Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

What do plants and bacteria want? Commentary on Carrie Figdor ' s Pieces of mind

2020; Wiley; Volume: 35; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/mila.12324

1468-0017

Édouard Machery,

Animal and Plant Science Education

In Pieces of mind , Figdor examines how to interpret psychological predicates that scientists assign to entities that commonsensically do not have a mind such as neurons and plants. She claims that these predicates are used literally to refer to the same structures in humans and non‐human entities. I argue on the contrary that most uses of this kind are merely the extension of preexisting, possibly behaviorist senses of the relevant psychological predicates.