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

Now Featured

John Schwenkler January 14, 2019 January 20, 2019 books

We are grateful to Shannon Spaulding for blogging this week on How We Understand Others: Philosophy and Social Cognition (Routledge, 2018). To view all her posts on a single page, please click here.

X-Phi Research Group at Florida State University

John Schwenkler January 9, 2019 January 9, 2019 Experimental Philosophy

The Experimental Philosophy Research Group at Florida State University, which is co-directed by David Rose, Mike Bishop, Jack Justus, Al Mele, and yours truly, has a new website, including links to a number of resources that could be useful to those starting out in the field. For more information, visit https://xphi.philosophy.fsu.edu/.

Sarah K. Robins Webinar on Memory & Optogenetic Intervention

Nick Byrd January 7, 2019 March 18, 2019 Memory / Neural Mechanisms Online / NM Webinar / Psychology

The Brains blog is excited for the first webinar of the year over at Neural Mechanisms this Friday. The event is free. Find information about how and when to join the webinar in this post.

Empirically-Informed Approaches to Weakness of Will: A Brains Blog Roundtable

Julia Haas January 7, 2019 April 10, 2019 Folk Psychology / Neuroscience / Psychology

Weakness of will is a traditional puzzle in the philosophy of action. The puzzle goes something like this:

FOLK PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY: If, at time t, an agent judges that it is better to do A than B, and she believes she is free to do A, then, provided she tries to do either at that time, she will try to do A and not B.

WEAKNESS OF WILL: An agent judges that it is better to do A than B, believes that she is free to do A, but tries to do B.

But taken together, these statements are inconsistent. FOLK PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY precludes the possibility of weakness of will (as characterized in WEAKNESS OF WILL), but WEAKNESS OF WILL asserts that it occurs. So can WEAKNESS OF WILL be possible, and if so, how?

Upcoming Events at the Brains Blog

John Schwenkler January 2, 2019 January 7, 2019 Events

I am very pleased to announce a number of events that will take place on the Brains blog in early 2019: January 7-11: Roundtable discussion on weakness of will, organized by Julia Haas, with contributions from Nora Heinzelmann, Agnes Moors, Neil Levy, Chandra Sripada, and Zina Ward. January 14-18: Featured Author: Shannon Spaulding on How …

CFP: Early Career Researcher Workshop in Philosophy of Mind and of Cognitive Science (Bochum)

John Schwenkler January 2, 2019 January 2, 2019 CFPs

Call for Papers: Second Bochum Early Career Researcher Workshop in Philosophy of Mind and of Cognitive Science Date: June 13th – June 14th, 2019 Location: Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany Submission deadline: March 17th, 2019 Keynote speakers: Onur Güntürkün and Rebekka Hufendiek This workshop offers early career researchers in philosophy of mind …