Beyond Reduction
Philosophy of Mind and Post-Reductionist Philosophy of Science
Horst, Steven Department of Philosophy, Wesleyan University
Print publication date: 2007 (this edition)
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2007
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-531711-4
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195317114.003.0010
 

Steven Horst
This chapter explores the metaphysical commitments of Cognitive Pluralism. Cognitive Pluralism, as a cognitivist/pragmatist thesis, is opposed to a native realism that assumes that the world divides itself into objects and kinds in a single canonical and mind-independent way, and that it is the job of the mind to accurately reflect how things are in their own right. Cognitivism, by contrast, holds that any way of modeling the world, including our best scientific models, reflects features of the mind's cognitive architecture as well. Cognitivist and pluralist assumptions create further problems for the terms in which contemporary problems in metaphysics of mind are framed. Intuitions about supervenience, the Negative EMC, and even our standard ways of framing issues about modal metaphysics turn out to be problematic. The cognitivist turn also suggests a way in which the psychological gaps are unlike the other gaps, as they are concerned with the relation between subjects and objects, while the others are concerned with relations between two types of objects.
Keywords: Cognitive Pluralism, cognitivism, Pragmatism, metaphysics, ontology, modal logic, supervenience, Negative EMC, explanatory gap
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195317114.003.0010
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Beyond Reduction
Part I Naturalism and Reduction in Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Science
Part II Philosophy of Mind and Post-Reductionist Philosophy of Science
Part III Cognitive Pluralism, Explanation, and Metaphysics