Peter Godfrey-Smith’s scientific contributions

What is this page?


This page lists works of an author who doesn't have a ResearchGate profile or hasn't added the works to their profile yet. It is automatically generated from public (personal) data to further our legitimate goal of comprehensive and accurate scientific recordkeeping. If you are this author and want this page removed, please let us know.

Publications (1)


Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature
  • Book

March 1996

·

7 Reads

·

362 Citations

Peter Godfrey-Smith

This book explains the relationship between intelligence and environmental complexity, and in so doing links philosophy of mind to more general issues about the relations between organisms and environments, and to the general pattern of 'externalist' explanations. The author provides a biological approach to the investigation of mind and cognition in nature. In particular he explores the idea that the function of cognition is to enable agents to deal with environmental complexity. The history of the idea in the work of Dewey and Spencer is considered, as is the impact of recent evolutionary theory on our understanding of the place of mind in nature.

Citations (1)


... Cognition involves integrating multiple streams of information, facilitating orderly whole-animal responses to the environment (or some relevant swathe of it) considered as a complex unity. A squirrel clambers over various obstacles and responds in real time to new ones that interpose themselves between it and the seeds hidden away in a garden birdfeeder; a skilled bartender keeps in mind the layout of the bar and the location, quantities and sequence of different ingredients in a cocktail order under the time pressure of a busy nighttime shift. 2 1 I won't attempt to list all of the prominent philosophers committed to this norms-and-teleology approach to demarcating the cognitive, but I take it to include such well known and otherwise differing thinkers as Burge (2014), Fodor (1987), Godfrey-Smith (1996), Hornsby (1997), Hurley (1998) and Davidson (2001b). Of course, these and others that could be included on the list will differ in what they take the relevant norms and teleological goals to be and how they fit these into their wider philosophical projects. ...

Reference:

Cognitive offloading and the causal structure of human action
Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature
  • Citing Book
  • March 1996