This book offers a new and externalist perspective in ignorance studies. Agnotology, the epistemology of ignorance, and, more generally, ignorance studies have grown to cover and explore different phenomena and subjects of research, from known events in history and sociology of science to the investigation of ordinary reasoning and cognitive processing. Nonetheless, although interested scholars have discussed ignorance phenomena and their impact on cognition, most of them have only adopted an internalist perspective to approach this theme. Meanwhile, even though externalist perspectives on cognition flourished in recent literature, authors have paid little attention to the emerging field of ignorance studies. Ignorance has been generally left out from the inquiries on the extension of cognitive states, cognitive processes, and predictive reasoning. Thus, in this volume, we seek to merge the two growing areas of research and to fill this research gap fruitfully. By addressing the uncomfortable themes that pertain to ignorance and related phenomena through an externalist perspective, this book aims to provide much food for thoughts to cognitive scientists and philosophers alike, enriching the current range and reach of both ignorance studies and externalist approaches to cognition.

This book offers a collective study of issues to do with experts and expertise, a topic of tremendous contemporary significance. The perspectives are philosophical but draw on relevant work from the sciences and social sciences. In addition, in keeping with other volumes in Oxford University Press's Engaging Philosophy series, many of the papers in the volume have an applied dimension, in that they examine the issues in practical settings. The questions discussed include the following: What is an expert? Who decides who the experts are? Should we always defer to experts? How should expertise inform public policy? What happens when the experts disagree? Must experts be unbiased? Should all experts be treated the same, or does it matter what the source of the expertise is? How should the testimony of experts be reported by the media? The chapters in the volume are organized into six sections: expertise and trust; situated and group expertise; expertise and public policy; expertise and virtue; expertise about value; and new directions. This volume will be of interest to scholars in such fields as philosophy, sociology, political theory, psychology, cognitive science, and bioethics. It will also be of relevance to policy-makers interested in the role that expertise plays in public policy.

The Routledge International Handbook of Creative Cognition is an authoritative reference work that offers a well-balanced overview of current scholarship across the full breadth of the rapidly expanding field of creative cognition. It contains 43 chapters written by world-leading researchers, covering foundational issues and concepts as well as state-of-the-art research developments. The handbook draws extensively on contemporary work exploring the cognitive representations and processes associated with creativity, whether studied in the laboratory or as it arises in real-world practice in domains such as education, art, science, entrepreneurship, design, and technological innovation. Chapters also examine the sociocognitive and cultural aspects of creativity in teams and organisations, while additionally capturing the latest research on the cognitive neuroscience of creativity. Providing a compelling synopsis of emerging trends and debates in the field of creative cognition and positioning these in relation to established findings and theories, this text provides a clear sense of the way in which new research is challenging traditional viewpoints. It is an essential reading for researchers in the field of creative cognition as well as advanced students wishing to learn more about the latest developments in this important and rapidly growing area of enquiry.

This volume explores how understanding relates to conscious experience. In doing so, it builds bridges between different philosophical disciplines and provides a metaphysically robust characterization of understanding, both in and beyond science. The past two decades have witnessed growing interest from epistemologists, philosophers of science, philosophers of mind and ethicists in the nature and value of intellectual understanding. This volume features original essays on understanding and the phenomenal experiences that underlie it. The chapters are divided into three thematic sections. Part 1 provides theoretical characterizations of understanding, including Henk de Regt’s defense of a contextual theory of scientific understanding and a debate on whether scientific inference and explanatory power are necessary or central features of understanding. Part 2 explores how conscious experience and understanding are related. The chapters articulate a phenomenal theory of understanding and address themes that are connected to understanding, including awareness, transformative experiences and exemplification. Finally, Part 3 is devoted to domain-specific inquiries about understanding, such as logical proofs, particle physics and moral understanding. Understanding and Conscious Experience will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in the philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics and phenomenology.

This book originated at a workshop by the same name held in May 2018 at the University of Pavia. The aim was to encourage a cross-disciplinary discussion on the limits of cognition. When venturing into cognitive science, notwithstanding the approach, one of the first riddles to be solved is the definition of cognition. Any definition immediately sparks the ascription debate: who/what cognizes? Definitions may appear either too loose, or too demanding. Are bacteria included? What about plants? Is it a human prerogative? We engage in the quest for artificial intelligence, but is artificial cognition already the case? And if it was a human prerogative, are we doing it all the time? Is cognition a process, or the sum of countless sub processes? Is it in the brain, or also in the body? Or does it go beyond the body? Where does it start? Where does it end? We tried answering these questions each from our own perspectives, as philosophers, ethnographers, psychologists and rhetoricians, handing each other our peculiar insight.

This book offers a comprehensive philosophical investigation of ignorance. Using a set of cognitive tools and models, it discusses features that can describe a state of ignorance if linked to a particular type of cognition affecting the agent’s social behavior, belief system, and inferential capacity. The author defines ignorance as a cognitive condition that can be either passively (and unconsciously) borne by an agent or actively nurtured by him or her, and a condition that entails epistemic limitations (which can be any lack of knowledge, belief, information or data) that affect the agent’s behavior, belief system, and inferential capacity. The author subsequently describes the ephemeral nature of ignorance, its tenacity in the development of human inferential and cognitive performance, and the possibility of sharing ignorance among human agents within the social dimension. By combining previous frameworks such as the naturalization of logic, the eco-cognitive perspective in philosophy and concepts from Peircean epistemology, and adding original ideas derived from the author’s own research and reflections, the book develops a new cognitive framework to help understand the nature of ignorance and its influence on the human condition.