Beate Krickel: "Three Questions about the Nature of Mind"

Beate Krickel, TU Berlin: "Three Questions about the Nature of Mind"

Abstract
The main purpose of this talk is to give a broad overview of my research interests and how they combine to form the research questions I plan to work on during my stay in Uppsala. I will introduce debates about three important questions about the nature of mind:

    1) Where is the mind?
    2) Can the mind be unconscious?
    3) How can the mind be decomposed into different mental faculties?

My answers to these questions are based on a combination of resources from philosophy of science and from actual scientific practice in cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology. More specifically, I address all three questions from the perspective of the so-called "new mechanistic approach." The main insight of this approach is that (a central mode of) explanation in cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology involves describing mechanisms that produce mental phenomena. I will summarize my answers to questions 1) and 2), which I have developed in recent publications, and show how these answers depend on an answer to 3). Finally, I will point out some challenges that arise for my approach in relation to 3) – challenges that I would like to reflect on during my visit.