Truth-conditionality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhani Yli-Vakkuri ◽  
John Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Truth Values ◽  
Narrow Content ◽  
Radical Form

In Chapter 2 we argue that internalists are committed to a kind of relativism, and that theirs is a particularly radical form of relativism. Thought experiments involving certain symmetries across space and/or time play a starring role. If the kinds of symmetries featured in them are possible, we argue, the truth values of narrow content must be relative to some very unusual parameters.

Narrow Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhani Yli-Vakkuri ◽  
John Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Central Topic ◽  
Tyler Burge ◽  
Narrow Content

Narrow mental content, if there is such a thing, is content that is entirely determined by the goings-on inside the head of the thinker. A central topic in the philosophy of mind since the mid-1970s has been whether there is a kind of mental content that is narrow in this sense. It is widely conceded, thanks to famous thought experiments by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge, that there is a kind of mental content that is not narrow. But it is often maintained that there is also a kind of mental content that is narrow, and that such content can play various key explanatory roles relating, inter alia, to epistemology and the explanation of action. This book argues that this is a forlorn hope. It carefully distinguishes a variety of conceptions of narrow content and a variety of explanatory roles that might be assigned to narrow content. It then argues that, once we pay sufficient attention to the details, there is no promising theory of narrow content in the offing.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhani Yli-Vakkuri ◽  
John Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Tyler Burge ◽  
Narrow Content ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come

The Introduction outlines the history of the narrow content debate. It introduces the famous thought experiments by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge, discusses why the debate only came to prominence in the 1970s, and outlines what is to come.

Content: wide and narrow

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kent Bach
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Mental States ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
Causal Efficacy ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Turn On ◽  
External Relations ◽  
The World ◽  
Narrow Content

A central problem in philosophy is to explain, in a way consistent with their causal efficacy, how mental states can represent states of affairs in the world. Consider, for example, that wanting water and thinking there is some in the tap can lead one to turn on the tap. The contents of these mental states pertain to things in the world (water and the tap), and yet it would seem that their causal efficacy should depend solely on their internal characteristics, not on their external relations. That is, a person could be in just those states and those states could play just the same psychological roles, even if there were no water or tap for them to refer to. However, certain arguments, based on some imaginative thought experiments, have persuaded many philosophers that thought contents do depend on external factors, both physical and social. A tempting solution to this dilemma has been to suppose that there are two kinds of content, wide and narrow. Wide content comprises the referential relations that mental states bear to things and their properties. Narrow content comprises the determinants of psychological role. Philosophers have debated whether both notions of content are viable and, if so, how they are connected.

Rationality and narrow content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhani Yli-Vakkuri ◽  
John Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Narrow Content ◽  
A Priority

In Chapter 4 we ask whether a range of epistemological properties and relations pertaining to apriority can be explained by any kind of narrow content, and we come to a pessimistic conclusion. Thought experiments involving certain symmetries across space and/or time again play a starring role. We argue that, if the kinds of symmetries that feature in those thought experiments are possible, then narrow content cannot be used for explaining a priority and related properties and relations.

Epistemological Status of Models and Thought Experiments in Economics

2015 ◽  
pp. 123-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Koshovets ◽  
T. Varkhotov
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Theoretical Modeling ◽  
Epistemological Status ◽  
Epistemological Analysis ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

The paper considers the analogy of theoretical modeling and thought experiment in economics. The authors provide historical and epistemological analysis of thought experiments and their relations to the material experiments in natural science. They conclude that thought experiments as instruments are used both in physics and in economics, but in radically different ways. In the natural science, a thought experiment is tightly connected to the material experimentation, while in economics it is used in isolation. Material experiments serve as a means to demonstrate the reality, while thought experiments cannot be a full-fledged instrument of studying the reality. Rather, they constitute the instrument of structuring the field of inquiry.

Modal logics with Belnapian truth values

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serge P Odintsov ◽  
Heinrich Wansing
Keyword(s):  
Modal Logics ◽  
Truth Values
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document