Research

Research Projects

• Sensory Studies and the Philosophy of Perception

  The nature of the senses, particularly what distinguishes them from one another.

  My Ph.D. dissertation looked at the work of neuroethologists studying electroreception in weakly electric fish. Electroreception is the capacity of some non-human animals—including some teleost fish, elasmobranchs (sharks, skates & rays), and even platypus—to perceive the world via the detection of electric fields. Some of these animals passively detect electricity already present in the world, such as that emitted by any living creature. Others, such as my weakly electric fish, actively generate electrical fields around themselves and then perceive how that field is changed by nearby stimuli. Despite all this talk of how scientists study this unusual (to us humans) sense, what I did not do is explain what exactly a sense is, such that neuroethologists by the 1960s can be said to have nailed down the reality of a new one (electroreception). What is a “sense” and what makes one sense (say, electroreception) different in kind from another (say, vision)?

  Starting in 2002, with “Making sense of the senses: Individuating modalities in humans and other animals,” I have explored questions about the nature of the senses and how they relate to one another. My view has changed in one important way since this first foray into the question: I now think the neuroethological approach to the senses I describe in this paper is but one account of many, pluralist accounts of the senses.

  As part of this general project, I’ve looked at the nature of synesthesia, the history of the qualia concept as it relates to the senses, and explored what we can learn about the senses through film and speculative fictional literature. In addition, in Fall 2018, as Director of the Munroe Center for Social Inquiry at Pitzer College, I organized a series of speakers on the topic of Perception in a Social World: Sensing others and seeing ourselves. Read more here.

  Starting Points [Links to the papers]:

  1.  Brian L. Keeley (2002). “Making sense of the senses: Individuating modalities in humans and other animals,” The Journal of Philosophy, 99, 5-28.
  2.  Brian L. Keeley (2009). “The Early History of the Quale and Its Relation to the Senses” in Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology, J. Symons & P. Calvo, eds., London: Routledge: 71-89.

• Philosophy of Science

  Papers on the Philosophy of Science (Be it Neuroscience, Biology, Psychology, Cognitive Science, etc.)

  One significant thread of my research involves the philosophy of science, including issues that arise in individual sciences, especially interdisciplinary science such as neuroethology and the cognitive sciences. For example,

  • I’m interested in issues that arise as a result of evolutionary biology and when taking a comparative perspective on mind and life. In “Anthropomorphism, primatomorphism, mammalomorphism: Understanding cross-species comparisons,” I ask: What, if anything, is wrong with anthropomorphism in scientific explanations of animal behavior? I argue that the alleged sin of anthropomorphism is largely a myth; that there is nothing in principle wrong with attributing human properties to nonhuman animals. This is not to say that all such attributions are always correct. I only argue that there is no special problem of anthropomorphism beyond the more basic problem of incorrect attributions. Perhaps ironically, if cognitive ethologists and other alleged anthropomorphites are correct, much of what is dealt with under this blanket charge are not anthropomorphic at all, and to draw such a conclusion is to commit a fundamental misunderstanding of the biological world and the place of humans within it. If cognitive ethology is correct, then a concept such as “play” is not ANTHROPOmorphic at all; it is “MAMMALOmorphic” or perhaps “ENDOTHERMOmorphic,” in that this trait belongs more appropriately to a broader biological category than humans. Getting clear about what is wrong (and not wrong) about anthropomorphism will allow cognitive science to come out of the closet and embrace animal models and the study of nonhuman cognition in their proper context.
  • I’ve also explored the role of naturalism as a feature of how to explain mental phenomena. Naturalism concerning the mental is the belief that the tools and concepts of natural science are necessary to achieve an understanding of the mind. After briefly setting the stage of naturalism and the mind, I pose the question of naturalism about the mind in its historical context, comparing the development of naturalist approaches to philosophy of mind to Bertrand Russell’s “hiving off” model of the history of Western philosophy, where parts of philosophy have split away from the field as we developed new ways to answer questions once central to philosophy. Next, after distinguishing ontological from methodological senses of naturalism, I then explore a number of different twentieth century naturalist approaches to studying the mind, ending with a discussion of Eliminative Materialism and its stress on the continuity of scientific (naturalist) and commonsense understandings of the mind.

  Starting Points [Links to the papers]:

  1.  Brian L. Keeley (2005). Paul Churchland. Series: Contemporary Philosophy in Focus. Cambridge University Press. (Edited volume with contributions from Dan Dennett, José Luis Bermúdez, Clifford Hooker, Jesse Prinz, Pete Mandik, William Krieger, Aarre Laakso, and Garrison Cottrell.)
  2.  Brian L. Keeley (2004). “Anthropomorphism, Primatomorphism, Mammalomorphism: Understanding cross-species comparisons.” Biology & Philosophy, 19, 521-540.
  3.  Brian L. Keeley (2016). “Natural mind” in The Cambridge Companion to Naturalism, Kelly James Clark, ed., Cambridge University Press: 196-208.

• Conspiracy Theory Theory

  An exploration into the often troubled epistemic waters surrounding both historical and contemporary conspiracy theorizing.

  Just at the close of the last millennium, I thought it might be interesting to write a paper exploring some of the odd epistemic features of popular conspiracy theories, such as those surrounding the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing in which 168 people died and almost 700 were injured (at the time, the largest death toll for an act of terrorism on U.S. soil). Very soon after the bombings occurred, independent investigators such as Jim Keith, author of Black Helicopters over America: Strikeforce for the New World Order, started raising questions about the official story of the bombing. Strangely, I thought, the phenomenon of conspiracy theory had received very little philosophical (or even academic) attention. In the two decades since my first paper, “Of Conspiracy Theories,” things have changed and there is now a thriving cottage industry in both what has been called the “philosophy of conspiracy theory” and what M R.X. Dentith calls “Conspiracy Theory Theory,” theories about conspiracy theories. Now, there are a growing number of philosophers, sociologists, media theorists, political scientists, cognitive scientists, and others exploring various dimensions of how to understand conspiracy theories. Here are a few good starting points for exploring conspiracy theory theory:

  • This is me as a guest on public radio’s Philosophy Talk, with Ken Taylor and John Perry
  • Joseph E. Uscinski, ed., Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them
    
  • David Coady, ed. Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate.
    
  • CONSPIRACY THEORY – CONSPIRACY FACT: Understanding a perplexing social phenomenon. A speaker series I organized in Fall 2017 with videos of most of the sessions.

  Since writing that first paper, I’ve continued exploring different aspects of these explanatory frameworks. I have argued that they ought to be taken seriously as forms of explanation,  even if in some cases this is done in an attempt to show where they go wrong. I also argue that distinguishing warranted conspiracy theories (such as those surrounding the Watergate affair or Iran-Contra) from the less warranted ones (e.g., that the U.S. Moon Landings were a hoax) is much more difficult than one might imagine, especially in the early days of a given conspiracy theory. However, in most cases, time will tell as the evidence either mounts up or fails to do so, which then pushes one to reject a given theory or one has to expand the scope of the theory (to include all of the work in the alleged ongoing cover-up) to ludicrous extremes. In addition, I’ve explored how conspiracy theorizing compares and contrasts with other forms of explanation, such as is found in science or religion.

  Starting Points [Links to the papers]:

  1.  Brian L. Keeley (1999). “Of conspiracy theories,” The Journal of Philosophy, 96, 109-126.
  2.  Brian L. Keeley (2007). “God as the ultimate conspiracy theory,” Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology, 4(2): 135-149.
  3.  M R. X. Dentith & Brian L. Keeley (2018). “The applied epistemology of conspiracy theories: An overview”, Routledge Handbook of Applied Epistemology, Coady, David, Ed. Routledge: 284-294.