Millikan, Ruth Garrett. A common structure for concepts of individuals, stuffs, and real kinds: More Mama, more milk, and more mouse
1997, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (1):55-65.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Juan R. Loaiza
Abstract: Concepts are highly theoretical entities. One cannot study them empirically without committing oneself to substantial preliminary assumptions. Among the competing theories of concepts and categorization developed by psychologists in the last thirty years, the implicit theoretical assumption that what falls under a concept is determined by description () has never been seriously challenged. I present a nondescriptionist theory of our most basic concepts, which include (1) stuffs (gold, milk), (2) real kinds (cat, chair), and (3) individuals (Mama, Bill Clinton, the Empire State Building). On the basis of something important that all three have in common, our earliest and most basic concepts of substances are identical in structure. The membership of the category like that of is a natural unit in nature, to which the concept does something like pointing, and continues to point despite large changes in the properties the thinker represents the unit as having. For example, large changes can occur in the way a child identifies cats and the things it is willing to call without affecting the extension of its word The difficulty is to cash in the metaphor of in this context. Having substance concepts need not depend on knowing words, but language interacts with substance concepts, completely transforming the conceptual repertoire. I will discuss how public language plays a crucial role in both the acquisition of substance concepts and their completed structureComment : This is a stub entry. Please add your comments to help us expand itNagel, Jennifer. Knowledge as a mental state2013, In: Gendler, Tamar (ed), Oxford Studies in Epistemology, Volume 4. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 275-310-
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Added by: Jie Gao
Abstract: In the philosophical literature on mental states, the paradigmatic examples of mental states are beliefs, desires, intentions, and phenomenal states such as being in pain. The corresponding list in the psychological literature on mental state attribution includes one further member: the state of knowledge. This article examines the reasons why developmental, comparative and social psychologists have classified knowledge as a mental state, while most recent philosophers - with the notable exception of Timothy Williamson - have not. The disagreement is traced back to a difference in how each side understands the relationship between the concepts of knowledge and belief, concepts which are understood in both disciplines to be closely linked. Psychologists and philosophers other than Williamson have generally have disagreed about which of the pair is prior and which is derivative. The rival claims of priority are examined both in the light of philosophical arguments by Williamson and others, and in the light of empirical work on mental state attribution.Comment : This is a good teaching material on knowledge first. There is a recent response to this paper written by Aidan McGlynn ("Mindreading knowledge", 2016) which can be used together in teaching in order to create a nice dynamic of debate.Padilla, Amado, Salgado De Snyder, V. Nelly. Psychology in Pre-Columbian Mexico1988, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 10 (1): 55-66-
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Added by: M. Jimena Clavel Vázquez and Andrés Hernández VillarrealAbstract:
Aztec psychological thought is described in this paper. The Pre-Columbian world of the Aztecs was characterized by Spanish chroniclers as being as sophisticated in the sciences and medicine as anything found in Europe at the time of the conquest of Mexico. This knowledge included a belief structure about the development of personality and the way in which Aztec society socialized the person. Concepts of psychological equilibrium and well-being are also found within Aztec medicine. Psychological dysfunctions were identified by Aztec healers and "talking" therapies not unlike today's psychotherapeutic techniques could be found.
Comment (from this Blueprint): The sections “Psychological well-being or in ixtli – in yollotl”, “Teachers of knowledge and face”, “Illness and the community”, and “Aztec healers or psychotherapists” provide a clear and helpful discussion on the concepts of destiny, free will, precarious nature of human beings on earth, and, more generally, on Nahua psychology.Piredda, Giulia. What is an affective artifact? A further development in situated affectivity2020, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 19(3), pp. 549-567-
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Added by: Maria Jimena Clavel VazquezAbstract:
In this paper I would like to propose the notion of "affective artifact", building on an analogy with theories of cognitive artifacts (cf. Casati 2017; Fasoli 2018; Heersmink, 2013, 2016; Hutchins 1999) and referring to the development of a situated affective science (cf. Colombetti 2014; Colombetti and Krueger 2015; Colombetti and Roberts 2015; Griffiths and Scarantino 2009). Affective artifacts are tentatively defined as objects that have the capacity to alter the affective condition of an agent, and that in some cases play an important role in defining that agent's self.The notion of affective artifacts will be presented by means of examples supported by empirical findings, by discussing a tentative definition and classification, and by considering several related but differing notions (cf. Colombetti and Krueger 2015; Heersmink 2018). Within the framework of situated affectivity, the notion of affective artifacts will represent a further step in the enterprise of understanding how the environment helps us scaffold our affective processes. I will conclude that affective artifacts play a key role in the philosophy of cognitive science, the philosophy of technology and in the debate about the self.Comment : available in this BlueprintPitts-Taylor, Victoria. The Mind in the Body: Feminist and Neurocognitive Perspectives on Embodiment2014, In Sigrid Schmitz & Grit Höppner (ed.), Gendered Neurocultures: Feminist and Queer Perspectives on Current Brain Discourses. Zaglossus, pp. 187-202-
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Added by: Maria Jimena Clavel VazquezAbstract:
From the introduction: The body's epistemic significance is a shared preoccupation for both feminist theory and neurophilosophy, two fields that rarely interact. Neurocognitive theories of embodied mind seek to identify the features of embodiment that inform cognition and consciousness. They share with feminist epistemologies a view that consciousness is inextricably linked to lived embodiment and situated in the environment, and they each offer powerful challenges to the disembodied, abstract Cartesian subject. This convergence bears deeper consideration. In this chapter I address claims of their compatibility, and also how feminist concerns trouble neurophilosophical interpretations of the embodied mind. I begin with a brief introduction to neurobiologically informed views of mind that embrace reductive physicalism, and then I describe the non-reductive physicalism of embodied mind theories. Later, I take up feminist epistemology and its parallels and tensions with this subfield of neurophilosophy. I raise the question of epistemic difference as an opening for critical engagement. (p. 1 - online version)Comment : available in this BlueprintRadden, Jennifer. Symptoms in particular: feminism and the disordered mind2022, In McWeeny, J. and Maitra, K. (eds) Feminist Philosophy of Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, pp.121-138-
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Added by: Adriana Alcaraz Sanchez and Jodie RussellAbstract:
Contrary to influential medical and cognitivist models governing how mental disorder is usually understood today, the socially embedded, disordered "mind," or subject, of feminist theory leaves little room for idiopathic causal analyses, with their narrow focus on the brain and its functioning, and reluctant acknowledgment of symptoms. Mental disorder must originate well beyond the particular brain of the person with whom it is associated, feminist analyses imply. Because the voiced distress of the sufferer cannot be reduced to the downstream, "symptomatic" effects of brain dysfunction, symptoms can be seen differently, as central to the diagnostic identity, and constitutive of (at least some) disorders. And new attention is required for the testimony of women diagnosed with mental disorder, vulnerable as it is to epistemic injustices. Corrected explanations of women's mental disorder leave remaining concerns, both epistemological and ethical, over the madwoman narrating her symptoms.Comment (from this Blueprint): Radden's paper introduces the reader to broad concerns with the dominant medical model of disorder from a feminist perspective, highlighting the tension with a naturalistic, reductionist approach with the situated and ecological approach of Radden's feminism. This article touches on topics mentioned in other readings (such as enactive concpetions of mind and epistemic injustice) but contextualises them within the field of philosophy of psychiatry. As such, this article is a fruitful springboard for critically considering the nature of medicine and psychiatry from multiple angles. This chapter would be complimented by the further reading of Russell's (2023) paper on Enactive Psychiatry.Ritunnano, Rosa. Overcoming Hermeneutical Injustice in Mental Health: A Role for Critical Phenomenology2022, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 53(3), pp.243-260-
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Added by: Adriana Alcaraz Sanchez and Jodie RussellAbstract:
The significance of critical phenomenology for psychiatric praxis has yet to be expounded. In this paper, Rituanno argues that the adoption of a critical phenomenological stance can remedy localised instances of hermeneutical injustice, which may arise in the encounter between clinicians and patients with psychosis. In this context, what is communicated is often deemed to lack meaning or to be difficult to understand. While a degree of un-shareability is inherent to subjective life, Rituanno argues that issues of unintelligibility can be addressed by shifting from individualistic conceptions of understanding to an interactionist view. This takes into account the contextual, historical and relational background within which meaning is co-constituted. She concludes by providing a corrective for hermeneutical injustice, which entails a specific attentiveness towards the person's subjectivity, a careful sensitivity to contingent meaning-generating structures, and a degree of hermeneutical flexibility as an attitude of openness towards alternative horizons of possibility.Comment (from this Blueprint): Ritunnano's paper clearly situates the concept of hermeneutic injustice in the field of mental health, using psychosis as a case study. Although it predominantly deals with just one type of epistemic injustice, Ritunnano's paper is nevertheless an approachable entry into the topic that compliments Radden's chapter. The field of critical phenomenology is also introduced, which links strongly to feminist considerations when trying to understand lived experience. Thus, this paper makes for good further reading on the topic of feminist philosophy of mind and mental illness.Russell, Jodie Louise. Problems for enactive psychiatry as a practical framework2023, Philosophical Psychology, pp.1458-1481-
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Abstract:
In recent years, autopoietic enactivism has been used to address persistent conceptual problems in psychiatry, such as the problem of demarcating disorder, that other models thus far have failed to overcome. There appear to be three main enactive accounts of psychopathology with subtle, although not incompatible, differences: Maiese characterizes disorder as distinct disruptions in autonomy and agency; Nielsen characterizes disorder as behaviors that relevantly conflict with the functional norms of an individual; De Haan emphasizes patterns of disordered sense-making, that are transformed through the existential dimension. Given that these accounts are intended to provide not only an ontologically richer account of psychopathology but also reduce the stigma experienced by individuals with mental disorders by accounting for lived experience, a critical analysis of these approaches is needed. Russell provides a problematization of enactive accounts of mental disorder, showing that this particular framework does not, as it stands, necessarily reduce the harm and suffering experienced by individuals with mental disorder because of its ontological openness; enactivism leaves much to be interpreted and applied by the clinician (or patient) such that practical and ethical problems in its use arise.Comment (from this Blueprint): This cheeky inclusion of Russell's paper as further reading would suitably compliment both the readings on mental disorder, and Butnor and MacKenzie's chapter on gender, for a deeper discussion. The positive feminist thesis is left vague at the end of this paper, which provides a nice starting point to discuss solutions to the problems with enactivism raised therein. This paper also provides a nice entry-point into the enactive literature, which might provide an enticing, situated model of mind to compliment particular feminist outlooks.Series, Peggy, Mark Sprevak. From Intelligent machines to the human brain2014, in M. Massimi (ed.), Philosophy and the Sciences for Everyone. Routledge-
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Added by: Laura Jimenez
Summary: How does one make a clever adaptive machine that can recognise speech, control an aircraft, and detect credit card fraud? Recent years have seen a revolution in the kinds of tasks computers can do. Underlying these advances is the burgeoning field of machine learning and computational neuroscience. The same methods that allow us to make clever machines also appear to hold the key to understanding ourselves: to explaining how our brain and mind work. This chapter explores this exciting new field and some of the philosophical questions that it raises.Comment : Really good chapter that could serve to introduce scientific ideas behind the mind-computer analogy. The chapter zooms in on the actual functioning of the human mind as a computer able to perform computations. Recommendable for undergraduate students in Philosophy of Mind or Philosophy of science courses.Solomon, Miriam. Situated cognition2006, In Paul Thagard (ed.) Handbook of the Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science. Elsevier, pp. 413-428-
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Added by: Maria Jimena Clavel VazquezAbstract:
This chapter provides a structured overview of work on situated cognition. The main fields in which situated cognition is studied - cognitive science, feminist epistemology, and science studies - are unnecessarily isolated from one another. Cognition is always situated. It is always concretely instantiated in one way or another. There are no disembodied cognitive achievements. The situated cognition literature details the ways in which cognition can be instantiated and, instead of abstracting what is in common to all cognition, explores the epistemic significance of particular routes to cognitive accomplishment. The phenomena of situated cognition have been described in several disciplines. Cognitive scientists have described the ways in which representation of the world, learning, memory, planning, action, and linguistic meaning are embedded in the environment, tools, social arrangements, and configurations of the human body. The situated cognition approaches have in common the rejection of the ideas that cognition is individualistic, general, abstract, symbolic, explicit, language based, and located in the brain as mediator between sensory input and action output.Comment : available in this BlueprintCan’t find it?Contribute the texts you think should be here and we’ll add them soon!
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