Krista Lawlor | |
---|---|
Academic background | |
Education | University of New Hampshire (BA), Tufts University (MA), University of Michigan (PhD) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Philosophy |
Institutions | Stanford University |
Main interests | philosophy of mind |
Krista Lawlor is an American philosopher and Henry Waldgrave Stuart Memorial Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. [1] She is known for her works on philosophy of mind and epistemology. [2] [3] [4]
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary,scientific study of the mind and its processes with input from linguistics,psychology,neuroscience,philosophy,computer science/artificial intelligence,and anthropology. It examines the nature,the tasks,and the functions of cognition. Cognitive scientists study intelligence and behavior,with a focus on how nervous systems represent,process,and transform information. Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language,perception,memory,attention,reasoning,and emotion;to understand these faculties,cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as linguistics,psychology,artificial intelligence,philosophy,neuroscience,and anthropology. The typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of organization,from learning and decision to logic and planning;from neural circuitry to modular brain organization. One of the fundamental concepts of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."
A Concept is defined as an abstract idea. It is understood to be a fundamental building block underlying principles,thoughts and beliefs. Concepts play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such,concepts are studied within such disciplines as linguistics,psychology,and philosophy,and these disciplines are interested in the logical and psychological structure of concepts,and how they are put together to form thoughts and sentences. The study of concepts has served as an important flagship of an emerging interdisciplinary approach,cognitive science.
Existence is the ability of an entity to interact with reality. In philosophy,it refers to the ontological property of being.
Internalism and externalism are two opposite ways of integration of explaining various subjects in several areas of philosophy. These include human motivation,knowledge,justification,meaning,and truth. The distinction arises in many areas of debate with similar but distinct meanings. Internal–external distinction is a distinction used in philosophy to divide an ontology into two parts:an internal part concerning observation related to philosophy,and an external part concerning question related to philosophy.
The mind is that which thinks,imagines,remembers,wills,and senses,or is the set of faculties responsible for such phenomena. The mind is also associated with experiencing perception,pleasure and pain,belief,desire,intention,and emotion. The mind can include conscious and non-conscious states as well as sensory and non-sensory experiences.
In its most common sense,philosophical methodology is the field of inquiry studying the methods used to do philosophy. But the term can also refer to the methods themselves. It may be understood in a wide sense as the general study of principles used for theory selection,or in a more narrow sense as the study of ways of conducting one's research and theorizing with the goal of acquiring philosophical knowledge. Philosophical methodology investigates both descriptive issues,such as which methods actually have been used by philosophers,and normative issues,such as which methods should be used or how to do good philosophy.
The problem of universals is an ancient question from metaphysics that has inspired a range of philosophical topics and disputes:"Should the properties an object has in common with other objects,such as color and shape,be considered to exist beyond those objects? And if a property exists separately from objects,what is the nature of that existence?"
In their most common sense,the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging,reasoning,concept formation,problem solving,and deliberation. But other mental processes,like considering an idea,memory,or imagination,are also often included. These processes can happen internally independent of the sensory organs,unlike perception. But when understood in the widest sense,any mental event may be understood as a form of thinking,including perception and unconscious mental processes. In a slightly different sense,the term thought refers not to the mental processes themselves but to mental states or systems of ideas brought about by these processes.
In its most general sense,the term "world" refers to the totality of entities,to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object while others analyze the world as a complex made up of many parts. In scientific cosmology the world or universe is commonly defined as "[t]he totality of all space and time;all that is,has been,and will be". Theories of modality,on the other hand,talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. Phenomenology,starting from the horizon of co-given objects present in the periphery of every experience,defines the world as the biggest horizon or the "horizon of all horizons". In philosophy of mind,the world is commonly contrasted with the mind as that which is represented by the mind. Theology conceptualizes the world in relation to God,for example,as God's creation,as identical to God or as the two being interdependent. In religions,there is often a tendency to downgrade the material or sensory world in favor of a spiritual world to be sought through religious practice. A comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it,as is commonly found in religions,is known as a worldview. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world while eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world.
Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reasons. In this regard,a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ability,as in rational animal,to a psychological process,like reasoning,to mental states,such as beliefs and intentions,or to persons who possess these other forms of rationality. A thing that lacks rationality is either arational,if it is outside the domain of rational evaluation,or irrational,if it belongs to this domain but does not fulfill its standards.
In cognitive linguistics,conceptual metaphor,or cognitive metaphor,refers to the understanding of one idea,or conceptual domain,in terms of another. An example of this is the understanding of quantity in terms of directionality or the understanding of time in terms of money.
Knowledge is a form of awareness or familiarity. It is often understood as awareness of facts or as practical skills,and may also mean familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts,also called propositional knowledge,is often defined as true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification. While there is wide agreement among philosophers that propositional knowledge is a form of true belief,many controversies in philosophy focus on justification. This includes questions like whether justification is needed at all,how to understand it,and whether something else besides it is needed. These controversies intensified due to a series of thought experiments by Edmund Gettier and have provoked various alternative definitions. Some of them deny that justification is necessary and suggest alternative criteria. Others accept that justification is an essential aspect and formulate additional requirements.
Experience refers to conscious events in general,more specifically to perceptions,or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense,experience involves a subject to which various items are presented. In this sense,seeing a yellow bird on a branch presents the subject with the objects "bird" and "branch",the relation between them and the property "yellow". Unreal items may be included as well,which happens when experiencing hallucinations or dreams. When understood in a more restricted sense,only sensory consciousness counts as experience. In this sense,experience is usually identified with perception and contrasted with other types of conscious events,like thinking or imagining. In a slightly different sense,experience refers not to the conscious events themselves but to the practical knowledge and familiarity they produce. In this sense,it is important that direct perceptual contact with the external world is the source of knowledge. So an experienced hiker is someone who actually lived through many hikes,not someone who merely read many books about hiking. This is associated both with recurrent past acquaintance and the abilities learned through them.
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence,i.e. what supports or counters this proposition,that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and plays a role in various other fields,like epistemology and law.
In philosophy,a distinction is often made between two different kinds of knowledge:knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Whereas knowledge by description is something like ordinary propositional knowledge,knowledge by acquaintance is familiarity with a person,place,or thing,typically obtained through perceptual experience. According to Bertrand Russell's classic account of acquaintance knowledge,acquaintance is a direct causal interaction between a person and some object that the person is perceiving.
Early modern philosophy is a period in the history of philosophy that overlaps with the beginning of the period known as modern philosophy.
Philosophical realism –usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters –is the view that a certain kind of thing has mind-independent existence,i.e. that it exists even in the absence of any mind perceiving it or that its existence is not just a mere appearance in the eye of the beholder. This includes a number of positions within epistemology and metaphysics which express that a given thing instead exists independently of knowledge,thought,or understanding. This can apply to items such as the physical world,the past and future,other minds,and the self,though may also apply less directly to things such as universals,mathematical truths,moral truths,and thought itself. However,realism may also include various positions which instead reject metaphysical treatments of reality entirely.
Experimental philosophy is an emerging field of philosophical inquiry that makes use of empirical data—often gathered through surveys which probe the intuitions of ordinary people—in order to inform research on philosophical questions. This use of empirical data is widely seen as opposed to a philosophical methodology that relies mainly on a priori justification,sometimes called "armchair" philosophy,by experimental philosophers. Experimental philosophy initially began by focusing on philosophical questions related to intentional action,the putative conflict between free will and determinism,and causal vs. descriptive theories of linguistic reference. However,experimental philosophy has continued to expand to new areas of research.
Philosophy is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence,reason,knowledge,values,mind,and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions.
Dutch philosophy is a broad branch of philosophy that discusses the contributions of Dutch philosophers to the discourse of Western philosophy and Renaissance philosophy. The philosophy,as its own entity,arose in the 16th and 17th centuries through the philosophical studies of Desiderius Erasmus and Baruch Spinoza. The adoption of the humanistic perspective by Erasmus,despite his Christian background,and rational but theocentric perspective expounded by Spinoza,supported each of these philosopher's works. In general,the philosophy revolved around acknowledging the reality of human self-determination and rational thought rather than focusing on traditional ideals of fatalism and virtue raised in Christianity. The roots of philosophical frameworks like the mind-body dualism and monism debate can also be traced to Dutch philosophy,which is attributed to 17th century philosopher RenéDescartes. Descartes was both a mathematician and philosopher during the Dutch Golden Age,despite being from the Kingdom of France. Modern Dutch philosophers like D.H. Th. Vollenhoven provided critical analyses on the dichotomy between dualism and monism.