Many Molyneux answers: Why we shouldn’t care (that much) about the answers to Molyneux’s question
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: In this paper I argue that the answer(s) to Molyneux's question are not as important as usually assumed. This view stems from two directions: (i) I believe the question is generally under-specified, and can be made precise in several incompatible ways (something noted by many others) and (ii) in order to answer a precise formulation of the question we are forced to make a number of assumptions about the individuation of the senses, the nature of representation, and about psychological explanation. These assumptions play an outsize role in evaluating Molyneux questions compared to most other questions in cognitive science, lessening the interest of any particular study or finding on this matter, even when we are very precise in the formulation of our question. Further, if we take our best contemporary accounts of sensory taxonomy, representation, and psychological explanation to be inherently pluralistic, modestly interest-relative, and multivariate (as many do), then we should not expect any answer to a precise version of the question to definitively settle any issues about content, taxonomy, or psychological explanation. The focus of this paper is a defense of this second line of thought.
Source: Philosophy and the Mind Sciences
Author: Matthew Fulkerson
Institution: University of California San Diego
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4404357096