PSA 2008 Draft Program

The preliminary program of the 2008 Philosophy of Science Association Meeting is out.  The meeting will take place on November 6–8, 2008, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  There will be many talks on the sciences of minds and brains, including a symposium I organized, on “Neural Computation” (other participants: Carl Craver, Oron Shagrir, and Jackie …

Computation in Cognitive Science (After the Fact)

Many thanks to Mark Sprevak for organizing the fabulous conference on computation in cognitive science that took place on July 7-8 at King’s College, Cambridge.  Several of us Brains contributors (Aizawa, Gillett, Rusanen, Weiskopf, and me) were there.  I had a great time.  The papers were excellent:  although they are drafts, reading …

Does your inspiration come from the laboratory or the library?

Penelope Maddy’s book Second Philosophy is exhilarating in its scope and content. She advocates a brand of methodological naturalism she denotes ‘Second Philosophy.’

The first section of the book is Maddy’s exposition of The Second Philosophy. She doesn’t define it explicitly. Rather, she explores the principles via a series of historical clashes. First, how would the second philosopher (SP) respond to Descartes’ arguments in the Meditations? She then goes on to tackle radical skepticism, Hume, Kant, Carnap, Quine, and Putnam’s anti-realism in the voice of the SP.

More summary and analysis below the fold.

Back to Top