This is the fourth instalment in our series of short interviews on the topics of artificial intelligence and agency. In the interest of both our guests’ and audience’s time, these interviews will be concise, but each is accompanied by a reading list to facilitate further exploration of the subject matter. …
Explaining our Actions: A Critique of Common-Sense Theorizing (CUP, 2025)Peter Carruthers 5. The will Intentions get discussed in a number of places in the book. One is in Chapter 5. Having shown that cognitive science makes use of an irreducible notion of intention (often studied in cognitive neuroscience under the …
Explaining our Actions: A Critique of Common-Sense Theorizing (CUP, 2025)Peter Carruthers 4. Belief and knowledge Chapter 7 discusses the other main component in common-sense belief-desire psychology: beliefs. (Chapter 8 – which discusses the question whether attitudes like belief, desire, and intention admit of degrees – takes up the alleged existence …
Explaining our Actions: A Critique of Common-Sense Theorizing (CUP, 2025)Peter Carruthers 3. Pleasure and desire Much of the remainder of the book evaluates the standard model of action-explanation itself. Chapter 5 discusses decision making in light of one’s beliefs and desires, resulting in intentions to act. Here there is much …
Explaining our Actions: A Critique of Common-Sense Theorizing (CUP, 2025)Peter Carruthers 2. Mental actions Yesterday I emphasized the wide range of actions that fall outside the standard belief-desire model. One payoff from recognizing this variety is that many more mental processes emerge as action-like, too. There are obvious cases that …
Explaining our Actions: A Critique of Common-Sense Theorizing (CUP, 2025)Peter Carruthers 1. Which actions? The proximal goal of Explaining our Actions is to critique the standard belief-desire model of actions and action-explanation, confronting it with our best science. A more distal methodological goal is to show that the methods still …
This week on Brains we will feature a series of posts by Peter Carruthers on his new book, Explaining our Actions. Check it out here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/explaining-our-actions/8B4B422B43A47D6F473BA2ED8F24D3FF.
