Mental states, adverbial theory of

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-v002-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Michael Tye

Keyword(s):

Mental States ◽

Grammatical Form ◽

External Objects ◽

Mental Objects

According to the adverbial theory, there are no mental objects of experience, no pains, itches, tickles, after-images, appearances. People certainly feel pains and have after-images; external objects certainly present appearances to people viewing them. But pains, after-images, and appearances are not real things. Statements which purport to be about such mental objects have a misleading grammatical form. In reality, such statements are about the ways in which people experience or sense or feel.

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Reid's response to Hume's perceptual relativity argument

Canadian Journal of Philosophy ◽

10.1080/00455091.2014.897481 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 41 (S1) ◽

pp. 25-49

Author(s):

Lorne Falkenstein

Keyword(s):

Mental States ◽

Primary Qualities ◽

Visible Points ◽

External Objects ◽

Principal Objection ◽

Best Argument ◽

The Ideal

Reid declared Hume's appeal to variation in the magnitude of a table with distance to be the best argument that had ever been offered for the ‘ideal hypothesis’ that we experience nothing but our own mental states. Reid's principal objection to this argument fails to apply to minimally visible points. He did establish that we have reason to take our perceptions to be caused by external objects. But his case that we directly perceive external objects is undermined by what Hume had to say about the role played by color in our perception of the primary qualities of bodies.

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Intersubjective approach to intentionality and internal objects

Filosofska dumka (Philosophical Thought) ◽

10.15407/fd2020.06.027 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol - (6) ◽

pp. 27-41

Author(s):

Andriy Vasylchenko

Keyword(s):

Possible Worlds ◽

Subjective Experience ◽

Mental States ◽

Possible World ◽

Second Person ◽

Possible World Semantics ◽

Internal Object ◽

Internal Objects ◽

Mental Objects ◽

Graham Priest

Intentionality — the orientation of mental states to objects (things, properties, states of things, events) — has been considered a hallmark of the psyche since Brentano’s time. In this article, we consider the problem of intentionality from the second-person approach, or the standpoint of intersubjectivity. Our analysis shows that intentionality is intrinsically projective. The projective nature of intentionality is related to internal objects that play a crucial role in fixing the person’s subjective experience and serve as a fulcrum in the development of the person. The internal object can be treated as a set of properties and tropes. The logic of intentionality proposed by Graham Priest and the theory of primary (that is, belonging to the Freudian system «unconscious») psychological attitudes developed by Linda Brakel created the preconditions for seman- tical analysis of projective intentionality. In the article, we rely on the logic of projective intentionality that reorients the resources of modal logics and semantics of possible worlds to the investigation and formalization of primary thinking. Considering the problem of mental existence within the framework of the second-person approach, we show that Wittgenstein’s reasoning about the «beetle in a box» does not refute the thesis of the privacy of mental meanings. Finally, involving the possible world semantics, we develop a neo-Aristotelian approach to the ontology of mental objects.

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CHRYSIPPUS ON IMAGINATION IN AETIUS 4.12

The Classical Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0009838820000567 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 70 (1) ◽

pp. 332-346

Author(s):

Pavle Stojanović

Keyword(s):

Mental State ◽

Mental States ◽

Causal Interaction ◽

External Objects ◽

The World ◽

The Moment ◽

Stoic Philosophy

According to Diogenes Laertius (7.49–51), the concept of ‘appearance’ (φαντασία) played a central role in Stoic philosophy. As staunch corporealists, the Stoics believed that appearances are physical structures in our corporeal soul which provide the foundation for all our thoughts (Sext. Emp. Math. 7.228–41). One of the crucial features of appearance is that it is a representational mental state that has the ability to provide us with accurate awareness of the world through causal interaction between our senses and external objects, and thus supply the means for acquiring knowledge about the reality. However, the Stoics recognized that we can also be aware and think of objects that are real but are not presently affecting our senses, as well as objects that are altogether fictional and thus incapable of ever interacting with our senses. Because of this, it was important for them to distinguish between representational mental states which are and those which are not caused by external objects at the moment in which they are formed. Chrysippus was one of the Stoics who paid special attention to this distinction; in a key text, Aet. 4.12, he is reported as reserving the name ‘appearance’ (φαντασία) only for the former states, while for the latter he used a different term, ‘imagination’ (φανταστικόν).

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The dual structure of touch

The World at Our Fingertips ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198851738.003.0011 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 197-214

Author(s):

Mohan Matthen

Keyword(s):

Haptic Perception ◽

Mental States ◽

The Body ◽

Experimental Results ◽

The Other ◽

Tactile Sensation ◽

Indirect Contact ◽

External Objects ◽

Tactile Sensations

Touch gives us tactile sensations that inform us of events that happen in and on our bodies (T), and haptic perception of things with which we are in direct or indirect contact (i.e. through intervening objects) (H). In the first part of this paper, I argue that these are distinct mental states (i.e. that T≠H). My strategy is to establish a double dissociation between T and H. Thus, it is possible to have similar sequences of tactile sensations T1 and T2, such that one yields a haptic perception and the other does not. And it is also possible to have the same haptic perception through different sequences of tactile sensations. This contradicts the idea that the switch from touch-awareness of one’s own body and touch-awareness of external objects is merely attentional: that being aware of something that you are touching is merely a matter of attending to your own body, but in a different way. In the second part of the chapter, I argue that tactile sensation does not represent space, but rather represents the relationships among parts of the body. This argument involves a reinterpretation of experimental results regarding touch-awareness by Patrick Haggard and co-workers.

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When Mother Earth Rises Up

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000112 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 44 (4) ◽

pp. 271-277 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Simona Sacchi ◽

Paolo Riva ◽

Marco Brambilla

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

Natural Disasters ◽

Natural Disaster ◽

Mental States ◽

Disaster Victims ◽

Willingness To Help ◽

Mother Earth

Anthropomorphization is the tendency to ascribe humanlike features and mental states, such as free will and consciousness, to nonhuman beings or inanimate agents. Two studies investigated the consequences of the anthropomorphization of nature on people’s willingness to help victims of natural disasters. Study 1 (N = 96) showed that the humanization of nature correlated negatively with willingness to help natural disaster victims. Study 2 (N = 52) tested for causality, showing that the anthropomorphization of nature reduced participants’ intentions to help the victims. Overall, our findings suggest that humanizing nature undermines the tendency to support victims of natural disasters.

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