Imperfect Cognitions

On the blog today, Kathleen speaks to Alfred Archer and Heidi Maibom about the journal ' Passion ', which was launched relatively recently. Alfred and Heidi are editors-in-chief of the journal.   Alfred Archer   KMH: Could you tell us a little bit about Passion, and its links to EPSSE? AA & HM: Certainly. 2014, The European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions (EPSSE) has been going for ten years now and has grown into a wonderful, lively and welcoming group of scholars working on philosophical issues related to emotions. Several years ago, it was suggested that the society could look into starting its own journal . The main reason for this was that while EPSSE’s members were publishing their work in a range of philosophical and interdisciplinary journals, there was no academic journal dedicated to publishing the kinds of papers that EPSSE members were writing. Between 2017 and 2020 the executive board, then led by Achim Stephan, explored various options fo...

In this post, I interview Bonny Astor on her experience on bringing philosophy to prisons and pubs. To learn more about her initiative to discuss thought experiments in pubs, check this website . Her meet up group  is here if you want to join! Bonny Astor Lisa Bortolotti: Do you want to tell us just a little bit about your background and how you got interested in philosophy. Bonny Astor: My academic background is in psychology. Then I did a course in the philosophy of psychology, and I got so interested in that and I had a lot of questions.  I don't really know much philosophy besides what I've taught myself. LB: But you brought philosophy to prison inmates. Do you want to tell us what you did? BA: Sure. I was co-facilitating a hearing voices support group in Pentonville Prison and I got a job with that team as an occupational therapy assistant. I was asked what kind of groups I would facilitate, and I wanted to create opportunities for people to talk about their e...

Fiona Woollard (University of Southampton) is a moral philosopher who has worked in areas that have been traditionally neglected by analytic philosophy, such as pregnancy and motherhood. See for instance, her recent piece for The Conversation .  In this interview, she shows us that philosophy can make a difference to how we think about maternal duties and choices in pregnancy and early motherhood. Fiona Woollard Lisa Bortolotti: To start with I'd like to ask you how you got interested in pregnancy and motherhood. Fiona Woollard : Thank you, Lisa. It feels to me that I was part of a fortunate group of women philosophers who felt able to be philosophers while still being women, without having to downplay the interests that we have as women. In the past it had been seen as possible to succeed as a woman in philosophy. But it was harder to get recognized as a philosopher if you were dealing with things that were thought to as women's issues.  And it felt as if there wa...

Today's post is an interview with Paolo Costa, who is a researcher at the Center for Religious Studies of the Bruno Kessler Foundation and leads the Resilient Beliefs project, and Eugenia Lancellotta, who is a postdoctoral researcher on the project. We talked about the Resilient Beliefs project.  Paolo Costa KMH: What is the 'Resilient Beliefs' project all about? PC & EL: It is a collaborative program involving 9 researchers in philosophy and theology and three different institutions: the Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento, in Italy, and the Universities of Innsbruck and Brixen in Austria. It is about hyper-robust beliefs, so to speak. By “hyper-robust beliefs” I mean beliefs that are especially resistant to criticism and change induced by counterargument and counterevidence. Now, these beliefs are often seen as irrational, because we tend to link rationality with revisability, flexibility, adaptability, etc.  But, of course, people who change their mind too ea...

As part of a University of Birmingham Women in Philosophy initiative to promote inclusion and diversity in access to philosophical research, I interviewed Anna Ichino (University of Milan) on the creation of the very first Philosophy Museum . Anna originally blogged about the Museum for us and for the Daily Nous in 2020 and she is offering here an exciting update on the uptake of the initiative and on her future plans to further develop the idea into something bigger and permanent.  Why do we need a Philosophy Museum? Can Philosophy be engaging and fun, as well as informative, for the wider public?  The first hall of the museum   Lisa Bortolotti (LB): How did you and your collaborators develop this idea of creating a philosophy museum? Anna Ichino (AI): The idea originally was of my colleague Paolo Spinicci who kept saying, there are in the world museums about almost everything. There are museums of art, science, cinema, sex, and toys. There are even a museum f...

In today's post I interview Åsa Wikforss about her Knowledge Resistance  program. Åsa is a professor of theoretical philosophy at Stockholm University, whose research sits at the intersection of philosophy of mind, language and epistemology. Åsa Wikforss Kathleen Murphy-Hollies : Hi Åsa. First of all, could you talk a little bit about what the knowledge resistance project is about and what kind of key questions it addresses? Åsa Wikforss : So it's a large cross disciplinary program with about 30 researchers involved. The full name is ‘Knowledge Resistance: Causes, Consequences and Cures’, and we investigate knowledge resistance from four different disciplinary angles. Philosophically, we do the foundational work of spelling out what we are even talking when we’re talking about knowledge resistance. At a first approximation, we say it's a kind of irrational resistance to evidence, but there's a lot to unpack there. What is the evidence? What kind of irrationality? What ...

In this post, part of a series on the new journal Memory, Mind & Media , Katie Laker interviews Robyn Fivush, whose article, co-authored with Ariel Grysman, is entitled: ' Narrative and gender as mutually constituted meaning-making systems ’ and is available open access. Robyn Fivush KL: Firstly, thank you for being part of the Memory, Mind & Media inaugural collection. Why was MMM a good fit for your paper? RF: The two core constructs that we explore in our paper, narrative and gender, are inherently interdisciplinary and culturally mediated. No single discipline can fully define or even describe either of these constructs; they require a broad synthesis across multiple ways of knowing. And both are fully culturally mediated; both narrative and gender derive from socially and culturally saturated lenses that find expression in multiple media formats, from books to memes.  MMM is committed to fostering conversations at the intersection of cognitive, social and cultural app...

Rachel Temple This post is first in a series of posts on a project on agency and youth mental health  funded by a MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind: Engagement Award and led by Rose McCabe at City University. The research team members were asked the same four questions and today it is Rachel Temple's turn to answer. Rachel is a Public Involvement & Research Manager at the mental health research charity, The McPin Foundation . At The McPin Foundation, she leads the McPin’s Young People Advisory Group and the wider young people’s network . She is passionate about ensuring meaningful involvement of young people in mental health research in ways that are comfortable, accessible, and engaging; regularly drawing from her social anxiety experiences when facilitating.  Rachel is responsible for ensuring that no key decisions are made without consulting with the young people on this project; seeking their input on things such as project aims, des...