The central executive system

Denis Buehler

pp. 1969-1991

in: Gualtiero Piccinini (ed), Neuroscience and its philosophy, Synthese 195 (5), 2018.

Abstract

Executive functioning has been said to bear on a range of traditional philosophical topics, such as consciousness, thought, and action. Surprisingly, philosophers have not much engaged with the scientific literature on executive functioning. This lack of engagement may be due to several influential criticisms of that literature by Daniel Dennett, Alan Allport, and others. In this paper I argue that more recent research on executive functioning shows that these criticisms are no longer valid. The paper clears the way to a more fruitful philosophical engagement with findings on the central executive system.

Cited authors

Dennett Daniel