Steven Horst

Paper: Intuitive Ontologies, Critical Metaphysics, and Cognitive Pluralism

What happens when a cognitive approach to metaphysics is combined with contemporary ideas from cognitive science such as Core Knowledge Systems and domain-specific reasoning?

Steven Horst is Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University, located in Middletown, CT, USA, where he has taught since receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 1990. He is the author of Laws, Mind, and Free Will (2011, MIT Press), Beyond Reduction: Philosophy of Mind and Post-Reductionist Philosophy of Science (2007, Oxford University Press), and Symbols, Computation, and Intentionality: A Critique of the Computational Theory of Mind, as well as articles in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and moral psychology. He is currently working on a magnum opus on Cognitive Pluralism, and on projects in cognitive science of religion.

Outside of philosophy, he was trained as a classical cellist while growing up in Baltimore and was a pioneer in the use of cello in Irish traditional music in the 1990s. He has been a member of the Episcopal Church since his teens, and is a thirty-year practitioner of Christian contemplative prayer in the tradition.