A series of blog posts featuring scholars in the philosophy and science of mind.
Knowing is a state of mind that can’t be wrong. If anyone knows that p, then p must be the case. My last post raised the question of why adults attribute that state of mind so heavily, in their ordinary descriptions and explanations of agency, rather than relying on what …
My first post in this series observed that (if usage is any guide) adults attribute knowledge an awful lot. My most recent post hinted that knowledge attribution might be a necessary bridge to reach belief attribution in the course of children’s development, and ended by raising the puzzle of why …
My last post went back to babies, to see if the dawn of mental state attribution might show us something about the relationship between knowledge and belief. Even for those who take the concept of belief to be innate or very early-developing, belief attribution is weirdly dependent on knowledge attribution …
The goal of the post-Gettier Analysis of Knowledge program was to come up with a good X to plug into the formula “Knowledge = True Belief + X”, where X itself didn’t illicitly smuggle in the concept of knowledge (theories invoking “competence”, I’m looking at you). As the Analysis of …
I’m surprised to find myself here. I started out in philosophy as a very old-fashioned epistemologist, concerned with the question of how necessary truths are known, and I think there was a whole chapter in my thesis arguing against naturalist approaches. For what it’s worth, I’m still a sworn enemy …
I am very excited to be introducing Jennifer Nagel, who will be guest-blogging here as our current “Featured Scholar” over the next couple of weeks. Jennifer holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh and is Associate Professor and Associate Chair Graduate in the Department of Philosophy at …
This is a post about a problem. How do largely informationally encapsulated processes ever nonacidentally operate in harmony with thinking? I will suggest that phenomenal expectations provide least part of the solution: phenomenal expectations matter because they tie different bits of the mind together.
Instead of answering this question directly, I want to start with another question, one that motivates asking the question of my title. How do humans first come to know about the categorical colour properties of things, properties like redness and blueness? Start with the simplest possible story. Red things visually …
Many thanks to Kristina and John for inviting me to write.
