I just read most of the comments in this thread and despite a general agreement that LW philosophy and Quinean philosophy have a whole lot in common, no one even suggested reading up on his critics. The lens that sees it’s own flaws is fine and good(although always a more difficult task than one might expect), but what about the lens that exposes itself to the eyes of others and asks them what flaws they see?
And, especially with the replication crisis, shouldn’t we all be gaining some awareness of the philosophical assumptions that inform our experimental and cognitive neuroscience? The interpreters of an FMRI scan or the designers or interpreters of an experimental study interpret their findings through the lenses of certain philosophical assumptions about mind, cognition, and metaphysics. Heck, our language of discourse that we use to talk about psychology is hugely influenced by a group of philosophers nearly everyone agrees was super wrong. The word idea can be traced straight back to Plato and refers to his Platonic forms and our English speaking naive psychology is, in large part, an internalization of Plato’s metaphysics, Newton’s physics, and Descartes dualisms. The words we use, and the ways it feels natural to combine them carry assumptions from philosophy whether we’re aware of them or not. And those assumptions trickle up into the ways a psychologist interprets a subjects actions, the ways the subject interprets and self-reports on their actions, and the ways a neuroscientist interprets a FMRI scan.
I just read most of the comments in this thread and despite a general agreement that LW philosophy and Quinean philosophy have a whole lot in common, no one even suggested reading up on his critics. The lens that sees it’s own flaws is fine and good(although always a more difficult task than one might expect), but what about the lens that exposes itself to the eyes of others and asks them what flaws they see?
And, especially with the replication crisis, shouldn’t we all be gaining some awareness of the philosophical assumptions that inform our experimental and cognitive neuroscience? The interpreters of an FMRI scan or the designers or interpreters of an experimental study interpret their findings through the lenses of certain philosophical assumptions about mind, cognition, and metaphysics. Heck, our language of discourse that we use to talk about psychology is hugely influenced by a group of philosophers nearly everyone agrees was super wrong. The word idea can be traced straight back to Plato and refers to his Platonic forms and our English speaking naive psychology is, in large part, an internalization of Plato’s metaphysics, Newton’s physics, and Descartes dualisms. The words we use, and the ways it feels natural to combine them carry assumptions from philosophy whether we’re aware of them or not. And those assumptions trickle up into the ways a psychologist interprets a subjects actions, the ways the subject interprets and self-reports on their actions, and the ways a neuroscientist interprets a FMRI scan.