Commentary from Carrie Figdor on today’s post from Mazviita Chirimuuta on The Brain Abstracted (MIT Press). The animating idea of Chirimuuta’s book is that science, and neuroscience in particular, must engage in simplification in order to explain a complex world. The epistemic dangers of taking the outcomes of simplification strategies …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
The Society for Philosophy and Psychology will be holding its annual meeting June 12-15 at Brown University, Providence, R.I. Early registration has been extended to June 2. Please see the society’s website, www.socphilpsych.org, for the program and other details. Speakers include Daniel Dennett, Susan Fiske, Sandra Upson (managing editor, Scientific …
In case anyone is interested in the response by Block and Kitcher to Fodor’s argument against evolutionary biology: https://bostonreview.net/BR35.2/block_kitcher.php
