Unconscious imagery in aphantasia? Spoiler: we still don’t know

Dr Andrea Blomkvistandrea.blomkvist@glasgow.ac.ukCentre for the Study of Perceptual ExperienceUniversity of Glasgow One of the most imagination-capturing concepts discussed in Bence Nanay’s recent book Mental Imagery (Nanay, 2024) is unconscious mental imagery. For many of us, mental imagery seems inherently phenomenally conscious (see for example Kung, 2010). But in Nanay’s book, …

Mental Imagery: Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience

Mental Imagery: Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience. Not really a Precis.Bence Nanay, University of Antwerp Let’s assume you’re reading this piece on your phone – a reasonable assumption these days. And let’s assume you’re reading it while standing in line at the checkout of your grocery store – a good time to …

[Updated!] SURe 2025, Miami: Call for Papers

CFA: 7th Scientific Understanding and Representation (SURe) Annual Workshop Host: University of Miami (FL) Department of Philosophy May 13-14, 2025  Call for Abstracts: We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 750-words for the upcoming 7th annual Scientific Understanding and Representation (SURe) workshop by March 4th, 2025. The workshop will take …

Rethinking Functions: The Role of Selection

By Hanzhe Dong and Gualtiero Piccinini Introduction What are biological functions, and how should we think about them? This question has been controversial in the philosophy of biology (and technology). The Selected Effects (SE) account ties (teleological) functions to selection history, asserting that a trait’s teleofunction F is an activity …

Selection is Inescapable (Part 2: Re-rethinking Biological Functions)

Fabian Hundertmark, Bielefeld UniversityJakob Roloff, Justus-Liebig-University GießenFrancesca Bellazzi, University of Oslo, ERC Project Assembling Life (no.101089326) 1. Introduction In the target post, Dong and Piccinini criticize SE and propose a new goal-contribution account of functions (GCA) (also in Maley, Piccinini 2017; Piccinini, 2020). In this second post, we argue that …

Selection is Inescapable (Part 1: Do We Need to Rethink Biological Functions?)

Fabian Hundertmark, Bielefeld UniversityJakob Roloff, Justus-Liebig-University GießenFrancesca Bellazzi, University of Oslo, ERC Project Assembling Life (no.101089326) 1. Introduction Functions are everywhere. Coffee machines have the function of making our coffee and our hearts have the function of pumping our blood. But what are functions, and how should we think of …

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