Twitches, Fidgets, Habits, Skills: Exploring the scope of common-sense psychology

Emma Borg (University of Reading)

We are pleased to announce our monthly online talk series on "Inferences & Capacities."

Our last speaker for 2026 is:

Emma Borg (SAS, University of London)
"Twitches, Fidgets, Habits, Skills: Exploring the scope of common-sense psychology"

December 14: 12am (Buenos Aires), 10am (New York), 4pm (Berlin).

Abstract: A standard philosophical view holds that human action is typically intentional, i.e. reasons-responsive, driven by what a subject believes, desires, and intends. This picture of human action seems crucial to many things we care about (e.g. underpinning reactive moral attitudes). However, recently questions have been asked about the scope of what Fodor 1987 called ‘good old common sense belief/desire psychology’: is the assumption that human behaviour is typically reasons-responsive right? According to various scope-based challenges, although the reasons-based approach holds for occurrently considered, consciously-willed actions, most of what humans do is not like this. In particular, fidgets, habits, and skills have all been argued to fall beyond the reach of the common-sense framework. Yet if this is right, then the reasons-based model turns out to be less interesting or impressive than we might once have thought, since it accounts for only a tiny sliver of human action, ignoring vast swathes of what people do. My aim in this talk is to defend common-sense psychology from various incarnations of the scope challenge. I’ll argue that, at heart, the challenge rests on a background picture of different, fully encapsulated systems for thought and action, a picture we have reason to resist.

How to participate: Please, send an email to Alfredo Vernazzani at: 

alfredo-vernazzani AT protonmail.com

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• About Inferences & Capacities:

The series brings together work on inferential capacities, rationality, normativity, and cognition — across both human and non-human animals — with the aim of fostering discussion on the nature and limits of the cognitive sphere.  

2026 line-up:  

April 27: Angelica Kaufmann (University of Milan): "Mind Blanking as Mental Imagery." 

May 18: Federico Burdman (Universidad Alberto Hurtado) "Constrained choices: addiction, attention, and reasons-responsiveness." 

June 22: Susanna Schellenberg (Rutgers): TBA 

July 20: Cameron Buckner (University of Florida): "Chains-of-Thought, Inner Speech, and Artificial Epistemic Agency."

September 7: Ulf Hlobil (Concordia University): TBA  

October 19: Eva Schmidt (TU Dortmund): TBA 

November 16: Hans-Johann Glock (University of Zürich): "Is Ascribing Inferences to Brains or Non-human Animals a Fallacy?" 

December 14: Emma Borg (SAS, University of London): "Twitches, Fidgets, Habits, Skills: The Scope of Common-Sense Psychology." 

Each talk lasts c. 40 minutes followed by 40 minutes open Q&A.  

The series is co-organized by:

Mariela Aguilera (University of Córdoba)

Matías Osta-Vélez (Universidad de la República)

Alfredo Vernazzani (TU Dortmund; Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg).

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