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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
In our first post we explained how we came to write The Multiple Realization Book, we articulated our general approach, and we set out our criteria for multiple realization. We also emphasized how our approach demands that we carefully examine scientific evidence for or against multiple realization. Is there good …
First, we’d like to thank John Schwenkler for giving us the opportunity to talk about The Multiple Realization Book (OUP 2016) on Brains. For about twenty years we’ve each been trying to understand the phenomenon of multiple realization and its importance in philosophy of mind and philosophy of science. In …
We are grateful to Tom Polger and Larry Shapiro for blogging on The Multiple Realization Book (Oxford University Press, 2016) during the week of March 12-18. To see all their posts on a single page, click here.
