Dretske on Naturalizing Experience

Dialogue ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 561-566
Author(s):  
Irene Sonia Switankowsky
Keyword(s):  
Mental Content ◽  
External World ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
Content Externalism ◽  
Secondary Qualities ◽  
Physical Conditions ◽  
The Subject

Many theorists in epistemology and mind accept externalism with respect to content–namely, the claim that the conditions that individuate mental content are external to the occurrence of that content as a mental fact. Whatever it is that distinguishes a pain in the knee from a pain in the toe—or, alternatively, whatever it is that makes it possible for the subject to discriminate this pain as a pain in the knee from that pain as a pain in the toe—are factors and conditions located in the physical and external world. This much externalism seems to be required even if one is a thoroughly entrenched mentalist. This “content externalism” is captured, fairly effectively, by the more traditional distinction between concepts and percepts. What is then asserted by the mentalist is that concepts have their source or origin in the external world, but the perceptual content does not. Perceptual content can be identified in different ways which are: (1) the view that identifies the distinguishing feature of the perceptual with qualia, a position not far removed from the Lockean distinction between Primary and Secondary qualities; or, (2) the perceptual might also be characterized in terms of representationalism, where qualia are an essential part of the representational medium, but where the representational medium contains conceptual content as well. In either case, the perceptual is Type and/or Token distinct from whatever is the external physical conditions or states of affairs causally responsible for the occurrence of either the conceptual content or the perceptual content. An argument for the claim that percepts (colours, sounds, smells, touches, and so on) are essential and necessary is that, without such percepts, there can be no experience.

THE PROBLEM OF EXPRESSION NON-CATEGORICAL STATEMENTS IN LINGUISTIC TEXTS

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 91-97
Author(s):  
Nigora Mukhamedova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Content ◽  
Scientific Communication ◽  
Scientific Text ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Evaluative Attitude

The article deals with the issues based on the study of non-categorical statements in a linguistic text in modern English. The essence of scientific communication is a message, or the transmission by means of language of some mental content, including the expression of an intellectual-evaluative attitude to the subject of speech. The content of intellectual assessments is conditioned by knowledge and experience of intellectual and material activities of people.In a scientific text, this attitude can be the result of verifying the truth of what is expressed by the author himself or by another scientist or a team of researchers, as well as confirmation or refutation of apreviously formed assessment that served as the basis for further discussion

PECULIARITIES OF MANIFESTATION OF MEANING DISSONANCE

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 25-28
Author(s):  
Abakumova I.V. ◽  
Grishina A.V. ◽  
Godunov M.V.
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Dissonance ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
External World ◽  
Personal Meaning ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
Common Mean ◽  
Personal Meanings ◽  
Modern Psychology ◽  
Meaning Systems ◽  
The Subject

Modern psychology considers meaning regulation, as an integral mechanism of personal development. A system of personal meanings develops in the processes of under-standing reality. Due to their polymodality personal meanings cannot be good or bad, but they are not the same. When confronted with unknown situations, the unevenness of the emerging personal meanings can lead to match or mismatch with the existing system of mean-ings. Coincidence, as agreement with a new fact, means meaning consonance. Mismatch, as a mismatch between new and existing information, means meaning disso-nance, as a kind of cognitive dissonance. An analysis of modern psychological literature shows that there are two main plans for the action of meaning dissonances: the dissonance of individual meanings in the implementation of real interactions and the dissonance of common mean-ings during the translation of interpersonal meaning formations. It is proposed to consider that meaning ac-quires a personal coloring due to the processes of both consonance and dissonance positioning of meaning con-structs in the meaning sphere of the subject. The revealed dichotomy of the meaning formation processes shows the possibility of manifestation of meanings bipolarity, which is revealed in the process of transition from the internal to the external world and in collisions with oth-er meaning systems. Then it can be assumed that the ef-fect of meaning dissonance manifests itself in two ways: firstly, in terms of real interactions as a discord of indi-vidual meanings, and secondly, in terms of translation of interpersonal meaning constructs as a dissonance of common meanings. In the course of such an external for-mation, meaning becomes already a personal meaning in the consciousness of a particular person.

Davidson on Pure Intending: A Non-Reductionist Judgement-Dependent Account

Dialogue ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Ali Hossein Khani
Keyword(s):  
Mental Content ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Subject

Abstract I will argue that Davidson's account of pure intending can be construed as a first-person-based judgement-dependent account of intention. For Davidson, pure intending to do φ is to make an all-out judgement that φing is desirable. On this anti-reductionist account, intention is treated as an irreducible state of the subject. I will draw a comparison between this account and Wright's and I will show that Davidson's account can be viewed as a non-reductionist judgement-dependent account along the lines suggested by Wright. I then explain how this account can help deal with various perplexities in Davidson's later view of meaning and mental content.

scholarly journals Analysis of Accessibility to Family Health Centers in Antalya Using GIS

2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (sp) ◽  
pp. 2442-2448
Author(s):  
Orhun Soydan
Keyword(s):  
Social Ties ◽  
Family Health ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Health Centers ◽  
Walking Distance ◽  
Physical Conditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Physical Features ◽  
First Time

Family health centers in Turkey started to be implemented for the first time in Düzce in 2004 years within the scope of Law No. 5258. While determining the physical conditions of the places where family health centers are built, the first item in the regulation is that the building should be easily accessible. This situation shows the importance of the subject in terms of accessibility. While determining the features of the places where FHCs will be made, environmental characteristics are also taken into consideration. Environmental features are effective in determining the FHCs location in different ways. These impacts are divided into two groups: the physical features that pavements, roads and parks can include, and the social, cultural and institutional features of neighborhoods that include local social ties and collective activities. From this point of view, the importance of the location of family health centers relative to roads and houses is understood. The aim of this study is to examine the accessibility of Family Health Centers in Konyaaltı, Antalya, on a neighborhood basis using Geographic Information Systems. Konyaaltı has 21 Family Health Centers. As a result of the analyses, it was determined that most of the neighborhoods had problems in terms of accessibility, while a very few of them did not experience problems in terms of accessibility. In terms of the total number of buildings, the ratio of buildings that are 500 meters walking distance from any family health center by using highways is 35.56%. With these rates, 3,634 of the 10,2018 buildings remain within the limits of the regulation. Finally; suggestions were made to increase accessibility to these areas.

Hegel's Hyperbolic Formalism

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (01) ◽  
pp. 107-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rocío Zambrana
Keyword(s):  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
Transcendental Logic ◽  
Great Insight ◽  
The Absolute

The Science of Logic is perhaps Hegel's most notoriously impenetrable work. Despite well over a century of commentaries as well as the recent proliferation of scholarship, there exists little agreement concerning the text, whether with regard to particular details or the project of speculative logic in general. Nonetheless, the Logic has often been regarded as exemplifying totalizing metaphysics at its worst. Contemporary philosophers concerned with overcoming metaphysics have thus sought to show not only the incoherence of speculative logic but also the perils of Hegel's supposedly totalizing philosophy. In contrast, showing the continuity between Kant and Hegel has been the strategy for establishing a ‘non-metaphysical’ view of Hegel's speculative logic. Against readings of Hegel as a metaphysical monist who defends the reality of the Absolute Idea developing in nature and spirit, speculative logic is presented as the absolute-idealist successor to Kantian transcendental logic. Hegel's speculative logic is an ‘idealist logic’, since it aims at expounding the conditions necessary for the determinacy of any possible object of thought. Speculative logic thus clarities that experience is dependent on non-empirical concepts and, ultimately, on selfconsciousness. Along this interpretative line, Hegel's Science of Logic offers an account of thinking as a norm-based activity, and of concepts as rules for fixing determinacy. The great insight of Hegel's Logic is, on this view, twofold. First, Hegel's notion of the concept [der Begriff] is understood as a holistic-inferential system of logical concepts, since it provides an account of conceptual content as determined by every other possible content. Second, Hegel's analysis of the actualization of the concept — of the concept that has ‘made itself the foundation’, in Hegel's obscure phrasing — provides an account of the fundamental role of authority involved in the process of fixing determinacy. To be bound to a rule is to acknowledge it as having authority over us and at the same time to institute it as authoritative over the states of affairs that we seek to determine. That Hegel spoke of the freedom of the concept is, therefore, crucial. It suggests that determinacy is ultimately a matter of the authorization of reason, of establishing one way of fixing intelligibility over against others.

Perceptual Knowledge of the External World

2018 ◽  
pp. 27-60
Author(s):  
Keith Lehrer
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
External Object ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Object Description ◽  
The Subject

This chapter explains how exemplarization of experience can provide representational evidence for perceptual claims. The perceptual subject experiences a smell of the spray of a skunk and knows what the sensation is like before he learns the origin of it. To know what the sensation is like in itself requires the subject has some conception or representation of what it is like. The representation of the experience is the result of using the experience as a reflexive exemplar representation of a kind of sensation of which it is an instance. As the subject learns that the exemplar sensation is the odor of the spray of a skunk, it becomes part of the meaning and, consequently, evidence for external object description by exhibiting what the objects are like for us. The evidence of truth is fallible but when not defeated by error it provides defensible knowledge of external things.

Internalism and externalism in epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William P. Alston
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Great Distance ◽  
Reliability Test ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Forming Process ◽  
Evil Demon ◽  
Positive View ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

The internalism–externalism distinction is usually applied to the epistemic justification of belief. The most common form of internalism (accessibility internalism) holds that only what the subject can easily become aware of (by reflection, for example) can have a bearing on justification. We may think of externalism as simply the denial of this constraint. The strong intuitive appeal of internalism is due to the sense that we should be able to determine whether we are justified in believing something just by carefully considering the question, without the need for any further investigation. Then there is the idea that we can successfully reply to sceptical doubts about the possibility of knowledge or justified beliefs only if we can determine the epistemic status of our beliefs without presupposing anything about which sceptical doubts could be raised – the external world for example. The main objections to internalism are: (1) It assumes an unrealistic confidence in the efficacy of armchair reflection, which is often not up to surveying our entire repertoire of beliefs and other possible grounds of belief and determining the extent to which they support a given belief. (2) If we confine ourselves to what we can ascertain on reflection, there is no guarantee that the beliefs that are thus approved as justified are likely to be true. And the truth-promoting character of justification is the main source of its value. Externalism lifts this accessibility constraint, but in its most general sense it embodies no particular positive view. The most common way of further specifying externalism is reliabilism, the view that a belief is justified if and only if it was produced and/or sustained by a reliable process, one that would produce mostly true beliefs in the long run. This is a form of externalism because whether a particular belief-forming process is reliable is not something we can ascertain just on reflection. The main objections to externalism draw on internalist intuitions: (1) If the world were governed by an evil demon who sees to it that our beliefs are generally false, even though we have the kind of bases for them we do in fact have, then our beliefs would still be justified, even though formed unreliably. (2) If a reliable clairvoyant (ones who ‘sees’ things at a great distance) forms beliefs on this basis without having any reason for thinking that they are reliably formed, those beliefs would not be justified, even though they pass the reliability test.

The proper place of subjectivity, meaning, and folk psychology in psychiatry

2020 ◽  
pp. 290-303
Author(s):  
Doug McConnell
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Effective Treatment ◽  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Brain State ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
Proper Place ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Discursive Interaction

‘The proper place of subjectivity, meaning, and folk psychology in psychiatry’ argues that Steven Hyman’s vision for psychiatry is excessively bioreductive. Hyman wrongly assumes that conceptual mental content is reducible to brain state descriptions and mistakes the neural vehicle of content for the content itself. Once we see that conceptual content, including the referents of folk psychology, shape brain activity, it becomes clear that content itself (or a lack of it) can be pathological. Therefore, treatment will sometimes be effective, even curative, by addressing that content through discursive interaction with the patient qua person. Diagnosis and effective treatment of mental disorders cannot just focus on neurobiology, as Hyman claims, both processes must also consider conceptual content and the complex interactions between content and the neurobiology instantiating it.

Disorders of consciousness, memory, and will

2018 ◽  
pp. 51-86
Author(s):  
Walter Glannon
Keyword(s):  
Psychiatric Disorder ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Mental States ◽  
External World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Disorders Of Consciousness ◽  
Action Plans ◽  
Flexible Behavior ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter examines major psychiatric disorders as disorders of consciousness, memory, and will. All of these disorders involve disturbances in how the brain processes and integrates information about the body and external world. Distorted mental content in these psychopathologies impairs the capacity to consider different action plans, and to form and execute particular plans in particular actions. Dysfunctional mental states correlating with dysfunctional neural states impair the capacity for flexible behavior and adaptability to the environment. This dysfunction also impairs the capacity for insight into a psychiatric disorder and understanding the need for and motivation to seek treatment.

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