Online research in philosophy

Buchanan and Darden have provided compelling reasons why philosophers of science concerned with the nature of scientific discovery should be aware of current work in artificial intelligence. This paper contends that artificial intelligence is even more than a source of useful analogies for the philosophy of discovery: the two fields are linked by interfield connections between philosophy of science and cognitive psychology and between cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. Because the philosophy of discovery must pay attention to the psychology of practicing scientists, and because current cognitive psychology adopts a computational view of mind with AI providing the richest models of how the mind works, the philosophy of discovery must also concern itself with AI models of mental operations. The relevance of the artificial intelligence notion of a frame to the philosophy of discovery is briefly discussed.

For much of the twentieth century, philosophy and science went their separate ways. In moral philosophy, fear of the so-called naturalistic fallacy kept moral philosophers from incorporating developments in biology and psychology. Since the 1990s, however, many philosophers have drawn on recent advances in cognitive psychology, brain science, and evolutionary psychology to inform their work. This collaborative trend is especially strong in moral philosophy, and these three volumes bring together some of the most innovative work by both philosophers and psychologists in this emerging interdisciplinary field.

This article critically examines the views that psychology ?rst came into existence as a discipline ca. 1879, that philosophy and psychology were estranged in the ensuing decades, that psychology ?nally became scienti?c through the in?uence of logical empiricism, and that it should now disappear in favor of cognitive science and neuroscience. It argues that psychology had a natural philosophical phase (from antiquity) that waxed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that this psychology transformed into experimental psychology ca. 1900, that philosophers and psychologists collaboratively discussed the subject matter and methods of psychology in the ?rst two decades of the twentieth century, that the neobehaviorists were not substantively in?uenced by the Vienna Circle, that the study of perception and cognition in psy- chology did not disappear in the behaviorist period and so did not reemerge as a result of arti?cial intelligence, linguistics, and the computer analogy, that although some psychologists adopted the language-of-thought approach of traditional cognitive science, many did not, and that psychology will not go away because it contributes independently of cognitive science and neuroscience.

This book offers the first sustained critique of individualism in psychology, a view that has been the subject of debate between philosophers such as Jerry Fodor and Tyler Burge for many years. The author approaches individualism as an issue in the philosophy of science and by discussing issues such as computationalism and the mind's modularity he opens the subject up for non-philosophers in psychology and computer science. Professor Wilson carefully examines the most influential arguments for individualism and identifies the main metaphysical assumptions underlying them. Since the topic is so central to the philosophy of mind, a discipline generating enormous research and debate at present, the book has implications for a very broad range of philosophical issues including the naturalisation of intentionality, psychophysical supervenience, the nature of mental causation, and the viability of folk psychology.

This paper serves to introduce the papers from the symposium by the same title, by describing the sort of work done in philosophy of psychology conceived as a branch of the philosophy of science, distinguishing it from other discussions of psychology in philosophy, and criticizing the claims to set limits on scientific psychology in the largely psychologically uninformed literatures concerning "folk psychology' and "wide" and "narrow" content. Philosophy of psychology as philosophy of science takes seriously and analyzes the explanatory structures, conceptual problems, and evidentiary practices of extant scientific psychology.

In the good old days, when general philosophy of science ruled the Earth, a simple division was often invoked to talk about philosophical issues specific to particular kinds of science: that between the natural sciences and the social sciences. Over the last 20 years, philosophical studies shaped around this dichotomy have given way to those organized by more fine-grained categories, corresponding to specific disciplines, as the literatures on the philosophy of physics, biology, economics and psychology--to take the most prominent four examples--have blossomed. In general terms, work in each of these areas has become increasingly enmeshed with that in the corresponding science itself, increasingly naturalistic (in at least one sense of that term), and in my view, increasingly interesting.

This essential book provides a comprehensive explanation of the key topics and debates arising in the philosophy of psychology. In editors William O'Donohue and Richard Kitchener's thoughtful examination, philosophy and psychology converge on several themes of great importance such as the foundations of knowledge, the nature of science, rationality, behaviorism, cognitive science, folk psychology, neuropsychology, psychoanalysis, professionalism, and research ethics. The Philosophy of Psychology also provides an in-depth discussion of ethics in counseling and psychiatry while exploring the diverse topics listed above. The internationally renowned group of contributors to this volume both stimulating and informative. The Philosophy of Psychology will be invaluable for students and academics in theories and systems in psychology, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, philosophy of the social sciences, philosophy of the mind, and related courses.

Psychology is the study of thinking, and cognitive science is the interdisciplinary investigation of mind and intelligence that also includes philosophy, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, and anthropology. In these investigations, many philosophical issues arise concerning methods and central concepts. The Handbook of Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science contains 16 essays by leading philosophers of science that illuminate the nature of the theories and explanations used in the investigation of minds. Topics discussed include representation, mechanisms, reduction, perception, consciousness, language, emotions, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology. Key Features - Comprehensive coverage of philosophy of psychology and cognitive science - Distinguished contributors: leading philosophers in this area - Contributions closely tied to relevant scientific research.

Philosophy of psychology takes various forms. Some philosophers of psychology use psychological findings and theories to develop new answers to traditional philosophical issues. A smaller number of philosophers of psychology take their cue from the philosophy of science. They describe and evaluate the discovery heuristics, theories, and explanatory practices endorsed by psychologists. Finally, much philosophy of psychology can be characterized as psychological theorizing. Just like psychologists, philosophers propose empirical theories of specific aspects of our mind, trying to explain relevant psychological phenomena. Focusing mostly on this aspect of the philosophy of psychology, I will consider philosophers’ contribution to the theoretical development of psychology in four areas: cognitive architecture and modularity (§2); situated, embodied and extended cognition (§3); concepts (§4), and mindreading (§6). 1 Before doing this, however, I will discuss philosophers’ and psychologists’ views and arguments about the distinctive character of psychology—its mentalistic nature (§1).

... PHILOSOPHY OF PSYCHOLOGY is the study of conceptual issues in psychology. For the most part, these issues fall equally well in psychology as in ...