Imperfect Cognitions

This week's post is by Shao-Pu Kang, a n assistant professor at National Tsing-Hua University, Graduate Institute of Philosophy,  his recent publication Against an Epistemic Argument for Mineness in Review of Philosophy and Psychology .    Shao-Pu Kang  Suppose you see a sunrise. You are thrilled, feel a chill in the air, hear your inner voice saying “that’s magnificent,” imagine enjoying the view with your best friend, and think about your loved one. As you undergo these mental states, do you experience them as yours, even be fore you turn your attention to and reflect on them? This question lies at the heart of live debates about whether experiences come with a built-in sense of ownership, often called mineness: a pre-reflective awareness of one’s experiences as one’s own. In “Against an Epistemic Argument for Mineness,” I critically examine Marie Guillot’s novel attempt to defend typicalism, the view that all ordinary experiences have mineness.  Guillot star...

This post is by Víctor Fernández Castro (University of Granada) and Miguel Núñez de Prado-Gordillo (University of Granada). It is based on their chapter “Embodied, embedded, enactive, extended… and exclusionary? Toward an inclusive E-Cognition for cognitive diversity,” published in Analytic Philosophy and 4E Cognition, which explores how 4E approaches can be made more inclusive of neurodiversity.                              Miguel Núñez de Prado-Gordillo (University of Granada)            Víctor Fernández Castro (University of Granada) If, following Alice Crary and the political turn in analytic philosophy, one takes the conceptual and methodological to be political, then 4E Mental Health concepts express a range of political commitments. Some of these merit special attention in debates about how cognitive diversity and disability should be understood and recognized. In our chapter ...

This post is by Pablo Andrés López Silva (University of Valparaíso) and Miguel Núñez de Prado-Gordillo (University of Granada). It draws on their paper “A Roadmap to 4E Mental Health,” published in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, where they develop a 4E (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) framework for understanding mental health and psychopathology.                      Miguel Núñez de Prado-Gordillo (University of Granada)              Pablo Andrés López Silva (University of Valparaíso)  As a teenager, I (Miguel) spent a significant amount of my weekend nights compulsively collecting all the trash left in the parks where I used to get trashed with my friends. Back home, I would then spend some more time aligning all the stuff in my massively misaligned desk in straight angles. And I did so out of fear that a nasty, omnipotent Karmic force—whose existence I deemed almost ce...

This post is by Charlotte Gauvry and Uwe Peters. Introducing themes of their recent paper "Epistemic Challenges Faced by Non-native English Speakers in Philosophy: Evidence from an International Survey"   published in Review of Philosophy and Psychology . Charlotte is a teaching and research associate at Univerity of Bonn and Uwe is an assistant professor at Utrecht University.    Charlotte Gauvry The English language now dominates analytic philosophy. This has extensive benefits for international collaboration and communication. But does it also create unfair inequalities for non-native English speakers in the field? Things could be relatively fair if non-native English speakers with university-level English proficiency needed roughly the same amount of time to read, write, and prepare talks in English as native English speakers do. After all, in student essay grading, hiring decisions, journal reviewing, and so on, it is widely implicitly assumed that both groups face c...

This post is by Michael Cholbi and Paolo Stellino. Michael Cholbi is Professor and Personal Chair in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and author of Suicide: The Philosophical Dimension and Grief: A Philosophical Guide . Paolo Stellino is a researcher at the NOVA University of Lisbon, and author of Philosophical Perspectives on Suicide: Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein . They have recently published The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Suicide   with Oxford University Press.  Michael Cholbi According to the World Health Organization (2023), suicide results in nearly eight hundred thousand deaths per year globally, nearly twice the number who die due to homicide. Global rates of suicide have declined in most parts of the world over the past generation, but there are some notable outliers where rates have increased. Some governments and health authorities have developed smartphone apps or partnered with social media platforms such as Facebook to...

This weeks post is by Dr. Lena Wimmer, University of Würzburg. Presenting her recent paper Why Disinformation, Fake News, and Conspiracy Theories are not Fiction: A View From Philosophical Aesthetics and Literary Studies   published in  Review of Philosophy and Psychology Lena Wimmer    Not just in everyday conversations, but also in academic discussions, unreliable information – like misinformation, disinformation, fake news, and conspiracy theories – is often compared to fiction. I want to question whether that comparison really holds up. First, let us clarify what we mean by these different kinds of unreliable information. All of them operate at the level of individual claims or statements. Misinformation is the broadest category: it simply refers to false information, no matter whether the person sharing it means to mislead or not. Disinformation is more specific – it is false information shared deliberately to deceive. Fake news is a form of disinformation that ...

This post is by Víctor Verdejo, one of the editors – together with José Luis Bermúdez and Matheus Valente – of the collection Sharing Thoughts: Philosophical Perspectives on Intersubjectivity and Communication , recently published with Oxford University Press. He is a philosopher of mind and language, Ramón y Cajal fellow at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, and currently leads a number of research projects on communication, intersubjectivity and the self. More information can be found here . Cover of Sharing Thoughts Are you thinking what I am thinking? Well, it might be hard for you to know without further context, and in particular, without me telling you what that could be. But this way of talking certainly illustrates how natural and easy it is to consider the possibility of shared thoughts. We are all used to the idea that thoughts, ideas and experiences can be talked about, expressed and ultimately shared with our peers. And the force of this idea not only sits deeply with...

 Today’s post is by Brady Wagoner, Professor of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen and Aalborg University, Denmark. He published a recent article in Current Opinion in Psychology , together with Maja Sødinge Jørgensen and Kirstine Pahuus, titled “Conspiracy theories through the lens of collective memory”.   Brady Wagoner In psychology, c onspiracy theories are often treated as symptoms of faulty thinking: cognitive shortcuts gone wrong , paranoia, or failures of information literacy. This article develops an alternative approach through the lens of collective memory, which refers to the socially shared ways groups reconstruct the past to make sense of the present and anticipate the future. This perspective focuses on what conspiracy theories do, rather than what is wrong with those who believe them. It shifts attention from individual cognition as such to how thinking is embedded within history, culture, and social relations.   The article begins wi...

This post is by Anna Mameli, who attends secondary school and volunteers for The Philosophy Garden as part of her Duke of Edinburgh silver award. Anna reports on a paper recently published in a special issue of Revue Internationale de Philosophie on philosophy in the public sphere. Conceptual plumbing, an installation at the Philosophy Museum What are employers looking for? What do you need to successfully pass an interview? What helps you to win debates? Good epistemic skills. Epistemic skills allow you to gain, develop and use knowledge so that you can achieve your goals. This can be applied anywhere, from expressing your view in passionate debates in comment sections and discussing political issues with friends to deciding whether or not you should trust a source (e.g., when looking for medical advice) and convincingly presenting your point at work. These skills can be used for anything in your life! Learning good epistemic habits is essential for surviving in our society. So, ho...