scholarly journals Cognitive Focus

2020 ◽  
pp. 223-250
Author(s):  
Imogen Dickie
Keyword(s):  
Singular Thought ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Mental Files ◽  
Causal Theories ◽  
Descriptive Names

The first part of the chapter motivates a unifying alternative to causal theories and description theories of reference and aboutness. The alternative account is built around a claim which the chapter argues brings out the significance for theories of reference and aboutness of the fact that justification is truth conducive: the claim that an aboutness-fixing relation is one which secures what the chapter calls “cognitive focus” on an object of thought. The second part of the chapter argues that a “singular thought” just is a thought made available by a cognitive focus relation, and uses the cognitive focus framework to advance the discussion of descriptive names. An Appendix explains why, though the proposal is a “mental files” proposal, it is better stated without use of this term.

scholarly journals Perceptual content

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matjaž Potrč
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Causal Theories

In the first part, the leading contemporary accounts of content are cri- ticised. Elim i nativism and the syntactic account fail because they flatly de- ny the existence of content, whereas causal theories are still not specific enough.An alternative account is proposed, relying on the role of perception. If the organista perceives external objects it possesses a basis for the for- mation of content.

Singular Thought and Mental Files

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Singular Thought ◽  
Mental File ◽  
Mental Files ◽  
De Re ◽  
The Relationship

Coinciding with recognition of the need for more clarity about the notion of singular (or de re) thought, there has been a surge of interest in the notion of a mental file as a way to understand what is distinctive about singular thought. But what isn’t always clear is what mental files are meant to be, and why we should believe that thoughts that employ them are singular (as opposed to descriptive). In order to make progress on these questions, this volume brings together original papers by leading scholars on singular thought, mental files, and the relationship between the two, as well as an introduction providing an overview of the central issues.

The Mental Files Theory of Singular Thought

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Murez ◽  
Joulia Smortchkova ◽  
Brent Strickland
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
Singular Thought ◽  
Mental Files ◽  
Psychological Data ◽  
Object Files ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Perceptual Capacity

The chapter outlines and evaluates the most ambitious version of the mental files theory of singular thought, according to which mental files are a wide-ranging psychological natural kind, including psychologists’ object-files as a representative subspecies, and underlying all and only singular thinking. It argues that such a theory is unsupported by the available psychological data, and that its defenders may have overestimated the similarities between different notions of “file” used in philosophy and cognitive science. Nevertheless, critical examination of the theory from a psychological perspective opens up promising avenues for research, especially concerning the relationship between our perceptual capacity to individuate and track basic individuals and our higher-level capacities for singular thought.

Descriptive Names and Singular Thought

2020 ◽  
pp. 38-51
Author(s):  
Marga Reimer
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Singular Thought ◽  
Mental File ◽  
Gareth Evans ◽  
David Kaplan ◽  
Potential Sources ◽  
Descriptive Names ◽  
François Recanati ◽  
Apparent Disagreement ◽  
Singular Thoughts

This chapter is concerned with an apparent disagreement between Gareth Evans (1982) and David Kaplan (1989) with regard to the capacities of names introduced into the language by describing their referents. The question at issue is whether such expressions are potential sources of novel singular thought. While Evans’ response is an emphatic “no,” Kaplan’s response is an equally emphatic “yes.” The chapter attempts to resolve (or rather dissolve) this apparent dispute by suggesting that the two philosophers have importantly different phenomena in mind when they talk of “thoughts”—including (and in particular) singular thoughts. Whereas Evans construes thoughts as mental states, Kaplan construes them as semantic contents. Before concluding, it argues for the superiority of the proposed resolution of the Evans/Kaplan debate over that of Francois Recanati (2012), who invokes his Mental File Framework in an attempt to reconcile the seemingly contrary views of Evans and Kaplan.

Singular Thought and Mental Files

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Rachel Goodman ◽  
James Genone
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Singular Thought ◽  
Mental File ◽  
Mental Files ◽  
De Re ◽  
Descriptive Information ◽  
Singular Thoughts

This introduction outlines some central challenges to a clear understanding of singular (or de re) thought, and illustrates why the literature has recently turned to the notion of a mental file as a way to theorize it. It sketches three central motivations behind the claim that singular thought is file-based thought. First, file-theorists have stressed that the descriptive information contained in a file does not determine its identity conditions or semantic content. Second, it is sometimes assumed that singular thoughts are devices of de jure coreference in thought and claimed that mental files are the cognitive reality of de jure coreference in thought. Finally, the file-theoretic approach to singular thought may seem to lend empirical respectability to the notion of singular thought. The chapter ends by?introducing some basic questions proponents of this approach must address if it is to fulfill its explanatory aims.

scholarly journals The Subtle Lives of Descriptive Names

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Imogen Dickie
Keyword(s):  
Singular Term ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Singular Thought ◽  
Singular Terms ◽  
Descriptive Names

This paper develops a radical alternative to standard accounts of descriptive names. A ‘descriptive name’ is a singular term introduced by a stipulation of form ┌Let α‎ refer to the Ψ‎ ┐. It is shown that—contrary to standard views—the reference-fixing mechanism for a descriptive name is not satisfactional. §1 argues for a background view of reference-fixing for ordinary language singular terms. §2 shows how this view generates a non-satisfactional account of reference-fixing for descriptive names. §3 explores the implications of the discussion in §§1–2 for the possibility of descriptively mediated singular thought. §4 argues for a new account of what speaker and hearer are committed to when the speaker makes and the hearer accepts a ┌Let α‎ refer to the Ψ‎ ┐ stipulation.

Singular Thought, Russellianism, and Mental Files

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-106
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. King
Keyword(s):  
Singular Thought ◽  
Singular Proposition ◽  
Mental File ◽  
Sort It ◽  
Mental Files ◽  
De Re ◽  
François Recanati

Many philosophers believe that there is a kind of thought about an object that is in some sense particularly directly about the object. The chapter will use the terms de re or singular thought for thoughts of this sort. It outlines a broadly Russellian approach to singular thought on which to have a singular thought about an object o is to have a thought whose content is a singular proposition having o as a constituent. It then explores some of the consequences of this view. It also critically discusses recent attempts by Francois Recanati and Robin Jeshion to explicate the notion of singular thought by means of the notion of a mental file.

Cognitive dynamics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
François Recanati
Keyword(s):  
Coarse Grained ◽  
Singular Thought ◽  
Cognitive Significance ◽  
Mental File ◽  
Mental Files ◽  
Cognitive Dynamics ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Dynamic Files

This chapter offers an elaboration and defense of the mental-file approach to singular thought. Mental files are supposed to account for both cognitive significance and coreference de jure. But these two roles generate conflicting constraints: files must be fine-grained to play the first role and coarse-grained to play the second role. To reconcile the constraints, we need to distinguish two sorts of file (static files and dynamic files), and two forms of coreference de jure (strong and weak). Dynamic files are sequences of file-stages united by the weak coreference de jure relation. It is at the synchronic level, that of file-stages, that the stronger coreference de jure is to be found. The resulting view is compared to that of Papineau, according to whom only dynamic files are needed, and to that of Ninan, according to whom there are proper dynamic files that exhibit strong coreference de jure.

'God' the name

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Earl Stanley Bragado Fronda
Keyword(s):  
Definite Description ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
Descriptive Names ◽  
Jack The Ripper

The word ‘God’ is typically thought to be a proper name, a name of a defined entity. From another position it appears to be a description that is fundamentally synonymous to ‘the first of all causes’, or ‘the font et origo of the structure of possibilities’, or ‘the provenience of being’, or ‘the generator of existence’. This lends credence to the view that ‘God’ is a truncated definite description. However, this article proposes that ‘God’ is a name given to whatever is that which is the first of all causes, the font et origo of the structure of possibilities, the provenience of being, the generator of existence. If so, then it is a descriptive name. Yet even among descriptive names ‘God’ is unique, for it is neither convertible to a proper name (unlike ‘Neptune’), nor to a definite description (unlike ‘Jack the Ripper’ and ‘Deep Throat’). ‘God’ is an inveterate descriptive name.

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