School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences

The Tinkering Mind: Philosophy professor’s new book takes a fresh look at epistemic agency

Epistemic agency is to take responsibility over one’s own learning efforts and advancement of understanding. But what does this mean?

The Tinkering Mind book cover image

In The Tinkering Mind, Dr Till Vierkant argues that epistemic agency has two distinct and incompatible definitions; as intentional mental action; or as a distinct non-voluntary form of evaluative agency.

The book seeks to clarify the meaning the notion of epistemic agency while discussing the links between different understandings of epistemic and moral agency.

“The Tinkering Mind is the synthesis of my thinking on many at first sight unconnected themes. It ranges from work in the philosophy of cognitive science like dual systems theory, metacognition and the extended mind, combines this with ideas from epistemology on epistemic agency and ends up in moral psychology. I am really pleased that publishing in this longer format has given me the chance to show why I think that there is a clear thread that links them all.”

Dr Tillman Vierkant

The Tinkering Mind is published by Oxford University Press and is available via the link below:

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