For link to original article, click here Successful decision-making within a democracy depends on an informed electorate. It is both depressing and alarming, then, that studies of political knowledge among the general population reveal a consistent lesson: The public is often ignorant and misinformed when it comes to basic matters of fact and issues of scientific … Continue reading To communicate scientific research, we need to confront motivated ignorance
Socially Adaptive Minds
Any attempt to understand human psychology must reconcile two characteristics of our species: the extraordinarily adaptive character of human intelligence in some contexts, and the conspicuous manifestations of stupidity and irrationality in others. On the one hand, human beings are remarkable. Not morally or aesthetically remarkable, but remarkable from a quasi-engineering perspective. With astonishing energetic … Continue reading Socially Adaptive Minds
Chapter 11: Looking Forward
In this concluding post I’ll briefly summarise what I have argued so far and then outline three pressing research questions moving forward. Summary My aim in the thesis as a whole has been to outline and defend a theory of some important aspects of mental representation based on the idea of idealised models in the … Continue reading Chapter 11: Looking Forward
Chapter 10: Generative Intentionality
Ok, this is the last substantive chapter in the thesis. In the next post—the concluding one—I’ll summarise the main lessons of previous chapters and outline some important questions and issues to address in future work. In this chapter I address another challenge to representationalist accounts of the mind, this one focused on representational content. Roughly, … Continue reading Chapter 10: Generative Intentionality
Chapter 9. Modelling the Umwelt
In this chapter I’m going to address another challenge to a representationalist understanding of perception. This one is less precise than the one that I addressed in the previous post, but it has nevertheless had a large influence in motivating anti-representationalism among a motley crew of anti-representationalists: pragmatists, ecological psychologists, enactivists, and so on. Roughly, … Continue reading Chapter 9. Modelling the Umwelt
