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 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.
Responses to Andrea Blomkvist, Fabrizio Calzavarini and Wade MunroeBence Nanay I have always thought of philosophy as a conversation. I know, not a very original take, Socrates and all, but it’s true. A conversation not just with other philosophers but also a conversation between disciplines. That is part of why …
Wade Munroe, University of Nebraska, Lincoln There is much to appreciate in Bence Nanay’s monograph. In particular, Nanay’s analysis of mental imagery is especially insightful. The expression, “mental imagery,” is a technical term introduced in experimental psychology’s nascency. As Nanay rightly argues, our use of, “mental imagery,” qua term of …
