Steven Horst
Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT 06459-3208)
FB-52344-06
Fellowships for College Teachers and Independent Scholars
Research Programs
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[Grant products]
Totals:
$40,000 (approved)
$40,000 (awarded)
Grant period:
12/1/2006 – 8/31/2007
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Cognitive Pluralism: Unities and Disunities of Knowledge and the Mind
This project explores issues of how knowledge and the mind are unified and disunified. It critiques the prevalent philosophical tradition of holding (a) that the mind is best viewed as a single, indivisible, well-unified entity, and (b) that all knowledge can be united, whether in the robust form of a reduction of all facts to those of basic physics, or in the more modest form of a comprehensive yet consistent world view or frame of reference. An alternative view, Cognitive Pluralism, will be developed and defended, drawing upon convergent evidence from several sciences of cognition: neuroscience, cognitive and developmental psychology, artificial intelligence, comparative ethology and evolutionary psychology.
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