Online research in philosophy

I will begin by noting two of the many convergences between my approach and that of Shaun Gallagher in his paper for the Socially Extended Mind workshop (Gallagher 2011). First, his insistence on the enactive – or what we could call the “dynamic interactional” – character of mind, countering the somewhat static view of classical EM (Extended Mind); and second, the move to a distributed notion of judgment, countering the lingering individualism of classical EM.

Gallagher, S. 2000. Ways of Knowing the Self and the Other. An Introduction to Ipseity and Alterity, a special issue of the online journal _Arobase: Journal des lettres et sciences humaines,_ 4 (1-2). Hardcopy publication: S. Gallagher and S. Watson. (in press). _Ipseity and Alterity: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Intersubjectivity_ . Rouen: Presses Universitaires de.

Shaun Gallagher's The Inordinance of Time develops an account of the experience of time at the intersection of three approaches: phenomenology, cognitive ...

There has been a long-standing interest in the putative roles that various so-called ‘theory of mind’abilities might play in enabling us to understand and enjoy narratives. Of late, as our understanding of the complexity and diversity of everyday psychological capacities has become more nuanced and variegated, new possibilities have been articulated: (i) that our capacity for a sophisticated, everyday understanding of actions in terms of reason (our folk psychology) may itself be best characterized as a kind of narrative practice and (ii) that acquiring the capacity for supplying and digesting reasons explana- tions might (at least normally) depend upon having a special training with narratives. This introductory paper to the volume situates the claims of those who support the narrative approach to folk psychol- ogy against the backdrop of some traditional and new thinking about intersubjectivity, social cognition and ‘theory of mind’ abilities. Spe- cial emphasis is laid on the different reasons for being interested in these claims about narrative practice and folk psychology in light of various empirical and philosophical agendas.

Shaun Gallagher and Dan Hutto claim that those once bitter rivals, simulation theory and theory-theory, are now to be treated as partners in crime. It's true that the debate has become more nuanced, with detailed suggestions abroad as to how these two approaches might peaceably divide the field. And there is common ground between them, at least to the extent that they agree on what needs to be explained. But I see no fatal flaw in what they share. In particular, I reject the idea that most interpersonal understanding can be accounted for without the postulation of mechanisms for inferring beliefs and desires. I also query the claim that simulation mechanisms have a very limited explanatory scope, and argue for the existence of such mechanisms at sub-personal levels. I suggest that Gallagher and Hutto's strictures against false belief tests are unwarranted, and their conclusions about the role of narrative in interpersonal understanding are unfounded.

Preprint of Shaun Gallagher, 2000. Reply to Cole, Sacks, and Waterman Trends in Cognitive Science 4, No. 5 (2000): 167-68. Please cite and quote from the original publication. This is a reply to Cole, Sacks, and Waterman. 2000. "On the immunity principle: A view from a robot." Trends in Cognitive Science 4 (5): 167, which was a reply to Shaun Gallagher, S. 2000. Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science , Trends in Cognitive Science 4 (1):14-21..

The questions that I explore are these: what are the cognitive elements that contribute to the development of narrative competency? What do we gain from the deployment of this narrative competency? And what do we lose if something goes wrong with it? In regard to the latter question I will focus on problems found in schizophrenic narratives.

Gallagher, S. and Hutto, D. (in press). Understanding others through primary interaction and narrative practice. In: J. Zlatev, T. Racine, C. Sinha and E. Itkonen (eds). The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.