This chapter applies the parity principle in discussing “active externalism,” which claims that the mind need not be confined within either the brain or body. Consequently, how one brain or body interacts with other brains and bodies must be explored, together with the problems that may arise out of this interaction. This chapter is not concerned with beliefs and desires as mental states but whether they play a role in controlling behavior. It argues the notion that any course of action (...) considered part of the cognitive process going on inside the brain is still part of the cognitive process no matter where it is being implemented. Divided into two parts, this chapter first establishes some points of reference regarding language and cognition, and then proceeds to an attempt to connect the issues by directly discussing the parity principle. (shrink)

Neuroscience offers more than new empirical evidence about the details of cognitive functions such as language, perception and action. Since it also shows many functions to be highly distributed, interconnected and dependent on mechanisms at different levels of processing, it challenges concepts that are traditionally used to describe these functions. The question is how to accommodate these concepts to the recent evidence. A recent proposal, made in Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (2003) by Bennett and Hacker, is that concepts play a (...) foundational role in neuroscience, that empirical research needs to presuppose them and that changing concepts is a philosophical task. In defending this perspective, PFN shows much neuroscientific writing to be dualistic in nature due to our poor grasp of its foundations. In our review article we take a different approach. Instead of foundationalism we plead for a mild coherentism, which allows for a gradual and continuous alteration of concepts in light of new evidence. Following this approach it is also easier to deal with some neurological conditions (like blindsight, synaesthesia) that pose difficulties for our concepts. Finally, although words and concepts seem to seduce us to thinking that many skills and tasks function separately, it is language skill that – as neuroscientific evidence shows – co-emerges with action/perception cycles and thus seems to require revision of some of our central concepts. (shrink)

James Mylne (1757-1839) taught moral philosophy and political economy in Glasgow from 1797 to the mid-1830s. Rational Piety and Social Reform in Glasgow offers readers Mylne's biography, a summary of his lectures on moral philosophy and political economy, several interpretative essays, and a collation of his introductory lecture.

Stephen Cowley’s paper contends that the breaking of a formerly vital link between philosophy and theology has compromised the work of the Church of Scotland. To this end, he examines the connection between philosophy and theology in the work of John McLeod Campbell (1800–72), arguing that the link has either been neglected or significantly misrepresented. He demonstrates that Campbell ascribes a positive role to philosophy and reason in his work, a position partly drawn from rethinking the views of his teacher, (...) James Mylne (1757–1839). He goes on to show how Campbell’s rejection of legal metaphors in understanding the atonement may have developed from Mylne’s philosophical theology. The paper marks a break from the suggestion that Campbell’s conclusions in The Nature of the Atonement emerge primarily from an outworking of his pastoral experience in the light of a reading of Calvinist theologians. (shrink)

Summary of contribution to history of ideas in Scotland in context of debates on self-determination.