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The Self in the Age of Cognitive Science
The most excellent Rob Rupert has made his latest paper freely available.
Abstract
Philosophers of mind commonly draw a distinction between the personal level – the distinctive realm of conscious experience and reasoned deliberation – and the subpersonal level, the domain of mindless mechanism and brute cause and effect. Moreover, they tend to view cognitive science through the lens of this distinction. Facts about the personal level are given a priori, by introspection, or by common sense; the job of cognitive science is merely to investigate the mechanistic basis of these facts. I argue that this view misrepresents the structure of cognitive-scientific enquiry. Taken at face value, cognitive science makes no commitment to the existence of a distinctive level at which persons or selves appear. Thus, in the age of cognitive science, we should not expect to find the self in an ontologically distinct realm. Instead, we should expect to locate it in cognitive-scientific models themselves. In closing, I indicate likely results of this approach.
Ludwig Lachmann: Enigmatic and Controversial Austrian Economist
This past weekend I had the good fortune to attend an intimate conference on Ludwig Lachmann, a name that has been lingering in the air for me for many years but that I’d never got round to actually reading. Not only did I for the most part find Lachmann’s writing, notably The Market As an Economic Process, very congenial to someone such as myself who has a longstanding interest in “situated” (i.e. non-rationalist) theorists, but I got to hear a few of those who actually knew him (insofar as one could) and others who are just well-versed in Lachmann’s work. This Liberty Fund Forum now has so much more significance for me though of course I can’t quite grasp the technical aspects of Lachmann’s economics. I’ve been advised that I now should read his The Legacy of Max Weber freely available here.
Kafka’s Last Trial
Christoph Irmscher reviews the newly published book by Benjamin Balint — Kafka’s Last Trial — that sets out the tortuous fate of Kafka’s literary estate.
Why Is Virtual Reality Interesting for Philosophers?
F. A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy and Social Philosophy
This should be a cracking read written by none other than grandee Hayek scholar Pete Boettke.
