20 research outputs found

    In praise of wider functionalism or for more matter in mind

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    Situating language and consciousness

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    Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 98-104).Language and consciousness enrich our lives. But they are rare commodities; most creatures are language-less and unconscious. This dissertation is about the conditions that distinguish the haves from the have-nots. The semantic properties of a natural language expression are determined by conventions governing the way speakers use the expression to communicate information. The capacity to speak a language involves highly specialized (perhaps even modular) cognition. Some authors think that one cannot consistently accept both views. In Chapter 1 ('Content and Competence') I explain why one can. According to the convention-based theory of content determination, propositions are fit to be the contents of both thought and speech. Recently, this view has been challenged. The challenge exploits a series of observations about what it takes to understand semantically incomplete sentences. In Chapter 2 ('Speaker Meaning in Context'), I explain how the challenge can be met. Physicalists seem to owe an explanatory debt. Why should psychophysical relations appear contingent? In Chapter 3 ('There Couldn't Have Been Zombies, but it's a Lucky Coincidence That There Aren't') I pay the debt on their behalf. My explanation proceeds in three steps. First, I observe that there are necessary coincidences, or accidents. Second, I show that traditional epistemological arguments for dualism merely establish that phenomenal states and corresponding physical states are accidentally, or coincidentally, related. Finally, I suggest that inattention to the distinction between coincidence/accidentality and contingency results in frequent equivocation. Thus the disposition to (correctly) judge that psychophysical relations are coincidences manifests itself as a disposition to (incorrectly) judge that psychophysical relations are contingent. In Chapter 4 ('Zombies are Inconceivable') I deny that psychophysical relations appear contingent. The chapter begins with an argument to the effect that zombies cannot be coherently conceived. I then consider and reject various ways of resisting the argument.by Mahrad Almotahari.Ph.D

    Content and Psychology

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    The theoretical underpinnings and practical worth of content-based, intentional, or "folk" psychology have been challenged by three distinct groups of philosophical critics in the past 15 years or so. The first group, comprised by Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge, and other advocates of "wide" or "externalist" theories of meaning, claims that traditional psychologists have been mistaken in assuming that our beliefs, desires, and other content-laden states supervene on or inhere in our individual minds or brains. The other two groups are both "eliminative materialists," who charge that the intentional approach is inadequate and that it can or will be replaced by a completely non-interpretive discipline: either neuropsychology, in the view of Patricia and Paul Churchland, or a strictly syntactic computational psychology, according to Stephen Stich. ;This dissertation defends "notional world" or narrow intentional psychology against these charges, primarily on the strength of its practical merits, in contrast to the limitations and adverse effects of the proposed alternatives. Psychology is at least partly an applied science with a mandate to help understand and treat concrete psychological problems such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression, I argue, so any theorist who proposes to reconfigure or phase out existing approaches must be prepared to take over these duties with at least equal facility. However, whereas various "narrow" schools of psychotherapy such as Cognitive Therapy are fairly successful in this regard and show every indication of continuing to be needed for the foreseeable future, the Syntactic Theory seems to show very poor promise of being able to help relieve the distress of people with psychological disturbances, while a purely neurobiological approach is inappropriate in many cases, and tends to cause a variety of untoward and dangerous side-effects. As for the "wide" theorists with their emphasis upon the social and environmental contributions to meaning: they must acknowledge that a good deal of content is in the head; and, more importantly, by focusing on the role of the "experts" in a society's language-game, they miss the whole point of a psychological attribution, which is to understand an individual's reasons--however idiosyncratic--for acting as he or she does

    The Metaphysics of Mental Representation

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    The representational theory of mind (RTM) explains the phenomenon of intentionality in terms of the existence and nature of mental representations. Despite the typical characterisation of mental representations in terms of their semantics, RTM is best understood as a metaphysical – more specifically formal ontological – theory whose primary defining feature is stipulating the existence of a class of mental particulars called representations. In this regard it is false, since mental representations do not exist. My argument is primarily methodological. Using an extended analysis of mereology and its variants as paradigmatic examples of a formal ontological theory, I argue for a 'synthetic’ approach to ontology which seeks to form a sound descriptive characterisation of the relevant phenomena from empirical data, to which philosophical analysis is applied to produce a rigorous theory. The value and necessity of this method is proved by example in our discussion of mereology which is shown to be defensible given certain assumptions, in particular perdurantism, but still inadequate as an account of parthood without considerable supplementation. We also see that there are viable alternatives which adopt a more synthetic approach and do not require the same assumptions. Having effectively demonstrated the value of a synthetic approach in ontology I critically examine the methodology employed by RTM and find it severely lacking. In the guise of ‘commonsense psychology’ RTM cavalierly imposes a theoretical framework without regard to empirical data, and this results in a severe distortion of the phenomenon of intentionality it purports to explain. RTM is methodologically unsound, and so its commitment to the existence of mental representations is utterly undermined. Furthermore the most attractive aspect of RTM – its semantics – can be separated from any commitment to mental representations existing. Even RTM’s strongest advocates lack motivation to believe that mental representations exist

    Mind out of matter: topics in the physical foundations of consciousness and cognition

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    This dissertation begins with an exploration of a brand of dual aspect monism and some problems deriving from the distinction between a first person and third person point of view. I continue with an outline of one way in which the conscious experience of the subject might arise from organisational properties of a material substrate. With this picture to hand, I first examine theoretical features at the level of brain organisation which may be required to support conscious experience and then discuss what bearing some actual attributes of biological brains might have on such experience. I conclude the first half of the dissertation with comments on information processing and with artificial neural networks meant to display simple varieties of the organisational features initially described abstractly.While the first half begins with a view of conscious experience and infers downwards in the organisational hierarchy to explore neural features suggested by the view, attention in the second half shifts towards analysing low level dynamical features of material substrates and inferring upwards to possible effects on experience. There is particular emphasis on clarifying the role of chaotic dynamics, and I discuss relationships between levels of description of a cognitive system and comment on issues of complexity, computability, and predictability before returning to the topic of representation which earlier played a central part in isolating features of brain organisation which may underlie conscious experience.Some themes run throughout the dissertation, including an emphasis on understanding experience from both the first person and the third person points of view and on analysing the latter at different levels of description. Other themes include a sustained effort to integrate the picture offered here with existing empirical data and to situate current problems in the philosophy of mind within the new framework, as well as an appeal to tools from mathematics, computer science, and cognitive science to complement the more standard philosophical repertoire

    Vědomí v přírodě. Russellovský přístup

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    Jakub Mihálik: Consciousness in Nature. A Russellian Approach Abstrakt Tato práce má za cíl poskytnout filosofickou odpověď na otázku, jak může fenomenální vědomí neboli prožívání (experience) existovat ve fyzickém světě, tj. ve světě, který nám popisují přírodní vědy. Práce sestává ze tří částí: v první části (kap. 1) pojednávám o pojmu fenomenálního vědomí a uvádím jej do protikladu k jiným pojmům vědomí běžným v literatuře. Dále ukazuji, že projekt, o který mi jde v této práci, je přirozené chápat jako součást obecnějšího projektu hledání stereoskopického pohledu na člověka, který Wilfrid Sellars považoval za klíčový úkol pro filosofii své doby. V druhé části práce (kap. 2 až 4) předkládám detailní zhodnocení pokusů o materialistickou redukci vědomí. Zatímco v kap. 2 zkoumám a podrobuji kritice apriorní fyzikalismus (Dennett, Lewis, Rey atd.), vkap. 3 a 4 se zaměřuji na novější, aposteriorní fyzikalismus a především na jeho vlivnou variantu zvanou strategie fenomenálních pojmů (Loar, Papineau, Levinová, Schroer atd.). Jedna obtíž, které aposteriorní fyzikalismus čelí, spočívá v tom, že, jak se pokoušejí ukázat Nida-Rümelinová, Goff a další, toto stanovisko není slučitelné s přesvědčivou tezí, že nám naše fenomenální pojmy poskytují bohaté poznání povahy svých referentů. Předkládám novou verzi argumentu...Jakub Mihálik: Consciousness in Nature. A Russellian Approach Abstract: This thesis attempts to provide a philosophical answer to the question of how phenomenal consciousness, or experience, can exist in the physical world, i.e. in the world as it is described by science. The thesis has three parts: In the first part (chapter 1) I explicate the concept of phenomenal consciousness and contrast it with other concepts of consciousness common in the literature. Moreover, I suggest that the project pursued in this thesis can be naturally viewed as a part of the more general project of trying to find a stereoscopic view of man, taken by Wilfrid Sellars to be a crucial task for contemporary philosophy. In the second part of the thesis (chapters 2 to 4) I offer a detailed evaluation of the attempts at a materialist reduction of consciousness. While in chapter 2 I explore and critique the approach of apriori physicalism (Dennett, Lewis, Rey, etc.), in chapters 3 and 4, I focus on the more recent doctrine of a posteriori physicalism and especially its most prominent variety called the phenomenal concept strategy (Loar, Papineau, Levin, Schroer, etc.). One problem with a posteriori physicalism is that, as Nida-Rümelin, Goff and others argue, the view cannot make sense of the plausible thesis that our phenomenal...Institute of Philosophy and Religious StudiesÚstav filosofie a religionistikyFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

    Judging by a Different Standard? Examining the Role of Rationality in Assessments of Mental Capacity

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    Decision-making capacity is an increasingly important medico-legal concept. The recent Mental Capacity Act employs a cognitive, process-based test of capacity, but in many psychiatric conditions pathological beliefs and values impair capacity even when the decision-making process is logically coherent. In such cases, capacity assessments implicitly rely on normative epistemic and evaluative standards. This raises a worry for the capacity test’s reliability, objectivity and tolerance of differences in beliefs and values. There is currently little conceptual research on capacity and the normative standards underpinning its assessment. This thesis makes an original contribution to research by employing a number of philosophical approaches to map out a conceptual terrain within which questions about the substantive standards of capacity assessment can be framed. Focusing on the nature of epistemic standards and third-person judgements about decision-making, the thesis examines the normative constraints determining what counts as a recognisable reason for a decision. It employs the theoretical apparatus of Davidson’s project of Radical Interpretation to explore the epistemology of interpretation, interrogating the conditions under which intentional attribution and the provision of reason explanations for behaviour are possible. It is contended that beliefs are intrinsically rational and intersubjective, and that judgements of irrationality are only possible against a background of shared belief between interpreter and observed agent. This view is defended against the objection that rationality is too stringent a constraint on belief. A misconception giving rise to this objection is then diagnosed. Drawing an analogy with Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations, it is submitted that the constitutive normativity of belief need not be codified in order to exert a genuine constraint on intentional behaviour. Rather, the norms of belief ought to be construed as emerging from shared practice. This indicates that normative judgements are disciplined through expertise and experience, rather than adherence to abstract principles. Finally, the implications of these insights for conceptualising and assessing capacity are considered

    Theories of persistence

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    Interference patterns: Literary study, scientific knowledge, and disciplinary autonomy after the two cultures

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    This project interrogates the claims made for the possibility of collapsing all the various disciplines into one discipline, probably physics, and surely a science, in the name of making clearer the relations between our various fields of knowledge. This is the aim of the radical reductionist, and I take E. O. Wilson's Consilience as exemplary of such attempts. Central to Wilson's method of achieving unity is the new science of evolutionary psychology - itself a re-working of the sociobiology with which Wilson first achieved notoriety. In the on-going project of explaining culture under a Darwinian description, the evolutionary psychologists have begun to suggest explanations for the popularity and content of narrative fiction. Because they are consonant with the rest of science, these biologistic accounts of fiction might be preferable to the accounts traditionally offered by Literary Studies. Consequently, there is a risk that the traditional practices of Literary Studies will be made redundant within the academy and gradually atrophy. The demand is that Literary Studies either makes itself rigorous like the sciences (as with such projects as Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism), or else forfeit its claims to produce knowledge. Aware of this threat, some literary critics embrace forms of relativism in an attempt to deny the unity or effectiveness of scientific knowledge and so neuter the threatened takeover. Among these forms of relativism, Richard Rorty's account seeks to collapse the hierarchy of disciplines and seemingly offers Literary Studies a means of retaining its distinctive approach without denying the effectiveness of scientific knowledge. I aim to show that Literary Studies need not become a science, and that such sciences as evolutionary psychology are neither as threatening as some had feared, nor as useful to literary study as some have hoped
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