Ian Ravenscroft

Neuroscience and the Mind

Francis Crick has identified a doctrine-the neuron doctrine-which he apparently regards as both true and astonishing. I begin by carefully articulating Cricks doctrine, arguing that whilst plausible it is certainly not astonishing. I then consider a related doctrine, the biological neuroscience thesis (BNT). According to BNT, mental science is biological neuroscience, where biological neuroscience is pretty much exhausted by neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and neurochemistry. Stoljar and Gold argue that BNT is unsupported by current scientific developments. I argue that well-established results in the cognitive sciences show that it is false.

Charity, signaling, and welfare

Voices on the political right have long claimed that the welfare state ought to be kept small, and that charities can take over many of the tasks involved in helping those at the bottom of society. The arguments in favor of this claim are controversial, but even if they are accepted at face value the policy proposal remains problematic. For the proposal presupposes that charities would, in fact, be able to raise enough money to provide adequate help to those in need, and therefore assumes that charities are able to very significantly increase the number and/or size of donations they receive. We argue that there are good reasons for doubting that charities will be able to do this. Our argument turns on the fact that the most powerful strategy for eliciting donations—namely, allowing donors to use their donation to signal their pro-sociality—has an inbuilt upper limit. If too much emphasis is placed on the signaling opportunities donating to charity provides, donating no longer functions as an effective signal and the motivation to donate declines.

Engaging the World: Writing, Imagination, and Enactivism

Abstract:Writing is not purely cerebral; it reaches out beyond the brain to engage the world. Two kinds of world-engaging processes are discussed here: a dynamic loop involving writing, reading, and writing again, and a second dynamic loop involving writing, reading to an audience, receiving feedback, and writing again. Several writers, including Flaubert and Nabokov, have discerned these loops, which have also been explored experimentally. I close by discussing the role that active engagement with the world plays in imagination.