Here’s a just published paper by Duncan Pritchard in Synthese. It’s reassuring to see epistemologists picking up on the extended mind thesis – the other notable epistemologist pursuing this line is Sandy Goldberg. This is the way things are going – I for one am working on a project that will be a major push in this direction. As I’ve recently said, “ it is clear that the notion of extended mind has made inroads into other domains . . epistemologists who view mind and epistemology as two sides to the same coin and are engaged in the project to “cognitivize epistemology” and “socialize the mind” (Goldberg, 2007; Marsh & Onof, 2008b; Prichard, in press).”
Duncan’s Abstract
This paper explores the ramifications of the extended cognition thesis in the philosophy of mind for contemporary epistemology. In particular, it argues that all theories of knowledge need to accommodate the ability intuition that knowledge involves cognitive ability, but that once this requirement is understood correctly there is no reason why one could not have a conception of cognitive ability that was consistent with the extended cognition thesis. There is thus, surprisingly, a straightforward way of developing our current thinking about knowledge such that it incorporates the extended cognition thesis.
I was sorry to learn of the death of Tony (Lord) Quinton.
My first contact with him was in the late-80s. Geoff Thomas, my Birkbeck tutor (who himself had Quinton as an examiner at Oxford), wrote to Quinton asking if he’d care to grant a young student an hour to chat about Oakeshott. Within the week, Quinton called me directly to set up a lunch-time meeting at the House of Lords. He very kindly showed me around and treated to me to a lovely lunch. We then settled in to discuss Oakeshott (I was canvassing interest in getting research supervision). Tony as he insisted I call him, was a superb raconteur and before long the formality of my stated intentions dissolved. We talked much about Oakeshott but also about Iris Murdoch, Gilbert Ryle and Wittgenstein. Three hours later I bid my farewell. On leaving he gave me a book from his private library (Baruch Brody’s Identity and Essence), an incredibly thoughtful gesture since he’d obvious consulted with Geoff as to what my other philosophical interests were. Not only that, he gave me a House of Lords pen set.
My next encounter with Tony was in the setting up of the Oakeshott Association. Without any hesitation he allowed me to trade on his name to gather the major Oakeshott players together to form this association. Of course this worked a charm. And when inquiries started to come through about when the Oakeshott conference would be (what conference???) once again I asked him if, subject to securing the funding, he would be the plenary speaker. Yet again, without pressing me on any detail whatsoever said that I should just let him know the date and he’ll be there. True to his word, at 9am precisely the dashing and dapper Tony Quinton stepped out of a taxi outside the Hong Kong Theatre in the Aldwych and Tony breezed in. Unusually for Tony (so I’m told) he hung around for the reception. Below are two photographs from the MOA reception.
At that time I was also in the process of setting up a new philosophy journal EPISTEME. Again, I turned to Tony asking if I could trade on his name to get this project going. As usual, he agreed with “no if or buts” expressed. Social epistemology was something he was always interested in but was not known as such in the analytical tradition. Having secured a publisher I decided that an annual conference would be in order to promote the journal and also provide a forum for this growing field. But where to hold such an event with little or no funding? Being a member of the British Academy Tony suggested that we book a room in his name and of course secure a members discount. This was duly done and again I was presumptuous enough to ask him if he’d be the first speaker. Of course, he agreed. In the interim I was Los Angeles-based and was communicating with Tony via snail mail and fax to get his talk knocked into shape for the first issue of EPISTEME. Tony didn’t do email and the typewritten script replete with “Tippexed” out typos and handwritten markup became quite a challenge to decipher.
Over the years I saw him at a couple of RIP lectures. Perhaps Tony’s real talent was as an expositor. He had the incredible ability to synthesis vast and difficult works and present them in a wonderfully lucid way. Tony never passed this ability off as being anything more than exposition – unlike some (who shall remain nameless), he was not one to immerse himself in a topic for six weeks, crank out a book, thereby setting himself up as an expert in yet another field. I thought Tony’s magnum opus The Nature of Things (1973) to be choppy (see Michael Ayers’ review in Philosophy 49, 1974, pp. 401-413) and its subject matter was bound to upset many of his political allies. His The Politics of Imperfection: The Religious and Secular Traditions of Conservative Thought in England from Hooker to Oakeshott (1978) finds Quinton at his very best.
I am terribly grateful for the kindness and generosity of spirit he accorded me – a true gentleman if ever there was one.
Keep an eye out for this soon to be published anthology of papers. To my knowledge, this is the first such collection of analytically orientated papers on social epistemology. Some of the stellar line-up has previously appeared in EPISTEME.
Here’s an interview with André Kukla plugging his book (see above) from 2006 (which I’ve only just come across). I know Kukla through his technical philosophical work: two titles remain vivid to me. Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science and Studies in Scientific Realism. The former was a well-needed tough-minded antidote to the vulgar relativism that was characteristic of the day (no doubt, still is in some quarters). The latter, I recall having to get printed-on-demand. In many ways Kukla reminds me of Colin McGinn (the subject of my last post). Both had psychology and philosophy as a joint interest; both also have a no-nonsense clarity in their approach. I felt honoured to meet Kukla in person in 2006 at the EPISTEME conference at the University of Toronto. Speaking of EPISTEME, Kukla and a talented then-student of his, Joel Walmsley, produced a lovely paper for the issue I was editing entitled “Mysticism and Social Epistemology.”
Here’s a review by Robert West of Ron Sun’s (Ed.) book that has been very useful to me (I mean that I have already been using the book): Rob West’s review will better articulate the book’s virtues. (Reference books are notoriously difficult to review – a job admirably well done by Rob West).
Abstract:
Computational psychology refers to the effort to create computational mechanisms that, in some way, mimic mechanisms within the brain. More specifically, the goal in creating these mechanisms is to show that they can systematically reproduce patterns of human behaviour elicited under specific conditions. From this it is inferred that these mechanisms bare some similarity to the brain mechanisms that produced the human behaviours. In most cases this involves mimicking the results of psychology experiments, although it is good to see in this book, two chapters discussing the application of this approach to non experimental areas (multi agent social interactions and cognitive engineering).
Check out two recent MSS by Alvin Goldman that addresses this question.
1. Why Social Epistemology Is Real Epistemology(to appear in D. Pritchard, A. Haddock, and A. Millar, eds., Social Epistemology, Oxford University Press). Goldman, the doyen of analytical social epistemology takes on the late Bill Alston.
2. Systems-Oriented Social Epistemology(to appear in T. Gendler and J. Hawthorne, eds., Oxford Studies in Epistemology). “Systems oriented SE is a flexible form of epistemological consequentialism that evaluates social epistemic systems in terms of their impact on epistemic outcomes.” Good grief – Hayek even gets a mention.
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