“Work on causal theories of knowledge - early work by Armstrong, and Dretske, and Goldman - seemed far more satisfying. As I started to see the ways in which work in the cognitive sciences could inform our understanding of central epistemological issues, my whole idea of what the philosophical enterprise is all about began to change. Quine certainly played a role here, as did Putnam's (pre-1975) work in philosophy of science, and the exciting developments that went on in that time in philosophy of mind.” WayMindIdeasPhilosophyWholeUnderstandingRolesIssuesTheoryDevelopmentExcitingPhilosophicalEnterpriseSatisfyingCognitivePhilosophy Of ScienceArmstrongCognitive ScienceEarly WorkTheory Of Knowledge Author:Hilary Kornblith
“It started becoming clear to me how one might have views about the nature of mind and of knowledge which are empirically informed. This way of thinking about philosophical theorizing makes sense of how philosophy might be a legitimate intellectual activity, in a way that a good deal of the armchair philosophy, I believe, cannot.” ThinkingWayMindBelievePhilosophyMightI BelieveViewsDealsClearBecomingActivityIntellectualPhilosophicalMake SenseWay Of ThinkingArmchairs Author:Hilary Kornblith
“Epistemologists should be concerned with knowledge and justification and so on, not our concepts of them; philosophers of mind should be concerned with various features of our mental life and the large-scale structure of the mind, not our concepts of mind, or consciousness, or anything else” ShouldMindConsciousnessConceptsConcernedStructurePhilosopherVariousScalesFeaturesJustificationLarge Scale Author:Hilary Kornblith
“The role of empirical work in informing our philosophical theories, as I see it, is not that it gives us a better view of our folk concepts, but that it gives us a better view of knowledge, and the mind, and so on.” GivingMindViewsRolesTheoryConceptsPhilosophicalFolksInforming Author:Hilary Kornblith
“The worry that unreflective belief acquisition may be unreliable, after all, applies equally to reflective belief acquisition: it too may be unreliable. To my mind, the plausibility of internalist views about justification is dramatically decreased when one becomes vividly aware of what introspection and reflection actually achieve.” MindMayBeliefViewsWorryAchieveReflectionJustificationIntrospectionAcquisitionUnreliable Author:Hilary Kornblith
“I do think that an understanding of contemporary work in the cognitive sciences has a profound effect on how one views the workings of the mind. It doesn't work the way we pretheoretically think it does. Such an understanding, of course, should have a large effect on one's views in philosophy of mind, but also in epistemology.” ThinkingWayShouldMindDoePhilosophyCoursesUnderstandingViewsEffectsShould HaveProfoundContemporaryCognitiveEpistemologyCognitive Science Author:Hilary Kornblith
“The great philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries did not think that epistemological questions floated free of questions about how the mind works. Those philosophers took a stand on all sorts of questions which nowadays we would classify as questions of psychology, and their views about psychological questions shaped their views about epistemology, as well they should have.” ThinkingShouldMindWellsViewsPsychologyCenturyShould HavePhilosopherPsychologicalEpistemology18th CenturyGreat Philosophers Author:Hilary Kornblith
“17th century philosophers were not in a position to understand the mind as well as we can today, since the advent of experimental methods in psychology. It shows no disrespect for the brilliance of Descartes or Kant to acknowledge that the psychology which they worked with was primitive by comparison with what is available today in the cognitive sciences, any more than it shows disrespect for the brilliance of Aristotle to acknowledge that the physics he worked with does not compare with that of Newton or Einstein.” MindWellsDoeShowsTodayPsychologyCenturyPositionMethodPhilosopherAvailablePhysicsCompareAcknowledgeComparisonPrimitiveBrillianceNewtonDisrespectCognitiveAdventCognitive Science17th Century Author:Hilary Kornblith
“What we need to do, however, is figure out what our best available theories of the mind suggest about epistemological issues, while we recognise that we may need to change our views on these questions as new evidence comes in.” NeedsMindMayViewsIssuesFiguresTheoryEvidenceAvailableRecogniseNeed A Change Author:Hilary Kornblith
