Explaining our Actions: A Critique of Common-Sense Theorizing (CUP, 2025)Peter Carruthers 3. Pleasure and desire Much of the remainder of the book evaluates the standard model of action-explanation itself. Chapter 5 discusses decision making in light of one’s beliefs and desires, resulting in intentions to act. Here there is much …
CFA: 7th Scientific Understanding and Representation (SURe) Annual Workshop Host: University of Miami (FL) Department of Philosophy May 13-14, 2025 Call for Abstracts: We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 750-words for the upcoming 7th annual Scientific Understanding and Representation (SURe) workshop by March 4th, 2025. The workshop will take …
By Hanzhe Dong and Gualtiero Piccinini Introduction What are biological functions, and how should we think about them? This question has been controversial in the philosophy of biology (and technology). The Selected Effects (SE) account ties (teleological) functions to selection history, asserting that a trait’s teleofunction F is an activity …
Fabian Hundertmark, Bielefeld UniversityJakob Roloff, Justus-Liebig-University GießenFrancesca Bellazzi, University of Oslo, ERC Project Assembling Life (no.101089326) 1. Introduction In the target post, Dong and Piccinini criticize SE and propose a new goal-contribution account of functions (GCA) (also in Maley, Piccinini 2017; Piccinini, 2020). In this second post, we argue that …
Fabian Hundertmark, Bielefeld UniversityJakob Roloff, Justus-Liebig-University GießenFrancesca Bellazzi, University of Oslo, ERC Project Assembling Life (no.101089326) 1. Introduction Functions are everywhere. Coffee machines have the function of making our coffee and our hearts have the function of pumping our blood. But what are functions, and how should we think of …
We are pleased to announce our forthcoming events: a book symposium on Nick Shea’s new book on concepts, & the lineup for the 2025 webinar series Book Symposiumjoint initiative with ISPSM (https://www.ispsmind.com/):13 December 2024, 4-7 pm CETConcepts at the Interface (OUP)Nick Shea (London)Discussants:Sara Aronowitz, Chris Hill, Eric Margolis, Gualtiero Piccinini, Michael Strevens …
Many thanks again to Andre Curtis-Trudel, Marcin Milkowski, Danielle Williams, and Mazviita Chirimuuta for their commentaries on our recent book The Physical Signature of Computation: A Robust Mapping Account. The medium independence of computation seems to have caused trouble for the latter three commentators, so we take this opportunity to …
