The Brains Blog — Carrie Figdor: Pieces of Mind

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 …

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.