I’m Brendan Lalor, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Castleton State College in Vermont.
Research
My research centers on philosophical issues in cognitive science; it engages both cognitive scientists and philosophers of language and mind. An organizing theme for me has been the embeddedness of cognition — on the one hand, the dependence of mental properties on structures spatially external to the organism (structures of the physical or social environments); on the other, the way the metaphysics of the mental at any point in time depends on factors temporally removed.
I am repeatedly drawn to historical sources outside of cognitive science which seem to me to shed often neglected light on deeper issues contemporary cognitive scientists take up as if for the first time — thinkers such as Kant, Peirce, and existential phenomenologists like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Most of these historical philosophical interests are organized around the general phenomenon of representation, especially linguistic and mental representation. Some of my publications (e.g., on Peirce and Hume) are born of this force in my work.
In the following papers, in one way or another, I contend that to gain a deep understanding of the mental, we need to conceptualize it as an essentially embedded phenomenon — an emergent property of beings’ temporal, social, and physical interaction with a world. I defend the superiority of this conception of the mental over traditional and other contemporary conceptions. I show that conceiving of the mental this way yields more powerful and promising theoretical and practical insights into what needs explaining.
Work
Publications
- Intentionality and Qualia, Synthese 121, 249-289, 1999.
- Swampman, Etiology, and Content, Southern Journal of Philosophy 36, 215-232, 1998.
- The Antilogistic Puzzle of Hume’s Appendix to the Treatise, Philosophical Inquiry 20, 22-30, 1998.
- It Is What You Think: Intentional Potency & Anti-Individualism, Philosophical Psychology 10, 165-178, 1997.
- Rethinking Kaplan’s “Afterthoughts” about ‘That’: An Exorcism of Semantical Demons, Erkenntnis 47, 67-88, 1997.
- The Classification of Peirce’s Interpretants, Semiotica 114-½, 31-40, 1997.
Curriculum Vitae
Personal Blurb
I’m good enough at playing music, making things out of wood, brewing, and web development to have fun. I enjoy hanging with friends and family, playing with my kids, traveling, hiking, canoeing, and camping, too.
- Likes: reason, spirit, progressive politics, Devendra Banhart, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Iron & Wine, The Clash, Wilco, and much more;
- Dislikes: transfats, Wal-Mart, corporate domination of media and foreign and domestic policy, privatization, war;
- Fears: people who see the world in black and white, and don’t count the dead because “God’s on their side.”
