Naturalizzazione, mente e conoscenza

2009 ◽  
pp. 151-186
Author(s):  
Giancarlo Zanet
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Controversial Issue ◽  
Naturalized Epistemology ◽  
Anomalous Monism ◽  
Proper Consideration ◽  
The Way

- A controversial issue regarding Quine's naturalised epistemology is that it may involve some form of reductionism. This article focuses on one of these forms, analysing the interplay of his philosophy of mind and epistemology. It aims to show that if we take into proper consideration the way in which the version of anomalous monism embraced affects his conception of mental states like sensations and propositional attitudes, Quine's philosophy of mind should be regarded as anti-reductionist. Through a discussion of his theory of perception, I try to argue that what is entailed by it is, in a sense only partially accepted by Quine himself, that neither perception nor observational language can be strictly reduced to their stimulatory conditions. By pointing out the relevance that Quine attributes to the mechanism of empathy as a means for ascribing propositional attitudes, a further interesting argument is provided to underline that, within a naturalized epistemology, there is room for a non-reductive description of mind in some ways close to the results of the hermeneutic tradition.

Metaphysics of Mind

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darragh Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Physical Phenomena ◽  
Metaphysics Of Mind

Philosophy of mind addresses fundamental questions about mental or psychological phenomena. The question held by many to be most fundamental of all is a metaphysical one, often labeled the “mind-body problem,” which concerns the relation between minds and material or physical phenomena. Physicalists (and/or materialists) contend that mental phenomena are physical, or at least that they may be accounted for in terms of physical phenomena (brains, for example). Dualists deny this, maintaining that mental phenomena have fundamentally nonphysical natures, so that to account for minds we must assume the existence of nonphysical substances or properties. Nowadays physicalism is more widely espoused than dualism, but physicalists differ over which physical states/properties should be considered relevant, and over the precise nature of the relation between physical and mental phenomena. This is one of four bibliography entries on the philosophy of mind, and this particular entry concentrates on this metaphysical issue of the relation between mental and physical/material phenomena. Inevitably, there is a good deal of overlap between this and topics covered in the other three entries. For example, this entry includes authors who attack physicalism by arguing that it cannot account for the distinctive phenomenal qualities of conscious experiences; but that line of antiphysicalist argument features even more prominently in the entry on consciousness. Moreover, the other entries feature various issues that might perfectly properly be categorized as concerning the metaphysics of mind: for example, the debate between internalists—philosophers who hold that propositional attitudes (mental states such as beliefs and desires, which have representational contents) are intrinsic properties of minds/brains—and externalists, who think of certain attitudes as extrinsic or relational, is surely a question about the metaphysics of mind: but this is discussed in the entry on intentionality instead of here.

Universal Grammar and Philosophy of Mind

2016 ◽  
pp. 36-60
Author(s):  
Wolfram Hinzen
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Anomalous Monism ◽  
Eliminative Materialism ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores the relationship between universal grammar and the philosophy of mind. It first provides an overview of the philosophy of mind, focusing on its basic metaphysical orientation as well as its concern with mental states. It then considers some basic paradigms in the philosophy of mind and what generative grammar had to contribute to these paradigms, which include behaviourism, eliminative materialism, anomalous monism, instrumentalism, and functionalism. It also discusses what we might call the ‘philosophy of generative grammar,’ and especially foundational assumptions in generative grammar, and examines what the linguistic contribution to the philosophy of mind has been. The article concludes by reflecting on the future and outlining current visions for where and how linguistics might prove to have a transformative influence on philosophy.

Who’s Afraid of Supervenient Laws?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Mcintyre
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Anomalous Monism ◽  
Causal Influence ◽  
Epistemological Break ◽  
The Many ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Shed Light

OVER THE LAST FEW decades there has been much debate in the philosophy of science over the attractiveness–and potential costs–of supervenience. As philosophers well know, supervenience burst onto the scene as the “Davidson debate” in the philosophy of mind began to raise some provocative questions over whether it was desirable to think of mental events as in some way irreducible to physical events, while still being firmly rooted in material dependence. After some initial misunderstanding over the question of whether supervenience was committing us to a sort of ontological break between the mental and the physical, it was finally settled that the autonomy one was after need not be metaphysical; an epistemological break would do just fine. After this the merits of supervenience could be clearly considered, for it allowed one to have it “both ways” in the dispute over mental states: mental explanations could be epistemically autonomous from physical ones (and thus probably not reducible to them), even while one preserved the notion of the ontological dependence of the mental on the physical (thus avoiding any embarrassing entanglements in supernatural or other spiritually based accounts of causal influence). Davidson himself, of course, never really bought into the non-reductive materialist craze that he started, preferring to champion his own idiosyncratic view of anomalous monism, which allowed the mental to continue to exist as irreducible, even while he gave it no causal or explanatory work to do. Since then Jaegwon Kim—the person who has done most to shed light on Davidson’s view and demonstrate how the concept of supervenience could recast it as a more legitimate contender among the many proposals on the merits of non-reductive materialism—has appeared to repudiate his own earlier views about explanation and now wholeheartedly endorses a type of physicalist-based account that is even more conservative than Davidson’s. In his recent work, Kim has argued not only for the elimination of any mentally based causal descriptions (or laws) of human behavior, but also seems to call into question the very idea that in pursuing scientific explanation we need to pay much attention to secondary-level descriptions.

Imagination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Kind
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Cognitive Architecture ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Way

Imagination is a speculative mental state that allows us to consider situations apart from the here and now. Historically, imagination played an important role in the works of many of the major philosophical figures in the Western tradition – from Aristotle to Descartes to Hume to Kant. By the middle of the twentieth century, in the wake of the behavioristic mindset that had dominated both psychology and philosophy in the early part of the century, imagination had largely faded from philosophical view and received scant attention from the 1960s through the 1980s. But imagination returned to the limelight in the late twentieth century, as it was given increasing prominence in both aesthetics and philosophy of mind. In aesthetics, interest in imagination derives in large part from its role in our engagement with works of art, music, and literature. For example, some philosophers have called upon imagination to capture the essence of fiction, while others have called upon it to explain how listeners understand the expressive nature of musical works. Yet others have seen imagination as centrally involved in ontological questions about art; in particular, they take works of art to be best understood as in some sense imaginary objects. In philosophy of mind, imagination plays an especially important role in discussions of mindreading, that is, our ability to understand the mental states of others. While theory theorists claim that we do this by calling upon a folk theory of mind, simulation theorists claim that we mindread by simulating the mental states of others – with simulation typically cashed out in terms of imagination. More generally, philosophers of mind who are interested in questions of cognitive architecture tend to be especially interested in imagination and its relationship to belief and desire. In fact, imagination has come to play an important role in a wide variety of philosophical contexts in addition to aesthetics and philosophy of mind. It has traditionally been central to discussions of thought experimentation and modal epistemology, where an analogy is often drawn between the way perception justifies beliefs about actuality and the way imagination seems to justify beliefs about possibility. Imagination has also been invoked to explain pretence, dreaming, empathy, delusion, and our ability to engage in counterfactual reasoning.

Extended Minds and Prime Mental Conditions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoe Drayson
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Extended Cognition ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Methodological Principle ◽  
Ceteris Paribus

The purpose of this chapter is to explore hitherto unconsidered parallels between two forms of externalism. In epistemology, Williamson argues for the indispensability of externalist propositional attitudes to make his case for knowledge as a mental state; in philosophy of mind, Clark and Chalmers argue for the indispensability of externally realized mental states to make their case for extended cognition. In this chapter, it is proposed that both arguments are attempts to reject the methodological principle of psychological internalism (PI), and that both arguments rely on the same appeal to the explanatory generality of their theories in the process. If one is persuaded of the existence of externalist propositional attitudes by Williamson’s argument then, ceteris paribus, one should also be persuaded of the existence of externally realized mental states by Clark and Chalmers’ argument—and vice versa.

Methodological solipsism considered as a research strategy in cognitive psychology

1980 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Fodor
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Computational Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Computational Theory ◽  
Methodological Solipsism ◽  
Semantic Properties

AbstractThe paper explores the distinction between two doctrines, both of which inform theory construction in much of modern cognitive psychology: the representational theory of mind and the computational theory of mind. According to the former, propositional attitudes are to be construed as relations that organisms bear to mental representations. According to the latter, mental processes have access only to formal (nonsemantic) properties of the mental representations over which they are defined.The following claims are defended: (1) That the traditional dispute between “rational” and “naturalistic” psychology is plausibly viewed as an argument about the status of the computational theory of mind. Rational psychologists accept a formality condition on the specification of mental processes; naturalists do not. (2) That to accept the formality condition is to endorse a version of methodological solipsism. (3) That the acceptance of some such condition is warranted, at least for that part of psychology which concerns itself with theories of the mental causation of behavior. This is because: (4) such theories require nontransparent taxonomies of mental states; and (5) nontransparent taxonomies individuate mental states without reference to their semantic properties. Equivalently, (6) nontransparent taxonomies respect the way that the organism represents the object of its propositional attitudes to itself, and it is this representation which functions in the causation of behavior.The final section of the paper considers the prospect for a naturalistic psychology: one which defines its generalizations over relations between mental representations and their environmental causes, thus seeking to account for the semantic properties of propositional attitudes. Two related arguments are proposed, both leading to the conclusion that no such research strategy is likely to prove fruitful.

scholarly journals Language Acquisition in the Light of Rationalist Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Language

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 303-315
Author(s):  
Halina Święczkowska ◽  
Beata Piecychna
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Speech Acquisition ◽  
The Way

Abstract The present study deals with the problem of the acquisition of language in children in the light of rationalist philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. The main objective of the paper is to present the way Gerauld de Cordemoy’s views on the nature of language, including its socio-linguistic aspects, and on the process of speech acquisition in children are reflected in contemporary writings on how people communicate with each other. Reflections on 17th-century rationalist philosophy of mind and the latest research conducted within the field of cognitive abilities of human beings indicate that between those two spheres many similarities could be discerned in terms of particular stages of the development of speech and its physical aspects.

Psychology: Autonomous or Anomalous?

Dialogue ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kernohan
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Essential Difference ◽  
Anomalous Monism

In a recent series of papers, Donald Davidson has put forward a challenging and original philosophy of mind which he has called anomalous monism. Anomalous monism has certain similarities to another recent and deservedly popular position: functionalist cognitive psychology. Both functionalism, in its materialist versions, and anomalous monism require token-token psychophysical identities rather than type-type ones. (Token identities are identities between individual events; type identities represent a stronger claim of identities between interesting sorts of events.) Both deny that psychology can be translated into, or scientifically reduced to, neurophysiology. Both are mentalistic theories, allowing psychology to make use of intentional descriptions in its theorizing. Anomalous monism uses a belief/desire/action psychology; cognitive science makes use of information-bearing states. But these similarities must not be allowed to conceal an essential difference between the two positions. Cognitive psychology claims to be a science, making interesting, lawlike generalizations for the purpose of explaining mental activity. Anomalous monism denies that psychology is a science by denying that psychological laws can be formulated. Davidson has other ideas for psychology connected with his work on meaning and truth. Hence, the title of one of his essays on anomalous monism is “Psychology as Philosophy”.

scholarly journals Apples and Pears: Symbolism and Influence in Daphne du Maurier’s ‘The Apple Tree’ and Katherine Mansfield’s ‘Bliss’

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Setara Pracha
Keyword(s):  
Apple Tree ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Katherine Mansfield ◽  
Organic Unity ◽  
Liminal Spaces ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Daphne Du Maurier ◽  
The Way

This essay offers a parallel reading of two stories, ‘Bliss’ by Katherine Mansfield and ‘The Apple Tree’ by Daphne du Maurier, revealing a hitherto unexamined yet fruitful area of research. Dramatic irony, organic unity and liminal spaces are identified and discussed in terms of how these are used to represent subconscious and conscious perceptions of reality. The plots incorporate symbols from well-known myths to suggest extreme mental states in narratives that invite the reader to occupy psychological spaces of delusion and fantasy. Material from previously unpublished letters reveals the extent to which Mansfield influenced du Maurier’s writing and this close analysis demonstrates how examining these writers in tandem provides a valuable mean of accessing their work in a new way. Du Maurier’s critical reputation is current undergoing a process of revision which echoes the way in which Mansfield has come to be increasingly regarded as one of the ‘high priestesses’ of modernism.

scholarly journals DORĘCZENIA PISM PROCESOWYCH (UWAGI NA MARGINESIE CTH. 2,4,1 [A. 318/319] = C. 5,4,20)

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Jacek Wiewiorowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Controversial Issue ◽  
Basic Data ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
European Law ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Universal Nature ◽  
The Way

THE NATURAL SCIENCES IN THE SERVICE OF PLEADINGS IN CASES INVOLVING MINORS: REMARKS ON CTH 2.4.1 [A. 318/319] = C. 5.4.20)SummaryThe subject of this article is the status of juvenile persons in Roman law, as exemplified by one of the constitutions of Constantine the Great, CTh 2.4.1 [a. 318/319] = C. 5.40.2, fragments of which are preserved in Theodosius’ Code of 438, and in an abridged version in Justinian’s Code of 534. In the first part of the article the author analyses the extremely controversial issue of the identity of the constitution’s addressee. In the second part he discusses the content of this constitution and the premises for its issue in the light of the Constantinian legislation on family matters and the way it was later interpreted. The article’s third part is an attempt to apply the natural and social sciences to the question of minors and their personality, and the examination of this issue as regards CTh 2.4.1 [a. 318/319] = C. 5.40.2. The author takes into consideration the basic data on the status of minors in Roman law, in the subsequent history of European law, and in non-European cultures. He concludes by making a series of observations on the potential for the application of the natural sciences in the study of Roman law, which could serve to confirm the timeless and universal nature of some of the solutions it prescribed.

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