John Symons

This paper argues that open-mindedness is a corrective virtue. It serves as a corrective to the epistemic vice of confirmation bias. Specifically, open-mindedness is the epistemically virtuous disposition to resist the negative effects of confirmation bias on our ability to reason well and to evaluate evidence and arguments. As part of the defense and presentation of our account, we explore four discussions of open-mindedness in the recent literature. All four approaches have strengths and shed light on aspects of the virtue of open-mindedness. Each mentions various symptoms of confirmation bias and some explore aspects of the corrective role of open-mindedness. However, ours is the first to explicitly identify open-mindedness as a corrective virtue to the specific epistemic vice of confirmation bias. We show how the corrective account also permits a response to the concern that open-mindedness might not actually count as a virtue.

Giandomenico Sica’s volume is a collection of eleven papers on category theory by philosophers, mathematicians, and mathematical physicists. In addition to papers of direct interest to philosophers of mathematics, the volume contains some introductory expositions of category theory along with a valuable discussion of the relationship between category theory and physics by Bob Coecke. While there are several technically difficult papers, the volume as a whole is reasonably accessible to those with some familiarity with the basics of category theory. The importance of the volume lies in the possibility that it will encourage broader interest in category theory among philosophers.

The analytic tradition is sometimes criticized as being narrowly focused on language, logic or conceptual analysis to the detriment of deeper investigations into ontological, metaphysical or moral questions.1 More specifically, analytic philosophy has been associated with a positivist attitude which favored replacing the philosophy’s traditional focus on fundamental questions with an obsequiously deferential relationship to mathematics and the natural sciences. While this line of criticism obscures the historical reality and contemporary diversity of the analytic tradition, it is certainly true that analytic philosophers have generated severe criticisms of traditional metaphysics.

Functionalism in the philosophy of mind rests on the claim that mental states are multiply realizable; mental states can be realized by or instantiated in a variety of distinct physical structures. To see them as multiply realizable we take mental states as causal roles rather than particular physical structures. As such, functionalism can be contrasted with metaphysical accounts which treat mental states as instances of a mental substance. Instead of puzzling over the relationship between mental and physical kinds, functionalists understand our talk of minds as a way of describing the functions of bodies. The attraction of a functionalist position is obvious. It seems to solve the traditional problem of mind-body dualism, while simultaneously reconciling the apparent irreducibility of psychological discourse with a broadly physicalistic or materialistic ontology.

This paper introduces the _Global Philosophy_ symposium on Giuseppe Primiero’s book _On the Foundations of Computing_ (2020). The collection gathers commentaries and responses of the author with the aim of engaging with some open questions in the philosophy of computer science. Firstly, this paper introduces the central themes addressed in Primiero’s book; secondly, it highlights some of the main critiques from commentators in order to, finally, pinpoint some conceptual challenges indicating future directions for the philosophy of computer science.

In his “A New Program for Philosophy of Science?”, Ronald Giere expresses qualms regarding the critical and political projects I advocate for philosophy of science—that the critical project assumes an underdetermination absent from actual science, and the political project takes us outside the professional pursuit of philosophy of science. In reply I contend that the underdetermination the critical project assumes does occur in actual science, and I provide a variety of examples to support this. And I contend that the political project requires no more than what other academic fields even in science studies are already providing.

SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE! Daniel Dennett has been one of the central voices in the philosophy of mind for at least the past forty years. Unlike most philosophers of his generation, Dennett’s work has resonated far and wide. It has powerfully influenced the development of cognitive science, robotics, developmental psychology, and artificial intelligence. Indeed, his work has led to many new lines of inquiry. For example, he has developed a theory of consciousness which provides an approach to naturalizing mind which circumvents many of the most significant philosophical arguments against the possibility of a scientific explanation of consciousness. The daunting quantity of literature available on Dennett makes it difficult to discriminate the useful from the tendentious, superficial, and otiose. Moreover, because no comparable philosopher has had a profound impact across such a wide range of disciplines and on intellectual culture in general, responses to Dennett’s philosophy are dispersed across a broad range of scientific, philosophical, and cultural domains. That is why this new title in the highly regarded Routledge series, Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, is so urgently needed. Edited by John Symons, this new Routledge Major Work is a four-volume collection of the best scholarship on Dennett; the collected materials have been carefully selected from a wide range of academic journals, edited collections, research monographs, and other sources. The tightly focused organization of this collection allows users quickly and easily to access both established and cutting-edge assessments of Dennett’s work. The set is also made for irresistible browsing. With comprehensive introductions to each volume, providing essential background information and relating the various works to each other, Daniel Dennett is destined to be an indispensable resource for research and study

This brief text assists students in understanding Dennett's philosophy and thinking so they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the Wadsworth Notes Series, (which will eventually consist of approximately 100 titles, each focusing on a single "thinker" from ancient times to the present), ON DENNETT is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concise book offers sufficient insight into the thinking of a notable philosopher, better enabling students to engage in reading and to discuss the material in class and on paper.

This dissertation begins with an analysis of the recent history of the cognitive neuroscience of vision. This analysis is intended to test the basic assumptions of computational functionalism. Functionalists have argued that since psychological properties can be realized by a variety of structures, those structures are irrelevant to a proper characterization of their properties. By considering applications of functionalist methodology in cognitive science, I argue that functionalist models of mental life can be faulted for being either too minimal, or for making empirical and methodological claims that cannot be supported. In opposition to the functionalist autonomy thesis, Chapters Three and Four argue that taking neuroscientific evidence seriously can justify a revision of psychological taxonomies. ;Though the approach taken here with respect to the relationship between neuroscience and philosophy echoes some arguments presented in support of theory reductionism, it does not presuppose taking a reductionist or eliminativist stance on either ontological or methodological questions. In opposition to traditional eliminativist or reductionist suggestions, it is argued that naturalizing the philosophy of mind does not imply the complete subordination of philosophical inquiry to neuroscientific evidence. As evidence for this general claim and for the relevance of philosophical analysis to scientific inquiry, Chapters Four and Five present an analysis of uses of the notion of information in the neuroscience of vision. This analysis draws on past work in the logic of perception, relying in particular on Jaakko Hintikka's analysis of identification. Chapter Five considers the so-called two-pathways theory of visual identification in cognitive neuroscience, concluding that developments in semantical analysis can make an important difference at the level of concrete neuroscientific investigation. Specifically, the scientifically misleading claim that two kinds of visual information are necessary for the implementation of two modes of identification is corrected.