Jake
Beck
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Email jsbeck@fas.harvard.edu Mailing Address Department of Philosophy Office 103 Emerson Hall Office Hours Wednesday 3-4 and by appointment |
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My research lies at the intersection of philosophy and
psychology, and focuses primarily on the nature and structure of
thought. The big questions that keep
me motivated are: ·
What is thought? What does it
take to be a thinker and how can we tell when a creature has what it
takes? If thoughts are mental
representations, what kind of mental representations are they (i.e. how are
they structured)? And for that matter,
what are mental representations? ·
How is consciousness related to thought? Does it play any role in furnishing our
thoughts with content? When our
thoughts are conscious, does that fundamentally change their nature? Or are the conscious properties of thought
mere epiphenomena? ·
What are the facts in virtue of which thoughts have the contents that
they do? Are thought contents
determinate? Do the thoughts of
animals suffer from greater indeterminacy than the thoughts of humans? Do thoughts have conceptual content, or
might some thoughts have nonconceptual content? ·
How are thoughts related to reasons?
Do all thinkers have reasons, or do thinkers need a special kind of
thought to have reasons? What about
moral reasons? ·
How have philosophical conceptions of thought changed over the
years? For example, how do Descartes,
Locke, Leibniz and Kant differ in their conceptions of thought? How do Helmholtz, James and Skinner differ? And how do all of these conceptions of
thought differ from the computational approach delivered up by the cognitive
revolution and the computer metaphor? ·
If we want to study thought, how should we divide the work between
philosophers and empirical researchers?
Is there any long-term, non-heuristic role for philosophy to play in studying
thought? Or are all questions about
the nature of thought ultimately questions for some other discipline to
answer, such as psychology or neuroscience?
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