books — The Brains Blog

3. Weakening the power of experience

In previous posts, I discussed the problem generated by the case of Jack and Jill. When Jill’s fear influences her visual experience that presents Jack as angry, does Jill get as much reason from her experience to believe her eyes, as she could if her fear didn’t influence her experience? …

2. (Ir)rational perception

Susanna Siegel April 5, 2017 April 8, 2017 Epistemology / perception / Susanna Siegel: The Rationality of Perception

Recall the example discussed in my earlier post: Jill and Jack: Jill fears (without good reason) that Jack is angry with her. As a result of her fear, Jack’s face looks angry to her when she sees it. If you saw Jack, you’d see his neutral expression for what it is. There’s …

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John Schwenkler April 4, 2017 April 17, 2017 Susanna Siegel: The Rationality of Perception

We are grateful to Susanna Siegel for blogging this week on her new book The Rationality of Perception (Oxford, 2017). To view all of her posts on a single page, click here.

1. An epistemic puzzle

Susanna Siegel April 4, 2017 April 3, 2017 Epistemology / perception / Susanna Siegel: The Rationality of Perception

On a traditional conception of the human mind, reasoning can be rational or irrational, but perception cannot. Perception is simply a source of new information, and cannot be assessed for rationality. I argue that this conception is wrong. Drawing on examples involving racism, emotion, self-defense law, and scientific theories, The Rationality …

The Autonomy of Psychology and Beyond

Tom Polger and Larry Shapiro March 17, 2017 March 17, 2017 Philosophy of Mind / Philosophy of Science / Polger and Shapiro: The Multiple Realization Book

In The Multiple Realization Book we articulate an account of multiple realization that is based on the idea that the “job description” for multiple realization is to be incompatible with brain-based theories of the mind and therefore to strongly favor functionalist and other realization-based theories. Multiple realization is supposed to …

Evidence and Modality

Tom Polger and Larry Shapiro March 16, 2017 March 10, 2017 Philosophy of Mind / Philosophy of Science / Polger and Shapiro: The Multiple Realization Book

In our last post of the week we will discuss some of the broader implications of our view of multiple realization. But first we want to put the arguments in The Multiple Realization Book into the context of our earlier individual and joint work, in part to make clear the …

Bird Brains

Tom Polger and Larry Shapiro March 15, 2017 March 14, 2017 metaphysics of mind / Neuroscience / Polger and Shapiro: The Multiple Realization Book

According to the approach we described in our previous posts, examples of multiple realization satisfy four criteria: Specifically, things of types A and B are multiple realizers of some kind if: As and Bs are of the same kind in model or taxonomic system S1; As and Bs are of …