Wolff, Baumgarten, and the Technical Idiom of Post-Leibnizian Philosophy of Mind

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-148
Author(s):  
Patrick R. Leland
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Taxonomic Relations ◽  
Technical Terms

Philosophers after Leibniz used a technical idiom to classify and explain the nature of mental content. Substantive philosophical claims were formulated in terms of this vocabulary, including claims about the nature of mental representations, concepts, unconscious mental content, and consciousness. Despite its importance, the origin and development of this vocabulary is insufficiently well understood. More specifically, interpreters have failed to recognize the existence of two distinct and influential versions of the post-Leibnizian idiom. These competing formulations used the same technical terms and taxonomic relations but assigned different connotations to those terms and employed different criteria for their application. This paper explains the two most influential versions of the post-Leibnizian idiom.

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.

scholarly journals Intentionality: A philosophical-cognitive approach to mental representations

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (39) ◽  
pp. 819
Author(s):  
Cleverson Leite Bastos ◽  
Tomas Rodolfo Drunkenmolle
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Hard Core ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Definition Of

This article critically analyses the notion of intentionality from several philosophical cognitive points of view. The authors argue that the notion of mental representation in the wider sense and intentionality in the narrower sense remains elusive despite accommodated paradoxes, improved semantic precision and more sophisticated strategies in dealing with intentionality. We will argue that different approaches to intentionality appear to be coherent in their inferences. However, most of them become contradictory and mutually exclusive when juxtaposed and applied to borderline questions. While the explanatory value of both philosophy of mind as well as cognitive psychology should not be underestimated, we must note that not even hard-core neuroscience has been able to pin point what is going on in our minds, let alone come up with a clear cut explanation how it works or a definition of what thought really is. To date, however, intentionality is the best of all explanatory models regarding mental representations.

Functionalism, Computationalism, and Mental Contents

2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gualtiero Piccinini
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Functional Role ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Inferential Role ◽  
Functional Relations ◽  
Popular View ◽  
Functional Role Semantics ◽  
Mental Contents

Almost no one cites Sellars, while reinventing his wheels with gratifying regularity. (Dennett 1987, 349)In philosophy of mind, there is functionalism about mental states and functionalism about mental contents. The former — mental State functionalism — says that mentalstatesare individuated by their functional relations with mental inputs, Outputs, and other mental states. The latter — usually called functional or conceptual or inferential role semantics — says that mentalcontentsare constituted by their functional relations with mental inputs, Outputs, and other mental contents (and in some versions of the theory, with things in the environment). If we add to mental State functionalism the popular view that mental states have their content essentially, then mental state functionalism may be seen as a form of functional role semantics and a solution to theproblem of mental content,namely, the problem of giving a naturalistic explanation of mental content. According to this solution, the functional relations that constitute contents are physically realized — in a metaphysically unmysterious way — by the functional relations between mental inputs, outputs, and the mental states bearing those contents.

Quel Arrière-plan pour l'esprit?

Dialogue ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-444
Author(s):  
Pierre Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
John Searle

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the notion of background capacities as developed by John Searle during the last twenty years in philosophy of mind. Broadly construed, this notion designates non-representational mental capacities as the means by which mental representations are given a precise semantic content and thus are able to be expressed. Though novel and relevant, I intend to show that, according to Searle's description, this notion proves inadequate to attain its descriptive and explicative goals. I go on to regard background capacities in a perspective both externalist and (minimally) representationalist.

scholarly journals Making up symptoms: psychic indeterminacy and the construction of psychotic phenomena

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huw Green
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Verbal Description ◽  
Psychotic Symptoms ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
Mental Symptoms ◽  
Clinical Phenomenology ◽  
Over Time

SummaryPsychotic phenomena include a far wider range of experiences than is captured by the brief descriptions offered in contemporary diagnostic guides. Given the richness of historical clinical phenomenology, what can account for the recent ascendancy of relatively impoverished descriptions of psychosis? One possible explanation is provided by Hacking's notion of dynamic nominalism, where human categories change over time in tandem with those who they classify. But although dynamic nominalism makes sense of changes in behaviour, it fails to account for change at the level of subjective experience. In this paper, psychotic symptoms are addressed in the light of the indeterminacy of subjective mental content. A naïve-introspectionist approach to mental symptoms assumes that, notwithstanding practical difficulties, such symptoms are reliably describable in principle. Contemporary philosophy of mind challenges this assumption. Lighting upon a verbal description for ineffable phenomena changes their nature, resolving them into new forms.Declaration of interestNone.

scholarly journals Entity Realism About Mental Representations

Erkenntnis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bence Nanay
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
The Real ◽  
Entity Realism ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

Abstract The concept of mental representation has long been considered to be central concept of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. But not everyone agrees. Neo-behaviorists aim to explain the mind (or some subset thereof) without positing any representations. My aim here is not to assess the merits and demerits of neo-behaviorism, but to take their challenge seriously and ask the question: What justifies the attribution of representations to an agent? Both representationalists and neo-behaviorists tend to take it for granted that the real question about representations is whether we should be realist about the theory of representationalism. This paper is an attempt to shift the emphasis from the debate concerning realism about theories to the one concerning realism about entities. My claim is that regardless of whether we are realist about representational theories of the mind, we have compelling reasons to endorse entity realism about mental representations.

Media and Radical Embodiment

Media in Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 71-96
Author(s):  
Daniel Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Radical Embodiment ◽  
Psychological Experiments

This chapter addresses the concept of mental representations in both media theory and philosophy of mind. It argues that, contrary to what representationalist models claim, the mind does not work by way of an internal language or internal images but through active bodily engagement with the environment. The chapter discusses how mental representations have functioned historically in media theory. It shows how video games have been employed in philosophical and psychological argumentation about the nature of the mind. It presents the case of Hugo Münsterberg, a psychologist whose encounter with film impacted his psychological theory. It discusses the role of imagery in video game play. It illustrates how the use of moving image media in psychological experiments can reinforce ideas about internal mental representations.

Passionate thought

1993 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Losonsky
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Cognitive Theories ◽  
Theories Of Mind ◽  
Intelligent Behavior

According to a computational view of mind, thinking is identified with the manipulation of internal mental representations and intelligent behavior is the output of these computations. Although Thomas Hobbes's philosophy of mind is taken by many to be a precursor of this brand of cognitivism, this is not the case. For Hobbes, not all thinking is the manipulation of language-like symbols, and intelligent behavior is partly constitutive of cognition. Cognition requires a 'passionate thought', and this Hobbsian synthesis of inner thought and outer behavior suggests a resolution to the contemporary conflict between cognitive theories of mind that make KNOWING THAT primary and pragmatic theories that make KNOWING HOW primary.

scholarly journals Mind, Matter, Meaning and Information

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-45
Author(s):  
Robin Faichney
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Semantic Information ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
Broad Term ◽  
Physical Information ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Material Form

This article aims to show how mind, matter and meaning might be united in one theory using certain concepts of information, building on ideas of empathy and intentionality. The concept of intentionality in philosophy of mind (“aboutness”), which is “the ineliminable mark of the mental” according to Brentano, can be viewed as the relationship between model and object, and empathy can be viewed as a form of mental modelling, so that the inclination to attribute mentality can be identified with the inclination to empathise with the relevant entity. Physical information, a concept quite well established within the discipline of physics, is basically a reconceptualization of material form. Daniel Dennett's concept of the intentional stance allows the development of a concept of “intentional information,” a broad term that encompasses mental content and semantic information generally, as encoded within physical information/material form.

Simple Minds

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Neander
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Prey Capture ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Normal System ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
Processing Approach ◽  
The Right ◽  
Simple Systems ◽  
Information Processing Approach

Plainly enough, the right theory of mental content should (when fed the facts) assign the right contents to mental representations, but which ones are right? There is disagreement among philosophers especially regarding the relatively simple systems often used (and abused) as “test” cases. Some disagreement is due to different meta-analytic aims or background assumptions, but some is due to lack of familiarity with known facts. So, in this chapter, the author sketches some neuroethological findings regarding the vision involved in toad prey-capture. What is argued is that the information-processing approach to explaining the toad’s abilities imposes constraints on which contents ought to be ascribed in this case. The normal system, and its normal causal sensitivities, must be able to support the contents ascribed, and perceptible features must be represented prior to the representation of imperceptible ones (e.g., in vision, visible features must be represented before invisible ones). In exploring the implications of this for philosophical theories of content, the author argues that, if the information-processing approach is along the right lines, the right contents are not those delivered by standard (a.k.a. “High Church”) teleosemantics, such as Millikan’s.

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