books — The Brains Blog

Remembering Plants

Plants eat animals—at least, some plants, and some animals. Well-known, but still fascinating, the trapping of the Venus flytrap is a case of thigmomorphism, a change of shape in response to touch. Since trapping is not affected by the direction of the stimulus, it is not a tropism, like phototropism …

Perceiving Plants

Chauncey Maher February 21, 2017 February 21, 2017 books / Chauncey Maher: Plant Minds / perception

In What a Plant Knows, Daniel Chamowitz reports what plant biologists apparently have known for a long time: although plants generally stay in one place (they’re sessile), they actively negotiate their environments. Not just their cells, like all living cells, constantly do things, but whole plants and their parts—their roots, …

Do Plants Have Minds?

Chauncey Maher February 19, 2017 March 10, 2021 books / Chauncey Maher: Plant Minds / Intentionality / metaphysics of mind / naturalism / Philosophy of Mind / representation

Plants don’t have minds. At least, that’s what most people think. A few years ago, that’s also what I thought. Then, reflecting on the work of Ruth Millikan and Fred Dretske, I started wondering why it seemed obvious, and whether it should. This led me to write a short book …

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John Schwenkler February 19, 2017 February 25, 2017 Chauncey Maher: Plant Minds

We are grateful to Chauncey Maher (Dickinson College) for blogging this week on Plant Minds: A Philosophical Defense, forthcoming from Routledge. To view all his posts, click here.

Emotion and Evaluative Phenomenology

Michelle Montague February 3, 2017 February 3, 2017 Consciousness / Emotion / Michelle Montague: The Given

In the final chapter of The Given, I describe the rich complexity involved in experiencing emotions. I restrict my attention to occurrent emotional episodes that are not only conscious, but are also intentional. I consider two questions: [i] What kind of property attributions do we typically make in having emotions? …

Thought and Cognitive Phenomenology

Michelle Montague February 2, 2017 February 1, 2017 Consciousness / Michelle Montague: The Given / Phenomenology

Chapter 8 of The Given discusses the topic of cognitive phenomenology. My view of the matter is simple: either accept cognitive phenomenology or deny that there is such a thing as conscious thought. How can you deny the existence of conscious thought?! So, grant that cognitive phenomenology exists. Cognitive phenomenology, …

Perception: Representational Properties and Phenomenological Properties

Michelle Montague February 1, 2017 January 31, 2017 Color / Consciousness / Michelle Montague: The Given / perception / representation

Consider the visual experience of a normally functioning subject who consciously sees a red ball in front of her in daylight. This experience has representational properties, it is of or about something, e.g. the red ball, and it has phenomenological properties, e.g. there is something it is like to see …