books — The Brains Blog

The Foundations of Perception

Yesterday, I gave a general overview of my forthcoming book. Today, I’ll lay out the foundations on which the rest of the book builds: the general and particular elements of perception. Chapter 1 addresses the particular elements of perception, Chapter 2 its general elements. The phenomenon of perceptual particularity …

The Unity of Perception

Susanna Schellenberg March 5, 2018 March 5, 2018 books / Consciousness / Content / Epistemology / functions / metaphysics of mind / perception / perception;neuroscience / Philosophy of Mind / Psychology / representation / Susanna Schellenberg: The Unity of Perception

Many thanks to John Schwenkler for running the Brains blog and for inviting me to guest blog this week about my new book The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Perception is our key to the world. It plays at least three different roles in …

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John Schwenkler March 5, 2018 March 11, 2018 books

We are grateful to Susanna Schellenberg for blogging this week on her book The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence, forthcoming in July 2018 from Oxford University Press. To view all her posts on a single page, please click here.

How could we rationally suppose that we lack free will?

John Schwenkler February 12, 2018 February 12, 2018 books / Epistemology / Ethics / Free will / Philosophy of Mind

[The following is a guest post by Bob Lockie. — JS] He who says that all things happen of necessity can hardly find fault with one who denies that all happens by necessity; for on his own theory this very argument is voiced by necessity (Epicurus 1964: XL). Epicurus’s famous …

Evolving Enactivism: The Natural Origins of Content

Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin January 28, 2018 January 29, 2018 Content / Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin: Evolving Enactivism

In our previous posts, we have so far focused on: (1) clarifying our understanding of Ur-intentionality – REC’s positive proposal for understanding the thesis that basic cognition lacks content; (2) reviewing the problems faced by classic teleosemantic theories that motivate adopting REC’s proposal; and (3) detailing some of the theoretical …

Evolving Enactivism: Neurodynamics sans content

Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin January 25, 2018 January 28, 2018 Content / Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin: Evolving Enactivism / Neuroscience / representation

In a direct challenge to radical, anti-representational proposals about how to conceive of cognition, Aizawa (2015) asks “If the brain does not contribute information processing or symbol manipulation or the transformation of representations … then what does it do?” (2015, 761–762). Given that REC embraces precisely such radicalisms, what alternative …

Evolving Enactivism: Ur-Intentionality – What’s it All About?

Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin January 24, 2018 January 28, 2018 Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin: Evolving Enactivism / Intentionality / Philosophy of Mind

In our previous instalment to this blog series, we alluded to a subtle but pivotal adjustment that our Radically Enactive account of Cognition, REC, recommends making to what, in analytic circles, is the standard conception of minds. The recommendation is that we conceive of the intentional and phenomenal aspects of …