My major claim in Chapter 2 of Talking About is that there is a characteristic way in which this phase of production can fail. So, just like we have malapropisms or tip-of-the-tongue phenomena at later stages of production, the normal…
“Hegel first lectured on aesthetics in Heidelberg. By the time he was lecturing in Berlin, he had reworked his ideas significantly,” said Illies. “This is the first time any transcript of these original lectures from Heidelberg has been found.” It…
I will wrap up by saying how this relates to Frege’s puzzle. Very crudely and predictably, part of the idea is to argue that puzzles of this sort are really symptomatic of some very basic dysfunction in the operation of…
Tim Adams is an Observer columnist I remember reading William MacAskill’s book Doing Good Better back in 2015 and wondering: is this too good to be true? MacAskill, the fresh-faced Oxford philosopher and prime mover of “effective altruism”, was on…
For what it’s worth, Matteo Colombo and I have just finished a brief introduction to The Computational Theory of Mind for Cambridge Elements, which is now under review and will hopefully help bring more people up to date. First, there…
Farina usefully offers the case study of software engineering to illustrate the three-tiered taxonomy I set out regarding types of social cognition/knowledge. In particular, he argues that such a case study can lend support to the idea that often…
In his blog, Pugh concludes that the Pong playing minibrains are not sentient. This is because in his view they do not possess phenomenal consciousness and thus are unable to experience pain or pleasure. To some the property of phenomenal…
This is a part of the symposium on socially extended knowledge Hinchey, M., Jackson, M., Cousot, P., Cook, B., Bowen, J. P., & Margaria, T. (2008). Software engineering and formal methods. Communications of the ACM, 51(9), 54-59. However, to balance things out-…
By Duncan Pritchard My paper is essentially an exercise in philosophical cartography (or philosophical hygienics, depending on your point of view). That is, I am trying to chart out the conceptual space in a particular area and in the process…
Unappealing views can sometimes be true, unfortunately. But in any case, we don’t need to be moral relativists to say that there are reasons to respect local norms and values of a country we visit. Indeed, respect for local norms…
In chapter 6 of my book The Rules of Rescue, I explore the surprisingly neglected question of when you are required to help. Existing literature tends to focus on how much you are required to help. For example, suppose that…
Today (1 November) is ‘world vegan day’. This is a good moment to reflect on a decision that the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics took almost exactly a year ago. In October 2021, we chose to firmly commit to…
The thing about being poor is not that you can’t be happy – and we were very happy, just the three of us with nothing – but that you are also scared, cold, hungry, uncertain and tired a lot of…
Welcome to the Brains Blog’s Symposium series on the Cognitive Science of Philosophy. The aim of the series is to examine the use of diverse methods to generate philosophical insight. Each symposium is comprised of two parts. In the target…
