Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Psychology

  • The Uses of Philosophy

    By Daniel A. Kaufman ___ [1] We need to distinguish between philosophy and what people have called philosophy. Physics is not philosophy and neither is biology, yet once, they — and the rest of the natural sciences — went under the name “natural philosophy.”  [2] I would identify philosophy with a set of tools and techniques,…

  • When Philosophy Gets Human Beings Wrong

    by Kevin Currie-Knight ____ In the past year, I’ve read two books on how people’s minds change. The latest, How Minds Change, is by science writer David McRaney. Previously, I’d read, Stop Being Reasonable, by philosopher Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Both attempt to drill into “what we know” about how real people in the real world go…

  • Psychologizing Philosophy

    by Kevin Currie-Knight ___ I stand with Friedrich Nietzsche and William James when (albeit in different ways) they arrive at a similar position: a person’s philosophy reflects their temperament. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche suggested that every philosophy is “the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography.” In Pragmatism,…

  • The Ethics of Compulsory Education — And Public Schooling Too — With Crispin Sartwell

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Crispin Sartwell (Dickinson College) returns to Sophia to talk about the issues he has with compulsory, state-sponsored k-12 education. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYm03FISkM4&ab_channel=ElectricAgora 10:50 – Crispin’s schooling experience in Washington DC 20:20 – The tension between learning and compulsion / Formal Compulsion and oppressive atmospheres 25:50 – Compulsion of minors considered more generally…

  • philosophy as diplomacy

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ During a conversation with Megan Fritts of Utah State, I suggested that perhaps philosophical disputes should be conducted as negotiations rather than arguments. I’d like to develop this idea a bit more. That philosophy is a primarily argumentative business is, I trust, evident enough that I don’t need to expand…

  • Course Notes – Paul Churchland, “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes”

    by Daniel A. Kaufman https://ruccs.rutgers.edu/images/personal-zenon-pylyshyn/class-info/FP2012_readings/Churchland_EliminativeMaterialsm.pdf In the philosophy of mind, apart from sensations, with their perplexing “qualia,” intentional states, the so-called “propositional attitudes,” have proven materialism’s biggest headache.  Materialism’s greatest hope, functionalism – and particularly its computational variety – ran into trouble with the propositional attitudes by way of the Chinese (or at least, one…