Inferentialism and the Transcendental Deduction

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Landy
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Founding Fathers

One recent trend in Kant scholarship has been to read Kant as undertaking a project in philosophical semantics, as opposed to, say, epistemology, or transcendental metaphysics. This trend has evolved almost concurrently with a debate in contemporary philosophy of mind about the nature of concepts and their content. Inferentialism is the view that the content of our concepts is essentially inferentially articulated, that is, that the content of a concept consists entirely, or in essential part, in the role that that concept plays in a system of inferences. By contrast, relationalism is the view that this content is fixed by a mental or linguistic item's standing in a certain relation to its object. The historical picture of Kant and the contemporary debate about concepts intersect in so far as contemporary inferentialists about conceptual content often cite Immanuel Kant not only as one of the founding fathers of a tradition that leads more or less straightforwardly to contemporary inferentialism, but also as the philosopher who first saw the fatal flaws in any attempt to articulate the content of our concepts relationally.

Idealism

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
George Berkeley ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Neutral Monism ◽  
Science Philosophy ◽  
To Receive

Idealism is a family of metaphysical views each of which gives priority to the mental. The best-known forms of idealism in Western philosophy are the versions developed by George Berkeley and Immanuel Kant. Although idealism was once a dominant view in Western philosophy, it has suffered almost total neglect over the last several decades. The contemporary debate has focused almost exclusively on physicalism and dualism, though the alternative views of panpsychism and neutral monism are beginning to receive more attention. This book remedies the situation by bringing together seventeen new essays by leading philosophers on idealism. They explain, attack, or defend a variety of forms of idealism—not only Berkeleyan and Kantian versions, but also Buddhist and Jewish versions, and others besides. The essays are all contributions to metaphysics, but variously focus on philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and other areas of philosophy.

scholarly journals DEKARTIŠKAS DUALIZMO ĮRODYMAS ŠIUOLAIKINĖJE SĄMONĖS FILOSOFIJOJE

Problemos ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Dagys
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Dimensional Theory ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Zombie Argument ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Modal Semantic

Straipsnyje analitinės filosofijos požiūriu analizuojamas Descartes’o sąmonės ir kūno skirtingumo įrodymas, siekiant atskleisti jo panašumus su šiuolaikinėje sąmonės filosofijoje populiariu Davido Chalmerso pateiktu „zombio“ mintiniu eksperimentu ir juo grindžiamu dualizmo įrodymu. Siekiama parodyti, kad šiuolaikinis modaline semantikos analize grindžiamas įrodymo variantas yra techniškai sudėtingesnis ir atsparesnis fizikalistinei kritikai, tačiau jis paremtas nutylėta ir nepagrįsta episteminio sąvokų skaidrumo prielaida, kuri išskirstina kaip viena originalaus dekartiško įrodymo silpnybių. Tai leidžia tvirtinti, kad Antoine’o Arnauld kritika, pateikta Descartes’o įrodymui, lygiai taip pat sėkmingai taikytina ir Chalmerso antifizikalistiniams samprotavimams.Reikšminiai žodžiai: sąmonės filosofija, dualizmo įrodymai, „zombio“ mintinis eksperimentas, fizikalizmas. DESCARTES’ ARGUMENT FOR DUALISM IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY OF MINDJonas Dagys Summary The paper analizes Descartes’ argument for the mind–body dualism from the perspective of contemporary analytical philosophy of mind. It attempts to show that the popular zombie argument, mostly due to David Chalmers, is reminescent of this Cartesian proof of dualism. The intended conclusion is that although the contemporary argument invokes modal semantic analysis and two-dimensional theory of conceptual content and so is technically more difficult and resistant to certain physicalist criticism, it neverhteless rests on an unstated and unjustified assumption. This assumption is that of epistemic transparency and completeness of at least some of our concepts. It was the same assumption that had been identified as one of the weaknesses of the original Cartesian argument for dualism. Therefore, one could argue that Arnauld’s objections to Descartes are well applicable to Chalmers’ antiphysicalist arguments without substantial modification.Keywords: philosophy of mind, arguments for dualism, zombie argument, physicalism.

Giving a Damn

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Unpublished Paper ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
The World ◽  
John Haugeland ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Traditional Approaches

In his work, the philosopher John Haugeland (1945–2010) proposed a radical expansion of philosophy’s conceptual toolkit, calling for a wider range of resources for understanding the mind, the world, and how they relate. Haugeland argued that “giving a damn” is essential for having a mind, and suggested that traditional approaches to cognitive science mistakenly overlook the relevance of caring to the understanding of mindedness. Haugeland’s determination to expand philosophy’s array of concepts led him to write on a wide variety of subjects that may seem unrelated—from topics in cognitive science and philosophy of mind to examinations of such figures as Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, and Thomas Kuhn. Haugeland’s two books with the MIT Press, Artificial Intelligence and Mind Design, show the range of his interests. This book offers a collection of essays in conversation with Haugeland’s work. The essays, by prominent scholars, extend Haugeland’s work on a range of contemporary topics in philosophy of mind—from questions about intentionality to issues concerning objectivity and truth to the work of Heidegger. Giving a Damn also includes a previously unpublished paper by Haugeland, “Two Dogmas of Rationalism,” as well as critical responses to it. Finally, an appendix offers Haugeland’s outline of Kant’s "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories.”

The Necessity of Idealism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Segal ◽  
Tyron Goldschmidt
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The World

This chapter formulates a version of idealism and argues for it. Sections 2 and 3 explicate this version of idealism: the world is mental through-and-through. Section 2 spells this out precisely and contrasts it with rival views. Section 3 draws a consequence from this formulation of idealism: idealism is necessarily true if true at all. Sections 4 and 5 make the case for idealism. Section 4 is defensive: it draws from the conclusion of section 3 to reply to a central, perhaps the central, anti-idealist argument. Section 5 is on the offense: it develops a new argument for idealism based on the contemporary debate in philosophy of mind. The contemporary debate in philosophy of mind has been dominated by physicalism and dualism, with idealism almost totally neglected. This chapter rectifies this situation.

Review of Spanish Monographs on Nietzsche

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 488-494
Author(s):  
Oscar Quejido Alonso
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy

Abstract This article reviews the most relevant monographs published in Spanish between 2012 and 2018. The latter have a particular focus on the relevance of Nietzsche’s philosophy for contemporary philosophy of mind, but they are also concerned with the reception of some fundamental tenets of Nietzsche’s political thought as well as with the reception of his work in Spain and the reconstruction of his intellectual itinerary.

Borges on Replication and Concept Formation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yemima Ben-Menahem
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Concept Formation ◽  
Jorge Luis Borges ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Common Theme ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
The Common

This chapter examines three stories by Jorge Luis Borges: “Funes: His Memory,” “Averroës's Search,” and “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” Each of these highlights the intricate nature of concepts and replication in the broad sense. The common theme running through these three stories is the word–world relation and the problems this relation generates. In each story, Borges explores one aspect of the process of conceptualization, an endeavor that has engaged philosophers ever since ancient Greece and is still at the center of contemporary philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Together, Borges's stories present a complex picture of concepts and processes of conceptualization.

scholarly journals Some Remarks in Defense of Immanuel Kant's Theory of Experience

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Balanovskiy Valentin
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Experiential Knowledge ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Reliable Knowledge ◽  
Conceptual Nature

The author attempts to answer a question of whether the fact that Immanuel Kant’s theory of experience most likely has a conceptual nature decreases an importance of Kant’s ideas for contemporary philosophy, because if experience is conceptual by nature, then certain problems with the search for means to verify experiential knowledge arise. In particular, two approaches are proposed. According to the first approach, the exceptional conceptuality of Kant’s theory of experience may be a consequence of absence of some important chains in arguments contained in the Critique of Pure Reason, which could clarify a question of how the conceptual apparatus of the subject corresponds to the reality. The author puts a hypothesis that the missing chains are not a mistake, but Kant’s deliberate silence caused by the lack of accurate scientific information that could not have been available to humankind in Enlightenment epoch. According to the second approach even if Kant’s theory of experience is exclusively conceptual by nature, this cannot automatically lead to a conclusion that it is unsuitable for obtaining reliable knowledge about reality, since transcendental idealism has powerful internal tools for verifying data in the process of cognition. The central position among them is occupied by transcendental reflection.

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