Fabrizio Calzavarini, University of Turin Bence Nanay’s Mental Imagery (OUP) is an impressive work that provides a comprehensive neurofunctional exploration of the idea that mental imagery is “perceptual representation that is not directly triggered by sensory input” (p. 4). Bence’s ability to combine sophisticated philosophical analyses with careful discussion of …
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. 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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
