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TIM MASSIE (845) 575-3171
DR. ANDREI BUCKAREFF (845) 575-3000, EXT. 2691
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COLLOQUIUM TO DISCUSS "A TALE OF TWO NATURALISMS"
POUGHKEEPSIE -
The Marist College Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies and the Department of Psychology will host a colloquium on "A Tale of Two Naturalisms (or Mental Causation Revisited)" on Tuesday, September 29, at 6:30 p.m. in the Henry Hudson Room, located on the third floor of Fontaine Hall on the Marist campus.
Dr. Daniel Hutto, professor of philosophical psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, U.K., will identify and discuss two different naturalistic attitudes, one open and one restrictive.
"It is argued that commitment to the latter sort of naturalism promotes a familiar rendering of our folk psychological practice as a kind of theory one that thinks of beliefs and desires as posits denoting inner, causally efficacious mental states," said Dr. Hutto. "From this it is shown how philosophical trouble ensues when we become attached to certain misleading pictures of our everyday practices. It is shown how this can lead to seemingly unsolvable problems such as the problem of mental causation. My aim is to debunk this problem by starting in a different place by looking first to the nature of our everyday practices and seeing how they can be understood under the auspices of a more relaxed and open variety of naturalism. Lessons are offered not just about the philosophy of mind but about philosophical methodology as well."
Dr. Hutto is the author of "Folk Psychological Narratives: The Sociocultural Basis of Understanding Reasons" (MIT Press, 2008) and "Wittgenstein and the End of Philosophy: Neither Theory nor Therapy" (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003). He is also the editor of "Narrative and Understanding Persons" (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and has published numerous articles in leading philosophy and cognitive science journals, including "Journal of Consciousness Studies," "Mind and Language," "The Monist," and "Philosophy and Phenomenological Research."
For information on this talk, contact Dr. Andrei Buckareff, chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Marist, at (845) 575-3000, ext. 2691, or by email at andrei.buckareff@marist.edu.
For further information, call the Marist College Office of Public Affairs at (845) 575-3174.
