This is a reminder that the submission deadline for Metacognition: New Developments and Challenges, to be held in London on May 12-13, 2020, is March 6. For further details see the link above.
Category: Social Cognition
4. What makes a social emotion?
An important aspect of emotions that is relatively neglected in both the philosophical and psychological literature is their social manifestation. There is plenty of work on empathy, the role of emotions in morality, and even a growing interest in emotional expression, but all this should be tied together with a …
Epistemic and Ethical Implications
Most philosophical discussions of mindreading stay squarely within the realm of philosophy of psychology. Theorizing about mindreading plays a role in debates about the modularity of the mind, the representational theory of mind, language development, the semantics of ordinary language use, etc. Using mindreading as a case study for understanding …
Model Theory
In this post, I argue that Model Theory is a superior account of the broader conception of mindreading laid out in the previous post. Thus far, I have refrained from discussing Theory Theory (TT) and Simulation Theory (ST) even though these theories have been the two main general theories of …
A Broader Conception of Mindreading
In the previous two posts, I examined challenges to the view that we regularly attribute mental states to others and explain and predict their behavior. Although these challenges do not show that mindreading is a rarely used or relatively unimportant tool, they do highlight how limited the ordinary conception of …
Pluralistic Folk Psychology
In the first post, I considered the 4-E objection that mindreading is not an important, frequently used tool in our folk psychological toolkit. I argued that mindreading accounts can withstand this challenge. We do regularly attribute mental states to others and explain and predict their behavior. Nevertheless, such challenges open the …
How We Understand Others
A question that has long interested me is how we understand others – that is, what are the cognitive processes that underlie successful social understanding and interaction – and what happens when we misunderstand others. In philosophy and the cognitive sciences, the orthodox view is that understanding and interacting with …
Symposium on Del Pinal and Spaulding, “Conceptual Centrality and Implicit Bias”
I’m very glad to announce our latest Mind & Language symposium on Guillermo Del Pinal and Shannon Spaulding’s “Conceptual Centrality and Implicit Bias” from the journal’s February 2018 issue. Commentators on the target article include Bryce Huebner (Georgetown), Edouard Machery (Pittsburgh), Eric Mandelbaum (CUNY), Steven Sloman (Brown), and Ema Sullivan-Bissett (Birmingham). *** The term “implicit bias” is typically used refer …
Call for Papers: Expanding Perception: The Role of Touch in Comparative Psychology, IJCP Special Issue
Call for Papers: Expanding Perception: The Role of Touch in Comparative Psychology, IJCP Special Issue In recent years, researchers have begun to include diverse modes of perception in an effort to understand cognitive and affective processes in various species. In this special issue, we are interested in an interdisciplinary account …
The 3rd Annual Minds Online Conference Starts Monday!
Mark your calendars! The conference starts Monday and runs for three weeks. The first session’s papers are already posted. Commenting for the first session starts Monday. Check out the full post for the rest of the details.
CFA: Understanding Social Cognition
We invite you to participate in the 3rd edition of the conference Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies, that will be held in Lublin (Poland) on October 20-22, 2017. The leading theme is ‘Understanding Social Cognition’. A special event: symposium devoted to Daniel Dennett’s newest book. The deadline for abstract submission is …
Morality, the Problem of Possible Future Selves, and Christmas Parables
In my 2016 book, Rightness as Fairness: A Moral and Political Theory, I argue that morality is a solution to a problem of diachronic rationality called ‘the problem of possible future selves.’ To simplify (very) greatly, the problem–which is partially inspired by L.A. Paul’s groundbreaking work on transformative experience–is that (A) our present …
CFP: Zahavi on Self and Other (Bochum)
Call for Papers and Workshop Announcement Ruhr-Universität Bochum June 20-22, 2016 Prof. Dan Zahavi (University of Copenhagen): Lectures on Self and Other Dan Zahavi is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of various books on Husserl’s Phenomenology, …
Three Studies That No Moral Philosopher Should Ignore
Robin Zheng Newnham College University of Cambridge In my chapter, I argue that for cases of implicitly biased action, we should set aside questions of responsibility as attributability in favor of responsibility as accountability. As I interpret the distinction, the former constitute a problem in metaphysics and philosophy of action because we are …
How Can A Stereotype You Don’t Believe Affect You?
Stacey Goguen Boston University One of the striking aspects of stereotype threat is that it demonstrates ways in which a stereotype that you might not necessarily believe (and perhaps even likely do not believe) can nonetheless significantly affect you cognitively and psychologically. For instance, math majors who are primed to think about …
Stereotyping, Rationality, & the Cognitive Architecture of Virtue
Alex Madva Cal Poly Pomona alexmadva.com Tamar Szabó Gendler (2008, 2011), and subsequently Andy Egan (2011), have argued that implicit biases pit our moral and epistemic aims against each other. They cite research suggesting that the strength of implicit biases correlates with the knowledge individuals have of prevalent stereotypes, even …
What is an Attitude?
Edouard Machery University of Pittsburgh Philosophers have mostly focused on the practical implications of the recent psychological research on biases (racism, sexism, etc.) and, more generally, on attitudes (e.g., political attitudes). As is by now well known, this impressive body of work is based on novel indirect measures such as …
Symposium on Hayley Clatterbuck, “Chimpanzee Mindreading and the Value of Parsimonious Mental Models”
I’m happy to initiate our latest Mind & Language symposium on Hayley Clatterbucks’s “Chimpanzee Mindreading and the Value of Parsimonious Mental Models,” from the journal’s September 2015 issue, with commentaries by Cameron Buckner (Houston), Shannon Spaulding (Oklahoma), and Jennifer Vonk (Oakland). There has been a long-standing debate about whether apes, dogs, corvids, and possibly other animals have the capacity to engage in …
#MindsOnline 2015, Session 1: Social Cognition
The Minds Online conference has begun, and our first session will be open for discussion through September 4. It is on the theme of Social Cognition, and includes the following papers: Tony Jack and Jared Friedman (Case Western Reserve): “Mapping cognitive structure onto the landscape of philosophical debate: an empirical framework …
Which Theory of Mind? – And other questions
In my final post I would like to wrap up by sketching some of the implications of my proposal – in particular concerning our theorizing about social cognition – as well as raising some questions that are being left open. There exists quite a large controversy in philosophy and psychology …