Mark Rowlands

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Mark Rowlands

Mark Rowlands (* 1962 in Newport , Wales ) is a British writer and professor of philosophy who teaches at the University of Miami .

biography

Rowlands first studied engineering at Manchester University . He then turned to philosophy, where he received his PhD from Oxford University . This was followed by various positions at the University Collegs Cork in Ireland , the University of London in England and the USA .

philosophy

Rowlands philosophy is based on the idea of the extended mind (ger .: Extended Mind ). The ideas behind this philosophy go back to the American philosopher Hilary Putnam , two of its best-known representatives are the two philosophers David Chalmers and Andy Clark. The idea behind the expanded mind is based on the assumption that a cognitive structure and, associated with it, its processes can extend beyond the body.

Rowlands, as well as Chalmers and Clark go in their interpretation of the extended mind it one step further and coined the term of the active externalism ( ger .: active externalism ), also vehicle externalism (Engl. : Vehicle externalism ) called. Active externalism would be a consequence that results from the assumption of the expanded mind, which, however, in contrast to this, relates to the content of a mental phenomenon .

Animal ethical position

God: Ok Mark - Choose how you want the world to be and I'll tell you what I'm going to make you. I could make a person out of you, a dog or even a stone.
I: All right, god. But if I were to become a stone, would I get any of it? Would I have feelings, could I suffer or enjoy things and so on?
God: Of course not: you'd be a stone, for God's sake.
I: OK. Then I don't have to take any precautions in my deliberations in the event that you make a stone out of me. Because if you did that, I wouldn't hear of it anyway.
God: Moron!
With this dialogue Rowlands responds to the accusation that everything must be taken into account when adding non-human animals to the class of morally considered beings.

Another central element of Rowlands' philosophy is his defense of an animal rights philosophy and his position critical of speciesism . In Animal Rights: Moral Theory and Practice (2009) Rowlands offers a contractualist argument that he puts forward in the tradition of thought in the Theory of Justice by John Rawls . Because there are socially privileged people, a utilitarian ethic needs to be corrected in favor of socially marginalized people - this is his interpretation of Rawls' basic idea behind the concept of the veil of ignorance . He criticizes Rawls for recognizing only that people are better off economically as a privilege and thereby naturalizing many other privileges, in particular belonging to a species, and thus removing the possibility of reflection . Using borderline arguments, this restriction to people cannot be justified morally either.

Daniel Loewe criticized this expansion for the fact that Rowlands 'theory of justice overstretched John Rawls' basic assumption that individuals in their original state come together for selfish motives to negotiate the “principles of justice” to be considered contract theory in this sense. , Rowlands' proposal, the negotiating entities in the original position as Trans present -Spezieswesen, d. H. as beings who negotiate as if they did not know of their species affiliation, Loewe rejects, on the grounds that an anthropocentric conception of these beings can often be demonstrated in the writings of Rawls.

Loewe concludes from this, also taking into account other contractualistic approaches to animal ethics , that contract theory cannot in principle be able to justify subjective animal claims to justice.

Quote

The Barking Dog Principle :

"If it is neccessary for an organism to be able to perform a given adaptive task T, then it is selectively disadvantageous for that organism to develop internal mechanisms sufficient for the performance of T when it is possible for the organism to perform T by way of combination of internal mechanisms and manipulation of the external environment. "

- Mark Rowlands : Externalism: Putting Mind and World Back Together Again

The principle of the barking dog :

"If it is necessary for an organism to be able to perform a given adaptive task T, then it is selectively disadvantageous for the organism to develop internal mechanisms for performing T when it is possible for the organism to perform T perform a combination of internal mechanisms and manipulation of the external environment. "

See also

Publications

  • Supervenience and Materialism. Avebury, Aldershot 1995, ISBN 1-85972-096-X .
  • Animal Rights. A Philosophical Defense. Macmillan et al., Basingstoke et al. 1998, ISBN 0-333-71131-9 (2nd edition as: Animal Rights. Moral Theory and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York NY et al. 2009, ISBN 978-0-230-21944-1 ).
  • The Body in Mind. Understanding Cognitive Processes. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1999, ISBN 0-521-65274-X .
  • The Environmental Crisis. Understanding the Value of Nature. Macmillan et al., Basingstoke et al. 2000, ISBN 0-312-23235-7 .
  • The Nature of Consciousness. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2001, ISBN 0-521-80858-8 .
  • Animals Like Us. Verso, London 2002, ISBN 1-85984-386-7 .
  • Externalism. Putting Mind and World Back Together Again. Acumen, Chesham 2003, ISBN 1-902683-78-1 .
  • The Philosopher at the End of the Universe. Ebury Press, London et al. 2003, ISBN 0-09188-921-9 (In German: The canvas philosopher . Great theories from Aristotle to Schwarzenegger. Translated from the English by Yamin von Rauch. Rogner & Bernhard, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3- 8077-1051-8 ).
  • Everything I Know I Learned From TV. Philosophy for the Unrepentant Couch Potato. Ebury Press, London 2005, ISBN 0-09-189835-8 .
  • Body Language. Representing in action. MIT Press, Cambridge MA et al. 2006, ISBN 0-262-18255-6 .
  • Fame. Acumen, London 2008, ISBN 978-1-84465-157-3 .
  • The Philosopher and the Wolf. Lessons from the wild on Love, Death and Happiness. Granta, London 2009, ISBN 978-1-8470-8102-5 (In German: The philosopher and the wolf. What a wild animal teaches us. Rogner & Bernhard, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-8077-1046-4 ).
  • New Science of the Mind. From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology. With Press, Cambridge MA et al. 2010, ISBN 978-0-262-01455-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mark Rowland's Personal Website ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.markrowlandsauthor.com
  2. ↑ Andy Clark, David Chalmers : The Extended Mind. In: Analysis. Vol. 58, No. 1, 1998, ISSN  0003-2638 , pp. 7-19, here p. 14.
  3. ^ Freely adapted from Rowlands 2009, p. 160.
  4. ↑ Daniel Loewe: Inclusión De Animales no-humanos En Un Marco De Argumentación Contractual. In: Veritas. Revista Da Pontificia Universidade Catolica Do Rio Grande Do Sul. Vol. 53, 2008, ZDB -ID 732406-6 , pp. 145-162.
  5. ^ Rowlands: Externalism. Putting Mind and World Back Together Again. 2003, p. 166.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Rowlands, Mark
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH Newport , Wales