Among philosophers, autonomous agency usually requires having some kind of metacognitive awareness that permits thinking about one’s reasons for action and being self-governing. Autonomous agency, then, requires metacognition. But it requires metacognition of a certain sort, namely beliefs about beliefs. The question about whether any other animal is metacognitive has …
** Note the extended deadline of Nov. 1 ** ************************************************************ CALL FOR POSTERS AND FLASH TALKS – Extended submissions deadline: November 1 Reciprocity and Social Cognition Symposium Berlin School of Mind and Brain, 23rd-25th March 2015 ************************************************************ Extended submissions deadline: November 1, 2014 Notifications sent: November 15, 2014 For more …
In standard approaches to folk psychology, our folk psychological reasoning is taken to be a species of causal reasoning. And while there is some attention to other kinds of reasoning in the developmental literature, notably teleological reasoning, most of the research I’ve run across on children’s social reasoning and explanations …
It’s natural to think we need language to explain—after all, isn’t an explanation an answer to a why question? It can be, but it can also be a resolution of a wondering why state.
… is hosted by David Papineau.
Once again, of course not! (Otherwise we wouldn’t be asking this question, would we?) Still, watch Angie Hobbs and Mary Midgley try to explain to Laurence Krauss why not, in this forum hosted by the Institute for Art and Ideas:
[Image credit: “Acceleration components” by Brews ohare – Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Acceleration_components.JPG#mediaviewer/File:Acceleration_components.JPG]
In our daily interactions with people—driving down the street, coordinating childcare, figuring out how to hide from an old girlfriend, buying a nice gift—we rely on folk psychology, our unschooled understanding of other people. These abilities are often attributed to a single mechanism often thought to be unique to the …
