Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes

1992 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Eliminative Materialism

Truth and Belief

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Rowett
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Propositional Attitudes

The first part of the chapter explores the relations between knowledge and truth and between knowledge and belief. It challenges a number of muddles in the literature concerning propositional attitudes, particularly the idea that while belief is a propositional attitude, knowledge is not. Second, it explores ancient words for ‘truth’, and how truth and being are related in ancient thought, including the so-called veridical sense of the verb einai. It argues that truth is (both for Plato, and in truth) first a property of things, and is then derivatively found in likenesses, such as reflections, pictures, and descriptions, where it comes in degrees according to the representation’s faithfulness to the truth. Finally, it connects this to the iconic method in Plato, whereby he uses such images as a means of accessing the truth that cannot be seen.

Eliminating Mistakes about Eliminative Materialism

1979 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 590-612 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert K. Shope
Keyword(s):  
Eliminative Materialism

scholarly journals Closed Structure

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Fritz ◽  
Harvey Lederman ◽  
Gabriel Uzquiano
Keyword(s):  
Formal Language ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Natural Extension ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Structured Propositions ◽  
Higher Order Logic ◽  
Closed Structure

AbstractAccording to the structured theory of propositions, if two sentences express the same proposition, then they have the same syntactic structure, with corresponding syntactic constituents expressing the same entities. A number of philosophers have recently focused attention on a powerful argument against this theory, based on a result by Bertrand Russell, which shows that the theory of structured propositions is inconsistent in higher order-logic. This paper explores a response to this argument, which involves restricting the scope of the claim that propositions are structured, so that it does not hold for all propositions whatsoever, but only for those which are expressible using closed sentences of a given formal language. We call this restricted principle Closed Structure, and show that it is consistent in classical higher-order logic. As a schematic principle, the strength of Closed Structure is dependent on the chosen language. For its consistency to be philosophically significant, it also needs to be consistent in every extension of the language which the theorist of structured propositions is apt to accept. But, we go on to show, Closed Structure is in fact inconsistent in a very natural extension of the standard language of higher-order logic, which adds resources for plural talk of propositions. We conclude that this particular strategy of restricting the scope of the claim that propositions are structured is not a compelling response to the argument based on Russell’s result, though we note that for some applications, for instance to propositional attitudes, a restricted thesis in the vicinity may hold some promise.

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 How to Think about the Debate over the Reality of Beliefs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Poslajko
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Form ◽  
Realist Approach ◽  
Natural Properties ◽  
Eliminative Materialism ◽  
Belief Attributions ◽  
Background Assumption ◽  
Realist View

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to propose a new conceptualization of the distinction between realism and anti-realism about beliefs that is based on the division between natural and non-natural properties, as defined by Lewis. It will be argued that although the traditional form of anti-realism about beliefs, namely eliminative materialism, has failed (as it led to unacceptable consequences), there is a possibility to reformulate the division in question. The background assumption of the proposal is the framework of deflationism about truth and existence: it will be assumed that beliefs can be said to exist and their attributions can said to be true. The aim is to show that even when we buy into such assumptions we can meaningfully distinguish between the realist and anti-realist approach to belief. According to the proposal, the paradigmatic anti-realist view on beliefs should be seen as a conjunction of three claims: that belief attributions do not track objective similarities, that beliefs are not causally active, and that there is no viable way of naturalizing content. It will be shown that seeing the debate in the proposed way has important advantages as it allows the issue of belief realism to be made non-trivial and tractable, and it introduces theoretical unity into contemporary metaphysics of beliefs.

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