Recent philosophy of mind has had a mistaken conception of the nature of psychological concepts. It has assumed too much similarity between psychological judgments and those of natural science and has thus overlooked the fact that other people are not just objects whose thoughts we may try to predict and control but fellow creatures with whom we talk and co-operate. In this collection of essays, Jane Heal argues that central to our ability to arrive at views about others' thoughts (...) is not knowledge of some theory of the mind but rather an ability to imagine alternative worlds and how things appear from another person's point of view. She then applies this view to questions of how we represent others' thoughts, the shape of psychological concepts, the nature of rationality and the possibility of first person authority. This book should appeal to students and professionals in philosophy of mind and language. (shrink)

Specifically designed to make the philosophy of mind intelligible to those not trained in philosophy, this book provides a concise overview for students and researchers in the cognitive sciences. Emphasizing the relevance of philosophical work to investigations in other cognitive sciences, this unique text examines such issues as the meaning of language, the mind-body problem, the functionalist theories of cognition, and intentionality. As he explores the philosophical issues, Bechtel draws connections between philosophical views and theoretical and experimental (...) work in such disciplines as cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, neuroscience, and anthropology. (shrink)

Philosophy of mind is one of the core disciplines in philosophy. The questions that it deals with are profound, vexed and intriguing. This volume of 15 new cutting-edge essays gives young researchers a chance to stir up new ideas. The essays cover a wide range of topics, including the nature of consciousness, cognition, and action. A common theme in the essays is that the future of philosophy of mind lies in judicious use of resources from related fields, (...) including epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and cognitive neuroscience. Approaches that the researchers explore in this volume range from the use of armchair conceptual analysis to brain scanning techniques. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays, weaving together cognitive psychology, psycho-linguistics, developmental psychology, modern philosophy and behavioural sciences. It raises the question, how grammar relates to our remarkable ability to cooperate for future needs and how our thought process is related to grammatical parameters.

The topic of this book is a comparison between holism in the philosophy and language and social holism on the one hand and holism about space-time and quantum systems on the other hand. The main claim is that holism in the humanities and holism in fundamental physics come under the same substantial, general conception of holism. That is to say: arguments to the effect that the holism of the mental is unscientific or that the mental is separated from (...) the physical owing to holism are not sound. The holism of the mental fits into a world-view that bases itself on scientific realism. The addressees of this book are all those who care about our view of the world and ourselves in the spirit of an argumentative examination of different positions. No familiarity with physics is presupposed. (shrink)

Indian Perspectives on Consciousness, Language and Self by Marco Ferrante explores theories of consciousness by examining the non-dual philosophy of Recognition mainly represented by the two philosophers Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta, and also carefully concludes that the trajectory of their ideas have compelling influence from Bhartṛhari and his commentator Helārāja. No philosophy ever evolves and develops in a void. No philosophical tradition or theory functions in oblivion. In the history of philosophy in South Asia, this is also (...) true of the traditions that have staunchly stood up and rigorously argued for the ubiquity of consciousness. The dynamism of... (shrink)

In 1792 Dugald Stewart published Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. In its section on abstraction he declared himself to be a nominalist. Although a few scholars have made brief reference to this position, no sustained attention has been given to the central role that it played within Stewart’s early philosophy of mind. It is therefore the purpose of this essay to unpack Stewart’s nominalism and the intellectual context that fostered it. In the first three sections (...) I aver that his nominalism emanated from his belief that objects of the mind—qualities, ideas and words—were signs that bore no necessary relation to the external objects that they were meant to represent. More specifically, it was these signs that were arranged into systems of thought by the ‘operations of the mind’. The next three sections suggest that his treatment of words as signs most probably originated in his views on language and medicine and that his nominalistic philosophy of mind could also be extended to systems that sought to classify the natural world. I conclude by suggesting several avenues of enquiry that could be pursued by future scholars interested in excavating Stewart’s thought. (shrink)

The philosophy of mind is one of the fastest-growing areas in philosophy, not least because of its connections with related areas of psychology, linguistics and computation. This _Companion_ is an alphabetically arranged reference guide to the subject, firmly rooted in the philosophy of mind, but with a number of entries that survey adjacent fields of interest. The book is introduced by the editor's substantial _Essay on the Philosophy of Mind_ which serves as an overview of the (...) subject, and is closely referenced to the entries in the Companion. Among the entries themselves are several "self-profiles" by leading philosophers in the field, including Chomsky, Davidson, Dennett, Dretske, Fodor, Lewis, Searle and Stalnaker, in which their own positions within the subject are articulated. In some more complex areas, more than one author has been invited to write on the same topic, giving a polarity of viewpoints within the book's overall coverage. All main entries have a full bibliography, and the book is indexed to the high standards set by other volumes in the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series. (shrink)

A welcome introduction to one of the most intellectually demanding areas of the undergraduate philosophy curriculum. The authors provide a clear framework within which students can fit contemporary developments in the Anglo-American tradition which provide the core themes of philosophy of mind and which connect to their other work in epistemology and philosophy of language.

From Plato's cave to Dennett's emergent systems, Teach Yourself Philosophy of Mind explores more than two millennia of thought on the knottiest of all philosophical questions. What is the mind? Is it a function of language, a neuropsychological artifact, or a metaphysical essence? Will machines ever be conscious? Is free will just an illusion? Beginning with the pre-Socratics and moving up through the latest in cognitive science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, this book explores major thinking on consciousness, memory, (...) creativity, and other major concepts in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1 The Cartesian legacy -- The dominant paradigm -- Cartesian dualism -- The secret life of the body -- The Cartesian theatre -- The domain of reason -- The causal relevance of the mind -- Conclusion -- Further reading --2 Reductionism and the road to functionalism -- Causation, scientific realism, and physicalism -- Reductionism and central state materialism -- Problems with central state materialism -- Modified ontological physicalism: supervenience -- Modified explanatory physicalism: the disunity of -- (...) science picture -- Supervenient causation -- Functionalism -- Further reading --3 Computational models of mind -- Intentionality -- Rationality: the calculative account -- The computational model of mind -- Objections to the language of thought (1) -- Objections to the language of thought (2) -- Conclusion -- Further reading --4 The content of thought -- The internalist picture -- Externalism -- Singular thoughts -- Dual component theories -- Naturalistic externalism -- Teleological theories -- Conclusion -- Further reading --5 Anti-reductionist alternatives -- Interpretationalism -- Real patterns -- Direct interpretationalism -- Psychological causalism -- Modified psychological causalism -- Third-personalism and perspectivity -- The world from the point of view of the subject -- Context and culture -- Conclusion -- Further reading --6 The content of experience -- Consciousness -- The knowledge argument -- Absent qualia and inverted spectra -- Functionalist responses -- Internal monitoring -- Intentionalism -- Form and content -- The private language argument -- Further reading -- 7 Subjects of experience -- Subjectivity -- The subjective viewpoint -- Intersubjectivity -- Simulation theory -- Normativity and normality -- Expression -- Self-knowledge -- Conclusion -- Further reading --8 The embodied subject -- Mentality -- Desire -- Beyond the Cartesian body -- Metaphysical questions: multiple narratives -- Further reading -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index. (shrink)

This book, published in 1976, presents an entirely original approach to the subject of the mind-body problem, examining it in terms of the conceptual links between the physical sciences and the sciences of human behaviour. It is based on the cybernetic concepts of information and feedback and on the related concepts of thermodynamic and communication-theoretic entropy. The foundation of the approach is the theme of continuity between evolution, learning and human consciousness. The author defines life as a process of energy (...) exchange between organism and environment, and evolution as a feedback process maintaining equilibrium between environment and reproductive group. He demonstrates that closely related feedback processes on the levels of the behaving organism and of the organism’s nervous system constitute the phenomena of learning and consciousness respectively. He analyses language as an expedient for extending human information-processing and control capacities beyond those provided by one’s own nervous system, and shows reason to be a mode of processing information in the form of concepts removed from immediate stimulus control. The last chapter touches on colour vision, pleasure and pain, intentionality, self-awareness and other subjective phenomena. Of special interest to the communication theorist and philosopher, this study is also of interest to psychologists and anyone interested in the connection between the physical and life sciences. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of fourteen essays by leading philosophers on issues concerning the nature, existence, and our knowledge of animal minds. The nature of animal minds has been a topic of interest to philosophers since the origins of philosophy, and recent years have seen significant philosophical engagement with the subject. However, there is no volume that represents the current state of play in this important and growing field. The purpose of this volume is to highlight the state (...) of the debate. The issues which are covered include whether and to what degree animals think in a language or in iconic structures, possess concepts, are conscious, self-aware, metacognize, attribute states of mind to others, and have emotions, as well as issues pertaining to our knowledge of and the scientific standards for attributing mental states to animals. (shrink)

A few years ago philosophy of mind in the main English-language tradition was characterized by marked optimism about progress and by broad agreement that a correct theory would be a version of physicalism that admitted the sui generis nature of psychological descriptions and explanations. Now consensus seems to have given way to chaos supervenient physicalism has become so weak as to be virtually contentless and reductionism has become no more plausible than when it was generally rejected. The essay (...) presses these points and suggests the need of more radical alternatives. (shrink)

Preface 1 Introduction: The Persistence of the Attitudes 2 Individualism and Supervenience 3 Meaning Holism 4 Meaning and the World Order Epilogue Creation Myth Appendix Why There Still Has to be a Language of Thought Notes References Author Index.

Phenomenology was in large part the discovery of Edmund Husserl, whose Logical Investigations of 1900/01 are normally regarded as the work that launched the phenomenological movement. Yet Husserl's phenomenology, in particular in the form in which it is set out in this his most important contribution to philosophy, is itself part of an Austrian philosophical tradi tion inspired by Brentano and continued, in very different ways, by Meinong, Stumpf, Twardowski, Ehrenfels, Husserl - and Marty. Like Brentano and all his (...) heirs Marty's philosophical interests were in the philosophy of mind, where this is taken to include or at least ground the philosophy of language, and analytic metaphysics. It is Marty's discussions of topics in these two areas that provide the contributions to this volume with their subject-matter. The papers by Roderick Chisholm, S. -Y. Kuroda, Barry Smith, Peter Simons, Rosaria Egidi, Karl Schuhmann, Elmar Holenstein, Edgar Morscher, Wolf gang Wenning and myself were presented at the 1984 conference on Anton Marty in Fribourg, Switzerland. Our host in Fribourg was Guido Kung, the conference was made possible by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung. I should like to thank both for their help. Geneva, April 1988 KEVIN MULLIGAN Xl Abbreviations Employed in the Text Anton Marty's two major works, the Untersuchungen and the posthumously published Raum und Zeit are referred to in what follows in the following style. U Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie, Vol. I (only volume published). Halle a. S. (shrink)

Developments in the philosophy of mind over the last 20 years have dramatically changed the nature of the subject. In this major new introduction, Tim Bayne presents an outstanding overview of many of the key topics, problems, and debates, taking account not only of changes in philosophy of mind itself but also of important developments in the scientific study of the mind. -/- The following topics are discussed in depth: -/- What distinguishes a physicalist conception of the mind? (...) -/- Behaviourism, the identity theory, functionalism, and eliminativism as accounts of the mental -/- The nature of perception, including the issue of perceptual transparency, the admissible contents of perception, and the question of unconscious perception -/- The nature of thought, including the language of thought hypothesis, Searle’s Chinese room argument, and the Turing test -/- The basis of intentional content -/- Externalist accounts of content and the ‘extended mind’ thesis -/- Consciousness-based objections to physicalism, and illusionist and panpsychist conceptions of consciousness -/- Theories of consciousness, including methodological issues in the study of consciousness -/- Mental causation, including both philosophical and scientific challenges -/- The problem(s) of other minds, including knowledge of non-human minds -/- Self-knowledge -/- Personal identity and the nature of the self -/- The book features a number of boxes that provide a more in-depth look at particular issues. Also included are chapter summaries, guides to further reading, and a helpful glossary of terms. -/- Written by a leading figure in the field, Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction is an invaluable core text for any student coming to philosophy of mind for the first time. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic account of Quine’s philosophy of mind. In doing so, I respond to an interpretive problem of reconciling Quine’s admission of irreducible mentalistic predicates with his physicalism. I argue that the required reconciliation takes place in a theory of mind that accords a central explanatory role to dispositions, but which nevertheless is non-behavioristic and non-reductive. A second, and intermediate, project of this paper is to explicate Quine’s account of dispositions and their status in (...) Quine’s regimented theory. Particularly, I will argue that Quine’s non-reductive physicalism about the mind rests on a distinction between two kinds of dispositions. (shrink)

This book differs from others by rejecting the dualist approach associated in particular with Descartes. It also casts serious doubt on the forms of materialism that now dominate English language philosophy. Drawing in particular on the work of Wittgenstein, a central place is given to the importance of the notion of a human being in our thought about ourselves and others.

This chapter contains sections titled: Mind‐Body Dualism Behaviourism The Identity Theory Machine Functionalism Cognitive Psychology Artificial Intelligence and the Computer Model of the Mind Homuncular Functionalism and Other Teleological Theories Problems with Qualia and Consciousness Problems with Intentionality The ‘Language of Thought’ Hypothesis Instrumentalism Eliminativism and Neurophilosophy The Status of ‘Folk Psychology’.

Introduction: Philosophy in Mind / Michaelis Michael and John O’Leary-Hawthorne -- AI and the Synthetic A Priori / Jose Benardete -- Armchair Metaphysics /Frank Jackson -- Doubts About Conceptual Analysis /Gilbert Harman -- Deflationary Self-Knowledge / Andre Gallois -- How to Get to Know One’s Own Mind: Some Simple Ways / Annette Baier -- Psychology in Perspective / Huw Price -- Can Philosophy of Language Provide the Key to the Foundations of Ethics? /Karl-Otto Apel --Unprincipled Decisions / (...) Lee Overton -- Philosophy and Commonsense: The Case of Weakness of Will / Jeanette Kennett and Michael Smith -- Reasoning and Representing / Robert Brandom -- The Problem of Consciousness / John Searle -- Godel’s Theorem and the Mind... Again / Graham Priest -- Epistemology and the Diet Revolution / Gilbert Harman -- Truth-Aptness and Belief / John O’Leary-Hawthorne -- Cubism, Perspective, Belief / Michaelis Michael. Objectivity and Modern Idealism: What is The Question? / Gideon Rosen. (shrink)

The recent reemergence of theories that emphasize the semantic and conceptual aspects of emotions has also brought to attention questions about their rationality. There are essentially two standard senses in which emotions can be assessed for their rationality. First, emotions can be said to be categorically rational insofar as they presuppose our psychological capacities to be clearly conscious of distinctions, to engage and manipulate concepts, and hence to provide intentional descriptions as reasons for what we feel and are moved to (...) do. For this "cognitive" rationality we can apply the usual standards intrinsic to the processes of belief formation such as coherence, consistency, inferential validity, and appropriateness of evidence. Secondly, and derivatively of "rationality" as a teleological or strategic notion, emotions can be thought of as rational or irrational depending upon their function in fulfilling certain specified human purposes. While neither adhering to nor dismissing what these two mainstream perspectives afford, the following thesis is an alternative, yet complementary, project. Its aim is to "rationalize" emotions through insights obtained in programmatic examinations of their relationship to a number of critical features of being human: intentionality, expression and language, sense of self, responsibility, self-deception, and value cognition and moral agency. The idea is less to fit emotions within some formulaic description of rationality and more to let its potential definition emerge subsequently to these investigations. This reflects a conviction that rationality is not a unitary property of our minds but a complex stance towards the world. It also exhibits an awareness that, as evidenced by current debates, "rationality" is very much a contested notion. (shrink)

Among Leibniz’s contributions to the philosophy of mind, two topics bear relevance to contemporary discussions in cognitive sciences: the mind-body problem, and the universal language. Leibniz’s deterministic view rejects inter-substance causality between mental and bodily states, as well as between mental or bodily states of different individuals. In addition, Leibniz believed in the need to enhance communication through a universal language based on symbolic representations. Here I reconsider Leibniz’s ideas in the light of experimental evidence coming from (...) mirror neurons. These recently discovered brain cells, responsive to both action execution and observation, are thought to enable the interpretation of the action performer’s intentions through their representation in the observer’s own brain, thus storing embodied shared representations. I propose that mirror neurons’ cross-modal responsiveness, whereby seeing an action being performed by somebody else triggers similar neural response to that of performing that action oneself, can be interpreted as an instantiation of intersubstance causality. I suggest that mirror neurons’ properties speak not only to the non-dualistic equation, supported by brain science in general, whereby in a given individual, mental states arise from bodily states but also introduce the possibility that bodily states may arise from someone else’s bodily states. In addition, I propose that this automatic embodied flow of information between individuals (from performer to observer) bears relevance to Leibniz’s intuitions on symbols. Specifically, I suggest that the shared representations stored in mirror neurons, thought to enable the interpretation of the action performer’s intentions, may be seen as a biological instantiation of Leibniz’s planned, but never realized, universal characteristic. (shrink)

_Wittgenstein, Mind and Meaning_ offers a provocative re-reading of Wittgenstein's later writings on language and mind, and explores the tensions between Wittgenstein's ideas and contemporary cognitivist conceptions of the mental. This book addresses both Wittgenstein's later works as well as contemporary issues in philosophy of mind. It provides fresh insight into the later Wittgenstein and raises vital questions about the foundations of cognitivism and its wider implications for psychology and cognitive science.

This article is an introduction to current issues in the field via a brief review of the history of the field since ryle's "the concept of mind" in 1949. The contributions of ordinary language philosophy and the first wave of identity theory provide the background for the development of the various brands of functionalism that occupy the center of attention today. Problems with functionalism concerned with mental representation, "qualia" and other presumed features of conscious experience are examined. There (...) is an extensive bibliography. (shrink)

Elements of Mind provides a unique introduction to the main problems and debates in contemporary philosophy of mind. Author Tim Crane opposes those currently popular conceptions of the mind that divide mental phenomena into two very different kinds (the intentional and the qualitative) and proposes instead a challenging and unified theory of all the phenomena of mind. In light of this theory, Crane engages students with the central problems of the philosophy of mind--the mind-body problem, the problem of (...) intentionality (or mental representation), the problem of consciousness, and the problem of perception--and attempts to find solutions to these problems. A fresh and engaging exploration of the main issues in the philosophy of mind, Elements of Mind is easily accessible to students with no background in the subject. (shrink)

In this book Jonathan Lowe offers a lucid and wide-ranging introduction to the philosophy of mind. Using a problem-centred approach designed to stimulate as well as instruct, he begins with a general examination of the mind-body problem and moves on to detailed examination of more specific philosophical issues concerning sensation, perception, thought and language, rationality, artificial intelligence, action, personal identity and self-knowledge. His discussion is notably broad in scope, and distinctive in giving equal attention to deep metaphysical questions (...) concerning the mind and to the discoveries and theories of modern scientific psychology. It will be of interest to any reader with a basic grounding in modern philosophy. (shrink)

Experimental Philosophy is a new and controversial movement that challenges some of the central findings within analytic philosophy by marshalling empirical evidence. The purpose of this short paper is twofold: to introduce some of the work done in experimental philosophy concerning issues in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics and to connect this work with several debates within the philosophy of religion. The provisional conclusion is that philosophers of religion must critically (...) engage experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Recent studies claim to show that language delayed deaf subjects typically display longlingering deficits in Theory of Mind (ToM) development, despite suffering no known deficits in other cognitive domains. These claims are supported by experimental evidence indicating that such subjects fare poorly on False Belief (FB) tasks. This paper turns a critical eye on these claims. In particular, I argue that the reported results raise important questions about the status of FB tasks as evidence, and about how such evidence (...) should be weighted against naturalistic observations of subjects engaged in everyday activities requiring complex social coordination. I conclude that these studies give us no decisive reason to believe that language delayed deaf subjects suffer distinctively and symptomatically in the domain of social cognition. To the contrary, the attribution of significant socio-cognitive impairment is potentially stigmatizing and may not help us understand the unique challenges these subjects face or suggest remedial strategies to aid them in overcoming these challenges. (shrink)

The history of philosophy resembles a convention of deaf-mutes. Each participant attempts to communicate the secrets of his private imagination through a swirl of silent gestures. Intent on disclosing his own insight, each is confined in his own world: he has no ear for the language of others and often little knowledge of how to make them understand his. The carnival of controversy which ensues is grotesque in the eyes of the outsider but tragic for the thoughtful participant. (...) For in the history of philosophy many more messages are sent than are received, and the ones that are received come to us mutilated, infected by our own perspective and interests. In our own way each of us distorts or discards the central judgments of almost everyone else. The dead sign-language of the printed word is inadequate to span a century. Philosophers signal like wild semaphores that lost their common code. (shrink)

In his most recent book, Ermanno Bencivenga offers a stylistically and conceptually exciting investigation of the nature of language, mind, and personhood and the many ways the three connect. Bencivenga, one of the most iconoclastic voices to emerge in contemporary American philosophy, contests the basic assumptions of analytic (and also, to an extent, postmodern) approaches to these topics. His exploration leads through fascinating discussions of education, courage, pain, time and history, selfhood, subjectivity and objectivity, reality, facts, the empirical, (...) power and transgression, silence, privacy and publicity, and play—all themes that are shown to be integral to our thinking about language. Relentessly bending the rules, Bencivenga frustrates our expectations of a "proper" theory of language. He invokes the transgressions of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein even as he appropriates the aphoristic style of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Written in a philosophically playful and experimental mode, A Theory of Language and Mind draws the reader into a sense of continual surprise, therapeutic discomfort, and discovery. (shrink)

This collection should be welcomed by anyone working on the subtle interplay between theories of perception, internalism and externalism about mental and linguistic content, and the linguistic expression of mental states. Many of these connections have been put into focus by John Searle, and his views are here subjected to careful scrutiny from a variety of directions. The contributions do not sum to a general discussion of Searle's contributions to the philosophy of mind and language. There is little (...) or nothing here on, for example, the Chinese rooms and Strong AI, or on his more recent work on social construction and rationality. Such absences are an inevitable consequence of the sheer number of influential theses Searle has advanced over the decades. Instead, the locus of discussion is the systematic perspective most clearly set out in his work , a fact that lends integrity to the volume.The book is divided into two main parts, with inevitable links across the divide. The first is concerned with the intentionality of mental states, and the second with the intentionality of linguistic acts. The first kind of intentionality is, according to Searle, intrinsic, while the second is inherited from the first, with linguistic conventions affording the derivation. The two kinds of intentionality parallel one another …. (shrink)

Extract from Hofstadter's revew in Bulletin of American Mathematical Society : http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1980-02-02/S0273-0979-1980-14752-7/S0273-0979-1980-14752-7.pdf -/- "Aaron Sloman is a man who is convinced that most philosophers and many other students of mind are in dire need of being convinced that there has been a revolution in that field happening right under their noses, and that they had better quickly inform themselves. The revolution is called "Artificial Intelligence" (Al)-and Sloman attempts to impart to others the "enlighten- ment" which he clearly regrets not having (...) experienced earlier himself. Being somewhat of a convert, Sloman is a zealous campaigner for his point of view. Now a Reader in Cognitive Science at Sussex, he began his academic career in more orthodox philosophy and, by exposure to linguistics and AI, came to feel that all approaches to mind which ignore AI are missing the boat. I agree with him, and I am glad that he has written this provocative book. The tone of Sloman's book can be gotten across by this quotation (p. 5): "I am prepared to go so far as to say that within a few years, if there remain any philosophers who are not familiar with some of the main developments in artificial intelligence, it will be fair to accuse them of professional incom- petence, and that to teach courses in philosophy of mind, epistemology, aesthetics, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, ethics, metaphysics, and other main areas of philosophy, without discussing the relevant aspects of artificial intelligence will be as irresponsible as giving a degree course in physics which includes no quantum theory." -/- (The author now regrets the extreme polemical tone of the book.). (shrink)

As one of the world's most eminent living philosophers, John Perry has covered a remarkable breadth of subjects in his published work, including semantics, indexicality, self-knowledge, personal identity, and consciousness. Looking particularly at the way in which he deals with issues of self, communication, and reality, this volume is organized in seven chapters that highlight a different aspect of Perry's work on the intersection of these subjects. A fundamental work for students and scholars, Identity, Language, and Mind explores questions (...) that are not only essential in understanding Perry's writings, but also contemporary philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

This volume deals with the relation between pragmatics and the philosophy of mind.

This is a volume of original essays on key aspects of John Searle's philosophy of language. It examines Searle's work in relation to current issues of central significance, including internalism versus externalism about mental and linguistic content, truth-conditional versus non-truth-conditional conceptions of content, the relative priorities of thought and language in the explanation of intentionality, the status of the distinction between force and sense in the theory of meaning, the issue of meaning scepticism in relation to rule-following, (...) and the proper characterization of ‘what is said’ in relation to the semantics/pragmatics distinction. Written by a distinguished team of contemporary philosophers, and prefaced by an illuminating essay by Searle, the volume aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of Searle's work in philosophy of language, and to suggest innovative approaches to fundamental questions in that area. (shrink)

Analogical cognition refers to the ability to detect, process, and learn from relational similarities. The study of analogical and similarity cognition is widely considered one of the ‘success stories’ of cognitive science, exhibiting convergence across many disciplines on foundational questions. Given the centrality of analogy to mind and knowledge, it would benefit philosophers investigating topics in epistemology and the philosophies of mind and language to become familiar with empirical models of analogical cognition. The goal of this essay is to (...) describe recent empirical work on analogical cognition as well as model applications to philosophical topics. Topics to be discussed include the epistemological distinction between implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge, the debate between empiricists and nativists, the frame problem, expertise, creativity and autism, cognitive architecture, and relational knowledge. Particular attention is given to Dedre Gentner and colleague’s structure-mapping theory – the most developed and widely accepted model of analogical cognition. (shrink)

THE PRESENT SITUATION in the philosophy of mind may be roughly summed up in three generalizations. First, Cartesian dualism is no longer widely accepted as a genuine option. For many reasons it is no longer taken seriously by experimental psychologists. Perhaps their best reason is that the dualistic hypothesis can provide no satisfactory explanation of behavior since it would seem to make no sense to ascribe to an immaterial substance an internal structure and activity which could be causally linked (...) to behavior. Among philosophers, A. J. Ayer has expressed a characteristic attitude in his admission that he does not find the hypothesis intelligible. Second, a version of materialism, let us call it physicalism, is now being taken seriously as an alternative to Cartesian dualism. According to this version, while it is admitted that mentalistic discourse may not be logically reducible to physicalistic discourse, nevertheless all true statements about the mind are in fact either statements about the behavior of the human body and its organs or about tendencies to behave. Finally, the concept of action has come to the forefront of discussion, and it is being explored primarily by those who reject Cartesian dualism but find something wrong with physicalism. Here is an attempt to construct an alternative to both views by developing a new kind of dualism, namely a distinction between persons as physical organisms and persons as agents, as beings who can act and who have intentions, motives, reasons, desires, and so forth. According to this view, persons are creatures to whom it is essential that teleological concepts apply, and teleological discourse and modes of explanation are not reducible, either logically or empirically, to physicalistic discourse and modes of explanation. Advocates of the new dualism are just as anxious to deny the existence of a ghost in the machine as are the materialists. But, to state roughly what they are after, it is claimed that there are at least two mutually exclusive language games or conceptual schemes which we use to talk about human beings. They are exclusive not in the sense of being about different entities but in the sense of using methods of explanation and concepts which are contextually incompatible with one another. To understand an agent's actions in terms of his intentions and motives is to rule out in that particular context a causal-physiological explanation. Physicalism ignores or fails to appreciate what is distinctively psychological in human life. (shrink)

Empirically-informed philosophy of mind (EIPM) has become a dominant research style in the twenty-first century. EIPM relies on empirical results in various ways. However, the extant literature lacks an empirical description of how EIPM philosophers rely on empirical results. Moreover, though EIPM is essentially a form of cross-disciplinary research, it has not been analyzed as cross-disciplinary research so far. We aim to fill the above two gaps in the literature by producing quantitative and qualitative descriptions of EIPM as a (...) kind of cross-disciplinary research. Our descriptions aim to enable metaphilosophers to evaluate EIPM methodologically and epistemically. Our analyses use co-citation and categorization analyses informed by the literature on interdisciplinarity. We present five sets of descriptions and identify the three most common types of cross-disciplinary interactions in EIPM. The resulting descriptions enable us to locate two metaphilosophical challenges for EIPM philosophers. One concerns how they should incorporate empirical results in different disciplinary contexts, and the other concerns which theoretical virtue(s) they should aim for when tinkering with scientific theories. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Using Sartre Ordinary Language and the Self Self‐Denial in the Analytic Philosophy of Mind and in Sartre A Short Phenomenology of Some Distinctions Sartre's Conception of the Pre‐Reflexive Cogito De Se Theories of Self‐Awareness A Synthesis of the Pre‐reflexive Cogito with a De Se Theory of Self‐Awareness Unity of Consciousness and Reflexive Assent Where Do Higher‐Order Theories of Consciousness Go Wrong? Conclusion.

These essays by some of the most prominent figures in linguistics, artificial intelligence, and psychology explore the problems involved in creating a general cognitive science that will treat language, thought, and behavior in an integrated fashion. They address the fundamental questions of the relations between linguistic structures and cognitive processes, between cognitive processes and language behavior, and between language behavior and linguistic structure. Contents: Introduction, Thomas G. Bever (Columbia University), John M. Carroll and Lance A. Miller (IBM (...) Thomas J. Watson Research Center). "Philosophy and "Linguistics: An Outline of Platonist Grammar, Jerrold J. Katz (CUNY). Sense and Reference in a Psychologically Based Semantics, Ray Jackendoff (Brandeis University). Some Thoughts on the Boundaries and Components of Linguistics, Charles J. Fillmore (University of California, Berkeley). Psychology: Approaches to the Study of the Psychology of Language, Walter Kintsch (University of Colorado). Toward An Abstract Performance Grammar, Charles E. Osgood (University of Illinois). Upgrading a Mind, David Premack (University of Pennsylvania). Computational "Models: "Memory, Meaning, and Syntax, Roger Schank (Yale University) and Lawrence Birnbaum (Yale University). Some Inadequate Theories of Human Language Processing, Mitchell P. Marcus (AT&T Bell Laboratories). (shrink)

The article examines the change of theoretical framework in analytic philosophy of mind. It is well known fact that nowadays philosophical problems of mind are frequently seen as incredibly difficult. It is noteworthy that the first programs of analytical philosophy of mind were skeptical about difficulty of that realm of problems. One of the most notable features of both those programs was the strong antimetaphysical stance, those programs considered philosophy of mind unproblematic in its nature. However, the (...) consequent evolution of philosophy of mind shows evaporating of that stance and gradual recovery of the more sympathetic view toward the mind problematic. Thus, there were two main frameworks in analytical philosophy of mind: 1) the framework of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy dominated in the 1930s and the 1940s; 2) the framework that dominated since the 1950s and was featured by the critique of the first framework. Thus, the history of analytical philosophy of mind moves between two highly opposite understandings of the mind problematic. The article aims to found the causes of that move in the ideas of C. Hempel and G. Ryle, who were the most notable philosophers of mind in the 1930s and the 1940s. (shrink)