Terence Horgan

Folk Psychology is Here to Stay

Folk psychology is a network of principles which constitutes a sort of common-sense theory about how to explain human behavior. These principles provide a central role to certain propositional attitudes, particularly beliefs and desires. The theory asserts, for example, that if someone desires that p, and this desire is not overridden by other desires, and he believes that an action of kind K will bring it about that p, and he believes that such an action is within his power, and he does not believe that some other kind of action is within his power and is a preferable way to bring it about that p, then ceteris paribus, the desire and the beliefs will cause him to perform an action of kind K. The theory is largely functional, in that the states it postulates are characterized primarily in terms of their causal relations to each other, to perception and other environmental stimuli, and to behavior. Folk psychology (henceforth FP) is deeply ingrained in our common-sense conception of ourselves as persons. Whatever else a person is, he is supposed to be a rational (at least largely rational) agent-that is, a creature whose behavior is systematically caused by, and explainable in terms of, his beliefs, desires, and related propositional attitudes. The wholesale rejection of FP, therefore, would entail a drastic revision of our conceptual scheme. This fact seems to us to constitute a good prima facie reason for not discarding FP too quickly in the face of apparent difficulties. Recently, however, FP has come under fire from two quarters. Paul Churchland (1981) has argued that since FP has been with us for at least twenty-five centuries, and thus is not the product of any deliberate and self-conscious attempt to develop a psychological theory which coheres with the account of homo sapiens which the natural sciences provide, there is little reason to suppose that FP is true, or that humans undergo beliefs, desires, and the like. And Stephen Stich (1983) has argued that current work in cognitive science suggests that no events or states posited by a mature cognitive psychology will be identifiable as the events and states posited by FP; Stich maintains that if this turns out to be the case,

Troubles on moral twin earth: Moral queerness revived

J. L. Mackie argued that if there were objective moral properties or facts, then the supervenience relation linking the nonmoral to the moral would be metaphysically queer. Moral realists reply that objective supervenience relations are ubiquitous according to contemporary versions of metaphysical naturalism and, hence, that there is nothing especially queer about moral supervenience. In this paper we revive Mackies challenge to moral realism. We argue: (i) that objective supervenience relations of any kind, moral or otherwise, should be explainable rather than sui generis; (ii) that this explanatory burden can be successfully met vis-à-vis the supervenience of the mental upon the physical, and in other related cases; and (iii) that the burden cannot be met for (putative) objective moral supervenience relations.

Metaethics After Moore

Introduction 1. How should ethics relate to (the rest of ) philosophy? 2. What do reasons do? 3. Evaluations of rationality 4. Intrinsic value and reasons for action 5. Personal good 6. Moore on the right, the good, and uncertainty 7. Scanlon versus Moore on goodness 8. Opening questions, following rules 9. Was Moore a Moorean? 10. Ethics as philosophy: a defence of ethical nonnaturalism 11. The legacy of Principia 12. Cognitivist expressivism 13. Truth and the expressing in expressivism 14. Normative properties 15. Moral intuitionism meets empirical psychology 16. Ethics dehumanized

TROUBLES FOR NEW WAVE MORAL SEMANTICS: THE ‘OPEN QUESTION ARGUMENT’ REVIVED

G. E. Moore held that all forms of ethical naturalism rested on a fallacy -the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacy’ which his open question argument was designed to expose. For a while anyway, the argument’s persuasive appeal held a good many philosophers in its sway. Its appeal was felt by W. D. Ross (1930: 7-11,92-3) and A. C. Ewing (1948: 41-2) who, like Moore, were led to espouse ethical nonnaturalism. Its appeal was also felt by A. J. Ayer (1952: 104-05) and R. M. Hare (1952: ch. 5 ) who, because they found the metaphysical and epistemological commitments of nonnaturalism unpalatable, were led to noncognitivist accounts of moral discourse.’ But as it turned out, the persuasive appeal of Moore’s argument lasted only as long as did the appeal of certain semantical views upon which ethical naturalism was presumed to rest. Once these semantical views were questioned and the philosophical soil was fertilized with more plausible views, a novel strain of ethical naturalism a kind allegedly immune to Moorean open question arguments was bound to sprout forth. One now sees this new strain of ethical naturalism everywhere, though we think it first emerged in the hearty intellectual climate of upper New York state. Our central aim in this paper is to cast doubt on the sort of new wave moral semantics that has recently been pressed into service on behalf of ethical naturalism. We argue that the currently popular version of naturalism, despite its immunity to Moore’s version of the open question argument, succumbs to a newly fashioned open question argument. Since new wave moral semantics is at the heart of the recent strain of

Phenomenal intentionality and the brain in a vat

In original contributions, internationally leading authors address themselves to one of the most important questions of contemporary theoretical philosophy. The debate between internalism and externalism has become a focal point of attention both in epistemology and in the philosophy of mind and language. Externalism challenges basic traditional internalist conceptions of the nature of knowledge, justification, thought and language.

Empathy and Agency the Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences

Introduction: Simulation, Empathy, and Interpretation in the Philosophy of Social Science (Hans Herbert Kgler and Karsten R. Stueber) Simulation and the Explanation of Action (Robert M. Gordon) The Theory of Holistic Simulation: Beyond Interpretivism and Postempiricism (Georg Vielmetter) Imitation or the Internalization of Norms: Is Twentieth-Century Social Theory Based on the Wrong Choice? (Stephen Turner) Simulation and Epistemic Competence (David Henderson and Terence Horgan) Understanding Other Minds and the Problem of Rationality (Karsten R. Stueber) Simulation and the Verstehen School: A Wittgensteinian Approach (Theodore R. Schatzki) From Simulation to Structural Transposition: A Diltheyan Critique of Empathy and Defense of Verstehen (Rudolf A. Makkreel) Empathy, Dialogical Self, and Reflexive Interpretation: Simulation as a Method in the Social Sciences? (Hans Herbert Kgler) The Importance of the Second Person: Interpretation, Practical Knowledge, and Normative Attitudes (James Bohman) The Object of Understanding (Paul A. Roth) Reenactment as Critique of Logical Analysis: Wittgensteinian Themes in Collingwood (Simon Blackburn)

The Case Against Events

THE concept of event has a prominent role in contemporary philosophy, because many important philosophical problems are often phrased with reference to events. For instance, the mind-body problem is often regarded nowadays as the problem of the relation between mental events and physical events; discussions of scientific explanation usually assume that the entities explained are events; causation is usually treated as a relation between events; determinism is usually taken to be the thesis that all events are causally necessitated; and actions, a species of event, are the very subjectmatter of action theory. It is not surprising, therefore, that philosophers have generally taken for granted that there are such things as events. We naturally tend to be tolerant of entities which seem to play such a prominent role in so many philosophical issues. But I contend that the concept of event is much less vital to the formulation of these issues-and to our conceptual scheme in general-than it first appears to be. Indeed, I shall argue that it is a mistake to posit events at all. My case will rest on an application of Occams Razor. I will show that despite the initial appearances, there is no real theoretical need to postulate events. So, since their elimination yields an important simplification of ontology, we should banish them from existence.

A nonclassical framework for cognitive science

David Marr provided a useful framework for theorizing about cognition within classical, AI-style cognitive science, in terms of three levels of description: the levels of (i) cognitive function, (ii) algorithm and (iii) physical implementation. We generalize this framework: (i) cognitive state transitions, (ii) mathematical/functional design and (iii) physical implementation or realization. Specifying the middle, design level to be the theory of dynamical systems yields a nonclassical, alternative framework that suits (but is not committed to) connectionism. We consider how a brains (or a networks) being a dynamical system might be the key both to its realizing various essential features of cognition — productivity, systematicity, structure-sensitive processing, syntax — and also to a non-classical solution of (frame-type) problems plaguing classical cognitive science.

The Epistemological Spectrum: At the Interface of Cognitive Science and Conceptual Analysis

1. An Overview 2. Grades of A Priori Justification 3. Neoclassical Reliabilism 4. Transglobal Reliabilism 5. Defending Transglobal Reliabilism 6. Epistemic Competence and the Call to Naturalize Epistemology 7. An Expanded Conception of Epistemically Relevant Cognitive Processes: The Role of Morphological Content 8. Iceberg Epistemology: Vindicating and Transforming Some Traditional Accounts of Justification Bibliography Index

Functionalism, Qualia, and the Inverted Spectrum

Functionalism is the doctrine that every mental state-type may be fully defined by means of its typical causal connections to sensory stimulation, behavior, and other mental state-types similarly defined. Some philosophers, myself included, believe that although functionalism is plausible as regards certain aspects of mentality, nevertheless there is one aspect that is incapable, in principle, of being analyzed functionally: viz., the qualitative, or phenomenal, content of our mental states i.e., what it is like to undergo these states. What we mean by the notion of qualitative content, and why we think that this aspect of mentality cannot be accommodated by functionalism, are nicely summarized by Jerry Fodor: