The Brains Blog — Since 2005, a leading forum for work in the philosophy and science of mind

1. The Theory of Reference is Retro-chic

Remember the causo-descriptivist wars? If your education was anything like mine, at some point you were walked across the old battlefield and shown some of the main sights: early naïve descriptivism about proper names; its cluster theoretic successor; Kripke’s attack on descriptivism in Naming and Necessity; his causal inheritance picture; …

Now Featured

John Schwenkler April 17, 2017 April 28, 2017 Imogen Dickie: Fixing Reference

We are grateful to Imogen Dickie for blogging this week on Fixing Reference (Oxford, 2016). To view all of Imogen’s posts on a single page, click here.

Final CFA: Psychological and Structural Explanations of Injustice

John Schwenkler April 13, 2017 April 13, 2017 CFPs

CFA—BIAS IN CONTEXT #4: PSYCHOLOGICAL AND STRUCTURAL EXPLANATIONS OF INJUSTICE University of Utah, Salt Lake City October 12- 13 2017 ***DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS, May 15*** CONFIRMED SPEAKERS: Dr. Kristie Dotson Dr. Adam Hosein Dr. Theresa Lopez & Dr. Brian Chambliss Dr. Kate Manne Dr. Mari Mikkola Dr. Jennifer Mueller Dr. …

A few links of interest

John Schwenkler April 11, 2017 April 11, 2017 Consciousness / perception

A BBC Radio 4 series on “The Uncommon Senses”, with Barry Smith (University of London) and sound artist Nick Ryan. A full list of episodes is here.
A special issue of Nautilus on the topic of Consciousness, including a profile of Christoph Koch and an essay on Russellian Monism by Hedda Hassel Mørch (NYU/Oslo).
And some more Barry Smith, with an essay on “overestimating consciousness” at IAI.

4. Inference and Experience: conceptual challenges to inferentialism

Susanna Siegel April 9, 2017 April 9, 2017 Belief / Epistemology / perception / Susanna Siegel: The Rationality of Perception

I find the challenges to the coherence of inferentialism much more powerful than the objections inherent in alternatives. That’s why I devote more time in the book to making the case that inferentialism is coherent, and to explaining what form it could take. Perhaps a first type of challenge to …

3. Weakening the power of experience

Susanna Siegel April 8, 2017 April 9, 2017 Belief / Epistemology / perception / Susanna Siegel: The Rationality of Perception

In previous posts, I discussed the problem generated by the case of Jack and Jill. When Jill’s fear influences her visual experience that presents Jack as angry, does Jill get as much reason from her experience to believe her eyes, as she could if her fear didn’t influence her experience? …

New M.Sc. in Early Childhood Research

Kristina Musholt April 7, 2017 April 7, 2017 Academia / Psychology

The M.Sc. in Early Childhood Research at Leipzig University (Germany) is a two-year Master’s program fully conducted in English. The program aims to enable highly qualified students to build up a career as a researcher as well as a scientific coordinator, consultant or advisor in the interdisciplinary field of early …