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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Allowing For Every Contingency, Raam P. Gokhale
Allowing For Every Contingency, Raam P. Gokhale
Raam P Gokhale
A Dialogue on Determinism, Contingency and Free Will
Locke And Berkeley At Twenty Paces, Frederick J. White Iii
Locke And Berkeley At Twenty Paces, Frederick J. White Iii
Frederick J White III
Does the world exist? Or more properly questioned, does anything of the world exist beyond our ideas of it? Locke and Berkeley have become seconds at twenty paces on this dichotomy, and we are asked to consider the outcome of the duel.
From Slumdog To Maddog, Raam P. Gokhale
From Slumdog To Maddog, Raam P. Gokhale
Raam P Gokhale
A hearing in the court of Sanity
Michael Wheeler: Reconstructing The Cognitive World: The Next Step, Leslie Marsh
Michael Wheeler: Reconstructing The Cognitive World: The Next Step, Leslie Marsh
Leslie Marsh
Michael Wheeler is the latest in a new wave of philosophical theorists that fall within a loose coalition of anti-representationalism (or anti-Cartesianism): Dynamical –, Embodied –, Extended –, Distributed –, and Situated –, theories of cognition (DEEDS an apt acronym). Against this background, cognition for Wheeler is, or should be, a more ecumenical concept. This ecumenical approach would still be amenable to making theoretical distinctions, the central one being the notion of offline and online styles of intelligence, a distinction that makes conceptual space for another closely related notion, that of propositional knowledge (knowing that) and tacit knowledge (knowing how).
Dewey: The First Ghost-Buster?, Leslie Marsh
Dewey: The First Ghost-Buster?, Leslie Marsh
Leslie Marsh
Ghost-busting, or less colloquially, anti-Cartesianism or non-representationalism, is a loose and internally fluid coalition (philosophical and empirical) comprising Dynamical, Embodied, Extended, Distributed, and Situated (DEEDS) theories of cognition. Gilbert Ryle – DEEDS’ anglophonic masthead [1] – supposedly exorcised the Cartesian propensity to postulate mind as an apparition-like entity somehow situated in the body. Ryle’s behaviouristic recommendation was, that just as we don’t see the wind blowing but only see the trees waving, so too should we conceive intelligence as manifest though action. The Cartesian ghost of old has mutated, taking the form of the ‘Machine in the Machine’, the brain …
Review Of Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles To A Science Of Consciousness, Leslie Marsh
Review Of Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles To A Science Of Consciousness, Leslie Marsh
Leslie Marsh
The question of how a physical system gives rise to the phenomenal or experiential (olfactory, visual, somatosensitive, gestatory and auditory), is considered the most intractable of scientific and philosophical puzzles. Though this question has dominated the philosophy of mind over the last quarter century, it articulates a version of the age-old mind–body problem. The most famous response, Cartesian dualism, is on Daniel Dennett’s view still a corrosively residual and redundant feature of popular (and academic) thinking on these matters. Fifteen years on from his anti-Cartesian theory of consciousness (Consciousness Explained, 1991), Dennett’s frustration with this tradition is still palpable. This …
Propositional Attitude Psychology As An Ideal Type, Justin Schwartz
Propositional Attitude Psychology As An Ideal Type, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
his paper critiques the view, widely held by philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists, that psychological explanation is a matter of ascribing propositional attitudes (such as beliefs and desires) towards language-like propositions in the mind, and that cognitive mental states consist in intentional attitudes towards propositions of a linguistic quasi-linguistic nature. On this view, thought is structured very much like a language. Denial that propositional attitude psychology is an adequate account of mind is therefore, on this view, is tantamount to eliminative materialism, the denial that human beings are thinking beings.
I dispute this on the basis of recent work …
Reduction, Elimination, And The Mental, Justin Schwartz
Reduction, Elimination, And The Mental, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
The antireductionist arguments of many philosophers for example, Fodor and Davidson, are motivated by a worry that successful reduction (whatever that would be) would eliminate rather than conserve or explain the mental. This worry derives from an misunderstanding of the classic deductive nomological empiricist account of reduction. Although this account does not, in fact, underwrite "cognitive suicide," it should be rejected as positivist baggage. Philosophy of psychology and mind needs to have more detailed attention to issues of reduction on philosophy of sciences and natural scientific analogies that serve as models for reduction. I consider a range of central cases …