Imperfect Cognitions

Today's post is by  Karen Yan (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University) on her recent paper (co-authored with Chuan-Ya Liao), " A co-citation analysis of cross-disciplinarity in the empirically-informed philosophy of mind " ( Synthese 2023). Karen Yan What drives us to write this paper is our curiosity about what it means when philosophers of mind claim their works are informed by empirical evidence and how to assess this quality of empirically-informedness. Building on Knobe’s (2015) quantitative metaphilosophical analyses of empirically-informed philosophy of mind (EIPM), we investigated further how empirically-informed philosophers rely on empirical research and what metaphilosophical lessons to draw from our empirical results.  We utilize scientometric tools and categorization analysis to provide an empirically reliable description of EIPM. Our methodological novelty lies in integrating the co-citation analysis tool with the conceptual resources from the philosoph

In this post, Harriet Fagerberg and Justin Garson discuss their new paper, “Proper Functions are Proximal Functions,” forthcoming in The British Journal for Philosophy of Science (preprint  here ). Harriet Fagerberg What makes something a mental disorder? Why are schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression mental disorders, but not jealousy, grief, or racism? This is philosophy of medicine’s famous “demarcation problem.” We think that what makes something a mental disorder, rather than an ordinary response to the problems of life, or run-of-the-mill social deviance, is that there’s a dysfunction. Something in the person’s brain isn’t working as designed. The same is true of the rest of medicine. What makes diabetes or leukemia diseases, rather than just unpleasant things to have (like being short), is that they involve dysfunctions. Justin Garson But what are functions? By ‘function’ we just mean effects that were favored by natural selection. The function of the heart is to pump

On 11th and 12th April in beautiful Trento, the Foundation Bruno Kessler hosted the final conference of the two-year research project on Resilient Beliefs , organised by Eugenia Lancellotta and featuring a number of international speakers interested in conspiracy theories, religious beliefs, delusions, and similar phenomena. Programme of the conference The first speaker was Scott Hill (University of Innsbruck), highlighting problems for a prominent study on the use of "conspiracy theory". Hill started discussing Miranda Fricker's account of testimonial injustice and then argued that conspiracy theorists do not suffer from a credibility deficit. That is because the credibility they are assigned matches the credibility they deserve. Scott Hill The second speaker was Anna-Maria Asunta Eder (University of Cologne), also working in social epistemology, who discussed the phenomenon of learning from others and resisting the evidence of others. Eder aims to bring some issues wid

Today's post is by David Thorstad who presents his new book  Inquiry Under Bounds (OUP 2024).  Herbert Simon held that human cognition is shaped by a pair of scissors. The blades of the scissors are our internal and external bounds. Internally, we are bounded by our limited cognitive abilities and the costs of exercising them. We cannot execute arbitrarily complex cognitive operations, and the operations we do execute compete with others for scarce resources.  Externally, we are bounded by our environment. The environment determines the cognitive problems we are likely to face and the results that cognitive strategies will have when applied to those problems.  The study of bounded rationality asks what rationality requires of agents who are both internally and externally bounded.   Simon also held that the fundamental turn in the study of bounded rationality is the turn from substantive to procedural rationality. Many of our most important cognitive bounds are felt most strongly a

This post is by Elliot Porter. Elliot is currently a teaching fellow at the University of Birmingham. He is interested in personal autonomy, the philosophy of madness and mental health, and broader themes in social and political philosophy. Elliot Porter Autonomy is not much of a folk concept: few people commiserate with their friends over how their autonomy has been disrespected, in quite those terms. Still, it’s something that everyone cares about. We take it as a slight when our view of what is good or reasonable is overlooked.  Mill has something like autonomy in mind when he tells us that someone’s mode of living is the best “not because it is the best in itself, but because it is his own mode”. At the heart of our interest in autonomy, lies an interest in our perspectives – what seems good or worthy to us. But not every perspective gets a hearing. Mill’s principle is conditional on our possessing “any tolerable amount of common sense and experience”. We mustn’t abandon anyon