Posts from the founder of Brains, Gualtiero Piccinini.
The standard story about the demise of introspectionist psychology goes something like this: Towards the beginning of the 20th Century, experimental psychologists relied on introspecting subjects to study the mind. Members of one prominent school believed that each thought is reducible to sensory images (visual, auditory including verbal, proprioceptive, etc.). Among …
In comments to some previous posts, Marcin Milkowski raised a spirited defense of Dennett’s heterophenomenology (HF) as a correct methodology of data from first-person reports (about mental states). Among other statements, he made the following: “HF is not about inferring beliefs from verbal behavior in any setting. It’s about …
Here.
In his 1997 book, What Emotions Really Are, Paul Griffiths argues that emotions split into three different natural kinds. But in his PSA talk a few weeks ago, Andrea Scarantino (a student of Griffiths) said that Griffiths now thinks that emotions do not split in the way he envisioned in his …
I agree with Anna-Mari Rusanen when she says that <<you should see this. It is a mechanistic, causal and probably algorithmic model of female cognition. The text in Finnish says “Finally female cognition has been modelled”.>>
Today’s NY Times has an interesting report on a recent conference discussing whether scientists should challenge religion more aggressively.
Joshua Knobe was kind enough to write me as follows (reproduced with permission):I was happy to see that you wrote up a description of oursession [two weeks ago at the PSA Meeting], and I’m glad that you are bringing attention to these important questions about the relationship between common sense andscientific …
