#957 Adam Toon - Mind as Metaphor: A Defence of Mental Fictionalism

The Dissenter

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Dr. Adam Toon is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Exeter. He works in philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, especially on topics that relate these two fields. He is also interested in the sociology of scientific knowledge. Much of his work focuses on the nature of representation—both how our minds represent the world and how we use other forms of representation, such as scientific models. He is the author of Mind as Metaphor: A Defence of Mental Fictionalism.

In this episode, we focus on Mind as Metaphor. We start by talking about folk psychology, and how people think about the mind. We go through several different approaches to the mind, like the mind as a machine, eliminativism, behaviorism, instrumentalism, and Daniel Dennett’s approach to the mind. We then get into mental fictionalism, and discuss whether the mind exists, how to approach causality and behavior through the lens of fictionalism, self-knowledge, and the concept of mental representation. We talk about the extended mind thesis, and 4E cognition. Finally, we discuss the implications that fictionalism would have for epistemology, and how we think about the nature of human knowledge and inquiry.

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