Last time, I argued that there are substantive open questions about whether the theoretical constructs of formal linguistics play any role in the psychological processes underlying language use. Let’s now address those questions. When people talk about “the psychological reality of syntax”, there are (at least) two importantly different types …
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 …
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 …
Neutral monism has a fascinating history, from Mach and Chancey Wright (b. 1830 in Northampton MA, where I happen to live) through William James, the American New Realists, including E.B. Holt and Ralph Barton Perry, many of them very much Harvard figures, Bertrand Russell, from 1919 to 1927, to Moritz …
Physicalism has never held any appeal for me. ‘It is false that the mind is non-physical’ seems to me plainly false. It seemed obvious to me, even as a student, that physicalism must be false, if it is taken to be the view that there is nothing outside the things …
