The narrative practice hypothesis: origins and applications of folk psychology

The original article can be found at: http://journals.cambridge.org/--Copyright The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors & Cambridge University Press DOI : 10.1017/S1358246107000033Psychologically normal adult humans make sense of intentional actions by trying to decide for which reason they were performed. This is a datum that requires our understanding. Although there have been interesting recent debates about how we should understand ‘reasons’, I will follow a long tradition and assume that, at a bare minimum, to act for a reason involves having appropriately interrelated beliefs and desires.Peer reviewe

Questing for happiness: augmenting Aristotle with Davidson

Original article can be found at: http://www.ajol.info/journal_index.php?jid=211 Copyright Philosophical Society of Southern Africa (PSSA)Drawing heavily on Aristotle, Tabensky attempts to establish ‘an ethic that flows from the very structure of our being’, but he also calls on Davidson’s arguments about the essentially social character of rationality to shore up Aristotle’s claim that we are essentially social beings. This much of his project, I argue is successful. However Tabensky takes this a step further and proposes a pluralist ethic on the grounds that a ‘fully’ or ‘properly’ instantiated account of the ‘ideal’ conditions for rationality requires encountering innumerable other points of view. Firstly, while confronting alternatives is essential to truth-seeking it hardly follows that an unconstrained pluralism represents an ideal condition for this kind of inquiry, since such an approach risks falling into mere clash of perspectives on practical grounds. Secondly, it is unclear how confronting more and more perspectives is supposed to help in enabling us to lead our lives well. In conclusion, picking up on this theme and looking again at Aristotle, I give reasons for questioning that the kind of rational choice involved in leading the good life, for reasons in part highlighted by Tabensky, benefits from analogy with the modes of conceptual rational inquiry in other domains in any case.Peer reviewe

The reign of Prince Auto : psychology in an age of science

Copyright SpringerThe principle of autonomy (hereafter Prince Auto) is a doctrine which commits physicalistic philosophers to mechanical explanations of human behaviour. In this paper I argue that physicalism (in all its forms) presents a much too narrow account of scientific explanation. If we are to develop an adequate philosophy of psychology we must first free ourselves from the rule of a metaphysical picture which has dominated philosophy since at least the time of Descartes. We must free ourselves from the reign of Prince Auto.Peer reviewe

Culture in Mind - An Enactivist Account: Not Cognitive Penetration But Cultural Permeation

Advancing a radically enactive account of cognition, we provide arguments in favour of the possibility that cultural factors permeate rather than penetrate cognition, such that cognition extensively and transactionally incorporates cultural factors rather than there being any question of cultural factors having to break into the restricted confines of cognition. The paper reviews the limitations of two classical cognitivist, modularist accounts of cognition and a revisionary, new order variant of cognitivism – a Predictive Processing account of Cognition, or PPC. It argues that the cognitivist interpretation of PPC is conservatively and problematically attached to the idea of inner models and stored knowledge. In abandoning that way of understanding PPC, it offers a radically enactive alternative account of how cultural factors matter to cognition – one that abandons all vestiges of the idea that cultural factors might contentfully communicate with basic forms of cognition. In place of that idea, the possibility that culture permeates cognition is promoted

The Cognitive Basis of Computation: Putting Computation in Its Place

The mainstream view in cognitive science is that computation lies at the basis of and explains cognition. Our analysis reveals that there is no compelling evidence or argument for thinking that brains compute. It makes the case for inverting the explanatory order proposed by the computational basis of cognition thesis. We give reasons to reverse the polarity of standard thinking on this topic, and ask how it is possible that computation, natural and artificial, might be based on cognition and not the other way around

Fus Fixico Classification System

Western cataloging systems organize information by subject and are created through a western lens. Indigenous communities organize information according to other factors, notably: cosmology, geography, language, and a sense of being. Our library created and actively uses the Fus Fixico (“Angry Bird” in Muskogee 'Creek' Language) Classification System (FFCS). FFCS is named after the Fus Fixico letters, which were written by Alexander Posey, a Muscogee Humorist, who served as secretary at the Sequoyah Constitutional Convention. FFCS borrows elements from the Brian Deer Classification System, Dewey, and Graph Theory to create a more inclusive system that empowers improved metadata and LoC subjects to thrive, while also still providing for user-friendly collocatio

Wittgenstein\u27s poker: the story of a ten-minute argument between two great philosophers

Did Wittgenstein violently threaten Karl Popper with a poker on the cold evening of 25 October 1946 at a meeting of Moral Sciences Club in Cambridge? Responding to this question is the wonderful pretext that the authors use to introduce the rich world and characters of mid-twenteith century philosophy. They grab their readers\u27 imaginations by latching onto this concrete, legendary, event - the alleged aggressive weilding of a poker - at what many would have imagined to be an utterly civilised, if not downright dull, philosophical meeting. Through this investigation, they bring to life not only the characters in this drama, both principal and supporting, but they also put flesh on the bones of the historical contexts from which some great philosophical ideas have emerged

Review: The Character of Consciousness

Chalmers is a very big name in the philosophy of consciousness and this is a very big book about consciousness. Weighing in at over six hundred pages and comprised of fourteen, already published papers (two of which are co-authored), it collects together Chalmers’ greatest hits on consciousness in one handy tome. It is comprised of some highly technical and intricate philosophical papers juxtaposed with a couple of more accessible writings that have influenced disciplines outside of philosophy. For anyone wishing to familiarize themselves with the nuances and fine details of Chalmers’ approach (or who lacks the full set of his papers already) the book offers excellent value for money. It provides a window on what motivates his approach and, crucially, where his thinking is leading him now

A reconciliation for the future of psychiatry: Both folk psychology and cognitive science

Philosophy of psychiatry faces a tough choice between two competing ways of understanding mental disorders. The folk psychology (FP) view puts our everyday normative conceptual scheme in the driver\u27s seat - on the assumption that it, and it only, tells us what mental disorders are (1). Opposing this, the scientific image (SI) view (2, 3) holds that our understanding of mental disorders must come, wholly and solely, from the sciences of the mind, unfettered by FP. This paper argues that the FP view is problematic because it is too limited: There is more to the mind than FP allows; hence, we must look beyond FP for properly deep and illuminating explanations of mental disorders. SI promises just this. But when cast in its standard cognitivist formulations, SI is unnecessarily and unjustifiably neurocentric. After rejecting both the FP view, in its pure form, and SI view, in its popular cognitivist renderings, this paper concludes that a more liberal version of SI can accommodate what is best in both views - once SI is so formulated and the FP view properly edited and significantly revised, the two views can be reconciled and combined to provide a sound philosophical basis for a future psychiatry