Alvin Goldman

(? - 2024)

This article blends psychological and social factors in the explanation of science, and defends the compatibility of a psychosocial picture with an epistemic picture. It examines three variants of the 'political' approach to interpersonal persuasion advocated by Latour and others. In each case an 'epistemic' or mixed account is more promising and empirically better supported. Psychological research on motivated reasoning shows the epistemic limits of interest-driven belief. Against social constructivism, the paper defends the viability of a truth-based standard, and reports how truth-possession can be promoted even when scientific work is motivated by political/professional considerations.

A new class of visuomotor neuron has been recently discovered in the monkey’s premotor cortex: mirror neurons. These neurons respond both when a particular action is performed by the recorded monkey and when the same action, performed by another individual, is observed. Mirror neurons appear to form a cortical system matching observation and execution of goal-related motor actions. Experimental evidence suggests that a similar matching system also exists in humans. What might be the functional role of this matching system? One possible function is to enable an organism to detect certain mental states of observed conspecifics. This function might be part of, or a precursor to, a more general mind-reading ability. Two different accounts of mind-reading have been suggested. According to “theory theory‘, mental states are represented as inferred posits of a naive theory. According to “simulation theory‘, other people’s mental states are represented by adopting their perspective: by tracking or matching their states with resonant states of one’s own. The activity of mirror neurons, and the fact that observers undergo motor facilitation in the same muscular groups as those utilized by target agents, are findings that accord well with simulation theory but would not be predicted by theory theory.

Epistemics as a whole would have a larger scope, encompassing secondary as well as primary individual epistemology and social epistemology in addition. There are a variety of terms of intellectual evaluation, many of interest to epistemology. The ones most commonly used in the discipline are ‘justified’ and ‘rational.’ Another central term of intellectual appraisal, which oddly has received only scant attention in the field, is ‘intelligent.’ Epistemology should be concerned with this range of intellectual assessments. Ethics distinguishes consequentialist and deontological types of theories, and epistemology can utilize the distinction. Which cognitive processes are available, and which are to be approved, are matters that can only be settled with the help of cognitive science. An important distinction drawn in Epistemology and Cognition is the distinction between processes and methods of belief formation. Processes are basic psychological operations, either innate parts of our cognitive architecture or merely the results of maturation as opposed to learning.

In any generation there are relatively few people who make major original contributions to even a single area of philosophy. But the man whose work is the topic of this conference has made such contributions not only in a single field, but in several. This morning and afternoon we have devoted our attention to Chisholm's epistemology, the breadth and significance of which is evident. Equally deserving of our attention, however, are his contributions to the theory of action and metaphysics, and we shall be turning to these topics this evening and tomorrow. As in epistemology, Chisholm's work in these areas has focused on the deepest philosophical problems. He has worked out suggested solutions to these problems with a scope, precision, and care which serve as models for others to emulate.