Gregory Currie
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3594191 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Gregory Currie |
| PRENOMES | Gregory |
| SOBRENOME | Currie |
| ASSINATURA | CURRIE G |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Otago |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8364-997X |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 53 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 60 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 50 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 3 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1976 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Is God’s creation a fictional world
Samuel Lebens argues that we may understand God’s act of creation by analogy with an author’s creation of fictional characters. I argue that, in the relevant sense of ‘fictional characters’, authors do not create such beings; rather, they invite us to imagine that such beings exist. I also argue that Lebens’s view would make authorship morally problematic in implausible ways. Along the way I briefly offer an account of the being of fictional char…
Irony, Tragedy, Deception
Two theories dominate the current debate over the nature of verbal irony: the pretence theory and the echoic theory. It is common ground in this debate that irony is sometimes both echoic and enacted through pretence; my concern here is with such cases. I ask how these features interact with each other within a form of irony that has not so far been the focus of theoretical attention: hidden or deceptive irony. This enables us to see that interes…
Opening the closed mind? Effects of reading literary fiction on need for closure and creativity
Although philosophers have long claimed that reading fiction has the potential to improve imaginative capacities, empirical evidence on this topic is limited. We report an experiment that aims to conceptually replicate and extend previous work by Djikic and colleagues by testing whether reading literary fiction reduces the need for closure, and by testing for the first time whether it enhances openness to experience, cognitive complexity, imagina…
The effect of narratives on attitudes toward animal welfare and pro-social behaviour on behalf of animals
We report three randomised and pre-registered experiments examining the effects of narrative fiction (vs. narrative non-fiction vs. expository non-fiction) on concern for animal welfare. In Experiment 1a (N = 363) there was no significant increase in concern for animal welfare or willingness to donate to an animal charity among participants who read a narrative fiction text about a monkey's plight (vs. narrative non-fiction or expository non-fict…
Reading Fictional Narratives to Improve Social and Moral Cognition
There is a long tradition in philosophy and literary criticism of belief in the social and moral benefits of exposure to fiction, and recent empirical work has examined some of these claims. However, little of this research has addressed the textual features responsible for the hypothesized cognitive effects. We present two experiments examining whether readers’ social and moral cognition are influenced by the perspective from which a narrative i…
Commentary on Fiction
Aesthetic sense and social cognition
Human aesthetic practices show a sensitivity to the ways that the appearance of an artefact manifests skills and other qualities of the maker. We investigate a possible origin for this kind of sensibility, locating it in the need for co-ordination of skill-transmission in the Acheulean stone tool culture. We argue that our narrative supports the idea that Acheulean agents were aesthetic agents. In line with this we offer what may seem an absurd c…
Truth and Trust in Fiction
This chapter examines two pathways through which fictions may affect beliefs: by invading readers’ cognitive system via heuristics and other sub-rational devices, and by expressing authorial beliefs that readers take to be reliable. Focusing mostly on the latter pathway, the chapter distinguishes fiction as a mechanism for the transmission of uncontroversial factual information from fiction as a means of expressing distinctive perspectives on eva…
Aesthetic Explanation and the Archaeology of Symbols
I argue that aesthetic ideas should play a significant role in archaeological explanation. I sketch an account of aesthetic interests which is appropriate to archaeological contexts. I illustrate the role of aesthetics through a discussion of the transition from signals to symbols. I argue that the opposition in archaeological debate between explanation and interpretation is one we should reject
Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East
For over half a century, the Middle East has been major migration corridor for domestic workers from Asia and Africa. This book Illuminates the multidimensionality of these workers' lives as they enga
The Irony in Pictures
Journal Article The Irony in Pictures Get access Gregory Currie Gregory Currie University of Nottingham [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 51, Issue 2, April 2011, Pages 149–167, https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayr003 Published: 01 April 2011
Narratives and Narrators
Reflecting on the nature and significance of narrative in human communication, this book shows that narratives are devices for manifesting the intentions of their makers in stories. Currie argues that human tendencies to imitation and joint attention underlie the pleasure of narrative, discussing irony, authorship, and character.
Why Irony is Pretence
This chapter defends the thesis that irony is a form of pretence. It traces the development of this view, and presents a stronger version of it than has previously been available. It contrasts the pretence theory with its strongest rival: the echoic theory. The similarities and differences between the theories are described, and the conclusion reached is that the pretence theory is better. Empirical evidence used to support the echoic theory is e…
Against Beck
For more than 10 years, Ulrich Beck has dominated discussion of risk issues in the social sciences. We argue that Beck's criticisms of the theory and practise of risk analysis are groundless. His understanding of what risk is is badly flawed. His attempt to identify risk and risk perception fails. He misunderstands and distorts the use of probability in risk analysis. His comments about the insurance industry show that he does not understand some…
The Creation of Art
Book Review| January 01 2005 The Creation of Art Berys Gaut and Paisley Livingston, eds. The Creation of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. vii, 295. Gregory Currie Gregory Currie Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2005) 114 (1): 139–141. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-114-1-139 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Gregory Currie; The Creati…
How Does Narrative Cue Children's Perspective Taking
Three experiments with a total of 120 children between 4 and 9 years of age revealed systematic errors in the recall of deictic terms from a narrative. In some cases, the terms were inconsistent with the perspective of a protagonist. The errors occurred in all age groups and were at the same level whether the protagonist was "good" or "bad" but were less common in a narrative that did not include a protagonist. The pattern of errors suggests that…
Recreative Minds
"Recreative Minds develops a philosophical theory of imagination that draws upon recent theories and results in psychology. Ideas about how we read the minds of others have put the concept of imagination firmly back on the agenda for philosophy and psychology. Currie and Ravenscroft present a theory of what they call imaginative projection; they show how it fits into a philosophically motivated picture of the mind and of mental states, and how it…
A note on art and historical concepts
Journal Article A note on art and historical concepts Get access G Currie G Currie University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 40, Issue 1, January 2000, Pages 186–190, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/40.1.186 Published: 01 January 2000
How to think about the Modularity of Mind-Reading
It has been suggested that the fixation of beliefs about people’s beliefs, desires and intentions is modularized. We argue that this is unlikely. We argue that there is modularity lower down: social‐intentional ‘markers’ are produced by an encapsulated mechanism intermediate between perception and belief‐fixation, and that these markers make a distinctive contribution to the fixation of beliefs about the mental. But belief fixation itself is not …
Realism of character and the value of fiction
Imagination is usually contrasted with knowledge, as imaginative literature is contrasted with fact or purported fact. Legitimate distinctions underlie these contrasts: imagination is not knowledge, nor is fiction factual assertion. But don't separate these ideas completely. Imagination might be a source of knowledge; in imagining things, we might thereby come to know (possibly other) things. And if fictions are aids to imagination, they may lead…
Image and Mind
Mental Simulation and Motor Imagery
Motor imagery typically involves an experience as of moving a body part. Recent studies reveal close parallels between the constraints on motor imagery and those on actual motor performance. How are these parallels to be explained? We advance a simulative theory of motor imagery, modeled on the idea that we predict and explain the decisions of others by simulating their decision-making processes. By proposing that motor imagery is essentially off…
Theories of Theories of Mind
Theories of Theories of Mind brings together contributions by a distinguished international team of philosophers, psychologists, and primatologists, who between them address such questions as: what is it to understand the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of other people? How does such an understanding develop in the normal child? Why, unusually, does it fail to develop? And is any such mentalistic understanding shared by members of other specie…
Image and Mind
This is a book about the nature of film: about the nature of moving images, about the viewer's relation to film, and about the kinds of narrative that film is capable of presenting. It represents a very decisive break with the semiotic and psychoanalytic theories of film which have dominated discussion. The central thesis is that film is essentially a pictorial medium and that the movement of film images is real rather than illusory. A general th…
Impersonal Imagining
Journal Article Impersonal Imagining: A Reply to Jerrold Levinson Get access Gregory Currie Gregory Currie University of Otago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 43, Issue 170, January 1993, Pages 79–82, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219943 Published: 01 January 1993
Music, Art, and Metaphysics
Individualism and Global Supervenience
How Does Narrative Cue Children's Perspective Taking
Three experiments with a total of 120 children between 4 and 9 years of age revealed systematic errors in the recall of deictic terms from a narrative. In some cases, the terms were inconsistent with the perspective of a protagonist. The errors occurred in all age groups and were at the same level whether the protagonist was "good" or "bad" but were less common in a narrative that did not include a protagonist. The pattern of errors suggests that…
The Role of Normative Assumptions in Historical Explanation
This paper concerns the problem of how to give historical explanations of scientist's decisions to prefer one theory over another. It is argued that such explanations ought to contain only statements about the beliefs and preferences of the agents involved, and, in particular, ought not to include evaluative premises about the theories themselves. It is argued that Lakatos's attempt to build into such historical explanations premises of an evalua…
Aesthetic Explanation and the Archaeology of Symbols
I argue that aesthetic ideas should play a significant role in archaeological explanation. I sketch an account of aesthetic interests which is appropriate to archaeological contexts. I illustrate the role of aesthetics through a discussion of the transition from signals to symbols. I argue that the opposition in archaeological debate between explanation and interpretation is one we should reject
Mental Simulation and Motor Imagery
Motor imagery typically involves an experience as of moving a body part. Recent studies reveal close parallels between the constraints on motor imagery and those on actual motor performance. How are these parallels to be explained? We advance a simulative theory of motor imagery, modeled on the idea that we predict and explain the decisions of others by simulating their decision-making processes. By proposing that motor imagery is essentially off…
Popper's evolutionary epistemology
How to think about the Modularity of Mind-Reading
It has been suggested that the fixation of beliefs about people’s beliefs, desires and intentions is modularized. We argue that this is unlikely. We argue that there is modularity lower down: social‐intentional ‘markers’ are produced by an encapsulated mechanism intermediate between perception and belief‐fixation, and that these markers make a distinctive contribution to the fixation of beliefs about the mental. But belief fixation itself is not …
An Ontology of Art
Frege's Metaphysical Argument
Journal Article Frege’s Metaphysical Argument Get access Gregory Currie Gregory Currie University of Otago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 34, Issue 136, July 1984, Pages 329–342, https://doi.org/10.2307/2218764 Published: 01 July 1984
The effect of narratives on attitudes toward animal welfare and pro-social behaviour on behalf of animals
We report three randomised and pre-registered experiments examining the effects of narrative fiction (vs. narrative non-fiction vs. expository non-fiction) on concern for animal welfare. In Experiment 1a (N = 363) there was no significant increase in concern for animal welfare or willingness to donate to an animal charity among participants who read a narrative fiction text about a monkey's plight (vs. narrative non-fiction or expository non-fict…
Aesthetic sense and social cognition
Human aesthetic practices show a sensitivity to the ways that the appearance of an artefact manifests skills and other qualities of the maker. We investigate a possible origin for this kind of sensibility, locating it in the need for co-ordination of skill-transmission in the Acheulean stone tool culture. We argue that our narrative supports the idea that Acheulean agents were aesthetic agents. In line with this we offer what may seem an absurd c…
Against Beck
For more than 10 years, Ulrich Beck has dominated discussion of risk issues in the social sciences. We argue that Beck's criticisms of the theory and practise of risk analysis are groundless. His understanding of what risk is is badly flawed. His attempt to identify risk and risk perception fails. He misunderstands and distorts the use of probability in risk analysis. His comments about the insurance industry show that he does not understand some…
The Long Goodbye
Journal Article THE LONG GOODBYE: THE IMAGINARY LANGUAGE OF FILM Get access Gregory Currie Gregory Currie Department of Philosophy, University of OtagoPO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 33, Issue 3, July 1993, Pages 207–219, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/33.3.207 Published: 01 July 1993
Works of Fiction and Illocutionary Acts
WORKS OF FICTION AND ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS by Gregory Currie ii O peech act theory is remarkably unhelpful in explaining what ficOtion is." So says Kendall Walton.1 My purpose here is to showjust how wrong diis judgment is. Not that I want to endorse all die attempts there have been to connect fiction with the notion of a speech act. Elsewhere I have argued diat the most prominent attempt at such a theory, the one due to John Searle, fails.2 But my …
The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes
Imre Lakatos' philosophical and scientific papers are published here in two volumes. Volume I brings together his very influential but scattered papers on the philosophy of the physical sciences, and includes one important unpublished essay on the effect of Newton's scientific achievement. Volume II presents his work on the philosophy of mathematics (much of it unpublished), together with some critical essays on contemporary philosophers of scien…
Mathematics, Science and Epistemology
Imre Lakatos' philosophical and scientific papers are published here in two volumes. Volume I brings together his very influential but scattered papers on the philosophy of the physical sciences, and includes one important unpublished essay on the effect of Newton's scientific achievement. Volume 2 presents his work on the philosophy of mathematics (much of it unpublished), together with some critical essays on contemporary philosophers of scienc…
Popper's evolutionary epistemology
Lakatos's philosophy of mathematics
Changing numbers
The Role of Normative Assumptions in Historical Explanation
This paper concerns the problem of how to give historical explanations of scientist's decisions to prefer one theory over another. It is argued that such explanations ought to contain only statements about the beliefs and preferences of the agents involved, and, in particular, ought not to include evaluative premises about the theories themselves. It is argued that Lakatos's attempt to build into such historical explanations premises of an evalua…
The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes
viii,250p. ; 23cm
Die Methodologie der wissenschaftlichen Forschungsprogramme
Royal Society, betrachtet die Hexentheorie als das Musterbeispiel empirischen Denkens. Wir müssen das empirische Denken definieren, ehe wir mit Hume anfangen, Bücher zu verbren nen. Das wissenschaftli
Frege's Letters
Frege, an introduction to his philosophy
Frege
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Frege: An Introduction to His Philosophy. By Gregory Currie. (Sussex: Harvester, 1982. Pp. 212.) D. A. Gillies D. A. Gillies Chelsea College, University of London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 34, Issue 137, October 1984, Pages 518–520, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219078 Published: 01 October 1984
Frege
Individualism and Global Supervenience
Frege's Metaphysical Argument
Journal Article Frege’s Metaphysical Argument Get access Gregory Currie Gregory Currie University of Otago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 34, Issue 136, July 1984, Pages 329–342, https://doi.org/10.2307/2218764 Published: 01 July 1984
The Forger's Art. Forgery and the Philosophy of Art
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access The Forger’s Art. Forgery and the Philosophy of Art. EDITED BY Denis Dutton (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983. Pp. x + 276. Price £19.00) Gregory Currie Gregory Currie University of Otago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 35, Issue 141, October 1985, Pages 435–437, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219478 Publish…
Was Frege a Linguistic Philosopher
Works of Fiction and Illocutionary Acts
WORKS OF FICTION AND ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS by Gregory Currie ii O peech act theory is remarkably unhelpful in explaining what ficOtion is." So says Kendall Walton.1 My purpose here is to showjust how wrong diis judgment is. Not that I want to endorse all die attempts there have been to connect fiction with the notion of a speech act. Elsewhere I have argued diat the most prominent attempt at such a theory, the one due to John Searle, fails.2 But my …
Inquiry
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Inquiry. By Robert C. Stalnaker. (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: MIT Press, 1984. Pp. xii + 187. Price £20.75) Gregory Currie Gregory Currie University of Otago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 36, Issue 145, October 1986, Pages 569–571, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219887 Published: 01 October 1986
The Nature of Fiction
This important book provides a theory about the nature of fiction, and about the relation between the author, the reader and the fictional text. The approach is philosophical: that is to say, the author offers an account of key concepts such as fictional truth, fictional characters, and fiction itself. The book argues that the concept of fiction can be explained partly in terms of communicative intentions, partly in terms of a condition which exc…
An Ontology of Art
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access An Ontology of Art. By Gregory Currie. (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press in association with the Scots Philosophical Club, 1989. Pp. xii + 143. Price £29.50.) Andy Hamilton Andy Hamilton University of Sheffield Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 40, Issue 161, October 1990, Pages 538–541, https://doi.org/10.2307/2220123 Published: 01 Octo…
Visual Fictions
Journal Article Visual Fictions Get access Gregory Currie Gregory Currie University of Otago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 41, Issue 163, April 1991, Pages 129–143, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219589 Published: 01 April 1991
The Nature of Fiction
Frege and Other Philosophers
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Frege and Other Philosophers. By Michael Dummett. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Pp. xii + 330. Price £35.00.) Gregory Currie Gregory Currie University of Otago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 42, Issue 168, July 1992, Pages 373–375, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219688 Published: 01 July 1992
An Ontology of Art
The Wolves and the Manger
Philosophy (40 obras) · Epistemology (31 obras) · Art (21 obras) · Psychology (19 obras) · Computer Science (13 obras) · Linguistics (11 obras) · Art history (9 obras) · Literature (9 obras) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (8 obras) · Cognition (8 obras)