tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8042142443470259188.post9002325505619814897..comments2023-05-13T07:41:26.217-05:00Comments on SOH-Dan: McDowell on Cognitive Science and EpistemologyDaniel Lindquisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05443116324301716578noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8042142443470259188.post-6145985692676197982013-05-26T23:18:57.873-05:002013-05-26T23:18:57.873-05:00http://youtu.be/m8y8673RmII?t=52m30s
"Cognit...http://youtu.be/m8y8673RmII?t=52m30s<br /><br />"Cognitive science *needs* epistemology. Cognitive science needs a self-standing understanding of the epistemology of perceptual states on the lines of the position I'm representing as compulsory for its conceptual apparatus to be so much as intelligible."<br /><br />http://youtu.be/m8y8673RmII?t=54m14s<br /><br />"So it's only because the [representational] states are the topic for a different inquiry, epistemology... that cognitive science so much as has its topic."<br /><br />"The dependence of cognitive science on epistemology goes farther, or perhaps deeper, than that...."<br /><br />http://youtu.be/m8y8673RmII?t=59m54s<br /><br />"The cognitive science of perception owes its conceptual apparatus to its connection with epistemological ideas which have their credentials independently. There's a kind of priority to philosophical epistemology with equipping cognitive science with its apparatus."<br /><br />So, yes: I think there are things in this talk that are stronger than what someone like Alva Noe says. I think the kind of line you mention is the line he's been more inclined to push in earlier work, but this lecture seems to me to be different in this respect. (See for instance his attack on functionalism in "Functionalism and Anomalous Monism.")<br /><br />As to whether McDowell *needs* to be pushed this direction: well, if he wants to be entirely sanguine about representationalist-computationalist cognitive science in the way he is in this lecture, I think his arguing in this way makes sense. He noticeably *isn't* saying that there is "bad philosophy" in this kind of cognitive science, but his philosophical commitments prevent it from being able to give a self-standing account of representational purport (in the way that someone like Fodor wants it to), so I think he is more or less forced to say that cognitive science relies on an independent philosophy to provide it with its (representational) subject-matter. Noe doesn't have to say this because he can say that there is (in some sense) good philosophy, or at least good philosophical ideas, in cognitive science that's not in need of philosophical tidying-up -- what he wants to say about philosophy of perception etc. is both what he thinks is right on its own merits and what good cognitive science already is saying. Since McDowell doesn't want to tidy up the cognitive sciences, he has to deny that this bad philosophical stuff is in the science at all. So he's pushed to a picture of cognitive science as resting on an independent philosophy, as I quoted him saying above; and my closing question was, if this is the way he wants to push things, how much further he wants to go. (This is a real question, not any kind of rhetorical posturing or a reductio -- I don't know what he thinks about the Analogies of Experience and that sort of thing, and would be interested in finding out.)<br /><br />At least, so it seems to me; as I said, I probably am getting a somewhat atypical picture of this stuff from studying at IU. (One of my former office-mates is doing his dissertation on nonrepresentationalist cognitive science/philosophy of mind, specifically dynamic systems theory; he doesn't want to posit representations when dealing with rational thought. So, McDowell's ameliorist posture in this talk strikes me as rather dogmatic, which I'm sure is not what he wants it to be.)Daniel Lindquisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05443116324301716578noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8042142443470259188.post-20951358073779127702013-05-26T17:38:06.827-05:002013-05-26T17:38:06.827-05:00A quick comment:
Again, I haven't seen the vi...A quick comment:<br /><br />Again, I haven't seen the videos yet. Nevertheless, do you think that McDowell's arguments need to be pushed into that direction? After all, perhaps he could be interpreted in a sense closer to (say) Alva Nöe, for whom philosophy should present a corrective to the <i>bad philosophy</i> which already "infects", in some sense, the otherwise good work of the scientists. In this sense, philosophy wouldn't provide a <i>basis</i> to science per se, but would merely restrain its flights into (bad) philosophy. Do you think that there is something which McDowell said in those lectures which could preclude this reading? Daniel Nagasehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09389957277629676271noreply@blogger.com