A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy)
Samuel Guttenplan
Language: English
Pages: 576
ISBN: 0631179534
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The Philosophy of Mind is one of the fastest-growing areas in philosophy, not least because of its connections with related areas of psychology, linguistics and computation. This is an alphabetically arranged reference guide to the subject, firmly rooted in philosophy of mind, but with a number of entries that survey adjacent fields of interest. The book is introduced by the editor's "Essay on Mind", which serves as an overview of the subject, and is closely referenced to the entries in the Companion. Among the entries themselves are several "self-profiles" by leading philosophers in the field, including Chomsky, Davidson, Dennett, Dretske, Fodor, Lewis, Searle and Stalnaker, in which their own positions within the subject are articulated. In some more complex areas, more than one author has been invited to write on the same topic, giving a polarity of viewpoint within the book's overall coverage. Thirty-five or so main entries form the heart of the book, but in addition many of the specialist terms within the field are glossed in a series of shorter, focused articles.
doubt it is by virtue of facts of the world that statements and beliefs are true. desires fulfilled, and so on. But we seem far short of any framework of theoretical understanding in which such facts can be accommodated and interpreted. This only skims the surface of very large topics. I do not want to leave the impression that I think a naturalistic approach along COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY the lines sketched deals with classic questions of language and thought. It definitely does not. For one
directly via the algorithm. if no more perspicuous specification can be given. That symbolic computation can be physically realized is important. but a commitment to CHimp is not part of the symbolic theory of mind: there is no claim that the brain. like a traditional computer. will have separate locations for each symbol and rule. More than an absence of commitment. in fact. the symbolic theory is essentially silent on the matter of its physical realization in the human case. Local connectionist
Theory can account better for our ability to discover more bizarre and alien beliefs than can the Simulation Theory. The Theory Theory and the Simulation Theory are not the only proposals about knowledge of beliefs. A third view has its origins in the later philosophy of Ludwig WITTGENSTEIN. On this view both the Theory and Simulation Theories attribute too much psychologizing to our commonsense psychology. Knowledge of other minds is, according to this alternative picture, more observational in
The Philosophical Review, 90, 5-43. Churchland, P. 1981. Eliminative materialism and propositional attitudes. The Journal of Philosophy, 78, 67-90. Fodor, J. 1987. Psychosemantics. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. 152 Goldman, A. 1989. Interpretation psychologized. Mind and Language, 4, 161-85. Gordon, R. 1986. Folk psychology as simulation. Mind and Language, 1, 158-171. Heal, J. 1986. Replication and functionalism. In Language, Mind and Logic, ed. J. Butterfield. Cambridge University Press. Pemer,
theories' that are a common human endowment, grounded in our nature. Not an easy problem, and one that is, I think, too lightly dismissed. Any organism has certain ways of perceiving and interpreting the world, a certain 'Umwelt' or 'cognitive space', determined in large part by its specific nature and general properties of biological systems. In Hume's terms, part of human knowledge derives 'from the original hand of nature' as 'a species of instinct'. Cognitive systems are grounded in