2018 — The Brains Blog

4. The Technical View, and Summing Up

In the previous post I articulated Literalism to a degree. In the book I articulate it further by responding to a series of objections, at least some of which have no doubt occurred to you. Since these are likely to be raised in comments, in this post I will present …

CFP: New Challenges in Philosophy of Neuroscience

John Schwenkler May 9, 2018 May 9, 2018 CFPs

Neural Mechanisms Web Conference New Challenges in Philosophy of Neuroscience October 5th, 10 – 18 (Greenwich Mean Time) In recent years, cognitive neuroscience has made several leaps forward: new discoveries have been made (e.g. the resting state networks or the increased scope of neural plasticity), prompting new questions; new …

3. Literalism (Expanded Somewhat)

Carrie Figdor May 9, 2018 May 7, 2018 animal cognition / Carrie Figdor: Pieces of Mind

Anthropocentric tradition holds that the (somewhat idealized) human case is the standard for what counts as a real instance of a psychological capacity. But even if we learn about minds from the human case, it does not follow that humans are the standard for objectively correct ascriptions. For the Literalist, …

2. The Evidence

Carrie Figdor May 8, 2018 May 7, 2018 Carrie Figdor: Pieces of Mind / Models

In my previous post I set up the problem of how to interpret the uses of psychological predicates in many unexpected domains throughout biology. In this one I will describe in general the evidence on which the extensions are based. I divide this evidence into two types: qualitative analogy and …

1. The Problem

Carrie Figdor May 7, 2018 May 7, 2018 animal cognition / Carrie Figdor: Pieces of Mind / Concepts

I first want to thank John for this opportunity to present and discuss my book with the Brains readership, and for his artful shepherding of the blog in general. I don’t know how he does it, but I’m grateful that he does. So, on to the book. Pieces of Mind …

Now Featured

John Schwenkler May 7, 2018 May 14, 2018 Carrie Figdor: Pieces of Mind

Thanks to Carrie Figdor for blogging this week on Pieces of Mind: The Proper Domain of Psychological Predicates, forthcoming next month from Oxford University Press. To view all her posts on a single page, please click here.

Symposium on Joshua Shepherd’s “Halfhearted Action and Control”

Aaron Henry April 30, 2018 April 30, 2018 Action / dispositions / Ergo Symposia

Welcome to our fifth Ergo symposium. This week we are showcasing Joshua Shepherd’s paper “Halfhearted Action and Control”, with commentaries by Andreas Elpidorou (Louisville), Nora Heinzelmann (Munich), and Zachary Irving (Virginia). Let me begin by thanking all the participants for their great work! Shepherd introduces his topic with a possibly familiar …