thoughts about Indigenous expertise, the Australian referendum on the Indigenous Voice, to parliament, and racism.

This is an introductory article on sociobiology, particularly its relationship to eugenics. Sociobiology developed in the 1960s as a field within evolutionary biology to explain human social traits and behaviours. Although sociobiology has few direct connections to eugenics, it shares eugenics’ optimistic enthusiasm for extending biological science into the human domain, often with reckless sensationalism. Sociobiology's critics have argued that sociobiology also propagates a kind of genetic determinism and represents the zealous misapplication of science beyond its proper reach that characterized (...) the eugenics movement. More recently, evolutionary psychology represents a sophistication of sociobiology that attends to the mind as the "missing link" between evolution and behaviour (Cosmides and Tooby 1992, Pinker 1997). (shrink)

This paper attempts to do two things. First, it recounts the problem of intentionality, as it has typically been conceptualized, and argues that it needs to be reconceptualized in light of the radical form of externalism most commonly referred to as the extended mind thesis. Second, it provides an explicit, novel argument for that thesis, what I call the argument from meaning making, and offers some defense of that argument. This second task occupies the core of the paper, and in (...) completing it I distinguish _active _ _cognition_ from _cyborg fantasy arguments_ for externalism, and develop the analogy between the extended mind thesis in the cognitive sciences and developmental systems theory in developmental biology. The rethinking of the problem of intentionality on offer leads not so much to a solution as to a dissolution of that problem, as traditionally conceived. (shrink)

This paper considers ten questions that those puzzled by or skeptical of extended cognition have posed. Discussion of these questions ranges across substantive, methodological, and dialectical issues in the ongoing debate over extended cognition, such as whether the issue between proponents and opponents of extended cognition is merely semantic or a matter of convention; whether extended cognition should be treated in the same way as extended biology; and whether conscious mental states pose a special problem for the extended mind thesis. (...) Lethocerus, the giant water bug, will be a recurrent reference point for much of the discussion. (shrink)

In the latter half of the twentieth century, philosophers of science have argued (implicitly and explicitly) that epistemically rational individuals might compose epistemically irrational groups and that, conversely, epistemically rational groups might be composed of epistemically irrational individuals. We call the conjunction of these two claims the Independence Thesis, as they together imply that methodological prescriptions for scientific communities and those for individual scientists might be logically independent of one another. We develop a formal model of scientific inquiry, define four (...) criteria for individual and group epistemic rationality, and then prove that the four definitions diverge, in the sense that individuals will be judged rational when groups are not and vice versa. We conclude by explaining implications of the inconsistency thesis for (i) descriptive history and sociology of science and (ii) normative prescriptions for scientific communities. (shrink)

Genes and the Agents of Life undertakes to rethink the place of the individual in the biological sciences, drawing parallels with the cognitive and social sciences. Genes, organisms, and species are all agents of life but how are each of these conceptualized within genetics, developmental biology, evolutionary biology, and systematics? The 2005 book includes highly accessible discussions of genetic encoding, species and natural kinds, and pluralism above the levels of selection, drawing on work from across the biological sciences. The book (...) is a companion to the author's Boundaries of the Mind (2004), also available from Cambridge, where the focus is the cognitive sciences. The book will appeal to a broad range of professionals and students in philosophy, biology, and the history of science. You can download the table of contents and the first chapter here. (shrink)

This paper argues that the metarepresentational systems we posses are wide or extended, rather than individualistic. There are two basic ideas. The first is that metarepresentation inherits its width from the mental representation of its objects. The second is that mental processing often operates on internal and external symbols, and this suggests that cognitive systems extend beyond the heads that house them.

Distinctions in fundamentality between different levels of description are central to the viability of contemporary decoherence-based Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM). This approach to quantum theory characteristically combines a determinate fundamental reality (one universal wave function) with an indeterminate emergent reality (multiple decoherent worlds). In this chapter I explore how the Everettian appeal to fundamentality and emergence can be understood within existing metaphysical frameworks, identify grounding and concept fundamentality as promising theoretical tools, and use them to characterize a system of explanatory (...) levels (with associated laws of nature) for EQM. This Everettian level structure encompasses and extends the ‘classical’ levels structure. The ‘classical’ levels of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. are recovered, but they are emergent in character and potentially variable across Everett worlds. EQM invokes an additional fundamental level, not present in the classical levels picture, and a novel potential role for self-location in interlevel metaphysics. When given a modal realist interpretation, EQM also makes trouble for supervenience-based approaches to levels. (shrink)

We introduce two notions–the shadows and the shallows of explanation–in opening up explanation to broader, interdisciplinary investigation. The shadows of explanation refer to past philosophical efforts to provide either a conceptual analysis of explanation or in some other way to pinpoint the essence of explanation. The shallows of explanation refer to the phenomenon of having surprisingly limited everyday, individual cognitive abilities when it comes to explanation. Explanations are ubiquitous, but they typically are not accompanied by the depth that we might, (...) prima facie, expect. We explain the existence of the shadows and shallows of explanation in terms of there being a theoretical abyss between explanation and richer, theoretical structures that are often attributed to people. We offer an account of the shallows, in particular, both in terms of shorn-down, internal, mental machinery, and in terms of an enriched, public symbolic environment, relative to the currently dominant ways of thinking about cognition and the world. (shrink)

There is a familiar problem in moral theories that recognize positive obligations to help others related to the practical room these obligations leave for ordinary life, and the risk that open-ended obligations to help others will consume our lives and resources. Responding to this problem, Kantians have tended to emphasize the idea of limits on positive obligations but are typically unsatisfactorily vague about the nature and extent of these limits. I argue here that aspects of Kant’s discussion of duties of (...) virtue owed to ourselves suggest a useful metric we can use in discussing these limits and that generalizing this account and combining it with elements of Barbara Herman’s view, offers us an attractive model of moral deliberation with the resources we need to engage the critic’s challenge properly. (shrink)

Eugenics does not feel so distant from where I stand. This essay explains why.

This is the introductory essay for the 80 or so philosophy articles in MITECS, covering philosophy's contribution to the cognitive sciences.