Category: books

2. Architecture of the Implicit Mind

Michael Brownstein: The Implicit Mind / Philosophy of Mind / Psychology

Part 1 of The Implicit Mind makes the case that “implicit attitudes” are mental states that cause us to act in relatively spontaneous ways, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. I offer an unorthodox description of implicit attitudes, distinguish implicit attitudes from other folk psychological kinds, and show how …

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1. The Virtues and Vices of Spontaneity

Michael Brownstein: The Implicit Mind / Philosophy of Science / Psychology

To avoid becoming a victim of violent assault, people are often coached to trust their gut feelings. “Trust your INSTINCTS,” the University of Oklahoma Police Department says, “believe your inner feelings when you get uncomfortable about a person or situation. Respond as soon as you feel uncomfortable!”[1] Gavin De Becker, …

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Epistemic and Ethical Implications

Mindreading / Shannon Spaulding: How We Understand Others / Social Cognition

Most philosophical discussions of mindreading stay squarely within the realm of philosophy of psychology. Theorizing about mindreading plays a role in debates about the modularity of the mind, the representational theory of mind, language development, the semantics of ordinary language use, etc. Using mindreading as a case study for understanding …

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A Broader Conception of Mindreading

Shannon Spaulding: How We Understand Others / Social Cognition / Uncategorized

In the previous two posts, I examined challenges to the view that we regularly attribute mental states to others and explain and predict their behavior. Although these challenges do not show that mindreading is a rarely used or relatively unimportant tool, they do highlight how limited the ordinary conception of …

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Pluralistic Folk Psychology

Shannon Spaulding: How We Understand Others / Social Cognition

In the first post, I considered the 4-E objection that mindreading is not an important, frequently used tool in our folk psychological toolkit. I argued that mindreading accounts can withstand this challenge. We do regularly attribute mental states to others and explain and predict their behavior. Nevertheless, such challenges open the …

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