Larry Shapiro has a new paper posted on his website. Prominent defenders of the extended cognition thesis have looked to evolutionary theory for support. Roughly, the idea is that natural selection leads one to expect that cognitive strategies should exploit the environment, and exploitation of the right sort results in a cognitive system that extends beyond the head…
Here’s a paper from Susan Haack to be delivered at the Helsinki Metaphysical Club. In philosophy, George Santayana famously observed, “partisanship is treason.” I agree. Like good-faith inquirers in any field, philosophers have an obligation to seek true and illuminating answers to the questions that concern them; and it would obviously be a serious breach…
Philosopher of mind, Tim Crane, on religion and evidence in The New York Times. For what it’s worth I have repeatedly said that epistemologically speaking, the concept of God does not achieve enough clarity and distinctness to be discussable. When we cite the divine attributes—omniscience, omnipotence, and so on—I do not think we have the least purchase on…
On hearing that Simon’s “thinking machine” computer program Logic Theorist not only validated Russell and Whitehead’s axioms and theorems (but even proved one more elegantly), Russell replied: “I am delighted to know that Principia Mathematica can now be done by machinery. I [only] wish Whitehead and I had known of this possibility before we both…
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…
manwithoutqualities 