Aida Roige

Are modules of the mind mechanisms? What role does the New Mechanistic philosophy of science play in describing the architecture of the mind/brain? In this paper, I answer both questions. I argue that cognitive science uses two types of account: those targeting mechanisms-as-systems (“modules of the mind”) and those targeting mechanisms-as-causings. These types have quite different metaphysical implications and should not be conflated. Examples of the face-recognition system and mechanisms for placebo analgesia illustrate the differences. For partial explanations in cognitive science, I recommend using a minimal notion of mechanism. Last, I argue we ought to be treating the New Mechanistic philosophy as a toolbox.

Trends in popular music hold wide sway, and the chart-topping songs of the day form an audible background to many public spaces. Because of this, we argue, there is a philosophically significant role in the social construction of romantic love that is distinctively played by popular music. In this chapter, we review some reasons for including a discussion of popular music in a volume on art, then discuss popular music’s connections to romantic love, as well the power and significance of such music. Next we outline our take on social construction, together with its connections to contingency and change. Finally, we discuss the social construction of romantic love in particular, and the role of popular music within that process. We conclude that romantic love as currently constructed includes damaging elements, and it is our aim to highlight the role of popular music in sustaining these.

Which non-human animals are phenomenally conscious? In this paper I argue that the distribution of phenomenal consciousness in the animal world is ultimately an unsolvable issue, because of an underlying problem inherent in the field: what I call the Kinda Hard Problem. The Kinda Hard Problem arises because the grounds on which we base our consciousness attributions to humans third-personally are either unavailable or ambiguous once we move to the animal case. Its nature is that of an epistemic problem: we cannot collect enough evidential grounds to justify attributions of phenomenal consciousness (and attributions of its lack) to non-human animals. Thus, it is impossible to ground rational belief one way or another regarding animal consciousness. This paper presents the problem and explains how it differs from other problems of consciousness.

The main thesis of Heyes' book is that all of the domain-specific learning mechanisms that make the human mind so different from the minds of other animals are culturally created and culturally acquired gadgets. The only innate differences are some motivational tweaks, enhanced capacities for associative learning, and enhanced executive function abilities. But Heyes' argument depends on contrasting cognitive gadgets with cognitive instincts, which are said to be innately specified. This ignores what has for some years been the mainstream nativist/anti-empiricist view, which commits only to partially specified learning systems that become elaborated and built through domain-specific learning.

A research resource created by the Metaphysics of Love project. The Metaphysics of Love Project is an interdisciplinary investigation into the nature of romantic love, supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant and by the funding of Principal Investigator Carrie Jenkins's Canada Research Chair. The project is running from 2016 to 2019, following a successful pilot project that ran from 2014 to 2016 (funded by a Hampton Research Grant from the University of British Columbia).

Intelligence, genius and mental ability were a cluster of traits that received much attention in eugenics discourse. Intelligence was regarded as one of the good qualities superior men possessed, in turn beneficial for society as a whole. On the other hand, the socially problematic or unproductive were identified as being of inferior mental quality: “feeble-minded”. By and large, eugenicists thought that (1) intelligence was a unitary psychological trait that could be measured, being quantified as an intelligence quotient (IQ); (2) intelligence was paired with educational achievement, reputation, and economic success; (3) a certain degree of intelligence was necessary to act morally and to foresee the consequences of one’s actions. Despite the prominent role of intelligence in the history of eugenics, there is considerable lack of clarity in what this general mental ability was considered to be.