Imperfect Cognitions

Caitrin Donovan  and  Reinier Schuur  report from the 2015 University of Sydney Winter School. The programme was entitled "Cross-cultural psychological differences and their philosophical implications" and seminars were led by  Stephen Stich  (Rutgers) and  Dominic Murphy  (University of Sydney). From the 19th till the 23rd of October the unit for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney held its second winter school programme, this year on the topic of “Cross-cultural psychological differences and their philosophical implications”. Intuitions have been long been the bread and butter of various philosophical projects, which use them to evaluate semantic, epistemic, ethical and ontological theories and concepts. This can be seen in ‘Gettier cases’ in epistemology where accounts of knowledge are tested against intuitions on what counts as knowledge, and in ‘trolley cases’ in ethics where what is morally justified action i...

Marion Godman I’m a philosopher at the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Philosophy of the Social Sciences and the University of Cambridge . I have been exploring the possibility that the human categories employed in psychology and the social sciences are not mere social constructions, but denote something real and epistemically useful to base a science on (or to use philos ophical jargon, ‘natural kinds’). As part of my work I am keen to look more closely at particular case studies that engage scientists. One case that has challenged my realist project is that of cultural syndromes (or culturally bound syndromes). At least on the face of it cultural syndromes hardly seem very scientific or very real. They represent conditions or disorders that do not occur in the human population at large, but instead seems connected to a particular time period and a particular culture. They also involve stories about the body that defy scientific fact. One well-known case in India, ...