Alvin Goldman

This Festschrift seeks to honor three highly distinguished scholars in the Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan: William K. Frankena, Charles L. Stevenson, and Richard B. Brandt. Each has made significant con­tributions to the philosophic literature, particularly in the field of ethics. Michigan has been fortunate in having three such original and productive moral philosophers serving on its faculty simultaneously. Yet they stand in a long tradition of excellence, both within the Department and in the University. Let us trace that tradition briefly. The University of Michigan opened in 184l. lts Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts at first resembled a typical American college of that period, with religious and ethical indoctrination playing a central role in course offerings. But when Henry Tappan, a Presbyterian clergyman and Professor of philosophy, became President in 1852, he succeeded in shifting the emphasis from indoctrination to inquiry and scholarship. Though he was dismissed for his policies in 1863, Tappan's efforts to establish a broad and liberal curriculum prevailed. Michigan was to take its place among the leading educational institutions in this country, and to achieve an international reputation as a research center. Several past philosophers are worthy of mention here. George Sylvester Morris, an absolute idealist, joined the Department in 1881, having served from 1870 as Chairman of the Department of Modern Languages and Literature. He assumed the Chairmanship of Philosophy in 1884.

How can intuitions be used to validate or invalidate a philosophical theory? An intuition about a case seems to be a basic evidential source for the truth of that intuition, i.e., for the truth of the claim that a particular example is or isn’t an instance of a philosophically interesting kind, concept, or predicate. A mental‐state type is a basic evidential source only if its tokens reliably indicate the truth of their contents. The best way to account for intuitions being a basic evidential source is to interpret their subject matter in psychologistic terms. Intuitions provide evidence about the contents of the intuiter's concept, where “concept” is understood as a psychological structure.

The aim of this paper is to study interpretation, specifically, to work toward an account of interpretation that seems descriptively and explanatorily correct. No account of interpretation can be philosophically helpful, I submit, if it is incompatible with a correct account of what people actually do when they interpret others. My question, then, is: how does the (naive) interpreter arrive at his/her judgments about the mental attitudes of others? Philosophers who have addressed this question have not, in my view, been sufficiently psychological, or cognitivist, even those who are otherwise psychologically inclined. I shall defend some proposals about the activity of interpretation that are, I believe, psychologically more realistic than their chief competitors.

Within the analytic tradition—especially under the influence of Frege’s anti-psychologism—the thought of incorporating empirical psychology into epistemology was definitely out of bounds. This began to change with the advent of “naturalistic” epistemology, in which Epistemology and Cognition played a role. However, there is no settled consensus as to how, exactly, empirical psychology or cognitive science should contribute to the epistemological enterprise. This is the topic to which the present paper is addressed. The discussion explores four topics or issues in contemporary epistemology to which current research in psychology might make helpful contributions: the generality problem for reliabilism; algorithms and belief-forming processes; epistemology and the Bayesian theory of vision; and the rationality wars and dual-process systems.

This volume illustrates how the methodology of metaphysics can be enriched with the help of cognitive science. Few philosophers nowadays would dispute the relevance of cognitive science to the metaphysics of mind, but this volume mainly concerns the relevance of metaphysics to phenomena that are not themselves mental. The volume is thus a departure from standard analytical metaphysics. Among the issues to which results from cognitive science are brought to bear are the metaphysics of time, of morality, of meaning, of modality, of objects, and of natural kinds, as well as whether God exists. A number of chapters address the enterprise of metaphysics in general. In traditional analytical metaphysics, intuitions play a prominent role in the construction of, and assessment of theories. Cognitive science can be brought to bear on the issue of the reliability of intuitions. Some chapters point out how results from cognitive science can be deployed to debunk certain intuitions, and some point out how results can be deployed to help vindicate certain intuitions.

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.

Social epistemology is the study of the social dimensions of knowledge or information. There is little consensus, however, on what the term "knowledge" comprehends, what is the scope of the "social", or what the style or purpose of the study should be. According to some writers, social epistemology should retain the same general mission as classical epistemology, revamped in the recognition that classical epistemology was too individualistic. According to other writers, social epistemology should be a more radical departure from classical epistemology, a successor discipline that would replace epistemology as traditionally conceived. The classical approach could be realized in at least two forms. One would emphasize the traditional epistemic goal of acquiring true beliefs. It would study social practices in terms of their impact on the truth-values of agents' beliefs. A second version of the classical approach would focus on the epistemic goal of having justified or rational beliefs. Applied to the social realm, it might concentrate, for example, on when a cognitive agent is justified or warranted in accepting the statements and opinions of others. Proponents of the anti-classical approach have little or no use for concepts like truth and justification. In addressing the social dimensions of knowledge, they understand "knowledge" as simply what is believed, or what beliefs are "institutionalized" in this or that community, culture, or context. They seek to identify the social forces and influences responsible for knowledge production so conceived. Social epistemology is theoretically significant because of the central role of society in the knowledge-forming process. It also has practical importance because of its possible role in the redesign of information-related social institutions.

A traditional view is that scientific evidence can be produced only by intersubjective methods that can be used by different investigators and will produce agreement. This intersubjectivity, or publicity, constraint ostensibly excludes introspection. But contemporary cognitive scientists regularly rely on their subjects' introspective reports in many areas, especially in the study of consciousness. So there is a tension between actual scientific practice and the publicity requirement. Which should give way? This paper argues against the publicity requirement and against a fallback version of it, viz. that evidence-conferring methods must at least have their reliability publicly validated

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.

Consciousness researchers standardly rely on their subjects’ verbal reports to ascertain which conscious states they are in. What justifies this reliance on verbal reports? Does it comport with the third-person approach characteristic of science, or does it ultimately appeal to first-person knowledge of consciousness? If first-person knowledge is required, does this pass scientific muster? Several attempts to rationalize the reliance on verbal reports are considered, beginning with attempts to define consciousness via the higher-order thought approach and functionalism. These approaches are either problematic in their own right, or ultimately based on a first-person access to consciousness. A third approach assumes that scientists can trust verbal reports because subjects reliably monitor or ‘introspect’ their conscious states. This raises the question of whether the reliability of introspection can be validated by independent criteria. Merikle's attempts to validate this reliability are shown to involve some unavoidable circularity. It is conjectured that scientists’ reliance on their subjects’ verbal reports tacitly appeals to their own introspective reliability, which is not independently validatable. Some epistemologists might conclude that this renders scientists’ conclusions about conscious states unjustified, but I argue that this does not contravene the constraints of a proper epistemology

Epistemology has always been concerned with mental states, especially doxastic states such as belief, suspension of judgment, and the like. A significant part of epistemology is the attempt to evaluate, appraise, or criticize alternative procedures for the formation of belief and other doxastic attitudes. In addressing itself to doxastic states, epistemology has usually employed our everyday mental concepts and language. Occasionally it has tried to systematize or precise these mental categories, e.g., by introducing the notion of subjective probabilities. But this is a minor refinement in our intuitive notion of degrees of confidence. What epistemology has not done—at least 20th century analytic epistemology hasn’t done it—is to seek help from experimental psychology in choosing its doxastic categories. Analytic epistemology has generally assumed that doxastic descriptions generated by casual and introspective thought are adequate for its purposes.

What are the conceptually necessary and sufficient conditions for a person, or organism, to perceive a given object? More precisely, what is the nature of our ordinary thought about perception that gives rise to our willingness or unwillingness to say that S perceives O? Some form of causal theory of perception is now, I think, widely accepted. Such a theory maintains that it is part of our concept of perception that S perceives O only if O causes a percept, or perceptual state, of S. I accept this causal requirement, though with some qualification. The crucial problem for the theory of perception is what must be added to the causal requirement. Not all causes of a percept are said to be perceived. Smith looks at a tree illuminated by the sun, when the sun is not itself in view. His visual percept is caused by the tree, but not only the tree. The percept's causal ancestry includes the sun and the array of light two inches from Smith's eyes. Why do we say that he sees the tree, but not the sun or the array of light? What principles underlie this invidious choice among causes? Similarly, we think of a bat as perceiving objects in his path, but not as perceiving himself. Yet, since he emits the sonar signals these objects reflect, he is himself a cause of his percepts. Why don't we say he perceives himself?

Findings and theories in cognitive science have been increasingly important in many areas of philosophy, especially philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. The time is ripe to examine its potential applications to moral theory as well. This article does not aspire to a comprehensive treatment of the subject. It merely aims to illustrate the ways in which research in cognitive science can bear on the concerns of moral philosophers. For present purposes the label 'cognitive science' is used fairly broadly, encompassing, for example, the study of emotion or "hot" cognition as well as "cold" cognition.

Pierre Jacob (2008) raises several problems for the alleged link between mirroring and mindreading. This response argues that the best mirroring-mindreading thesis would claim that mirror processes cause, rather than constitute, selected acts of mindreading. Second, the best current evidence for mirror-based mindreading is not found in the motoric domain but in the domains of emotion and sensation, where the evidence (ignored by Jacob) is substantial. Finally, simulation theory should distinguish low-level simulation (mirroring) and high-level simulation (involving pretense or imagination). Jacob implies that bi-level simulationism creates an unbridgeable 'gap' in intention reading, but this is not a compelling challenge.

Social epistemology is the normative theory of socioepistemic practices. Teaching is a socioepistemic practice, so educational practices belong on the agenda of social epistemology. A current question is whether intelligent design should be taught in biology classes. This paper focuses on the argument from “fairness” or “equal time.” The principal aim of education is knowledge transmission, but evidence renders it doubtful that giving intelligent design equal time would promote knowledge transmission. In making curricular decisions, boards of education should consult the experts. Are novices capable of identifying genuine experts? This social epistemological question is answered affirmatively

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.