Dani Stubbs

It is early morning and I enter my favourite café in Bristol, Society Café. I can smell pastries, fresh, crisp, and ripe; I glance over at the seating area to my left, lined with miniature plants and painted with the pinkness of dawn. I order a flat white with Oat milk and sit at the long table near the window, structuring my interview answers in my head ready for the panel. The juicy espresso shoots through me and I am awake.

Demarcation of science is an attempted account by philosophers of science to separate science from non-science (or pseudoscience), and to exhibit the criteria needed for each. My essay will focus on the debate between Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn; the hallmark of the debate for many. This debate is shown in the form of a third philosopher named Imre Lakatos; one who endeavours to simplify the complex philosophies of Popper and Kuhn whilst providing his own account of the demarcation of science. Whereas Popper talks of falsifiability and Kuhn talks of paradigms, Lakatos writes of a methodology of research programmes and develops Popper’s work on falsification.  I will argue for the progress of Lakatos’ sophisticated methodological falsificationism as the most satisfactory method of demarcation.

The Extended mind Thesis states that the boundary between inner cognition and the external environment does not take place at the skin and skull of the human. That which is outside the body is not necessarily outside the mind. Rather the connection or interaction between the mind and external processes can create a coupled-system in which the latter play a causal role in determining the former by affecting behaviour in the same way that internal cognition does. Hence, Andy Clark and other philosophers of mind have been persuaded to argue for a type of active externalism of the following description: 'If we remove the external component the system's behavioural competence will drop, just as it would if we removed part of its brain. Our thesis is that this sort of coupled process counts equally well as a cognitive process, whether or not it is wholly in the head.' (Clark & Chalmers, cited in Menary, 2010, pg. 29). In other words the use of these external processes is tied so intricately with cognition (and active enough to drive cognition), it seems they are part of cognition-the mind, for some, can be seen to have extended into the environment. The HEC (hypothesis of the extended mind) theorist hence holds the Parity Principle which maintains that if when using an external process, it could be considered cognitive in the same way as internal processes would be; we can legitimately claim this external process to be a part of cognition. In this essay I will pay specific attention to Andy Clark & Chalmers Extended Mind Thesis and the responses made by Robert Rupert. Rupert's objections, I hold, can be defeated by the alteration of terminology and more importantly can be seen to rely on a misunderstanding of Clark's Theory. This misunderstanding can be characterised by three waves of HEC; Rupert's criticisms only focus on the first of these. Therefore, Clark's HEC is not heavily-hedged-the problems made my Rupert are not problematic. I will lastly suggest that the way forward for HEC lies within the third wave.

The Hellenistic school of Epicureanism holds that false belief is the source of anxiety and stress to a human. Epicurus aims at providing therapy for these beliefs which seem to lead humans to desires of an unreachable nature. Alongside, Greek Sceptics-otherwise known as Skeptical Purgatives-look to solve the problems of desire by eradicating all beliefs. This second Hellenistic school does not believe in the dogmatic commitment to truth and falsity, for commitment and belief opens us up to harm. I will proceed in this essay, to compare the two philosophical schools, drawing close examination to the value and concept of belief. I will side with the sceptic however, exhibiting an unlikely similarity between the two schools but explaining the Sceptic's correct reasoning for their views on belief.