Background
Hamlyn, David W alter was born in October 1924 in I, Plymouth. England. Cai; Analytic metaphysician, philosopher of mm.
Hamlyn, David W alter was born in October 1924 in I, Plymouth. England. Cai; Analytic metaphysician, philosopher of mm.
Research Fellow, Corpus Christi College. Oxford, 1950-1953; Lecturer, Jesus College, Oxford. 1953-1954; Lecturer, 1954-1963, Reader,
1963-1964, Professor and Chair of Philosophy,
1964-1988, Head.
Department of Classics, 1981-1986, Vice-Master, 1983-1988, Professor Emeritus, since 1988, Birkbeck College. London; Editor of Mind. 1972-1984; Member of the Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy since 1968.
Executive Committee since 1971. Vice-Chairman since 1991.
A major concern for Hamlyn has been to disentangle philosophical from psychological questions, and in his early work he criticizes as logically hybrid and inappropriate some of the kinds of explanation employed in Gestalt and derivative schools of psychology. This critique reflects Hamlyn's rejection of scientific reductionism within the field of psychology. He points out the failure of cognitive scientists to pay adequate attention to the concept of perception itself and to the related but—for Hamlyn—logically disparate concepts of sensation and judgment. Similar approaches are reiterated in Hamlyn’s critique of contemporary theorists of knowledge and language acquisition in and through experience. Although sympathetic to some of the 'rationalist' concerns of scientists and linguists such as Piaget and Chomsky, he is also critical of their work. Hamlyn argues for the requirement of a social context and social experience for concept and knowledge acquisition, and for the recognition of the place of emotions, motives and agency in that experience. Hamlyn’s anti-Cartesian thesis that accurate analysis of perception must indicate the social and affective nature of our being steers a course between radical empiricism, rationalism and Piaget’s biological, genetic epistemology. These factors of society and agency, he claims, figure in any answer to the problem of the Meno, which Hamlyn regards as central to cognitive theory. Hamlyn’s strongest critique is of the behaviourist position of B. F. Skinner, whose concept of conditioning Hamlyn regards as a scientific non-starter. The metaphysics of this critique is found in his argument against the behaviourist view of the passivity of the perceiving subject, which is developed at length in In and Out of the Black Box (1990). Broadly following Aristotle, he argues that a percipient’s agency or activity is fundamental to and presupposed in any adequate account of perception, a fact that vitiates the 'black-box’ information-processing model of learning and behaviour. Hamyln’s works also includes examinations of love, hate, self-deception, unconscious intentions and false emotions. Generally his interests range widely and along with a monograph on metaphysics he has written on logic, ethics and the philosophy of education. Aside from authoring a general history of philosophy his particular historical intersts are mainly in ancient philosophy—notably Aristotle’s theory of agency and cognition—and in the philosophy of Schopenhauer, where similar concerns guide his study. Sources: John Haldane (1988) 'Prefatory tribute', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 62: 223^»; Who’s Who 1993, p. 801; Philosophical Investigations.