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The depths and shallows of psychological externalism

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Abstract

This paper examines extant ways of classifying varieties of psychological externalism and argues that they imply a hitherto unrecognized distinction between shallow and deep externalism. The difference is between starting points: shallowly externalist hypotheses begin with the attribution of psychological states to individuals, just as individualistic hypotheses do, whereas deeply externalistic hypotheses begin with agent-environment interaction as the basis of cognitive processes and attribute psychological states to individuals as necessary for such interaction. The over-arching aim is to show how deep externalism works and what its implications are for psychological and philosophical theorizing.

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Notes

  1. Following established usage, I will sometimes use “wide” and “widely” as adjectival and adverbial equivalents of “externalist” and “externalistically” respectively.

  2. This is a running theme in the work of, among others, Susan Hurley (1998) and Robert Wilson (1995).

  3. In his 1994 discussion of the possibility and plausibility of wide computationalism, Wilson focuses on formal systems. This provides another axis along which individual-environment relations could be scrutinized for candidacy for wide description and explanation.

  4. See Sneddon (2002) for discussion of externalist models of apraxia as an example.

  5. In principle, the deep/shallow distinction applies not just to hypotheses but also to explanations, models, theories, and to any other explanatory devices that characterize the principled discourse of science.

  6. For a simple yet suggestive example, see Wilson’s discussion of multiplication (1994, 355–356).

  7. John Doris presents and develops the implications of this debate for philosophical thinking about the virtues (2002). A view of the debate from the perspective of personality psychology can be found in Funder (1999). Ross and Nisbett (1991) is a well-known view of the debate from the situationist side.

  8. See the Appendix to Miller 2003 for discussion of both success and failure in replicating Isen and Levin’s results, and for a perspective different from that of Doris.

  9. Wilson has recently made the similar suggestion that, for perception, externalist positions are more attractive the more one takes into account the “in-the-world functional role” of organisms and perceptual systems (2006, 126–128).

  10. See my 2002 for discussion.

  11. See Alfred Mele’s “Introduction” to The Philosophy of Action (1997) for a useful discussion of causalism.

  12. This is given extended attention in Shoda, Mischel & Wright 1994.

  13. I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for support while doing this work.

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Sneddon, A. The depths and shallows of psychological externalism. Philos Stud 138, 393–408 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-006-9058-8

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