The Fragmented Mind

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Implicit Attitudes ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Belief State ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

Mental fragmentation is the thesis that the mind is fragmented, or compartmentalized. Roughly, this means that an agent’s overall belief state is divided into several sub-states—fragments. These fragments need not make for a consistent and deductively closed belief system. The thesis of mental fragmentation became popular through the work of philosophers like Christopher Cherniak, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker in the 1980s. Recently, it has attracted great attention again. This volume is the first collection of essays devoted to the topic of mental fragmentation. It features important new contributions by leading experts in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Opening with an accessible Introduction providing a systematic overview of the current debate, the fourteen essays cover a wide range of issues: foundational issues and motivations for fragmentation, the rationality or irrationality of fragmentation, fragmentation’s role in language, the relationship between fragmentation and mental files, and the implications of fragmentation for the analysis of implicit attitudes.

The Cambridge Handbook of the Philosophy of Language

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Argumentation Theory ◽  
Linguistic Relativity ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
And Linguistics

The philosophy of language is central to the concerns of those working across semantics, pragmatics and cognition, as well as the philosophy of mind and ideas. Bringing together an international team of leading scholars, this handbook provides a comprehensive guide to contemporary investigations into the relationship between language, philosophy, and linguistics. Chapters are grouped into thematic areas and cover a wide range of topics, from key philosophical notions, such as meaning, truth, reference, names and propositions, to characteristics of the most recent research in the field, including logicality of language, vagueness in natural language, value judgments, slurs, deception, proximization in discourse, argumentation theory and linguistic relativity. It also includes chapters that explore selected linguistic theories and their philosophical implications, providing a much-needed interdisciplinary perspective. Showcasing the cutting-edge in research in the field, this book is essential reading for philosophers interested in language and linguistics, and linguists interested in philosophical analyses.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Brian Leiter
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

Moral psychology, for purposes of this volume, encompasses issues in metaethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action, including questions concerning the objectivity of morality, the relationship between moral judgment and emotion, the nature of the emotions, free will, and moral responsibility, and the structure of the mind as that is relevant to the possibility of moral action and judgment. Nietzsche’s “naturalism” is introduced and explained, and certain confusions about its meaning are addressed. An overview of the volume follows

scholarly journals The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Recent Philosophy ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Do So

The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity contains forty-four commissioned chapters on a wide range of topics. It will appeal especially to readers with an interest in ethics or epistemology, but also to those with an interest in philosophy of mind or philosophy of language. Both students and academics will benefit from the fact that the Handbook combines helpful overviews with innovative contributions to current debates. A diverse selection of substantive positions are defended by leading proponents of the views in question. Few concepts have received as much attention in recent philosophy as the concept of a reason. This is the first edited collection to provide broad coverage of the study of reasons and normativity across multiple philosophical subfields. In addition to focusing on reasons as part of the study of ethics and as part of the study of epistemology (as well as focusing on reasons as part of the study of the philosophy of language and as part of the study of the philosophy of mind), the Handbook covers recent developments concerning the nature of normativity in general. A number of the contributions to the Handbook explicitly address such “metanormative” issues, bridging subfields as they do so.

Lewis, David Kellogg (1941–2001)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter van Inwagen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Logic ◽  
Rational Decision

David Lewis has made extremely important and influential contributions to many topics in metaphysics, philosophical logic, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of probability, rational decision theory, and ethics and social philosophy. His work on counterfactuals and the philosophy of modality has been especially influential.

Locke and Port-Royal on Affirmation, Negation, and Other Postures of the Mind

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurent Jaffro
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Port Royal ◽  
The Mind ◽  
One Act ◽  
The Way

The chapter claims that in order to understand Locke’s doctrine of assent, his philosophy of mind needs to be seen in conjunction with his philosophy of language, which in turn gains from being compared with Port-Royal’s logic and grammar. It points out two conflicting facts in Locke’s account of affirmation and negation in the Essay. First, Locke entrusts affirmation and negation with the task of signifying both the assertion by which we manifest our assent to a proposition and the junction or separation of the ideas constituting the proposition. The other fact is that Locke accepts a great variety of ways of considering a proposition. This diversity of ‘postures’ is poorly expressed by the limited number of syncategorematic terms, ‘particles’. The first fact fosters a one-act view of the assent we give to propositions. The second opens the way to a multiple-act view.

Mental Substances

2003 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 229-250
Author(s):  
Tim Crane
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Semantic Externalism ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Independent Entity ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events

Philosophers of mind typically conduct their discussions in terms of mental events, mental processes, mental properties, mental states—but rarely in terms of minds themselves. Sometimes this neglect is explicity acknowledged. Donald Davidson, for example, writes that ‘there are no such things as minds, but people have mental properties, which is to say that certain psychological predicates are true of them. These properties are constantly changing, and such changes are mental events’. Hilary Putnam agrees, though for somewhat different reasons:The view I have long defended is that the mind is not a thing, talk of our minds is talk of World-involving capabilities that we have and activities that we engage in. As Dewey succinctly put it, ‘Mind is primarily a verb. It denotes all the ways in which we deal consciously and expressly with the situation in which we find ourseleves. Unfortunately, an influential manner of thinking has changed modes of action into an underlying substance that performs the activities in question. It has treated mind as an independent entity which attends, purposes, cares and remembers’. But the traditional view, by treating mental states as states of the ‘underlying substance’, makes them properties of something ‘inside’, and, if one is a materialist philosopher, that means properties of our brains. So the next problem naturally seems to be: ‘Which neurological properties of our brains do these mental properties “reduce” to?’ For how could our brains have properties that aren't neurological? And this is how materialist philosphers saw the problem until the advent of such new alternatives in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language as Functionalism and Semantic Externalism.

scholarly journals The role of discourses in enacting neoliberal urbanism: Understanding the relationship between ideology and discourse in planning

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliana M Zanotto
Keyword(s):  
Belief System ◽  
Metropolitan Region ◽  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Planning Practice ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Explanatory Mechanism ◽  
The Relationship

Claims that neoliberalism has been shaping planning practice and the production of space abound in planning literature. In this article, neoliberalism is treated not only as a set of policies but also as an ideology that organizes a particular way of seeing and orients action accordingly. The article explores how a particular socially shared belief system (ideology) that is taken as common sense (naturalized) provides the basis for particular ways of talking (discourses) about planning and urban development that legitimize and justify certain actions while making alternative possibilities unthinkable. In this sense, the article focuses on ideology in action and provides an empirically grounded discussion that renders ideology visible. Thus, ideology emerges from the empirical case as an explanatory mechanism to make sense of the dominant discourse that legitimizes the proliferation of suburban gated communities in the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba, in Brazil. The deconstruction of the discourse reveals content and structural properties that combine environmental concerns and neoliberal principles to turn potentially controversial practices into desirable outcomes. The ideological nature of the discourse is revealed when alternative ways of seeing and acting challenge its commonsensical and taken for granted claims. While simplifying complex relationships and rendering important elements invisible, the discourse appeals to a wide range of actors who hold different individual and professional values. Ultimately, this article offers insights into the mechanisms through which ideologies are manifested, reproduced, and materialized in planning practice.

scholarly journals Thinking Just Happens

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-151
Author(s):  
David Chalmers
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
New York University ◽  
Indiana University ◽  
Prolific Author ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
University Of Arizona ◽  
National University

David Chalmers is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University. He received his PhD in philosophy and cognitive science from Indiana University in 1993 and has held positions at University of California, Santa Cruz, University of Arizona, and Australian National University. He helped to found the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and co-directs the PhilPapers Foundation. Chalmers has written extensively on a wide range of topics, including philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, and metaphilosophy. He is a prolific author. His well-known works include The Conscious Mind, The Character of Consciousness, and Constructing the World. For more information about Chalmers and his current projects, visit http://consc.net/.

scholarly journals The idea of incarnation revisited by Jung, Gadamer and Henry

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-302
Author(s):  
Paweł Sznajder
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
The Body ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Holy Trinity ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Michel Henry ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

The idea of incarnation is one of the Christian theological concepts that has exerted the strongest influence on philosophical thought in Europe and which was repeatedly referred to in the twentieth century. The paper presents three reinterpretations of this biblical category. Carl Gustav Jung interprets incarnation in the spirit of Gnosticism, as a process of the psychological individuation of God and man; Hans‑Georg Gadamer employs the idea of the inner Word, Verbum interius, to analyse the dogmas of incarnation and the Trinity: seeking in them a solution to the mystery of language; while Michel Henry reaches for the Bible and theology to face anew the issue of human corporeality. These attempts to rethink the theological aspects of the Incarnation of the Son of God reveal the role of this notion in the development of modern psychology, the hermeneutic philosophy of language as well as in anthropology. At the same time, a philosophical reinterpretation of incarnation provides an impulse to rephrase the questions about the relationship between philosophy and theology, as well as faith and reason, good and evil, the relationship between God and man, the mind and the body, as well as speech and thinking. On the other hand, provisional answers to these questions may rekindle theological thought and contribute to the revival of reflection on issues such as the Holy Trinity, the Immaculate and Virgin Conception, or a privation theory of evil. The article provides a starting point for just such a multi‑faceted analysis.

The Epistemology of Non-Visual Perception

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Visual Perception ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
Action Perception ◽  
Event Perception ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Relationship

Most of the research on the epistemology of perception has focused on visual perception. This is hardly surprising given that most of our knowledge about the world is attributable to our visual experiences. This edited volume is the first to instead focus on the epistemology of non-visual perception—hearing, touch, taste, and cross-sensory experiences. Drawing on recent empirical studies of emotion, perception, and decision-making, it breaks new ground on discussions of whether perceptual experience can yield justified beliefs and how to characterize those beliefs. The Epistemology of Non-Visual Perception explores questions not only related to traditional sensory perception, but also to proprioceptive, interoceptive, multisensory, and event perception, expanding traditional notions of the influence that conscious non-visual experience has on human behavior and rationality. Contributors investigate the role that emotions play in decision-making and agential perception and what this means for justifications of belief and knowledge. They analyze the notion that some sensory experiences, such as touch, have epistemic privilege over others, as well as perception’s relationship to introspection, and the relationship between action, perception, and belief. They engage with topics in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, exploring the role that artworks can play in providing us with perceptional knowledge of emotions. The essays collected here, written by top researchers in their respective fields, offer perspectives from a wide range of philosophical disciplines and will appeal to scholars interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophical psychology, among other topics.

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