Intentional content and demonstrative thought

Synthese ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-404
Author(s):  
Belinda Richards
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Content ◽  
Demonstrative Thought

Quality and Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Levine
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
Phenomenal Concept ◽  
Cognitive Phenomenology ◽  
Modal Argument ◽  
Demonstrative Thought ◽  
Naturalistic Theory ◽  
Phenomenal Concept Strategy ◽  
The One

The papers presented in this volume cover topics, such as the “phenomenal concept strategy,” to defend materialism from anti-materialist intuitions, the doctrine of representationalism about phenomenal character, the modal argument against materialism, the nature of demonstrative thought, and cognitive phenomenology. On the one hand, I argue that the phenomenal concept strategy cannot work and that representationalism has certain fatal flaws, at least if it’s to be joined to a materialist metaphysics. On the other, I defend materialism from the modal argument, arguing that it relies on a questionable conflation of semantic and metaphysical issues. I also provide a naturalistic theory of demonstrative thought, criticizing certain philosophical arguments involving that notion in the process. I argue as well that the peculiarly subjective nature of secondary qualities provides a window into the nature of the relation between phenomenal character and intentional content, and conclude that relation involves a robust notion of acquaintance.

Scham und Autonomie

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-192
Author(s):  
Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
Conceptual Clarification ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conventional Behavior ◽  
And Control

Autonomy is associated with intellectual self-preservation and self-determination. Shame, on the contrary, bears a loss of approval, self-esteem and control. Being afflicted with shame, we suffer from social dependencies that by no means have been freely chosen. Moreover, undergoing various experiences of shame, our power of reflection turns out to be severly limited owing to emotional embarrassment. In both ways, shame seems to be bound to heteronomy. This situation strongly calls for conceptual clarification. For this purpose, we introduce a threestage model of self-determination which comprises i) autonomy as capability of decision-making relating to given sets of choices, ii) self-commitment in terms of setting and harmonizing goals, and iii) self-realization in compliance with some range of persistently approved goals. Accordingly, the presuppositions and distinctive marks of shame-experiences are made explicit. Within this framework, we explore the intricate relation between autonomy and shame by focusing on two questions: on what conditions could conventional behavior be considered as self-determined? How should one characterize the varying roles of actors that are involved in typical cases of shame-experiences? In this connection, we advance the thesis that the social dynamics of shame turns into ambiguous positions relating to motivation, intentional content,and actors’ roles.

Demonstrative Thought

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Levine
Keyword(s):  
Concept Acquisition ◽  
Phenomenal Concept ◽  
Demonstrative Reference ◽  
Demonstrative Thought ◽  
Phenomenal Concept Strategy

In this paper I develop a model of what it is to entertain a demonstrative thought, whether about an individual or a property. The primary question I investigate is the mechanism responsible for securing the referent of the demonstrative component of the thought. I characterize mechanisms of demonstrative reference for both token-demonstratives and type-demonstratives, drawing a distinction between genuine type-demonstratives and “quasi” type-demonstratives in the process. I then use the results of this discussion to criticize various philosophical uses of the notion of a demonstrative concept, including the “phenomenal concept strategy” for responding to challenges to materialism and the attempt to explain concept acquisition by appeal to demonstrative concepts.

Empiricism and Normative Constraint

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Ginsborg
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
Empirical Reality ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Empirical World ◽  
Normative Constraint ◽  
Normative Relation

McDowell holds that our thinking, in order to have intentional content, must stand in a normative relation to empirical reality. He thinks that this condition can be satisfied only if we adopt “minimal empiricism”: the view that beliefs and judgements stand in rational relations to perceptual experiences, conceived as passive. I raise two complementary difficulties for minimal empiricism, one challenging McDowell’s view that experiences, conceived as passive, can be reasons for belief, the other challenging his view of experience as presupposing conceptual capacities. I go on to argue that minimal empiricism is not necessary for satisfying the condition that thinking be normatively related to the empirical world. There is another way of understanding the relation between thought and reality which construes it as normative without being rational: we can understand it as the world’s normative constraint on the activity through which empirical concepts, and hence empirical thinking, become possible.

scholarly journals A radical relationist solution to the problem of intentional inexistence

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Marchesi
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Commitment ◽  
Intentional Content

AbstractThe problem of intentional inexistence arises because the following (alleged) intuitions are mutually conflicting: it seems that sometimes we think about things that do not exist; it seems that intentionality is a relation between a thinker and what such a thinker thinks about; it seems that relations entail the existence of what they relate. In this paper, I argue for what I call a radical relationist solution. First, I contend that the extant arguments for the view that relations entail the existence of their relata are wanting. In this regard, I defend a kind of pluralism about relations according to which more than one kind of relation involves non-existents. Second, I contend that there are reasons to maintain that all thoughts are relations between thinkers and the things they are about. More accurately, I contend that the radical relationist solution is to be preferred to both the intentional content solution (as developed by Crane) and the adverbial property solution (as developed by Kriegel). Finally, I argue that once the distinction between thinking “X” and thinking about X has been drawn, the radical relationist solution can handle issues like ontological commitment, substitutivity failure, scrutability, and non-specificity.

Cognitive Phenomenology and Indirect Sense

Metaphysica ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley Richards
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Content ◽  
Cognitive Phenomenology

AbstractAcquaintance with the non-sensory cognitive phenomenology of a given intentional content can act as a Fregean sense presenting that content. This provides (i) a mechanism for acquaintance with (a kind of) sense, (ii) a sense that is subject and context invariant, and (iii) a mechanism for the immediate presentation of a referent. This kind of sense can be used to defend

scholarly journals Relational Imperativism about Affective Valence

2021 ◽  
pp. 341-370
Author(s):  
Antti Kauppinen
Keyword(s):  
Opportunity Cost ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
Affective Valence ◽  
Affective Experiences ◽  
In Virtue Of

Affective experiences motivate and rationalize behaviour in virtue of feeling good or bad, or their valence. It has become popular to explain such phenomenal character with intentional content. Rejecting evaluativism and extending earlier imperativist accounts of pain, I argue that when experiences feel bad, they both represent things as being in a certain way and tell us to see to it that they will no longer be that way. Such commands have subjective authority by virtue of linking up with a relevant background concern. The imperative content explains but doesn’t constitute world-directed motivation. It also rationalizes action indirectly, by giving rise to an affective seeming that represents the situation as calling for the authoritatively commanded behaviour. One experience feels worse than another if its content tells us to bear a higher opportunity cost to comply with the command. Finally, experience-directed motivation is contingent on our being attitudinally (dis)pleased with the character of our experience.

Metaphysics and the Theory of Content

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-38
Author(s):  
Christopher Peacocke
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Content ◽  
General Argument ◽  
Theories Of Meaning

Is the metaphysics of a domain prior in the order of philosophical explanation to a theory of intentional contents and meanings about that domain? Or is the opposite true? There is a general argument from the nature of meaning and intentional content that, contrary to Brandom and Dummett, meaning cannot be prior to metaphysics. In every domain, either the metaphysics is prior, or else the case is one of no priority. McDowell treats all cases as no-priority cases; his arguments overlook the case for a metaphysics-first treatment in certain domains. Order of explanation must also be distinguished from order of discovery, something that distinguishes the metaphysics-first view of a domain from that of Devitt. We must distinguish, for each domain, the task of explaining how a metaphysics-involving view can be correct from explaining that it is correct. Consequences for current theories of meaning follow from the metaphysics-involving view.

Editor's Introduction

2001 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
D. M. Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
Great Promise ◽  
Cognitive Ethology ◽  
Royal Institute ◽  
Biological Phenomena ◽  
The Mind

The papers collected in this volume are the proceedings of the 1999 Royal Institute of Philosophy conference: the theme of the conference, the same as the title of this collection, Naturalism, Evolution and Mind. The essays collected here cover a wide array of disparate themes in philosophy, psychology, evolutionary biology and the philosophy of science. They range in subject matter from the mind/body problem and the nature of philosophical naturalism, to the naturalization of psychological norms to the naturalization of phenomenal and intentional content, from the methodology cognitive ethology to issues in evolutionary psychology. They are united by the simple thought that the great promise of current naturalism in philosophy of mind resides in its potential to reveal mental phenomena as continuous with other phenomena of the natural world, particularly with other biological phenomena.

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