People are minded creatures; we have thoughts, feelings and emotions. More intriguingly, we grasp our own mental states, and conduct the business of ascribing them to ourselves and others without instruction in formal psychology. How do we do this? And what are the dimensions of our grasp of the mental realm? In this book, Alvin I. Goldman explores these questions with the tools of philosophy, developmental psychology, social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He refines an approach called simulation theory, (...) which starts from the familiar idea that we understand others by putting ourselves in their mental shoes. Can this intuitive idea be rendered precise in a philosophically respectable manner, without allowing simulation to collapse into theorizing? Given a suitable definition, do empirical results support the notion that minds literally create surrogates of other peoples mental states in the process of mindreading? Goldman amasses a surprising array of evidence from psychology and neuroscience that supports this hypothesis. (shrink)

Table of Contents Contributors Introduction I Epistemology 1 Visual Object Recognition by Irving Biederman 2 Deductive Reasoning by John H. Holland, Keith J. Holyoak, Richard E. Nisbett and Paul R. Thagard 3 Probabilistic Reasoning by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman 4 Our Native Inferential Tendencies by Hilary Kornblith 5 Epistemic Folkways and Scientific Epistemology by Alvin I. Goldman II Science and Mathematics 6 Observation Reconsidered by Jerry A. Fodor 7 Perceptual Plasticity and Theoretical Neutrality: A Reply to Jerry (...) Fodor by Paul M. Churchland 8 Explanatory Coherence by Paul R. Thagard 9 Scientific Discovery by Pat Langley, Herbert A. Simon, Gary L. Bradshaw and Jan M. Zytkow 10 Evidence against Empiricist Accounts of the Origins of Numerical Knowledge by Karen Wynn III Mind 11 Troubles with Functionalism by Ned Block 12 Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes by Paul M. Churchland 13 Fodor’s Guide to Mental Representation: The Intelligent Auntie’s Vade-Mecum by Jerry A. Fodor 14 Misrepresentation by Fred I. Dretske 15 How We Know Our Minds: The Illusion of First-Person Knowledge of Intentionality by Alison Gopnik 16 The Psychology of Folk Psychology by Alvin I. Goldman 17 Quining Qualia by Daniel C. Dennett 18 Neuropsychological Evidence for a Consciousness System by Daniel L. Schacter IV Metaphysics 19 Object Perception by Elizabeth S. Spelke 20 Ontological Categories Guide Young Children’s Inductions of Word Meaning by Nancy N. Soja, Susan Carey and Elizabeth S. Spelke 21 Some Elements of Conceptual Structure by Ray Jackendoff 22 Color Subjectivism by C. L. Hardin V Language 23 On the Nature, Use, and Acquisition of Language by Noam Chomsky 24 On Learning the Past Tenses of English Verbs by David E. Rumelhart and James L. McClelland 25 Critique of Rumelhart and McClelland by Andy Clark 26 The Mental Representation of the Meaning of Words by Philip N. Johnson-Laird 27 Brain and Language by Antonia R. Damasio and Hanna Demasio 28 Meaning, Other People, and the World by Hilary Putnam VI Ethics 29 Ethics and Cognitive Science by Alvin I. Goldman 30 The Contribution of Empathy to Justice and Moral Judgment by Martin L. Hoffman 31 Situations and Dispositions by Owen Flanagan VII Conceptual Foundations 32 Autonomous Psychology and the Belief-Desire Thesis by Stephen P. Stich 33 Individualism and Psychology by Tyler Burge 34 The Co-evolutionary Research Ideology by Patricia S. Churchland 35 On the Proper Treatment of Connectionism by Paul Smolensky 36 Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture by Jerry A. Fodor and Zenon W. Pylyshyn 37 The Computer Model of the Mind by Ned Block 38 The Critique of Cognitive Reason by John R. Searle Index. (shrink)

One of the most influential analytic philosophers of the late twentieth century, William P. Alston is a leading light in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of language. In this volume, twelve leading philosophers critically discuss the central topics of his work in these areas, including perception, epistemic circularity, justification, the problem of religious diversity, and truth.

In his 1967 paper 'A Causal Theory of Knowing', Alvin Goldman sketched an account of empirical knowledge in terms of appropriate causal connections between the fact known and the knower's belief in that fact. This early causal account has been much criticized, even by Goldman himself in later years. We argue that the theory is much more defensible than either he or its other critics have recognized, that there are plausible internal and external resources available to it (...) which save it from many objections in the literature (in particular, objections raised by Harman, Pappas and Swain, Klein, Dretske, Goldman, Shope, Ackermann, Morawetz, and Collier). (shrink)

In his 1967 paper 'A Causal Theory of Knowing', Alvin Goldman sketched an account of empirical knowledge in terms of appropriate causal connections between the fact known and the knower's belief in that fact. This early causal account has been much criticized, even by Goldman himself in later years. We argue that the theory is much more defensible than either he or its other critics have recognized, that there are plausible internal and external resources available to it (...) which save it from many objections in the literature. (shrink)

Why should a citizen vote? There are two ways to interpret this question: in a prudential sense, and in a moral sense. Under the first interpretation, the question asks why—or under what circumstances—it is in a citizen's self-interest to vote. Under the second interpretation, it asks what moral reasons citizens have for voting. I shall mainly try to answer the moral version of the question, but my answer may also, in some circumstances, bear on the prudential question. Before proceeding to (...) my own approach, let me briefly survey alternatives in the field. (shrink)

1. Mainstream Epistemology and Social Epistemology Epistemology has had a strongly individualist orientation, at least since Descartes. Knowledge, for Descartes, starts with the fact of one’s own thinking and with oneself as subject of that thinking. Whatever else can be known, it must be known by inference from one’s own mental contents. Achieving such knowledge is an individual, rather than a collective, enterprise. Descartes’s successors largely followed this lead, so the history of epistemology, down to our own time, has been (...) a predominantly individualist affair. There are scattered exceptions. A handful of historical epistemologists gave brief space to the question of knowing, or believing justifiably, based on the testimony of others. Testimony-based knowledge would be one step into a more social epistemology. Hume took it for granted that we regularly rely on the factual statements of others, and argued that it is reasonable to do so if we have adequate reasons for trusting the veracity of these sources. However, reasons for such trust, according to Hume, must rest on personal observations of people’s veracity or reliability.1 Thomas Reid took a different view. He claimed that our natural attitude of trusting others is reasonable even if we know little if anything about others’ reliability. Testimony, at least sincere testimony, is always prima facie credible (Reid, 1970: 240-241). Here we have two philosophers of the 18th century both endorsing at least one element of what nowadays is called “social epistemology.” But these points did not much occupy either Hume’s or Reid’s corpus of philosophical writing; nor were these passages much studied or cited by their contemporaries and immediate successors. Fast forward now to the second half of the 20th century. Here we find intellectual currents pointing toward the socializing of epistemology. Several of these movements, however, were centered outside of philosophy and never adopted the label of “social epistemology,” or adopted it only belatedly. (shrink)

This article examines a thesis of interest to social epistemology and some articulations of First Amendment legal theory: that a free market in speech is an optimal institution for promoting true belief. Under our interpretation, the market-for-speech thesis claims that more total truth possession will be achieved if speech is regulated only by free market mechanisms; that is, both government regulation and private sector nonmarket regulation are held to have information-fostering properties that are inferior to the free market. After discussing (...) possible counterexamples to the thesis, the article explores the actual implications of economic theory for the emergence of truth in a free market for speech. When confusions are removed about what is maximized by perfectly competitive markets, and when adequate attention is paid to market imperfections, the failure of the market-for-speech thesis becomes clear. The article closes by comparing the properties of a free market in speech with an adversarial system of discourse. (shrink)

Alvin I. Goldman, Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology and Neuroscience of Mindreading Content Type Journal Article Pages 279-282 DOI 10.1007/s11023-009-9142-x Authors Susan Stuart, University of Glasgow Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute 11 University Gardens Glasgow G12 8QQ Scotland, UK Journal Minds and Machines Online ISSN 1572-8641 Print ISSN 0924-6495 Journal Volume Volume 19 Journal Issue Volume 19, Number 2.

‘Epistemics: an enterprise linking traditional epistemology, first with cognitive science and, second, with social scientific and humanistic disciplines that explore the interpersonal and cultural processes impinging on knowledge and belief’ (Epistemology and Cognition, p. vii).

The volume contains the written versions of all papers given at the workshop, divided into five chapters and followed by Alvin Goldman¿s replies in the sixth ...

People are minded creatures; we have thoughts, feelings and emotions. More intriguingly, we grasp our own mental states, and conduct the business of ascribing them to ourselves and others without instruction in formal psychology. How do we do this? And what are the dimensions of our grasp of the mental realm? In this book, Alvin I. Goldman explores these questions with the tools of philosophy, developmental psychology, social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He refines an approach called simulation theory, (...) which starts from the familiar idea that we understand others by putting ourselves in their mental shoes. Can this intuitive idea be rendered precise in a philosophically respectable manner, without allowing simulation to collapse into theorizing? Given a suitable definition, do empirical results support the notion that minds literally create surrogates of other peoples mental states in the process of mindreading? Goldman amasses a surprising array of evidence from psychology and neuroscience that supports this hypothesis. (shrink)

Introduction Alvin I. Goldman and Brian P. McLaughlin Section I: What Might Be the Role of Cognitive Science in Metaphysics? Chapter 1: Time Lost, Time Regained Craig Callender Chapter 2: Cognitive Science and Metaphysics: Partners in Debunking Jonathan Schaffer Section II: Ethics and Cognitive Science Chapter 3: Moral Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, and the Cognitive Sciences Peter Railton Chapter 4: Debunking and Vindicating in Moral Psychology Shaun Nichols Section III: God and Cognitive Science Chapter 5: On Perceiving God: Prospects (...) for a Cognitive Science of Religious Experiences Mark Baker and Dean Zimmerman Chapter 6: God and Cognitive Science: A Bayesian Approach Alvin I. Goldman Section IV: Meaning, Linguistics, and Ontology Chapter 7: Cognitive Psychology and the Metaphysics of Meaning Mark Johnston and Sarah-Jane Leslie Chapter 8: Natural Language and Its Ontology Friederike Moltmann Section V: Modality and the Ontology of Bodily Feelings Chapter 9: Modal Prospection John McCoy, Laurie Paul, Tomer Ullman Chapter 10: Against Phenomenal Parsimony: A Plea for Bodily Feelings Frédérique de Vignemont Section VI: Sortals and Natural Kinds Chapter 11: Does the Identity of an Object Depend on Its Category? The Role of Sortals in Thought Lance J. Rips and Nick Leonard Chapter 12: What the Study of Psychological Essentialism May Reveal About the World Susan A. Gelman Section VII: Debunking and Cognitive Science Chapter 13: Debunking Arguments in Metaethics and Metaphysics Daniel Z. Korman Chapter 14: Cognitive Science for the Revisionary Metaphysician David Rose Chapter 15: Unbunking Arguments: A Case Study in Metaphysics and Cognitive Science Christopher Frugé. (shrink)

This is the most up-to-date collection of essays by the leading proponent of process reliabilism, refining and clarifying that theory and critiquing its rivals. The volume features important essays on the internalism/externalism debate, epistemic value, the intuitional methodology of philosophy, and social epistemology.

In 1966 the U.S. Supreme Court wrote, “The basic purpose of a trial is the determination of truth.” This is Larry Laudan's guiding premise in his “essay on legal epistemology.” Without ascertaining the facts about a crime, he writes, it is impossible to achieve justice, since a just resolution crucially depends on correctly figuring out who did what to whom. Thus, he continues, “it is entirely fitting to ask whether the procedures and rules that govern a trial are genuinely truth-conducive.” (...) In chapter 1 of the book, Laudan identifies one of the most important and legitimate methods for finding truth, namely, ensuring that the jury hears all and only relevant evidence. Laudan bemoans the fact, however, that “legal texts and the practices of courts routinely flout” this principle. Much of the rest of the book is devoted to the other tests for admissibility that the system imposes, tests that Laudan often regards as misguided. (shrink)

Uterus transplantation is an emerging technology adding to the arsenal of treatments for infertility; specifically the only available treatment for uterine factor infertility. Ethical investigations concerning risks to uteri donors and transplant recipients have been discussed in the literature. However, missing from the discourse is the potential of uterus transplantation in other groups of genetically XY women who experience uterine factor infertility. There have been philosophical inquiries concerning uterus transplantation in genetically XY women, which includes transgender women and women with (...) complete androgen insufficiency syndrome. We discuss the potential medical steps necessary and associated risks for uterus transplantation in genetically XY women. Presently, the medical technology does not exist to make uterus transplantation a safe and effective option for genetically XY women, however this group should not be summarily excluded from participation in trials. Laboratory research is needed to better understand and reduce medical risk and widen the field to all women who face uterine factor infertility. (shrink)

This collection of essays by Alvin Goldman explores an array of topics in the philosophy of cognitive science, ranging from embodied cognition to the metaphysics of actions and events.

In the movie Regarding Henry, the main character, Henry Turner, is a lawyer who suffers brain damage as a result of being shot during a robbery. Before being wounded, the Old Henry Turner had been a successful lawyer, admired as a fierce competitor and well-known for his killer instinct. As a result of the injury to his brain, the New Henry Turner loses the personality traits that had made the Old Henry such a formidable adversary.

Knowledge in a Social World offers a philosophy for the information age. Alvin Goldman explores new frontiers by creating a thoroughgoing social epistemology, moving beyond the traditional focus on solitary knowers. Against the tides of postmodernism and social constructionism Goldman defends the integrity of truth and shows how to promote it by well-designed forms of social interaction. From science to education, from law to democracy, he shows why and how public institutions should seek knowledge-enhancing practices. The result (...) is a bold, timely, and systematic treatment of the philosophical foundations of an information society. (shrink)

These essays by a major epistemologist reconfigure philosophical projects across a wide spectrum, from mind to metaphysics, from epistemology to social power. Several of Goldman's classic essays are included along with many newer writings. Together these trace and continue the development of the author's unique blend of naturalism and reliabilism.Part I defends the simulation approach to mentalistic ascription and explores the psychological mechanisms of ontological individuation. Part II shows why epistemology needs help from cognitive science - not only to (...) evaluate cognitive agents but also to illuminate the practices of epistemic evaluators. Parts III and IV explain how philosophical projects can be reshaped through interchange with social science. An epistemological study of scientific activity exploits the economic paradigm, and philosophical tools are applied to analyze power in society.Alvin I. Goldman is Professor of Philosophy and Research Scientist in Cognitive Science at the University of Arizona. During 1991-92 he served as President of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division.Contents:Mind and Metaphysics. Interpretation Psychologized. Metaphysics, Mind, and Mental Science. Cognition and Modal Metaphysics. Individual Epistemology. A Causal Theory of Knowing. Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge. What Is justified Belief? Strong and Weak justification. Psychology and Philosophical Analysis. Epistemic Folkways and Scientific Epistemology. Social Epistemology. Foundations of Social Epistemics. Epistemic Paternalism: Communication and Control in Law and Society. An Economic Model of Scientific Activity and Truth Acquisition (with Moshe Shaked). Social Power. Toward a Theory of Social Power. On the Measurement of Power. (shrink)

So argues a leading epistemologist in this work of fundamental importance to philosophical thinking.