Philosophy and Psychology

Philosophy of Psychology

1. Introduction In the good old days, when general philosophy of science ruled the Earth, a simple division was often invoked to talk about philosophical issues specific to particular kinds of science: that between the natural sciences and the social sciences. Over the last 20 years, philosophical studies shaped around this dichotomy have given way to those organized by more fine-grained catego...

The Philosophy of Psychology

The Philosophy of Psychology

Psychology, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science: Reflections on the History and Philosophy of Experimental Psychology*

This article critically examines the views that psychology first came into existence as a discipline ca. 1879, that philosophy and psychology were estranged in the ensuing decades, that psychology finally became scientific through the influence of logical empiricism, and that it should now disappear in favor of cognitive science and neuroscience. It argues that psychology had a natural philosop...

[forthcoming in Review of Philosophy and Psychology]

The idea that incompatibilism is intuitive is one of the key motivations for incompatibilism. Not surprisingly, then, philosophers who defend incompatibilism often claim that incompatibilism is the natural, commonsense view about free will and moral responsibility (e.g., Pereboom 2001, Kane 1999, Strawson 1986). This claim has received some support from empirical studies that indicate that when...