Link to the book. In the philosophy of language and mind, Paderewski’s name became well known because Saul Kripke used this example to illustrate or argue for certain ideas about proper names and reference. In Chapter 7 of Talking About,…
Nudges have become increasingly popular, but there are many objections to their widespread use. Some allege that nudges do not actually benefit people, while others suspect that they do not really respect autonomy. Although there are many ways of making…
I propose to do at least three things with this distinction. First, attitude ascriptions will tend to resist substitution of coreferential expressions only when we have in mind representational acts. Second, reference should be thought of as an act, an…
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…
