The Demarcation between Philosophy and Science
The Demarcation between Philosophy and Science

Summary/Abstract: This paper is based on a criterion recently proposed by Richard Fumerton for demarcating philosophy of mind and cognitive science. I suggest to extend it to a demarcation criterion between philosophy and science in general, and put it in the context of the historical changes of boundaries between the philosophical and the scientific field. I point to a number of philosophical claims and approaches that have been made utterly obsolete by the advancement of science, and conjecture that a similar thing may happen in the future with today’s philosophy of mind: under the supposition that cognitive science manages to progress very successfully in a certain direction, our concepts for mental states could change, and the type of philosophical interest we put in them, thus reshaping the whole debate on the subject.

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