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Showing posts from January, 2020

Confabulation and Introspection

Today's post is by Adam Andreotta . He earned his PhD from the University of Western Australia in 2018. His research and teaching interests include: epistemology, self-knowledge, the philosophy of David Hume and the philosophy of artificial intelligence.  Here, he introduces his article, " Confabulation does not undermine introspection for propositional attitudes ", that has recently appeared in the journal Synthese. For more of his work, see his PhilPapers profile . Most of us think there exists an asymmetry between the way we know our own minds, and the way we know the minds of others. For example, it seems that I can know that I intend to watch Back to the Future , or that I believe that Australia will win the Ashes, by introspection: a private and secure way of knowing my own mental states. If I want to know whether my friend intends to see Back to the Future or believes that Australia will win the Ashes, I need to ask them or observe their behaviour. This co

The Philosophy Museum

This post is by Anna Ichino, University of Milan. Have you ever visited a Philosophy Museum? I bet not. Apparently, indeed, there aren’t any Philosophy Museums in the world. Or better: there aren’t any yet… But together with my colleagues at the Philosophy Department of the University of Milan we have decided that it is time to build the first one. In this post, I’ll tell you about this exciting project. What we had in mind was not an historically-minded museum collecting relics about the lives and works of important philosophers; but something more dynamic and interactive – built on the model of the best science museums – where philosophical problems and theories become intuitively accessible through a variety of games, activities, experiments, aesthetic experiences, and other such things. Easier to say than to do, no doubt. It’s an ambitious project, and to put it into action we had to proceed gradually. We started with a temporary exhibition, which took place in

Phenomenological Psychopathology

Today's post is by Joseph Houlders, doctoral candidate at the University of Birmingham. In this post, he reports on the book launch for the new Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology . The event took place on 22 July 2019, and was chaired by one of the editors of the handbook, Professor Matthew Broome, Director of the Institute for Mental Health at the University of Birmingham. Five contributors to the handbook spoke at the launch: Professor Christoph Hoerl, Understanding, explaining and the concept of psychic illness   Dr Clara Humpston, Thoughts without thinkers: The paradox of thought insertion   Professor Femi Oyebode, Consciousness and its Disorders  Dr Anthony Vincent Fernandez, Phenomenology and Psychiatric Classification Dr Gareth Owen, Psychopathology and Law: what does phenomenology have to offer?  The launch began with an apt question: to what extent can we understand and explain psychic illness? The central theme of the afternoon was how

Self, Others and the State: Relations of Criminal Responsibility

Today's post is by Arlie Loughnan who is Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Law Theory and Co-Director of the Institute of Criminology at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Manifest Madness: Mental Incapacity in Criminal Law (OUP 2012). Criminal responsibility – the basis on which individuals are called to account for criminal conduct, and the form or structure of the criminal law – is now central to criminal law, but it is in need of re-examination. In the context of Australian criminal laws, my book, Self, Others and the State: Relations of Criminal Responsibility reassesses the general assumptions made about the rise to prominence of criminal responsibility in the period since around the turn of the twentieth century. In my account, I pay close and careful attention to the intricacies of developments in criminal responsibility, and reconsider the role and significance of criminal responsibility in criminal law. I argue that criminal responsibility is sign