scholarly journals Interview on Experimental Philosophy with Joshua Knobe

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-28
Author(s):  
Pendaran S. Roberts ◽  
Joshua Knobe ◽  
Pendaran Roberts ◽  
Joshua Knobe
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Knobe Effect ◽  
Experimental Philosopher ◽  
Interdisciplinary Collaborations ◽  
Conversation Piece

This conversation piece contains an interview with Joshua Knobe. It provides a useful introduction to what experimental philosophy is and the interdisciplinary collaborations it encourages. Pendaran Roberts and Joshua Knobe collaboratively developed this conversation piece via email. Joshua Knobe is a renowned experimental philosopher, who works on a range of philosophical issues, including philosophy of mind, action and ethics. He is a professor in the Program in Cognitive Science and the Department of Philosophy at Yale University. He is most known for what is now called the ‘Knobe effect’.

Psychology: Autonomous or Anomalous?

Dialogue ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kernohan
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Essential Difference ◽  
Anomalous Monism

In a recent series of papers, Donald Davidson has put forward a challenging and original philosophy of mind which he has called anomalous monism. Anomalous monism has certain similarities to another recent and deservedly popular position: functionalist cognitive psychology. Both functionalism, in its materialist versions, and anomalous monism require token-token psychophysical identities rather than type-type ones. (Token identities are identities between individual events; type identities represent a stronger claim of identities between interesting sorts of events.) Both deny that psychology can be translated into, or scientifically reduced to, neurophysiology. Both are mentalistic theories, allowing psychology to make use of intentional descriptions in its theorizing. Anomalous monism uses a belief/desire/action psychology; cognitive science makes use of information-bearing states. But these similarities must not be allowed to conceal an essential difference between the two positions. Cognitive psychology claims to be a science, making interesting, lawlike generalizations for the purpose of explaining mental activity. Anomalous monism denies that psychology is a science by denying that psychological laws can be formulated. Davidson has other ideas for psychology connected with his work on meaning and truth. Hence, the title of one of his essays on anomalous monism is “Psychology as Philosophy”.

Monolingual and bilingual children’s understanding of Moore-paradox sentences

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-155
Author(s):  
Krisztina Bartha ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Overwhelming Majority ◽  
The Other ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Central Topic ◽  
Experimental Findings

Research of the theory of mind (ToM) has long been a central topic in cognitive science and experimental philosophy. A preliminary example of a Moore-paradox sentence would be: It is raining, but I don’t think it is. Understanding the paradoxes in these sentences is considered part of ToM development. This study focuses on the recognition of Moore’s paradoxical sentences by monolingual and bilingual children. According to the first hypothesis, comprehension of Moore-paradoxical sentences is estimated to start at the age of 7. The second hypothesis assumes that balanced bilingual children develop the ability to understand Moore-paradoxical sentences earlier than Hungarian dominant bilinguals, and balanced bilinguals also outperform their monolingual peers. Romanian monolingual and Hungarian-Romanian bilingual children aged between 5 and 8 (N = 134) participated in the experiment. Balanced and dominant bilingual groups were established based on a questionnaire filled in by the children’s parents. During the experiment, children had to listen to a number of sentences. Each sentence that contained paradoxical statements had control sentences matching syntactically. Children had to choose the sentences they thought to be “silly”. According to the experimental findings, 5- and 6-year-old children performed poorly while the overwhelming majority of 7- and 8-year-olds could select the Moore-paradoxical sentences. There were differences between the performance of monolingual and balanced bilingual groups and between the two bilingual groups. Balanced bilinguals performed better, and their comprehension of understanding Moorean sentences developed earlier than those of the other groups.

II. The Emotions and their Philosophy of Mind

2003 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
Richard Wollheim
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Yale University

When I was invited by Yale University to deliver the Cassirer lectures, I hesitated for a topic. I wanted something new. I proposed the emotions, and at that time my knowledge of the topic was so slight that I didn't know whether it was something that I had already written on or not.I mention this fact because one thing that I have since learnt about the emotions is that such ignorance is in order. For it is one of those topics where grasping the extension of the term is inseparable from having some theory of the matter, however primitive. One way to explain this fact is to invoke the novelty of the term, for, in the sense in which it is used in this lecture, it is only about 300 years old. Another way, probably related, is to point to the fact that, not only are there belief and particular beliefs, desire and particular desires, but, when we refer to particular beliefs and to particular desires, we call them ‘the belief that this’ or ‘the desire that that’. However there is no locution ‘the emotion that this’, or ‘the emotion that that’, which would indicate the presence of an emotion. It seems that ordinary language is an intermittent guide to the circumscription of the emotions.

scholarly journals The Problem of ESEE Knowledge

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Turri
Keyword(s):  
Side Effect ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Good Thing ◽  
Knobe Effect ◽  
Knowledge Ascription ◽  
Specific Instance ◽  
Theoretical Significance ◽  
Performance Error ◽  
A New Technique ◽  
Moral Valence

Traditionally it has been thought that the moral valence of a proposition is, strictly speaking, irrelevant to whether someone knows that the proposition is true, and thus irrelevant to the truth-value of a knowledge ascription. On this view, it’s no easier to know, for example, that a bad thing will happen than that a good thing will happen (other things being equal). But a series of very surprising recent experiments suggest that this is actually not how we view knowledge. On the contrary, people are much more willing to ascribe knowledge of a bad outcome. This is known as the epistemic side-effect effect (ESEE), and is a specific instance of a widely documented phenomenon, the side-effect effect (a.k.a. “the Knobe effect”), which is the most famous finding in experimental philosophy. In this paper, I report a new series of five experiments on ESEE, and in the process accomplish three things. First, I confirm earlier findings on the effect. Second, I show that the effect is virtually unlimited. Third, I introduce a new technique for detecting the effect, which potentially enhances its theoretical significance. In particular, my findings make it more likely that the effect genuinely reflects the way we think about and ascribe knowledge, rather than being the result of a performance error.

Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Studies

2019 ◽  
pp. 18-43
Author(s):  
Miranda Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Art Music ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Research Context ◽  
Renaissance Studies

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a background to current research in medieval and Renaissance studies on topics related to distributed cognition and to consider how the various chapters in this volume represent, reflect and advance work in this area. The volume brings together 14 chapters by international specialists working in the period between the ninth and the seventeenth century in the fields of law, history, drama, literature, art, music, philosophy, science and medicine. The chapters revitalise our reading of medieval and Renaissance works by bringing to bear recent insights in cognitive science and philosophy of mind on the distributed nature of cognition. Together the chapters make evident the ways in which particular notions and practices of distributed cognition emerged from the particular range of sociocultural and technological contexts that existed during this period. This chapter attempts to put these contributions in their wider research context by examining how such topics have been approached by mainstream scholarship, earlier work in the cognitive sciences and by existing applications of distributed cognition theory. It draws out both more general features of distributed cognition and what was distinctive about medieval and Renaissance insights into (and superstitions about) the cognitive roles of the body and environment. Throughout this chapter, I reference the chapters in this volume that provide further information on topics covered or take forward the issues in question. In the concluding section, I turn to a fuller overview of the chapters themselves

On the Philosophy of Cognitive Science

1998 ◽  
pp. 32-36
Author(s):  
Henrique de Morais Ribeiro
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Philosophy Of Cognitive Science ◽  
Irreducible Elements ◽  
Framework Model ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Ontological Problem

Psychophysical dualism — the distinction between mind and body — is the counterposition between essentially irreducible elements: the mind and body. Such a dualism implies the main ontological problem of the philosophy of cognitive science and philosophy of mind: the mind-body problem (MBP). The dualism and the referred-to problem has been insistently discussed in the philosophical tradition and several solutions have been proposed. Such solutions are properly philosophical or require a scientific approach. First, I will expound the philosophical solution to the MBP proposed by Descartes, to be followed by an exposition of Ryle's criticisms to the solution. Second, from Ryle's criticism, I will deduce a scientific solution to the MBP related to the neural framework model of mind in cognitive science by means of what I call 'the principle of the embodiment of the mind.' Finally, I shall point out the philosophical difficulties that are to be found in using such a principle.

Is There Progress in Philosophy? The Case for Taking History Seriously

Philosophy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter P. Slezak
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Historical Evidence

AbstractIn response to widespread doubts among professional philosophers (Russell, Horwich, Dietrich, McGinn, Chalmers), Stoljar argues for a ‘reasonable optimism’ about progress in philosophy. He defends the large and surprising claim that ‘there is progress on all or reasonably many of the big questions’. However, Stoljar's caveats and admitted avoidance of historical evidence permits overlooking persistent controversies in philosophy of mind and cognitive science that are essentially unchanged since the 17thCentury. Stoljar suggests that his claims are commonplace in philosophy departments and, indeed, the evidence I adduce constitutes an indictment of the widely shared view among professional analytic philosophers.

scholarly journals The Evolution of Moral Cognition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tony James Scott
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Extended Cognition ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Inheritance Model ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Evolution Of Mind ◽  
Dual Inheritance

<p>Many modern approaches to the evolution of mind have claimed that the fundamental drivers of our cognitive capacities and cultures are genetically specified psychological adaptations, which evolved in response to evolutionary pressures deep within our lineage's history. Many of our cognitive capacities are innate. Recent approaches to moral cognition have similarly argued that moral cognition is innate. In this thesis, I argue that even though our capacity for moral cognising is an adaptation, it is a learned adaptation. Moral cognition is not innate. In arguing this thesis I will question many of the assumptions of traditional cognitive science and evolutionary approaches to the mind. By incorporating theory and evidence from cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, I apply the explanatory frameworks of embodied and extended cognition to the domain of morality: moral cognition is both embodied and extended cognition. This places particular importance on the role of our bodies and world in the fundamental structuring and scaffolding of the development and execution of moral cognition. Putting this in an evolutionary framework, I develop a dual inheritance model of the non-nativist evolution of moral cognition focusing on the roles of niche construction, biased learning and active learning in the transfer of moral phenotypes between generations. Morality is a learned adaptation that evolved through the dynamic and reciprocal interaction between genes and culture.</p>

scholarly journals The significance of encapsulation of visual perception for philosophy of mind and aesthetic analysis

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-92
Author(s):  
Vladimir Konecni
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Visual Perception ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Cognitive Effects ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Opinion Article

This Opinion Article highlights three sets of important implications of the very recent work by C. Firestone and B. Scholl on the encapsulation of visual perception: (a) methodological implications, especially with regard to experimental areas of cognitive science, such as cognitive social psychology; (h) implications of interest to philosophers of mind, some of whose more extravagant recent claims have been based on the assumption of "top-down" cognitive effects on perception; and (c) implications that challenge some recent work in philosophical and psychological aesthetics regarding art expertise, as well as defend the logic of A. Danto's theorizing from attacks that are based on the assumption of "top-down- cognitive effects.

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