Beyond reduction: philosophy of mind and post-reductionist philosophy of science

A positive, alternative approach to mind which sees the philosophy of mind, like the sciences, as cognitive enterprises trying to model local features of the world and ourselves. Contemporary philosophers of mind tend to assume thatthe world of nature can be reduced to basic physics. Yet there are features of the mind consciousness, intentionality, normativity that do not seem to be reducible to physics or neuroscience. This explanatory gap between mind and brain has thus been a major cause of concern in recent philosophy of mind. Reductionists hold that, despite all appearances, the mind can be reduced to the brain. Eliminativists hold that it cannot, andthat this implies that there is something illegitimate about the mentalistic vocabulary. Dualists hold that the mental is irreducible, and that this implies either a substance or a property dualism. Mysterian non-reductive physicalists hold that the mind is uniquely irreducible, perhaps due to somelimitation of our self-understanding.In this book, Steven Horst argues that this whole conversation is based on assumptions left over from an outdated philosophy of science. While reductionismwas part of the philosophical orthodoxy fifty years ago, it has been decisively rejected by philosophers of science over the past thirty years, and for good reason. True reductions are in fact exceedingly rare in the sciences, and the conviction that they were there to be found was an artifact of armchair assumptions of 17th centuryRationalists and 20th century Logical Empiricists. The explanatory gaps between mind and brain are far from unique. In fact, in the sciences it is gaps allthe way down.And if reductions are rare in even the physical sciences, there is little reason to expect them in the case of psychology.Horst argues that this calls for a complete re-thinking of the contemporary problematic in philosophy of mind. Reductionism, dualism, eliminativism and non-reductive materialism are each severely compromised by post-reductionist philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind is in need of a new paradigm.Horst suggests that such a paradigm might be found in Cognitive Pluralism: the view that human cognitive architecture constrains us to understand the worldthrough a plurality of partial, idealized, and pragmatically-constrained models, each employing a particular representational system optimized for its own problem domain. Such an architecture can explain the disunities of knowledge, and is plausible on evolutionary grounds. INDICE: Preface Introduction Section I -- Naturalism and Reductionism 1. Varieties of Naturalism: What is a Naturalistic Philosophy of Mind? 2. Reduction and Supervenience: The Contemporary Problematic in Philosophy of Mind 3. TheDemise of Reductionism in Philosophy of Science Section II 4. Reductionism and Eliminativism 5. Dualism and the Explanatory Gaps 6. Non-Reductive Physicalism and Mysterianism Section III -- Cognitive Pluralism 7. Two Types of Pluralism 8. The Scope and Plausibility of Cognitive Pluralist Epistemology 9. Cognitive Pluralism and Modal Metaphysics 10. Cognitive Pluralism and Naturalism Bibliography

• ISBN: 978-0-19-991469-2
• Editorial: Oxford University
• Encuadernacion: Rústica
• Páginas: 242
• Fecha Publicación: 01/03/2012
• Nº Volúmenes: 1
• Idioma: Inglés