Common sense, philosophy, and the natural sciences
Sebastian Sunday Grève
Link: https://join.skype.com/w74i2IpLQoMX
Abstract: Philosophy is both a natural and a non-natural science. I shall develop this view, together with a number of arguments in favour of it, on the basis of an ongoing written exchange on the topic with Timothy Williamson (whose view is that philosophy, like mathematics, is a non-natural science). After giving an initial formulation of my own view, and defending it against some objections, I shall attempt to illustrate its implications more clearly using two closely related examples of work on human and artificial intelligence, one historical and one contemporary. The first example is Alan Turing’s important work in the 1940s and early 1950s; the second is some of my own ongoing work using fMRI brain scanning techniques to figure out the nature of intelligence.
