The fact that cases of radical indeterminacy, though possible in principle, are vanishingly unlikely ever to comfort us in small solacing refuge and shelter, apparently this idea is deeply counter-intuitive to many philosophers, who have hankered for more ‘realistic’ doctrines. There are two different strands of ‘realism’ that in the attempt to undermine are such:
(1) Realism about the entities purportedly described by four
Every day, mentalistic discourse ~ what I dubbed as
folk-psychology, such as beliefs, desires, pains, the self.
(2) Realism about content itself ~ the idea that there have
to be events or entities that really have intentionality
(as opposed to the events and entities that only have as
if they had intentionality).
The tenet indicated by (1) rests of what is fatigue, what bodily states or events are so fatiguing, that they are identical with, and so forth. This is a confusion that calls for diplomacy, not philosophical discovery: The choice between an ‘eliminative materialism’ and an ‘identity theory’ of fatigues is not a matter of which ‘ism’ is right, but of which way of speaking is most apt to wean these misbegotten features of them as conceptual schemata.
Again, the tenet (2) my attack has been more indirect. The view that some philosophers, in that of a demand for content realism as an instance of a common philosophical mistake: Philosophers oftentimes manoeuvre themselves into a position from which they can see only two alternatives: Infinite regress versus some sort of ‘intrinsic’ foundation ~ a prime mover of one sort or another. For instance, it has seemed obvious that for some things to be valuable as means, other things must be intrinsically valuable ~ ends in themselves ~ otherwise we would be stuck with a vicious regress (or, having no beginning or end) of things valuable only that although some intentionality is ‘derived’ (the ‘aboutness’ of the pencil marks composing a shopping list is derived from the intentions of the person whose list it is), unless some intentionality is ‘original’ and underived, there could be no derived intentionality.
There is always another alternative, namely, a finite regress that peters out without marked foundations or thresholds or essences. Here is an avoided paradox: Every mammal has a mammal for a mother ~ but, this implies an infinite genealogy of mammals, which cannot be the case. The solution is not to search for an essence of mammalhood that would permit us in principle to identify the Prime Mammal, but rather to tolerate a finite regress that connects mammals to their non-mammalian ancestors by a sequence that can only be partitioned arbitrarily. The reality of today’s mammals is secure without foundations.
The best instance of this theme is held to the idea that the way to explain the miraculous-seeming powers of an intelligent intentional system is to decompose it into hierarchically structured teams of ever more stupid intentional systems, ultimately discharging all intelligence-debts in a fabric of stupid mechanisms. Lycan (1981), has called this view ‘homuncular functionalism’. One may be tempted to ask: Are the subpersonal components ‘real’ intentional systems? At what point in the diminutions of prowess as we descend to simple neurons does ‘real’ intentionality disappear? Don’t ask. The reasons for regarding an individual neuron (or a thermostat) as a intentional system are unimpressive, but zero, and the security of our intentional attributions at the highest lowest-level of real intentionality. Another exploitation of the same idea is found in Elbow Room (1984): At what point in evolutionary history did ‘real’ reason become the appreciators’s, especially the real selves, make their appearance? Don’t ask ~ for the dame reason. Here is yet another, more fundamental versions of evolution can point in the early days of evolution can we speak of genuine function, genuine selection-for and not mere fortuitous preservation of entities that happen to have some self-replicative capacity? Don’t ask. Many of the more interesting and important features of our world have emerged, gradually, from a world that initially lacked them ~ function, intentionality, consciousness, morality, value ~ and it is a fool’s errand to try to identify a first or most-simple of an instance of the ‘real’ thin. It is for the same reason a mistake must exist to answer all the questions our system of cognitive content attribution permit us to ask. Tom says he has an older brother in Toronto and that he is an only child. What does he really believe? Could he really believe that he had a but if he also believed he was an only child? What is the ‘real’ content of his mental state? There is no reason to suppose there is a principled answer.
The most sweeping conclusion having drawn from this theory of content is that the large and well-regarded literature on ‘propositional attitudes’ (especially the debates over wide versus narrow content) is largely a disciplinary artefact of no long-term importance whatever, except perhaps, as history’s most slowly unwinding unintended reductio ad absurdum. By and large, the disagreements explored in that literature cannot even be given an initial expression unless one takes on the assumption of an unsounded fundamentality of strong realism about content, and its constant companion, the idea of a ‘language of thought’ a system of mental representation that is decomposable into elements rather like terms, and large elements rather like sentences. The illusion, that this is plausible, or even inevitable, is particularly fostered by the philosophers’ normal tactic of working from examples of ‘believing-that-p’ that focuses attention on mental states that are directly or indirectly language-infected, such as believing that the shortest spy is a spy, or believing that snow is white. (Do polar bears believe that snow is white? In the way we do?) There are such states ~ in language-using human beings ~ but, they are not exemplary r foundational states of belief, needing a term for them. As, perhaps, in calling the term in need of, as they represent ‘opinions’. Opinions play a large, perhaps even decisive role in our concept of a person, but they are not paradigms of the sort of cognitive element to which one can assign content in the first instance. If one starts, as one should, with the cognitive states and events occurring in non-human animals, and uses these as the foundation on which to build theories of human cognition, the language-infected states are more readily seen to be derived, less directly implicated in the explanation of behaviour, and the chief but an illicit source of plausibility of the doctrine of a language of thought. Postulating a language of thought is in any event a postponement of the central problems of content ascribed, not a necessary first step.
Our momentum, forces out the causal theories of epistemology, of what makes a belief justified and what makes a true belief knowledge? It is natural to think that whether a belief deserves one of these appraisals depends on what causes the subject to have the belief. In recent decades a number of epistemologists have pursued this plausible idea with a variety of specific proposals. For some proposed casual criteria for knowledge and justification are for us, to take under consideration.
Some causal theories of knowledge have it that a true belief that ‘p’ is knowledge just in case it has the right sort of causal connection to the fact that ‘p’. Such a criteria can be applied only to cases where the fact that ‘p’, a sort that can enter into causal relations: This seems to exclude mathematical and other necessary facts and perhaps any fact expressed by a universal generalization. And proponents of this sort of criterion have usually supposed that it is limited to perceptual knowledge of particular facts about the subject’s environment.
For example, the forthright Australian materialist David Malet Armstrong (1973), proposed that a belief of the form ‘This (perceived) object is ‘F’ is (non-inferential) knowledge if and only if the belief is a completely reliable sign that the perceived object is ‘F’, that is, the fact that the object is ‘F’ contributed to causing the belief and its doing so depended on properties of the believer such that the laws of nature dictate that, for any subject ‘x’ and perceived object ‘y’. If ‘x’ has those properties and believes that ‘y’ is ‘F’, then ‘y’ is ‘F’. Dretske (1981) offers a rather similar account in terms of the belief’s being caused by a signal received by the perceiver that carries the information that the object is ‘F’.
This sort of condition fails, however, to be sufficient for non-inferential perceptual knowledge because it is compatible with the belief’s being unjustified, and an unjustified belief cannot be knowledge. For example, suppose that your mechanisms for colour perception are working well, but you have been given good reason to think otherwise, to think, say, that any tinted colour in things that look brownishly-tinted to you and brownishly-tinted things look of any tinted colour. If you fail to heed these results you have for thinking that your colour perception is awry and believe of a thing that look’s colour tinted to you that it is colour tinted, your belief will fail to b e justified and will therefore fail to be knowledge, even though it is caused by the thing’s being tinted in such a way as to be a completely reliable sign (or to carry the information) that the thing is tinted or found of some tinted discolouration.
One could fend off this sort of counter-example by simply adding to the causal condition the requirement that the belief be justified. But this enriched condition would still be insufficient. Suppose, for example, that in an experiment you are given a drug that in nearly all people (but not in you, as it happens) causes the aforementioned aberration in colour perception. The experimenter tells you that you’re taken such a drug that says, ‘No, wait a minute, the pill you took was just a placebo’. But suppose further that this last ting the experimenter tells that you are false. Her telling you this gives you justification for believing of a thing that looks colour tinted or tinged in brownish tones, but in fact about this justification that is unknown to you (that the experimenter’s last statement was false) makes it the casse that your true belief is not knowledge even though it satisfies Armstrong’s causal condition.
Goldman (1986) has proposed an important different sort of causal criterion, namely, that a true belief is knowledge if it is produced by a type of process that a ‘global’ and ‘locally’ reliable. It is global reliability of its propensity to cause true beliefs is sufficiently high. Local reliability had to do with whether the process would have produced a similar but false belief in certain counter-factual situations alternative to the actual situation. This way of marking off true beliefs that are knowledge e does not require the fact believed to be causally related to the belief and so it could in principle apply to knowledge of any kind of truth.
Goldman requires the global reliability of the belief-producing process for the justification of a belief, he requires, also for knowledge because justification is required for knowledge. What he requires for knowledge but suffices to say that it is not required for justification as local reliability. His idea is that a justified true belief is knowledge if the type of process that produced it would not have produced it in any relevant counter-factual situation in which it is
The theory of relevant alternative is best understood as an attempt to accommodate two opposing strands in our thinking about knowledge. The first is that knowledge is an absolute concept. On one interpretation, tis means that the justification or evidence one must have an order to know a proposition ‘p’ must be sufficient to eliminate all the alternatives to ‘p’ (when an alternative to a proposition ‘p’ is a proposition incompatible with ‘p’).
For knowledge requires only that elimination of the relevant alternatives. So the relevant alternatives view preservers both strands in our thinking about knowledge. Knowledge is an absolute concept, but because the absoluteness is relative to a standard, we can know many things.
The relevant alternative’s account of knowledge can be motivated by noting that other concepts exhibit the same logical structure e. two examples of this are the concepts ‘flat’ and the concept ‘empty’. Both appear to be absolute concepts ~ a space is empty only if it does not contain anything and a surface is flat only if it does not have any bumps. However, the absolute character of these concepts is relative to a standard. In the case of flat, there is a standard for what there is a standard for what counts as a bump and in the case of empty, there is a standard for what counts as a thing. We would not deny that a table is flat because a microscope reveals irregularities in its surface. Nor would we den y that a warehouse is empty because it contains particles of dust. To be flat is to be free of any relevant bumps. To be empty is to be devoid of all relevant things. Analogously, the relevant alternative’s theory says that to know a proposition is to have evidence that eliminates all relevant alternatives.
Some philosophers have argued that the relevant alternative’s theory of knowledge entails the falsity of the principle that set of known (by S) propositions in closed under known (by S) entailment, although others have disputed this however, this principle affirms the following conditional or the closure principle:
If ‘S’ knows ‘p’ and ‘S’ knows that ‘p’ entails ‘q’, then ‘S’ knows ‘q’.
According to the theory of relevant alternatives, we can know a proposition ‘p’, without knowing that some (non-relevant) alterative to ‘p’ is false. But, once an alternative ‘h’ to ‘p’ incompatible with ‘p’, then ‘p’ will trivially entail not-h. So it will be possible to know some proposition without knowing another proposition trivially entailed by it. For example, we can know that we see a zebra without knowing that it is not the case that we see a cleverly disguised mule (on the assumption that ‘ewe see a cleverly disguised mule’ is not a relevant alterative). This will involve a violation of the closure principle. This is an interesting consequence of the theory because the closure principle seems to many to be quite intuitive. In fact, we can view sceptical arguments as employing the closure principle as a premise, along with the premise that we do not know that the alternatives raised by the sceptic are false. From these two premisses, it follows (on the assumption that we see that the propositions we believe entail the falsity of sceptical alternatives) that we do not know the proposition we believe. For example, it follows from the closure principle and the fact that we do not know that we do not see a cleverly disguised mule, that we do not know that we see a zebra. We can view the relevant alternative’s theory as replying to the sceptical arguments by denying the closure principle.
What makes an alternative relevant? What standard do the alternatives raised by the sceptic fail to meet? These notoriously difficult to answer with any degree of precision or generality. This difficulty has led critics to view the theory as something being to obscurity. The problem can be illustrated though an example. Suppose Smith sees a barn and believes that he does, on the basis of very good perceptual evidence. When is the alternative that Smith sees a paper-maché replica relevant? If there are many such replicas in the immediate area, then this alternative can be relevant. In these circumstances, Smith fails to know that he sees a barn unless he knows that it is not the case that he sees a barn replica. Where no such replica exist, this alternative will not be relevant. Smith can know that he sees a barn without knowing that he does not see a barn replica.
This suggests that a criterion of relevance is something like probability conditional on Smith’s evidence and certain features of the circumstances. But which circumstances in particular do we count? Consider a case where we want the result that the barn replica alternative is clearly relevant, e.g., a case where the circumstances are such that there are numerous barn replicas in the area. Does the suggested criterion give us the result we wanted? The probability that Smith sees a barn replica given his evidence and his location to an area where there are many barn replicas is high. However, that same probability conditional on his evidence and his particular visual orientation toward a real barn is quite low. We want the probability to be conditional on features of the circumstances like the former bu t not on features of the circumstances like the latter. But how do we capture the difference in a general formulation?
How significant a problem is this for the theory of relevant alternatives? This depends on how we construe theory. If the theory is supposed to provide us with an analysis of knowledge, then the lack of precise criteria of relevance surely constitute a serious problem. However, if the theory is viewed instead as providing a response to sceptical arguments, it can be argued that the difficulty has little significance for the overall success of the theory.
What justifies the acceptance of a theory? Although particular versions of empiricism have met many criticisms, it still attractive to look for an answer in some sort of empiricist terms: In terms, that is, of support by the available evidence. How else could objectivity of science be defended except by showing that its conclusions (and in particular its theoretical conclusion ~ those theories it presently accepts) are somehow legitimately based on agreed observational and experimental evidence? But, as is well known, theories in general pose a problem for empiricism.
Allowing the empiricist the assumption that there are observational statements whose truth-values can be inter-subjectively agreed, and show the exploratory, non-demonstrative use of experiment in contemporary science. Yet philosophers identify experiments with observed results, and these with the testing of theory. They assume that observation provides an open window for the mind onto a world of natural facts and regularities, and that the main problem for the scientist is to establish the unique or the independence of a theoretical interpretation. Experiments merely enable the production of (true) observation statements. Shared, replicable observations are the basis for scientific consensus about an objective reality. It is clear that most scientific claims are genuinely theoretical: Nether themselves observational nor derivable deductively from observation statements (nor from inductive generalizations thereof). Accepting that there are phenomena that we have more or less diet access to, then, theories seem, at least when taken literally, to tell us about what is going on ‘underneath’ the observable, directly accessible phenomena on order to produce those phenomena. The accounts given by such theories of this trans-empirical reality, simply because it is trans-empirical, can never be established by data, nor even by the ‘natural’ inductive generalizations of our data. No amount of evidence about tracks in cloud chambers and the like, can deductively establish that those tracks are produced by ‘trans-observational’ electrons.
One response would, of course, be to invoke some strict empiricist account of meaning, insisting that talk of electrons and the like, is, in fact just shorthand for talks in cloud chambers and the like. This account, however, has few, if any, current defenders. But, if so, the empiricist must acknowledge that, if we take any presently accepted theory, then there must be alternatives, different theories (indefinitely many of them) which treat the evidence equally well ~ assuming that the only evidential criterion is the entailment of the correct observational results.
All the same, there is an easy general result as well: assuming that a theory is any deductively closed set of sentences, and assuming, with the empiricist that the language in which these sentences are expressed has two sorts of predicated (observational and theoretical), and, finally, assuming that the entailment of the evidence is only constraint on empirical adequacy, then there are always indefinitely many different theories which are equally empirically adequate in a language in which the two sets of predicates are differentiated. Consider the restricts if ‘T’ to quantifier-free sentences expressed purely in the observational vocabulary, then any conservative extension of that restricted set of T’s consequences back into the full vocabulary is a ‘theory’ co-empirically adequate with ~ entailing the same singular observational statements as ~ ‘T’. Unless veery special conditions apply (conditions which do not apply to any real scientific theory), then some of the empirically equivalent theories will formally contradict ‘T’. (A similar straightforward demonstration works for the currently more fashionable account of theories as sets of models.)
How can an empiricist, who rejects the claim that two empirically equivalent theories are thereby fully equivalent, explain why the particular theory ‘T’ that is, as a matter of fact, accepted in science is preferred these other possible theories ‘T’, with the same observational content? Obviously the answer must be ‘by bringing in further criteria beyond that of simply having the right observational consequence. Simplicity, coherence with other accepted these and unity are favourite contenders. There are notorious problems in formulating this criteria at all precisely: But suppose, for present purposes, that we have a strong enough intuitive grasp to operate usefully with them. What is the status of such further criteria?
The empiricist-instrumentalist position, newly adopted and sharply argued by van Fraassen, is that those further criteria are ‘pragmatic’ ~ that is, involved essential reference to ourselves as ‘theory-users’. We happen tp prefer, for our own purposes, since, coherent, unified theories ~ but this is only a reflection of our preference es. It would be a mistake to think of those features supplying extra reasons to believe in the truth (or, approximate truth) of the theory that has them. Van Fraassen’s account differs from some standard instrumentalist-empiricist account in recognizing the extra content of a theory (beyond its directly observational content) as genuinely declarative, as consisting of true-or-false assertions about the hidden structure of the world. His account accepts that the extra content can neither be eliminated as a result of defining theoretical notions in observational terms, nor be properly regarded as only apparently declarative but in fact as simply a codification schemata. For van Fraassen, if a theory say that there are electrons, then the theory should be taken as meaning what it says ~ and this without any positivist divide debasing reinterpretations of the meaning that might make ‘There are electrons’ mere shorthand for some complicated set of statements about tracks in obscure chambers or the like.
In the case of contradictory but empirically equivalent theories, such as the theory T1 that ‘there are electrons’ and the theory T2 that ‘all the observable phenomena as if there are electrons but there are not ‘t’. Van Fraassen’s account entails that each has a truth-value, at most one of which is ‘true’, is that science need not to T2, but this need not mean that it is rational believe that it is more likely to be true (or otherwise appropriately connected with nature). So far as belief in the theory is belief but T2. The only belief involved in the acceptance of a theory is belief in the theorist’s empirical adequacy. To accept the quantum theory, for example, entails believing that it ‘saves the phenomena’ ~ all the (relevant) phenomena, but only the phenomena, theorists do ‘say more’ than can be checked empirically even in principle. What more they say may indeed be true, but acceptance of the theory does not involve belief in the truth of the ‘more’ that theorist say.
Preferences between theories that are empirically equivalent are accounted for, because acceptance involves more than belief: As well as this epistemic dimension, acceptance also has a pragmatic dimension. Simplicity, (relative) freedom from ads hoc assumptions, ‘unity’, and the like are genuine virtues that can supply good reasons to accept one theory than another, but they are pragmatic virtues, reflecting the way we happen to like to do science, rather than anything about the world. Simplicity to think that they do so: The rationality of science and of scientific practices can be in truth (or approximate truth) of accepted theories. Van Fraassen’s account conflicts with what many others see as very strong intuitions.
The most generally accepted account of this distinction is that a theory of justification is internalist if and only if it requires that all of the factors needed for a belief to be epistemologically justified for a given person to be cognitively accessible to that person, internal to his cognitive perceptive, and externalist, if it allows that, at least some of the justifying factors need not be thus accessible, so that they can be external to the believer’s cognitive perspective, beyond his knowingness. However, epistemologists often use the distinction between internalist and externalist theories of epistemic explication.
The externalism/internalism distinction has been mainly applied to theories of epistemic justification. It has also been applied in a closely related way to accounts of knowledge and a rather different way to accounts of belief and thought content. The internalist requirement of cognitive accessibility can be interpreted in at least two ways: A strong version of internalism would require that the believer actually be aware of the justifying factors in order to be justified while a weaker version would require only that he be capable of becoming aware of them by focussing his attention appropriately. But without the need for any change of position, new information, and so forth. Though the phrase ‘cognitively accessible’ suggests the weak interpretation, therein intuitive motivation for intentionalism, viz., the idea that epistemic justification requires that the believer actually have in his cognitive possession a reason for thinking that the belief is true, wherefore, it would require the strong interpretation.
Perhaps the clearest example of an internalist position would be a ‘foundationalist’ view according to which foundational beliefs pertain to immediately experienced states of mind other beliefs are justified by standing in cognitively accessible logical or inferential relations to such foundational beliefs. Such a view could count as either a strong or a weak version of internalism, depending on whether actual awareness of the justifying elements or only the capacity to become aware of them is required. Similarly, a ‘coherentist’ view could also be internalist, if both the beliefs or other states with which a justification belief is required to cohere and the coherence relations themselves are reflectively accessible.
It should be carefully noticed that when internalism is construed in this way, it is neither necessary nor sufficient by itself for internalism that the justifying factors literally be internal mental states of the person in question. Not necessarily, because on at least some views, e.g., a direct realist view of perception, something other than a mental state of the believer can be cognitively accessible: Not sufficient, because there are views according to which at least some mental states need not be actual (strong version) or even possible (weak versions) objects of objective awareness. Also, on this way of drawing the distinction, a hybrid view (like the ones already mentioned), according to which some of the factors required for justification must be cognitively accessible while others need not and in general will not be, would count as an externalist view. Obviously too, a view that was externalist in relation to a strong version of internalism (by not requiring that the believer actually be aware of all justifying factors) could still be internalist in relation to a weak version (by requiring that he at least be capable of becoming aware of them).
The most prominent recent externalist views have been versions of ‘reliabilism’, whose main requirements for justification is roughly that the belief be produce d in a way or via a process that make it objectively likely that the belief is true. What makes such a view externalist is the absence of any requirement that the person for whom the belief is justified have any sort of cognitive access to the relation of reliability in question. Lacking such access, such a person will in general have or likely to be true, but will, on such an account, nonetheless, be epistemologically justified in accepting it. Thus, such a view arguably marks a major break from the modern epistemological tradition, stemming from Descartes, which identifies epistemic justification with having a reason, perhaps even a conclusive reason, for thinking that the belief is true. An epistemological working within this tradition is likely to feel that the externalist, than offering a competing account on the same concept of epistemic justification with which the traditional epistemologist is concerned, has simply changed the subject.
Two general lines of argument are commonly advanced in favour of justificatory externalism. The first starts from the allegedly common-sensical premise that knowledge can be un-problematically ascribed to relativity unsophisticated adults, to young children and even to higher animals. It is then argued that such ascriptions would be untenable on the standard internalist accounts of epistemic justification (assuming that epistemic justification is a necessary condition for knowledge), since the beliefs and inferences involved in such accounts are too complicated and sophisticated to be plausibly ascribed to such subjects. Thus, only an externalist view can make sense of such common-sense ascriptions and this, on the presumption that common-sense is correct, constitutes a strong argument in favour of externalism. An internalist may respond by externalism. An internalist may respond by challenging the initial premise, arguing that such ascriptions of knowledge are exaggerated, while perhaps at the same time claiming that the cognitive situation of at least some of the subjects in question. Is less restricted than the argument claims? A quite different response would be to reject the assumption that epistemic justification is a necessary condition for knowledge, perhaps, by adopting an externalist account of knowledge, rather than justification, as those aforementioned.
The second general line of argument for externalism points out that internalist views have conspicuously failed to provide defensible, non-sceptical solutions to the classical problems of epistemology. In striking contrast, however, such problems are in general easily solvable on an externalist view. Thus, if we assume both that the various relevant forms of scepticism are false and that the failure of internalist views so far is likely to be remedied in the future, we have good reason to think that some externalist view is true. Obviously the cogency of this argument depends on the plausibility of the two assumptions just noted. An internalist can reply, first, that it is not obvious that internalist epistemology is doomed to failure, that the explanation for the present lack of success may simply be the extreme difficulty of the problems in question. Secondly, it can be argued that most of even all of the appeal of the assumption that the various forms of scepticism are false depends essentially on the intuitive conviction that we do have reasons our grasp for thinking that the various beliefs questioned by the sceptic are true ~ a conviction that the proponent of this argument must of course reject.
The main objection to externalism rests on the intuition that the basic requirements for epistemic justification are that the acceptance of the belief in question be rational or responsible in relation to the cognitive goal of truth, which seems to require in turn that the believer actually be aware of a reason for thinking that the belief is true or at the very least, that such a reason be available to him. Since the satisfaction of a externalist condition is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of such a cognitively accessible reason. It is argued, externalism is mistaken as an account of epistemic justification. This general point has been elaborated by appeal to two sorts of putative intuitive counter-examples to externalism. The first of these challenges the necessity justification by appealing to examples of belief which seem intuitively to be justified, but for which the externalist conditions are not satisfied. The standard examples of this sort are cases where beliefs produced in some very non-standard way, e.g., by a Cartesian demon, but nonetheless, in such a way that the subjective experience of the believer is indistinguishable on that of someone whose beliefs are produced more normally. Cases of this general sort can be constructed in which any of the standard externalist condition, e.g., that the belief be a result of a reliable process, fail to be satisfied. The intuitive claim is that the believer in such a case is nonetheless, epistemically justified, inasmuch as one whose belief is produced in a more normal way, and hence that externalist accounts of justification must be mistaken.
Perhaps the most interesting reply to this sort of counter-example, on behalf of reliabilism specifically, holds that reliability of a cognitive process is to be assessed in ‘normal’ possible worlds, i.e., in possible worlds that are actually the way our world is common-scenically believed to be, rather than in the world which actually contains the belief being judged. Since the cognitive processes employed in the Cartesian demon case are, we may assume, reliable when assessed in this way, the reliabilist can agree that such beliefs are justified. The obvious further issue is whether or not there is an adequate rationale for this construal of reliabilism, so that the reply is not merely ad hoc.
The second, correlative way of elaborating the general objection to justificatory externalism challenges the sufficiency of the various externalist conditions by citing cases where those conditions are satisfied, but where the believers in question seem intuitively not to be justified. Here the most widely discussed examples have to do with possible occult cognitive capacities like clairvoyance. Considering the point in application once again to reliabilism specifically, the claim is that a reliable clairvoyant who has no reason to think that he has such a cognitive power, and perhaps even good reasons to the contrary, is not rational or responsible and hence, not epistemologically justified in accepting the belief that result from his clairvoyance, despite the fact that the reliabilist condition is satisfied.
One sort of response to this latter sort of objection is to ‘bite the bullet’ and insist that such believer e in fact justified, dismissing the seeming intuitions to the contrary as latent internalist prejudice. A more widely adopted response attempts to impose additional conditions, usually of a roughly internalist sort, which will rule out the offending example while still stopping far short of a full internalist . But while there is little doubt that such modified versions of externalism can indeed handle particular cases well enough to avoid clear intuitive implausibility, the issue is whether there will always be equally problematic cases that the cannot handle, and also whether there is any clear motivation for the additional requirements other than the general internalist view of justification that externalists are committed to reject.
A view in this same general vein, one that might be described as a hybrid of internalism and externalism, holding that epistemic justification requires that there be a justificatory facto r that is cognitively accessible e to the believer in question (though it need not be actually grasped), thus ruling out, e.g., a pure reliabilism. at the same time, however, though it must be objectively true that beliefs for which such a factor is available are likely to be true, this further fact need not be in any way grasped o r cognitive ly accessible to the believer. In effect, of the two premises needed to argue that a particular belief is likely to be true, one must be accessible in a way that would satisfy at least weak internalism, while the second can be (and normally will be) purely external. Here the internalist will respond that this hybrid view is of no help at all in meeting the objection that the belief is not held in the rational responsible way that justification intuitively seems required, for the believer in question, lacking one crucial premise, still has no reason at all for thinking that his belief is likely to be true.
An alternative to giving an externalist account of epistemic justification, one which may be more defensible while still accommodating many of the same motivating concerns, is to give an externalist account of knowledge directly, without relying on an intermediate account of justification. Such a view obviously have to reject the justified true belief account of knowledge, holding instead that knowledge is true belief which satisfies the chosen externalist condition, e.g., is a result of a reliable process (and, perhaps, further conditions as well). This makes it possible for such a view to retain an internalist account of epistemic justification, though the centrality of that concept is epistemology would obviously be seriously diminished.
Such an externalist account of knowledge can accommodate the common-sen conviction that animals, young children and unsophisticated adult’s posse’s knowledge, though not the weaker conviction (if such a conviction even exists) that such individuals are epistemically justified in their belief. It is also, least of mention, less vulnerable to internalist counter-examples of the sort and since the intuitions involved there pertain more clearly to justification than to knowledge. What is uncertain is what ultimate philosophical significance the resulting conception of knowledge is supposed to have. In particular, does it have any serious bearing on traditional epistemological problems and on the deepest and most troubling versions of scepticism, which seem in fact to be primarily concerned with justification rather than knowledge?
A rather different use of the terms ‘internalism’ and ‘externalism’ has to do with the issue of how the content of beliefs and thoughts is determined: According to an internalist view of content, the content of such intentional states depends only on the non-relational, internal properties of the individual’s mind or brain, and not at all on his physical and social environment: While according to an externalist view, content is significantly affected by such external factors. Here too a view that appeals to both internal and external elements is standardly classified as an externalist view.
As with justification and knowledge, the traditional view of content has been strongly internalist character. The main argument for externalism derives from the philosophy of language, more specifically from the various phenomena pertaining to natural kind terms, indexical, and so forth, that motivate the views that have come to be known as ‘direct reference’ theories. Such phenomena seem at least to show that the belief or thought content that can e properly attributed to a person is dependent on facts about his environment -, e.g., whether he is on Earth or Twin Earth, what in fact he is pointing at, the classificatory criteria employed by the experts in his social group, and so forth. ~ not just on what is going on internally in his mind or brain.
An objection to externalist accounts of content is that they seem unable to do justice to our ability to know the contents of our beliefs or thoughts ‘from the inside’, simply by reflection. If content is dependent of external factors pertaining to the environment, then knowledge of content should depend on knowledge of the these factors ~ which will not in general be available to the person whose belief or thought is in question.
The adoption of an externalist account of mental content would seem to support an externalist account of justification in the following way: If part of all of the content of a belief inaccessible to the believer, then both the justifying status of other beliefs in relation to the content and the status of that content as justifying further beliefs will be similarly inaccessible, thus contravening the internalist must insist that there are no rustication relations of these sorts, that only internally accessible content can either be justified or justify anything else: By such a response appears lame unless it is coupled with an attempt to shows that the externalists account of content is mistaken.
To have a word or a picture, or any other object in one’s mind seems to be one thing, but to understand it is quite another. A major target of the later Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is the suggestion that this understanding is achieved by a further presence, so that words might be understood if they are accompanied by ideas, for example. Wittgenstein insists that the extra presence merely raises the same kind of problem again. The better of suggestions in that understanding is to be thought of as possession of a technique, or skill, and this is the point of the slogan that ‘meaning is use’, the idea is congenital to ‘pragmatism’ and hostile to ineffable and incommunicable understandings.
Whatever it is that makes, what would otherwise be mere sounds and inscriptions into instruments of communication and understanding. The philosophical problem is to demystify this power, and to relate it to what wee know of ourselves and the world. Contributions to this study include the theory of speech acts and the investigation of commonisation and the relationship between words and ideas, sand words and the world.
The most influential idea I e theory of meaning I the past hundred years is the thesis that the meaning of an indicative sentence is given by its truth-condition. On this conception, to understand a sentence is to know its truth-conditions. The conception was first clearly formulated by the German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics Gottlob Frége (1848-1925), then was developed in a distinctive way by the early Wittgenstein, and is as leading idea of the American philosopher Donald Herbert Davidson. (1917-2003). The conception has remained so central that those who offer opposing theories characteristically define their position by reference to it.
The conception of meaning as truth-conditions need not and should not be advanced for being in itself a complete account of meaning. For instance, one who understands a language must have some idea of the range of speech acts conventionally performed by the various types of sentences in the language, and must have some ideate significance of speech act, the claim of the theorist of truth-conditions should rather be targeted on the notion of content: If two indicative sentences differ in what they strictly and literally say, then this difference is fully accounted for by the difference in their truth-conditions. It is this claim and its attendant problems, which will be the concern of each in the following.
The meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meaning of its constituents. This is indeed just a statement of what it is for an expression to be semantically complex. It is one of the initial attractions of the conception of meaning as truth-conditions that it permits a smooth and satisfying account of the way in which the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meaning its constituents. On the truth-conditional conception, to give the meaning of sn expressions is the contribution it makes to the truth-conditions of sentence in which it occur. For example terms ~ proper names, indexical, and certain pronouns ~ this is done by stating the reference of the term in question. For predicates, it is done either by stating the conditions under which the predicate is true of arbitrary objects, or by stating the conditions under which arbitrary atomic sentences containing it true. The meaning of a sentence-forming operators as given by stating its contribution to the truth-conditions of a complex sentence, as function of the semantic values of the sentence on which it operates. For an extremely simple, but nevertheless structured language, er can state that contribution’s various expressions make to truth condition, are such as:
A1: The referent of ‘London ‘ is London.
A2: The referent of ‘Paris’ is Paris
A3: Any sentence of the form ‘a is beautiful’ is true if and only if the referent of ‘a’ is beautiful.
A4: Any sentence of the form ‘a is lager than b’ is true if and only if the referent of ‘a’ is larger than referent of ‘b’.
A5: Any sentence of t he for m ‘its no t the case that ‘A’ is true if and only if it is not the case that ‘A’ is true .
A6: Any sentence of the form ‘A and B’ is true if and only if ‘A’ is true and ‘B’ is true.
The principle’s A1-A6 form a simple theory of truth for a fragment of English. In this the or it is possible to derive these consequences: That ‘Paris is beautiful’ is true if and only if Paris is beautiful, is true and only if Paris is beautiful (from A2 and A3): That ‘London is larger than Paris and it is not the case that London is beautiful, is true if and only if London is larger than Paris and it is not the case that London is beautiful (from A1-A5), and in general, for any sentence ‘A’, this simple language we can derive something of the form ‘A’ is true if and only if ‘A’ .
Yet, theorist of truth conditions should insist that not ever y true statement about the reference o f an expression is fit to be an axiom in a meaning-giving theory of truth for a language. The axiom‘London’ refers to the city in which there was a huge fire in 1666.
This is a true statement about the reference of ‘London’. It is a consequence of a theory which substitute’s tis axiom for A1 in our simple truth theory that ‘London is beautiful’ is true if and only if the city in which there was a huge fire in 1666 is beautiful. Since a subject can understand thee name ‘London; without knowing that the last-mentioned truth condition, this replacement axiom is not fit to be an axiom in a meaning-specifying truth theory. It is, of course, incumbent on a theorist of meaning as truth conditions to state the constraints on the acceptability of axioms in a way which does not presuppose any prior, truth-conditional conception of meaning.
Among the many challenges facing the theorist of truth conditions, two are particularly salient and fundamental, first, the theorist has to answer the charge of triviality or vacuity. Second, the theorist must offer an account of what it is fir a person’s language to truly describable by a semantic theory containing a given semantic axiom.
What can take the charge of triviality first? In more detail, it would run thus: since the content of a claim that the sentence ‘Paris is beautiful’ is true amounts to no more than the claim that Paris is beautiful, we can trivially describe understanding a sentence, if we wish, as knowing its truth-conditions. But this gives us no substantive account of understanding whatsoever. Something other than grasp of truth conditions must provide the substantive account. The charge tests upon what has been called the ‘redundancy theory of truth’, the theory also known as ‘minimalism’. Or the ‘deflationary’ view of truth, fathered by the German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics, had begun with Gottlob Frége (1848-1925), and the Cambridge mathematician and philosopher Plumton Frank Ramsey (1903-30). Wherefore, the essential claim is that the predicate’ . . . is true’ does not have a sense, i.e., expresses no substantive or profound or explanatory concept that ought to be the topic of philosophical enquiry. The approach admits of different versions, nit centres on the points that ‘it is true that p’ says no more nor less than ‘p’(hence redundancy): That in less direct context, such as ‘everything he said was true’. Or ‘all logical consequences are true’. The predicate functions as a device enabling us to generalize rather than as an adjective or predicate describing the things he said or the kind’s of propositions that follow from true propositions. For example: ‘(∀p, q)(p & p ➞ q ➞ q)’ where there is no use of a notion of truth.
There are technical problems in interpreting all uses of the notion of truth in such ways, but they are not generally felt to be insurmountable. The approach needs to explain away apparently substantive users of the notion, such as ‘science aims at the truth’ or ‘truth is a normative governing discourse’. Indeed, postmodernist writing frequently advocates that we must abandon such norms, along with a discredited ‘objectivity’ conception of truth. But, perhaps, we can have the norm even when objectivity is problematic, since they can be framed without mention of truth: Science wants it to be so that whenever science holds that ‘p’, then ‘p’, discourse is to be regulated by the principle that it is wrong to assert ‘p’ when
not-p.
It is, nonetheless, that we can take charge of triviality, since the content of a claim ht the sentence ‘Paris is beautiful’ is true, amounting to no more than the claim that Paris is beautiful, we can trivially describe understanding a sentence. If we wish, as knowing its truth-condition, but this gives us no substitute account of understanding whatsoever. Something other than grasp of truth conditions must provide the substantive account. The charge rests on or upon what has been the redundancy theory of truth. The minimal theory states that the concept of truth is exhaustively by the fact that it conforms to the equivalence principle, the principle that for any proposition ‘p’, it is true that ‘p’ if and only if ‘p’. Many different philosophical theories, accept that e equivalence principle, as e distinguishing feature of the minimal theory, its claim that the equivalence principle exhausts the notion of truth. It is, however, widely accepted, both by opponents and supporters of truth conditional theories of meaning, that it is inconsistent to accept both the minimal theory of truth and a truth conditional account of meaning. If the claim that the sentence ‘Paris is beautiful, it is circular to try to explain the sentence’s meaning in terms of its truth condition. The minimal theory of truth has been endorsed by Ramsey, Ayer, and later Wittgenstein, Quine, Strawson, Horwich and ~ confusingly and inconsistently of Frége himself.
The minimal theory treats instances of the equivalence principle as definitional truth for a given sentence. But in fact, it seems that each instance of the equivalence principle can itself be explained. The truths from which such an instance as:
‘London is beautiful’ is true if and only if
London is beautiful
can be explained are precisely A1 and A3 in that, this would be a pseudo-explanation if the fact that ‘London’ refers to London consists in part in the fact that ‘London is beautiful’ has the truth-condition it does? But that is very implausible: It is, after all, possible to understand the name ‘London’ without understanding the predicate ‘is beautiful’. The idea that facts about the reference of particular words can be explanatory of facts about the truth conditions of sentences containing them in no way requires any naturalistic or any other kind of reduction of the notion of reference. Nor is the idea incompatible with the plausible point that singular reference can be attributed at all only to something which is capable of combining with other expressions to form complete sentences. That still leaves room for facts about an expression’s having the particular reference it does to be partially explanatory of the particular truth condition possessed by a given sentence containing it. The minimal theory thus treats as definitional or stimulative something which is in fact open to explanation. What makes this explanation possible is that there is a general notion of truth which has, among the many links which hold it in place, systematic connections with the semantic values of subsentential expressions.
A second problem with the minimal theory is that it seems impossible to formulate it without at some point relying implicitly on features and principles involving truth which go beyond anything countenanced by the minimal theory. If the minimal theory treats truth as a predicate of anything linguistic, be it utterances, type-in-a-language, or whatever. Then the equivalence schemata will not cover all cases, but only those in the theorist’s own language. Some account has to be given of truth for sentences of other languages. Speaking of the truth of language-independent propositions or thoughts will only post-pone, not avoid, this issue, since at some point principles have to be stated associating these language-dependent entities with sentences of particular languages. The defender of the minimalist theory is that the sentence ‘S’ of a foreign language is best translated by our sentence, then the foreign sentence ‘S’ is true if and only if ‘p’. Now the best translation of a sentence must preserve the concepts expressed in the sentence. Constraints involving a general notion of truth are pervasive plausible philosophical theory of concepts. It is, for example, a condition of adequacy on an individuating account of any concept that there exist what may be called a ‘Determination Theory’ for that account ~ that is, a specification on how the account contributes to fixing the semantic value of that concept. The notion of a concept’s semantic value is the notion of something which makes a certain contribution to the truth conditions of thoughts in which the concept occurs. But this is to presuppose, than to elucidate, a general notion of truth.
It is, also, plausible that there are general constraints on the form of such Determination Theories, constrains which involve truth and which are not derivable from the minimalist ‘s conception. Suppose that concepts are individuated by their possession condition. A possession condition may in various ways make a thinker’s possession of a particular concept dependent upon his relation to his environment. Many possession conditions will mention the links between accept and the thinker’s perceptual experience. Perceptual experience represents the world as being a certain way. It is arguable that the only satisfactory explanation to what it is for perceptual experience to represent the world in a particular way must refer to the complex relations of the experience to the subject’s environment. If this is so, to mention of such experiences in a possession condition dependent in part upon the environmental relations of the thinker. Evan though the thinker’s non-environmental properties and relations remain constant, the conceptual content of his mental state can vary in the thinker’s social environment is varied. A possession condition which properly individuates such a concept must take into account the thinker’s social relations, in particular his linguistic relations.
Its alternative approach, addresses the question by starting from the idea that a concept is individuated by the condition which must be satisfied a thinker is to posses that concept and to be capable of having beliefs and other altitudes whose content contain it as a constituent. So, to take a simple case, one could propose that the logical concept ‘and’ is individualized by this condition: It is the unique concept ‘C’ to posses which a thinker has to find these forms of inference compelling, without basting them on any further inference or information: From any two premises ‘A’ and ‘B’, ACB can be inferred and from any premise s a relatively observational concepts such as; round’ can be individuated in part by stating that the thinker finds specified contents containing it compelling when he has certain kinds of perception, and in part by relating those judgements containing the concept and which are not based on perception to those judgements that are. A statement which individuates a concept by saying what is required for a thinker to posses it can be described as giving the possession condition for the concept.
A possession condition for a particular concept may actually make use of that concept. The possession condition for ‘and’ doers not. We can also expect to use relatively observational concepts in specifying the kind of experience which have to be mentioned in the possession conditions for relatively observational concepts. What we must avoid is mention of the concept in question as such within the content of the attitude attributed to the thinker in the possession condition. Otherwise we would be presupposed possession of the concept in an account which was meant to elucidate its possession. In talking of what the thinker finds compelling, the possession conditions can also respect an insight of the later Wittgenstein: That a thinker’s mastery of a concept is inextricably tied to how he finds it natural to go in new cases in applying the concept.
Sometimes a family of concepts has this property: It is not possible to master any one of the members of the family without mastering of the others. Two of the families which plausibly have this status are these: The family consisting of same simple concepts 0, 1. 2, . . . of the natural numbers and the corresponding concepts of numerical quantifiers, ‘there are o so-and-so’s, there is 1 so-and- so’s, . . . and the family consisting of the concepts ‘belief’ and ‘desire’. Such families have come to be known as ‘local holist’s’. A local holism does not prevent the individuation of a concept by its possession condition. Rather, it demand that all the concepts in the family be individuated simultaneously. So one would say something of this form, belief and desire form the unique pair of concepts C1 and C2 such that for a thinker to posses them is to meet such-and-such condition involving the thinker, C1 and C2. For those other possession conditions to individuate properly. It is necessary that there be some ranking of the concepts treated. The possession condition or concepts higher in the ranking must presuppose only possession of concepts at the same or lower levels in the ranking.
A possession condition may in various ways make a thinker’s possession of a particular concept dependent on or upon his relations to his environment. Many possession conditions will mention the links between a concept and the thinker’s perceptual experience. Perceptual experience represents the world as being a certain way. It is arguable that the only satisfactory explanation of what it is for perceptual experience to represent the world in a particular way must refer to the complex relations of the experience to te subject’s environment. If this is so, then mention of such experiences in a possession condition will make possession f that concept relations tn the thicker. Burge (1979) has also argued from intuitions about particular examples that even though the thinker’s non-environmental properties and relations remain constant, the conceptual content of his mental state can vary in the thinker’s social environment is varied. A possession condition which properly individuates such a concept must take into account the thinker’s social relations, in particular his linguistic relations.
Once, again, some general principles involving truth can, as Horwich has emphasized, be derived from the equivalence schemata using minimal logical apparatus. Consider, for instance, the principle that ‘Paris is beautiful and London is beautiful’ is true if and only if ‘Paris is beautiful’ is true and ‘London is beautiful’ is true if and only if Paris is beautiful and London is beautiful. But no logical manipulations of the equivalence e schemata will allow the derivation of that general constraint governing possession condition, truth and assignment of semantic values. That constraints can of course be regarded as a further elaboration of the idea that truth is one of the aims of judgement.
What is to a greater extent, but to consider the other question, for ‘What is it for a person’s language to be correctly describable by a semantic theory containing a particular axiom, such as the above axiom A6 for conjunctions? This question may be addressed at two depths of generality. A shallower of levels, in this question may take for granted the person’s possession of the concept of conjunction, and be concerned with what hast be true for the axiom to correctly describe his language. At a deeper level, an answer should not sidestep the issue of what it is to posses the concept. The answers to both questions are of great interest.
When a person means conjunction by ‘and’, he is not necessarily capable of formulating the axiom A6 explicitly. Even if he can formulate it, his ability to formulate it is not causal basis of his capacity to hear sentences containing the word ‘and’ as meaning something involving conjunction. Nor is it the causal basis of his capacity to mean something involving conjunction by sentences he utters containing the word ‘and’. Is it then right to regard a truth theory as part of an unconscious psychological computation, and to regard understanding a sentence as involving a particular way of deriving a theorem from a truth theory at some level of unconscious processing? One problem with this is that it is quite implausible that everyone who speaks exactly the same language has to use exactly the same algorithms for computing the meaning of a sentence. In the past thirteen years, the particular work as befitting Davies and Evans, whereby a conception has evolved according to which an axiom like A6, is true of a person’s component in the explanation of his understanding of each sentence containing the words ‘and’, a common component which explains why each such sentence is understood as meaning something involving conjunction. This conception can also be elaborated in computational; terms: As alike to the axiom A6 to be true of a person’s language is for the unconscious mechanism, which produce understanding to draw on the information that a sentence of the form ‘A and B’ is true only if ‘A’ is true and ‘B’ is true. Many different algorithms may equally draw on or open this information. The psychological reality of a semantic theory thus are to involve, Marr’s (1982) given by classification as something intermediate between his level one, the function computed, and his level two, the algorithm by which it is computed. This conception of the psychological reality of a semantic theory can also be applied to syntactic and phonological theories. Theories in semantics, syntax and phonology are not themselves required to specify the particular algorithm which the language user employs. The identification of the particular computational methods employed is a task for psychology. But semantic, syntactic and phonological theories are answerable to psychological data, and are potentially refutable by them ~ for these linguistic theories do make commitments to the information drawn on or upon by mechanisms in the language user.
This answer to the question of what it is for an axiom to be true of a person’s language clearly takes for granted the person’s possession of the concept expressed by the word treated by the axiom. In the example of the axiom A6, the information drawn upon is that sentences of the form ‘A and B’ are true if and only if ‘A’ is true and ‘B’ is true. This informational content employs, as it has to if it is to be adequate, the concept of conjunction used in stating the meaning of sentences containing ‘and’. S he computational answer we have returned needs further elaboration, which does not want to take for granted possession of the concepts expressed in the language. It is at this point that the theory of linguistic understanding has to argue that it has to draw upon a theory if the conditions for possessing a given concept. It is plausible that the concept of conjunction is individuated by the following condition for a thinker to have possession of it:
The concept ‘and’ is that concept ‘C’ to possess which a
thinker must meet the following conditions: He finds inferences
of the following forms compelling, does not find them
compelling as a result of any reasoning and finds them
compelling because they are of there forms:
pCq pCq PQ
p q PCq
Here ‘p’ and ‘q’ range over complete propositional thoughts, not sentences. When axiom A6 is true of a person’s language, there is a global dovetailing between this possessional condition for the concept of conjunction and certain of his practices involving the word ‘and’. For the case of conjunction, the dovetailing involves at least this:
If the possession condition for conjunction entails that the
thinker who possesses the concept of conjunction must be
willing to make certain transitions involving the thought p&q,
and of the thinker’s semitrance ‘A’ means that ‘p’ and his
sentence ‘B’ means that ‘q’ then: The thinker must be willing
to make the corresponding linguistic transition involving
sentence ‘A and B’.
This is only part of what is involved in the required dovetailing. Given what wee have already said about the uniform explanation of the understanding of the various occurrences of a given word, we should also add, that there is a uniform (unconscious, computational) explanation of the language user’s willingness to make the corresponding transitions involving the sentence ‘A and B’.
This dovetailing account returns an answer to the deeper questions because neither the possession condition for conjunction, nor the dovetailing condition which builds upon the dovetailing condition which builds on or upon that possession condition, takes for granted the thinker’s possession of the concept expressed by ‘and’. The dovetailing account for conjunction is an instance of a more general; schemata, which can be applied to any concept. The case of conjunction is of course, exceptionally simple in several respects. Possession conditions for other concepts will speak not just of inferential transitions, but of certain conditions in which beliefs involving the concept in question are accepted or rejected, and the corresponding dovetailing condition will inherit these features. This dovetailing account has also to be underpinned by a general rationale linking contributions to truth conditions with the particular possession condition proposed for concepts. It is part of the task of the theory of concepts to supply this in developing Determination Theories for particular concepts.
In some cases, a relatively clear account is possible of how a concept can feature in thoughts which may be true though unverifiable. The possession condition for the quantificational concept all natural numbers can in outline run thus: This quantifier is that concept Cx . . . x . . . to posses which the thinker has to find any inference of the form
CxFx
Fn
Compelling, where ‘n’ is a concept of a natural number, and does not have to find anything else essentially containing Cx . . . x . . . compelling. The straightforward Determination Theory for this possession condition is one on which the truth of such a thought CxFx is true only if all natural numbers are ‘F’. That all natural numbers are ‘F’ is a condition which can hold without our being able to establish that it holds. So an axiom of a truth theory which dovetails with this possession condition for universal quantification over the natural numbers will b component of a realistic, non-verifications theory of truth conditions.
Finally, this response to the deeper questions allows us to answer two challenges to the conception of meaning as truth-conditions. First, there was the question left hanging earlier, of how the theorist of truth-conditions is to say what makes one axiom of a semantic theory correct rather than another, when the two axioms assigned the same semantic values, but do so by different concepts. Since the different concepts will have different possession conditions, the dovetailing accounts, at the deeper level, of what it is for each axiom to be correct for a person’s language will be different accounts. Second, there is a challenge repeatedly made by the minimalist theories of truth, to the effect that the theorist of meaning as truth-conditions should give some non-circular account of what it is to understand a sentence, or to be capable of understanding all sentences containing a given constituent. For each expression in a sentence, the corresponding dovetailing account, together with the possession condition, supplies a non-circular account of what it is to that expression. The combined accounts for each of the expressions which comprise a given sentence together constitute a non-circular account of what it is to understand the complete sentence. Taken together, they allow theorist of meaning as truth-conditions fully to meet the challenge.
A widely discussed idea is that for a subject to be in a certain set of content-involving states, for attribution of those state s to make the subject as rationally intelligible. Perceptions make it rational for a person to form corresponding beliefs. Beliefs make it rational to draw certain inference s. belief and desire make rational the formation of particular intentions, and the performance e of the appropriate actions. People are frequently irrational of course, bu t a governing ideal of this approach is that for any family of contents, there is some minimal core of rational transitions to or from states involving them, a core that a person must respect of his states are to be attributed with those contents at all. We contrast what we wan do with what we must do ~ whether for reasons of morality or duty, or even for reasons of practical necessity (to get what we wanted in the first place). Accordingly, our own desires have seemed to be the principal actions that most fully express our own individual natures and will, and those for which we are personally most responsible. But desire has also seemed t o be a principle of action contrary to and at war with our better natures, as rational and or agents. For it is principally from our own differing perspectives upon what would be good, that each of us wants what he does, each point of view being defined by one’s own interests and pleasure. In this, the representations of desire are like those of sensory perception, similarly shaped by the perspective of the perceiver and the idiosyncrasies of the perceptual dialectic about desire and its object recapitulates that of perception ad sensible qualities. The strength of desire, for instance, varies with the state of the subject more or less independently of the character, an the actual utility, of the object wanted. Such facts cast doubt on the ‘objectivity’ of desire, and on the existence of a correlatives property of ‘goodness’, inherent in the objects of our desires, and independent of them. Perhaps, as the Dutch Jewish rationalist (1632-77) Benedictus de Spinoza put it, it is not that we want what we think good, but that we think good what we happen to want ~ the ‘good’ in what we want being a mere shadow cast by the desire for it. (There is a parallel Protagorean view of belief, similar ly sceptical of truth). The serious defence of such a view, however, would require a systematic reduction of apparent facts about goodness to fats about desire, and an analysis of desire which in turn makes no reference to goodness. While what is yet to be provided, moral psychologists have sought to vindicate an idea of objective goodness. For example, as what would be good from all points of view, or none, or, in the manner of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, to establish another principle (the will or practical reason) conceived as an autonomous source of action, independent of desire or its object: And this tradition has tended to minimize the role of desire in the genesis of action.
Ascribing states with content on actual person has to proceed simultaneously with attributions of as wide range of non-rational states and capacities. In general, we cannot understand a persons reasons for acting as he does without knowing the array of emotions and sensations to which he is subject: What he remembers and what he forgets, and how he reasons beyond the confines to minimal rationality. Even the content-involving perceptual states, which play a fundamental role in individuating content, cannot be understood purely in terms relating to minimal rationality. A perception of the world as being a certain way is not (and could not be) under a subject’s rational control. Thought it is true and important that perceptions give reason for forming beliefs, the beliefs for which they fundamentally provide reasons ~ observational beliefs about the environment ~ have contents which can only be elucidated by referring back to perceptual experience. In this respect (as in others), perceptual states differ from beliefs and desires that are individuated by mentioning what they provide reasons for judging or doing: or frequently these latter judgements and actions can be individuated without reference back to the states that provide for them.
What is the significance for theories of content of the fact that it is almost certainly adaptive for members of as species to have a system of states with representational contents which are capable of influencing their actions appropriately? According to teleological theories a content, a constitutive account of content ~ one which says what it is for a state to have a given content ~ must make user of the notion of natural function and teleology. The intuitive idea is that for a belief state to have a given content ‘p’ is for the belief-forming mechanisms which produced it to have the unction as, perhaps, the derivatively of producing that stare only when it is the case that ‘p’. One issue this approach must tackle is whether it is really capable of associating with states the classical, realistic, verification-transcendent contents which, pre-theoretically, we attribute to them. It is not clear that a content’s holding unknowably can influence the replication of belief-forming mechanisms. But if content itself proves to resist elucidation, it is still a very natural function and selection. It is still a very attractive view that selection, it is still a very attractive view, that selection must be mentioned in an account of what associates something ~ such as a sentence ~ with a particular content, even though that content itself may be individuated by other means.
Contents are normally specified by ‘that . . .’ clauses, and it is natural to suppose that a content has the same kind of sequence and hierarchical structure as the sentence that specifies it. This supposition would be widely accepted for conceptual content. It is, however, a substantive thesis that all content is conceptual. One way of treating one sort of ‘perceptual content’ is to regard the content as determined by a spatial type, the type under which the region of space around the perceiver must fall if the experience with that content is to represent the environment correctly. The type involves a specification of surfaces and features in the environment, and their distances and directions from the perceiver’s body as origin, such contents lack any sentence-like structure at all. Supporters of the view that all content is conceptual will argue that the legitimacy of using these spatial types in giving the content of experience does not undermine the thesis that all content is conceptual. Such supporters will say that the spatial type is just a way of capturing what can equally be captured by conceptual components such as ‘that distance’, or ‘that direction’, where these demonstratives are made available by the perception in question. Friends of conceptual content will respond that these demonstratives themselves cannot be elucidated without mentioning the spatial type which lack sentence-like structure.
Content-involving states are actions individuated in party reference to the agent’s relations to things and properties in his environment. Wanting to see a particular movie and believing that the building over there is a cinema showing it makes rational the action of walking in the direction of that building.
However, in the general philosophy of mind, and more recently, desire has received new attention from those who understand mental states in terms of their causal or functional role in their determination of rational behaviour, and in particular from philosophers trying to understand the semantic content or intentional; character of mental states in those terms as ‘functionalism’, which attributes for the functionalist who thinks of mental states and evens asa causally mediating between a subject’s sensory inputs and that subject’s ensuing behaviour. Functionalism itself is the stronger doctrine that makes a mental state the type of state it is ~ in pain, a smell of violets, a belief that the koala (an arboreal Australian marsupial (Phascolarctos cinereus), is dangerous ~ is the functional relation it bears to the subject’s perceptual stimuli, behavioural responses, and other mental states.
In the general philosophy of mind, and more recently, desire has received new attention from those who would understand mental stat n terms of their causal or functional role in the determination of rational behaviour, and in particularly from philosophers trying to understand the semantic content or the intentionality of mental states in those terms.
Conceptual (sometimes computational, cognitive, causal or functional) role semantics (CRS) entered philosophy through the philosophy of language, not the philosophy of mind. The core idea behind the conceptual role of semantics in the philosophy of language is that the way linguistic expressions are related to one another determines what the expressions in the language mean. There is a considerable affinity between the conceptual role of semantics and structuralist semiotics that has been influence in linguistics. According to the latter, languages are to be viewed as systems of differences: The basic idea is that the semantic force (or, ‘value’) of an utterance is determined by its position in the space of possibilities that one’ language offers. Conceptual role semantics also has affinities with what the artificial intelligence researchers call ‘procedural semantics’, the essential idea here is that providing a compiler for a language is equivalent to specifying a semantic theory of procedures that a computer is instructed to execute by a program.
Nevertheless, according to the conceptual role of semantics, the meaning of a thought I determined by the though’s role in a system of states, to specify a thought is not to specify its truth or referential condition, but to specify its role. Walter’s and twin-Walter’s thoughts, though different truth and referential conditions, share the same conceptual role, and it is by virtue of this commonality that they behave type-identically. If Water and twin-Walter each has a belief that he would express by ‘water quenches thirst’ the conceptual role of semantics can explained predict their dripping their cans into H2O and XYZ respectfully. Thus the conceptual role of semantics would seem, though not to Jerry Fodor, who rejects of the conceptual role of semantics for both external and internal problems.
Nonetheless, if, as Fodor contents, thoughts have recombinable linguistic ingredients, then, of course, for the conceptual role of semantic theorist, questions arise about the role of expressions in the language of thought as well as in the public language we speak and write. And, according, the conceptual role of semantic theorbists divide not only over their aim, but also about conceptual roles in semantic’s proper domain. Two questions avail themselves. Some hold that public meaning is somehow derivative (or inherited) from an internal mental language (mentalese) and that a mentalese expression has autonomous meaning (partly). So, for example, the inscriptions on this page require for their understanding translation, or at least, transliterations. Into the language of thought: representations in the brain require no such translation or transliteration. Others hold that the language of thought just is public language internalized and that it is expressions (or primary) meaning in virtue of their conceptual role.
After one decides upon the aims and the proper province of the conceptual role for semantics, the relations among expressions ~ public or mental ~ constitute their conceptual roles. Because most conceptual roles of semantics as theorists leave the notion of the role in conceptuality as a blank cheque, the options are open-ended. The conceptual role of a [mental] expression might be its causal association: Any disposition to token or example, utter or think on the expression ‘ℯ’ when tokening another ‘ℯ’ or ‘a’ an ordered n-tuple < ℯ’ ℯ’‘, . . . >, or vice versa, can count as the conceptual role of ‘ℯ’. A more common option is characterized conceptual role not causally but inferentially (these need compatible, contingent upon one’s attitude about the naturalization of inference): The conceptual role of an expression ‘ℯ’ in ‘L’ might consist of the set of actual and potential inferences from ‘ℯ’, or, as a more common, the ordered pair consisting of these two sets. Or, if it is sentences which have non-derived inferential roles, what would it mean to talk of the inferential role of words? Some have found it natural to think of the inferential role of as words, as represented by the set of inferential roles of the sentence in which the word appears.
The expectation of expecting that one sort of thing could serve all these tasks went hand in hand with what has come to be called the ‘Classical View’ of concepts, according to which they had an ‘analysis’ consisting of conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for their satisfaction, which are known to any competent user of them. The standard example is the especially simple one of [bachelor], which seems to be identical to [eligible unmarried male]. A more interesting, but analysis was traditionally thought to be [justified true belief].
This Classical View seems to offer an illuminating answer to a certain form of metaphysical question: In virtue of what is something the kind of thing it is ~ i.e., in virtue of what is a bachelor a bachelor? ~ and it does so in a way that supports counter-factual: It tells us what would satisfy the conception situations other than the actual ones (although all actual bachelors might turn out to be freckled, its possible that there might be unfreckled ones, since the analysis does not exclude that). The view also seems to offer an answer to an epistemological question of how people seem to know a priori (or independently of experience) about the nature of many things, e.g., that bachelors are unmarried: It is constitutive of the competency (or possession) conditions of a concept that they know its analysis, at least on reflection.
The Classic View, however, has alway ss had to face the difficulty of primitive concepts: Its all well and good to claim that competence consists in some sort of mastery of a definition, but what about the primitive concept in which a process of definition mus t ultimately end: Here the British Empiricism of the seventeenth century began to offer a solution: All the primitives were sensory, indeed, they expanded the Classical View to include the claim, now often taken uncritically for granted in the discussions of that view, that all concepts are ‘derived from experience’:’Every idea is derived from a corresponding impression’, in the work of Walter Locke (1632-1704), George Berkeley (1685-1753) and David Hume (1711-76) were often thought to mean that concepts were somehow composed of introspectible mental items ~ ‘images’, ‘impressions’ ~ that were ultimately decomposable into basic sensory parts. Thus, Hume analysed the concept of [material object] as involving certain regularities in our sensory experience and [cause] as involving spatio-temporal contiguity ad constant conjunction.
The Irish ‘idealist’ George Berkeley, noticed a problem with this approach that every generation has had to rediscover: If a concept is a sensory impression, like an image, then how does one distinguish a general concept [triangle] from a more particular one ~ say, [isosceles triangle] ~ that would serve in imagining the general one. More recently, Wittgenstein (1953) called attention to the multiple ambiguity of images. And in any case, images seem quite hopeless for capturing the concepts associated with logical terms (what is the image for negation or possibility?) What ever the role of such representation, full conceptual competency must involve something more.
Conscionably, in addition to images and impressions and other sensory items, a full account of concepts needs to consider is of logical structure. This is precisely what the logical positivist did, focussing on logically structured sentences instead of sensations and images, transforming the empiricist claim into the famous ‘Verifiability Theory of Meaning’, the meaning of s sentence is the means by which it is confirmed or refuted, ultimately by sensory experience the meaning or concept associated with a predicate is the means by which people confirm or refute whether something satisfies it.
This once-popular position has come under much attack in philosophy in the last fifty years, in the first place, few, if any, successful ‘reductions’ of ordinary concepts (like [material objects] [cause] to purely sensory concepts have ever been achieved. Our concept of material object and causation seem to go far beyond mere sensory experience, just as our concepts in a highly theoretical science seem to go far beyond the often only meagre evidence we can adduce for them.
The American philosopher of mind Jerry Alan Fodor and LePore (1992) have recently argued that the arguments for meaning holism are, however less than compelling, and that there are important theoretical reasons for holding out for an entirely atomistic account of concepts. On this view, concepts have no ‘analyses’ whatsoever: They are simply ways in which people are directly related to individual properties in the world, which might obtain for someone, for one concept but not for any other: In principle, someone might have the concept [bachelor] and no other concepts at all, much less any ‘analysis’ of it. Such a view goes hand in hand with Fodor’s rejection of not only verificationist, but any empiricist account of concept learning and construction: Given the failure of empiricist construction. Fodor (1975, 1979) notoriously argued that concepts are not constructed or ‘derived’ from experience at all, but are and nearly enough as they are all innate.
The deliberating considerations about whether there are innate ideas is much as it is old, it, nonetheless, takes from Plato (429-347 Bc) in the ‘Meno’ the problems to which the doctrine of ‘anamnesis’ is an answer in Plato’s dialogue. If we do not understand something, then we cannot set about learning it, since we do not know enough to know how to begin. Teachers also come across the problem in the shape of students, who can not understand why their work deserves lower marks than that of others. The worry is echoed in philosophies of language that see the infant as a ‘little linguist’, having to translate their environmental surroundings and grasp on or upon the upcoming language. The language of thought hypothesis was especially associated with Fodor that mental processing occurs in a language different from one’s ordinary native language, but underlying and explaining our competence with it. The idea is a development of the Chomskyan notion of an innate universal grammar. It is a way of drawing the analogy between the workings of the brain or mind and those of the standard computer, since computer programs are linguistically complex sets of instruments whose execution explains the surface behaviour of computer. As an explanation of ordinary language has not found universal favour. It apparently only explains ordinary representational powers by invoking innate things of the same sort, and it invites the image of the learning infant translating the language whose own powers are a mysterious a biological given.
René Descartes (1596-1650) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), defended the view that mind contains innate ideas: Berkeley, Hume and Locke attacked it. In fact, as we now conceive the great debate between European Rationalism and British Empiricism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the doctrine of innate ideas is a central bone of contention: Rationalist typically claim that knowledge is impossible without a significant stoke of general innate concepts or judgements: Empiricist argued that all ideas are acquired from experience. This debate is replayed with more empirical content and with considerably greater conceptual complexity in contemporary cognitive science, most particularly within the domain of psycholinguistic theory and cognitive developmental theory.
Some of the philosophers may be cognitive scientist other’s concern themselves with the philosophy of cognitive psychology and cognitive science. Since the inauguration of cognitive science these disciplines have attracted much attention from certain philosophes of mind. The attitudes of these philosophers and their reception by psychologists vary considerably. Many cognitive psychologists have little interest in philosophical issues. Cognitive scientists are, in general, more receptive.
Fodor, because of his early involvement in sentence processing research, is taken seriously by many psycholinguists. His modularity thesis is directly relevant to question about the interplay of different types of knowledge in language understanding. His innateness hypothesis, however, is generally regarded as unhelpful,. And his prescription that cognitive psychology is primarily about propositional attitudes is widely ignored. The American philosopher of mind, Daniel Clement Dennett (1942- )whose recent work on consciousness treats a topic that is highly controversial, but his detailed discussion of psychological research finding has enhanced his credibility among psychologists. In general, however, psychologists are happy to get on with their work without philosophers telling them about their ‘mistakes’.
Connectionmism has provided a somewhat different reaction mg philosophers. Some ~ mainly those who, for other reasons, were disenchanted with traditional artificial intelligence research ~ have welcomed this new approach to understanding brain and behaviour. They have used the success, apparently or otherwise, of connectionist research, to bolster their arguments for a particular approach to explaining behaviour. Whether this neuro-philosophy will eventually be widely accepted is a different question. One of its main dangers is succumbing to a form of reductionism that most cognitive scientists and many philosophers of mind, find incoherent.
One must be careful not to caricature the debate. It is too easy to see the debate as one pitting innatists, who argue that all concepts of all of linguistic knowledge is innate (and certain remarks of Fodor and of Chomsky lead themselves in this interpretation) against empiricist who argue that there is no innate cognitive structure in which one need appeal in explaining the acquisition of language or the facts of cognitive development (an extreme reading of the American philosopher Hilary Putnam 1926-). But this debate would be a silly and a sterile debate indeed. For obviously, something is innate. Brains are innate. And the structure of the brain must constrain the nature of cognitive and linguistic development to some degree. Equally obvious, something is learned and is learned as opposed to merely grown as limbs or hair growth. For not all of the world’s citizens end up speaking English, or knowing the Relativity Theory. The interesting questions then all concern exactly what is innate, to what degree it counts as knowledge, and what is learned and to what degree its content and structure are determined by innately specified cognitive structure. And that is plenty to debate about.
The arena in which the innateness takes place has been prosecuted with the greatest vigour is that of language acquisition, and it is an appropriate to begin there. But it will be extended to the domain of general knowledge and reasoning abilities through the investigation of the development of object constancy ~ the disposition to concept of physical objects as persistent when unobserved and to reason about there properties locations when they are not perceptible.
The most prominent exponent of the innateness hypothesis in the domain of language acquisition is Chomsky (1296, 1975). His research and that of his colleagues and students is responsible for developing the influence and powerful framework of transformational grammar that dominates current linguistic and psycholinguistic theory. This body of research has amply demonstrated that the grammar of any human language is a highly systematic, abstract structure and that there are certain basic structural features shared by the grammars of all human language s, collectively called ‘universal grammar’. Variations among the specific grammars of the world’s ln languages can be seen as reflecting different settings of a small number of parameters that can, within the constraints of universal grammar, take may of several different valued. All of type principal arguments for the innateness hypothesis in linguistic theory on this central insight about grammars. The principal arguments are these: (1) The argument from the existence of linguistic universals, (2) the argument from patterns of grammatical errors in early language learners: (3) The poverty of the stimulus argument, (4) the argument from the case of fist language learning (5) the argument from the relative independence of language learning and general intelligence, and (6) The argument from the moduarity of linguistic processing.
Innatists argue (Chomsky 1966, 1975) that the very presence of linguistic universals argue for the innateness of linguistic of linguistic knowledge, but more importantly and more compelling that the fact that these universals are, from the standpoint of communicative efficiency, or from the standpoint of any plausible simplicity reflectively adventitious. These are many conceivable grammars, and those determined by universal grammars, and those determined by universal grammar are not ipso facto the most efficient or the simplest. Nonetheless, all human languages satisfy the constraints of universal grammar. Since either the communicative environment or the communicative tasks can explain this phenomenon. It is reasonable to suppose that it is explained by the structures of the mind ~ and therefore, by the fact that the principles of universal grammar lie innate in the mind and constrain the language that a human can acquire.
Hilary Putnam argues, by appeal to a common-sens e ancestral language by its descendants. Or it might turn out that despite the lack of direct evidence at present the feature of universal grammar in fact do serve either the goals of commutative efficacy or simplicity according in a metric of psychological importance. finally, empiricist point out, the very existence of universal grammar might be a trivial logical artefact: For one thing, many finite sets of structure es whether some features in common. Since there are some finite numbers of languages, it follows trivial that there are features they all share. Moreover, it is argued that many features of universal grammar are interdependent. On one , in fact, the set of fundamentally the same mental principle shared by the world’s languages may be rather small. Hence, even if these are innately determined, the amount not of innate knowledge thereby, required may be quite small as compared with the total corpus of general linguistic knowledge acquired by the first language learner.
These relies are rendered less plausible, innatists argue, when one considers the fact that the error’s language learners make in acquiring their first language seem to be driven far more by abstract features of gramma r than by any available input data. So, despite receiving correct examples of irregular plurals or past-tense forms for verbs, and despite having correctly formed the irregular forms for those words, children will often incorrectly regularize irregular verbs once acquiring mastery of the rule governing regulars in their language. And in general, not only the correct inductions of linguistic rules by young language learners but more importantly, given the absence of confirmatory data and the presence of refuting data, children’s erroneous inductions always consistent with universal gramma r, oftentimes simply representing the incorrect setting of a parameter in the grammar. More generally, innatists argue (Chomsky 1966, 1977 & Crain, 1991) all grammatical rules that have ever been observed satisfy the structure-dependence constraint. That is, many linguistics and psycholinguistics argue that all known grammatical rules of all of the world’s languages, including the fragmentary languages of young children must be started as rules governing hierarchical sentence structure, and not governing, say, sequence of words. Many of these, such as the constituent-command constraint governing anaphor, are highly abstract indeed, and appear to be respected by even very young children. Such constrain may, innatists argue, be necessary conditions of learning natural language in the absence of specific instruction, modelling and correct, conditions in which all first language learners acquire their native language.
An important empiricist rely to these observations derives from recent studies of ‘conceptionist’ models of first language acquisition, for which of a ‘connection system’, not previously trained to represent any subset universal grammar that induce grammar which include a large set of regular forms and a few irregulars also tend to over-regularize, exhibiting the same U-shape learning curve seen in human language acquire learning systems that induce grammatical systems acquire ‘accidental’ rules on which they are not explicitly trained but which are not explicit with those upon which they are trained, suggesting, that as children acquire portions of their grammar, they may accidentally ‘learn’ correct consistent rules, which may be correct in human languages, but which then must be ‘unlearned’ in their home language. On the other hand, such ‘empiricist’ language acquisition systems have yet to demonstrate their ability to induce a sufficient wide range of the rules hypothesize to be comprised by universal grammar to constitute a definitive empirical argument for the possibility of natural language acquisition in the absence of a powerful set of innate constraints.
The poverty of the stimulus argument has been of enormous influence in innateness debates, though its soundness is hotly contested. Chomsky notes that (1) the examples of their targe t language to which the language learner is exposed are always jointly compatible with an infinite number of alterative grammars, and so vastly under-determine the grammar of the language, and (2) The corpus always contains many examples of ungrammatical sentences, which should in fact serve as falsifiers of any empirically induced correct grammar of the language, and (3) there is, in general, no explicit reinforcement of correct utterances or correction of incorrect utterances, either by the learner or by those in the immediate training environment. Therefore, he argues, since it is impossible to explain the learning of the correct grammar ~ a task accomplished b all normal children within a very few years ~ on the basis of any available data or known learning algorithms, it must be ta the grammar is innately specified, and is merely ‘triggered’ by relevant environmental cues.
Opponents of the linguistic innateness hypothesis, however, point out that the circumstance that the American linguistic, philosopher and political activist, Noam Avram Chomsky (1929-), who believes that the speed with which children master their native language cannot be explained by learning theory, but requires acknowledging an innate disposition of the mind, an unlearned, innate and universal grammar, suppling the kinds of rule that the child will a priori understand to be embodied in examples of speech with which it is confronted in computational terms, unless the child came bundled with the right kind of software. It cold not catch on to the grammar of language as it in fact does.
As it is wee known from arguments due to the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1978, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953), the American philosopher Nelson Goodman (1972) and the American logician and philosopher Aaron Saul Kripke (1982), that in all cases of empirical abduction, and of training in the use of a word, data underdetermining the theories. The is moral is emphasized by the American philosopher Willard van Orman Quine (1954, 1960) as the principle of the undetermined theory by data. But we, nonetheless, do abduce adequate theories in silence, and we do learn the meaning of words. And it could be bizarre to suggest that all correct scientific theories or the facts of lexical semantics are innate.
But, innatists rely, when the empiricist relies on the underdermination of theory by data as a counter-example, a significant disanalogy with language acquisition is ignored: The abduction of scientific theories is a difficult, labourious process, taking a sophisticated theorist a great deal of time and deliberated effort. First language acquisition, by contrast, is accomplished effortlessly and very quickly by a small child. The enormous relative ease with which such a complex and abstract domain is mastered by such a naïve ‘theorist’ is evidence for the innateness of the knowledge achieved.
Empiricist such as the American philosopher Hilary Putnam (1926-) have rejoined that innatists under-estimate the amount of time that language learning actually takes, focussing only on the number of years from the apparent onset of acquisition to the achievement of relative mastery over the grammar. Instead of noting how short this interval, they argue, one should count the total number of hours spent listening to language and speaking during h time. That number is in fact quite large and is comparable to the number of hours of study and practice required the acquisition of skills that are not argued to derive from innate structures, such as chess playing or musical composition. Hence, they are taken into consideration, and language learning looks like one more case of human skill acquisition than like a special unfolding of innate knowledge.
Innatists, however, note that while the case with which most such skills are acquired depends on general intelligence, language is learned with roughly equal speed, and to roughly the same level of general intelligence. In fact even significantly retarded individuals, assuming special language deficit, acquire their native language on a tine-scale and to a degree comparable to that of normally intelligent children. The language acquisition faculty, hence, appears to allow access to a sophisticated body of knowledge independent of the sophistication of the general knowledge of the language learner.
Empiricist’s reply that this argument ignores the centrality of language in a wide range of human activities and consequently the enormous attention paid to language acquisition by retarded youngsters and their parents or caretakers. They argue as well, that innatists overstate the parity in linguistic competence between retarded children and children of normal intelligence.
Innatists point out that the ‘modularity’ of language processing is a powerful argument for the innateness of the language faculty. There is a large body of evidence, innatists argue, for the claim that the processes that subserve the acquisition, understanding and production of language are quite distinct and independent of those that subserve general cognition and learning. That is to say, that language learning and language processing mechanisms and the knowledge they embody are domain specific ~ grammar and grammatical learning and utilization mechanisms are not used outside of language processing. They are informationally encapsulated ~ only linguistic information is relevant to language acquisition and processing. They are mandatory, and language learning and language processing are automatic. Moreover, language is subserved by specific dedicated neural structures, damage to which predictable and systematically impairs linguistic functioning. All of this suggests a specific ‘mental organ’, to use Chomsky’s phrase, that has evolved in the human cognitive system specifically in order to make language possible. The specific structure is organ simultaneously constrains the range of possible human language s and guide the learning of a child’s target language, later masking rapid on-line language processing possible. The principles represented in this organ constitute the innate linguistic knowledge of the human being. Additional evidence for the early operation of such an innate language acquisition module is derived from the many infant studies that show that infants selectively attend to soundstreams that are prosodically appropriate, which have pauses at clausal boundaries, and that contain linguistically permissible phonological sequence.
It is fair to ask where we get the powerful inner code whose representational elements need only systematic construction to express, for example, the thought that cyclotrons are bigger than black holes. But on this matter, the language of thought theorist has little to say. All that ‘concept’ learning could be (assuming it is to be some kind of rational process and not due to mere physical maturation or a bump on the head). According to the language of thought theorist, is the trying out of combinations of existing representational elements to see if a given combination captures the sense (as evinced in its use) of some new concept. The consequence is that concept learning , conceived as the expansion of our representational resources, simply does not happen. What happens instead is that the work with a fixed, innate repertoire of elements whose combination and construction must express any content we can ever learn to understand.
Representationalist typifies the conforming generality for which of its inclusive manner that by and large induce the doctrine that the mind (or sometimes the brain) works on representations of the things and features of things that we perceive or thing about. In the philosophy of perception the view is especially associated with the French Cartesian philosopher Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) and the English philosopher Walter Locke (1632-1704), who, holding that the mind is the container for ideas, held that of our real ideas, some are adequate, and some are inadequate. Those that have in adequacy to, are those represented as archetypes that the mind supposes them taken from which it tends them to stand for, and to which it refers them. The problem in this account were mercilessly exposed by the French theologian as philosopher Antoine Arnauld (1216-94) and the French critic of Cartesianism Simon Foucher (1644-96), writing against Malebranche , and by the idealist George Berkeley, writing against Locke. The fundamental problem is that the mind is ‘supposing’ its ds to represent something else, but it has no access to this something else, except by forming another idea. The difficulty is to understand how the mind ever escapes from the world of representations, or, acquire genuine content pointing beyond themselves in more recent philosophy, the analogy between the mind and a computer has suggest that the mind or brain manipulates signs and symbols, thought of as like the instructions in a machine’s program of aspects of the world. The point is sometimes put by saying that the mind, and its theory, becomes a syntactic engine rather than a semantic engine. Representation is also attacked, at least as a central concept in understanding the ‘pragmatists’ who emphasize instead the activities surrounding a use of language than what they see as a mysterious link between mind and world.
Representations, along with mental states, especially beliefs and thought, are said to exhibit ‘intentionality’ in that they refer to or stand for something other than of what is the possibility of it being something else. The nature of this special property, however, has seemed puling. Not only is intentionality oftentimes assumed to be limited to humans, and possibly a few other species, but the property itself appears to resist characterization in physicalist terms. The problem is most obvious in the case of ‘arbitrary’ signs, like words, where it is clear that there is no connection between the physical properties of a word and what it demotes, and, yet it remains for Iconic representation.
Early attempts tried to establish the link between sign and object via the mental states of the sign and symbol’s user. A symbol # stands for ✺ for ‘S’ if it triggers a ✺-idea in ‘S’. On one account, the reference of # is the ✺idea itself. Open the major account, the denomination of # is whatever the ✺-idea denotes. The first account is problematic in that it fails to explain the link between symbols and the world. The second is problematic in that it just shifts the puzzle inward. For example, if the word ‘table’ triggers the image ‘‒’ or ‘TABLE’ what gives this mental picture or word any reference of all, let alone the denotation normally associated with the word ‘table’?
An alternative to these Mentalistic theories has been to adopt a behaviouristic analysis. Wherefore, this account # denotes ✺ for ‘S’ is explained along the lines of either (1) ‘S’ is disposed to behave to # as to ✺:, or (2) ‘S’ is disposed to behave in ways appropriate to ✺ when presented #. Both versions prove faulty in that the very notions of the behaviour associated with or appropriate to ✺ are obscure. In addition, once seems to be no reasonable correlations between behaviour toward sign and behaviour toward their objects that is capable of accounting for the referential relations.
A currently influential attempt to ‘naturalize’ the representation relation takes its use from indices. The crucial link between sign and object is established by some causal connection between ✺ and #, whereby it is allowed, nonetheless, that such a causal relation is not sufficient for full-blown intention representation. An increase in temperature causes the mercury to rise the thermometer but the mercury level is not a representation for the thermometer. In order for # to represent ✺ to S’s activities. The flunctuational economy of S’s activity. The notion of ‘function’, in turn is yet to be spelled out along biological or other lines so as to remain within ‘naturalistic’ constraints as being natural. This approach runs into problems in specifying a suitable notion of ‘function’ and in accounting for the possibility of misrepresentation. Also, it is no obvious how to extend the analysis to encompass the semantical force of more abstract or theoretical symbols. These difficulties are further compounded when one takes into account the social factors that seem to play a role in determining the denotative properties of our symbols.
The problems faced in providing a reductive naturalistic analysis of representation has led many to doubt that this task is achieved or necessary. Although a story can be told about some words or signs what were learned via association of other causal connections with their referents, there is no reason to believe ht the ‘stand-for’ relation, or semantic notions in general, can be reduced to or eliminated in favour of non-semantic terms.
Although linguistic and pictorial representations are undoubtedly the most prominent symbolic forms we employ, the range of representational systems human understand and regularly use is surprisingly large. Sculptures, maps, diagrams, graphs. Gestures, music nation, traffic signs, gauges, scale models, and tailor’s swatches are but a few of the representational systems that play a role in communication, though, and the guidance of behaviour. Even, the importance and prevalence of our symbolic activities has been taken as a hallmark of human.
What is it that distinguishes items that serve as representations from other objects or events? And what distinguishes the various kinds of symbols from each other? As for the first question, there has been general agreement that the basic notion of a representation involves one thing’s ‘standing for’, ‘being about’, referring to or denoting’ something else. The major debates have been over the nature of this connection between a reorientation and that which it represents. As for the second question, perhaps, the most famous and extensive attempt to organize and differentiate among alternative forms of representation is found in the works of the American philosopher of science Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) who graduated from Harvard in 1859, and apart from lecturing at Walter Hopkins university from 1879 to 1884, had almost no teaching, nonetheless, Peirce’s theory of signs is complex, involving a number of concepts and distinctions that are no longer paid much heed. The aspects of his theory that remains influential and ie widely cited is his division of signs into Icons, Indices and Symbols. Icons are the designs that are said to be like or resemble the things they represent, e.g., portrait painting. Indices are signs that are connected in their objects by some causal dependency, e.g., smoke as a sign of fire. Symbols are those signs that are used and related to their object by virtue of use or associations: They a arbitrary labels, e.g., the word ‘table’. This tripartite division among signs, or variants of this division, is routinely put forth to explain differences in the way representational systems are thought to establish their links to the world. Further, placing a representation in one of the three divisions has been used to account for the supposed differences between conventional and non-conventional representations, between representations that do and do not require learning to understand, and between representations, like language, that need to be read, and those which do not require interpretation. Some theorbists, moreover, have maintain that it is only the use of symbols that exhibits or indicates the presence of mind and mental states.
Over the years, this tripartite division of signs, although often challenged, has retained its influence. More recently, an alterative approach to representational systems (or as he calls them ‘symbolic systems’) has been put forth by the American philosopher Nelson Goodman (1906-98) whose classical problem of ‘induction’ is often phrased in terms of finding some reason to expect that nature is uniform, in Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (1954) Goodman showed that we need in addition some reason for preferring some uniformities to others, for without such a selection the uniformity of nature is vacuous, yet Goodman (1976) has proposed a set of syntactic and semantic features for categorizing representational systems. His theory provided for a finer discrimination among types of systems than a philosophy of science and language as partaken to and understood by the categorical elaborations as announced by Peirce. What also emerges clearly is that many rich and useful systems of representation lack a number of features taken to be essential to linguistic or sentential forms of representation, e.g., discrete alphabets and vocabularies, syntax, logical structure, inferences rules, compositional semantics and recursive e compounding devices.
As a consequence, although these representations can be appraised for accuracy or correctness. It does not seem possible to analyse such evaluative notion along the lines of standard truth theories, geared as they are to the structure found in sentential systems.
In light of this newer work, serious questions have been raised at the soundness of the tripartite division and about whether various of the psychological and philosophical claims concerning conventionality, learning, interpretation, and so forth, that have been based on this traditional analysis, can be sustained. It is of special significance e that Goodman has joined a number of theorists in rejecting accounts of Iconic representation in terms of resemblance. The rejection has ben twofold, first, as Peirce himself recognized, resemblance is not sufficient to establish the appropriate referential relations. The numerous prints of lithograph do not represent one another any more than an identical twin represent his or her sibling. Something more than resemblance is needed to establish the connection between an Icon and picture and what it represents. Second, since Iconic representations lack as may properties as they share with their referents, sand certain non-Iconic symbol can be placed vin correspondences with their referents. It is difficult to provide a non-circular account of what the similarity I at distinguishes Icons from other forms of representation. What is more, even if these two difficulties could be resolved, it would not show that the representational function of picture can be understood independently of an associated system of interpretations. The design, □, may be a picture of a mountain of the economy in a foreign language. Or it may have no representational significance at all. Whether it is a representation and what kind of representation it uses, is relative to a system of interpretation.
If so, then, what is the explanatory role of providing reasons for our psychological states and intentional acts? Clearly part of this role comes from the justificatory nature of the reason-giving relation: ‘Things are made intelligible by being revealed to be, or to approximate to being, as they rationally ought to be’. For some writers the justificatory and explanatory tasks of reason-giving simple coincide. The manifestation of rationality is seen as sufficient to explain states or acts quite independently of questions regarding causal origin. Within this model the greater the degree of rationality we can detect, the more intelligible the sequence will b e. where there is a breakdown in rationality, as in cases of weakness of will or self-deception, there is a corresponding breakdown in our ability to make the action/belief intelligible.
The equation of the justificatory and explanatory role of rationality links can be found within two quite distinct picture. One account views the attribute of rationality from a third-person perspective. Attributing intentional states to others, and by analogy to ourselves, is a matter of applying to them a certain pattern of interpretation. We ascribe that ever states enables us to make sense of their behaviour as conforming to a rational pattern. Such a mode of interpretation is commonly an ex post facto affair, although such a mode of interpretation can also aid prediction. Our interpretations are never definitive or closed. They are always open to revision and modification in the light of future behaviour. If such revision enable person as a whole to appear more rational. Where we fail to detect of seeing a system then we give up the project of seeing a system as rational and instead seek explanations of a mechanistic kind.
The other picture is resolutely firs-personal, linked to the claimed prospectively of rationalizing explanations we make an action, for example, intelligible by adopting the agent’s perspective on it. Understanding is a reconstruction of actual or possible decision making. It is from such a first-personal perspective that goals are detected as desirable and the courses of action appropriated to the situation. The standpoint of an agent deciding how to act is not that of an observer predicting the next move. When I found something desirable and judge an act in an appropriate rule for achieving it, I conclude that a certain course of action should be taken. This is different from my reflecting on my past behaviour and concluding that I will do ‘X’ in the future.
For many writers, it is, nonetheless, the justificatory and explanatory role of reason cannot simply be equated. To do so fails to distinguish well-formed cases thereby I believe or act because of these reasons. I may have beliefs but your innocence would be deduced but nonetheless come to believe you are innocent because you have blue eyes. Yet, I may have intentional states that give altruistic reasons in the understanding for contributing to charity but,. Nonetheless, out of a desire to earn someone’s good judgment. In both these cases. Even though my belief could be show to be rational in the light of other beliefs, and my action, of whether the forwarded belief become desirously actionable, that of these rationalizing links would form part of a valid explanation of the phenomena concerned. Moreover, cases inclined with an inclination toward submission. As I continue to smoke although I judge it would be better to abstain. This suggests, however, that the mere availability of reasoning cannot, least of mention., have the quality of being of itself an sufficiency to explain why it occurred.
If we resist the equation of the justificatory and explanatory work of reason-giving, we must look fora connection between reasons and action/belief in cases where these reasons genuinely explain, which is absent otherwise to mere rationalizations (a connection that is present when enacted on the better of judgements, and not when failed). Classically suggested, in this context is that of causality. In cases of genuine explanation, the reason-providing intentional states are applicable stimulations whose cause of holding to belief/actions for which they also provide for reasons. This position, in addition, seems to find support from considering the conditional and counter-factuals that our reason-providing explanations admit as valid, only for which make parallel those in cases of other causal explanations. Imagine that I am approaching the Sky Dome’s executives suites looking for the cafeteria. If I believe the café is to the left, I turn accordingly. If my approach were held steadfast for which the Sky Dome has, for itself the explanation that is simply by my desire to find the cafê, then in the absence of such a desire I would not have walked in the direction that led toward the executive suites, which were stationed within the Sky Dome. In general terms, where my reasons explain my action, then the presence to the future is such that for reasons were, in those circumstances, necessary for the action and, at least, made probable for its occurrence. These conditional links can be explained if we accept that the reason-giving link is also a causal one. Any alternative account would therefore also need to accommodate them.
The defence of the view that reasons are causes for which seems arbitrary, least of mention, ‘Why does explanation require citing the cause of the cause of a phenomenon but not the next link in the chain of causes? Perhaps what is not generally true of explanation is true only of mentalistic explanation: Only in giving the latter type are we obliged to give the cause of as cause. However, this too seems arbitrary. What is the difference between mentalistic and non-mentalistic explanation that would justify imposing more stringent restrictions on the former? The same argument applies to non-cognitive mental stares, such as sensations or emotions. Opponents of behaviourism sometimes reply that mental states can be observed: Each of us, through ‘introspection’, can observe at least some mental states, namely our own, least of mention, those of which we are conscious.
To this point, the distinction between reasons and causes is motivated in good part by a desire to separate the rational from the natural order. However, its probable traces are reclined of a historical coefficient of reflectivity as Aristotle’s similar (but not identical) distinction between final and efficient cause, engendering that (as a person, fact, or condition) which proves responsible for an effect. Recently, the contrast has been drawn primarily in the domain or the inclining inclinations that manifest some territory by which attributes of something done or effected are we to engage of actions and, secondarily, elsewhere.
Many who have insisted on distinguishing reasons from causes have failed to distinguish two kinds of reason. Consider its reason for sending a letter by express mail. Asked why id so, I might say I wanted to get it there in a day, or simply, to get it there in as day. Strictly, the reason is repressed by ‘to get it there in a day’. But what this express to my reason only because I am suitably motivated: I am in a reason state, as wanting to get the letter there in a day. It is reason state’s especially wants, beliefs and intentions ~ and not reasons strictly so called, that are candidates for causes. The latter are abstract contents of propositional altitudes: The former are psychological elements that play motivational roles.
If reason states can motivate, however, why (apart from confusing them with reasons proper) deny that they are causes? For one can say that they are not events, at least in the usual sense entailing change, as they are dispositional states (this contrasts them with occurrences, but not imply that they admit of dispositional analysis). It has also seemed to those who deny that reasons are causes that the former justify as well as explain the actions for which they are reasons, whereas the role of causes is at most to explain. As other claim is that the relation between reasons (and for reason states are often cited explicitly) and the actions they explain is non-contingent, whereas the relation causes to their effects is contingent. The ‘logical connection argument’ proceeds from this claim to the conclusion that reasons are not causes.
These arguments are inconclusive, first, even if causes are events, sustaining causation may explain, as where the [states of] standing of a broken table is explained by the (condition of) support of staked boards replacing its missing legs. Second, the ‘because’ in ‘I sent it by express because I wanted to get it there in a day; is in some semi-causal ~ explanation would at best be construed as only rationalizing, than justifying action? And third, if any non-contingent connection can be established between, say, my wanting something and the action it explains, there are close causal analogism such as the connection between brining a magnet to iron filings and their gravitating to it: This is, after all, a ‘definitive’ connection, expressing part of what it is to be magnetic, yet the magnet causes the fillings to move.
There I then, a clear distinction between reasons proper and causes, and even between reason states and event causes: But the distinction cannot be used to show that the relations between reasons and the actions they justify is in no way causal. Precisely parallel points hold in the epistemic domain (and indeed, for all similarly admit of justification, and explanation, by reasons). Suppose my reason for believing that you received it today is that I sent it by express yesterday. My reason, strictly speaking, is that I sent it by express yesterday: My reason state is my believing this. Arguably reason justifies the further proposition I believe for which it is my reason and my reason state ~ my evidence belief ~ both explains and justifies my belief that you received the letter today. I an say, that what justifies that belief is [in fact] that I sent the letter by express yesterday, but this statement expresses my believing that evidence proposition, and you received the letter is not justified, it is not justified by the mere truth of the proposition (and can be justified even if that proposition is false).
Similarly, there are, for belief for action, at least five main kinds of reason (1) normative reasons, reasons (objective grounds) there are to believe (say, to believe that there is a green-house-effect): (2) Person-relative normative reasons, reasons for [say] me to believe, (3) subjective reasons, reasons I have to believe (4) explanatory reasons, reasons why I believe, and (5) motivating reasons for which I believe. Tenets of (1) and (2) are propositions and thus, not serious candidates to be causal factors. The states corresponding to (3) may not be causal elements. Reasons why, tenet (4) are always (sustaining) explainers, though not necessarily even prima facie justifier, since a belief can be casually sustained by factors with no evidential value. Motivating reasons are both explanatory and possess whatever minimal prima facie justificatory power (if any) a reason must have to be a basis of belief.
Current discussion of the reasons-causes issue has shifted from the question whether reason state can causally explain to the perhaps, deeper questions whether they can justify without so explaining, and what kind of causal states with actions and beliefs they do explain. ‘Reliabilist’ tend to take as belief as justified by a reason only if it is held at least in part for that reason, in a sense implying, but not entailed by, being causally based on that reason. ‘Internalists’ oftentimes deny this, as, perhaps, thinking we lack internal access to the relevant causal connections. But internalists need internal access to what justified ~ say, the reason state ~ and not to the (perhaps quite complex) relations it bears the belief it justifies, by virtue for which it does so. Many questions also remain concerning the very nature of causation, reason-hood, explanation and justification.
Nevertheless, for most causal theorists, the radical separation of the causal and rationalizing role of reason-giving explanations is unsatisfactory. For such theorists, where we can legitimately point to an agent’s reasons to explain a certain belief or action, then those features of the agent’s intentional states that render the belief or action reasonable must be causally relevant in explaining how the agent came to believe or act in a way which they rationalize. One way of putting this requirement is that reason-giving states not only cause but also causally explain their explananda.
The general attempt to understand the components of a working language, the relationship the understanding speaker has to its elements, and the relationship they bear to the world. The subject therefore, embraces the traditional division of ‘semiotic into ‘syntax’, ‘semantics’, and ;’pragmatics’. The philosophy of language thus mingles with the philosophy of mind, since it needs an account of what it is in our understanding that enables us to use language. It also mingles with the metaphysics of truth and the relationship with the metaphysics of truth and the relationship between sign and object. Much philosophy especially in the 20th century, has been informed by the belief that philosophy of language is the fundamental basis of all philosophical problems, in that language is the distinctive exercise of mind, and the distinctive way in which we give shape to metaphysical beliefs. Particular topics will include the problems of ‘logical form’ and the basis of the division between ‘syntax’ and ‘semantics’, as well as problems of understanding the number and nature of specifically semantic relationships such as ‘meaning’, ‘reference’, ‘prediction’, and ‘quantification’. Pragmatics include the theory of ‘speech acts’, while problems of ‘rule following’ and the ‘indeterminacy of translation’ infect philosophies of both pragmatics and semantics.
There is no denying it, the language of thought hypothesis has a compelling neatness about it. A thought is depicted as a structure of internal representational elements, combined in a lawful way , and playing a certain functional role in an internal processing economy.
In the philosophy of mind, an adequate conception of mind and its relationship to matter should explain how it is possible for mental events to interact with the rest of the world, and in particular to themselves have a causal influence on the physical world. It is easy to think that this must be impossible: It takes a physical cause to have a physical effect. Yet, every day experience and theory alike show that it is commonplace. Consciousness could hardly have evolved if it had, had no uses. In general, it is a measure of the success of any theory of mind and body that it should enable us to avoid ‘epiphenomenalism’.
On the same course, the Scottish philosopher, historian and essayist David Hume (1711-76), said that the earlier of two causally related events is always the cause, and the later effect. However, there are a number of objections to using the earlier-later ‘arrow of time’ to analyse the directional ‘arrow of causation’. In that, it seems in principle possible that some causes and effects could be simultaneous. More of the essence, the idea that time is directed from ‘earlier’ to ‘later’ itself stands in need of philosophical explanation ~ and one of the most popular explanation is that the idea of ‘movement’ from earlier to later depend on the fact that cause-effect pairs always have a given orientation in time. Even so, if we adopt such a ‘casual theory of the arrow of time’, and explain ‘earlier’ as the direction in which causes lie, and ‘later’ as the direction of effects, then we will clearly need to find some account of the direction of causality which does not itself assume the direction of time.
A number of such accounts have been proposed. The American philosopher David Lewis (1941-2002), has argued that the asymmetry of causation derives from an ‘asymmetry of over-determination’. The over-determination of present events by past events ~ consider a person who dies after simultaneously being shot and struck by lightning ~ is a very rare occurrence. By contrast, the multiple ‘over determination’ of present events by future events is absolutely normal. This is because the future, unlike the past, will always contain multiple traces of any present event. To use Lewis’s example, when the president presses the red button in the White House, the future effects do not only include the dispatch of nuclear missiles, but also his finger-print on the button, his trembling, the further depletion of his tonic and gin, the recording of the button’s click on tape, the emission of light from the passage of the signal current, and so on, and on, and on.
Lewis relates this asymmetry of over-determination to the asymmetry of causation as if we are to assume the cause of a given effect to have been absent, then this implies the effect would have been absent too, since (apart from freaks like the lightning-shooting case) there will not be any other causes left to ‘fix’ the effect. By contrast, if we suppose a given effect of some cause to have been absent, this does not imply the cause would have been absent, for there are still all the other traces left to ‘fix’ the cause. Lewis argues that these counterfactual considerations suffice to show why causes are different from effects.
Other philosophers appeal to a probabilistic variant of Lewis’s asymmetry. Following Reichenbach (1956), they note that the different causes of any given type of effect are normally probabilistically independent of each other: By contrast, the different effects of any given type of cause are normally probabilistically correlated. For example, both fat people are more likely to get excited than thin ones: The fact that both lung cancer and nicotine-stained fingers can result from smoking does imply that lung cancer is more likely among people with nicotine-stained fingers. So this account distinguishes effects from causes by the fact that the former, but not the ;latter, are probabilistically dependent on each other.
Even so, fundamental trajectories take upon the crescentic edge-horizons of ‘directedness’ or ‘aboutness’ of many, if not all, conscious states. The term was used by the ‘scholastics’, but revived in the 19th century by German philosopher and phytologist Franz Clemens Brentano (1838-1917). Our beliefs, thoughts, wishes, dreams, and desires are about things. Equally, the words we use to express these beliefs and other mental states are about things. The problem of intentionality is that of understanding the relation obtaining between a mental state, or its expression, and the things it is about. A number of peculiarities attend this relation. First, if I an in some relation to a chair, for instance by sitting on it, then both it and I must exist. But while mostly one thinks about things that exist, sometimes (although this way of putting it has its problems) ne has beliefs, hopes, and fears about things that do not, as when the child expects Santa Claus, and the child fears Zeus. Secondly, if I sit on the chair and the chair is the oldest antique in Toronto, then I it on the oldest antique in Toronto. But if I plan to avoid the mad axeman, and the mad axeman is in fact my friendly postman, I do not therefore plan to avoid my friendly postman. Intentional relations seem to depend on how the object is specified, or as Frége put it, on the mode of presentation of the object. This makes them quite the relations whose logic we can understand by means of the predicate calculus, and this peculiarity has implicated an unusual mental or emotional effect on those capable of reaction, especially those philosophers notably the American philosopher Willard van Orman Quine (1908-2000), who declared them unfit for use in serious science. More widespread is the view that since the concept is indispensable, we must either declare serious science unable to deal with the serious features of the mind, or explain how serious science may include intentionality. One approach in which we communicate fears and beliefs have a two-fold aspect, involving both the objects referred to, and the mode of presentation under which they are thought of, we can see the mind as essentially related to them, intentionality then becomes a feature of language, rather than a metaphysical or ontological peculiarity of the mental world.
The attitudes are philosophically puzzling because it is not easy to see how the intentionality of the attitudes fits with another conception of them, as local mental phenomena.
Beliefs, desires, hopes, and fears seem to be located in the heads or minds of the people that have them. Our attitudes are accessible to us through ‘introspection’. We think of attitudes as being caused at certain times by events that impinge on the subject’s body, specifically by perceptual events, such as reading a newspaper or seeing a picture of an ice-cream cone. Still, the psychological level of description carries with it a mode of explanation which ‘has no echo in physical theory’, wherefore, a major influence on philosophy of mind and language in the latter half of the 20th century brought Davidson to introduce the position known as ‘anomalous monism’ in the philosophy of mind, instigating a vigorous debate over the relation between mental and physical descriptions of persons, and the possibility of genuine explanation of events in terms of psychological properties. Following but enlarging upon the works of Quine on language, Davidson concentrated upon the figure of the ‘radical interpreter’, arguing that the method of interpreting a language could be thought of as constructing a ‘truth definition’ in the style of Alfred Tarski (1901-83), in which the systematic contribution of elements of sentences to their overall meaning is laid bare. The construction takes place within a generally holistic theory of knowledge and meaning. A radical interpreter can tell when a subject holds a sentence true, and using the principle of charity ends up making an assignment of truth conditions to individual sentence s. although Davidson is a defender of the doctrines of the ‘indeterminacy of radical translation and the ‘scrutability’ of reference, his approach has seemed to many to offer some hope of identifying meaning as a respectable notion, even within a broader extensional approach to language. Davidson is also known for rejection of the idea of a conceptual scheme, thought of as something peculiar to one language or one way of looking at the world, arguing that where the possibility of translation stops so does the coherence of the idea that there is anything to translate.
These attitudinal values can in turn cause in other mental phenomena, and eventually in the observable behaviour of the subject. Seeing the picture of an ice-cream cone leads to a desire for one, which leads me to forget the meaning I am supposed to attend and walk to the ice-cream sho instead. All of this seems to require that attitudes be states and activities that are localized in the subject.
But the phenomena of intentionality suggests that the attitudinal values are essentially relational in nature, they involve relations to the propositions at which they are directed and at the objects they are about. These objects may be quite remote from the minds of subjects. An attitudinal value seems to be individuated by the agent, the type of attitude (belief, desire, and so forth). It seems essential to the attitude reported by a role of assertion that it is directed toward the proposition that is directed propositionally proper.
Even so, the formulation ‘actions are doing that are intentional under some description’ reflects the minimizing view of the individuation of actions. The idea is that for what I did that count as an action, there must be a description ‘V-ing’ of what I did, such that I V’ d intentionally. Still, since (on the minimizing view) my causing the modification was the same even s my greeting you, and I greeted you intentionally, this event was an action. Or, suppose I did not know it was you on the phone, and thought it was my spouse. Still, I would have said ‘Good-morning’ intentionally, and that suffices for this event, however described to be an action. My snoring and involuntary coughing, nonetheless, are not intentional under any description, and so are not definite actions.
No matter, the standard confusion in the philosophical literature is to suppose that there is some special connection between intentionality-with-a-t, and intentionality-with-an-a, some authors even allege that these are identical. But, in fact, the two notions are quite distinct. Intentionality-with-a-t, is that property of the mind by which it is directed at, or is about objects and states of affairs in the world. Intentionality-with-an-s, is that phenomenon by which sentences fail to satisfy certain tests for extentionality.
There are many standard test for extentionality, but substitutability of identical two most common in the literature are substitutability of identicals and existential inference. The principle of substitutability states that referable expressions can be substituted for other without changing the truth value of the statement in which the substitution is made. The principle of existential inference states that any statement which contains a referring expression implies the existence of the object referred to, by that expression. But there are statements that do not satisfy these principles such statements are said to be intentional with respect to these tests for extentionality. An example is given as such from the statement that:
(1) The sheriff believes that Mr Howard is an honest man
And:
(2) Mr Howard is identical with the notorious outlaw, Jesse James
It does not follow that:
(3) The sheriff believes that the notorious outlaw, Jesse James, is an honest man.
This is a failure of the substitutability of identicals.
From the fact:
(4) Billy believes that Santa Claus will come on Christmas Eve
It does not follow that:
(5) There is some ‘x’ such that Billy believes ‘x’ will come on Christmas Eve.
This is a failure of existential inference. Thus, statements (1) and (4) fail tests for extentionality and hence are said to be intentional with respect to these tests.
A proper understanding of intentionality is crucial to the study of a number of topics in cognitive science, including perception, imagery, and consciousness. The term itself, intentionality, can be misleading, in suggesting intentional action, doing something intentionally, with a certain aim or purpose. In cognitive science, the term is used in a different, more technical sense. Intentionality involves reference or aboutness or some similar relation to something having what the scholastics of the Middle Ages called intentional inexistence.
When Ruth thinks of Wally K., as a cognitive scientist, the intentional object of her thought is Wally K., and the intentional content of her thought is that Wally K., is a cognitive scientist. She has a mental representation of him as a cognitive scientist. What Ruth thinks about has intentional inexistence in the sense that her thoughts may be wrong and she can have thoughts about things that do not even exist. She may think incorrectly that Wally K., is a computer scientist or even that Santa Claus is a computer scientist.
If you treat intentionality as a relation to an intentional object, you must remember that it is not a real relation in the way that kissing or touching is. A real relation holds between two existing things independently of how they are conceived. When a woman kisses a man and the man she kisses is bald, the woman kisses a bald man. But Ruth can think about a man who happens to be bald without thinking of him as bald: She may represent him as hairy. Similarly. Ruth can think of someone who does not exist but cannot kiss or touch someone who does no exist.
Looking for something is an example of an intentional activity in this technical sense of intentional as well as in the more ordinary sense having to do with what you are aiming at. You sometimes look for things that turn out not to exist. Ponce de Leon searched in Florida for the fountain of youth. Also, thee was no such thing to be found.
There can be intentionality without representation. For example, needing something is an intentional phenomenon. The grass in my lawn can need water even though it is not going to get any and even if there is no water to give it. But the grass does not represent the water it needs.
Other examples of intentional phenomena include spoken and written language, gestures, representational paintings, photographs, films, road maps, and traffic lights. It is controversial how these last instances of intentionality are related to the intentionality of thoughts and other cognitive states.
Nonexistent intentional objects like Santa Claus and the fountain of youth raise difficult logical puzzles if taken seriously as objects. What properties do they have? What sorts of properties does Santa Claus have, as he in conceived by a certain child? Perhaps he is fat, lives at the North pole, dresses in red, drives a sleigh, brings presents to children at Christmas time, and has in at least, eight reindeer. But intentional objects cannot always have all the properties which they are envisioned as having, because, as in the case on the child’s conception of Santa Claus, a nonexistent intentional object may be envisioned as existent, and it is inconsistent to suppose that something could be both existent and nonexistent.
You must resist the temptation to try to resolve such problems by identifying intentional objects with mental objects such as ideas or mental representations. That identification does not work. The child does have an idea of Santa Claus, and Ponce de Leon had an idea of the fountain of youth. But the child does not believe that his idea of Santa Claus lives at the North Pole. Nor was Ponce de Leon looking for a mental representation of the fountain of youth. He already had a mental representation: He was looking for the [intentional] object of that representation.
Is it enough to say that a nonexistent intentional object is a merely possible object ~ is not a completely general account, because some intentional objects are not even possible? Someone may try to find the greatest prime number without realizing that there is no such thing. The intentional object of the attempt ~ the greatest prime number ~ is not a possible object. There is no possible world in which it exists.
One controversy concerning intentionality concerns how to provide a logically adequate account of talk of intentional objects. That is a controversy in philosophical logic and may not be especially important to the rest of cognitive science.
The moral is that, on the other, in which you have to take of nonexistent intentional objects with a grain of salt, without being too serious about the notion that there really are such things. And, yet, you have to be careful not to conclude that the child pondering Santa Claus is not really thinking about anything o that Ponce de Leon was not really looking for anything as he wandered through Florida.
To what extent does cognition involve intentionality? In one view, everything cognitive is intentional: Intentional inexistence is the mark of the mental, according to the German philosopher and psychologist Franz Clemens Brentano (1838-1917), who may be regarded as the foundation of the phenomenological movement in philosophy. His major work was ‘Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunld’ (1864, trans., as ‘Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint’, (1973) which rehabilitates the medieval concentration of the mental as a fundamental aspect, as well, he wrote on theological matter, and on moral philosophy, where the directedness of emotions allows a notion of their correct and incorrect objects, thus permitting him a notion of moral objectivity.
Clearly, many feelings recognized in folk psychology have intentionality and are not simply raw feels. A child hopes that Santa Claus will bring a big red fire truck and fears that Santa Claus will bring a lump of coal instead. The child is happy that Christmas is tomorrow and unhappy that he hasn’t been a good little boy for the past few weeks. A child’s hopes, fears, happiness, and unhappiness have intentional object and intentional content.
It is unclear whether all feelings or emotions have intentional content in this way. Do feelings of ‘free-floating’ anxiety and depression have no intentional content, so that you are not anxious about anything or depressed about anything, but just depressed? Or do such states have a very general nonspecific content, so that you are anxious about things in general or depressed about things in general, just not anxious or depressed about something specific? It is hard to say what turns on the answer to these questions, however.
Perceptual experience has intentionality insomuch as it presents or represents a certain environment. How perceptual experience present’s o represents things may be accurate or inaccurate. Things may or may not be as they seem to be. Sometimes what you see or seem to see does not really exit, as when William Shakspere’s Macbeth hallucinated a bloody dagger.
The intentional content of perceptual experience is sortally perspectival, representing how things are from here, or even representing how things are as perceived from this place. The content of the experience may even be in part about the experience itself: What ids perceived is perhaps seen as causing that very experience.
The dagger is an intentional object of Macbeth’s perceptual experience. That’s what he is or seems to be aware of. You may be tempted to think that Macbeth must be aware of a mental image of a dagger, but that is like thinking that Ponce de Leon must have been trying to find an idea of the fountain of youth.
Reconditions amounting to mental imagery have intentionality. What you image or imagine is the intentional object of your imagining or imaging. When you picture Lucy’s smile is what you imagine. Theories of imagery offer accounts of the structure of the inner representation involved in one’s imagery and the processes that operate on the structure. But what you imagine is not that inner mental representation, you imagine Lucy’s smile.
The term ‘mental image’ is ambiguous. Sometimes it refers to the imagining of that thing, picturing Lucy smiling. Sometimes it refers to the hypothetical inner representation formed when something is imagined, an inner mental picture or description of Lucy smiling. It is important not to confuse these things. Otherwise, the substantial claim that imagination involves the construction of inner pictures or the sorts of mental representations with specific structures will be conflated with the obvious fact that you are capable of imaging various things.
Similarly, it is important to distinguish imaging something revolving from actually revolving a mental representation in your mind or head: It is important to distinguish imagining scanning a scene from scanning an inner mental representation.
It is controversial what sort of introspective awareness you have of your inner mental representations. Matters are only confused through failure to distinguish the various senses of mental image. You have something that might be called ‘introspective’ awareness of mental images in the first sense: Namely, the intentional object of your thoughts. You often know what you are thinking about, imagining, perceiving, and so forth. It is unclear whether you have any corresponding access to the mental representations, if any, underlying your thinking, imagining, perceiving, and so forth.
The ascendancy of cognitive approaches to mind has brought with it a renewed interest in imagery. Two problems concerning representation have held centre stage in these discussions, as the first problem, is of a piece with older ontological worries over the status of so-called ‘pictures in the mind’. Proponents of imaginistic theories often talk in ways that seem to presuppose that images are objects, like physical objects, that can be rotated, scanned, approached, enlarged, and so forth. Yet it is hard to make sense of such reification, given that mental images have no mass, physical size, shape, or location. The second problem concerning imagery has close ties to debates over the adequacy of the (digital) computer model of mind. The reason for this is that images are typically identified with pictures and thus allied with analogue representation. So it is held that if we employ images in cognition, it shows that claims that all mental representation is propositional or sentential, i.e., digital, is false. In turn, if mental processing involves the use of non-digital, pictorial representations, our minds and cognitive activities cannot be understood within the constraints of the standard computer model. Although seemingly separate mattes, the issue of ontological reification and the issue of ontological reification and the issue for those who assume that analogue representational function via their sharing or having features analogous to those they represent. Most proponents of imaginistic explanation allow that their theories would be unsustainable if they did require that their literally be items in the mind that possessed spatial dimensions and other physical properties. They have offered various proposals attempting to show how it is possible to cash in on talk, of using or manipulating images without falling into the trap of reification. In any case, it should be clear that questions of reification also pose a problem for proponents of sentential models of mind, who claim that we think in words. For the ontological quandary of giving a satisfactory account of how there can be pictures or maps in the head is at root no different from the problem of how there can be words and sentences in the head. And if a satisfactory answer is available to the latter, it should be adaptable to the former.
A good deal of the debate over imagery has been obscured by problematic accounts of the basis of the ‘stand for’ relation and by unsupported assumptions about the nature, function and distinction between and among linguistic and non-linguistic forms of representation. For example, it is common for both proponents and critics of imagery to identify images with pictures or picture-like items, and then take it for granted that pictorial representation can be explained in terms of resemblance or some other notion of 1 ~ 1 correspondence, or assume that since pictures are like their referents they require no interpretation. But it is highly questionable whether such accounts are adequate for dealing with our everyday use of pictures (maps, diagrams, and so forth), in cognition. The difficulties involved with this older understanding of Iconic representation become more acute when applied in imaginistic or mental pictures.
Expanding the representational domain is something problematic in the very way the imagery controversy, along with other debates over mind and cognition have been set up as a choice between whether humans employ one or two kinds of representational systems. As we know that humans make use of an enormous number of different types of [external] representational systems. These systems differ in form and structure along a variety of syntactic, semantical and other dimensions. It would appear there is no sense in which these various and diverse systems can be divided into two well-specified kinds. Nor does it seem possible to reduce, decode, or capture the cognitive content of all of these forms of representation into sentential symbols. Any adequate theory of mind is going to have to deal with the fact that many more than two types of representation are employed in our cognitive activities, then, to assume that yet-to-be discovered modes of internal representation must fit neatly into one or twp pre-ordained categories.
Appeals to representations play a prominent role in contemporary work in the study of mind. With some justification, most attention has been focussed on language or language-like symbol systems. Even when some non-linguistic systems are countenanced, they tend to be given second-class status. This practice, however, has had a rather constricting affect on our understanding of human cognitive activities. It has, for example, resulted in a lack of serious examination of the function of the arts in organizing the reorganizing our world. And the cognitive uses of metaphor, expression. Exemplification, and the like are typically ignored. Moreover, recognizing that a much broader range of representational systems play a number of philosophical presuppositions and doctrines in the study of mind into question: (1) Claims about the unique of representation as the mark of the mental (2) the identification of contentful or informational states with the sentential of propositional attitudes: (3) The idea that all thought can be expressed in language (4) the assumption that compositional accounts of the structure of language provide the only model we have for the exhibits or productive nature of representational systems in general, and (5) The tendency to construe all cognitive transitions among representations as cases of inference (based on syntactic or logical form.)
Thought, in having contents, possess semantic properties, and, fundamentally, a central assumption in much current philosophy of mind, is that, propositional attitudes, like beliefs and desires play a causal or explanatory role in mediating between perception and behaviour ~ in terms of reasons ~ we ourselves and each other as ‘rational purposive creatures, fitting our beliefs to the world as we perceive it and seeing to obtain what we desire in the light of them. Reasoning-giving explanation can be offered not only for actions and beliefs, which will gain most attention to this entry: But, also, for desires, intentions, hopes, fears, angers within a network of rationalizing links is part of the individuating characteristics of this range of psychological states and the intentional acts they explain. Even though
the reason-giving relation is a normative claim, as such of a reason for believing, acting, and so forth, that if, given to other psychological states, this belief/action is justified or appropriate profoundly of someone’s reason consists in making clear this justificatory link. Paradigmatically, the psychological states that provide an agent with reason and intentional states individuated in terms of their propositional content, are links of the rationalization of this range of psychological states and intentional acts they explain. The associated process of simple ideas we are evermore of an understanding the fundamental aspect attributed to content. This causal-explanatory conception of propositional attitudes, however, casts little light on their representational aspects. The casual-explanatory y role of beliefs and desires depend on how they interact with each other and with subsequent actions. But the representational contents of such states can often involve referential relations to external entities with which thinkers are causally quite unconnected. These referential relations thus seem extraneous to the causal-explanatory roles of mental states. It follows that the causal-explanatory conception of mental states must somehow be amplified or supplemented if it is to account for representational content. Yet, mental events, states or processes with content include seeing the door is shut, believing you are being followed and calculating the square root of two. Saying that, as mental state with content can fail to refer, but there always exist s a specific condition for a state with content to refer to certain things. When the state has a correctness or fulfilment condition, its correctness is determined by whether its referents have the properties the content specifies for them.
In general, we cannot understand a person’s reasons for acting as he does without knowing the array of emotions and sensation to which he is subject, of what is remembered and of what is forgotten, and how reasons beyond the confines of minimal rationality. Even the content involving perceptual states, which play a fundamental role in individuating content, cannot be understood purely in terms relating to minimal rationality. Overall, contents are normally specified by ‘that . . .’ clauses, and it is natural to suppose that a content has the same kind of sequential and hierarchical structure as the sentence that specifies it. This supposition would be widely accepted for conceptual content. It is, however, a substantive thesis that all content is conceptual. One way of treating one sort of perceptual content is to regard the content as determined by a spatial type, the type under which the region of space around the perceiver must fall if the experience with that content is to represent the environment correctly. So, that all content is conceptual legitimacy for using these spatial types in giving the content of experience does not undermine the thesis that all content is conceptual. Such supporters will say, that the spatial type is just a way of capturing what can equally be captured by conceptual components such as ‘that distance’, or ‘that direction’, where these demonstratives are made available by the perception in question. Thar non-conceptual content will respond that these demonstratives themselves cannot be elucidated without mentioning the spatial type which lack sentence-like structure.
Beliefs are true or false. If, as representationalists had it, beliefs are relations to mental representations, then beliefs must be relations to representations that have truth values among their semantic properties. Sentences, at least declarative, are exactly the kind of representations that ave truth values, this in virtue of denoting and attributing. So, if mental representations are as sententialism says, we could readily account for the truth valuation of mental representations.
Beliefs serve a function within the mental economy. They play a central part in reasoning and, thereby, contribute to the control of behaviour of which has lead into the topic through which elaborative considerations have been defended with that in a number of philosophers and psychologists. The contributive rationalities depict of a set of beliefs, desires, and actions, also perceptions, intentions, and decisions, must fit together in various ways. If they do not, in the extreme case they fail to constitute a mind at all ~ no rationality, no agent. This core notion of rationality in philosophy of mind thus concern a cluster of personal identity conditions, that is, holistic coherence requirements upon the system of elements comprising a person’s mind. As such, functionalism about content and meaning appears to lead to holism. In general transition between mental stares and between mental states and behaviour depend on the contents of the mental states themselves. If I believe that sharks are dangerous, I will infer from sharks being in the water to the conclusion that people should not be swimming. Suppose I first think that sharks are dangerous, but then change m mind, coming to think that sharks are not dangerous. However, the content that the first belief affirms cannot be the same as the content that the second belief denies, because the transition relations (e.g., the inference from sharks being in the water to what people should do) that constitute the contents changed when I changed my mind. A natural functionalist reply is to say that some transitions are relevant to content individualists have not told us how to do that. Appeal to a traditional analytic/synthetic distinction clearly would do. For example, ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ would have the same content on such a view. It could not be analytic that dogs bark or that cats meow, since we can imagine a non-barking breed of dog and a non-meowing breed of cat. If ‘Dogs are animals’ is analytic, so is ‘Cats are animals’. If ‘Cats are adult kittens’ is analytic, so is ‘Dogs are adult puppies’. Dogs are not cats ~ but then cats are not dogs. So a functionalist account will not find traditional analytic inference relations that will distinguish the meaning of ‘dog’ from the meaning of ‘cat’. Other functionalist accept holism for ‘narrow content’, attempting to accommodate intuitions about the stability of content by appealing to wide content.
While a person’s putative beliefs must mesh with the person’s desire and decisions, or else they cannot qualify as the individuals beliefs: Similarly, for desire, decision and so forth. This is ‘agent-constitutive rationality’ ~ that agent’s posses it is more than an empirical hypothesis. A related conception; to be rational (that is, reasonable, well-founded, not subject to epistemic criticism) a belief or decision at least, must cohere with the rest of the person’s cognitive system ~ (for instance, in terms of logical consistency and application of valid inference procedures. Rationality constraints therefore, are key linkages among the cognitive, as distinct from qualitative, mental states.
‘Reason’ capitalizes on various semantic and evidential relations among antecedently held beliefs (and perhaps other attitudes) to generate new beliefs to which subsequent behaviour ,might be tuned. Apparently, reasoning is a process that attempts to secure new true beliefs by exploiting old [true] beliefs. By the lights of representationalist, reasoning must be a process defined over mental representations. Sententialism tells us that the type of representation in play in reasoning is most likely sentential ~ even in mental ~ representation.
The sentential theory also seems supported by the argument that the ability to think certain thoughts appears intrinsically connected with the ability to think certain others. For example, the ability to think that Walter hit’s Julie goes hand in hand with the ability to think that Julie hits Walter, but not with the ability to think that Toronto is overcrowded. Why is this? The ability to produce or understand certain sentences is intrinsically connected with the ability to produce or understand certain others. For example, there are no native speakers of English who know how to say ‘Walter hits Julie’ but who do not know how to say ‘Julie hits Walter’. Similarly, there are no native speakers who understand the former sentence but not the latter. These facts are easily explained if sentences have a syntactic and semantic structure. But if sentences are taken to be atomic, these facts are a complete mystery. What is true for sentences involving manipulating mental representations? If mental representations with a propositional content have a semantic and syntactic structure like that of sentences, it is no accident that one who is able to think that Walter hit’s Julie is thereby also able to think that Julie hits Walter. Furthermore, it is no accident that one who can think these thoughts need not thereby be able to think thoughts having different components ~ for example, the thought that Toronto is overcrowded. And what goes here for thought goes for belief and the other propositional attitudes.
A traditional view of philosophical knowledge can be straightforward and so forth, as held by comparing and contrasting philosophical and scientific investigation, as follows. The two types of investigations differ both in their methods (the former is a priori, and the latter a posteriori)and in the metaphysical status of their results (the former yields facts that are metaphysically necessary and the later yields facts that are metaphysically contingent). Yet the two types of investigations resembled each other in that both, if successful, uncover new facts, and these facts, although expressed in language , are generally not about language (except for investigations I such specialized areas as philosophy of language and empirical linguistics).
This view of philosophical knowledge has considerable appeal. But it faces problems. First, the conclusions of some common philosophical argument seem preposterous. Such positions as that it is no more reasonable to eat bread than arsenic, because it is only in the past that arsenic poisoned people), or that one can never know he is not dreaming, may seem to go so far against commonsense as to be for that reason unacceptable. Second, philosophical investigation does not lead to a consensus among philosophers. Philosophy, unlike the sciences, lacks an established body of generally-agreed-upon truths. Moreover, philosophy lacks an unequivocally applicable method of setting disagreements. (The qualifier‘unequivocally applicable’ is to forestall the objection that philosophical disagreements are settled by the method of a priori argumentation: There is often unresolvable disagreement about which si de has won a philosophical argument.)
In the face of these and other considerations, various philosophical movements have repudiated the traditional view of philosophical knowledge. Thus, verificationism responds to the unresolvability of traditional philosophical disagreements by putting forth a criterion of literal manfulness: ‘A statement is held to be literally meaningful if and only if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable’ where a statement is analytic if it is just a matter of definition, and tradition controversial philosophical views, such as that it is metaphysically impossible to have knowledge of the world outside one’s own knowledge of the world outside one’s own mind, would count as neither analytic nor empirically verifiable ‘logical positivism’, in the sense of being incapable of truth or falsity, and so not a possible object of cognition. This required a criterion of meaningfulness, and it was found in the idea of empirical verification. Verification or conformation is not necessarily something that can be carried out by the person who entertains the sentence or hypothesis in question, or even by anyone at all at the stage of intellectual and technological development achieved at the time it is entertained. A sentence is cognitively meaningful if and only if it is in principle empirically verifiable or falsifiable.
Anything which does not fulfil this criterion is declared literally meaningless. There is no significant ‘cognitive’ question as to its truth or falsity: It not an appropriate object of enquiry. Moral and aesthetic and other ‘evaluative’ sentences are held to be neither conformable nor disconfirmable on empirical grounds, and so are cognitively meaningless. They are at best, expressions of feelings or preference which are neither true nor false. Bu t they did not spend much time trying to show this in detail about the philosophy of the past. They were more concerned with developing a theory of meaning and of knowledge adequate to the understanding and perhaps even the improvement of science.
The logical positivist conception of knowledge in its original and purest form sees human knowledge as a complex intellectual structure employed for the successful anticipation of future experience. It requires, on the one hand, a linguistic or conceptual framework in which to express what is to be categorized and predicted and, ion the other, a factual element which provides that abstract form with content. This comes of have that anyone can understand or intelligibly think to be so could go beyond the possibility of human experience, and the only reason anyone could have for believing anything must come, ultimately, from actual experience.
The general project of the positivist theory of knowledge is to exhibit the structure, content, and basis of human knowledge in accordance with these empiricist principles. Since science is regarded as the repository of all genuine human knowledge, this becomes the task of exhibiting the structure, or as it was called, the ‘logic’ of science. The theory of knowledge, thus become the philosophy of science. It has three major tasks (1) to analyses the meaning o f the statements of science exclusively in terms of observations or experiences in principle available to human beings. (2) To show how certain observations o r experiences serve to confirm a given statement in the sense of making it more warranted or reasonable: (3) To show how non-empirical or a priori knowledge of the necessary truths o f logic and mathematics is possible even though every matter of fact which can be intelligibly thought or known is empirically verifiable or falsifiable.
1. The slogan ‘the meaning of a statement is its method of verification’ expresses the empirical verification theory of meaningfulness according to which a sentence is cognitively meaningful if and only if it is empirically verifiable. It says in addition what the meaning of each sentence is: It is all those observations which would confirm or disconfirm the sentence. Sentences which would be verified or falsified by all the same observations are empirically equivalent or have the same meaning.
A sentence recording the result of a single observation is an observation or ‘protocol’ sentence. It can be conclusively verified of falsified on a single occasion. Every other meaningful statement is a ‘hypothesis’ which implies an indefinitely large number of observation sentences which together exhaust its meaning, but at no time all of them have been verified or falsified. To give an ‘analysis’ of the statements of scientific statement can reduced in this way to nothing more than a complex combination of directly verifiable ‘protocol’ sentences.
Any view according to which he condition of a sentence’s or a thought’s being meaningful or intelligibly are equated with the conditions of its being verifiable of falsifiable. An explicit defence of the position would be a defence of the variability principle of meaningfulness. Implicit verificationism is often present in positions or arguments which do not defend that principle in general. But which reject suggestions to the effect that certain sort of claim is unknowable or unconfirmable on the sole ground that it would therefore be meaningless or intelligible is indeed a guarantee of knowability or confirmability is the position sound. If it is, nothing we understand could be unknowable or unconfirmable.
2. The observations recorded in particular ‘protocol’ sentences are said to confirm those ‘hypotheses’ of which they are instances. The task f confirmation theory is therefore to define the notion of a confirming instance of a hypothesis and to show how the occurrence of more and more such instances adds credibility or warrant to the hypothesis in question. A complete answer would involve a solution of the problem of induction: To explain how any past or present experience makes it reasonable to believe in some thing that has not yet been experienced.
3. Logical and mathematical propositions, and other necessary truths do not predict the course of future sense experience. They cannot be empirically confirmed or disconfirmed. But they are essential to science, and so must be accounted for. They are one and all ‘analytic’ in something like Kant’s sene: True solely in virtue of the meaning of their constituent terms. They serve only to make explicit the contents of and the logical relations among the terms or concept which make up the conceptual framework through which we interpret and predict experience. our knowledge of such truths is simply knowledge of what is and what is not contained in the concepts we use.
Experience can perhaps show that a given concept has no I instances, or that it is not a useful concept for us to employ. But that would not show that what we understand ti be included in that concept is not really included in it. Or that is not the concept we take it to be. Our knowledge of the constituents of and the relations among our concepts is therefore not dependent on experience: It is a priori. It is knowledge of what holds necessarily, and all necessary truths are ‘analytic’, there is no synthetic a priori knowledge.
The anti-metaphysical empiricism of logical positivism requires that there be no access to any facts beyond sense experience. The appeal to analyticity succeed in accounting for knowledge of necessary truths only if analytic truths state no facts, and our knowledge of them does not require non-sensory awareness of matters of fact. The reduction of all the concepts of arithmetic, for example, to those of logic alone, as was taken to have been achieved in Whitehead and Russell’s ‘Principia Mathematica’, showed that the truths of arithmetic were derived from nothing more than definitions of their constituent terms and general logical laws. Frége would have called them ‘analytic’ for that reason alone. But for a complete account positivism would have also to show that general logical laws state no facts.
Under the influence of their reading of Wittgenstein’s ‘Tractatus Logico Philosophicus’, the positivists regarded all necessary and therefore all analytic truths as ‘tautologies’. They do not state relations holding independently of us within an objective domain of concepts,. Their truth is ‘purely formal’: The y are completely ‘empty’ and ‘devoid of factual content’. The y are to be understood as made true solely by our decisions to think and speak in one way than another, as somehow true ‘by convention’. A priori knowledge of them is in this way held to be compatible with there being no non-sensory access to a world of thing s beyond sense experience.
The full criterion of meaningfulness therefore says that a sentence is cognitively meaningful if and only if either it is analytic or it is in principle empirically verifiable or falsifiable.
The interest in logic, however, goes beyond the ability to use it to produce detailed proofs. There are interesting properties that can be proven of logical systems themselves. Many of these proofs of what are called ‘metatheorems’ were developed as part of an endeavour to use logic to provide a foundation to arithmetic. The German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics, Gottlob Frége (1848-1925) whose fist important work came in the Begriffsschift (‘concept writing’, 1879). Is also the first example of a formal system in the sense of modern logic? In it Frége undertakes to develop a formal system within which mathematical proofs may be given. It was his discovery of the correct representation of generality, the notion of ‘quantifier’ and ‘variable’, the at opened the possibility of successfully achieving this aim. With the at notation Frége could represent sentences involving multiple generality (such as the form ‘for every small number ‘e’ there is a number ‘n’ such that . . . ’) on which the validity of much mathematical reasoning depends. In 1884, Frége published the Grundlagen der Arithmetik (translated as, The Foundaments of Arithmetic, by the British linguistic, philosopher J.L. Austin, 1959). The first volume of the Grundgesetze der Arithimetic (1893, translates, as The Basic Laws of Arithmetic, 1964) and formalized the mathematical approach of the Grundlagen, a task that necessitated giving the first formal theory of classes, it was this theory that was later shown inconsist by Russell’s paradox.
Frége’s distinction as a logician is matched by his deep concern with the basic semantic concepts involved in the logical foundations of his work. In a succession of papers he forges the basic concepts and distinctions that have dominated subsequent philosophical investigation of logic and language. The topics of these writings include sense (Sinn) and reference, negation, assertion, truth/falsity, and the nature of thought. Although Frége’s relation to the philosophical surrounding s of his time are debatable, however, these concerns and his approach to them stamp Frége as the founding figure of ‘analytic philosophy’. Nonetheless, his concern to protect a timeless objectivity for thought and its contents has led to accusations of Platonism, and his own views of the objects of mathematics troubled him until the end of his life.
The program of reducing arithmetic to logic turned out to be impossible, but pursuit of this program resulted in number of important findings. For example, in addition to consistency another important property of a logical system is completeness. A complete system is one in which the axiom structure is sufficient tp allow derivation of all true statements within the particular domain. The German-speaking mathematician logician, Kurt Gödel (1906-78) was to include the proof of the completeness of the first-order predicate calculus, and the ground-breaking results commonly referred to as ‘Gödel’s theorems’, for which his proof that no system can show its own consistency effectively put and end to Hilbert’s programme, as Gödel’s theorem of 1931, which showed that any system strong enough to provide a consistency proof of arithmetic would need to make logical and mathematical assumptions at least as strong as arithmetic itself , and hence be just as much prey to on hidden inconsistencies. Kurt Gödel established that quantificational logic is complete ~ any statement that must be true whenever the premises are true can, in principle, be derived using the standard inference rules of quantificational logic. But the fact that a system is complete does not mean that a procedure exists to generate a proof of any given logical consequences of the premises. If such a procedure exists the system is decidable. Sentential logic is decidable, and so are some restricted versions of quantificational logic. But Chu proved that general quantificational logic is not decidable. In general quantificational logic, the mere fact that we have failed to derive a result from the postulates does not mean that it could not be derived: It may be that we simply have not yet constructed the right proof. Of even more significant to the program of grounding mathematics in logic was Gödel’s proof that, unlike quantificational logic, there is no consistent axiomatization of arithmetic that is complete. This is referred to as the ‘incompleteness of arithmetic’, and is commonly presented as the claim that for any axiomatization of arithmetic there will be a true statement that cannot be proven within the system.
Some of these theorems about logic have played important roles in the development of computer science. Other claims of logic, which are commonly accepted as true but which are not or cannot be prove n, have figured prominently in motivating the use of computers to study cognition. An example is Church’s thesis, which holds that any decidable process is effectively decidable or computable, which is to say that it can be automated. If this thesis is true, then it follows that it is possible to implement a formal system on a computer that will generate the proof of any particular theorem that follows from the postulate. The assumption that this thesis is true has buttressed the use of computers in studies of cognitive premisses. Assuming that cognition rules on decidable procedures, this thesis tells us that these procedures can be implemented on a digital computer as well as in the brain. Many have assumed that the procedures of symbolic logic characterize much of human reasoning, and because these procedures can readily be implemented on a computer, many investigators have tried to develop simulations of human reasoning using computers equipped with these inference procedures, however, the interest in logic is that numerous philosophers have tried to explicate scientific theories as logical structures and the structures of scientific explanation in terms of formal logical derivation.
According to Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924), of which the metaphysical picture to which this leads is one that celebrates unity and wholeness as attuned of real, with anything partial and dependent upon division, in the way that thought is, yet, by contrast, formulated in language is always partial, and dependent upon categories themselves are inadequate to the harmonious whole. Nevertheless, these self-contradictory elements somehow contribute to the harmonious whole, or Absolute, lying beyond categorizations,. Although absolute idealism maintains few adherents today, Bradley’s dissent from empiricism, his ‘holist’ and the brilliance and style of his writing continue to make him the most interested of the late 19th century writers influenced by the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Georg Hegel (1770-1831). And without a doubt, which Hegel contributed many articles, and wrote his first works the, ‘Phänoomenologie des Geistes’ (1807), and wrote as ‘The phenomenology of Mind, 1977. Again, in 1816 he became professor of philosophy at Heidelberg, where he produced the Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenchaften im Grundrisse (‘Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline’) It is, nonetheless, that the cornerstone of Hegel’s system, or world view, is the notion of freedom, conceived not as simple licence to fulfil preferences but as the rare condition of living self-consciously and in a fully rationally organization community or state (this is not, as it charged for exampled by Karl Raimund Popper (1902-19940), who in the traditional attempt to found scientific method in the support that experience gives to suitably formed generalizations and theories. Stressing the difficulty the problem of ‘induction’ puts in front of any such method. Popper substitutes an epistemology that starts with the bold imaginative formation of hypotheses. However, the tribunal of experience, which has the power to falsify them, but not to confirm them. Is that, the theory is capable of being refuted by experience, so that, in the philosophy of science of Popper falsifiablility is the great merit of genuine scientific theory, as opposed to unfalsifiable pseudo-science, notably psychoanalysis and historical materialism? Popper’s idea was that it could be a positive virtue in a scientific theory that it is bold, conjectural and goes beyond the evidence, but that it had to be capable of facing possible refutation. If each and every way things turn out is compatible with the theory, then it is no longer a scientific theory, but, for instance, an ideology or article of faith.
The complex relationship Bradley had with pragmatism, mark a major crux in the history of philosophy. In brief, the philosophy of meaning and truth especially associated with Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) and William James (1842-1910). Pragmatism is given various formulations by both writers, but the core in the belief that the meaning of a doctrine is the same as the practical effects of adopting it. Peirce interpreted a theoretical sentence as a confused form of thought whose meaning is only that of a corresponding practical maxim (telling us what to do in some circumstances). In James the position issues in a theory of truth, notoriously allowing that beliefs, including for example, belief in God, are true if the belief ‘works’ satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word’. On James’s view almost any belief might be respectable, and even true, provided it works (but working is not a simple matter for James). The apparently subjectivist consequences of this were widely assailed by Russell and Moore, and others in the early years of the 20th-century. This led to a division within pragmatism between those such as Walter Dewey (1859-1952), whose humanistic conception of practice, remains inspired by science and the more ‘idealistic’ route taken especially by the English writer F.C.S. Schiller (1864-1937), embracing the doctrine that our cognitive efforts and human needs actually transform the reality that we seek to describe. James often writes as if he sympathizes with this development. For instance, in The Meaning of Truth (1909), he considers the hypothesis that other people have no minds, and remarks that the hypothesis would not work because it would not satisfy our (i.e., men’s) egoistic cravings for the recognition and admiration of others. The complication that this is what makes it true that other persons have minds is the disturbing part.
Peirce’s own approach to truth is that it is what [suitable] processes of enquiry would tend to accept if pursued to an ideal limit. Modern pragmatist such as McKay Richard Rorty (1931-) and some writings that Hilary Putnam (1926-) have usually tried to dispense with an account of truth advocated by a minimal theory of truth, for example, holds that there is no general problem about what makes sentences or propositions true: A minimal theory of value holds that there is nothing useful to say in general about values and valuing. minimalism approaches arise when the prospects for a substantial meta-theory about some term seem dim. They are thus consonant with suspicion of ‘first philosophy’, or the possibility of a stand-point over and above involvements in some aspect of our activities, from which those activities can be surveyed and described. Minimalism is frequently associated with the anti-theoretical aspects of the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and has also been charged with being a fig-leaf for philosophical bankruptcy or anorexia.
Originally, a title for those books of Aristotle that came after ‘Physics’, the term is now applied to any enquiry that raises questions about reality that lie beyond or behind those capable of being tackled by the methods of science. Naturally, an immediately contested issue is whether there are any such questions, or whether any text of metaphysics should, in Hume’s words, be ‘committed to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion’ (Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding). The traditional examples will include questions of ‘mind’ and ‘body’, substance and accident, events, causation, and the categories of things that exist. However, a 17th-century coinage for the branch of metaphysics that concerns itself with what exists. Apart from the ‘ontological’ argument itself there have existed many deductive arguments that the world must continue things of one kind or another, simple things, unexpected things, eternal substances, necessary beings, and so forth. Such arguments often depend on or upon some version of the principle of ‘sufficient reason’, Kant is the greatest opponent of the view that unaided reason can tell us in detail what kinds of things must exist, and therefore do exist. These are the things the variables range over in a properly regimented formal presentation of the theory. Philosophers characteristically charge each other with ‘reifying’ thing improperly, and in the history of philosophy every kind of thing will at one time or another have been thought to be the fictitious result of an ontological mistake.
Metaphysics seeks to determine what are the basic or fundamental kinds of things that exist and to specify the nature of these entities. Historically, interest in metaphysics cantered on such issues as whether a supreme being or a creator god exists. Whether there are mental phenomena or spiritual phenomena that are different from physical phenomena, or whether there is such a thing as free will. In more recent times it has addressed the question of the kinds of entities that we can include in scientific theories. For example, are mental events the kinds of things that should be posited in a theory of human action? The set of entities posited in general said to specify the ontology to which the theory is committed.
It is important to note that the charter of metaphysical questions is generally taken to be different from the character of ordinary empirical questions such as whether there are any living dinosaurs. With such empirical questions we rely on such techniques as ordinary observations to settle the issue. Ontological questions are thought to be more fundamental and no resolvable by ordinary empirical investigations. It was thought that to address the classical questions of the existence of God or of minds separate from bodies required a kind of inquiry that went beyond ordinary empirical investigation. Sometimes it was claimed that such issues could be addressed simply through the tools of logic. For example, the ontological argument for God’s existence tried to argue from the idea of God as a perfect being to the actual existence of God did not exist, there would a more perfect being ~ a being just like God but who actually existed. Thus, the assumption that God does not exist is claimed to be contradictory, so God must exist. The modern ontological questions concern how we should set up the categories through which we conduct our empirical inquiry. The question of the appropriate categories arises prior to empirical observation and so cannot be easily settled by means of such observation.
To many non-philosophers both classical and contemporary questions of ontology seem peculiarly remote and unproductive. Of what value would it be to have an answer to an ontological question? The very character of ontological questions suggests that they lack practical significance. If ontological differences do not entail physical differences, it would seem that one could hold whatever ontology one wanted and still deal with the physical world in much the same way. When the challenge is put in this way, philosophers often find themselves hard put to provoke a satisfactory answer. A number of philosophers, in fact, have tried to divert attention away from metaphysical issues. The logical positivists, who clam that most classical questions of ontology were meaningless, whereas Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) tried to convince readers that when philosophers raised such issues they were letting their language go on a holiday, not raising real questions at all.
Other philosophers have sought to reduce the distance between ontological inquires and empirical ones. The most influential American philosopher of the latter half of the 20th century, Orman von Willard Quine (1908-2000), whose early work on mathematical logic, and issued in ‘A System of Logistic’ (1934). ‘Mathematical Logic’ (1940), and ‘Methods of Logic’ (1950). It was with the collection of papers from a ‘Logical Point of View’ (1953) that his philosophical importance became widely recognized. His celebrated attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction heralded a major shift away from the view of language descended from logical positivism, and a new appreciation of the difficulty of providing a sound empirical basis for theses concerning ‘convention’, ‘meaning’, and ‘synonymy’.
His reputation was cemented by ‘Word and Object’ (1960), in which the indeterminacy of radical translation first takes centre stage. In this and many subsequent writings Quine took a bleak view of the nature of the language with which we ascribe thoughts and beliefs to ourselves and others. The languages that are properly behaved and suitable for literal and true description of the world are those of mathematics and science. The entities to which our best theories refer must be taken with full seriousness in our ontologies, yet an empiricalist. Quine thus supposed that the abstract objects of set theory are required by science, and therefore exist. Quine, for example, proposed that when we settle on a scientific theory we thereby settle the question of what ontological scheme we accept. Invoking the framework of quantificational logic, where all the terms referring to objects can be represented as variable inn quantified expressions, Quine offers the maxim, ‘to be is to be the value of a bound variable’, i.e., the objects to which we attribute properties in our theories are the ones whose existence we accept. Although this attempt to place ontological questions in the context of scientific inquiry may seem particularly attractive when we consider how perplexing the issues are otherwise, we should not think that thereby we really avoid them. What this proposal overlooks is that many of the debates over the adequacy of scientific theories have focussed on the ontology assume by the theory. This has been particularly true in recent psychology, where there have been active disputes over whether to count mental events as causal factors in an explanatory theory. But such questions are not peculiar to psychology. In physics and biology as well, disputes between theories have often turned on ontological issues as much as an empirical issue. For example, there was a long controversy between Cartesians and Newtonians during the 17th and 18th centuries over the legitimacy of appals to action at a distance. Embryology at the end of the last century was torn by a prolonged battle between ‘vitalists’ and ‘mechanists’ over the appropriated kind of explanation for developmental phenomena.
However, it is once, again, felt in consideration of the argument: That ‘if anyone knows some ‘p’, then he or she can be certain that ‘p’. But no one can be certain of anything, and therefore, no one knows anything’. This argument, advanced in this form by Unger, is instructive, it repeats Descartes’ mistake of thinking that the psychological state of feeling certain ~ which someone Can be in with respect to falsehoods, such as the fact that I can feel certain that Northern Dancer will win the Derby next wee k, and be wrong ~ is what we are seeking in epistemology. But it also exemplifies the tendency in discursions of knowledge as such to make the definition of knowledge so highly restrictive little or nothing passes discernable scrutiny. Should one care if a suggested definition of knowledge is such that, as the argument jus t quoted tells us, no one can know anything? Just so long as one has many well-justified beliefs which work well in practice, can one not be quite content to know nothing? For my part, some might think it not to bad, that the overall interests are in connectionwith the justification of beliefs and not the definition of knowledge that they do so. Justification is an important matter, not ;least because in the area of application in epistemology where the really serious interest should lie ~ in question about the ‘philosophy of science’ ~ justification is the crucial problem. That is where epistemologists should be getting down to work. By comparison, efforts to define knowledge’ are trivial and occupy too much effort in epistemology. the disagreeable propensity of the debate generated by Gettier counter-examples, as from the American philosopher Edmund Gettier who provided a range of counter-examples to this formula, in his case a belief is true, and the agent is justified in believing it. But the justification does not relate to the truth of the belief in the right way, so that it is relatively y accidental, or a matter of luck, that the belief is true. for example, I see what I reasonably and justifiably take to be an even of your receiving a bottle of whiskey and this basis I believe you drink whiskey. The truth is the at you do not drink whiskey, but on this occasion you were in fact taking delivery of a medical specimen. In such a case my belief is true and justified, but I do not thereby know that you drink whiskey, since this truth is only accidental relative to m y evidence. The counter-example, sparked a prolonged debate over the kinds of conditions that might be substituted to give a better account of knowledge, or whether all suggestions would met similar problems.
The overall problem with justification is that the procedures we adopt, across all walks of epistemic life, appear highly permeable to difficulties posed by scepticism. The problem of justification is therefore a large part the problem of scepticism: Which precisely why discussion of scepticism is most central.
Nonetheless, Russell developed a method of philosophical analysis, the beginning of which are clear in the work of his idealist phase. This method was central to his revolt against idealism and was employed throughout his subsequent career. Its main distinctive feature is that it has two parts. First, it proceeds backwards from a given body of knowledge (the ‘results’) to its premises, and second, it proceeds forwards from the premises to a reconstruction of the original body of knowledge. Russell often referred to the first stage of philosophical analysis simply as ‘analysis’. In contrast to the second stage, which he called ‘synthesis’. While the first stage was seen as being the most philosophic al, both were nonetheless essential to philosophical analysis. Russell consistently adhered to this two-directional view of analysis throughout his career.
Analytic philosophy has never been fixed or stable, because it s intrinsically self-critical and its practitioners are always challenging their own presuppositions and conclusions. However, it is possible to locate a central period in analytic philosophy ~ the period comprising, roughly speaking, the logical positivist immediately priori to the 1939-45 war and the postwar phase of ;linguistic analysis. Both the prehistory and the subsequent history of analytic philosophy can be defined by the main doctrines of that central period.
In the central period, analytic philosophy was defined by a belief in two linguistic distinctions, combined with a research programme. The two distinctions are, first, that between analytic and synthetic propositions, and, secondly, that between analytic and synthetic propositions, and, secondly, that between descriptive and evaluative utterances. The research programme is the tradition al philosophical research programme as language knowledge, meaning, truth, mathematics and so forth. One way to see development of analytic philosophy over the past thirty years is to regard it as the gradual rejection of these distinctions, and a corresponding rejection of foundationalism as the crucial enterprise of philosophy. However, in the central period, these two distinctions served not only to identify the main beliefs of analytic philosophy, but, for those who accepted them and the research programme, they defined the nature of philosophy itself.
The distinction between analytic and synthetic prepositions was supposed to be the distinction between those propositions that are true or false as a matter of definition or of the meaning of the terms contained in them (the analytic propositions) and those that are true or false as a matter of fact in the word and not solely in virtue of the meaning of the words (the synthetic propositions) example of analytic truths would be such propositions as ‘Triangles are three-sided plane figures’, ’All bachelors are unmarried’, ‘Women are female’, ‘2 + 2 = 4', and so forth. In each of these, the truth of the proposition is entirely determined by its meaning: They are true by the definitions of the words that they contain. Such propositions can be known to be true or false a priori, and in each case they express necessary truths. Indeed, it was a characteristic feature of the analytic philosophy of this central period that terms such as ‘analytic’, ‘necessary[, and ‘tautological’ were taken to be co-existence. Contrasted with these were synthetic proposition, which, if they were true, were true as a matter of empirical fact and not as a matter of definition alone. Thus, propositions such as ‘There are more women than men’, ‘Bachelors tend to die earlier that married men’ and ‘Bodied attract each other according to the inverse square law’ are all said to be synthetic propositions, , and, if they are true, they express posteriori empirical truths about the real world that are independent of language. Such empirical truths, according to this view, are never necessary rather that they are contingent. For philosophers holding these views, the terms ‘a posteriori’, ‘synthetic’, contingent’, and ‘empirical’ were taken to be more or less co-extensive.
It was a basic assumption behind the logical positivists movement that all meaningful propositions were either analytic or empirical, as defined by the conception that are so. The positivists wished to build a sharp boundary between meaningful propositions of science and everyday life on the one hand, and nonsensical propositions of metaphysics and theology on the other. They claimed that all meaningful propositions are either analytic of synthetic: Discipline s such as logic and mathematics fall within the analytic camp, the empirical sciences and much of common-sensical fall within the synthetic camp. Propositions that were neither analytic nor empirical propositions or meaningless. The slogan of the positivists was called the verification principle ~ and, in a simple form. It can be stated as follows All meaningful propositions are either analytic or synthetic, and those which are synthetic are empirically verifiable. This slogan was sometimes shortened to an even simpler Verifiability: The meaning of propositions is just its method of verification.
Nevertheless, how can analysis be informative? This in the question that gives rise to what philosophers have traditionally called ‘the’ paradox of analysis. Thus consider the following propositions:
(1) To be an instance of knowledge is to be an instance
of justified true belief not essentially grounded in any
falsehood.
(1), If true, illustrates an important type of philosophical analysis. For convenience of exposition, and assuming (1) is a correct analysis. The paradox arises from the fact that if the concept of justified true belief not essentially grounded in any falsehood is the ‘analysans’ of the concept of knowledge. It would seem that they are the same concept and hence that:
(2) To be an instance of knowledge is to be an instance
of knowledge.
Would have to be the same proposition as (1), but then how can (1) be informative when (2) is not? This is what might be the first paradox of analysis.
Classical writing on analysis suggest a second paradox of analysis (Moore, 1942). Consider this:
(3) An analysis of the concept of being a brother is that
to be a brother is to be a male sibling.
If (3) is true, it would seem that the concept of being a brother would have to be the same concept as the concept of being a male sibling and that
(4) An analysis of the concept of being a brother is that
to be a brother is to be a brother.
Would also have to be true and in fact would have to be the same proposition as (rather), Yet (3) is true and (4) is false?
Both these paradoxes rest on or upon the assumption that analysis is a relation between concepts, rather than one involving entities of other sorts, such as linguistic expression, and that in a true analysis, analysans and analysandum, are the same concept. Both these assumptions are explicit of Moore’s remarks hint at a solution ~ that a statement of an analysis is a statement partly about the concept involved and partly about the verbal expressions used to express it. He says, he thinks a solution of this sort is bound to be right, but fails to suggest one because be cannot see a way in which the analysis can be even partly about the expression (Moore, 1942).
Its led in suggestion of such a way as a solution to the second paradox, which is to explicate (3) as:
(5) An analysis is given be saying that the verbal expression
‘x is a brother’ expressed the same concept as is expressed
by the conjunction of the verbal expressions ‘x is a male’
when used to express the concept of being male and
‘x is a sibling’ when used to express the concept of being
a sibling. (Ackerman, 1990)
An important pint about (5) is such of its philosophical jargon (‘analysis’, ‘concept’, ‘x is a . . . ’), (5) seems to state the sort of information generally stated in a definition of the verbal expressions ‘brother’ in terms of the verbal expressions ‘male’ and ‘sibling’, where this definition is designed to draw on or upon listeners’ antecedent understanding of the verbal expressions ‘male’ and ‘sibling’, and thus to tell listeners what the verbal expression ‘brother’ really means. Instead of merely providing the information that two verbal expressions are synonymous without specifying the meaning of either one. Thus, finding the solution to the second paradox seems to make the sort of analysis that gives rise to this paradox a matter of specifying the meaning of a verbal expression in terms of separate verbal expressions already understood and saying how the meaning of these separate, already-understood verbal expressions are combined, as should both specify the constituents concepts of the analysandum and tell how they are combined. But is this all there is to philosophical analysis?
To answer this question, we must note that, in addition to there being two paradoxes of analysis, there are two types of analysis that are relevant here. (There are also other types of analysis, such as reformatory analysis, where the analysans is intended to improve on and replace the analysandum. But since reformatory analysis involves no commitment to conceptual identity between analysans and analysandum identity between analysis does not generates a paradox of analysis and so will not concern us here). One way to recognize the difference between each of the other types of anaplasia is to focus on the difference between the two paradoxes. This can be done by mans of the Frége-inspired sense-individuation condition, which is the condition that two expressions have the same sense if and only if they can be interchanged whenever used in propositional attitude context: If the expressions for the analysans and the analysandum in (1) met this condition. (1) and (2) would not raise the first paradox, but the second paradox arises regardless of whether the expressions for the analysans and the analysandum meet this condition. The second paradox is a matter of the failure of such expressions to be interchangeable in sentences involving such contexts s ‘an analysis is given by’. Thus, a solution (such as the one given or offered) that is aimed only at such contexts can solve the second paradox. Tis is clearly false for the first paradox, however, which will apply to all pairs of propositions expressed by sentences in which expressions for pairs of analysand and anslysantia raising the first paradox are interchanged. For example, consider the following proposition:
(6) Julie knows that some cats lack tails.
It is possible for Walter to believe (6) without believing
(7) Julie has justified true belief, not essentially grounded
in any falsehood, that some cats lack tails.
Yet this possibility clearly does not man that the proposition that Mart knows that some casts lack tails is partly about language.
One approach to the first paradox is to argue that, despite the apparent epistemic inequivalence of (1) and (2) and concept of justified true believing and essentially grounded in any falsehood is still identical with the concept of knowledge. Another approach is to argue that vin the sort of analysis raising the first paradox, the analysans and analysandum are concepts that are different but that bears a special epistemic relation to each other. Elsewhere, by using developmental approaches and to its finding suggestion, that this analysans-analysandum relation has the following facets:
(I) The analysans and analysandum are necessarily
coextensive, i.e., necessarily every instance of one is an
instance of the other.
(ii) The analysans and analysandum are knowable
a priori to be coextensive.
(iii) the analysandum is simpler than the analysans
(a condition whose necessarily is recognized in classical writings on analysis, such as Langford, 1942).
(iv) The analysand does not have the analysandum
as a constituent.
Condition (iv) rules out circularity, but since many valuable quasi-analyses are partly circular, e.g., knowledge is justified true belief supported by known reasons not essentially grounded in any falsehood, and it seems best to distinguish between full analysis, for which (iv) is a necessary condition, and partial analysis, for which it is not.
These conditions, while necessary, are clearly insufficient. The basic problem is that they apply to many pairs of concepts that do not seem closely enough related epistemologically to count as analysans and analysandum, such as the concept of being six and the concept of being the fourth root of 1296. Accordingly, its solution finds the fifth condition by drawing on or upon what actually seems epistemologically distinctive about analysis of the sort under consideration, which is a certain way they can be justified. This is by the philosophical example-and-counter-example method, which in general terms goes as follows:’J’ investigates the analysis of K’s concept ‘Q’ (where ‘K’ can but need not be identical to ‘J’) by setting ‘K’ a series or armchair thought experiments, i.e., presenting ‘K’ with a series of simple described hypothetical test cases and asking ‘K’ questions of that form ‘If such-and-such were the case, would this count as a case of ‘Q’? ‘J’ then contrasts the description of the cases to which ‘K’ answers affirmatively with the descriptions of the cases to which ‘K’ does not, and ‘J’ generalizes upon these descriptions to arrive at the concepts (if possible not including the analysandum) and their made of combination that constitute the analysans of K’s concept ‘Q’. Since ‘J’ need not be identical with ‘K’, there is no requirement that ‘K’ himself be able to perform this generalization, to recognize its result as correct, or even to understand the analysans that is it correct. This is reminiscent of Walton’s observation that one can simply recognize a bird as a blue-jay without realizing just what features of the bird (beak, wing configuration, and so forth), form the basis of this recognition. (The philosophical significance of this way of recognizing is self-evident, however, ‘K’ answers the questions based solely on whether the described hypothetical cases just strike him as cases of ‘Q’. ‘J’ observes certain strictures in formulating the cases and questions. He makes the cases as simple as possible, to minimize the possibility of confusion and also to minimize the likelihood that ‘K’ will draw upon his philosophical theories (or, quasi-philosophical, rudimentary notions if he is unsophisticated philosophically) in answers the questions. For this reason, if two hypothetical test cases yield conflicting results, the conflict should be resolved in favour of the simpler case. ‘J’ makes the series of described cases wide-ranging and varied, with the aim of having it to be complete series. Whereby, it might be to say, that a series is complete if and only if no case that is omitted is such that, if included. It would change the analysis arrived at: ‘J’ does not, of course, use as a test-vase description anything complicated and general enough to express the analysans. There is no requirements that the described hypothetical test case be formulated only in terms of what can be observed. Moreover, using described hypothetical situations as test cases enables ‘J’ to frame the question in such a way as to rule out extraneous background assumptions to a degree. Thus, even if ‘K’ correctly believes that all and only P’s are R’s, the question of whether the concepts of ‘P’, ‘R’, or both enter into the analysans of his concept ‘Q’ can be investigated by asking him such questions as ‘Suppose (even if it seems preposterous to you) that you were to find out that there wads a ‘P’ that was not an ‘R’. Would you still consider it a case of ‘Q?’
Taking all this into account, the fifth necessary condition for this sort of analysans-analysandum relation is s follows:
(v) If ‘S’ is the analysans of ‘Q’, the proposition that necessarily
all and only instances of ‘S’ are instances of ‘Q’ can be
justified by generalizing from intuitions about the correct
answers to questions about a varied and wide-ranging series
of simple described hypothetical situations.
Are these five necessary conditions jointly sufficient?
The view that the truth of a proposition consists in its being a member of some suitably defined body of other propositions: A body that is consistent, coherent, and possible endowed with other virtues, provided there are not defined in terms of truth. The theory, though surprising at first sight, has two strengths (1) we test beliefs for truth in the light of other beliefs, to see ho well it is doing in terms of correspondence with the world. To many thinkers the weak point of pure coherence theories is that they fail to include a proper sense of the away in which actual systems of belief are sustained by persons with perceptual experience. For a pure coherent or incoherent set. This seems not to do justice to our sense that experience plays a special role in controlling our systems of belief, but coherentists have contested the claim in various ways.
Aristotle said that a statement is true if it says of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not (Metaphysics Γ. iv. 1011). But a correspondence theory is not simply the view that truth consists in correspondence with the ‘facts’, but rather the view that it is theocratically interesting to realize this. Aristotle’s claim is in itself a harmless platitude, common to all views of truth. A correspondence theory is distinctive in holding that the notion of correspondence and fact can be sufficiently developed to make the platitude into an interesting theory of truth. Opponents charge that this is not so, primarily because we have no access to facts independently of the statements and beliefs that we hold our beliefs with a reality apprehended by other means than those beliefs, or perhaps, further beliefs. Hence we have no fix on ‘facts’ as something like structures in which our beliefs may or may not correspond.
Coherence is a major player in the arena of knowledge. There are coherence theories of belief, truth and justification. These combine in various ways to yield theories of knowledge. It only seems reasonably and yet fitting to proceed first, from theories of belief through justification to truth. Coherence theories of belief are concerned with the content of beliefs. Consider a belief you now have, the belief that you are reading a page in this book. So what makes that belief the belief that it is? What makes it the belief that you are reading a page in a book than the belief that your having some effectively estranging dissimulations of illusory degenerations, made-up in disturbing and perturbative thoughts whirling within your mind, and, yet, it is believed not but only of what is to be in reading your book, but that’s not my fault?
One answer is that the belief has a coherent place or role in a system of beliefs. Perception has an influence on belief. You respond to sensory stimuli by believing that you are reading a page in a book than believing that you have invented some differentiated space where you occupy a particular point thereof, in a new and different world of imaginistic latency, and in that world is where our reading is taking place to its actualized concentration on or upon the belief that an influence on action began by some sorted desirous mode of differentiations. You will act differently if you believe that you are reading a page than if you believe of something imaginable of a world totally alienable of itself, in that whatsoever has in occurrences to you, it has individuated concurrences with some imaginistic events, as, perhaps, of an imaginistic source so that your presence toward the future is much to be realized. Perception and action undermine the content of belief, however. The same stimuli may produce various beliefs and various beliefs may produce the same action. The role that gives the belief the content it has is the role it plays in a network of relations to other beliefs, the role in inference and implication, for example. I infer different things from believing that I am reading a page in a book that from any other belief, just as I infer that belief from different things than I infer other beliefs from.
The input of perception and the output of action supplement the central role of the systematic relations the belief has to other beliefs, but it is the systematic relations that give the belief he specific content it has. They are the fundamental source of the content of belief. That is how coherence comes in. A belief has the content that it does because of the way in which it coheres within a system of beliefs. We might distinguish weak coherence theories of content of beliefs from strong coherence theories. Weak coherence theories affirm that coherence is one determinant of the content of belie f. strong coherence theories of the content of belief affirm that coherence is the sole determinant of the content of belief.
When we turn from belief to justification, we confront a similar group of coherence theories. What makes one belief justified and another not? The answer is the way it coheres with the background system of beliefs. Again there is a distinction between weak and strong theories of coherence. Weak theories tell us that the way in which a belief coheres with a background system of beliefs is one determinant of justification, other typical determinants being perception, memory and intuition. Strong theories, by contrast, tell us that justification is solely a matter of how a belief coheres with a system of beliefs. There is, however, another distinction that cuts across the distinction between weak and strong coherence theories of justification. It is the distinction between positive and negative coherence theories. A positive coherence theory tells us that if a belief coheres with a background system of beliefs, then the belief is justified. A negative coherence theory tells us that if a belief fails to cohere with a background system of beliefs, then the belief is not justified. We might put this by saying that, according to a positive coherence theory, coherence has the power to produce justification, while according to a negative coherence theory, coherence has only the power to nullify justification.
A strong coherence theory of justification is a combination of a positive and a negative theory which tells us that a belief is justified if and only if it coheres with a background system of beliefs.
Coherence theories of justification and knowledge have most often been rejected as being unable to deal with perceptual knowledge, and, therefore, it will be most appropriate to consider a perceptual example which will serve as a kind of crucial test. Suppose that a person, call her Julie, works with a scientific instrument that has a gauge for measuring the temperature e of liquid in a container. The gauge is marked in degrees. She looks at the gauge and sees that the reading is 105 degrees. What is she justified in believing and why? Is she, for example, justified in believing g that the liquid in the container is 105 degrees? Clearly, that depends on her background beliefs. A weak coherence theorist might argue that though her belief that she sees the shape 105 is immediately justified as direct sensory evidence without appeal to a background system, the belief that the liquid in the container is 105 degrees results from coherence with a background system of beliefs affirming that the shape 105 is a reading of 105 degrees on the gauge that measures the temperature of the liquid in the container. This sort of weak coherence combines coherence with direct perceptual evidence, the foundation of justification, to account for justification of our beliefs.
A strong coherence theory would go beyond the claim of the weak coherence theory to affirm that the justification of all beliefs, including the belief that one sees the shape 105, or even the more cautious belief that one sees a shape, results from coherence with a background system. One may argue for this strong coherence theory in a number of different ways. One line of argument would be appeal to the coherence theory of the content to the coherence theory of the perception belief results from the relations of the belief to other beliefs in a system of beliefs, then one may argue that the justification of the perceptual belief to other beliefs ion the system. One may, however, argue for the strong coherence theory without assuming the coherence theory of the content to beliefs. It ma y be that some beliefs have the content that they do atomistically but that our justification for believing them is the result of coherence. Consider the vr y cautious belief that I see a shape. How could the justification for that belief be the result of coherence with a background system of beliefs? What might the background system tell us that would justify that belief? Our background system contains a simple and primary theory about relationships to the world. To come to the specific point at issue, we believe that we can tell a shape at issue, we believe that we can tell a shape when we see one, that we are trustworthy about such simple matters as whether we see a shape before us or not. We may, with experience, come to believe that sometimes we think we see a shape before us when there is nothing there at all, and so we see an after-imagine, for example, and so we are not perfect, not beyond deception, yet we are trustworthy for the most part. Moreover, when Julie sees the shape 105, she believes that the circumstances are not those that are deceptive about whether she sees that shape. The light is good, the numeral shapes are large, readily discernable and so forth. These are beliefs that Julie has that tell her that her belief the at see sees a shape is justified. Her belief that she sees a shape is justified because of the way it is supported by the other beliefs. It coheres with those beliefs, and so she is justified.
There are various ways of understanding the nature of this support or coherence. One way ids to view Julie as inferring, that her belief is true from the other beliefs. The inference might be construed as an inference to the best explanation. Given her background beliefs, the best explanation Julie has for the existence of her belief that she sees a shape is the at she does see a shape. Thus, we might think of coherence as inference to the best explanation based on a background system of beliefs. Since e are not aware of such inferences for the most part, the inference might object to such an account on the grounds that all justifying inference is explanatory and, consequently, be led to a more general account of coherence as successful competition based on a background system. The belief that one sees a shape competes with the claim that one is deceived and other sceptical objections. The background system of belief informs one that one is trustworthy and enabling one to meet the objection. A belief coheres with a background system just in case it enables one to meet the sceptical objections and in that way justifies one in the belief. This is a standard strong coherence theory of justification.
It is easy to illustrate the relationship between positive and negative coherence theories in terms of the standard coherence theory. If some objection to a belief cannot be met in terms of the background system of beliefs of a person, then the person is not justified in that belief. So, to return to Julie, suppose that she has been told that a warning light has been installed on her gauge to tell her when it is not functioning properly and that when the red light is on, the gauge is malfunctioning. Suppose e that when she sees the reading of 105, she also sees that the red light is on. Imagine, finally, that this is the first time the cred light has been on, and, after years of working with the gauge. Julie, who has always placed her trust in the gauge, believed what the gauge tells her, that the liquid in the container is at 105 degrees. Though she believes what she reads, her belief that the liquid in the container is at 105 degrees is not a justified belief because it fails to cohere with her background belief the at the gauge is malfunctioning. Thus, the negative coherence theory tells us that she is not justified in her belief about the temperature e of the contents in the container. By contrast, when the red light is not illuminated and the background system of Julie tells her that under such conditions that gauge is a trustworthy indicator of the temperature of the liquid in the container, then she is justified. The positive coherence tho ry tells us that she is justified in her belief because her belief coheres with hr background system.
The foregoing of conventional type in coherence theories of justification have a common feature, namely, that they are what are called internalistic theories of justification. Also, on this, a fundamental similarity to a coherentist view could be internalist, if both the beliefs or other states with which a justificadum belief is required to cohere and the coherence relations themselves are reflectively accessible. According to which some of the factors required for justifications must be cognitively accessible while others need not and in general will not be, would count as an externalist view. Perhaps the clearest example of an internalist position would be a ‘foundationalist’ view according to which foundational beliefs pertain to immediately experienced states of mind and other beliefs and justified by standing in cognitively accessible logical or inferential relations to such foundational beliefs. Such a view could count as either a strong or a weak version of internalism depending on whether actual awareness of the justifying elements or only the capacity to become of them is required, and, in this position, drawing much of a similar coherentist view.
Respectfully, internalist and externalist theories affirming the coherence is a matter of internal relations between beliefs and that justification is a matter of coherence. If then, justification is solely a matter of internal relations between beliefs, we are left with the possibility that the internal relations might fail to correspond with any external reality. How, one might object, can a completely internal subjective notion of justification bridge the gap between mere true belief, which might be no more than a lucky guess, and knowledge, which must be grounded in some connection between internal subjective conditions and external objective realities?
The answer is that it cannot and that something more than justified true belief is required for knowledge. This result has, however, been established quite apart from consideration of coherence theories of justification. What is required may be put by saying that the justification one has must be undefeated by errors in the background system of belief. A justification is undefeated by errors just in case any correction of such errors sustain the justification of the belief on the basis of the corrected system. So knowledge, on this sort of positive coherence theory, is true belief the at coheres with the background belief system and corrected version of that system. In short, knowledge is true belief plus justification resulting from coherence and undefeated by error. The connection between internal subjective conditions of belief and external objective realities result from the required correctness of our beliefs about the relations between those conditions and realities. In the example of Julie, she believes that her internal subjective condition of sensory experience an perceptual belief are connected with the external objective reality of the temperature of the liquid in the container in the container is 105 degrees, and the correctness of that background belief is essential to the justification remaining undefeated. So our background system of beliefs contains a simple theory about our relation to the external world which justifies certain of our belief s that cohere with that system. For such justification to convert to knowledge, that theory must be sufficiently free from error so that coherence is sustained in corrected versions of our background system in corrected versions of the simple background theory, providing the connection between the internal condition and external realities.
The coherence theory of truth arises naturally out of a problem raised by the coherence theory of justification. The problem. Nonetheless, is that anyone seeking to determine whether she has knowledge is confined so the search for coherence among her beliefs. The sensory experiences she had are mute until they are represented in the form of some perceptual belief. Beliefs are the engine that pulls the train of justification. But what assurance do we have that our justification is based on true beliefs? What justification do we have that any of our justifications are undefeated? The fear that we might have none, that our beliefs might be the artifact of some deceptive demon or scientist, leads to the quest to reduce truth to some form, as, perhaps, an idealized form, of justification, that would close the threatening sceptical gap between justification and truth. Suppose e that a belief is true if and only if it is ideally justified for some person. For such a person there would be no gap between justification and truth or between justification and undefeated justification. Truth would be coherence with some ideal background system of beliefs, perhaps, one expressing a consensus among belief systems or some convergence toward consensus. Such a view is theoretically attractive for the reduction it promises, but it appears open to profound objection. One is that there is a consensus that we can all be wrong about, at least in some matters. For example, about the origins of the universe. If there is a consensus that we can all be wrong about something, then the consensual belief system rejects the equation of truth with consensus. Consequently, the equation of truth with coherence with a consensual belief system is itself incoherent.
Coherence theories of the content of our beliefs and the justification of our beliefs themselves cohere with our background systems but coherence theories of truth do not. A defender of coherentism must accept the logical gap between justification and justified belief and truth, but she may believe that her capacities suffice to close the gap to yield knowledge. That view is, at any rate, a coherent one.
Mental states have contents: A belief may have the content that I will catch that train, or a hope, that awaits for hope that its hope is hope and would be hope for the wrong thing, and that may have content. A concept is something which is capable of being a constituent of such contents. More specifically, a concept is a way of thinking of something ~ a particular object, or property, or relation, or some other entity.
A concept is that which is understood by a term. Particularly a predicate. To possess a concept is to be able to deploy a term expressing it in making judgements: The ability connects with such things as recognizing when the term applies, and being able to understand the consequences of its application. The term ‘idea’ was formerly used in the same way, but is avoided because of its associations with subjective mental imagery, which ,may be irrelevant to the possession of a concept. In the semantics of Frége, a concept is the reference of a predicate, and cannot be referred to by a subject term. The distinction in Frége’s philosophy of language, explored in ‘On Concept and Object’ (1892). Frége regarded predicates as incomplete expressions, in the same way as a mathematical expression for a function, such as sine . . . or, log . . ,.is incomplete? Predicates refer to concepts, which themselves are ‘unsaturated’, and cannot be referred to by subject expression (we thus get the paradox that the concept of a horse is not a concept) although, Frége recognized the metaphorical nature of the notion of a concept being unsaturated, he was rightly convinced that some such notion is needed to explain the unity of a sentence, and to prevent sentences from being thought of as mere lists of names.
Even so, several different concepts may each be ways of thinking of the same object. A person may think of himself in the first-person pronoun, or think of himself as the spouse of Jane Doe, or as the person located in a certain room now. More generally, a concept ‘c’ is distinct from a concept ‘d’ if it is possible for a person rationally to believe ‘c’ is such-and-such, without believing ‘ d’ is such-and-such. As words can be combined to for m structured sentences, concepts have also been conceived as combinable into structural complex contents. When these complex contents are expressed in English by ‘that . . . ’clauses, as in our opening examples, they will be capable of being true or false, depending on the way the world is.
Concepts are to be distinguished from stereotypes and from conceptions. The stereotypical spy may be a middle-level official down on his luck and in need of money. Nonetheless, we can come to learn that Anthony Blunt, are its historian and Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, is a spy, we can come to believe that something falls under the concept while positively disbelieving that the same thing falls under the stereotype associated with the concept. Similarly, a person’s conception of a just arrangement for resolving disputes may involve something like contemporary Western legal systems. But whether or nor would be correct, it is quite intelligible for someone to reject this conception by arguing that it does not adequately provide for the elements of fairness and respect which are required by the concept of justice.
A theory of a particular concept must be distinguished from a theory of the object or objects it picks out. The theory of the concept is part of the theory of thought and epistemology: A theory of the object or objects is par t of metaphysics and ontology. Some figures in the history of philosophy ~ and, perhaps, even some of our contemporaries ~ are open to the accusation of not having fully respected the distinction between the two kinds of theory. Descartes appears to have moved from facts about the indubitability of the thought ‘I think’, containing the first-person pronoun way of thinking, to conclusions about the non-material nature of the object he himself was. But though the goals of a theory of concepts and a theory of objects are distinct, each theory is required to have an adequate account of its relation to the other theory. A theory of concepts is unacceptable if it gives no account of how the concept is capable of picking out the objects it evidently does pick out. A theory of objects is unacceptable if it makes it impossible to understand how we could have concepts of those objects.
A fundamental question for philosophy is: ‘What individuates a given concept’ ~ that is, what makes it the one it is, than any other concept? One answer, which has been developed in great detail, is that it is impossible to give a non-trivial answer to this question. An alternative approach, addresses the question by starting from the idea that a concept is individuated by the condition which must be satisfied if a thinker is to posses that concept and to be capable of having beliefs and other attitudes whose contents contain it as a constituent. So, to take a simple case, one could propose that the logical concept and is individuated by this condition: It is the unique concept ‘C’ to possess which a thinker has to find these forms of inference compelling, without basing them on any further inference or ‘B’, ACB can be inferred: And from any premise ACB, each of ‘A’ and ‘B’ can be inferred. Again, a relatively observational concept such as ‘round’ can be individuated in part by stating that the thinker finds specified contents containing it compelling when he has certain kinds of perception, and in part by relating those judgements containing the concept and which are not based on perception those judgements that are. A statement which individuates a concept by saying what is required for the thinker to possess it can be described as giving ‘possession conditions’ for the concept.
A possession condition for a particular concept may actually make use of that concept. The possession condition for ‘and’ does not. We can also expect to use relatively observational concepts in specifying the kind of experience which have to be mentioned in the possession conditions for relatively observational concepts. What we must avoid is mention of the concept in question as such within the content of the attitudes attributed to the thinker in the possession condition. Otherwise we would be presupposing possession of the concept in an account which was meant to elucidate its possession. Inn talking of what the thinker finds compelling, the possession condition can also respect an insight of the later Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951): That a thinker’s mastery of a concept is inextricably tied to how he finds it natural to go on in new cases ion applying the concept.
Sometimes a family of concepts has this property: It is not possible to master any one of the members of the family without mastering the other. Two of the families which plausibly have this status are these: The family consisting of some simple concepts ‘0, 1, 2, . . . of the natural numbers and the corresponding concepts of numerical quantifiers there are ‘0' so-and-so’s, there is ‘1' so-and-so: . . . the family consisting of the concepts belief and desire. Such families have come to be known as, ‘logical holism’. A local ‘holism’ does not prevent the individuation of a concept by its possession condition. Rather, it demands that all the concepts in the family be individuated simultaneously. Si one would say something of this form: Belief and desire form the unique pair of concepts C1 and C2 such that for a thinker to possess them is to meet such-and-such condition involving the thinker, C1 and C2. For these and other possession conditions to individuate properly, it is necessary that there be some ranking, of the concept treated. The possession condition for concepts higher in the ranking must presuppose only possession of concepts at the same or lower levels in the ranking.
A possession condition may in various ways make a thinker’s possession of a particular concept dependent on or upon his relations to his environment. Many possession conditions will mention the links between a concept and the thinker’s perceptual experience. Perceptual experience represents the world as being a certain way. It is arguable that the only satisfactory explanation of what it is for perceptual experience to represent the world in a particular way must refer to the complex relations of the experience to the subject’s environment. If this is so, then mention of such experiences in a possession condition will make possession of that condition will make possession of that concept dependent in part upon the environment relations of the thinker. Burge (1979) has also argued from intuitions about particular examples that, even though the thinker’s non-environmental properties and relations remain constant, the conceptual content of his mental state can vary if the thinker’s social environment is varied. A possession condition which properly individuates such a concept must take into account the thinker’s social relations, in particular his linguistic relations.
Concepts have a normative dimension, a fact strongly emphasized by the American logician and philosopher Saul Aaron Kripke (1940-), where on, for any judgement whose content involves a given concept. There is a ‘correctness condition’ for that judgement, a condition which is dependent in part upon the identity of the concept. The normative character of concepts also into the territory of a thinker’s reasons for making judgements. A thinker’s visual perception can give him good reason for judging ‘That man is bald’: It does not by itself give him good reason for judging ‘Rostropovich is bald’, even if the man he sees is Rostropovich. All these normative connections must explain by a theory of concepts. One approach to these matters is to look to the possession condition for a concept, and consider how the referent of the concept, and consider how the referent of the concept is fixed from it, together with the world. One proposal is that the referent of the concept is that object (or, property, or function, . . .) Which makes the practices of judgement and inference mentioned in the possession condition always lead to true judgements and truth-preserving inferences? This proposal would explain why certain reasons are necessarily good reasons for judging given contents. Provided the possession condition permits us to say what it is about a thinker’s previous judgements that makes it the case that he is employing one concept than another, this proposal would also have another virtue. It would allow us to say how the correctness condition is determined for a judgement in which the concept is applied to a newly encountered object. The judgement is correct if the new object has the property which in fact makes the judgmental practice mentioned in the possession condition yield true judgements, or truth-preserving inference.
A definition that proceeds by ostension, or in other words by simply showing what in intended, as one might ostensively define a shade such as blue, or the taste of a pineapple, by actually exhibiting an example. It relies on the hearer’s uptake in understanding which feature is intended, and how broadly the example may be taken. A direct ostension is a showing of the object or feature intended, while in deferred ostension one shows one thing in order to direct attention to another, e.g., when showing a photograph to indicate a person, or a thermometer to indicate the temperature.
An ostensive definition is an explanation of the meaning of a word typically involving three elements: (1) An ostensive gesture (2) an object pointed at which functions as a sample, and (3) the utterance ‘This is (a) ‘W’. Like other forms of explanation of word-meaning, an ostensive definition function as a rule or standard of correctness for the application of a word. The utterance ‘This is ‘W’, when employed in giving an ostensive definition does not describe an object (i.e., the thing pointed at) as having the property ‘W’, but defines a word. It is most illuminatingly viewed as providing a kind of substitution-rule in accord with which one symbol, e.g., ‘red’, is replaced by a complex symbol consisting of utterances (‘This’ or ‘This colour’), gesture, and sample. Hence instead of ‘The curtains are red’ one can say ‘The curtains are this ↗ is correctly characterized as being ‘W’.
Like all definitions, ostensive definitions are misinterpreted. One way of warding off misunderstanding is to specify the ‘grammatical signpost’ by which the definiendum is stationed, i.e., to give the logico-grammatical category to which it belongs, viz. ‘This ‘C’ is ‘W’, where ‘C’ is a place-holder for, e.g., ‘colour’, ‘length’, ‘shape’, ‘weight’. Like all rules, an ostensive definition does not provide its own method of application. Understanding an ostensive definition involves grasping the ‘method of projection’ from the sample to what it represent or from the ostensive gesture accompanying the definition to the application of the word. Thus, in the case of defining a length by reference to a measuring rod, one must grasp the method of laying the measuring rod alongside objects to determine their length before one can be said to grasp the use of the definiendum. Ostensive definitions fulfil a crucial role both in explaining word meaning and in justifying or criticizing the application to that word, (e.g., ‘Those curtains are not ultramarine ~ this ↗ colour is ultramarine [pointing at a colour chart] and the curtains are not this colour). An ostensive definition does not give evidential grounds for the application of a word ‘W’, but rather specifies what counts as being ‘W’.
The boundaries of the notion of ostensive definition are vague. A definition of a smell, taste or sound by reference to a sample typically involves no deictic gesture but a presentation of a sample (by striking a keyboard, for example). Conversely, defining directions (for example. ‘North’) by a deictic gesture involves no sample. Nor is the form of words ‘This is (a) ‘W’ essential. ‘This is called ‘W’ or ‘W is this C’ can fulfil the same role,
Whether something functions as a sample (or, paradigm) for the correct application of a word is not a matter of its essential nature, but of human choice and convention. Being a sample is a role conferred upon an object momentarily, temporarily or relatively permanently by us ~ it is a use to which we put the object. Thus, we can use the curtains here and now to explain what ‘ultimarine’ means ~ but, perhaps, never again, although we may often characterize (describe) them as being ultramarine. Or we can use a standard colour chat to explain what ‘ultramarine’ means. Although if it is left in the sun and fades, it will no longer be so used. Or we may establish relatively permanent canonical samples, as ‘was’ the case with the Standard Metre bar. A sample represents that of which it is a sample, and hence must be typical of its kind. It can characteristically be copied or reproduce and has associated with it a method of comparison. It is noteworthy that one and the same object may function now as a sample in an explanation of meaning or evaluation of correct application and now as an item described as having the defined property. But these roles are exclusive in as much as what functions as a norm for description cannot simultaneously be described as falling under the norm. Qua sample the object belonging to the means of representation and is properly conceived as belonging to grammar in an extended sense of the term. Therefore, the Standard Metre bar cannot be said to be (or not to be) one metre long. Furthermore, one and the same for more than one expression. Thus, a black patch on a colour chart may serve both to explain what ‘black’ means and as part of an explanation of what ‘darker than’ means.
Although the expression ‘ostensive definition’ is modern philosophical jargon (W E. Walterson, ‘Logic’, 1921) the idea of ostensive definition is venerable. It is a fundamental constituent of what Wittgenstein called ‘Augustine’s picture of language’ in which it is conceived as the fundamental mechanism whereby language is ‘connected with reality’. The mainstream philosophical tradition has represented language as having a hierarchical structure, its expressions being either ‘definables’ or ‘indefinables’, the former constituting a network of lexically definable terms, the latter of simple, unanalyzable expressions that link language with reality and that inject ‘content’ into the network. Ostensive definition thus constitute the ‘foundations’ of language and the terminal point of philosophical analysis, correlating primitive terms with entities which are their meanings. On this conception, ostensive definition is privileged: It is final and unambiguous, setting all aspects of word use ~ the grammar of the definiendum being conceived to flow from the nature of the entity with which the indefinable expression is associated. In classical empiricism definables stand for complex ideas, indefinables for simple ideas that are ‘given’ is mental in nature, the linking mechanism is private ‘mental’ ostensive definition, and the basic samples, stored in the mind, are ideas which are essentially epistemically private and unshareable.
Wittgenstein, who wrote more extensively on ostensive definition than any other philosophers, held this picture of language to be profoundly misleading. Far from samples being ‘entities in reality’ to which indefinables are linked by ostensive definition, they themselves belong to the means of representation. In that sense, there is no ‘link between language and reality’, for explanations of meaning, including ostensive definitions are not privileged but are as misinterpretable as any other form of explanation. The object pointed at are not ‘simpler’, which constitute the ultimate metaphysical constituents of reality, but samples with a distinctive use in our language-games. They are not the meanings of words, but instruments of our means of representation. The grammar of a word ostensively defined does not flow from the essential nature of the object pointed at, but is constituted by all the rules for the use of the word, of which ostensive definition is but one. It is a confusion of suppose that expressions must be explained exclusively either by analytic definition (definables) or by ostension (indefinables), for many expressions can be explained in both ways, and there are many other licit forms of explanation of meaning. The idea of ‘private’ or ‘mental’ ostensive definition is wholly misconceived, for there can be no such thing as a rule for the use of a word which cannot logically be understood or followed by more than one person, there can be no such thing as a logically private sample nor any such thing as a mental sample.
Apart from these negative lessons, a correct conception of ostensive definition by reference to samples resolves the venerable puzzles of the alleged synthetic priorities of colour exclusion (e.g., that nothing can be simultaneously red and green all over) apparently metaphysical propositions as ‘black is darker than white’. Such ‘necessary truths’ are indeed not derivable from explicit definitions and the laws of logic alone (i.e., are not analytic) but nor are they descriptions of the essential natures of objects in reality. They are rules for the use of colour words, exhibited in our practices of explaining and applying words defined by reference to samples. What we employ as a sample of red we do not also employ as a sample of green: And a sample of black can, in conjunction with a sample of white, also be used to explain what ‘darker than’ mans. What appears to be metaphysical propositions about essential natures are but the shadows cast by grammar?
A description of a (putative) object as the single, unique, bearing of a property: ‘The smallest positive number’, ‘the first dog born at sea’,’the richest person in the world’, in the theory of definite descriptions, unveiled in the paper ‘On Denoting’ (Mind, 1905) Russell analysed sentences of the form ‘the ‘F’ is ‘G’, as asserting that there is an ‘F’ that there are no two distinct F’s, and that if anything is ‘F’ then it is ‘G’. A legitimate definition of something as the ‘F’ will therefore depend on there being one and not more than one ‘F’. To say that the ‘F’ does not exist is not to say, paradoxically, of something that exists that it does not, but to say that either nothing is ‘F’, or more tan one thing is. Russell found the theory of enormous importance, since it shows how we can understand propositions involving the us of empty terms (terms that do not refer to anything or describe anything) without supposing that there is a mysterious or surrogate object that they have as their reference. So, for example, it becomes no argument for the existence of God that we understand claims in which the term occurs. Analysing the term as a description, we may interpret the claim that God exists as something like ‘there a unique omnipotent, personal creator of the universe’, and this is intelligible whether or not it is true.
Formally the theory of descriptions can be couched in the two definitions:
The F is G = (∃x)(Fx &(∀y)(Fy ➞ y = x)) & Gx)
The F exists = (∃x)(Fx & (∀y)(Fy ➞ y = x))
In the most fundamental scientific sense to define is to delimit. Thus, definitions serve to fix boundaries of phenomena or the range of applicability of terms or concepts. That whose range is to be delimited is called the ‘definiendum’, and that which delimits the ‘definiens’. In practice the hard sciences tend to be more concerned with delimiting phenomena, and definitions are frequently informal, given on the fly, as in ‘Therefore, a layer of high rock strength, called the ‘lithosphere;, exists near the surface of planets’. Social science practice tends to focus on specifying application of concepts through formal operational definitions. Philosophical discussions have concentrated almost exclusively on articulating definitional forms for terms.
Definitions are full if the definiens completely delimits the definidum, and partial if it only brackets or circumscribes it. Explicit definitions are full definitions where the definidum and the definiens are asserted to be equivalent. Examples are coined terms and stimulative definitions such as ‘For the purpose of this study the lithosphere will be taken as the upper 100 km’s f hard rock in the Earth’s crust’. Theories or models which are so rich in structure that sub-portions are functionally equivalent to explicit definitions are hard to provide implicit definitions. In formal context our basic understanding of full definitions, including relations between explicit and implicit definitions, is provided by the Beth definability theorem, nonetheless, partial definitions are illustrated by reduction sentences such as:
When in circumstances ’C’, definiendum ‘D’ applies if situation ‘S’ obtains, which says nothing about the applicability of ‘D’ outside ‘C?’
It is commonly supposed that definitions are analytic specifications of meaning. In some cases, such as stimulative definitions, this may be so. But some philosophers, e.g., the German logical positivist Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), combining a basic empiricism with the logical tools provided by Frége and Russell, and it is his works that the main achievements (and difficulties) of logical positivism are best exhibited his first major work, was Der logische Aufbau der Welt (1928, translated, as, The Logical Structure of the World, 1967). This is the solipsisytic basis of the construction of the external world, although Carnap later resisted the apparent metaphysical priority here given to experience. Carnap pursued the enterprise of clarifying the structures of mathematics and scientific language (the only legitimate task for scientific philosophy) in Logische Syntax der Sprache (1934, translated as, The Logical Syntax of Language 1937). Refinements to his syntactic and semantic views continued with Meaning and Necessity (1947). While a generally loosening of the original ideal of reduction culminated in the great Logical Foundations of Probability, the most important single work of confirmation theory, in 1950. Other works concern the structure of physics and the concept of entropy.
Reduction sentences are often descriptions of measurement apparatus specifying empirical correlations between detector output reading of meaning. The larger point here is that specification of meanings is only one of many possible means for delimiting the definiendum. Specification of meaning seems tangential to the bulk of scientific definitional practices.
Definitions are said to be creative, if their addition to a theory expands its content, and non-creative, if they do not. More generally, we can say that definitions are creative whenever the definiens assert contingent relations involving the definiendum. Thus, definitions providing analytic specifications of meaning are non-creative. Most explicit definitions are non-creative, and hence eliminable from theories without loss of empirical content. One could relativize the distinction so that definitions redundant of accepted theory or background belief in the scientific context are counted as non-creative. Either way, most other scientific expressions of empirical correlation. Thus, for purposes of philosophical analysis, suppositions that definitions either are non-creative or meaning specifications demand explicit justification. Much of the literature concerning incommensurability and meaning change in science turns on uncritical acceptance of such suppositions.
Many philosophers have been concerned with admissible definitional forms. Some require real definitions ~ a form of explicit definition in which the definiens equates the definiendum with an essence specified as a conjunction A1 ∧ . . . ∧ An of attributes. (By contrast, normal definitions use non-essential attributes.) The Aristotelian definitional form further requires that real definitions be hierarchical, where the species of a genus share A1 . . . An ~ 1, being differentiated only by the remaining essential attributes An. Such definitional forms are inadequate for evolving biological species whose essence may vary. Disjunctive polytypic definitions allow changing essences by equating the definiendum with a finite number of conjunctive essences. But future evolution may produce further new essences, so partially specify potentially infinite disjunctive polytypic definitions were proposed. Such ‘explicit definitions’ fail to delimit the species, since they are incomplete. A superior alternative is to formulate reduction sentences for each essence encountered, which partially define the species but allow the addition of new reduction sentences for subsequent evolved essences.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) claimed that many natural kinds lac conjunctive essences rather, their members stand only in a family resemblance to each other. Philosophers of science have developed the idea in two ways. Achinstein (1968) retorted to cluster analysis, arguing that most scientific definitions (e.g., of gold) specify non-essential attributes of which a ‘goodly number’ must be present for the definiendum to apply. Suppe (1989) argued that natural kinds were constituted by a single kind-making attributes (e.g., being gold), and that which patterns of correlation might obtain between the kind-making attribute and other diagnostic characteristics is a factual matter. Thus, issues of appropriate definitional form (e.g., explicit, polytypic, or cluster) are empirical, not philosophical questions.
Definitions of concepts are closely related to explications, where imprecise concepts (explicanda) are replaced by more precise ones (explicasta). The explicandum and explicatum are never equivalent. In an adequate explication the explicatum will accommodate all clear-cut instances of the explicandum and exclude all clear-cut non-instances. The explicatum decides what to do with cases where application of the explicandum is problematic. Explications are neither real nor nominal definitions and are generally creative. In many scientific cases, definitions function more as explications than as meaning specifications or real definitions.
Imagination most directly is the faculty of reviving or especially creating images in the mind’s eye. But more generally, the ability to create and rehearse possible situations, to combine knowledge in unusual ways, or to invent thought experiments. The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was the first aesthetic theorist to distinguish the possibility of disciplined, creative use of the imagination, as opposed to the idle play of fancy imagination is involved in any flexible rehearsal of different approaches to a problem and is wrongly thought of as opposed reasoning. It also bears an interesting relation to the process of deciding whether a projected scenario is genuinely possible. We seem able to imagine ourselves having been someone other than were supposed to be or otherwise elsewhere than were are supposed to be. And unable to imagine space being spherical, tet further reflection may lead us to think that the first supposition is impossible and the second entirely possible.
It is probably true that philosophers have shown much less interest in the subject of the imagination during the last fifteen years or so than in the period just before that. It is certainly true that more books about the imagination have been written by those concerned with literature and the arts than have been written by philosophers in general and by those concerned with the philosophy of mind in particular. This is understandable in that the imagination and imaginativeness figure prominently in artistic processes, especially in romantic art. Indeed, those two high priests of romanticism, Wordsworth and Coleridge, made large claims for the role played by the imagination in views of reality, although Coleridge’s thinking on this was influenced by his reading of the German philosophy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, particularly Kant and Schelling. Coleridge distinguished between primary and secondary imagination, both of them in some sense productive, as opposed to merely reproductive. Primary imagination is involved in all perception of the world in accordance with a theory. Coleridge derived from Kant, while secondary imagination, the poetic imagination is creative from the materials that perception provides. It is this poetic imagination which exemplifies imagination nativeness in the most obvious way.
Being imaginative is a function of thought, but to use one’s imagination in this way is not just a matter of thinking in novel ways. Someone who, like Einstein for example, presents a new way of thinking about the world need not be by reason of this supremely imaginative (though of course he may be). The use of new concepts or a new way of using already existing concepts is not in itself an exemplification of the imagination. What seems crucial to the imagination is that it involves a series of perspectives, new ways of seeing things, in a sense of ‘seeing’ that need not be literal. It thus involves, whether directly or indirectly. Some connection with perception, but in different ways, some of which will become evident later. The aim of subsequent discussion here will indeed be to make clear the similarities and differences between seeing proper and seeing with the mind’s eye, as it is sometimes put. This will involve some consideration of the nature and role of images.
Connections between the imagination and perception are evident in the ways that many classical philosophers have dealt with the imagination. One of the earliest examples of this, the treatment of pantasia (usually translated as ‘imagination’) in Aristotle’s De Amima III.3, seems to regard the imagination as a sort of half-way house between perception and thought, but in a way which makes it cover appearances in a way which makes it cover appearances in general, so the at the chapter in question has as much to do with perceptual appearances, including illusions, as it has to do with, say, imagery. Yet Aristotle al so emphasizes that imagining is in some sense voluntary, and the at when we imagine a terrifying scene we are not necessarily terrified, and more than we need be when e see terrible things in a picture. How that fits in within the idea that an illusion is or can be a function of the imagination is less than clear. Yet some subsequent philosophers, Kant in particular, followed in recent times by thee English philosopher Peter Frederick Strawson (1919-), whereon, his early work concerned logic and language, very much in the spirit of the general tradition of ordinary language philosophy of the time. In 1958 his ‘Individuals’ marked a return to wider metaphysical concerns, and his reconciliation was consolidated, by ‘The Bounds of Sense’ (1966) which is a magnificent tour of the metaphysics of Kant, and naturalist papers on epistemology, freedom, naturalism and scepticism. Both Kant and Strawson have maintained that all perception involves the imagination, in some sense of that term, in that some bridge is required between abstract thoughts and their perceptual instance. This comes out in Kant’s treatment of what he calls the ‘schematism’, where he rightly argues that someone might have an abstract understanding of the concept of a dog without being able to recognize or identify any dogs. It is also clear that someone might be able to classify all dogs together without any understanding of what a dog is. The bridge that needs to be provided to link these two abilities as for Kant attributes to the imagination.
In so arguing, Kant carries on farther than Hume, for he thought of the imagination in two connected ways. First, there is the fact that there exist, Hume thinks, ideas which are either copies of impressions provided by the senses or derived from these. Ideas of imagination are distinguished from those of memory, and both of these from impressions of sense, by their lesser vivacity. Second, the imagination is involved in the processes, mainly associated of ideas, which take one from one idea to another, and take one from one idea to another, and which Hume uses to explain, for example, our tendency to think of objects as having a continuing existence, even when we have no impressions of them. Ideas, one might suggest, are for Hume more or less images, and imagination in the second, wider, since is the mental process which takes one from one idea to another and thereby go beyond what the senses immediately justify. The role which Kant gives to the imagination in relation to perception in general is obviously a wider and fundamental role than Hume allows. Indeed one might take Kant to be saying that were there not the role that he, Kant, insists on there would be no place for the role which Hume gives it. Kant also allows for a free use of the imagination in connection with the arts and the perception of beauty, and this is more a specific role than that involved in perception in general.
Philosophical issues about perception tend to be issues specifically about sense-perception. In English (and the same is true of comparable terms in many other languages) the term ‘perception’ has a wider connotation than anything that has to do with the senses and the sense-organs, though it generally involves the idea of what may imply, if only in a metaphorical sense a point of view. Thus, it is now increasingly common for news-commentators, for example, to speak of people’s perception of a certain set of events, even though those people have not been witnesses of them. In one sense, however, there is nothing new about this: In seventeenth and eighteenth-century philosophical usage, words for perception were used with much wider coverage than sense-perception alone. It is, however, sense-perception that has typically raised the largest and most obvious philosophical problems.
Such problems may be said to fall into two categories. There are, first, the epistemological problems about the role of sense-perception in connection with the acquisition and possession of knowledge of the world around us. These problems ~ does perception give us knowledge of the so-called ‘external world’? How and to what extent? ~ have become dominant in epistemology since Descartes because of his invocation of the method of doubt, although they undoubtedly existed in philosophers’ minds in one way or another before that. Anglo-Saxon philosophy y such problems centre on the question whether there are firm data provided by the senses ~ so-called sense-data ~ and if so what is the relation of such sense-data to
so-called material problems for the philosophy of mind, although certain answers undoubtedly belong to the philosophy of mind can certainly add to epistemological difficulties. If perception is assimilated, for example, to sensation there is an obvious temptation to think that in perception we are restricted, at any rate, initially to the contents of our own minds.
The second category of problems about perception ~ those that fall directly under the heading of the philosophy of mind ~ are thus, in a sense priori to the problems that exercised many empiricists in the first half of this century. They are problems about how perception is to be construed and how it relates to a number of other aspects of the mind’s functioning ~ sensation, concepts of other things involved in our understanding of things, belief and judgement, the imagination, our action in relation to the world around us, and causal processes involved in the physics, biology and psychology of perception. Some of the latter were central to the considerations that Aristotle raised about in his ‘De Anima’.
It is obvious enough that sense-perception involves some kind of stimulation of sense-organs -by stimuli that are themselves the product of physical processes, and that subsequent processes which are biological in character are then initiated. Moreover, only if the organism in which this takes place is adapted to such stimulation can perception ensure. Aristotle had something to say about such matters, but it was evident to him that such an account was insufficient t to explain what perception itself is. It might be thought that the most obvious thing that is missing in such an account is some reference to consciousness. But while it may be the case that perception can take place only in creatures that have consciousness in some cases, it is not clear that every case of perception directly involves consciousness. There is such a thing as unconsciousness, whereby perception as well among psychologist s have recently drawn attention to the phenomenon which is described as ‘blindness’, ~ an ability, generally manifested in patients with certain kinds of brain-disjunctions, to discriminate, sources of light that when people concerned have no consciousness of the lights and think themselves of guessing about them. It is important, then, not to confuse the plausible claim that perception can take place only in conscious beings with the less plausible claim that perception always involves consciousness of objects. A similar point may apply to the relation of perception to some other perception-possession content.
It gives reasonable cause, to assume that our own consciousness seems ton be the most basic fact confronting us, yet it is almost impossible to say what consciousness is. Is mine like yours? Is ours like that of animals? Might machines come to have consciousness? Whatever complex biological and neural processes go on backstage, it is my consciousness that provides the theatre where my experiences and thoughts have their existence, where my desires are felt and where my intentions are formed. But then how am I to conceive the ‘I’, or ‘self’ that is the spectator, or at any rate the owner of this theatre? These problems together make up what is sometimes called the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. One of the difficulties in thinking about consciousness is that the problems seem not to be scientific ones, as Leibniz remarked, that if we could construct a machine that could think and feel thus, be able to examine its working parts as thoroughly as we pleased, we would still not find any tracings found of consciousness, and draw the conclusion that consciousness resides in simple subjects, not complex ones. Even if we are convinced that consciousness somehow emerges from the overflowing emptiness that of brain functioning, we may still feel baffled about the way the emergence takes place, or why it takes place in just the way it does.
The nature of conscious experience has been the largest single obstacle to ‘physicalism’, ‘behaviouralism’, and ‘functionalism’ in the philosophy of mind: These are all views that according to their opponents, can only be believed by feigning permanent anaesthesia. But many philosophers are convinced that we can divide and conquer: We may make progress not by thinking of one ‘hard’ problem, but by breaking the subject up into different skills and recognizing that we would do better to think of a relatively undirected whirl of cerebral activity, with no inner theatre, no inner lights, and above all no inner spectator.
Historically, it has been most common to assimilate perception to sensation on the one hand, and judgement on the other. The temptation to assimilate it to sensation aries from the fact that perception involves the stimulation of an organ and seems to that extent passive in nature. The temptation to assimilate it to judgement arises from the fact that e can be said to perceive not just objects but that certain things hold good of them, so that the findings, so to speak, of perception may have a propositional character. But to have a sensation, such as that of a pain, by no means entails perceiving anything or indeed having awareness of anything apart from itself. Moreover, while in looking out of the window we may perceive (see) that the sun is shining, this may involve no explicit judgement on our part, even it gives rise to a belief, and part, it sometimes gives to knowledge. (Indeed, if ‘see that’ is taken literally, seeing-that always implies knowledge: To see that something is the case is already to apprehend, and thus know, that it is so.)
The point about sensation was made admirably clear by The Scottish philosopher and common-sense of Thomas Reid (1710-96), in his own approach, sensations of primary qualifies of objects speak to us like words, affording us ‘natural signs’ of the qualities of things. The mind passes naturally and above every word to consider what it signifiers, and in like manner directly the qualities they signify. This is so for ‘original perceptions’ of primary qualities, as perceptions of secondary qualities have to be acquired, Reids insight has been recaptured in the 20th century in various kinds of direct ‘realism’ it enables him to defend the basic conceptual scheme of common-sense against what he saw as the corrosive scepticism of Hume. For Thomas Reid, as for George Moore later, the basic principles of common-sense cannot be avoided or abandoned, although f we raise the question of their truth we can only appeal to divine harmony (he may not have been so far from Hume as he supposed), Reid’s influence persisted in the Scottish school of common-sense philosophy, and his phenomenological insights continue to attract modern attention.
In his ‘Essays 1 and 2', Reid said that sensation involved an act of mind ‘that hath no object distinct from the act itself’. Perception, by contrast, involved according to Reid, a ‘conception or notion of the object perceived’, and a ‘strong and irresistible conviction and belief of its present existence’, which, moreover, are ‘immediate, and not the effect of reasoning’. Reid also thought that perceptions are generally accompanied by sensations and offered a complex account of the relations between the two. Whether all this is correct in every detail need not worry us present, although it is fairly clear that perceiving need not be believing. Certain illusions, such as the Müller-Lyer illusion, are such that we may see them in a certain way, no matter what our beliefs may be about them. Once, again, it is arguable that such misperceptions could only take place in believers, whether or not belief about the object in question occur in the actual perception.
Similar considerations apply to concept-possession. It is certainly not the case that in order to perceive a cyclotron I must have the (or, a) concept of a cyclotron: I may have no idea of what I am perceiving, except of course, that it is something. But to be something it must have some distinguishable characteristics and must stand in some elation to other objects, including whatever it is that constitutes the background against which it is perceived. In order to perceive it I must therefore have some understanding of the world in which such objects are to be found. That will, in the case of most if not all our senses, be a spatial world in which things persist or change over time. Hence, perception of objects presupposes forms of awareness that are spatiotemporal. It is at least arguable that framework would not be available were we not active creatures who are capable of moving about in the world in which we live breath and love. Once, again, it is not that every perception involves some activity on our part, although some may do so, but that perception can take place only in active creatures, and is to that extent, if only that extent, no t a purely passive process.
It must be evident in all this how fa we are getting from the idea that perception is simply a matter of the stimulation of our sense-organ: It may be replied that it has long been clear that there must be some interaction between what is brought about by stimulation of sense-organs and subsequent neural: Including, however, does not end the problem, since we are now left with the question of the relation among all that and the story about sensations, beliefs, concepts and activity that some of the issues are in part, of the general mind-body problem, but there is also the more specific problem of how these ‘mental’ items are construed in such a way as to have any kind of relations to what are apparently the purely passive casual processes involved in and set up by the stimulation of sense-organs.
One idea that has in recent times been thought by many philosophers and psychologists alike is the idea that perception can be thought of as a species of information-processing, in which the stimulation of the sense-organs constitutes an input to subsequent processing, presumably of a computational form. The psychologist J.J. Gibson suggested that the senses should be construed as systems the function of which is to derive information from the stimulus-array that to ‘hunt for’ such information (Gibson, 1966). He thought, however, that it was enough for a satisfactory psychological theory of perception, that his account should be restricted to the details of such information pick-up, without reference to other ‘inner’ processes such as concept-use. Although Gibson has been very influential in turning psychology away from the previously dominant sensation-based framework of ideas (of which gestalt psychology was really a special case), his claim that reliance on his notion of information is enough has seemed incredible to many. Moreover, his notion of ‘information’ is sufficiently close to the ordinary one to warrant the accusation that it presupposes the very ideas of, for example, concept-possession and belief that he claimed to exclude, the idea of information espoused by him (though it has to be said that this claim has been disputed) is that of ‘information about’, not the technical one involved in information theory or that presupposed by the theory of computation.
The most influential psychological theory of perception has in consequence been that David Marr, who has explicitly adopted the ‘computational metaphor’ in a fairly literal way. He distinguished three levels of analysis: (1) The description of the abstract computational theory involved. (2) The account of the implementation of that theory in terms of its appropriate logarithm, and (3) the account of the physical realization of the theory and the senses. All this is based on the idea that the senses when simulates provides representations on which the computational processes can work. Other theories have offered analogous accounts, if differing in detail. Perhaps the most crucial idea in all this is the one about representations. There is, perhaps, a sense in which what happens at, say, the level of the retina constitutes, as a result of the processes occurring in the process of stimulation, some kind of representation of what procedure e that stimulation, and thus some kind of representation of the objects of perception. Or so, it may seem, if one attempts to describe the relation between the structure and character and nature of the retinal processes. One might indeed, say that the nature of that relation is such as to provide information about the part of the worked perceived, in the sense of ‘information’ presupposed when one says that the rings in the sectioning of a tree’s trunk provide the rings for providing information of its age. This is because there is an appropriate causal relation between the two things, which makes it impossible for it to be a matter of chance. Subsequently, processing can then be thought to be one carried out on what is provided in the representations in question.
One needs to be careful, however, if there are such representations, they are not representations for the perceiver, that, indeed, it is the thought that perception involves representations for the perceiver. Indeed, it is the thoughts of that kind which produced the old, and now largely discredited, philosophical theories of perception which suggested that perception is a matter, primarily, of an apprehension of mental states of some kind (e.g., sense-data) which are representatives of perceptual objects, either by being caused by them, or in being in some way constitutive of them. Also, if it be said that the idea of information so invoked indicates that there is a sense in which the processes of stimulation can be said to have content, but a non-conceptual content. Distinct from the content provided by the subsumption of what is perceived under concepts, it must be emphasized that, that concept is not one for the perceiver. What the information ~ processing story provides is, at best, a more adequate categorization than previously available of the causal processes involved. That may be important but more should not be claimed for it than there is. If in perception in a given case one can be said to have an experience as of an object of a certain shape and kind related to another object it is only because there is presupposed in the perception the possession of concepts of objects, and more particularly, a concept of space and how objects occupy space.
Perception is always concept-dependent at least in the sense that perceivers must be concept possessors and users, and almost certainly in the sense that perception entails concept-use in its application to objects. It is at least, arguable that these organisms that react in a biologically useful way to something but that are such that the attribution of concepts to them is implausible, should not be said to perceive those objects, however, much the objects figure causally un their behaviour. Moreover, in spite of what was said earlier about unconscious perception, and blind sight, perception normally involves consciousness of objects. Moreover, that consciousness presents the objects in such a way that the experience has a certain phenomenal character, which derived from the sensations which are casual processes involved set up. This is most evident in the case of touch (which being a ‘contact sense’ provides a more obvious occasion for speaking of sensations than do ‘distance senses’ such as sight). Our tactual awareness of the texture of a surface is, to use a metaphor, ‘coloured’ by the nature of the sensations that the surface produces in our skin, and which we can be explicitly aware of our attention is drawn to them (something that gives one indication of how attention too is involved in perception).
It has been argued that the phenomenal character of an experience is detachable from its conceptual content in the sense that an experience of the same phenomenal character could occur even if the appropriate concepts were not available. Certainly the reverse is true ~ that a concept-mediated awareness of an object could occur without any sensation-mediated experience ~ as in an awareness of something absent from us. It is also the case, however, that the look of something can be completely changed by the realization that it can be thought of in a certain way, so that it is to be seen as ‘x’ rather than ‘y’. To the extent that, which is so, the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience should be viewed as the result of the way in which sensations produced in us by objects blend with our ways of thinking of and understanding those objects (which, it should be noted, are things in the world and should not be confused with the sensations which they produce).
Seeing things in certain ways also sometimes involves the imagination, as, perhaps, in the imagination we may bring to bear a way of thinking about an object which may not be visually imaginative, as an artist may have to be, is at best a special case of our general ability to see things as such and such’s. But that general ability is central to the faculty of visual perception and, of the faculty of perception in general. What has been said may be enough to indicate the complexities of the notion of perception and how many different phenomena have to be taken into consideration in elucidating that notion within the philosophy of mind. But the crucial issue, perhaps, is how they are all to be fitted together within what may still be called the ‘workings of the mind’.
The last two decades have been a period of extraordinary change in psychology. Cognitive psychology, which focuses on higher mental processes like reasoning, decision making, problem solving, language processing and higher-level visual processing, has become a ~ perhaps, the ~ dominant paradigm among experimental psychologists, while behaviouristically oriented approaches have gradually fallen into disfavour. Largely as a result of this paradigm shift, the level of interaction between the disciplines of philosophy and psychology has increased dramatically. The goal of which these interactions have been areas in which these interactions have been most productive, or at least, most provocative.
One of the central goals of the philosophy of science is to provide explicit and systematic accounts of the theories and explanatory strategies exploited in the sciences. Another common foal is to construct philosophically illuminating analyses or explications of central theoretical concepts invoked in one or another science. In the philosophy of biology, foe example, there is a rich literature aimed at understanding teleological explanations, and there has been a great deal of work on the structure of evolutionary theory and on such crucial concepts as fitness and biological function. The philosophy of physics is another area in which studies of this sort have been actively pursued. In undertaking this work, philosophers need not, and typically do not, assume that there is anything wrong with the science they are studying. Their goal is simply to provide accounts of the theories, concepts and explanatory strategies that scientists are using ~ accounts that are more explicit, systematic and philosophically sophisticated than the often rather rough-and-ready accounts offered by te scientists themselves.
Cognitive psychology is in many ways as curious and puzzling science. Many of the theories put forrard by cognitive psychologists make use of a family of ‘intentional’ concepts ~ like believing that ‘p’. Desiring that ‘q’, and representing ‘r’ ~ which do not appear in the physical or biological sciences, and these intentional concepts play a crucial role in many of the explanations offered by these theories. People’s decisions and actions are explained by appeal to their beliefs and desires. Perceptual processes, some of which may themselves be representational, are said to result in mental states which represent (or, sometimes misrepresent) one or another aspect of the cognitive agent’s environment.) While cognitive psychology occasionally say a bit about the nature of intentional concepts and the explanations that exploit them, their comments are rarely systematic or philosophically illuminating. Thus, it is hardly surprising that many philosophers have seen cognitive psychology as fertile ground for the sort of careful descriptive work that is done in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of physics. The American philosopher of mind Jerry Alan Fodor (1935-), who believes that mental representation should be conceived as individual representations with their own identities and structured states formulae transformed by processes of commutations or thought. Yet, Fodor’s ‘The Language of Thought’ (1975) was a pioneering study in this genre, that continues to have a major impact on the field.
These philosophical account of cognitive theories and the concepts they invoke are generally much more explicit than the accounts provided by psychologists, and they inevitably smooth over some of the rough edges of scientist’ actual practice. But if the account they give of cognitive theories diverges significantly from the theories that philosophers have just gotten it wrong. There is, however, a very different way in which philosophers have approached cognitive psychology. Rather than merely trying to characterize what cognitive psychology is actually doing, some philosophers try to say what it should and should not be doing. Their goal is not to explicate scientific practice, but to criticize and improve it. The most common target of this critical approach is the use of intentional notions have been criticized on various grounds. The two that are considered are that they fail to supervene on the physiology of the cognitive agent, and that they cannot be ‘naturalized’.
It is, nonetheless, that according to the sentential theory that objects of belief are sentences. Some sententialists maintain that public sentences are the objects of belief, Gilbert Ryle, for example, seems to have held that to believe that ‘p’ is to be disposed to assent to some natural language sentence that means that ‘p;. And Donald Davidson is usually read as accepting a version of the public sentence approach. The dominant version of the sentential theory, however, is the view that the objects of belief are private sentences. This view goes hand in hand with the computational conception of the mind. Since words are also about things, it is natural to ask how their intentionality is connected to that of thoughts. Two views have been advocated, as one view takes thought content to be self-subsisting, relative to linguistic content, and with the latter view dependent upon the former: The other view takes thought content to be derivative upon linguistic content, so that there can be no thought without a bedrock of language. The relation to language and thought is arguably felt, that a language is an abstract pairing of expressions and meanings, a function, in the set-theoretic sense, from expressions onto meaning. This makes sens of the fact that it explains why is a language no one speaks, and it explains why it is that, while it is a contingent fact that, ‘La neige est blanche’ means that snow is white among the French, it is a necessary truth that it means that in French and English are abstract objects in his sense, then they exist whether or not anyone speaks them: They even exist in possible worlds in which there are no thinkers in this respect, then language, as well as such notions as meaning and truth in a language, is priori too thought.
Nevertheless, computers are symbol manipulators: They transform symbols in accordance with fixed syntactic rules and thereby process information. If the mind is a computer then its states must themselves be symbolic states in whatever inner language the mind employs. So, belief must involve a relation to a string of symbols such that the string is a sentence, and presents as its natural language counterpart, whatever sentence is used to specify the content of the belief in a public context. So, on the dominant version of the sentential theory, believing that nothing succeeds like excess, say, is a matter of the mind standing in a certain computational relation (distinctive of belief) to a sentence which means that nothing succeeds like excess. This sentence is physically realized in the brain by some neurophysiological state of content, just as symbol strings in electric computers are physically realized by charged states of grids or patterns of electrical pulses.
The sentential theory involves no explicit commitment to abstract propositions. But propositions can still enter in the analysis of what it is for a given sentence to mean that such and such is the case. Thus, it is a mistake to suppose that a sentential approach to belief automatically repudiates propositions.
There are four min dominant versions of the sentential theory usually adduce as motivating their view. To begin with. It is that the view that the mind is a computer is one that has considerable empirical support from cognitive psychology. The sentential theory, then. Is an empirically plausible theory, one that supplies a mechanism for the relation that propositionalists take to obtain between minds and propositions? The mechanism id mediation by inner sentences.
Secondly, the sentential theory offers a straightforward explanation for the parallels that obtain between the objects and contents of speech acts and the objects of contents of belief. For example, I may say that I believe. Furthermore, the object of believing like the object of saying, can have semantic properties. We may say, for example.
What Jones believes is true
and:
What Jones believes entails what Smith believes
One plausible hypothesis, then, is that the object of belief is the same sort of entity as what is uttered in speech acts (or, what is written down).
The sentential theory also seems supported by the argument, that the ability to think certain thoughts appears intrinsically connected with the ability to think certain others. For example, the ability to think that Walter hits Julie goes hand in hand that Julie hits Walter, but not with the ability to think that Toronto is overcrowded. Why is this? The ability to produce or understand certain sentences is intrinsically connected with the ability to produce or understand certain others. For example, there are no native speakers of English who know how to say ‘Walter hits Julie’ but who do not know how to say ‘Julie hits Walter’. Similarly, there are no native speakers who understand the former sentence but not the latter. These facts are easily explained if sentences have a syntactic and semantic structure. But if sentences are taken to be atomic, these facts are a complete mystery. What is true for sentences is true also for thoughts. Thinking thoughts involves manipulating representations with a propositional content have a semantic and syntactic structure like that of sentences, it is no accident that one who is able to think that Walter hits Julie is thereby also able to think that Julie hits Walter. Furthermore, it is no accident that one who can think these thoughts need not thereby be able to think thoughts having different components ~ for example, the thought that Toronto is overcrowded. And what goes here for thought goes for belief and the other propositional attitudes.
Consider the inference from:
Rufus believes that the round object ahead is brown
And:
The round object ahead is the coin Rupert dropped
To:
Rufus believes that the coin Rupert dropped is brown
This inference is strictly parallel to the inference from:
Rufus uttered the sentence ‘The round object ahead is brown
And the round object ahead is the coin Rupert dropped to:
Rufus uttered the sentence ‘The coin Rupert dropped is brown’
If the immediate object of belief are sentences, we should ‘expect’ the former inference to be invalid just as the latter is.
Another motivating factor is the thought that, since the pattern of causal interactions among beliefs mirrors various inferential relations among the sentences that entail relations among the sentences that are ordinarily used to specify the object of beliefs have logical form. For example, corresponding to the inference from:
All dogs make good pets
And:
All of Jane’s animals are dogs
To:
All of Jane’s animals make good pets
We have the fact that, if Walter believes that all dogs make good pets and he later comes to believe that all of Jane’s animals are dogs, he will, in all likelihood, be caused to believe that all of Jane’s animals make good pets. Generalizing, we can say that a belief of the form
All F’s are G’s
Together with a belief of the form
All G’s are H’s
Typically causes a belief of the form
All F’s are H’s
This generalization concerns belief alone. But there are also, generalizations linking belief and desire. For example, a desire of the form:
Do A.
Together with a belief of the form:
In order to do A, it is necessary to do B
Typically generates a desire of the form:
Do B.
Now these generalizations categorize beliefs and desires according to the logical form of their object. They therefore require that the object have logical forms. But the primary possessors of logical form are sentences. Hence the (immediate) objects of beliefs and desires are themselves sentences.
Advocates of the propositional theory sometimes object to the sentential approach on the grounds that it is chauvinistic. Maybe our beliefs are represented in our heads in the form of sentences in a special mental language, but why should all beliefs necessarily be so represented in all possible creatures? For example, could not belief tokens the form of graphs, maps, pictures, or some other form dissimilar to any of our public forms of representation?
This objection is based on a misunderstanding. The sentential theory is not normally presented as an analysis of the essence of belief, of what is common to all actual and possible believers in virtue of which they have beliefs. So, it has nothing to say about the beliefs of angels, say, or other possible believers. Rather it is a theory of how belief is actually realized in us.
There is another important class of beliefs, however. These are standardly attributed using predicates of the form, believes of ‘x’ that it is ‘F’. Beliefs of this sort are called ‘de re beliefs’. Consider, for example, my believing of the building I am facing that it is an imposing structure. This is a belief with respect to a particular building, however, that building is described. Suppose, for example, that building is St. Paul’s Cathedral. Then, in believing of the building I am thereby believing of St. Paul’s that it is an imposing structure. So, for a belief to be ‘de re’ with respect to some object ‘θ’ which the belief is about. By contrast, if I simply believe that the building I am facing is imposing ~ this is the ‘de dicto’ case ~ I need not believe that the building I am facing is St. Paul’s. moreover, I t is not a condition of my having the belief that the building I am facing is before me. I might, for example, be under the influence of some drug, which has caused me to hallucinate a large building.
De re beliefs, then, are beliefs held with respect to particular things or people, however described that they have such and such properties. On the propositional theory, such beliefs are often taken to require that the given thing or person itself believing of Smith that he is dishonest is a matter of standing in the belief relation to the proposition that Smith is dishonest, where this proposition is a complex entity having the person, Smith as one of its components.
The sentential theory can account for ‘de re’ belief in a similar fashion. The assumption now is that the inner sentence is a singular one (consisting in the simplest case of a name concatenated with a predicate). This sentence has, as its meaning, a proposition which meets the above requirement (assuming a propositional approach to sentence meanings).
Of the two theories the sentential view probably has the wider support in philosophy today. However, as earlier, comments should have made clear, the two theories are not diametrically opposed to one another. For the sentential theory, unlike the propositional view of belief. Moreover, its advocates are not necessarily against the introduction of abstract propositions.
There is one further feature worth commenting upon that is common to both the theories. This is their acceptance of the relational character of belief. The primary reason for tasking belief to be relational is syntactic objects. For example:
Jones believes that gorillas are more intelligent than chimpanzees
Entails:
There is something Jones believes.
Not all philosophers accept that existential generalizations like this one should be taken at face value as indicating a metaphysical commitment to some entity which is the believed object. However, unless some strong argument can be given which show that this case is anomalous, it is surely reasonable to existential generalization, and hence to grant that there really are objects in which we are related in belief.
The hypothesis especially associated with Fodor, that mental processing occurs in a language different from one’s ordinary native language, but underlying and explaining our competence with it. The idea is a development of the Chomskyan notion of an innate universal grammar. It is a way of drawing the analogy between the workings of the brain or mind and those of a standard computer, since computer programs are linguistically complex sets of instruments whose execution explains the surface behaviour of the computer. As an explanation of ordinary language learning and competence the hypothesis has not found universal favour. It apparently only explains ordinary representational powers by invoking innate things of the same sort, and it invites the image of the learning infant translating the language surrounding it back into an innate language whose own powers are a mysterious biological given.
Thought, in having contents, possess semantic properties. The syntax/semantic distinctions seem straightforward, but there are deep issues in linguistics and the philosophy of language tying in wait to make things more complex. First of all, though syntax is a matter of form, there are many possible levels of such form. Thus, knowing that a sentence is of the subject-predicate sort is a fairly sophisticated level of formal description, one must know something about grammatical categories to appreciate it. Consider ‘The cat is on the mat’, whenas of saying that it contains 16 letters and 5 spaces, or that it is composed of certain kinds of black-on-white shapes are descriptively no less formal, though they can be appreciated without any background grammatical knowledge.
However, the complications really multiply in respect of semantics. It is one thing to say that the semantics of a sentence is its meaning, it is another to say what meaning is, or even to say how one would go about describing the meaning of words or sentences. Is it enough to say that the sentence ‘The cat is on the mat’ expresses the fact that the cat is on the mat? On the one hand, this seems uninformative ~ imagine it was the sole explanation of the meaning of this sentence. On the other hand, it is not clear how to understand ‘expresses the fact that’.
Exactly what form a theory of meaning should take, and what level of syntactical description is most appropriate to understanding language, are problems for linguistic and philosophers of language. But the notions of syntax and semantics also play an important part in philosophy of mind. This arises because it is widely maintained that words and sentences are not the only kinds of thing that have syntax and semantics: In one way or another these features have been claimed for mental phenomena such as beliefs and other propositional attitudes. The range of representational systems humans understand and regularly use is surprisingly large, in that distinguishes items that serve as representations from other objects or events. There has ben general agreement that the basic notion of a representation involves one thing’s ‘standing for’, ‘being about’, ‘referring to or denoting’ something else. Thus, there is a view known as the ‘language of thought’ theory which maintains that beliefs are syntactically characterized items in the mind/brain and that they are semantically evaluable. According to this account, wee can best explain, for example, Smith’s belief that snow is white as his having in his mind/brain a token of a language of thought sentence ~ a sentence with some kind of syntax ~ which has as a semantic value the appropriate relation to snow and whiteness. Also, many not committed to the idea of a language of thought would still believe there to be a semantics of attitude states. So, the very difficult issue of how to describe the semantical relations carried over from the philosophy of language to the philosophy of mind. It is often called the ‘problem of intentionality’, though this label covers other issues as well.
Beliefs are true or false. If, as representationalist had it, beliefs are relations to mental representations, then beliefs must be relations to representations that have truth values among their semantic properties. Sentences, at least declaratives, are exactly the kind of representation that have truth values, this in virtue of denoting and attributing. So, if mental representations says, we could readily account for the truth valuation of mental representations.
Beliefs serve a function within the mental economy. They play a central part in reasoning and thereby, contribute in the control or behaviour in various ways. This core notion of rationality in philosophy of mind thus concerns a cluster of personal identity conditions, that is, holistic coherence requirements upon the system of elements comprising a person’s mind. A person’s putative beliefs must mesh with the person’s desires and decisions, or else they cannot qualify as the individual’s beliefs. Similarly, mutatis mutandis, for desires, decisions, and so forth. This is ‘agent-constitutive rationality’ ~ that agents possess it is more than an empirical hypothesis. A related conception is epistemic or ‘normative rationality’: To be rational (that is, reasonable, well-founded, not subject to epistemic criticism), a belief or decision at least must cohere with the rest of a person’s cognitive system ~ for instance, in terms of logical consistency and application of valid inference procedures. Rationality constraints therefore, are key linkages among the cognitive states. The main issue is characterizing these types of mental coherence.
Reason capitalizes on various semantic and evidential relations among antecedently held beliefs (and, perhaps other attitudes) to generate new beliefs to which subsequent behaviour might be tuned. Apparently, reasoning is a process that attempts to secure new true beliefs by exploiting old [true] beliefs. By the lights of representationalist, reasoning must be a process defined over mental representation. Sententialism tells us that the type of representation in play in reasoning is most likely sensational ~ even if mental -, representations. Possibly, in reasoning mental representations stand to one another just as do public sentences in valid formal derivation. Reasoning would then preserve truth of belief by being the manipulation of truth-valued sentential representations according to rules so selectively sensitive to the syntactic properties of the representations as to respect and preserve their semantic properties. The sententialists hypothesis is thus that reasoning is formal inference: It is a process tuned primarily to the structure of mental sentences. Reasoners, then, are things very much like classically programmed computers.
Would that the story could be so tidily told. Arguably we have infinitely many beliefs. Yet, certainly the finitude of the brain or relevant representational devices defies an infinity corresponding representation. So preserving sententialism requires disavowing the apparent infinitude of beliefs between (finitely many) actual beliefs ~ these being relations to actual Mentalese sentences ~ and (infinitely many) dispositional beliefs ~ these being the unactualized but potential consequences of their actual counterpart. But this distinction in hand, the mind ~ as a sentential processor ~ is able so elegantly to manage and manipulate its actual beliefs so as regularly to produce the new beliefs rationally demanded of it in response to detectable environmental fluctuations. This and other related matters lead to notoriously difficult research problems whose solution certainty bears on or upon the plausibility of the language of thought. The sententialists must admit that if these problems finally prove intractable, then whatever warrant sententialists might otherwise have had, will have evaporated. But this aside, there are additional reasons in abductive support of sententialism.
Nevertheless, representationalist is launched by the assumption that psychological states are relational, that being in a psychological state minimally involves being related to something. But, perhaps, psychological states are not at all relational. Might not the logical form of Peter Abelard (1078-1142), a controversial figure, he found his work condemned in 1121, and his scepticism about the legends of St. Dionysius forced him to leave the Abbey of St. Denis? Abelard wrote extensively on the problem of universals, probably adopting moderate ‘realism’, although he has sometimes been claimed as a ‘nominalist’. Also, writing commentaries on ‘Porphyry’ and other authorities. His ‘Scito te psum’ (‘know thyself’), is a treatise on ethics holding that sin consists entirely in contempt for the wishes of God, action is therefore less important than states of mind such as intention. Abelard’s contributions to logic have been the object of recent admiration. Abelard not a relation to anything but simply the monadic property of thinking in certain ways, however. Adverbialism begins by denying that expressions of psychological states are relational, infers that psychological states themselves are monadic and, thereby, opposes classical versions of representationalist, including sententialism.
Adverbialism aspires to ontological simplicity in eschewing the existence of entities as theoretically recondite as mental representations. Nonetheless, it is hard pressed plausibly and simply to explain what in intuitivistically semantical yet, common to Abelard’s thoughts that are supposed monadic properties of thinking are, apparently no more mutually similar than either is to the property of thinking . It is, after all, only an orthographic accident and totally without significance that the predicates for the first two properties have portions of their spelling in common. Thus, unless Adverbialism allows for internally complete properties ~ in which case it seems to have no metaphysical advantage over its relational rival ~ it seems unable to meet the psychological facts.
A semantic theory relates pieces of language to pieces of the world. We use language to talk about the world, and express our thoughts, which are also about the world. (The ‘aboutness’ of though it is oftentimes called ‘intentionality’). The relationship between talk, thought and the world, which is explored in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind and metaphysics.
Thus, for example, we might try to give a philosophical account of some distinctions in reality ~ say, between objects and properties, or between particulars and universals ~ in terms of differences among words or in terms of differences in the realm of thought, provided that we already had some understanding of those linguistic or mental differences. Or, going the other way about, we might assume some account of the metaphysical differences, and use it in our philosophical words in the domains of talk or thought. There are also important questions of categorical priorities between philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Indeed, any strategy for elucidating the concept of linguistic meaning will inevitably depend on our general view of the order of priority as between talk and thought.
Suppose that we accept the intentionality of though, does this remove all force from the argument, it does not, if one accepts some connection between what we can conceive and what we can imagine. Whenever we imagine an object we imagine what it would be like perceived room a certain viewpoint: We attempt to conceive of the object as it is independently of some possible perceptual perspective would have to be more abstract than a concrete imagination. As a physical object is an empirical object, with empirical properties, it might seem that thee was something peculiar about the idea that it possesses a mode of existence that could not be represented imaginistically, that is, in a form in which those empirical properties are actualized.
The natural reply to this is that a good perspective on an object enables one to form a conception of the object as it is in itself. This is most simply represented by a clear view of a flat surface, which enables one to see it not merely from a perspective but as it is in its own plane. Our visual perception comes to be structured in three dimensions, so its having a perspective does not force us into having a merely abstract conception of the object in its own space, as it would do if vision were two dimensional and distance was only inferred.
The most significant feature of thought is its ‘intentionality’ of ‘content’: In thinking , one thinks about certain things, and one thinks certain things of those things ~ one entertains propositions that stand for states of affairs. Nearly all the interesting properties of thoughts depend upon their content: Their being coherent or incoherent, disturbing or reassuring, revolutionary or banal, connected logically or illogically to other thoughts bother talking prepared to recognize the intentionality of thought. So we are naturally curious about the nature of content as we want to understand what makes it possible, what constitutes it, what it stems from. To have a theory of thought is to have a theory of its content.
Four issues have dominated recent thinking about the content of thought, each may be construed as a questions about what sequence of its so depending for not depending. These potential dependencies concern: (1)The world outside of the thinker himself (2) language (3) logical truth (4) consciousness. In each case the question is whether intentionality is essentially, or accidentally related to the items mentioned: Does it exist, that is, only by courtesy of the dependence of thought on the said items? And this question determines what the intrinsic nature of thought.
Thoughts are obviously about things in the world, but it is a further question whether they could exist and have the content they do whether or not their putative objects themselves exist. Is what I think intrinsically dependent upon the world in which I happen to think it? This question was given impetus and definition by a thought experiment due to the American philosopher Hilary Putnam (1926-), concerning a planet called Twin-Earth. On Twin-Earth. Whom of which there live thinkers who are duplicate copies of us, in all internal respects but whose surrounding environment contain different kinds of natural objects, and so forth. The key point is that since it is not possible to individuate natural kinds, in that things are solely by reference to the way they strike the people who think about particular things, for which thinking about them cannot be a function simply of internal properties of the thinker. Thought content is relational in nature, whereby it is fixed by external facts as they bear upon the thinker. Much the same point can be made by considering repeated demonstrative reference to distinct particular objects: What I refer in when I say ‘that ‘bomb’, of different bombs, depends on or upon the particular bomb in font of me and cannot be deduced from what is going on inside me. Context contributes to content.
Inspired by such examples, many philosophers have adopted an ‘externalist’ view of thought content: Thoughts are not autonomous states of the individual, capable of transcending the contingent facts of the surrounding surfaces inherent to the perceptions of our world. One is therefore not free to think whatever one likes, as it were, whether or not the world beyond cooperates in containing suitable referents for those thoughts. And this conclusion has generated a number of consequential questions. Can we know our thoughts with special authority, given that they are thus, hostage to external circumstances? How do thoughts cause other thoughts and behaviour, given that they are not identical with any internal stares we are in?
To believe a proposition is to accept it as true, and it is relative to the objective of reaching truth that the rationalizing relations between contents are set for belief. They must be such that the truth of the premises makes likely the truth of the condition, making clear this justificatory link. Paradigmatically, the psychological states that provide an agent with reasons are intentional states of individuation in terms of their propositional content, as such is the traditional emphasis that the reason-giving relation is a logical or conceptual link of bringing the nature of this conceptual representation for actions that provide intentional states other than beliefs.
We might say, that the objective of desires is their own satisfaction. In the case of reason for acting therefore, we are looking for a relationship between the content and the agent’s intentional states and the description of the action which show that performing an action of that kind has some chance of promoting the desired goals. The presence of a reason for believing or acting does not necessarily make a rational for an agent to believe or act in that way. From the agent’s point of view, overall she may have other beliefs which provide conflicting evidence, or conflicting desires. To establish what is rational to believe or do in general, of what we needs to take into account principles for weighing competing beliefs and desires. Of course, we do not always believe what is rational or act in the light of what we judge best, e.g., as, cases of self-deception and weakness of will show this. However, a minimum of rationality must be present in the pattern of a person’s belief, desire, intentions, and actions before they can be regarded as an agent with intentional states at all.
Nonetheless, for some writers the justificatory and explanatory tasks of reason-giving d simply coincide. The manifestation of rationality is seen as sufficient to reexplain or acts quite independently of questions regarding casual origin. Within this model the greater the degree of rationality we can detect, the ,more intelligible the sequence will be where there is a breakdown in rationality, as in cases of weakness of will or self-deception, as there is a corresponding breakdown in our ability to make the action/belief intelligible.
Once, again, the justificatory and explanatory role of reason cannot simply be equated. To do so fails to distinguish cases where I have reasons for which I believe from which your innocence could be deduced but nonetheless, come to believe you are innocent because you have blue eyes. I my Have intentional states that give me altruistic reasons for giving to charity but nonetheless contribute our of a desire to earn someone’s good opinion: In both these cases, although my belief could be shown to be rational in the light of other beliefs, and my actions in the light of my altruistic states, neither of these rationalizing links could form part of a valid explanation of the phenomena concerned. Moreover, cases of weakness of will show that I can have sufficient reason for acting and yet fail to act, e.g., I continue to smoke although I judge it would be better to abstain. This suggests that the mere availability of reasoning, however good, in favour of an action cannot in itself be sufficient to explain why it occurred.
The casual explanatory approach to reason-giving explanations also requires an account of the intentional content of our psychological states, which makes it possible for such content to be doing such work. It also provides a motivation for the reduction of intentional characteristics to extensional ones. In an attempt to fit such intentional causality into a fundamentally materialist world picture. The very nature of the reason-giving relations, however, can be seen to render such reductive projects unrealizable. This, therefore, leaves intensional and non-intentional levels of description in such a way as to accommodate intentional causality, without either over-determination or a miraculous coincidence of prediction from within distinct casually explanatory frameworks.
What has not been considered carefully enough, however, is the scope of the externalists thesis ~ whether it applies to all forms of thought all concepts. For unless this question can be answered affirmatively we cannot rule out the possibility that thought in general depends on there being some thought that is purely internally determined, so that the externally fixed thoughts are a secondary phenomenon. What about thoughts concerning one’s present sensory experience, or logical thoughts, or ethical thought? Could there, indeed, be a thinker for when internalism was generally correct? Is external individuation he rule or the exemption? And might it take different forms in different cases?
Since words are also about things, it is natural to ask how their intentionality is connected to that of thoughts. Two views have been advocated: One view takes thought content to be self-subsisting relative to linguistic content: With the latter dependent upon the former, the other view takes thought content to be derivative upon linguistic content, so that there can be no thought content to be derivative upon linguistic content, so that there can be no thought without fundamental principles of language. Thus arise controversies about whether animals really think, being non-speakers, or computers really use language, being non-thinkers. All such questions depend critically upon what one is to mean by ‘language’. Some hold that spoken language is unnecessary for thought, but that there must be an inner language in order for thought to be possible: While others reject the very idea of an inner language, preferring to suspend thought from outer speech. However, it is not entirely clear what it amounts to, to assert (or deny) that there is n inner language of thought. If it means merely that concepts (thought-constituents) are structured in such a way as to be isomorophic with spoken language, then the claim is trivially true, given one natural assumption. But if it means that concepts just are ‘syntactic’, items orchestrated into strings of the same. Then the claim is acceptable only insofar as syntax is an adequate basis for meaning ~ which on the face of it, it is not. Concepts no doubt have combinatorial powers comparable to those of words, but the question is whether anything else can plausibly be meant by the hypothesis of an inner language.
On the other hand, it appears undeniable that spoken language does not have autonomous intentionality, but instead derives its meaning from the thoughts of speakers ~ though language may augment one’s conceptual capacities. So thought cannot post-date spoken language. The truth seems to be that in human psychology speech and thought are interdependent in many ways, but that there is no conceptual necessity about this. The only ‘language’ on which thought essentially depends is that of the structured system of concepts itself: Thought indeed depends upon there being thought indeed depends upon there being isolable concepts that can join with others to produce complex propositions. But ths is merely to draw complete propositions. Nonetheless, ths is merely to draw attention to a property any system of concepts must have: It is not to say what concepts are or how they succeed in moving between thoughts as they do. All in what is the same, appeals to language at this point are apt to founder on circularity, since words take on the powers of concepts only insofar as they express them. Thus, there seems little philosophical illumination to be got from making thought depend upon language.
Least remains in the question that whether intentionality is dependent upon consciousness for its very existence, and if so why. Could our thoughts have the very content they now have if we were not to be conscious beings at all? Unfortunately, it is difficult to see how to mount an argument in either direction. On the one hand, it can hardly be an accident that our thoughts are conscious and that their content is reflected in the intrinsic condition of our state of consciousness: It is not as if consciousness leaves off where thought content begins ~ as it does with, say, the neural basis of thought. Yet, on the other hand, it is by no means clear what it is about consciousness that links it to intentionality in this way. Much of the trouble stems from our exceedingly poor understanding of the nature of consciousness in general. Just as we cannot see how consciousness could arise from brain tissue (the mind-body problem), so we fail to grasp that manner in which conscious states bear meaning. Perhaps content is fixed by extra-conscious properties and relations and only subsequently shows up in consciousness, as various naturalistic reductive accounts would suggest: Or, perhaps, consciousness itself plays a more enabling role, allowing meaning to come into the world, hard as this may be to penetrate. In some ways the question is analogous to, say, the properties of pain: Is the aversive property of pain, causing avoidance behaviour and so forth, essentially independent of the conscious state of feeling pain, being possibly present without the feeling, or is it that pain could only have in aversive function in virtue of the conscious feelings? This is part of the more general question of the epiphenomenal character of conscious awareness, much as conscious awareness is just a dispensable accompaniment of some mental feature ~ such as content of causal power ~ or as it that consciousness is structurally involved in the very determination of the feature? It is only too easy to feel pulled in both directions on this question, neither alternative being utterly felicitous. Some theorists suspect that our uncertainty over such questions stems from a constitutional limitation to human understanding. We just cannot develop the necessary theoretical tools with which to provide answers to these questions: So we may not in principle be able to make any progress with the issue of whether thought depends upon consciousness and why. Certainly our present understanding falls far short of providing us with any clear route into the question.
Another, but relevant question pertains of what is the relation between mind and physical reality? Well-established schools of thought give starkly opposing answers to this question. The French mathematician and founding father of modern philosophy was René Descartes (1596-1650), insisted that mental phenomena are non-physical in nature. This view seems inviting because mental phenomena are indisputably different from everything else. Moreover, its safe to assume that all phenomena that are not of or relating to the mind have some objectively phenomenal descriptions that are essentially structured in the shaping of nature. So it may seem that the best way to explain how the mental differs from everything else is to hypothesize that mind is non-physical in nature.
But that hypothesis is not the only way to explain how mind differs from everything else. Its also possible that mental phenomena are instead just a special case of physical phenomena: They would then have properties that no other physical phenomena have, but would still themselves be physical. This explanation requires that we specify what is special about mental phenomena which makes them different from everything else. But we must specify that, in any case, just in order to understand the nature of the mental. Characterizing mental phenomena negatively, simply as not being physical, does little to help us understand what it is for something to be mental.
In Descartes’ time, the issue between materialists and their opponents was framed in terms of substances. Materialists such as the English philosopher, mathematician and linguist Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and French philosopher and mathematician Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) who maintained that people are physical systems with abilities that no other physical system have, therefore, are special kinds of physical substance. Descartes’ Dualism, by contrast, claimed that people consist of two distinct substances that interact causally: A physical body and a non-physical unextended substance. The traditional conception of substance, however, introduces extraneous issues, which have no bearing on whether mental phenomena are physical or non-physical. And in any case, even those who agree with Descartes that the mental is non-physical have today given up the idea that there are non-physical substances that people are physical organisms with two distinctive kinds of states: Physical stares such as standing and walking, and mental states such as thinking and feeling.
Accordingly, the issue of whether the mental is physical or non-physical is no longer cast in terms of whether people, and other creatures that have the ability to tink and sense, are physical or non-physical substances. Rather, that question is put in terms of whether the distinctively mental states of thinking, sensing, and feeling are physical states or non-physical stares. The identity theory is the materialist thesis that every mental state is physical, that is, that every mental state is identical with some physical state.
If mental states are identical with physical states, presumably the relevant physical states are various sorts of neural states: Our concept of metal states such as thinking, sensing, and feeling are of course, different from our concepts of neural states, of whatever sort. But that is no problem for the identity theory. As the Cambridge-born Australian philosopher J.J.C. Smart (1920-)who first argued for the identity theory, emphasized the requisite identities do not depend on our concepts of mental states or the meaning of mental terms, for ‘a’ to be the meaning with ‘b’, ‘a’ and ‘b’ must have exactly the same properties, but the terms ‘a’ and ‘b’ need not mean the same. For our agreeing with Joseph Butler, in stating that everything is what it is and not another thing. The difficultly is to know when we have one thing and not two. A rule for telling this is a principle if ‘individuation’ or a criterion of identity for things of the kind in question. In logic, identity may be introduced as a primitive relational expression or defined via the identity of ‘indiscernibles’, and is known as ‘Leibniz’s law’.
But a problem does seem to arise about the properties of mental states. Suppose pain is identical with a certain firing of c-fibres. Although a particular pain is the very same state as a neural firing, we identify that this state as a neural firing, we identify that state in two different ways, a pain and as a neural firing. The state will therefore have certain properties in virtue of which we identify it as a pain and those in virtue of which we identify it as a neural firing. The properties in virtue of which we identify it as a pain will be mental properties, whereas those in virtue of which we identify it as a neural firing will be physical properties. This has seemed to many to lead a kind of duality, at the level of the properties of mental states. Even if we reject a duality or dualism of physical organisms and take people simply to be physical organisms, those organisms still have both mental and physical stares. Similar ly, even if we identify those metal with certain physical states, those state will nonetheless, have both mental and physical properties. So, disallowing duality or dualism, with respect to substances and their states simply leads to its reappearances at the level of the properties of those states.
Mental states such as ‘thought’ and ‘desire’, often called ‘propositional attitudes’ and have ‘content’ that can be described by ‘that’ clauses. For example, one can have a thought, or desire, that it will rain. These states are said to have intentional properties, or intentionality. Sensations, such as pain and sense impression, lack intentional content , and have instead qualitative properties of various sorts.
However, the problem about mental properties for sensations, since the painful quality of pains and the red quality of visual sensation seem to be irretrievably non-physical. Even so, if mental states are all identical with physical states, these states appear to have properties that are not physical. And if mental states do actually have non-physical properties the identity of mental with physical states would not sustain a thoroughgoing mind-body materialism.
The Australian philosopher J.J.C. Smarts reply to this challenge is that, despite initial appearances, the distinctive properties of sensation are neural as between being mental and physical: In the term Smart borrows from Gilbert Ryle (1900-76) the English philosopher and classicist), is that, they are topic neutral. My having a sensation of red consists in my being in state that is similar, in respects that wee need not specified, to something that occurs in me I am in the presence of certain stimuli. Because the respect of similarity is not specified, the property is distinctively neither mental nor it distinctively physical. But everything is similar to everything else in some respect or other. So leaving the respect or other. So leaving the respect similarity unspecified makes this account too weak to capture the distinguishing properties of sensation.
A more sophisticated reply to the difficultly of mental properties is due independently to the forthright Australian ‘materialist’ and together with J.J.C. Smart, that David Malet Armstrong, the leading Australian philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. Armstrong defends an uncompromising scientific ‘materialism’, together with a ‘functionalist’ theory of mind (1968), and David Lewis (1941-2002), an American philosopher whose ‘Convention: A Philosophical Study’ (1969), rehabilitated the notion of ‘convention’, at the time regarded with deep suspicion both philosophers of language and by political theorists. ‘Counterfactuals’ (1973) introduced the now classic ‘possible worlds’ treatment of such statements. Both were to argue that for a state to be a particular sort of intentional characteristic casual relations to other particular occurrences. The properties in virtue of which we identify states as thoughts or sensations will still be neural as between being mental and physical, since anything can bear a causal relation to anything else. But causal connections have a better chance than
similarity in some unspecified aspect of sensation and thoughts.
The causal theory is ingathering the view that the link between words and the world, whereby words mean what they do, is a causal link. The theory is aired in Kripke’s ‘Naming and Necessity’ for the special case of proper names. A plausible way of thinking o the link between the name ‘Plato’ and the philosophe r Plato is that there was an original naming of the philosopher with a term, which is itself an ancestor of the word we use, and a reference-preserving linkage causally responsible for our present use of the term. Even in this case, there are difficulties over what makes for a reference-preserving link, and extending the theory of other kinds of term, such as those designing ‘natural’ kinds, is not straightforward.
Nonetheless, its misguided to try to construe the distinctive properties of mental states as being neural as between being mental and physical. To be neural regards being mental or physical is to be neither distinctively mental nor distinctively physical. But since thought and sensations are distinctively mental states, for a state to be a thought or a sensation is perforced for it to have some characteristically metal property. We inevitably lose the distinctively mental if we construe there properties as being neither mental nor physical.
Not only is the topic-neutral construed misguided: The problem it was designed to solve is equally so. That problem stemmed from the idea that the mental must have some non-physical aspect. If not at the level of people or their mental states, then at the level of the distinctively mental properties of those states. A thorough discussion would take one deep into metaphysical and ontological issues, but, in the context of philosophy of mind, it is important to have some grasp of this notion. The best way to appreciate what is meant by a property is by contrast with two others: Predicated and concept. Consider first the sentence: ‘Walter id bearded’. The word ‘Walter’ in this sentence is a bit of language ~ a name of some individual human being ~ and no one would be tempted to confuse the word with what it names. Consider now the expression ‘is bald’. This too is a bit of language ~ philosopher’s call it a ‘predicate’ ~ and it brings to our attention some property or feature which, if the sentence is true, is possessed by Walter. Understood in this way, a property is not itself linguistic though it is expressed, or conveyed by something that is, namely a predicate. What might be said is that a property is a contrasted just as sharply with any predicate we use to express it as the name, ‘Walter’ is contrasted with the person himself. However, it is a matter of great controversy just what sort of ontological status should be accorded to properties. Many philosophers think that one should keep one’s ontological commitments to the minimum, and these philosophers ~ known as ‘nominalists’ would count only particular physical objects as ontologically suitable. But even if you are willing to accept properties and relations into your ontology, it still a further question whether you would count, e.g., belief as properties of person and/or relations between persons and belief contents. This sort of question about belief is ontological, and such questions figure widely in most areas of philosophy of mind. Even so, discussions of consciousness and action are often cast as debates about the ontological status of things as pains, sensations of colour, Qualia and particular instances of action. Nevertheless, one could leave ‘dualism’ out of the characterization altogether by describing the view of as ‘anomalous monism’. This label ~ coined by Donald Herbert Davidson (1917-2003) the American philosopher, instigating mental and physical descriptions of persons, and the possibility of genuine explanation of events in terms of psychological properties. While at the same time signalling a refusal to continence reduction, describing the mental as anomalous in respect of the physical just is a way of denying reducibility.
But the idea that the understanding, is that of or relating to the mind is in some respect non-physical cannot be assumed without independent variabilities. Plainly, the distinctively mental properties of mental states are unlike any other properties we know about: Only mental states have properties that are at all like the quantities properties of sensations. And arguably nothing but mental stares have properties that are anything like the international properties of ‘thoughts’ and ‘desires’. Nonetheless, this does not show that these mental properties are not physical properties. Not all physical properties are like the standard cases: So, mental properties might still be special kinds of physical properties, in that, its question begging to assume otherwise. The doctrine that the mental properties of mental states are non-physical properties is simply an expression of the ‘Cartesian’ doctrine that the mind is automatically non-physical.
To settle or not those mental properties are non-physical, we would need a positive account of what those properties are. Proposals and available that would account for intensional properties wholly in physical terms are that Daniel Dennett, (1942-), Dretske and Jerry Alan Fodor, if, perhaps, one of these will prove correct. Its been more difficult to give a positive account for quantitative properties of sensation such that has lead to conclude that such properties will inevitably turn out to be non-physical. But its plainly unfounded to infer from the difficulty in explaining something to its being non-physical.
It is sometimes held that properties should count as physical properties only if they can be defined using the terms of physics. This is far too restrictive, yet, nobody would hold that to reduce biology to physics, for example, we must define all biological properties using only terms that occur in physics. And even putting ‘reduction’ aside. If certain biological properties could not be so defined, that would no mean that those properties were in any way non-physical. The sense of ‘physical’ that is relevant must be broad enough to include not only biological properties, but also commonsense, macroscopic properties. Bodily stat es are controversially physical in the relevant way. So, we can recast the identity theory as asserting that mental states are identical with bodily states.
There are two ways to take the claim that every mental state is identical with some state. It might mean identity at the level of types, that is, that every mental state type is identical with some physical state type. Such type identity would hold if all the instances of a particular type of mental state are also instances of a particular type identity theory.
But the identity claim might instead mean only that every instance of a mental state is identical with an instance of a bodily state of some type or other. On this construal, the various types of mental state would not have a correspond to types of bodily stare: Instances of a single mental type might be identical with tokens of distinct bodily types. The weaker claim is known as the ‘token identity theory’.
There is reason to doubt that the type identity theory is true. It is plausible that organisms of different species may share at least some type of mental state ~ say, pain ~ even if their anatomical and physiological differences are so great that they cannot share the relevant types of bodily state. No single bodily-state type would then correspond to these mental-state types. This possibility is called the ‘multiple realizablity’ of mental states. It is conceivable, of course, that biology will someday type physiological states in a way that corresponds tolerantly well with types of mental state, but there is no guarantee that, that will happen.
Even if no physiological types correspond to types of mental state, the causal theory of Lewis and Armstrong would allow us to identify types of mental state with types described in other terms. On Lewis’s version of the theory, mental states in whatever states occupy the casual roles specified by all our commonsense psychological platitude, taken together. The various types of mental roles thus specified: Mental-state tokens occupy the causal role that defines that type. These causal roles involve causal ties to behaviour and stimuli and to other states that occupy these casual roles. Such a theory, which define mental-state types in terms of causal roles, is oftentimes called ‘functionalism’.
One could imagine that the individual states that occupy the relevant causal roles turn out to be bodily states, for example they might instead be states of an Cartesian unextended substance. But it is overwhelming like that the states that do occupy those casual roles are all tokens of bodily-state types. So the casual theory, together with this empirical likelihood, sustains at least the token identity theory. Moreover, this version of the causal theory bypasses the problematic idea that the mental properties of those states are neutral as between being mental and physical, since mental-state types are determined by our psychological platitudes.
To defend the type identity theory as well, however, would require showing that all mental-state tokens that occupy a particular causal role also fall under a single physiological type. Lewis (1980) expects substantial uniformity of physiological type across the token of each mental-state type, at least within particular populations of creatures. But if tokens of different physiological types do occupy the same causal role that would undermine the type identify theory, or at least make it relative to certain populations.
Multiple realizablity is the possibility that mental-state types are instantiated by stress of distinct psychological types. It is an empirical matter whether that is actually the case. If it is, physical-state types don not correspond to mental-state types to mental-state types, and the type identity theory is false.
But one might, wit h Hilary Putnam (1975), construe the type identity theory more strongly, as claiming that the mental properties that define the various types of mental state are identical with physical properties. And that is false even if the tokens of each mental-state type fall under a single physiological type: The property of occupying a particular causal role is plainly of occupying a particular causal role is plainly not identical with the property of belonging to a particular physiological type. On this construal, no empirical findings are needed to refute the type identical theory. But it is more reasonable to construe the type identity theory less strongly, as requiring the claim only that all tokens of a particular mental-state type fall under a single physiological type.
Donald Davidson (1970) has used different considerations to argue that mental-state types correspond to no physiological types, but that the token identity theory is nonetheless correct. Plainly, mental and bodily events cause each other. Moreover, as Davidson reasonably holds, one event token can cause another only is that causal connection instantiates some explanatory law. But Davidson also insists that an event token belongs to a particular mental type only relative to certain background assumptions about meaning and ‘rationality’. Tokens of physical events by contrast, belonging to whatever physical type they do independently of any such background assumptions. Davidson infers that there can be no strict laws connecting physical and mental events. But if so, how can mental and bodily events cause each other?
In the hands of Davidson, the status of intentional generalization is used to a somewhat different end. Such generalizations provide the constitutive principles of rationality which govern our attribution of intentional states to ourselves and others. He argues that such attributions are open to constant revision and retain a residual indeterminacy which render our intentional notions quite unsuitable for inclusion in strict causal laws. The Davidson argument, however, classification in to necessarily undermined process of interpretation. For the causal theorists, in contrast, they are akin to natural kind terms, generating casual explanatory generalizations, and subject to no other such terms.
The casual explanatory approach to reason-giving explanations also requires an account of the intentional content of our psychological states, which makes it possible for such content to be doing such work. It also provides a motivation for reduction of intentional characteristics to extensional ones, in an attempt to fit intentional causality into fundamentally materialist world picture. The very nature of the reason-giving relation, however, can be seen to render such reductive projects unrealizable, therefore, this leaves casual theorists with the task of linking intentional and non-intentional levels of description in such a way as to accommodate intentional causality, without either over-determination or a miraculous coincidence of prediction from within distinct causally explanatory frameworks.
The claim that every mental state is identical with some bodily state, might mean that every mental state type is identical with some physical state type. Such type identify would hold if all the instances of a particular type of mental state are also instances of a particular type of bodily state. This is called the ‘type identity
theory’.
Yet, the identity claim might instead mean only that every instance of a mental state is identical with an instance of a bodily state, of some type or other. On this construal, the various types of mental state would not have to correspond to types of bodily state: Instances of a single mental type might be identical with tokens of distinct bodily types. This weaker claim is known as the ‘token identity theory’.
There is reason to doubt that the type identity theory is true. It is plausible that organisms of different species may share at least some types of mental stare ~ say, pain ~ even if their anatomical and physiological differences are so great that they cannot share the relevant types of bodily state. No single bodily-stare type would then correspond to these mental-state types. This possibility is called the multiple realization of mental states. It is conceivable, of course, that biology will someday type physiological states in a way that correspond tolerably well with types of mental state, but we can have no guarantee that this will happen.
Even so, if no physiological types correspond to types of mental state, the causal theory of Lewis and Armstrong would allow us to identify types of mental state with types described in other terms. On Lewis’s version of the theory, mental stats are whatever states occupy the causal roles specified by all our common-sense psychological platitude, taken together. The various types of mental state correspond to the various causal roles thus specified: Mental-state tokens are of a particular mental type. If they occupy the causal role that defines that type. These causal roles involve causal ties to behaviour and stimuli and other stares that occupy these casual roles. Such a theory, which defines mental-state types in terms of causal roles, if often called ‘functionalism’.
One could image that the individual states that occupy the relevant causal roles turn out not to be bodily states: For example they might instead be states of an Cartesian unextended substance. But it is overwhelming likely that the states that do occupy those causal roles are all tokens of bodily-state types. So that causal theory, together with this empirical likelihood, sustains at least the token identity theory. Moreover, this version of the casual theory bypasses the problematic idea hat the mental properties of those states are neural as between being mental and physical, since mental-state types are determined by our psychological platitudes.
To defend the type identity theory as well, however, would require showing that all mental-state tokens that occupy a particular causal role also fall under a single physiological type. Lewis (1980) expects substantial uniformity of physiological type across the token of each mental-state type, at least within particular populations of creatures. But if tokens of different physiological types do occupy the same casual role that would undermine the type identity theory, or at least make it relative to certain populations.
Multiple realizablity is the possibility that mental-state types are instantiated by states of distinct physiological types. It is an empirical matter whether that is actually the case. If it is, physical-state types do not correspond to mental-state types, and the type identity theory is false.
But one might, with Hilary Putnam (1975), construe the type identity theory more strongly, as claiming that the mental properties that define the various types of mental state are identical with physical properties. And that is false even if the tokens of each mental-state type fall under a single physiological type: The property of occupying a particular causal role is plainly not identical with the property of belonging to a particular physiological type. On this construal, no empirical findings are needed to refute the type identity theory. But it is more reasonable to construe the true identity theory less strongly, as requiring the claim only that all tokens of a particular mental-stare type fall under a single physiological type.
Donald Davidson (1970) has used different considerations to argue that mental-state types correspond to no physiological types, but that the token identity theory is nonetheless correct. Plainly, mental and bodily events cause each other. Moreover, as Davidson reasonably holds, one event token can cause another only if that causal connection instantiates some explanatory law. But Davidson also insists that an event token belongs to a particular mental type only relative to certain background assumptions about meaning and rationality. Tokens of physical events, by contrast, belong to whatever physical type they do independently of any such background assumption. Davidson infers that there can be no strict laws connecting physical and mental events. But if so, how can mental and bodily events cause each other?
One way of brining out the nature of this conceptual link is by the construction of reasoning, linking the agent’s reason-providing states with the states for which they provide reasons. This reasoning is easiest to reconstruct in the case of the reasons for belief where the contents of the reason-providing beliefs inductively or deductively support the content of the rationalized belief. For example, I believe that my colleague is in his room now, and my reasons are (1) he usually has a meeting in his room at 9:30 on Monday. To believe a proposition is to accept it as true: And it is relative to the objective of reaching truth that the rationalizing relations between contents are set for belief. They must be such that the truth of the premises makes likely the truth of the conclusion.
In the case of reasons for action the premises of any reasoning are provided by intentional states other than beliefs. Classically, an agent has a reason to perform a certain kind of action when he has (a) a pro-attitude toward some end or objective and (b) as belief that an action of that kind will promote this end. The term pro-attitude derives from Davidson. It concludes ‘desires’, ‘wanting’, ‘urges’, ‘prompting’, and a great variety of moral views, aesthetic principles . . . It is common to use ‘desire’ as a generic term for such pro-attitudes. It is relative to the constitutive objectives of desire that the rationalizing links are established in the practical case. We might say that the objective of desire is their own satisfaction. In the case of reason for acting therefore, we are looking for a relationship between the contents of the agent’s intensional state and the description of the action which show the preforming an action of that kind has some chance of promoting the desired goals.
The presence of a reason for believing or acting does not necessarily make it rational for an agent to believe or act in that way. From the agent’s point of view overall he may have other beliefs which provide conflicting evidence, or conflicting desires. To establish what is rational to believe or do overall, we would need to take into account principles for weighing competing beliefs and desires. Of course, we do not always believe what is rational, or act in the light of what we judge best, least of mention, in cases of self-deception and weakness of will show this, however, a minimum of rationality must be present in the pattern of a person’s belief, desires, intention and action before they can be regarded as an agent with intentional states at all.
The causal explanatory approach to reason-giving explanations also requires an account of the intentional content of our psychological stares, which makes it possible for such content to be doing such work. It also provides a motivation for the reduction of intentional characteristics to extensional ones. In an attempt to fit such intentional causality into a fundamental materialists world picture. The very nature of the reason-giving relation, however, can be seen to render such reductive projects unrealizable. This, therefore, leaves causal theorists with the task of linking intentional ad non-intentional levels of description in such a way as to accommodate intentionality as the frameworks for casual explanations.
Davidson’s solution relies on the fact that explanatory laws describe events in particular ways and a different description of the same events might not sustain the explanatory connection. So the impossibility of laws connecting mental and physical events means only that laws can connect physical events, described as such, with mental events, described as such. To interact causally, events must figure in explanatory laws. So each mental-event token that interacts causally with a bodily event can figure in a law only if that mental-event token can also be described in purely physical terms. The consideration that preclude laws connecting mental with physical events presumably show also that no physical types correspond to any mental-stare types. But since we can describe every mental-event token in physical terms that token will be identical with some physical-event token. This intriguing argument is difficult to evaluate, mainly because it is unclear exactly why background assumptions about meaning and rationality should preclude laws connecting events described in mental terms with those described physically.
In order for causal interactions between mental and bodily events to fall under laws that describe events solely in physical terms, physically indistinguishable events must be mentally indistinguishable, though not necessarily the other way around. That relationship is known as ‘supervenience’ in this case, mental properties would be said to this case, mental properties would be said to supervene on physical properties. Jaegwon Kim (1984) has usefully explored such supervenience as a way to capture the relation between mental and physical.
The Cartesian doctrine that the mental is in some way non-physical is so pervasive that even advocates of the identity theory have sometimes accepted it, at least tacitly. The idea that the mental is non-physical underlies, for example, the insistence by some identity theorists that mental properties are really neutral as between being mental and physical. To be neutral in this way, a property would have to be neutral as to whether it is mental at all. Only if one thought that being mental meant being non-physical would one hold that defending materialism required showing that ostensible mental properties are neutral as regards whether or not they are mental.
But holding that mental properties are non-physical has cost that is usually not noticed. A phenomenon is mental only if it has some distinctive mental property. So, strictly speaking, a materialist who claims that mental properties are non-physical would have to conclude that no mental phenomena exist. This is the ‘eliminative e materialist’ position advanced by the American philosopher and critic Richard McKay Rorty (1931-). According to Rorty, ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ are incompatible terms. Nothing can be both mental and physical, so metal states cannot be identical with bodily states. Rorty trace this incompatibility to our views about incompatibility terms because we regard as incorrigible reports of one’s own mental states, but he also argues that we can imagine a people who describe themselves and each other using terms just like our mental vocabulary, except that those people take the reports made with their vocabulary to be incorrigible. Since Rorty takes a state to be a mental state in one’s reports about it are taken to be incorrigible, his imaginary people not ascribe mental states to themselves or each other. But the only difference between their language and ours is that we take as incorrigible certain reports which they do not. So their language has no less descriptive or explanatory power than ours. Rorty concludes that our mental vocabulary is idle, and that there are no distinctively mental phenomena.
This argument hinges on building incorrectibility into the meaning of the term ‘mental’. If we do not, the way is open to interpret Rorty’s imaginary people as simply having a different theory of mind from ours, on which reports of one’s own mental states are corrigible. Their reports would thus be about mental states, as construed by their theory. Rorty’s thought experiment would then provide reason to conclude, not that our mental terminology is idle, but only that this alternative theory of mental phenomena is correct. His thought experiment would thus sustain the non-eliminativist view that mental sates are bodily states, whether Rorty’s argument supports identity theory, therefore, depends solely on whether or not one holds that the mental is in some way non-physical.
Paul M. Churchland (1981) advances a different argument for eliminative materialism. According to Churchland, the common-sense conceptions of mental states contained in our present folk psychology, are, from a scientific point of view, radically defective. But we can expect that eventually a more sophisticated theoretical account will replace those folk-psychological conception, showing that mental phenomena, as described by current folk psychology, do not exist. Since that account would be integrated into the rest of science, we would have a thoroughgoing materialism treatment of all phenomena. So this version of eliminativist materialism, unlike Rorty’s does not rely on assuming that the mental is non-physical.
Nonetheless, even if current folk psychology is mistaken, that does not show that mental phenomena do not exist, but only that are not the way folk psychology describes them as being. We could conclude they do not exist only if the folk-psychological claims that turn out to be mistaken actually define what it is for a phenomena to be mental. Otherwise, the new theory would still be about mental phenomena, and would help show that they are identical with physical phenomena. Churchland’s argument, like Rorty’s, depend on a special way of defining the mental, which we need not adopt. Its likely that any argument will require some such definition, without which the argument would instead support the identity theory.
Early identity theorists insisted that the identity between mental and bodily events was contingent, meaning simply that the relevant identity statements were not conceptual truths. This leaves open the question of whether such identities would be necessarily true on other construals of necessity.
The American logician and philosopher Aaron Saul Kripke (1940-) has argued that such identities would have to be necessarily true if they were true at all. Some terms refer to things contingently, in that those terms would have referred to different things had circumstances been relevantly different. Kripke’s example is,’The first master General of the US’, which in a different situation, would have referred to somebody other than Benjamin Franklin. Kripke calls these terms non-rigid designators. Other terms refer to things necessarily, since no circumstances are possible in which they would refer to anything else; there terms are rigid designators.
In the terms ‘a’ and ‘b’ refer to the same thing and both determine the thing necessarily, the identity statement ‘a = b’ is necessarily true. Kripke maintains that the term ‘pain’ and the terms for the various brain states all determine the states they refer to necessarily: If be in any of these circumstances are possible in which these terms would refer to different things. So if pain were identical with some particular brain state, it would be necessarily identical with that state. But be necessarily identical with that state, it would be necessarily identical with that state. But Kripke agues that pain cannot be necessarily identical with any brain state, since the tie between pain and brain states plainly seem contingent. He concludes that they
cannot be identical at all.
This argument applies equally to the identity of types and tokens. Whenever the term ‘pain’ refers to a state, it refers to that state rigidly: Similarly with the various terms for bran states. So if an individual occurrence of pain were identical with an individual brain state, it would be necessarily identical, they cannot be identical at all.
Kripke notes that our intuitivistic amplitude about whether an identity is contingent can mislead us. Heat is necessarily identical with mean molecular kinetic energy. No circumstances are possible in which they are not identical. Still it may at first sight appear that heat could have been identical with some other phenomenon. But it appears this way. Kripke argues, only because we pick out heat by sensation of heat, which bears only a contingent tie to mean molecular kinetic energy. It is the sensation of heat that actually seems to be connected contingently with mean molecular kinetic energy, not the physical molecular kinetic energy, not the physical heat itself.
Kripke insists, however, that such reasoning cannot disarm our intuitive sense that pain is connected only contingently with brain states,. That is, because for a state to be pain is necessarily for it to be felt as pain, unlike heat, in the case of pain there is no difference between the state itself and how that pain is felt, and intuitivism about the one are perforced intuitivistically about the other.
Kripke’s assumption about the term ‘pain’ is open to question. As Lewis notes, one need not hold that ‘pain’ determines the same state in all possible situations, indeed, the casual theory explicitly allows that it may not. And if it does not, it may be that pains and brain states are contingently identical. But there also a problem about a substantive assumption Kripke makes about the nature of pain, namely, that pains are necessarily felt as pains. First impressions notwithstanding, there is reason to think not. There are times when we are not aware of our pains, for example, when we have suitably distracted. So the relationship between pains and our being aware of them between pains and our being aware of them may be contingent after all, just as the relationship between physical heat and our sensations of heat is. And that would disarm the intuitive pinch that pain is connected only contingently with brain states.
Kripke’s argument focus on pains and other sensations, which because they have qualitative properties, are frequently held to cause the greatest problems for the identity theory. The American moral and political theorist Thomas Nagel (1937-) who is centrally concerned with the nature of moral motivation and the possibility of ca rational theory of moral and political commitment, and has been a major stimulus to interests in realistic and Kantian approaches to these issues. At this time, Nagel (1974) traces the general difficulty for the identity theory to the consciousness of mental states. A mental state’s being conscious, he urges means that there is something its like to be in that state. And to understand that, we must adopt the point of view of the kind of creature that is in the state. But an account of something is objective, he insists. Only insofar as its independent of any particular type of point of view. Since consciousness is inextricably tied to points of view, no objective account of it is possible. And that means conscious states cannot be identical with bodily states.
The viewpoint of a creature is cental to what that creature’s conscious states are like because different kinds of creatures have conscious states with different kinds of qualitative property. Nonetheless, the qualitative properties of a creature’s conscious stats depend, in an objective way, on the creature’s perceptual apparatus. We cannot always predict what another creature’s conscious states are like, just as we cannot always extrapolate from microscopic to macroscopic properties, at least without having a suitable theory that covers those properties. But what a creature’s conscious states are like depend in an objective way on its bodily endowment, which is itself objective. So these considerations give us no reason to think that what those conscious states are like is not also an objective matter.
If a sensation is not conscious, there is nothing its like to have it. So Nagel’s idea that what its like ti have sensations is central to their nature suggests that sensations cannot occur without being conscious. And that in turn seems to threaten their objectivity. If sensations must be conscious perhaps, they have no nature independently of how we are aware of them, and thus no objective nature, indeed, its only conscious sensations that seem to cause problems for the identity theory.
Although pain has the general properties of a sensory experience. It has, in addition, features beyond sensation that make it both more complex and of interest to a range of people other than sensory physiologists. The most important distinguishing feature of pain is uts affective-motivational aspect. In contrast to most other sensations, the pain experience necessarily include a quality of unpleasantness and the wish for its immediate termination,. Thus pain is one of the major forces, along with pleasure, that can shape behaviour
(1) ‘Pain’ refer to a subjective experience (the notion of subjectivity underlies one’s concept of oneself a subject of experience, distinguished, in the first place, from the objects of experience, and, latterly, from other subjects of experience as well. The idea of subjectivity, tied in a deep way to a notion of a point of view, is the realization that one is not only a different subject of experience from other subjects of experience but also that the world is experienced differently by different subjects of experience.) In addition, the other simple sensory properties of pain include intensity and duration. Location and intensity may vary with time.
(2) In common with all somatic sensations, pain has the property of sensory quality. Quality is a compound property that distinguishes a specific types of pain from non-painful sensations and from different types of pain. For example, aching and burning are different qualities, the quality of a pain is often described in terms of a stimulus that might elicit it (i.e., burning, pricking or tearing). These terms often convey the sense of penetration, intrusion and assault upon the body. The quality of a pain is in part determined by the temporal and spatial variation of its primary properties, e.g., a brief sharp throbbing pain that radiates into the wrist.
(3) In addition to the intensity of the stimulus that elicits it, the intensity of perceived pain is influenced by powerful modifying factors. These factors include the attention, expectation and state of arousal of the subject. For example, when two stimuli are applied simultaneously at different sites on the body, one stimulus may enhance or suppress the sensation resulting from the other stimulus. The effect of one stimulus on the sensation evoked by a second stimulus depends on the proximity of the two stimulus and their relative intensities (e.g., biting one’s lip may case the pain of a sprained ankle). Another example is that identical noxious stimulus, when repeatedly applied at the same site, evoke pain sensations that progressively increase in intensity and area.
(4) The experience of ain characteristically is experienced by human subjects as a desire to escape, to terminate the sensation. When the sensation is intense and/or prolonged or its duration uncertain, the experience includes emotional component is called the effective-motivational dimension of pain to distinguish it from the sensory-discriminative dimension.
(5) The negative effect of pain confers upon it the power, along with pleasure, to shape behaviour. This motivational power assures pain a place of great and unique importance, relative to other sensations. Obviously, better understanding of learning , memory and the human personality requires a fuller understanding of pain. The reverse is also true. Thus, pain is a fascinating object of study not only foe neuroscientsts but for medical scientists, psychologists, philosophers and theologians.
(6) As with all other sensory phenomena, pain has a cognitive-evaluation component. This component represents both an abstraction and synthesis of the sensory and affective dimensions. Thus you might be aware of a severe pain in your heel which forces you to stoop walking. The cognitive-evaluative aspect of pain may involve remembering how far you will have to walk and weighing the decision to endure the unpleasant sensation against not getting to work on time.
This dimension of pain includes its meaning. In some situations the meaning of a pain is by far its most important dimension to the individual. For example, the development of even mild pain in a patient being treated for cancer may be terrifying and depressing if it is believed to signify recurrence of a malignant tumour.
(7) The sensory, affective and evaluative dimensions of pain have lawful interrelationships. The example cited in (6) illustrate how affect can be closely tied to meaning. In humans, psychological studies confirm that the affective dimension of pin can be powerfully reduced or increased by factors such as psychological set and personality traits or by manipulations such as hypnosis or distraction.
(8) Duration is a critical factor that influences pain. Clinically, the persistence of pain is associated with profound changes in the affective and evaluative dimension of pain. Whereas acute pain (minutes to hours and days) is associated with restlessness, arousal, and fear, chronic pain (weeks to months and years) is associated with
resignation, depression, reduced activity and preoccupation with all bodily sensations.
Nevertheless, the assumption that mental states are unvariably conscious, like the supposition that there are non-physical, is basic to the Cartesian view. But sensations do occur that are not conscious. A mental state’s being conscious consists in one’s being conscious of it in a way that is intuitively direct and unmediated, but as already noted, distraction often make us wholly unaware of our sensations. Sensations that are not conscious also occur in both subliminal perception and peripheral vision, as well as in more esoteric context.
Sensations can, moreover, have qualitative properties without being conscious. Qualitative properties are sometimes called ‘Qualia’ with there implication that we must be conscious of them: But wee need not be bound by that term’s implications. Qualitative properties are simply those properties by means of which we distinguish among the various kinds of sensations when they are conscious. But a sensation’s being conscious makes no difference to what its distinguishing properties are, its being conscious consists simply in one’s being conscious of those properties in a suitable way. When a situation is not conscious its distinguishing properties seem to cause no difficulty for the identity theory. And since those properties are the same whether or not the sensation is conscious, there is nothing the identity theory. We would assume otherwise only if we held, with Nagel and Kripke, that sanctions must all be conscious.
Perhaps multiple realizablity refutes the type identity theory, but there are ample arguments that support the token identity theory. Moreover, the arguments against the token theory seem all to rely on unfounded Cartesian assumptions about the nature of mental states. The doctrine that mental is in some way non-physical is straightforwardly question begging, and its simple not the case that all sensory stares are conscious. It is likely, therefore, that the identity theory, at least in that token version is correct.
Its conveniences inbounded to Functional logic and mathematical function, also known a map or mapping, is a relation that associates members of one class ‘x’ with some unique member ‘y’ of another class ‘y’. The association is written as ‘y = f(x). The class ‘x’ is called the domain of the function, and whose domain includes all people, and whose range is the class of male parents. But the relation ’son of x’ is not a function, because a person can have more than one son. Since ‘x’ is a function of the perimeter of a circle, π x, it a function of its diameter ‘x’, and so forth. Functions may task sequences such as < x1 . . . xn > as their arguments, in which case they may be thought of as associating a unique members of ‘y’ with any ordered n-tuple as argument. given the equation y = f(x1 . . . xn), x1 . . . xn are called the independent variable or value. Functions may be ‘many-one’, meaning that different members of ‘x’ may take the same member of ‘y’ as their value, or ‘one-one’, when to each member of ‘x’‘ their corresponds a distinct member of ‘y’. A function with domain ‘X’ and range ‘Y’ is also called a mapping from ‘x’ to ‘y’, written f X ➞ Y. If the function is such that:
(1) if x, y ∈ X and f(x) = f(y) then x = y.
Then the function is an injection from X and Y . If also:
(2) if y ∈ Y, then (∃x)(x ∈ X & y f(x)).
Then the function is a bijection of ‘X’ and ‘Y’. A bijection is also known as a one-one correspondence. A bijection is both an injection and a subjection where a dir-jection is any function whose domain is ‘x’ and whose range is the whole of ‘y’‘. Since functions are relations a function may be defined as a set of ‘ordered pairs’ < x, y > where ‘x’ is a member of ‘X’ and ‘y’ of ‘Y’.
One of Frége’s logical insights was that a concept is analogous to a function, and a predicate analogous to the expression for a function (a functor) just as ‘the square root of ‘x’ takes us from one number to another, so ‘x’ is a philosopher’ refers to a function that takes us from persons to truth-values: True for values of ‘x’ who are philosophers, and false otherwise.
An explanation of a phenomenon that cites the functional properties of contributing elements, than their physical or mechanical natures. The explanation of a computer’s behaviour that cites the software it is running is a functional explanation.
In biology, the function of a feature of as organism is frequently defined as that role it players which has been responsible for its genetic success and evolution. Thus, although the brain weighs down the shoulders, this is not its function, for this is not why entities with brains are successful. A central question will be the unit whose ‘adaptation’ is in question: There may be persons, or their ‘genes’, or clusters of genes, or gene pools. It may be said that a person is a gene’s way of making another gene, just as a scholae is a library’s way of making another library. There also difficulties fortuitous roles that an adaptation may come to serve from its function proper.
Profoundly, our impending of concern has taken on or upon the pretextual affiliation that makes apparent the evidential implicity as implicated in the philosophy of mind. Is that of ‘functionalism’, and to realize that functionalism is the modern successor to ‘behaviouralism?’. Its early advocates were Hilary Putnam, an American philosopher, who accordingly does not stand for a monolithic system or body of doctrine, and in so of himself concentrates upon the philosophy of science. And is not afraid of changing his mind, but in the latter part of his career his interests in the human sciences have become more prominent, his Reason, Truth and History (1981) marked a departure from scientific realism in favour of a subtle position that he calls ‘internal realism’, initially replaced to an ideal limit theory of truth, and apparently maintaining affinities with verification, but in subsequent work more closely aligned with ‘Minimalism’. However, Putnam’s concern in the later period has largely been to deny any serious asymmetry between truth and knowledge as it is obtained in natural science, and so it is obtained in morals and even theology
Also an advocate to the session of functionalism is Wilfrid Sellars (1912-89), the son of the philosopher Roy Wood Sellars (1880-1973), wherefor, Wilfrid’s early work represented a blend of ‘analytic philosophy’ with ‘logical positivism’, and together with others he founded the Journal Philosophical Studies (Readings in Philosophical Analysis, 1949, and Readings in Ethical Theory, 1952). Even so, his most influential paper ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’, (1956), which was possibly the central text introducing ‘functionalism’ in the philosophy of mind, whereby the use of a sentence is to express an associated propositions, as a useful framework due to Sellars, divides use into three parts, there are ‘entry rules’ describing the kinds of situation justifying application of a term, as too, ‘exit rules’, for which of describing the practical consequences of accepting the application of the term, and ‘transformation rules’ taking us to other linguistic applications that themselves bear definite relations to the term.
Its guiding principle is that we can define mental stares by a triplet of relations what typically causes them, and what effects they have on behaviour. The definition need not take the form of s simple analysis, but if we could write down the totality of axioms, or postulates, or platitudes that govern our theories about what things are apt to cause (for example) a belief state, what effects it would have on a variety of other mental states,. And what effects it is likely to have on behaviour, then we would have done all that is needed to make the state a proper theoretical notion. It would be implicitly defined by these theses.
Functionalism is often compared with descriptions of a computer, since according to its mental descriptions correspond to a description of a machine in terms of software, that remains silent about the underlying hardware or ‘realization’ of the program the machine is running. The principal advantage of functionalism include its fit with the way we know of mental states both of ourselves and others, which is via their effects on behaviour and other mental states. As with behaviouralism. Critics change the structurally complex items that do not bear mental states might nevertheless imitate the functions that are cited. According to this criticism functionalism is too generous, and would count too many things as having minds. It is also queried whether functionalism is too parochial, able to see mental similarity only when there is causal similarity, when our actual practices of interpretation enable us to ascribe thoughts and desires to persons from our own. It may then seem as though beliefs and desires can be ‘variably realized’ in causal architecture, just as much as they can be in different neurophysiological states
That an intelligent system, or mind, may fruitfully be thought of as the result of a number of sub-systems performing more simple tasks in co-ordination with each other. The sub-systems may be envisaged as homunculi, or small, relatively stupid agents. The archetype is a digital computer, where a battery of switches capable of only one response (on or off) can make up a machine that can play chess, write dictionaries, and so forth.
The functionalist thinks of ‘mental states’ and events as causally mediating between a subject’s sensory inputs and that subject’s ensuing behaviour. Functionalism itself is the stronger doctrine that what makes a mental state the type of state it is ~ a pain, a smell of violets, a belief that koalas are dangerous ~ is the functional relations it bears to the subject’s perceptual stimuli, behavioural responses, and other mental states.
Twentieth-century functionalism gained its credibility in an indirect way, by being perceived as affording the least objectionable solution of the mind-body problem.
Disaffected from Cartesian dualism and from the ‘first-person’ perspective of introspective psychology, the behaviourists had claimed that there is nothing to the mind but the subject’s behaviour and dispositions to behave. Philosophically, the doctrine of behaviouralism is that mental states are ‘logical constructions out of dispositions to behaviour, or in other words, that describing the mental aspects of a person is a shorthand for describing the various dispositions to behaviour that the person possesses. The most influential work promoting this point of view was The Concept of Mind (1949), by Gilbert Ryle, an English philosopher and classicist, in which he urged behaviourism as the best defence against the Cartesian myth of the ‘ghost in the machine’. Yet, the extent of which Ludwig Wittgenstein writing the Philosophical Investigations, at the same time, intended to promote a behaviourist doctrine is subject to dispute. Like other ‘reductionist doctrines’ behaviourism fell foul of the difficulty of providing workable analyses, notably because of the ‘holist’ of the mental, or the fact that how a person behaves is not as function of one belief or one desire. The modification to take care of this turns behaviourism into its more popular modern successor, ‘functionalism’. For example, for Rudolf to be in pain is for Rudolf to be either behaving in a wincing groaning-and-favouring way or disposed to do so (in that he would so behave were something not keeping him from doing so): It is nothing about Rudolf’s putative inner life or any episode taking place within him.
Though behaviourism avoided a number of nasty objections to dualism (notably Descartes’ admitted problem of mind-body interaction), some theorist were uneasy: They felt that in its total repudiation of the inner, behaviourism was leaving out something real and important. U.T. Place spoke of an ‘intractable residue’ of conscious mental items that bear no clear relations to behaviour of any particular sort. And it seems perfectly possible for two people to differ psychologically despite total similarity of their actual and counter-factual behaviour, as in a Lockean case of ‘inverted spectrum’, for that matter, a creature might exhibit all the appropriate stimulus-response relations and lack mentation entirely.
For such reasons, Place and Smart proposed a middle way, the ‘identity theory’, which allowed that at least some mental states and events are genuinely inner and genuinely episodic after all: They are not to be identified with outward behaviour or even with hypothetical dispositions to behave. But, contrary to dualism, the episodic mental items are not ghostly or non-physical either. Rather, they are neurophysiological. They are identical with states or events occurring in their owner’s central nervous systems. To be in pain is, for example, to have one’s c-fibres, or possibly a-fibres, firing. A happy synthesis: The dualists were wrong in thinking that mental items are non-physical but right in thinking them inner and episodic, the behaviourists were right in their ‘physicalism’ but wrong to repudiate inner mental episodes.
However, Hilary Putnam (1960) and Jerry Fodor (1968) pointed out a presumptuous implication of the identity theory understood as a theory of types or kinds of mental items: That a mental type such as pain has always and everywhere the neurophysiological characterization initially assigned to it. For example, if the identity theorist intensified pain itself with the firing of c-fibres, it followed that a creature of any species (earthly or science-fiction) could be in pain only if that creature had c-fibres and they were firing. But such constraint on the biology of any being capable of feeling pain is both gratuitous and indefensible: Why should we suppose that any organism must be made of the same chemical materials as us in order to have what can be accurately recognized s pain? The identity theorist had overreached to the behaviourist’s difficulties and focussed too narrowly on the specifics of biological humans’ actual inner states, and in so doing they had fallen into species chauvinism.
Jerry Fodor and Hilary Putnam advocated the obvious correction: What is most important that, it was not its being c-fibres (per se) that were firing, but their firing contributed to the role of the c-fibre could have been performed by any mechanistically suitable component part?: So long as that role was per performed, the psychology of the containing organism would have ben unaffected. Thus, to be in pain is not per se to have c-fibres that are firing. But merely to be in some state or other, of whatever biological description, that plays the same functional role as did the firing of c-fibres in the human beings. We may continue to maintain that pain ‘tokens’, individual instances of pain occurring in particular subjects at particular times, are strictly identical with particular neurophysiological states of these subjects that happen to be playing the appropriate roles: This is the thesis of ‘token identity’ or ‘token physicalism’, but pain itself (the kind, universal or type) can be identified only with something more abstract: The causal or functional role that c-fibres share with their potential replacements or surrogates. Mental state-types are identified not with neurophysiological types but with more abstract functions to the organism’s inputs, outputs and other psychological states.
Putnam compared mental states to the functional of ‘logical’ states of a computer. Just as a computer program can be realized or instantiated by any different hardware configurations, so can a psychological ‘program’ be realized by different organisms of various physicochemical composition, and that is why different physiological states of organisms of different species can realize one and the same mental state-type. Where an identity theorist’s type identification would take the form. To be in mental state of type ‘M’ is to be in the neurophysiological state of type ‘N’. Putnam’s machine functionalism (as we may call it) some physiological state or other that plays role ‘R’ in the relevant computer program (i.e., the program that at a suitable level or abstraction mediates the creature’s total outputs given total inputs and so serves as the creature’s global psychology) the physiological state ‘plays role ‘R’ in that it stands in a set of relations to physical inputs, outputs and other inner states that matches one-to-one the abstract input/output/logical-state relations codified in the computer program.
The functionalist, then, mobilizes three distinct levels of description but applies them all to the same fundamental reality. A physical state-token is someone’s brain at a particular time has a neurophysiological description, but may also have a functional description relative to a machine program that the brain happens to be realizing, and it may further have a mental description if some everyday mental state is correctly type-identified with the functional category it exemplifies. And so there is after all a sense in which ‘the mental’ is distinct from ‘the physicals’: Though presumably there are no non-physical substances or stuff, and every mental token is itself entirely physical, mental characterization is not physical characterization, and the property of being a pain is not simply the property of being such-and-such a neural firing. Moreover, unlike behaviourism and the identity theory, functionalism doe not strictly entail that minds are physical: It might be true of non-physical minds, so long as those minds realized the relevant programs.
In a not accidental similar vein, behaviouralism in psychology has almost entirely given way to ‘cognitivism’. Cognitivism is roughly the view that (1) psychologists may and must advert to inner states and episodes in explaining behaviour, so long as the states and episodes are construed throughout as physical, and (2) human beings and other psychological organisms are best viewed as in some sense ‘information processing systems’. As cognitive psychology sets the agenda, its questions take the form, ‘How does this organism receive information through its sense-organs, process it in such a way as to result in intelligent behaviour’? The working language of cognitive psychology is highly congenial to the functionalists, for cognitivism thinks of human beings as systems of interconnected functional components, interacting with each other in an efficient and productive way.
Meanwhile, researchers in computer science have pursued fruitful research programmes based on the idea of intelligent behaviour as the output of skilful information-processing given input. Artificial intelligence is, roughly, the project of getting computing machines to perform tasks that would usually be taken to demand human intelligence and judgement: Computers have achieved some modest successes, but a computer just is a machine that receives, interprets, processes, stores, manipulates and uses information, and artificial intelligence researchers think of it in just that way as they try to program intelligent behaviour. An artificial intelligence problem sees this as input, what must it do with that input nd what must it accordingly do with that input in order to be able to . . . [recognize, identify, sort, put together, predict, tell us, and so forth] . . . ? And how, then, can we start it off knowing that and get it to do those things? So we may reasonably attribute such success as artificial intelligence has had to self-conscious reliance on the information-processing paradigm. And that in turn mutually encourages the functionalist idea that human intelligence and cognition generally are matters of computational information-processing.
Machine functionalism supposed human brains may be described at each of three levels, the first two scientific and the third familiar to common sense: The biological specifically neurophysiological: The machine-program or computational, and the everyday mental or folk psychological. Psychologists would explain behaviour, characterized in everyday terms, by reference to stimuli and to intervening mental states such as belief and desires, type-identity the mental states with functional or computational states as they went. Such explanations would themselves presuppose nothing about neuroanatomy, since the relevant psychological/computational generalizations would hold regardless of what particular biochemistry might happen to be realizing the abstract program in question.
Machine functionalism as described has more recently been challenged on each of a number of points that together motivate a specifically teleological notion of ‘function’:
(1) the machine functionalist still conceived psychological explanation in the positivists’ terms of subsumption o data under wider and wider universal laws. But Jerry Fodor, Dennett and Cummins (1983) have defended a competing picture of psychological explanation: According to which behavioural data are to be seen as manifestations of subject’s psychological capacities, and these capacities are to be explained by understanding the subject’s as systems of interconnected components. Each component is a ‘homunculus’, in that it is identified by reference to the function it performs, and the various homuncular components cooperate with each other in such a way as to produce overall behavioural responses in stimuli. The ‘homunculi’ are themselves broken down into sub-components whose functions and interactions are similarly used to explain the capacities of the subsystems they compose, and so, again, and again until the sub-sub . . . components are seen to be neuroanatomical structures. (An automobile works ~ locomotes ~ by having a fuel reservoir, a fuel line, a fuel injector, a combustion chamber, an ignition system, a transmission, and wheels that turn. If one wants to know how a fuel injector works, one will be told what parts are and how they work together to infuse oxygen into fuel , and so forth.) Nothing in this pattern of explanation corresponds to the subsumption of data under wider and wider universal generalizations, or to the positivists’ deductive-nomological model of explanation as formally valid derivation from such generalizations.
(2) The machine functionalist treated functional ‘realization’, the relation between an individual physical organism and the abstract program it was said to instantiate, as a simple matter of one-to-one correspondence between the organism’s repertoire of physical stimuli, structural states and behaviour, on the one hand, and the program’s defining input/state/output or realization was seen to be literal, since virtually anything bears a one-to-one correlation of some sort to virtually anything else: ‘Realization’ in the sense of mere one-to-one correspondence is far to easily come by: For example, the profusion of microscopic events occurring in a sunlit pond (convection currents, biotic activity, or just molecular motion) undoubtedly yield some one-to-one correspondence or other to any psychology you like, but this should not establish that the pond is, or has, a mind. Some theorists have proposed to remedy this defect by imposing a teleological requirement on realization: A physical state of an organism will count as realizing only in the organism has genuine organic integrity and the state plays its functional role properly for the organism, in the teleological sense of ‘for’ and in the teleological sense of ‘function’ the state must do what it does as a matter of, so to speak, its biological purpose. This rules out our pond, since the and is not a single organism having convection currents or molecular motion as organs. (Machine functionalism took ‘function’‘ in its spare mathematical sense than in a genuine functional sense. The term ‘machine factional sense’ is tied to the original libertine conception of ‘realizing’, as so to impose a teleological restriction is to abandon machine functionalism).
(3) Of the machine functionalist’s three levels of description, one is common-seismical and two are scientific, so we are offered a two-levelled picture of human psychobiology in the extreme. Not either the living things or even computers themselves are split into a purely ‘structural’ level of biology/physicochemical description and any one abstract’ computational level of machine/psychological description. Rather, they are all hierarchically organized as many levels, each level ‘functional’ with respect to those beneath it but ‘structural’ or concrete as it realizes those levels above it. This is relatively of the ‘functional’/’structural’ or ‘software’/’hardware’ distinction to one’s chosen level of organization has repercussions for functionalist solutions to problems in the philosophy of mind, and for current controversies surrounding connectivism and neural modelling.
(4) Millikan, Van Gulick, Fodor, Dretake and others have argued powerfully that teleology must enter into any adequate analysis of the intentionality of ‘aboutness’ of mental states such as beliefs and desires, by reference to the states’ psychological functions. If teleology is needed to explicate intentionality ands machine functionalism affords no teleology, then machine functionalism is not adequate to explicate intentionality.
It would have been nice to stick with machine functionalism, for the teleologizing of functionalism comes at a price. Talk of teleology and biological function seems to presuppose that biological function seem and other ‘structural’/’states’ of physical systems really have functions in the theological sense. The latter claim is controversial, to say that least. And if it is not literally true, then mental states cannot be type-identified with teleological states. But fortunately for the teleological functions, there is now a small but vigorous industry whose purpose is to explicate biological teleology in naturalistic terms, typically in term of aetiology.
Functionalism, and cognitive psychology considered as a complete theory of human thought, inherited some of the same difficulties that earlier beset behaviouralism and identity theory. These remaining obstacles fall into two main categories: Intentionality and Qualia problems.
Propositional attitudes such as beliefs and desires are directly upon states of affairs which may or may not actually obtain (e.g., that the Liberal candidate will win), and are about individuals who may or may not exist (e.g., King Arthur). Franz Clemens Brentano (1838-1917), the German philosopher and psychologist, proposed in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) that is the intentionality or directedness of mental states that marks off the mental from the physical, nonetheless, in which rehabilitates the medieval concentration upon the ‘directedness’ or ‘intentionality’ of the mental as a functional aspect of thought and consciousness.
However, this solution does not seem quite adequate. There is fist of all the substantial difficulty of specifying the appropriate condition for covariation in a non-circular fashion. Many suspect that this will fall afoul of ‘Brentano’s Thesis’ of the irreducibility of the intentionality: Spelling out the appropriate condition would involve mentioning other intentional/semantic/conceptual conditions, such as that the agent is paying attention, does not believe that perceptual experience is misleading, wants to notice what is going on, and so forth. This potential circle is particularly troubling for those concerned with ‘naturalizing’ talk of concepts, i.e., of fitting it into theories
of the rest of nature (biology physics).
Nonetheless, the concept of intentionality was introduced into modern philosophy by Brentano, who took what he called ‘intentional inexistence’ to be a feature that distinguished the mental from the physical (1960). In this work, the focus on two puzzles about the structures of intentional states and activities, an area in which the philosophy of mind meets the philosophy of language, logic and ontology. We need to note that the term intentionality should not be confused with the terms intention and intension, as there is an important connection between intentions and intentionality, for semantic systems, like extensional model theory, that are limited to extensions and cannot provide plausible accounts of the language of intentionality.
Brentano raised the question of how any purely physical entity or state could have the property of being ‘directed on or upon’ or about a non-existent state of affairs or object, which is not the sort of feature that ordinary, purely physical objects can have. Whereas the standard functionalist reply is that propositional altitudes have Brentano’s feature because the internal physical states and concepts that realize them represent actual or possible states of affairs.
Representations, along with mental states especially beliefs and thought are said to exhibit intentionality in that they refer to or stand for something else. The nature of this special property, however, has seemed puzzling. Not only is intentionality often assumed to be limited to humans an possibly a few other species, but the property itself appears to resist characterizations in physicalist terms. The problem is most obvious in the case of ‘arbitrary’ signs, like words, where it is clear that here is no connection between the physical properties of a word and what it denotes. There is no denying it: The Language of Thought hypothesis has a compelling neatness about it. A thought is depicted as a structured of internal representational elements, combined in a lawful way, and playing a certain functional role in an internal processing economy. Relations between thoughts (e.g., the semantic overlap between the thought and ‘Walter loves wine’ and the thought that ‘Walter loves food) consist representational elements. Novel thoughts and the much vaunted systematicity of thought (the fact that being who can think ‘Walter loves wine’ and ‘Walter loves food’ and ‘Julie loves food; can always think ‘Walter loves food?; nd ‘Julie loves wine’( are accounted for in the same way. Once the representational elements and combinatoric rules are I place, of course, such inter-combinations of potential content will occur. The predictive success of propositional attitudes talk (the ascription of e.g., belief and desires such as ‘Walter believes that the wine is good’) is likewise explained on the hypothesis that the public language words pick out real inner representational complexes which are casually potent and thus capable of bringing about actions. And finally, what distinguishes an intensional action from a mere reflex is, on this ,model the fact that intervening between input and action there is, in the intentional case, an episode of actual tokening of an appropriate symbol string. ‘No intentional causation without explicit representation’, as the rallying cry goes. A pretty package indeed, and all for the price ~ beware.
What they represent is determined, in, at least, in part, by their functional roles. The notion of a concept, like the related notion of memory, lies at the heart of some of the most difficult and unresolved issues in philosophy and psychology. The word ‘concept’ itself is applied to a bewildering assortment of phenomena commonly thought to be constituents of thought. These include internal mental representations, images, words, stereotypes, senses, properties, reasoning and discrimination abilities, mathematical functions. Given the lack of anything like a settled theory in this area, it would be a mistake to fasten readily on any one of these phenomena as the unproblematic referent of the term. One does better to survey this geography of the area and gain some idea of how these phenomena might fit together, leaving aside for the time being, just of them deserve to be called ‘concepts’ as ordinarily understood.
Historically, a great deal has been asked of concepts. As shareable constituents of the objects of attitudes, they presumably figure in cognitive generalizations and explanations of animals’ capacities and behaviour. They are also presumed to serve as the meaning of linguistic items, underwriting relations of translation, definition, synonymy, antonymy, and semantic implication. Much work in the semantics of natural languages, as taking itself t be addressing conceptual structure.
Concepts have also been thought to be the proper objects of ‘philosophical analysis’, the activity practised by Socrates and twentieth-century ‘analytic’ philosophers when they ask about the nature of justice, knowledge or piety, and expect to discover answers by means of a priori reflection alone.
The expectation that one sort of thing could serve all these tasks went hand in hand with what has come to be called the ‘Classical View’ of concepts, according to which they have an ‘analysis’ consisting of conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for their satisfaction, which are known to any competent user of them. The standard example is the especially simple one of [bachelor], which seems to be identical to [legible unmarried male]. A more interesting, but problematic one has been [knowledge], whose analysis was traditionally thought to be [justified true belie].
This Classical View seems to offer an illuminating answer to a certain form of metaphysical question: In virtue of what is something the kind of thing it is ~ e.g., in virtue of what is a bachelor a bachelor? ~ and it does so in a way that supports counterfactuals, it tells us what would satisfy the concept in situations other than the actual ones (although all actual bachelors might turn out to be bald. Its possible that there might be bald ones, since the analysis does not exclude that.
However, Wittgenstein (1953) raised a different issue of whether a concept actually need have any Classical analysis at all. Certainly, people are seldom very good at producing adequate definitions to terms that they are, nonetheless, competent to use. Wittgenstein proposed that, rather than classical definitions that isolated what, for example, all games had in common, the different uses of the word ‘game’ involved a set of overlapping and criss-crossing ‘family resemblances’. This speculation was taken seriously by Rosch (1973) and Smith and Medin (1981) as testable psychological hypothesis.
Meanwhile, there are two difficulties. One is that of saying exactly how a physical item’s representational content is determined: In virtue of what does a neurophysiological state represent precisely that the Liberal candidate will win? An answer to that general question is that Fodor has called a ‘psychosemasntics’, and several attempts have been made.
The second difficulty is that ordinary propositional attitude contents do not supervene on the states of their subject’s nervous systems, but are under-determined by even the total state of that subject’s head. Putnam’s (1975) Twin Earth and indexical examples show that, surprising as it may seem, two human beings could be molecular-for molecular alike and still differ in their beliefs and desires, depending on various factors in their spatial and historical environments. Thus we can distinguish between ‘narrow’ properties, those that are determined by a subject’s intrinsic physical composition, and ‘wide’ properties, those that are not so determined, and representational contents are wide. Yet functional roles are, ostensibly, narrow, how, can propositional attitudes be type-identified with functional roles?
Leaving all else for reason to posit in giving an account of what someone believes, does essential reference have to be made to how things are in the environment of the believer? And, if so, exactly what relation does the environment have to the belief? Answering these questions involves taking sides in the externalism/internalism consideration. To a first approximation, the externalist holds that one’s propositional attitude cannot be characterized without reference to the disposition of objects and properties in the world ~ the environment ~ in which on is situated.
The internalist thinks that propositional attitudes (especially belief) must be characterizable without such reference. The reason that this is only a first approximation of the contrast is that there can be different sorts of externalism. Thus, one sort of externalist might insist that you could not have, say, a belief that grass is green unless it could be shown that there was some relation between you, the believer, and grass. Had you never come across the plant which makes up lawns and meadows, belief about grass would not be available to you. This does not mean that you have to be in the presence of grass in order to entertain a belief about it, nor does it even mean that you were in its presence. For example, it might have been the case that, though you have never seen grass, it has been described to you. Or, at the extreme, perhaps grass no longer exists anywhere in the environment, but your ancestors’ contact with it left some sort of genetic trace in you, and that trace is sufficient to give rise to a mental state that could be characterized as about grass.
Clearly, these forms of externalism entail only the weakest kind of commitment to the existence of things in the environment. However, some externalist hold that propositional attitudes require ~ something stronger. Thus, it might be said that in order to believe that grass is green, you must have had some direct experience ~ some causal contact with it during your lifetime. Or an even stronger version might hold that there are beliefs that require that you be in direct contact with the subject matter of these beliefs in order to so much as have them. Obviously, such a strong form of externalism is implausible in connection with a general belief about grass, for example, that it is green. But when it comes to what are called singular beliefs, matters are not so clear. For example, on seeing something bird-like outside the window of my study, I may say, ‘that bird was a Bluejay’, thereby expressing what I believe. Suppose, however, that I never did see a bird on that occasion ~ it was only a movement of a leaf which I had mistaken for one. In this case, one sort of externalist would insist that, since nothing in my environment answers to the expression ‘that bird’ that I used, then I simply do not have the belief that, that bird was a Bluejay. And this is true even if I myself am convinced that I have the belief. On this strong extern alist stance, propositional attitudes become opaque to their possessors. We can think we believe and desire various things ~ that our attitudes have certain contents ~ though we might well just be wrong.
In contrast, the internalist would insist that the contents of our attitude can be described in ways that do not require the existence of any particular objects or properties in the environment, and this is so even in the case of singular beliefs. There are several motivating factors involved. First, there is the intuition that we do know the contents of our own minds. I may be wrong about there being a bird, but how can I be wrong about my believing that there is one? One way the internalist might try to embarrass the externalist into agreeing about our interpretation of the here and now, nonetheless,. How to explain our intuition that we have some sort of first-person pronoun authority with respect to the contents of our thoughts. For, on the strong form of externalism, what we actually think is dependent on the environment, and this is something that is as accessible to others as it is to oneself. The second motivation comes from the demands of action explanation. Suppose that I reach for my binoculars just after insisting that I saw the bird in the tree. The obvious explanation for my action would seem to mention, among other things, my belief that there is such a bird. However, since if the externalist is right, then just do not have any such belief, it is unclear how to explain my reaching for the binoculars. Finally, internalist can seem the obvious way to deal with the otherwise puzzling consequences of versions of the Twin Earth thought experiment. Briefly, suppose this time that I really do see the bird, but suppose that my twin ~ someone who is a molecular duplicate of me on a duplicate plant called ‘twin earth’ ~ does not. (We can stipulate that the only difference between earth and twin earth at that very time that there really is a bird in the tree on earth, but there is none on twin earth.) As would generally be agreed, my twin would say ‘that bird is a Bluejay’, while pointing in the direction of the tree. After all, being a molecular duplicate of me, one would expect his behaviour to resemble mine as closely as can be imagined. Moreover, it is difficult to deny that his saying believes it. The fact that my twin and I are molecular-for-molecular the same is often reckoned to imply that my twin and I are psychological, as well as physical duplicates. Yet the strong externalist position would be committed to saying that my twin has no such belief, while I do, and this because of the way things are in our respective environments. Yet, if I were suddenly to be in my twin’s shoes ~ if I were instantaneously transported to twin earth without any knowledge of the move ~ there could be no doubt that I would say ‘that bird is a Bluejay’. And what reason could be given for saying that my mental state had changed during the transportation? Why, if my saying something counted as evidence for my belief in the one case does not count in the other.
Given these factors, the internalist is apt to insist that beliefs and other attitudes must be characterizable ‘from the inside’, so to speak. What I share with my twin is a content, though wee obviously do not share an environment that answers to that content in the same way. In not being answerable to how things are in the environment, it has been suggested that what I and my twin share is a narrow content. The broad or wide content does take the environment into considerations, and it is therefore true that my twin and I do share broad content in the case imagined. However, what the internalist insists is that only the notion of narrow content is up to the task of explaining the intuitiveness that we have about twin earth cases, explanation of action and first-person pronoun authority. To be sure, there are rejoinders available to the externalist in respect to each of these intuitions, and only of its beginning are that we have been touched.
Questions about the nature of word meaning have drawn attention across the cognitive science disciplines. Because words are one of the basic units of language, linguistics working to describe the design of human language have naturally been concerned with word meaning. Perhaps less obvious, though, is the importance of word meaning to other disciplines. Philosophers seeking to identify the nature of knowledge and its relation to the world, psychologists trying to understand the mental representations and processes that underlie language use, and computer scientists wanting to develop machines that can talk to people in a natural language have all worked to describe what individual words mean, and, more generally, what kind of thing a word meaning is.
The two major questions for theories of meaning ~ How can the meaning of individual words be described? and What kind of thing in general is a meaning? ~ are difficult to discuss independently. Although ideas about how to describe individual meanings overlap across different views of the nature of meaning, the relative pros and cons of these ideas depend in part on the larger view in which they are embedded. Therefore, our viewing organizations of the general nature of meaning, with which ideas about how to describe specific meanings are to accredit the manifesting accommodations addressed under them.
Many people intuitively think of word meanings as something that they have in their heads. Not surprisingly, since psychologists are interested in how knowledge is represented and used by humans, this view of meaning is consistent with how most psychologists treat word meaning. That is, they consider a word meaning to be a mental representation, part of each individual’s knowledge of the language he or she speaks. In fact, psychologists typically have not distinguished between the meaning of a word and conception: For instance, they treat the meaning of [bachelor] as equivalent to a person’s concept of [bachelorhood]. This approach is also shared by linguists in the cognitive linguistic camp, who view knowledge of language as embedded in social and general conceptual knowledge.
Given this view of word meanings, the central question becomes: ‘What is the nature of the meaning representation? What kinds of information do word meanings (or, concepts) consist of? An answer adopted by many psychologists in the 1970's, and dating back to Plato’s quest to define concepts like ‘piety, ‘justice’, and ‘courage’, came into philosophy by way of a linguistics theory, as, perhaps, this answer is that what a person knows when they know or knows the meaning of a word is a set of defining (or necessary and sufficient) feature: That is, features that are true of all things the person would call by the name and that together separate those things from all things called by other names. For instance, defining features for the word [bachelor] might be adult, male, and unmarried. If someone’s representation of the meaning of [bachelor] consists of this set of features, then he or she would consider all and only people with those features to be bachelors. Although this sort of analysis was most often applied to nouns, psychologist George Miller and Philip Walterson Lair, in their 1976 book, applied a similar kind of analysis to a large number of verbs.
A problem for this possibility, though, is raised by an early analysis by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1953. He argued that for many words, there is no single set of features shared by all and only the thins that the word refers to. His famous example is the word ‘game’. Some games involve boards and movable markers, others involved balls and hoops or bats, still others involve singing: Furthermore, some involve a winner and some do not, as some are purely for fun and others are for monetary reward, and s forth. The psychologists Eleanor Rosch and Carolyn Mervis, drawing on Wittgenstein’s analysis, suggested in 1975 that what people know about many common nouns is a set of features having varying strengths of association to the category named by the word. For instance, most fruits are juicy, but a few (like bananas) are not; many fruits are sweet, but some (like lemons and limes) are not; some fruits have a single large pit, while others have many small seeds. The most common features, like sweet and juicy for fruit, are true of prototypical examples but do not constitute necessary and sufficient conditions for using the word. In support of their suggestion, they found that a sample of college students could not list features shared by all the members of several categories, but the student’s judgements of how typical the objects were as members of a category were strongly correlated with how many of the more common category features each had. Linguistics Linda Coleman and Paul Kay argued in 1981 that verbs such as ‘lie; may work in a similar way. They found that the lies considered most typical by their subject sample involved deliberate falsehoods with the intent to deceive, but some acts the subjects verified as lies lacked one or more of these features.
This prototype view, although capturing more of the apparent complexity associated with many common words, share with the defining features view an assumption that the meaning of a word is a relatively constant thing, unvarying from situation to situation. Yet it has long been noted that the same word can have more than one meaning. For instance, ‘foot’ can refer to a human body part, and end of a bd, or the base of a mountain , which are uses distinct enough to warrant thinking of them as involving different, albeit related, meanings. Further, it is clear that the content in which a word occurs may help to determine how it is interpreted. In the 1980's, Herbert Clark argued that context does more than just select among a fixed set of senses for a word: It contributes to the meaning of a word on as particular occasion of use in a deeper way.
Specifically, Clark argued that many words can take on an infinite number of different senses. For instance, most people have the knowledge associated with the word ‘porch’ that it refers to a structure used for enjoying fresh air without being completely outdoors. But in the context of the sentence ‘Joey porched the newspaper’., a new meaning is constructed: Namely, ‘threw onto the porch’. And in ‘After the main living area was complete, the builders porched the house’, the meaning ‘built the porch onto’ is constructed. Because there is no limit to the number of context that can be generated for a word, there can be no predetermined list of meanings for a word. Other authors have made related points for less unusual cases of context, arguing, for instance, that the meaning of the word ‘line’ is subtly different in each of many different context (e.g., ‘standing in line’, ‘crossing the line’, ‘typing a line of text’), and that the variations are constructed at the time of hearing/reading the word from some core meaning of the word in combination with the context in which it occurs.
Although this last view differs from the defining features and prototype views in that it does not treat word meanings as things that are stored in their entirety in someone’s head, all three approaches share the basic assumption that some critical knowledge of meaning is held by individuals. Several issues arise from this assumption. One is how people understand each other, since meaning must somehow be shared among people in order for communication to take place. The defining features view can easily account for how meanings are shared by assuming that everyone will have the same set of defining features for a word. The prototype approach, in proposing that meaning is a much broader set of features with varying strengths of association to the word, opens the possibility that individuals will differ from one another in the features that they represent and the strength of the associations to the word. Each person’s experience with bachelors will be slightly different. One person may think of them as driving fast cars and partying, another may think of them as more like the Canadian bachelor-farmer in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Similarly, this version of meaning opens the possibilities that each person’s meaning will change over time as they experience the chance to change. The third view of meaning, by taking meaning to be context-dependent, likewise implies that a word meaning may differ from person to person and, notably, from situation to situation. And if meaning is person ~ and situation-dependent, then it is difficult to know if anything should be called the meaning of a word and what the mental representation of a word consists of. The idea that there is some core part of meaning that is invariant across all contexts or instances of a category offers a useful solution to this problem in principle, but in practice, cores for many words may be difficult or impossible to identify, just as were defining features, while having intuitive appeal, at the same time raises a number of difficult issues which must be resolved.
Most linguistics and many philosophers view word meanings not as something inside individual people’s heads, but as part of a language in a more abstract sense. Many computer scientists likewise seem to take this view of meaning, though they are typically less explicit about such assumptions. Meanings, on this view, are treated as attached to words regardless of the individuals who use them or what they know about them. The most extreme way of formulating this position is to consider meanings to be part of a system that can be characterized in items of its properties without reference to language-users at all, just as the properties of the solar system might be described without reference to its relation to humans (a view expressed, for instance, in the title of linguist Jerrold Katz’s 1981 book, Language and other Abstract Objects). A more moderate formulation is to think of meanings as things fixed by convection within a language community. A word can then be characterized as having some particular meaning within the linguistic community even if so, or even many, members of the community do not know that meaning or have incomplete knowledge of that meaning. For example, the word ‘turbid’ might be characterized as meaning muddy, cloudy, or dense in English, even if not all people who speak English know its meaning.
In the 1960's and 1970's substantial effort was made by linguistics (and also anthropologists) to describe meanings in terms of features that define the conditions under which something would be labelled by the word. This effort, by investigators such as Jerrold Katz, Jerry Fodor, and others, is in fact the source of the example of defining ‘bachelor as male, adult, and unmarried used by psychologists (adapted there to a more psychological perspective). Although primarily applied to nouns, this sort of defining features analysis was also applied to verbs by a number of linguistics such as James McCawley and Ray
A major benefit of this approach is its usefulness in attempting to specify how words are related to other words. Within linguistics, doing so has often been taken to be a major goal for a theory of meaning. Thus, linguistics have wanted to capture meanings in a way that would allow them to identify what words are synonymous with other words, what words are antonyms (opposites), what words name things with part-whole relations (as, for example, arm and body), what ones name things with inclusion relations (as, for example, dog and animal), and so forth. Characterizing meanings in terms of defining feature provides a way of doing this: Two words are synonymous if they have the same defining features: Two words have an inclusion relations if the defining features of one are includes in the defining features of the other, and so forth. The defining features approach has also provided a convenient way of representing meaning s and their relation to each other for use in computer programs that attempt to deal with natural language input, and featural approaches along these lines have been widely used within artificial intelligence.
Another benefit of this approach is that we can then treat some of the individual differences in knowledge about word meanings by saying that a person might not fully grasp whatever the meaning of the word actually is. So, someone who does not understand ‘bachelor’ to mean adult, male, unmarried but only adult and unmarried, do not fully grasp the meaning of ‘bachelor’. To the extent that successful communication and consistency in individual representation of meaning occur, they are presumably achieved because people aim to acquire the meaning given to the word by linguistic convention.
Nevertheless, several potential serious problems arise for the defining features versions of meanings as public entities. A major one is that, it seems impossible to provide an analysis of many words (such as ‘game’) in terms of defining features. Another ids that, also along the same lines, we might want to include other factures such as ‘likes to party’ and ‘drives a sporty car’ as part of the meaning of ‘bachelor’. One solution to these problems is to expand the notion of meaning to encompass a boarder range of features, as proposed and have been incorporated in some artificial intelligence system for representing meaning. However, these solutions create the problem of trying to decide where word meanings end and general knowledge begins: That also undermine the attempt to provide an account of relations like synonymy and antonymy between words. Another solution, adopted in the 1980's by the linguistic George Layoff and others, is to view a word having a set of distinct but specifiable meanings that may have a variety of relations, including metaphorical relations like synonymy can be specified and it requires enumerating a potentially very large number of meanings for each word.
Once, again, is that the meaning of ‘bachelor’ resides in individual heads or belongs to a language like ‘adult’ and ‘male’, however, scholars of meaning since the philosopher Gottlob Frége in the late 1800's have distinguished between two components or aspects of meaning. One, the ‘sense’ or ‘intension’ of a word, is the conceptual aspect of meaning that we have understood so far. The others is the ‘reference’ or ‘extension’ of a word, the set of things in the world that the word refers to. For the word ‘bachelor’, for instance, the reference of the word ids the set of all (real or possible) ‘bachelors’ in the world. In other words the reference aspect of meaning is a relations between a word and the world.
Psychologists, linguistics, and computer scientists holding any of the views of meaning, insofar as generally to consider the sense of a word to be the primary concern for a theory of meaning, although they would also agree that the theory should account for what entities the word is used to refer to. A view of meaning quite distinct from this perspective, though, has recently been influential, and that is a view that says, essentially, that the meaning of a word is its relation to things in the world: That is, meaning is reference.
An important argument for this view, derived primarily from analysis of meaning by philosopher Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke, is based on the observation that the features that one thinks of as constituting the meaning of word could turn out not to be true. For example, a person )or, a language) might specify features like ‘sour’ and ‘yellow’ as meaning of the word ‘lemon’, but it could turn out that these features do not accurately reflect the truth about lemons. Research could reveal that pollution makes lemons yellow and sour, but normally they would be green and sweet. The word lemon would still refer to the set of things in the world that it did before everyone revised their knowledge of the properties of lemons. Similarly, new scientific discoveries could add to or alter beliefs about the properties on many objects, but those changes in the properties associated with the words would not change the set of things correctly namely by the word. Putnam suggested, on the basis of these and other arguments, that words function simply to pick out sets of things in the world. On this referential view, the properties constitute a stereotype of what the object is like (or seems to be like), nut they do not constitute the meaning of the word. As Putnam wrote in advocating thus view in 1973: ‘Cut the pie any way you like’, meanings’ ‘just are not in the head’. (And therefore, according to this view, they ‘just ain ‘t’ definitions held by linguistic community).
A benefit of this referential view of meaning is that it provides an account of stability in meaning and communication: A word refers to the same set of things in the world regardless of variation in knowledge among people, and use of a word to refer to a particular set of things can be passed from generation to generation regardless of changes in belief about properties of the object. However, it also has weaknesses and one prominent one is that the analysis des not seem to apply to many common words. Or example, the word ‘bachelor’ seems intrinsically to involve the property of being unmarried. Although we can imagine researchers discovering that lemons really are green, it is not possible for researchers to discover that bachelors really are married people. Even if all men previously thought to be unmarried turned out to be married, we would not change the properties associated with bachelor, we would say that these men were not bachelors after all. Likewise, ‘island’ seems to intrinsically refer to a certain kind of motion, and any activity not involving that motion just wouldn’t be running. In such cases, having the associated properties does seem to be critical to whether or not the word can be applied to the object. If the referential view is correct for some words, this observation raises the interesting possibilities that the nature of the meanings may differ for different words, and one analysis of meaning may not be appropriated for all words.
Placing all else aside, are nonetheless, that the Logical positivists have in themselves attributed many of the confusions and uncertainties of science, particularly those found in the social and behavioural sciences, to unclarity in the language. Even more strongly, they claim that the quandaries that beset other areas of human inquiry, including politics, religion and areas of philosophy like metaphysics, resulted from unclear use of language. When language is not governed by strict rules of meaning , the utterly meaningless statements. In calling a statement meaningless, the positivists were not merely asserting that the statement was false but something worse ~ the statement was not really understandable. The kind of statement the positivists had in mind is a statement like, ‘God is love’. Consequently, they viewed theological debates, for example, not as substantive debates for which there were objective answers, but simply as confused discourse. The remedy for such confusion was to attend carefully to the principles governing meaningful discourse and to restrict oneself to those domains where language could be used meaningfully. The positivists did admit that language could serve other functions than making true or false statements. For example, they thought that literature and poetry could be used to arouse emotional responses or inspire action. But science, they maintained, was concerned was with truth and therefore had to restrict itself to discourse for which clear principles of meaningfulness was available.
In their discussions of meaning the positivists followed the classical ‘empiricists’ in linking knowledge to experience, but they advocated one important change. The classical empiricists treated ideas as the units of thinking and viewed these ideas as causal products of sensory experience. The logical positivists rejected ideas as fuzzy entities. Rather, they took linguistic entities ~ sentences and words ~ to be the basic vehicles of meaning. They proposed the criterion of verification to explain how these linguistic entities could be appropriately related to experience. According to this criterion, the meaning of a sentence was the set of conditions that would show that the sentence was true. Although these conditions would not actually occur if the sentence was false, we could still state what would be the case if it was true. Because only sentences and dividual words could be true or false, the meaning of words had to be analysed in terms of their roles in sentences. This account of meaning became known as the ‘verifiability theory of meaning’.
Some instances, the logical positivists maintained, could be directly verified through experience. Sensory exposure could tell us directly that these sentences were true or false. The positivists referred to these sentences variously as ‘protocol sentences’ or ‘observation sentences’. There was considerable disagreement amongst positivists as to which sentences counted as such. Some, like the early politists Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), whereby was probably more influential than any other thinker in combining a basic empiricism with the logic tool s provided by Frége and Russell, and it is in his works that the m ain achievements (and difficulties) of logical positivism are best exhibited. Carnap’s first major work was, ‘Der logische Aufbau der welt’ (1928, translated, as, The Logical Structure of the World, 1967). However, a launching gasification for which the celebration in ‘logische der Sprache (1934, translated as, The Logical Syntax of Language, 1937). Refinements to his syntactic and semantic views continued with Meaning and Language, 1947, while a general loosening of the original idea of reduction culminated in the great ‘Logical Foundations of Probability’, the most important single work of ‘confirmation theory’, in 195. Other works concern the structure of physics and the concept of entropy.
Just the same, Carnap (1928/1967), restricted observation sentences to those characterized our phenomenal experience (e.g., ‘I am sensing a blue colour patch now’) Others like the Austrian philosopher and social theorist Otto Neurath (1932), maintained that sentences about observable parts of the world (e.g., ‘the sun is shining’) could be directly verified. For the most part, positivists took observation sentences to refer to physical states of the world, producing a biassed predetermine which is physically observable.
Other sentences in a language could not be verified directly through experience. This particularly true of sentences that contain theoretical terms (e.g., force) that do not directly refer to observable features or objects. To explicate the meaning of these terms the positivists focussed on ways in which the truth or falsity of sentences using these terms could be determined indirectly via other sentences that were observational. At this point, logical analysis became important, for the positivists had to explain the logical relationship between two sentences whereby one could serve to explicate the meaning of the other. Initially, a number of positivists proposed to ‘translate’ all sentences referring to theoretical entities into observable sentences. Because they limited themselves to the tools of symbol logic, the kind of translation with which the positivists were concerned was not aimed at preserving the connotation of the theoretical sentences, but an identifying sentence that were true under the same empirical conditions. Thus, translations consist of bi-conditional sentences that assert that one statement (the theoretical statement) is true if only if another, possibly complex statement (the observational statement) is true. These statements have a unusual characteristic. Because they only articulate the meaning of one sentence in terms of another sentence, they do not depend on experience in any way and so cannot be refuted by experience. Such statements are often referred to as ‘analytic statements’ to distinguish them from ordinary sentences whose truth depends on or upon how the world is.
This attempt to explicate the meaning of all scientific discourse in terms of observational conditions is closely related to the very influential doctrine associated with the American physicist and mathematician Percy Bridgman (1927), of operational definitions. According to this doctrine, in introducing a theoretical concept, it is necessary to specify through which one can confirm or disconfirm statements using that term. Bridgman’s notion of an operational definition extends the positivists conception of an observation term by supplying procedures for producing the requisite observation.
One of the issues in cognitive science to which the verifiability theory of meaning has been applied is the question of wether machines can think. In order to render this into a meaningful question, the positivists require that it be translated into a sentence that can be confirmed or disconfirmed observationally. Turing’s (1950) famous test for machine thinking provides the kind of thinking that would require. Turing proposed that we should accept a machine as thinking when we could not distinguish its behaviour (e.g., in answering questions and carrying on a dialogue) from that of a thinking human being. Of course, we also confront problems in deciding whether another being in thinking, or is simply automation. The verificationist theory of meaning, however, advocates the same treatment of this case ~ explicate what thinking is in terms of this kind of behaviour a thinking being would perform. This treatment construes the concept of thought as referring not to some unobservable activity but as something detectable in the behaviour of organisms or computers.
The criterion that theoretical terms have to be translatable into observational terms was quickly recognized to be too strong. First of all, it is common for theoretical terms to be linked with experience in more than one way. This is particularly true for measurement terms for which there may be several different observational criteria. Generally, scientists will not accept just one of these as the definition, but view them as giving alterative criteria. Some of these may be discounted if several of the others all support a common measurement. This practice cannot be understood if one insists that there be a single definition translating theoretical terms into, dispositional term ‘soluble’, may not be translatable into observational terms. An object’s property of being soluble cannot be correlated directly with observable features of the object except when the object is placed in water. Many soluble objects will never be placed in water. Even worse, the dispositional term cannot be translated into a conditional sentence (e.g., if it is placed in water, then it will dissolve). The reason is that in symbolic logic a sentence of the form ‘if-----, then . . . is defined as true if the antecedent is false. This would make any object that was never placed in water soluble.
To account for the meaning of such terms, which contemporary science seems clearly to require, positivists attempted to weaken their verifiability conditions. Carnap proposed that a dispositional term like ‘soluble’ could be translated by the following sentence (which he termed, ‘reduction sentence):
‘If x is placed in water, then x will dissolve if and only if x is soluble’.
Such a reduction sentence overcomes the previous objection because it does not imply that something never placed in water is soluble. It also has the consequence that under conditions where the test conditions are never investigated (e.g., where the object is destroyed before it can be placed in water) as we will be able to determine the truth of the theoretical sentence. Unfortunately, this means that the initial aspirations of the verifiability criterion are not achieved because there will be reduction sentences for terms even though we may be powerless to verify and actualize applicability of the term in specific instances. But at least, according to the positivists, we know what conditions we claim hold when we make a statement using the term.
In cognitive anthropology, at least, the limitation of the cognitive perspective has been recognized, mainly with reference to the problem of motivation. If people have a lot of scripts and schemata in their heads, what makes them emotionally compelling are an extremely salient and important aspect of human mental life. However, until recently they have not attracted much attention in cognitive science. Despite this neglect by cognitive theoretical perspectives that cognitive scientists will have to address as they bring emotions into their purview: (Is it the physiological sort in the cognitive aspects of an emotional experience that primarily determine which emotion is being experienced? (2) Are emotions culturally specific or widely shared across cultures? (3) Are either emotions themselves or the causes that elicit them innate in one or more of that word’s several senses? These issues of emotional indifferencing do vary within the different theoretical perspectives that are a direct combination that each suggests that emotions must be investigated by looking at detailed exemplifications that emotional context of thought and resultant behaviours, are, that, emotion is not an individualistic property.
These complications do not suffice to explain philosophy’s neglect to the emotions. Philosophers, after all, tend rather to be fond of complications. Even so, this neglect is both relatively recent and already out of fashion. Most of the great classical philosophers ~ Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Descartes, Hobbes, Hume ~ has had recognizable theories of emotion. Yet in twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy and psychology, the increasing attention of most recently devoted criteria to emotion has had an air of innovation. Under the influence of a ‘tough-minded’ ideology committed to behaviouralism, theories of action or the will, and theories belief or knowledge, had seemed more readily achievable than theories of emotion. Again, recently dominant Bayesian-derived economic models of rational decision and agency are essentially assimilative models ~ two-factor theories, which view emotion either as a species of belief, or as a species in expressing desire.
That enviably resilient Bayesian model been cracked, in the eyes of many philosophers, by such refractory phenomena as the ‘weakness of will’. As such, the weakness of will, as is the case of a traditional descriptive rationality seems to be violated, insofar as the ‘strongest’ desire does not win, even when paired with the appropriate belief, whereby each in the belief indicates a state of some kind of arousal a state that can prompt some activities and interfere with others. These states are associated with characteristic feelings, and they have characteristic bodily expressions. Unlike moods they have objects: One grieves over some particular thing or is angry at something. Different philosophical theories have tended to highlight one or other of these aspects of emotion. Pure arousal theory imagines a visceral reaction triggered by some event, which stands ready to be converted into one emotion or another by contextual factors. Theories based on the feel or ‘Qualia’ of an emotion were put forward by writers such as Hume and Kant, nut the approach meets difficulty when we consider that an emotion is not a raw feel, but is identified by its motivational powers, and their function is prompting action. The characteristic expression of emotion was studied extensively by Darwin, resulting in the classic, The Expression of the Emotion in Man and Animals’, (1872). In 1884, James published what became known as the James-Lange theory of emotion whose main contention is that we feel as we do in virtue of the bodily expressions and behaviour that we are prompted toward, than the other way round, ‘our feelings of the changes as they occur as ‘our emotion’. Again, it is not clear how such a theory would accommodate the directed, cognitive side of emotions that have a specific objects, than being simply the experience of bodily change. Directly opposing this some philosophers have the emotions, derived from Stoicism, seeing them simply as judgement fear of the dog is no more than the judgement that it is dangerous or a threat to one’s well-being. The Stoics thought that as judgements the emotions were typically false, but modern cognitive theories tend to be more generous to them, often emotions are often an admirable moral adaptation. Other questions concern the cultural variability of emotion, and the dependence of some emotion, but not all, on the existence of linguistically adequate modes of expression and self-interpretation.
What is distinctive about emotions is perhaps precisely what made them a theoretical embarrassment: That they have a number of apparently contradictory properties. In what follows, are five areas in which emotion’s pose specific philosophical puzzles: Emotion’s relation to cognition; emotions and self-knowledge; the relation of emotions to their objects; the nature of emotional intensity and the relation of emotions to rationality.
It is a commonplace (whether true or false) that emotions are in some sense ‘subjective’. Some have taken this to mean that they reflect nothing but the peculiar consciousness of the subject. But that conclusion follows only if one adopts a fallacious equation of point of view and subjectivity. The existence of ‘perspectivity’ does not invalidate cognition, in that emotional states are perspectival, therefore, need not bar them from being cognitive or playing a role on cognition. There are at least three ways in which emotions have been thought to relate to cognition:
(1) As stimulants of cognition: Philosophers have been interested in learning from psycho-physiologists that you would not learn anything unless the limbic system ~ in part of the brain most actively implicated in emotional states ~ is stimulated at the time of learning.
(2) Many emotions are specified in terms of propositions: One cannot be angry with someone unless one believes that person guilty of some offence, one cannot be jealous unless one believes that one’s emotional property is being poached on by another. From this, it has ben inferred that emotions are (always? Sometimes?) cognitive in the sense that they involve ‘propositional attitudes’. This claim is relatively weak, however, since the existence of a propositional attitude is at best a necessary, but not a sufficient condition of the existence of an emotion.
(3) The most literal interpretation of cognitivism about emotions would be committed to ascribing to emotions a ‘mind-to-world direction of fit’. The expression ‘direction of fit’, which is due to Searle (1983), distinguishes between an essentially cognitive orientation of the mind, in which success is defined in terms of whether the mind fits the world (a mind-to-world direction of fit) and an essentially conative orientation. In which success is defined in terms of the opposite, world-to-mind, direction of fit. We will what does not yet exist, and deem ourselves successful if the world is brought into line with the mind’s plan.
A view ascribing to emotions a true mind-to-world direction of fit would involve a criterion of success that depended on correctness with respect to some objective property. Such a view was first defended by Scheler (1954), and has in general had more currency as a variant of an objectivists theory of aesthetics than as a theory of emotions as a whole.
To take seriously cognitivism in this sense, is to give a particular answer to the question posed long ago in Plato’s, Euthyphro: Do we love ‘X’- mutatis mutandis for the other emotions ~ because ‘X’ is loveable, or do we declare ‘X’ to be lovable merely because we love it? One way to defend a modest objectivism, in the sense of the first alternative, is to explore certain analogies between emotion and perception. It requires first that we define clearly what is to count as ‘objectivity’ in the relevant sense. Second, it requires that we show that there is a valid analogy between some of the ways in which we can speak of perception as aspiring to objectivity and ways in which we can say the same of emotion.
Emotions are sometimes said to be subjective in this sense: That they merely reflect something that belongs exclusively and contingently to the mind of the subject of experience, and therefore do not covary with any property that could be independently identified. This charge presupposes a sense of ‘objective’ that contrasts with ‘projective’, in something like the psychoanalytic sense. The way that psychoanalytic explanation is understood has immediate implications for one’s view of its truth or acceptability, and thus is of course a notoriously a controversial matter. However, Freud clearly regarded psychoanalysis as engaging principally in the task of explanation, and held fast to claims for its truth in the course of alterations in his view of the efficacy of psychoanalytic treatment.
In terms of the analogy of perception, to say that emotions are universally subjective in this sense would be to claim that they resemble hallucinations more than veridical perception. The perceptual system is capable of the sort of vacuous functioning that leads to perceptual mistakes. Similarly, emotions may mislead us into ‘hasty’ or ‘emotional’ judgements. Nonetheless, the lack of perceptual capacities can be a crippling handicap in one’s attempt to negotiate the world: In a like manner, a lack of adequate emotional response can hinder our attempts to view the world correctly and act correctly in it. This explains why we are so often tempted to take seriously ascription of reasonableness or unreasonableness, fittingness or inappropriateness, for common emotions. The big drawback of this view is that it is quite unclear how independently to identify the alleged objective property.
Closely related to the question of the cognitive aspect of emotion is the question of its passivity. Passivity has an ambiguous relation to subjectivity. In one vein, impressed by the bad reputation of the ‘passions’ as taking over our consciousness against our will, philosophers have been tempted to take the passivity of emotions as evidence of their subjectivity. In an another vein, however, represented especially in the last few years by Robert Gordon (1987), philosophers have noted that the passivity of emotions is sometimes precisely analogous to the passivity of perception. How the world is, is not in our power. So it is only to be expected that our emotions, if they actually represent something genuinely and objectively in the world, should not be in our power either. To this extent, the cognitive model holds out rather well, while at the same time suggesting that our common notion of what cognition amounts to may be excessively narrows.
We often make the ‘Cartesian’ assumption that if anyone can know our emotions it is ourselves. Descartes said it thus: ‘It is impossible for the soul to feel a passion without that passion being truly as one feels it’. The existence of first person authority is not an empirical discovery, but rather a criterion, among others, of what a mental state is. Among others, so it can happen that we concede error on occasion. But exceptions do not throw in doubt the presumption that we know our own minds. What accounts for this presumption? Introspection offers no solution, since it fails to explain why one’s perceptions of one’s own mental states should be any more reliable than one’s perceptions of anything else. Even so, that ‘those that are most agitated by their passions are not those who know them best’. In fact, emotions are one of our avenues to self-knowledge, since few kinds of self-knowledge could matter more than knowing one’s own repertoire of emotional responses. At the same time, emotion are both the cause and the subject of many failures of self-knowledge. Their complexity entails several sources for their potential to mislead or be misled. Insofar as most emotions involve belief, they inherit the susceptibility of a latter self-deception. Recent literature on self-deception has dissolved the air of paradox to which this once gave rise. But there are also three distinct problems that are specific to emotions.
The first arises from the connection of emotion with bodily changes. There is something right in William James’s notorious claim that the emotion follows on, than causing the voluntary and involuntary bodily changes which express it. Because some of these changes are either directly or indirectly subject to our choices, we are able to pretend or dissimulate emotion. That implies that we can sometimes be caught in our own pretence. Sometimes we identity our emotions by what we feel, and if what we feel has been distorted by a project of deception, then we will misidentify our own emotions.
A second source of self-deception arises from the role of emotions in determining salience among potential objects of attention or concern. Poets have always known that the main effect of love is to redirect attention, when in love. Nonetheless, one is not always able to predict, and therefore to control, the effects that redirect attention might produce, the best explanation for this familiar observations require us to take seriously the hypothesis of the unconscious: If among the associations that are evoked by a given scene are some that I can react to without being aware of what they are, then I will not always be able to predict my own reactions, even if I have mastered the not altogether trivial task of attending to whatever I choose. Where the unconscious is, self-deception necessarily threatens.
This brings us to the third source of emotional self-deception: The involvement of social norms in the determination of our emotions. This possibility arises in two stages from the admission that there are unconscious motivations for emotions. First, if I am experiencing an emotion that seems altogether inappropriate to its occasion, I will naturally confabulate an explanation for it. A neurotic who is unreasonably angry with his wife because he unconsciously identifies her with, his mother will not rest content with having any reason for his anger. Instead, he will make one up. Moreover, the reason he makes up will typically be one that is socially approved.
When we are self-deceived in our emotional response, or when some emotional state induces self-deception, there are various aspects of the situation about which self-deception can take place. These relate to different kinds of intentional objects of emotion.
What does a mood, such as free-floating depression or euphoria have in common with a precisely articulable indignation? The first seems to have as its object nothing and everything, and often admits of no particular justification: The second has a long story to tell typically involving other people and what they have done or said. Not only those people but the relevant facts about the situation involved, as well as some of the special facts about those situations, aspects of those facts, the causal role played by these aspects, and even the typical aims of the actions motivated by the emotions, can all in some context or other be labelled objects of emotion. Objects are what we emote at, with, to, because of, in virtue of or that the directness or ‘aboutness’ of many, if not all conscious states. The term ~ intentionality ~ was used by the scholastics but revived in the 19th century by Brentano,. Our beliefs, thoughts, wishes, dreams, and desires are about things. Equally the words we use to express these beliefs and other mental states are about things. The problem of intentionality is that of understanding the relation obtaining between a mental state, or its expression, and the things it is about. First, if I am in some relation to a chair, for instance by sitting on it, then both it and I must exist. But while mostly one thinks about things that exist, sometimes (although this way of putting it has its problems) one has beliefs, hopes and fears about things that do not, as when the child expects Santa Claus and the adult fears the axeman. Secondly, if I sit on the chair, and the chair is the oldest antique in Toronto, then I sit on the oldest antique in Toronto. But if I plan to avoid the mad axeman, and the mad axeman is in fact my friendly postman. I do not therefore plan to avoid my friendly postman.
Intentional relations seem to depend on how the object is specified, or as Frége put it, on the mode of presentation of the object. This makes them quite unlike the relations whose logic we can understand by means of the predicate calculus, and this peculiarity has led some philosophers, notably Quine, to declare them unfit for use in serious science. More widespread is the view that since the concept is indispensable to deal with the central feature of the mind, or explain how science may include intentionality. One approach is to suggest that while the linguistic forms in which we communicate fears and beliefs have a two-faced aspect, involving both the objects referred to, and the mode of presentation under which they are thought of, wee can see the mind as essentially directed onto existent things, and extensionally related to them. Intentionality then becomes a feature of language, rather than a metaphysical or ontological peculiarity of the mental world.
It seems to be an irreducible differentia of emotions that they can be measured along a dimension of intensity. This corresponds neither in the strength of desire nor to a belief’s degree of confidence. What does mild distaste have in common with the most murderous rage? Is it just a matter of degree? Or does intensity necessarily bring with it differences in kind? Two different sorts of considerations favour endorsing the latter view. The difference between them illustrates a characteristic methodological dilemma faced by emotions research. The first approaches taxonomy through social significance: Mild distaste is one thing, rage quite another, in the sense that the circumstances in which the first or the second is generally appropriate and acceptable are radically disjoint. From this point of view, then, they must obviously be classed as entirely different phenomena. But a similar response might be derived from an entirely different approach: One might look at the brain’s involvement in the two cases and find (perhaps) the first to be an essentially cortical response, while the second involves activity of the limbic system or even the brain stem -what has been dubbed as the ‘mammalian’ or ‘crocodile’ brain. In this case the classification of the two as entirely separate phenomena might have a strictly physiological basis. How are the two related?
The very notion of intensity is problematic exactly to the extent that the emotions call for disparate principles of explanation. Might a physiological criterion settle the question? One could stipulate that the most intense emotion is the one that involves the greatest quantity of physiological ‘disturbance’. But this approach must implicitly posit a state of ‘normal’ quietude hard to pin down among the myriad different measures of physiological activity one might devise. To select a measure that will count as relevant, one will inevitably have to resort to another level of more functional physiological activity that are relevant to the social functions subserved by those emotions? And what are the mental functions that should be deemed most important in the context of the relevant demands of social life? At that point, while physiological explanations may be of great interest, there is no hope from their quarter of any interesting criteria for emotional intensity.
There is a common prejudice that ‘feelings’ a word now sometimes vulgarly used interchangeably with ‘emotions’, nether owe nor can give ant rational account of themselves. Yet we equally commonly blame others or ourselves for feeling ‘not wisely, but too well’, or for targeting inappropriate objects. Yet we have sen, the norms appropriate to both these types of judgement are inseparable from social norms, whether or not these are endorsed. Ultimately they are inseparable from conceptions of normality and human nature. Judgements of reasonableness therefore tend to be endorsed or rejected in accordance with one’s ideological commitments to this or that conception of human nature. It follows that whether these judgements can be viewed as objective or not will depend on whether there are objective facts to be sought about human nature. on this question, we fortunately do need to pronounce. It is enough to note that there is no logical reason why judgements of reasonableness or irrationality in relation to emotions need any other judgements of rationality in human affairs.
There are further contribution that the study of emotions can make to our understanding of rationality. The clearest notions associated with rationality are coherence and consistency in the sphere of beliefs, and maximizing expected utility in the sphere of action. But these notions are purely critical ones. By themselves, they would be quite incapable of guiding an organism toward any particular course of action. For the number of goals that it is logically possible to posit at any particular time is virtually infinite, and the number of possible strategies that might be employed in pursuit of them os orders of magnitude larger. Moreover, in considering possible strategies, the number of consequences of any one strategy is again infinite, so that unless some drastic preselection can be effected among the alternatives their evaluation could never be completed. This gives rise to what is known among cognitive scientists as the ‘Frame Problem’: In deciding among any ranges of possible actions, most of the consequences of each mus t be eliminated from consideration a priori, i.e., without any time being wasted on their consideration. That this is not as much of a problem for people as it is for machines may well be due to our capacity for emotions. Emotions frame our defining parameters as taken into account in any particular deliberation. Second, in the process of rational deliberation itself, they render salient only a tiny proportion of the available alternatives and of the conceivably relevant facts. In these ways, then, emotions would be all-important to rationality even if they could themselves be deemed rational or irrational. For they winnow down to manageable size the number of considerations relevant to rational deliberation, and provide the indispensable farmwork without which the question of rationality could never be raised.
Notwithstanding, emotions are an important aspect of human mental life, however, until recently they have not attracted much attention in cognitive science. Despite this neglect by cognitive scientists, other investigators have been actively studying emotions and developing theoretical perspectives on them. These theoretical perspectives raise a number of important questions that cognitive scientists will have to address as they bring emotions into their purview: (1) Is it the physiological or the cognitive aspects of an emotional experience that primarily determine which emotion is being experienced? (2) Are emotions culturally specific or widely shared across cultures? (3) Are either emotions themselves or the causes that elicit them innate in one or more of what word’s several senses?
The scientific study of emotions began with Charles Darwin’s, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872-1965). Darwin used posed photographs to show that observers can reliably identify emotions from facial expression. He analysed the muscle movements in each expression and argued that human expressions are sometimes homologous (descended from a common ancestor) with those of primates, despite differing superficial appearances, because the underlying muscle contractions are the same. Darwin identified several expressions still recognized today as pan-cultural human behaviours with affinities to the behaviour of other primates.
Darwin argued that expressions of emotion typically evolve from behaviours with some direct value to the organism in the situation that elicits the emotion. In surprise the eyes are widely opened and the head oriented to the stimulus. This serves to obtain as much information as possible. Chimpanzees expose their teeth in subordinate threat displays, signalling the intention, and perhaps the ability, for biting attack. Darwin argued that the reliable link between these behaviours and emotional states gave the behaviours a secondary adaptive value as signals of emotional stat. The behaviours might even be modified to make them clearer signals (later ethologists called this ritualization). This secondary communicative function allowed the behaviours to be retained when their original role declined. A human confronted in a bar brawl may display an expression homologous to that of the chimpanzee. The behaviour signals the emotion of anger, rather than the intention or ability to bite.
Like most nineteenth-century writers, Darwin thought of the physiology of emotions as a mere manifestation of private emotion feelings. His modern followers have been more inclined to identify emotions with their associated physiology. Both views imply that an emotion can be reidentified across cultures as long as the physiology is present. Until quite recently, most philosophers and psychologists would have rejected this conclusion
Another early theory of emotion also linked emotions very strongly to their attendant physiology. In the 1890's William James proposed that a conscious emotion feeling stimulus via a reflex arc. According to the famous James-Lange theory of emotion, the perception of a fearful object directly precipitates the autonomic nervous system (ANS) changes of the flight response. The later perception of these changes constitutes the feeling of fear. At the present time, the James-Lange theory is undergoing a revival. Antonio Damasio’s research into the neural basis of emotion embraces James as an intellectual ancestor. Damasio (1994) argues that emotion feeling is the perception in the neocortex of bodily responses to stimuli mediated through lower brain centres.
The pioneering neuroscientsts Walter D. Cannon campaigned strongly against the James-Lange theory in the 1920's and 1930's. he tried to show that emotional responses involving the [ANS] were just another example of the control of the body by limbic areas of the brain, particularly the hypothalamus, that had been revealed by his research into bodily homeostasis. Among Cannon’s many powerful empirical criticisms, his claim to a continuing controversy in emotion theory. If this finding is correct, then differences in the feeling associated with various emotions cannot be the result of different [ANS] feedback.
The idea that [ANS] arousal does not differentiate between emotions has been used to support the wider conclusion that emotions are not individuated by their attendant physiology at all. In perhaps, the most widely cited single study on emotion, Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer (1962) suggested the alternative cognitive labelling theory of emotion. Physiological arousal is a necessary condition of emotion, but the very same arousal can be labelled as many different emotions. Emotions are individuated by hypotheses for experimental test: (1) a subject will label a state of [ANS] arousal for which they have no other explanation in terms of the cognitive available to them at the time (2) if subjects are offered an immediate physiological explanation of their arousal, they will not label the arousal as an emotion, and (3) an individual will report emotion only if physiological aroused.
Schachter and Singer divided their subjects into four groups. One group was injected with a placebo. The remaining three groups were injected with adrenalin. One of these three groups was told the genuine physiological effect that they would experience, another group was told nothing, and the third group was misinformed about what they would experience. Half the participants in each group were subjected to conditions designed to produce happiness or euphoria, and the other half to conditions designed to produce anger. These emotions were to be induced by the behaviour of stooges placed with the subjects and, in the latter case, by the use of impertinent questionnaires. Schachter and Singer gathered results by making secret observations of their subjects during the anger and euphoria conditions and by asking them to fill in questionnaires after the event the effects found in the experiment were weak, but broadly supportive of the three hypotheses (1) subjects in the euphoria condition reported, and subjects in the anger condition reported anger (2) the group fully informed about the effects of the injection of adrenalin showed and reported the least signs of emotional arousal. And the group told nothing fell in between, and (3) the placebo group showed and reported relatively little emotion.
Not only were the effects in Schachter and Singer’s experiment weak, but there have been problems with replication. More importantly, it is unclear that they succeeded in simulating the normal experience of emotion. People unable to account for their own behaviour or physiological responses (e.g., after brain damage) often invent demonstrable incorrect explanations of their symptoms. This phenomenon is known as ‘confabulation’. One would expect Schachter and Singer’s uninformed subjects to confabulate in order to explain the abnormal arousal caused by adrenalin injections. The results obtained do not discriminate between the hypothesis and the hypothesis that experiment stimulated normal emotion.
The question as to whether emotions are individuated by the cognition that accompany them was the focus of a pointed dispute in the 1980's between R.B. Zajonic, who denied that emotions need involve cognition at all, and Richard Lazarus, who vigorously defended the cognitivist view. Lazarus started from the uncontroversial premise that emotion requires processing is information concerning the stimulus. The cognitivist claims that this processing is sufficiently sophisticated to be called ‘cognition’, Zajonc opposed this claim, citing a large number of empirical findings which suggest that there are direct pathways from the perceptual system to limbic areas implicated in emotional responses. He argued that the processes linking perception and emotion should not be regarded as ‘cognition’.
Despite appearances, this is not a trivial semantic dispute. Although the term ‘cognition’ is used very loosely in contemporary psychology, there are certain traditional paradigms of ‘non-cognition’ processes, such as reflexes. Lazarus claimed that the triggering of emotions resembles paradigm cognitive processes, whereas :Lazarus claimed that emotions are ‘modular’. They are reflex-like responses, whereas Zajonc claimed that emotions of the processes underlying long-term, planned action. His argument in favour of this view are threefold: First, experiments by Zalonc and others show that emotions can be produced by subliminal stimuli. No information about these stimuli seems to be available to paradigm higher cognitive processes such as conscious recall and verbal report. Second: The affect program emotions are homologous with responses in far simpler organisms and are localized in brain areas shared with those simple were organisms, and finally, the modularity hypothesis explains the anecdotal data about the ‘passivity’ of emotion. Like reflexes or perceptual inputs, emotions happen to people rather than being planned and performed.
Even so, cognitivist have frequently assumed that emotions are reidentifiable across cultures because the cognition that define them can occur in different cultures. However, in recent years the view that emotions are culturally specific has gained popularity as part of a broader interest in the social construction of mind. Social constructionists have characterized emotions as ‘transitory social roles’. People adopt an emotion as one might a theoretical role, in situations in which that role is culturally prescribed. These roles have been compared to culturally specific categories of mental or physical illness. Medieval people expressed psychological distress through the myth of spirited possession. Eighteenth-century gentlewoman negotiated their demanding social role by being subject to fits of the vapours. In a parallel fashion, romantic love is a pattern of thought and action produced by a person who wants to receive the treatment appropriate to a lover from their society. This pattern is interpreted by the lover and by society as a natural, involuntary response. Like illness roles, emotion roles differ across time and culture and are acquired by example, and by exposure to stories and other cultural products. Constructionism suggests that emotions must be investigated by looking at the cultural context of thought and behaviour. A conventional cognitivist approach would overlook the wider social context that makes sense of individual cognition. A physiological investigation of love or feeling of disembowelment would be misguided in the same way as a search for the physiological basis of a medieval man ’honour’. Like having honour an emotion is not an individualistic property.
Cognitivist and constructionist theories of emotion stand in stark contrast to Darwin’s interest in pan-cultural physiology. Darwin’s work had little influence on psychology in the first half of this century. It emphasized the inheritance of complex behaviour patterns, in contradiction to the main thrust of behaviouralism. It was also rejected in anthropology, where the consensus was that emotions are culturally specific. Darwin, 1872-1965. Like Darwin, ethologists looked at behaviour comparatively, using resemblances across species to diagnose the function and evolutionary causes of behaviours. They also believed, perhaps mistakenly, that evolved behaviours should be seen in all human cultures. Ethological work caused a revival of interest in Darwin’s ideas I the 1960's. in one of the best-designed studies, Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen (1971) studied members of the Fore language group in New Guinea. These people understood neither English nor pidgin English, had seen no movies or magazines, and had not lived or worked with Westerners. Subjects were shown three photographs of faces and told a story designed to involve only one emotion. They were asked to pick the person in the story. Forty photographs were used in experiments with 189 adult and 130 child subjects. Subjects reliably chose the pictures representing Westerner expressions of the emotion in the story. In one experiment the photograph represented sadness, anger, and surprise. The new Guineans were asked to select the face of a man whose child has died. Some 79 percent of adults and 81 percent of children selected the sadness photograph. These results suggests that some facial expressions of emotion are pan-cultural.
Darwin’s other experiment technique, analysing expressions into component movements, was revived by Ekman and a large group of collaborators. Twenty-five subjects from Berkeley and the same number from Waseda University in Tokyo were shown a stress-induced film known to elicit similar self-reports of emotion from Japanese and Americans. Subjects were alone in a room, aware that skin conductance and heart rate measures were being made, but unaware that their facial expressions were being videotaped. The facial behaviour of the two sets of subjects was classified using a standard atlas of facial expressions. Correlations between the facial behaviour shown by Japanese and American subjects in relation to the stress film ranged from 0.72 to 0.96, depending upon whether a particular facial area was compared o the entire face. This result also supports the view that some facial expressions of emotion are pan-cultural.
The ethological tradition crystallizes in the affect program theory of emotions. This is very similar to the modular theory of emotions suggested by Zajone. Certain short-term human emotional responses, often labelled surprise, anger, fear, disgust, sadness and joy, are stereotypic, pan-cultural responses with an evolutionary history. They involve coordinated facial expression, skeletal/muscular responses (such as flinching or orienting), expressive vocal changes and cognitive phenomena such as direction of attention as literal, neural programs. There is considerable evidence that control of these behaviours is localized in the limbic system. However, the term ‘affect program’ can be used to refer simply to the coordinated set of chainages observed.
The current ‘evolutionary psychology’ movement has suggested that there may be many more specific emotional adaptions, such as a specific cognitive-behavioural response to sexual jealousy. The methodology of these recent authors are very different from that of the ethological tradition. Rather than seeking evolutionary explanations for pan-cultural behaviour observed in the field, they use ‘adaptive thinking’ as a heuristic whereby to search for such behaviours. Robert Frank derives a theory of emotions from game-theoretic model of the ‘commitment problem’: The problem of convincing another organism that you will follow through a signalled intention. Amongst other emotions, Frank predicts a sense of fairness that would motivate agents to forgo profit in order to punish trading partners for exploiting their competitive position. In contrary has adaptively explained why it should exist.
The ethological tradition has stressed the pan-cultural and inherent nature of emotion, something that has been hotly denied by other researchers. This dispute has been caused in part by the fact that different theorists discuss different parts of the overall domain of emotion. However, much of the nature-nurture dispute in emotion theory is due to a failure to distinguish between the output side and the input side of emotional responses. The thesis that people are everywhere afraid in the same way and the thesis that they are everywhere afraid of the same things are almost always conflated. For what it is to be unconditioned.
The ethologist Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1973) applied one of the fundamental experimental paradigms of classical ethology ~ the deprivation experiment ~ to facial expressions of emotion. He showed that the pan-cultural expressions of emotion develop in infants born as opposed of being learned. It is not necessary to accept these particular theoretical constructions to recognize that the six affect programs develop in a way more akin to classic anatomical structure like organ systems than to classic psychological structures like beliefs. However, both this deprivation experiment and Ekman’s cross-cultural studies reviewed as concerned with the output side ~ the behaviour displayed in emotions ~ have the same developmental patterns and/or are pan-cultural.
The behaviourist John Broadus Watson found support for his extreme environmentalist view of mental development in the act that newborns are sensitive to very few emotion stimuli. They respond to loud sounds and to loss of balance with fear, to prolonged restraint with rage, and to gentle forms of skin stimulation with pleasure. In addition, neonates are extremely responsive to the facial expressions of care-givers. Sensitivity to a broader range of emotional stimuli does not mature in any very rigid fashion. At best, there is some evidence of biassed learning (e.g., fewer trails may be needed to form negative associations with classic phobic stimuli than with arbitrary stimuli). In general, however, the emotions are produced in response to stimuli that, in the light o the individual’s experience, have a certain general significance for the organism. On the input side, cultural and individual diversity are the norm.
Overall, the state of the field strongly suggests that the emotions are a collection of very different psychological phenomena, and that they cannot all be brought under a single theory. Surprise may have no more in common with love to individual emotions, such as contempt or anger. These single emotion categories may contain everything from phylogenetically ancient reactions realized in the limbic brain to complex social roles requiring a very specific cultural upbringing. On one occasion anger may be a rigid, involuntary affect program. And on another a strategic behaviour adopted to manipulate other people. A successful theory of one of these phenomena should not be rejected because it cannot dal with the others and hence fails as a general theory of emotion.
Some philosophers may be cognitive scientists others concern themselves with the philosophy of cognitive psychology and cognitive science. Indeed, since the inauguration of cognitive science these disciplines have attached much attention from certain philosophers of mind. The attitudes of these philosophers and their reception by psychologists vary considerably. Many cognitive psychologists have little interest in philosophical issues, a cognitive scientists are, in general more receptive.
Fodor, because of his early involvement in sentence processing research, is taken seriously by many psychologists. His modularity thesis is directly relevant to questions about the interplay of different types of knowledge in language understanding. His innateness hypothesis, however is generally regarded a unhelped, and his prescription that cognitive psychology is primarily about propositional altitudes of which is widely ignored. Dennett’s recent work on consciousness treats a topic that is highly controversial, but his detailed discussion on psychological research findings has enhanced his credibility among psychologists. In general, however, psychologists are happy to get on with their work without philosophers telling them about their ‘mistakes’.
Further, Fodor (1978) claims that psychology would be impoverished if we insisted on equating psychological terms wit neural terms. Part of the task of psychology, as Fodor views it, is to explain rational human action. This requires that we be able to describe the psychological state of a person in terms of an attitude (e.g., belief) toward a proposition (Toronto is in Ontario). The internal structure of the proposition is often critical to our psychological explanations. If a person believes that Toronto is in Ontario and also desires never to go to Ontario, we can explain why the person never wants to go to Toronto. The person made an inference that we can represent in systems made formal logic. If we limited ourselves to the neural states that underlie these two mental states (the belief and the desire), the logical relationship between these propositions, which is critical to our psychological explanation, would be lost. All we would have is the causal relation between the two neurophysiological states. With only the neural information, we could not assess whether a person was rational. We would not be able to distinguish the previous person, who reasoned properly from false information, from another person who reasoned illogically from true information (e.g., the person who believes Toronto is in Canada and desires never to go to Ontario and decides on that basis never to go to Toronto). Hence, if we only had neuroscience theory we could not judge rationality and we would have lost explanatory power. In some respects, then, the neuroscience theory is weaker than the psychological theory and so Fodor contends that we should not try to reduce the psychological theory to a neuroscience one.
Even in certain speech acts (saying and asserting things, for example) and as having certain propositional attitudes (believing and intending things, for example). The principle of humanity constraints the specifications of meaning by imposing the requirements that the resulting overall description of the language users in terms of meanings, speech acts and propositional attitudes should make them out to be reasonable or intelligible. But the principle of humanity does not itself tell us which combinations of meanings, speech acts and propositional attitudes can be intelligibly attributed.
On the face of it, an account of which combinations are coherent would be provided by articulating the analytical connections between the concept of meaning, the concepts of various speech acts like saying and asserting, and the concepts of propositional attitude like believing and intending. There might, for example, be conceptual connections that require that anyone who asserts that ‘p’ does so by using a sentence that literally means that ‘p’, and that anyone who asserts that ‘p’ intends an audience to take him (the speaker) to believe that ‘p’. Whether there are connections like this, and if so, what exactly they are, is not a trivial question: It is something that requires detailed investigation. The bold proposal of analytical programmes, in that there are connections of this kind that actually permit the analysis of the concept of linguistic meaning (and the concepts of the various speech acts, in terms of propositional attitudes.)
The quickening spirit of philosophy initiates the intentional analysis of our mental states which include thoughts. Mental images, and perceptual experience. But philosophers have paid special attention to the class of intentional states, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) propounded the theory of ‘definite descriptions and the theory of types’, which were central elements in his own solution after the discovery of Russell’s paradox, wherein the seminal work on the foundations of mathematics is accompanied by lucid work on truth and its basis in experience, the theory of definite descriptions provided the logical background to an epistemology based on the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description, although the restricted role that Russell allows to acquaintance is generally thought to be problematic. By the time of ‘Our Knowledge of the External World’ (1914), Russell was convinced that scientific philosophy required analysing many objects of belief as ‘logical constructions’ or ‘logical fictions’, and the programme of analysis that this inaugurated dominated the subsequent philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), the logical positivist. In The Analysis of Mind, the mind itself is treated, in a fashion reminiscent of Hume, as no more than the collection of neural perceptions or sense-data that make up the flux of conscious experience, and that looked at another way also make up the external world (neutral monism). In his early period Russell is content with extending his realism to universals, but An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940) represents a more empiricist approach to the problem.
Nonetheless, Russell called these internationalities by the name, ‘propositional attitudes’, and states that propositions as their objects. (A proposition is what a declarative sentence expresses. So, for example, ‘Its raining’ and ‘Está Iioviendo’ are sentences from different languages, yet they express the same proposition). It is useful to think of propositions as facts, though strictly speaking, only true propositions are facts.
Propositional altitudes includes, Believing (I believe that Pluto is not really a planet), Hoping (I hope that this milk is still fresh), Wishing (I wish that I were Superman), and others. But of all propositional attitudes, one has received a greater amounts of attention from philosophers: Belief. Why? First there is reason to think that belief is the fundamental propositional attitude, in the sense that all of the others presuppose it. So, for example, if I hope that this milk is fresh, I must also believe (among other things) that this is milk. And if I wish that I were Superman, I must also have certain beliefs about Superman’s qualities a second reason to focus on belief is that it is a central component of knowledge, which is traditionally defined as justified true belief. Given the fundamental philosophical special scrutiny, a third implication is that belief plays a indispensable role in explaining behaviour. What one (rationally) does is a direct function of what one believes.
Fodor, Dretske, and Searle, in spite. Of their disagreements of what one believes about belief and intentional states generally in that of a belief for the realist is a concrete mental particular, one with propositional content and an appropriate set of causal powers (Realism is sometimes called the Representational Theory of Mind (RTM). A particularly strong version of representational theory is endorsed by Fodor, who thinks that beliefs are literally internal sentences in a ‘language of thought’, sentences that play a certain computational role in one’s mental life. Realism is challenged, in one way or another, by Davidson, Dennett, and Churchland.
Davidson is primarily concerned to demonstrate a connection between that of belief (or thought) and language. In particular, he argues that it is impossible to have beliefs unless one can interpret the language of another. One immediate and striking consequence of this thesis is that non-linguistic animals cannot have beliefs, but why think that this is true? Davidson’s main arguments are that (1) A creature must be able to interpret the language of another ~ must ‘be a member of a speech community ~ in order to have the concept of belief, (2) A creature cannot have beliefs without having the concept of belief. Therefore (3) a creature must be able to interpret the language of another in order to have beliefs. The bulk of Davidson’s premise rests on or upon (1), and it is here where his challenge to intentional realism emerges.
For Davidson, attributing a belief to others and understanding their linguistic utterances are inextricably bound together in the process of interpretation. When confronted with another person -call her Julie ~ all we can observe are the manifestations of her behaviour disposition, where such manifestations include, importantly, Julie’s utterances. To know what such utterances mean, we must know, at a minimum, what beliefs they are intented to express. Yet our primary behavioural data for attributing beliefs to Julie is what she says. We can break into this circle only by adopting the ‘Principle of Charity’, only by assuming that Julie is rational and has by and large true beliefs. Given this assumption, we can appeal to what is true, yo attribute beliefs to Julie, and thereby too interpret her utterances. This is not to say, however, that belief-attributions are prior to and independent of how we assign meaning to utterances, for it is only by interpreting what Julie says that we can attribute fine-grained beliefs to her ~ the belief that, say, there is a cat in the bushes, not the belief that Dave’s favourite pet is in the bushes, even though this latter proposition also is true. It is because of this feature of fine-graininess, of ‘semantic opacity’, that premise (1) must be true, that having the concept of belief requires being able to understand the interpretation of language.
What are we to say, however, when the ‘principle of charity’, combines with a person’s behaviour disposition, still leaves open a number of rival belief attributions? An interpretationist, it seems, must say that there is no fact of the matter about what Julie really believes in such cases, and in this sense interpretationist is opposed to realism. As a way of making this clearer, it may be useful at this point to introduce the notion of a ‘truth-maker’. The truth-maker for a sentence (alternatively, a proposition) is what makes the sentence true. So, for example, ‘There are mice’ has many truth-makers: Each of the world’s mice: ‘I am hungry’ has a particular state, my hunger, as a truth-maker, and so forth. Now consider a realist and an interpretationist who both take the belief-ascription, ‘Julie believes that Roberts is late’, to be true. What is the truth-maker for such a claim? According to the realist, the ascription is made true by a concrete particular in Julie’s mind, a state (a) with the content that Roberts is late and (b) which plays the appropriate causal role in Julie’s mental life. According to the interpretationist, by contrast, what makes the ascription true is Julie’s behavioural dispositions plus an interpretative scheme imposed, in accordance with the ‘principle of charity’, on to this system of dispositions. In this way an interpretative scheme is literally part of what grounds the truth of the belief-ascription. The interpretationist, then, seems to be committed to a kind of intentional relativism, it, if at all, only relative to this or that interpretative scheme. In opposition to this, a realist will insist that interpretative schemes enter only into our knowledge of what Julie believes, not into the fact of believing itself.
Daniel Clement Dennett (1942-) an American philosopher of mind, had taken to defend a view in the interpretationist tradition. For Dennett, ascribing beliefs and other intentional states to a system ~ a human being, artifact, or what have you ~ is a matter of adopting a certain kind of predictive stance towards it, in the ‘intentional stance’. To adopt the intentional stance, one assumes the system in question is rational and has beliefs and desires appropriate to its situation. If such a stance is successful in predicting the system’s behaviour in a wide and diverse range of circumstances, the system is ipso facto a boilover. What it is to have beliefs and such as to be a system whose behaviour can be successfully predicted from the intentional forms: A belief ascriptions are made true merely by the patterns the behaviour that make the intentional stance useful. Yet Dennett insists that he is a realist of sorts. The behavioural patterns in question are objectively there, independently of what anyone might think about them. And furthermore, Dennett grants that it is empirically likely there are in our heads the sorts of concrete representations that realists postulate. Yet Dennett claims that what makes these internal states beliefs is the role they play in making the intentional stance toward Julie successfully. Whether, and it what sense, any of this makes Dennett a realist is a matter of continuing debate.
While Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett, in their own ways, rejected intentional realism, they at least granted that ascriptions of belief and other intentional states are true. But in Paul Churchland who argues that there is good empirical evidence to think that such ascriptions are just flat false. Belief and related intentional concepts are part of a vast theory we use for explaining and predicting human behaviour, a theory Churchland and others called folk-psychology. And like any theory, folk psychology is open to empirical investigation and, perhaps, refutation. While following of a folk psychology those in boasting the explanatory power of folk-psychological concepts, as Churchland points to their explanatory failures. Concepts such as beliefs and desires, argues Churchland, have proved to be too crude in explaining complex mental phenomena such as mental illness, creative imagination, the psychological function of sleep, and the ability to perform complex motor tasks, such as catching a fly ball. Furthermore, it has become increasingly unlike that folk psychology y will be able to integrate with the advancing sciences of the brain. In all likelihood, the concepts of belief and desire will eventually be eliminated and replaced by more sophisticated explanatory powerful concepts of neuroscience.
Eliminativism has provoked a number of responses from defenders of folk psychology, one simple response is to say that Eliminativism is at odds with the introspective knowledge we have of our own mental states, knowledge normally thought to be quite secure. The introspective strategy is pursed by, for example, John Searle. To Eliminativism who say that beliefs and desires are merely theoretical entities postulated to explain behaviour, Searle relies:
We do not postulate beliefs and desires to account for anything.
We simply experience conscious beliefs and desires. Think about
real-life examples. It is a hot day and you are driving a pickup
truck in the desert outside of Phoenix. No air conditioning.
You can’t remember when you were so thirsty, and you want
a cold beer so bad you could scream. Now where is the
‘postulation’ of a desire? Conscious desires are experienced.
They are no more postulated than conscious pains.
One question this raises is whether cognitive states as beliefs and desires are, like pains, consciously experienced, or is it merely the qualitative states associated with thirst (e.g., the experience of a dry throat?) And second, an eliminativist such as Churchland will insist that even introspection ids theory laden: Facts about our own mental lives are not, as Searle would have it, available to us unmediated. Just as our judgements about the external world are coloured by the concepts we bring to sensory experience, so our judgements about our mental lives are coloured by the concepts of folk psychology, a theory which may, according to Churchland, ends up being false. In any case, the introspective response to Eliminativism raises an important methodological question: Can the mind be primarily studied from the first-person perspective, or should it, like other objects of scientific inquiry, be studied using only objective, third-person methods?
Philosophical issues about perception tend to be issues specifically about sense-perception. In English (and the same is true of comparable terms in many another language) the term ‘perception’ has a wider connotation than anything that has to do with the senses and sense-organs, though it generally involves the idea of what may imply, if only in a metaphorical sense, a point of view. Thus, it is now increasingly common for news-commentators, for example, to speak of people’ perception of a certain set of events, even though those people have not been witnesses of them. In one sense, however, there is nothing new about this: In seventeenth and eighteenth-century philosophical usage, words for perception were used with a much wider coverage than sense-perception alone. It is, however, sense-perception that has typically raised the largest and most obvious philosophical problems.
Such problems may be said to fall into two categories. There are, first, the epistemological problems about the sense-perception in connection with the acquisition and possession of knowledge of the world around us. These problems ~ does perception give us knowledge of the so-called ‘external world’? How and to what extent? ~ have become dominant in epistemology since Descartes because of his innovation of the method of doubt, although they undoubted existed in philosophers’ minds in one way another before that. In early and middle twentieth-century Anglo-Saxon philosophy such problems centred on the question whether there are firm data provided by the senses ~ so-called sense-data ~ and if so what is the relation of such sense to so-called material objects. Such problems are not essentially problems for the philosophy of mind, although certain answers to question about perception which undoubtedly belong to the philosophy of mind can certainly add tp epistemological difficulties. If perception is assimilated, for example, to sensations, there is an obvious temptation to think that in perception we are restricted, at any rate initially, to contents of our own minds.
The second category of problems about perception ~ those that fall directly under the heading of the philosophy of mind ~ are thus in a sense prior to the problems that exercised many empiricists in the first half of this century. They are problems about how perception is to be construed and how it relates to a number of other aspects of the mind’s functioning ~ sensation, concepts and other things involved in our understanding of things, as belief and judgement, the imagination of things, our action in relation to the world around us, and the causal processes involved in the physics, biology and psychology of perception. Some of the last were central to the consideration that Aristotle raised about perception in his ‘De Anima’.
It is obvious enough that sense-perception involves some kind of stimulation of sense-organs by stimuli that are themselves the product of physical processes, and that subsequent processes which are biological in character are then initiated. Moreover, only if the organism in which this takes place is adapted to such stimulation can perception ensue. Aristotle had something to say about such matters, but is was evident to him that such an account was insufficient to explain what perception itself is. It might be thought that the most obvious thing that is missing in such an account is some reference to consciousness. But while it may be the case that perception can take place only in creatures that have consciousness. There is such a thing as unconscious perception and psychologists have recently drawn attention to the phenomenon which is described as ‘blind sight’ ~ an ability, generally Manifested in patients with certain kinds of brain-damage, to discriminate sources of light, even when the people concerned have no consciousness of the lights and think that they are guessing about them. It is important, then, not to confuse the plausible claim in conscious beings with the less plausible claim that perception always involves consciousness of objects. The similar point may apply to the relation of perception to some of the other items, e.g., concept-possession.
Historically, it has been most common to assimilate perception to sensation on the one hand and judgement on the other. The temptation to assimilate it to sensation arises from the fact that perception involves the stimulation of an organ and seems to that extent passive in nature. The temptation to assimilate it to judgement on the other hand arises from the fact that we can be sais to perceive not just objects but that certain thing hold good of them, so the findings, so to speak, of perception may have a propositional character. But to have a sensation, such as that of a pain, by no means entails perceiving anything or having awareness of anything apart from itself. Moreover, while in looking out of the window we may perceive (see) that the sun is shining, this may involve no explicit judgement on our part, even if it gives rise to a belief, and sometimes knowledge. (Indeed, if ‘see that’ is taken literally, seeing-that always implies knowledge: To see that something is the case is all ready to apprehend, and thus know, that it is so.)
The point about sensation was made admirably clear by Thomas Reid in the eighteenth century. Reid said that sensation involved an act of mind ‘that hath no object distinct from the act itself’. Perceptions, by contrast, involved according to Reid a ‘conception or notion of the object perceived’, and a ‘strong and irresistible convection and belief of it s present existence’, which, moreover, are ‘immediate, and not the effect of reasoning’. Reid also thought that perceptions are generally accompanied by sensations and offered a complex account of the relations between the two. Whether all this is correct in every detail, need not worry us at present, although it is fairly clear that perceiving need not be believing. Certain illusions, such as the Müller-Lyer illusion, are such that we may see them in a certain way, no matter what our beliefs may be about them. Once, again, it is arguable that such [miss] perceptions could only take place in believers, whether or not beliefs about the objects in question occur in the actual perception.
Similar considerations apply to concept-possession (Reid’s ‘conception or notion’). It is certainly not the case that in order to perceive a cyclotron I must have the (or a) concept of a cyclotron: I may have no idea of what I am perceiving, with the exception, that, of course, what at it is something. But to be something it must have some distinguishable characteristics and must stand in some relation to order objects, including whatever it is that constitutes the background against which it is perceived. In order to perceive it I must therefore have some understanding of the world in which such objects are to be found. That will, in the case of most if not all of our senses, be a spatial world in which things persist or change over time. Hence, perception of objects presupposes forms of awareness that are spatiotemporal. It is at least arguable that, that framework would not be available were we not active creatures who are capable of moving about in the world in which we live. Once again, it is not that every perception involves some activity on our part, although some may do so, but that perception can take place only in active creatures, and is to that extent, if only that extent, not a purely passive process.
It must be evident in all this how far we are getting from the idea that perception is simply a matter of the stimulation of our sense-organs. It may be replied that it has long been clear that there must be some interaction between what is brought about by stimulation of sense-organs and subsequent neural, including cortical processes. That, however, does not end the problem, since we are now left with the question of the relation between all that and the story about sensations, beliefs, concepts and activity. Some of that issue is part of the general ‘mind-body problem’ but there is also the more specific problem of how these ‘mental’ items are to be construed in such a way as to have any kind of relation to what are apparently the purely passive causal processes involved in and set up by the stimulation of sense-organs.
One idea that has in recent times been thought by many philosophers and psychologists alone to offer promise in that connection is the idea that perception can be thought of as a species of information-processing, in which the stimulation of the sense-organs constitutes an input to subsequent processing, presumably of a computational form. The psychologists J.J. Gilbson suggested that the senses should be construed as systems the function of which is to derive information from the stimulus-array. Indeed to, ‘hunt for’ such information. He thought. However, that it was enough for a satisfactory psychological theory y for perception that his account should be restricted to the details of such information pick-up, without reference to other ‘inner’ processes, such as concept-use. Although Gilbson has been very influential in turning psychology away from the previously dominant sensation-based framework of ideas (of which gestalt psychology was really a special case), his claim that reliance on his notion of information is enough has seemed incredible to many. Moreover, his notion of ‘information’ is sufficiently close to the ordinary one to warrant the accusation, that it presupposes the very ideas of, for example, concept-possession and belief that claimed to exclude. The idea of information espoused by him (though it has to be said that this claim has been disputed) is that of ‘information about’, not the technical one involved in information theory or that presupposed by the theory of computation.
Perception is always concept-dependent at least in the sense that perceiver must be concept possessors and users, and almost certainly in the sense that perception entails concept-us e in its application to objects. It is, at least arguable that those organisms that react in the biologically useful way to something but that are such that the attribution of concepts to them is implausible, should not be said to perceive those objects, however, much the objects figure causally in their behaviour. Moreover, in spite of what was said earlier, about unconscious perception and blind sight, perception normally involves consciousness of objects. Moreover, that consciousness presents the object in such a way that the experiencer has a certain phenomenal character, which derived from the sensations which the causal involved set up. This is most evident in the case of touch (which being a ‘contact sense’ provides a more obvious occasion for speaking of sensations than do ‘distance senses’ such as sight). Our tactual awareness of the texture of a surface is, to use a metaphor, ‘coloured’ by the nature of the sensations that the surface produces in our skin, and which we can be explicitly aware of if our attention is drawn to them (something that gives one indication of how attention too is involved in perception).
It has been argued that the phenomenal character of an experience is detachable from its conceptual content in the sense that an experience on the same phenomenal character could occur even if the appropriate concepts were not available. Certainly the reverse is true ~ that a concept-mediated awareness of an object could occur without any sensation ~ mediated experiences ~ as in an awareness of something absent from us. It is also the case, however, that the look of something can be completely be thought of in a certain way, so that it is to be seen as ‘X’ rather than ‘Y’. To the extent that, which is so, the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience should be viewed as the result of the way in which sensations produced in us by objects blend with our ways of thinking of and understanding those objects (which are things in the world and should not be confused with the sensations which they produce).
Seeing things in certain ways also sometimes involves the imagination, whereby we may bring to bear a way of thinking about an object which may not be the immediately obvious one, and being visually imaginative, as an artist may have to be, at least a special case of our general ability to see things as such and suches. But that general ability is central to the faculty of visual perception and, mutatis mutandis of the faculty of perception in general. What has been said may be enough to indicate the complexities of the notion of perception and be taken into consideration in elucidating that notion within the philosophy of mind. But the crucial issue, perhaps, is how they are all to be fitted together within what may still be called the ‘workings of the mind’.
Manifesting in that which is expressed by an utterance or sentence ‘content’ is the proposition or claim made about the world. By extension, the content of a predicate or other sub-sentimental component is what it constitutes to the content of sentences that contain it. The nature of content is the central concern of the philosophy of language. Whatever it is that makes, what would otherwise be mere sounds and inscriptions into instruments of communication and understanding. The philosophical problem is to demystify this power, and to relate it to what we know of ourselves and the world. Sharing in this study is the theory of ‘speech acts’ and the investigation of communication and the relationship between words and ideas, and words involved in and of the world. For particular problems a notion, was it denotes a subjective, internal presence in the mind, somehow thought of as representing something about the world, to where it represents an eternal and timeless changing form or concept, such as the concept of the number series or, or justice, for example, thought of as independent objects of enquiry and perhaps of knowledge.
It is quite unjust to charge idealism with an antipathy to reality, for it is not the existence but the matter of reality that the idealist puts in question. It is not reality but materialism that classical idealism rejects ~ and to make (as a surface) and not this merely, but also ~ to be found as used as an intensive to emphasize the identity or character of something that otherwise leaves as an intensive to indicate an extreme hypothetical, or unlikely case or instance, if this were so, it should not change our advantage that the idealist that speaks rejects ~ and being of neither the more nor is it less than the defined direction or understood in the amount, extent, or number, perhaps, not this as merely, but also ~ its use of expressly precise considerations, an intensive to emphasize that identity or character of something as so to be justly even, as the idealist that articulates words in order to express thoughts is to a dialectic discourse of verbalization that speaks with a collaborative voice. Agreeably, that everything is what it is and not another thing, the difficulty is to know when we have one thing and not another one thing and as two. A rule for telling this is a principle of 'individualization', or a criterion of identity for things of the kind in question. In logic, identity may be introduced as a primitive rational expression, or defined via the identity of indiscernibles. Berkeley's 'immaterialism' does not as much rejects the existence of material objects as their unperceivedness.
There are certainly versions of idealism short of the spiritualistic position, an ontological idealism that holds that 'these are none but thinking beings', idealism does not need for certain, for as to affirm that mind matter amounts to creating or made for constitutional matters: So, it is quite enough to maintain (for example) that all of the characterizing properties of physical existents, resembling phenomenal sensory properties in representing dispositions to affect mind-endured customs in a certain sort of way. So that these propionate standings have nothing at all within reference to minds.
Weaker still, is an explanatory idealism which merely holds that all adequate explanations of the ‘real’ invariable requirements, some recourse to the operations of mind. Historically, positions of the general, idealistic types have been espoused by several thinkers. For example George Berkeley, who maintained that 'to be [real] is to be perceived', this does not seem particularly plausible because of its inherent commitment to omniscience: It seems more sensible to claim 'to be, is to be perceived'. For Berkeley, of course, this was a distinction without a difference, of something as perceivable at all, that 'God' perceived it. But if we forgo philosophical alliances to 'God', the issue looks different and now comes to a pivot on the question of what is perceivable for perceivers who are physically realizable in 'the real world', so that physical existence could be seen ~ not so implausible ~ as tantamount to observability ~ in principle.
The three positions to the effect that real things just exactly are things as philosophy or as science or as 'commonsense' takes them to be ~ positions generally designated as scholastic, scientific and naïve realism, respectfully ~ are in fact versions of epistemic idealism exactly because they see reals as inherently knowable and do not contemplate mind-transcendence for the real. Thus, for example, there is a refinement ('commonsense') realism that external things that subsist, insofar as there has been a precise and an exact categorization for what we know, this sounds rather realistic or idealistic, but accorded as one dictum or last favour.
There is also another sort of idealism at work in philosophical discussion: An axiomatic-logic of idealism, which maintains both the value play as an objectively causal and constitutive role in nature and that value is not wholly reducible to something that lies in the minds of its beholders. Its exponents join the Socrates of Platos 'Phaedo' in seeing value as objective and as productively operative in the world.
Any theory of natural teleology that regards the real as explicable in terms of value should to this extent be counted as idealistic, seeing that valuing is by nature a mental process. To be sure, the good of a creature or species of creatures, e.g., their well-being or survival, need not actually be mind-represented. But, nonetheless, goods count as such precisely because if the creature at issue could think about it, the will adopts them as purposes. It is this circumstance that renders any sort of teleological explanation, at least conceptually idealistic in nature. Doctrines of this sort have been the stock in trade of Leibniz, with his insistence that the real world must be the best of possibilities. And this line of thought has recently surfaced once more, in the controversial 'anthropic principle' espoused by some theoretical physicists.
Then too, it is possible to contemplating a position along the lines envisaged by Fichte's, 'Wisjenschaftslehre', which sees the ideal as providing the determinacy factor for something real. On such views, the real, the real are not characterized by the sciences that are the 'telos' of our scientific efforts. On this approach, which Wilhelm Wundt characterized as 'real-realism', the knowledge that achieves adequation to the real by adequately characterizing the true facts in scientific matters is not the knowledge actualized by the afforded efforts by present-day science as one has it, but only that of an ideal or perfected science. On such an approach in which has seen a lively revival in recent philosophy ~ a tenable version of 'scientific realism' requires the step to idealization and reactionism becomes predicted on assuming a fundamental idealistic point of view.
Immanuel Kant's 'Refutation of Idealism' agrees that our conception of us as mind-endowed beings presuppose material objects because we view our mind to the individualities as of conferring or provide with existing in an objective corporal order, and such an order requires the existence o f periodic physical processes (clocks, pendulous, planetary regularity) for its establishment. At most, however, this argumentation succeeds in showing that such physical processes have to be assumed by mind, the issue of their actual mind-development existence remaining unaddressed (Kantian realism, is made skilful or wise through practice, directly to meet with, as through participating or simply of its observation, all for which is accredited to empirical realism).
It is sometimes said that idealism is predicated on a confusion of objects with our knowledge of them and conflict’s things that are real with our thought about it. However, this charge misses the point. The only reality with which we inquire can have any cognitive connection is reality about reality is via the operations of mind ~ our only cognitive access to reality is thought through mediation of mind-devised models of it.
Perhaps the most common objections to idealism turns on the supposed mind-independence of the real, but so runs the objection, 'things in nature would remain substantially unchanged if there were no minds. This is perfectly plausible in one sense, namely the causal one ~ which is why causal idealism has its problems. But it is certainly not true conceptually. The objection's exponent has to face the question of specifying just exactly what it is that would remain the same. 'Surely roses would smell just as sweat in a mind-divided world'. Well . . . yes or no? Agreed: the absence of minds would not change roses, as roses and raise fragrances and sweetness ~ and even the size of roses ~ the determination that hinges on such mental operations as smelling, scanning, measuring, and the like. Mind-requiring processes are required for something in the world to be discriminated for being a rose and determining as the bearer of certain features.
Identification classifications, properly attributed are all required and by their exceptional natures are all mental operations. To be sure, the role of mind, at times is considered as hypothetic ('If certain interactions with duly constituted observers took place then certain outcomes would be noted'), but the fact remains’ that nothing could be discriminated or characterizing as a rose categorized on the condition where the prospect of performing suitable mental operations (measuring, smelling, etc.) is not presupposed?
The proceeding versions of idealism at once, suggest the variety of corresponding rivals or contrasts to idealism. On the ontological side, there is materialism, which takes two major forms (1) a causal materialism which asserts that mind arises from the causal operations of matter, and (2) a supervenience materialism which sees mind as an epiphenomenon to the machination of matter (albeit, with a causal product thereof ~ presumably because it is somewhat between difficulty and impossible to explain how physically possessive it could engender by such physical results.)
On the epistemic side, the inventing of idealism ~ opposed positions include (1) A factual realism that maintains linguistically inaccessible facts, holding that the complexity and a divergence of fact 'overshadow' the limits of reach that mind's actually is a possible linguistic (or, generally, symbolic) resources (2) A cognitive realism that maintains that there are unknowable truths ~ that the domain of truths runs beyond the limits of the mind's cognitive access, (3) A substantive realism that maintains that there exist entities in the world which cannot possibly be known or identified: Incognizable lying in principle beyond our cognitive reach. (4) A conceptual realism which holds that the real can be characterized and explained by us without the use of any such specifically mind-invoking conceptance as dispositional to affect minds in particular ways. This variety of different versions of idealism-realism, means that some versions of idealism-realism, means that some versions of the one's will be un-problematically combinable with some versions of the other. In particular, conceptual idealism maintains that we standardly understand something for being real in somehow mind-invoking terms of materialism which holds that the human mind and its operations purpose (be it causally or superveniently) in the machinations of physical processes.
Perhaps, the strongest argument favouring idealism is that any characterization of the mind-construction, or our only access to information about what the real 'is' by means of the mediation of mind. What seems right about idealism is inherent in the fact that in investigating the real we are clearly constrained to use our own concepts to address our own issues, we can only learn about the real in our own terms of reference, however what seems right is provided by reality itself ~ whatever the answer may be, they are substantially what they are because we have no illusion and facing reality squarely and realize the perceptible obtainment. Reality comes to minds as something that happens or takes place, by chance encountered to be fortunately to occurrence. As to put something before another for acceptance or consideration we offer among ourselves that which determines them to be that way, mindful faculties purpose, but corporeality disposes of reality bolsters the fractions learnt about this advantageous reality, it has to be, approachable to minds. Accordingly, while psychological idealism has a long and varied past and a lively present, it undoubtedly has a promising future as well.
To set right by servicing to explaining our acquaintance with 'experience', it is easily thought of as a stream of private events, known only to their possessor, and bearing at best problematic relationships to any other event, such as happening in an external world or similar steams of other possessors. The stream makes up the content's life of the possessor. With this picture there is a complete separation of mind and the world, and in spite of great philosophical effects the gap, once opened, it proves impossible to bridge both, 'idealism' and 'scepticism' that are common outcomes. The aim of much recent philosophy, therefore, is to articulate a less problematic conception of experiences, making it objectively accessible, so that the facts about how a subject's experience toward the world, is, in principle, as knowable as the fact about how the same subject digest’s food. A beginning on this may be made by observing that experiences have contents:
It is the world itself, which is represented for us as one way or another; we take the world to being publicity manifested by our words and behaviour. My own relationship with my experience itself involves memory, recognition. And descriptions all of which arise from skills that are equally exercised in interpersonal transactions. Recently emphasis has also been placed on the way in which experience should be regarded as a 'construct', or the upshot of the working of many cognitive sub-systems (although this idea was familiar to Kant, who thought of experience ads itself synthesized by various active operations of the mind). The extent to which these moves undermine the distinction between 'what it is like from the inside' and how things agree objectively is fiercely debated, it is also widely recognized that such developments tend to blur the line between experience and theory, making it harder to formulate traditional directness such as 'empiricism'
The considerations now placed upon the table have given in hand to Cartesianism, which is the name accorded to the philosophical movement inaugurated by René Descartes (after 'Cartesius', the Latin version of his name). The main features of Cartesianism are (1) the use of methodical doubt as a tool for testing beliefs and reaching certainty (2) a metaphysical system which starts from the subject's indubitable awareness of his own existence (3) A theory of 'clear and distinct ideas' based on the innate concepts and propositions implanted in the soul by God: These include the ideas of mathematics with which Descartes takes to be the fundamentally significant construction’s that brings the structure to science, and (4) The theory now known as 'dualism' ~ that there are two fundamentally incompatible kinds of substance in the universe, mind (or thinking substance and matter or, extended substance). A corollary of this last theory is that human beings are radically heterogeneous beings, composed of an unextended, immaterial consciousness united to a piece of purely physical machinery ~ the body. Another key element in Cartesian dualism is the claim that the mind has perfect and transparent awareness of its own nature or essence.
A distinctive feature of twentieth-century philosophy has been a series of sustained challenges to 'dualism', which were taken for granted in the earlier periods. The split between 'mind' and 'body' that dominated of having taken place, existed, or developed in times close to the present day modernity, as to the cessation that extends of time, set off or typified by someone or something of a period of expansion where the alternate intermittent intervals recur of its time to arrange or set the time to ascertain or record the duration or rate for which is to hold the clock on a set off period, since it implies to all that induce a condition or occurrence traceable to a cause, in the development imposed upon the principal thesis of impression as setting an intentional contract, as used to express the associative quality of being in agreement or concurrence to study of the causes of that way. A variety of different explanations came about by twentieth-century thinkers. Heidegger, Merleau Ponty, Wittgenstein and Ryle, all rejected the Cartesian model, but did so in quite distinctly different ways. Others cherished dualisms but comprise of being affronted ~ for example ~ the dualistic-synthetic distinction, the dichotomy between theory and practice and the fact-value distinction. However, unlike the rejection of Cartesianism, dualism remains under debate, with substantial support for either side
Cartesian dualism directly points the view that mind and body are two separate and distinct substances, the self is as it happens associated with a particular body, but is self-substantially capable of independent existence.
We could derive a scientific understanding of these ideas with the aid of precise deduction, as Descartes continued his claim that we could lay the contours of physical reality out in three-dimensional co-ordinates. Following the publication of Isaac Newton's 'Principia Mathematica' in 1687, reductionism and mathematical modelling became the most powerful tools of modern science. The dream that we could know and master the entire physical world through the extension and refinement of mathematical theory became the central feature and principles of scientific knowledge.
The radical separation between mind and nature formalized by Descartes served over time allowing scientists to concentrate on developing mathematical descriptions of matter as pure mechanism without any concern about its spiritual dimensions or ontological foundations. Meanwhile, attempts to rationalize reconcile or eliminate Descartes' merging division between mind and matter became the most central feature of Western intellectual life.
Philosophers like John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and David Hume tried to articulate some basis for linking the mathematical describable motions of matter with linguistic representations of external reality in the subjective space of mind. Descartes' compatriot Jean-Jacques Rousseau reified nature as the ground of human consciousness in a state of innocence and proclaimed that 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternities' are the guiding principles of this consciousness. Rousseau also fabricated the idea of the 'general will' of the people to achieving these goals and declared that those who do not conform to this will were social deviants.
The Enlightenment idea of 'deism', which imaged the universe as a clockwork and God as the clockmaker, provided grounds for believing in a divine agency, from which the time of moment the formidable creations also imply, in of which, the exhaustion of all the creative forces of the universe at origins ends, and that the physical substrates of mind were subject to the same natural laws as matter, in that the only means of mediating the gap between mind and matter was pure reason. As of a person, fact, or condition, which is responsible for an effectual causation by traditional Judeo-Christian theism, for which had formerly been structured on the fundamental foundations of reason and revelation, whereby in responding to make or become different for any alterable or changing under slight provocation was to challenge the deism by debasing the old-line arrangement or the complex of especially mental and emotional qualities that distinguish the act of dispositional tradition for which in conforming to customary rights of religion and commonly causes or permit of a test of one with infirmity and the conscientious adherence to whatever one is bound to duty or promise in the fidelity and piety of faith. Whereby embracing of what exists in the mind as a representation, as of something comprehended or as a formulation, for we are inasmuch with no light or frivolous (as in disposition, appearance, or manner) that of expressing involving or characterized by seriousness or gravity (as a consequence) are given to serious thought, as the sparking of ambers that brings aflame the awarenesses of conscious apprehension, in that by the considerations are schematically structured frameworks or appropriating methodical arrangements, as to bring an orderly disposition in preparations for prioritizing of such things as the hierarchical order as formulated by making or doing something or attaining an end, for which we can devise a plan for arranging, realizing or achieving something. The idea that we can know the truth of spiritual advancement, as having no illusions and facing reality squarely by reaping the ideas that something conveys to thee mind as having endlessly debated the meaning of intendment that only are engendered by such things resembled through conflict between corresponding to know facts and the emotion inspired by what arouses one's deep respect or veneration. And laid the foundation for the fierce completion between the mega-narratives of science and religion as frame tales for mediating the relation between mind and matter and the manner in which they should ultimately define the special character of each.
The nineteenth-century Romantics in Germany, England and the United States revived Rousseau's attempt to posit on the ground for human consciousness by reifying nature in a different form. Goethe and Friedrich Schelling proposed a natural philosophy premised on ontological Monism (the idea that adhering manifestations that govern toward evolutionary principles have grounded inside an inseparable spiritual Oneness) and argued God, man, and nature for the reconciliation of mind and matter with an appeal to sentiment, mystical awareness, and quasi-scientific attempts, as he afforded the efforts of mind and matter, nature became a mindful agency that 'loves illusion', as it shrouds men in mist, presses him or her heart and punishes those who fail to see the light. Schelling, in his version of cosmic unity, argued that scientific facts were at best partial truths and that the mindful creative spirit that unites mind and matter is progressively moving toward self-realization and 'undivided wholeness'.
The British version of Romanticism, articulated by figures like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, placed more emphasis on the primary of the imagination and the importance of rebellion and heroic vision as the grounds for freedom. As Wordsworth put it, communion with the 'incommunicable powers' of the 'immortal sea' empowers the mind to release itself from all the material constraints of the laws of nature. The founders of American transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Theoreau, articulated a version of Romanticism that commensurate with the ideals of American democracy.
The American envisioned a unified spiritual reality that manifested itself as a personal ethos that sanctioned radical individualism and bred aversion to the emergent materialism of the Jacksonian era. They were also more inclined than their European counterpart, as the examples of Thoreau and Whitman attest, to embrace scientific descriptions of nature. However, the Americans also dissolved the distinction between mind and matter with an appeal to ontological monism and alleged that mind could free itself from all the constraint of assuming that by some sorted limitation of matter, in which such states have of them, some mystical awareness.
Since scientists, during the nineteenth century were engrossed with uncovering the workings of external reality and seemingly knew of themselves that these virtually overflowing burdens of nothing, in that were about the physical substrates of human consciousness, the business of examining the distributive contribution in dynamic functionality and structural foundation of mind became the province of social scientists and humanists. Adolphe Quételet proposed a 'social physics' that could serve as the basis for a new discipline called 'sociology', and his contemporary Auguste Comte concluded that a true scientific understanding of the social reality was quite inevitable. Mind, in the view of these figures, was a separate and distinct mechanism subject to the lawful workings of a mechanical social reality.
More formal European philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, sought to reconcile representations of external reality in mind with the motions of matter-based on the dictates of pure reason. This impulse was also apparent in the utilitarian ethics of Jerry Bentham and John Stuart Mill, in the historical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and in the pragmatism of Charles Smith, William James and John Dewey. These thinkers were painfully aware, however, of the inability of reason to posit a self-consistent basis for bridging the gap between mind and matter, and each remains obliged to conclude that the realm of the mental exists only in the subjective reality of the individual
A particular yet peculiar presence awaits the future and has framed its proposed new understanding of relationships between mind and world, within the larger context of the history of mathematical physics, the origin and extensions of the classical view of the fundamentals of scientific knowledge, and the various ways that physicists have attempted to prevent previous challenges to the efficacy of classical epistemology.
The British version of Romanticism, articulated by figures like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, placed more emphasis on the primary of the imagination and the importance of rebellion and heroic vision as the grounds for freedom. As Wordsworth put it, communion with the 'incommunicable powers' of the 'immortal sea' empowers the mind to release itself from all the material constraints of the laws of nature. The founders of American transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Theoreau, articulated a version of Romanticism that commensurate with the ideals of American democracy.
The American envisioned a unified spiritual reality that manifested itself as a personal ethos that sanctioned radical individualism and bred aversion to the emergent materialism of the Jacksonian era. They were also more inclined than their European counterpart, as the examples of Thoreau and Whitman attest, to an embrace scientific descriptions of nature. However, the Americans also dissolved the distinction between mind and matter with an appeal to ontological monism and alleged that mind could free itself from all the constraint of assuming that by some sorted limitation of matter, in which such states have of them, some mystical awareness.
Since scientists, during the nineteenth century were engrossed with uncovering the workings of external reality and seemingly knew of themselves that these virtually overflowing burdens of nothing, in that were about the physical substrates of human consciousness, the business of examining the distributive contribution in dynamic functionality and structural foundation of mind became the province of social scientists and humanists. Adolphe Quételet proposed a 'social physics' that could serve as the basis for a new discipline called sociology, and his contemporary Auguste Comte concluded that a true scientific understanding of the social reality was quite inevitable. Mind, in the view of these figures, was a separate and distinct mechanism subject to the lawful workings of a mechanical social reality.
The fatal flaw of pure reason is, of course, the absence of emotion, and purely explanations of the division between subjective reality and external reality, of which had limited appeal outside the community of intellectuals. The figure most responsible for infusing our understanding of the Cartesian dualism with contextual representation of our understanding with emotional content was the death of God theologian Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900. After declaring that God and 'divine will', did not exist, Nietzsche reified the 'existence' of consciousness in the domain of subjectivity as the ground for individual 'will' and summarily reducing all previous philosophical attempts to articulate the 'will to truth'. The dilemma, forth in, had seemed to mean, by the validation, . . . as accredited for doing of science, in that the claim that Nietzsche's earlier versions to the 'will to truth', disguises the fact that all alleged truths were arbitrarily created in the subjective reality of the individual and are expressed or manifesting the individualism of 'will'.
In Nietzsche's view, the separation between mind and matter is more absolute and total than previously been imagined. Taken to be as drawn out of something hidden, latent or reserved, as acquired into or around convince, on or upon to procure that there are no real necessities for the correspondence between linguistic constructions of reality in human subjectivity and external reality, he deuced that we are all locked in 'a prison house of language'. The prison as he concluded it was also a 'space' where the philosopher can examine the 'innermost desires of his nature' and articulate a new message of individual existence founded on 'will'.
Those who fail to enact their existence in this space, Nietzsche says, are enticed into sacrificing their individuality on the nonexistent altars of religious beliefs and democratic or socialists' ideals and become, therefore, members of the anonymous and docile crowd. Nietzsche also invalidated the knowledge claims of science in the examination of human subjectivity. Science, he said. Is not exclusive to natural phenomenons and favours reductionistic examination of phenomena at the expense of mind? It also seeks of reducing the separateness and uniqueness of mind with mechanistic descriptions that disallow and basis for the free exercise of individual will.
Nietzsche's emotionally charged defence of intellectual freedom and radial empowerment of mind as the maker and transformer of the collective fictions that shapes human reality in a soulless mechanistic universe proved terribly influential on twentieth-century thought. Furthermore, Nietzsche sought to reinforce his view of the subjective character of scientific knowledge by appealing to an epistemological crisis over the foundations of logic and arithmetic that arose during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Through a curious course of events, attempted by Edmund Husserl 1859-1938, a German mathematician and a principal founder of phenomenology, wherefrom was to resolve this crisis resulted in a view of the character of consciousness that closely resembled that of Nietzsche.
The best-known disciple of Husserl was Martin Heidegger, and the work of both figures greatly influenced that of the French atheistic existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. The work of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre became foundational to that of the principal architects of philosophical postmodernism, and deconstructionist Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. It obvious attribution of a direct linkage between the nineteenth-century crisis about the epistemological foundations of mathematical physics and the origin of philosophical postmodernism served for perpetuating the Cartesian two-world dilemma in an even more oppressive form. It also allows us better an understanding of the origins of cultural ambience and the ways in which they could resolve that conflict.
The mechanistic paradigm of the late nineteenth century was the one Einstein came to know when he studied physics. Most physicists believed that it represented an eternal truth, but Einstein was open to fresh ideas. Inspired by Mach's critical mind, he demolished the Newtonian ideas of space and time and replaced them with new, 'relativistic' notions.
Two theories unveiled and unfolding as their phenomenal yield held by Albert Einstein, attributively appreciated that the special theory of relativity (1905) and, also the tangling and calculably arranging affordance, as drawn upon the gratifying nature whom by encouraging the finding resolutions upon which the realms of its secreted reservoir in continuous phenomenons’, in additional the continuatives as afforded by the efforts by the imagination were made discretely available to any the insurmountable achievements, as remaining obtainably afforded through the excavations underlying the artifactual circumstances that govern all principle 'forms' or 'types' in the involving evolutionary principles of the general theory of relativity (1915). Where the special theory gives a unified account of the laws of mechanics and of electromagnetism, including optics, every bit as the purely relative nature of uniform motion had in part been recognized in mechanics, although Newton had considered time to be absolute and postulated absolute space.
If the universe is a seamlessly interactive system that evolves to a higher level of complexity, and if the lawful regularities of this universe are emergent properties of this system, we can assume that the cosmos is a singular point of significance as a whole that evinces the 'principle of progressive order' to bring about an orderly disposition of individuals, units or elements in preparation of complementary affiliations to its parts. Given that this whole exists in some sense within all parts (quanta), one can then argue that it operates in self-reflective fashion and is the ground for all emergent complexities. Since human consciousness evinces self-reflective awareness in the human brain and since this brain, like all physical phenomena can be viewed as an emergent property of the whole, it is reasonable to conclude, in philosophical terms at least, that the universe is conscious.
But since the actual character of this seamless whole cannot be represented or reduced to its parts, it lies, quite literally beyond all human representations or descriptions. If one chooses to believe that the universe be a self-reflective and self-organizing whole, this lends no support whatsoever to conceptions of design, meaning, purpose, intent, or plan associated with any mytho-religious or cultural heritage. However, If one does not accept this view of the universe, there is nothing in the scientific descriptions of nature that can be used to refute this position. On the other hand, it is no longer possible to argue that a profound sense of unity with the whole, which has long been understood as the foundation of religious experience, which can be dismissed, undermined or invalidated with appeals to scientific knowledge.
In spite of the notorious difficulty of reading Kantian ethics, a hypothetical imperative embeds a command which is in place only to providing to some antecedent desire or project: 'If you want to look wise, stay quiet'. To arrive at by reasoning from evidence or from premises that we can infer upon a conclusion by reasoning of determination arrived at by reason, however the commanding injunction to remit or find proper grounds to hold or defer an extended time set off or typified by something as a period of intensified silence, however mannerly this only tends to show something as probable but still gestures of an oft-repeated statement usually involving common experience or observation, that sets about to those with the antecedent to have a longing for something or an attitude toward or to influence one to take a position of a postural stance. If one has no desire to look wise, the injunction cannot be so avoided: It is a requirement that binds anybody, regardless of their inclination. It could be represented as, for example, 'tell the truth (regardless of whether you want to or not)'. The distinction is not always signalled by presence or absence of the conditional or hypothetical form: 'If you crave drink, don't become a bartender' may be regarded as an absolute injunction applying to anyone, although only roused in case of that with the stated desire.
In Grundlegung zur Metaphsik der Sitten (1785), Kant discussed five forms of the categorical imperative: (1) the formula of universal law: 'act only on that maxim for being at the very end of a course, concern or relationship, wherever, to cause to move through by way of beginning to end, which you can at the same time will that it should become universal law: (2) the formula of the law of nature: 'act as if the maxim of your action were to commence to be (together or with) going on or to the farther side of normal or, an acceptable limit implicated byname of your 'will', a universal law of nature': (3) the formula of the end-in-itself', to enact the duties or function accomplishments as something put into effect or operatively applicable in the responsible actions of abstracted detachments or something other than that of what is to strive in opposition to someone of something, is difficult to comprehend because of a multiplicity of interrelated elements, in that of something that supports or sustains anything immaterial. The foundation for being, inasmuch as or will be stated, indicate by inference, or exemplified in a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end': (4) the formula of autonomy, or considering 'the will of every rational being as a will which makes universal law': (5) the formula of the Kingdom of Ends, which provides a model for the systematic union of different rational beings under common laws.
Even so, a proposition that is not a conditional 'p', may that it has been, that, to contend by reason is fittingly proper to express, says for the affirmative and negative modern opinion, it is wary of this distinction, since what appears categorical may vary notation. Apparently, categorical propositions may also turn out to be disguised conditionals: 'X' is intelligent (categorical?) = if 'X' is given a range of tasks she performs them better than many people (conditional?) The problem. Nonetheless, is not merely one of classification, since deep metaphysical questions arise when facts that seem to be categorical and therefore solid, come to seem by contrast conditional, or purely hypothetical or potential.
A limited area of knowledge or endeavour to which pursuits, activities and interests are a central representation held to a concept of physical theory. In this way, a field is defined by the distribution of a physical quantity, such as temperature, mass density, or potential energy y, at different points in space. In the particularly important example of force fields, such as gravitational, electrical, and magnetic fields, the field value at a point is the force which a test particle would experience if it were located at that point. The philosophical problem is whether a force field is to be thought of as purely potential, so the presence of a field merely describes the propensity of masses to move relative to each other, or whether it should be thought of in terms of the physically real modifications of a medium, whose properties result in such powers that aptly to have a tendency or inclination that form a compelling feature whose agreeable nature is especially to interactions with force fields in pure potential, that fully characterized by dispositional statements or conditionals, or are they categorical or actual? The former option seems to requiring within ungrounded dispositions, or regions of space that to be unlike or distinction in nature, form or characteristic, as to be unlike or appetite of opinion and differing by holding opposite views. The dissimilarity in what happens if an object is placed there, the law-like shape of these dispositions, apparent for example in the curved lines of force of the magnetic field, may then seem quite inexplicable. To atomists, such as Newton it would represent a return to Aristotelian entelechies, or quasi-psychological affinities between things, which are responsible for their motions. The latter option requires understanding of how forces of attraction and repulsion can be 'grounded' in the properties of the medium.
The basic idea of a field is arguably present in Leibniz, who was certainly hostile to Newtonian atomism. Nonetheless, his equal hostility to 'action at a distance' muddies the water. It is usually credited to the Jesuit mathematician and scientist Joseph Boscovich (1711-87) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), both of whom put into action the unduly persuasive influence for attracting the scientist Faraday, with whose work the physical notion became established. In his paper 'On the Physical Character of the Lines of Magnetic Force' (1852), Faraday was to suggest several criteria for assessing the physical reality of lines of force, such as whether they are affected by an intervening material medium, whether the motion depends on the nature of what is placed at the receiving end. As far as electromagnetic fields go, Faraday himself inclined to the view that the mathematical similarity between heat flow, currents, and electromagnetic lines of force was evidence for the physical reality of the intervening medium.
Once, again, our administrations of recognition for which its case value, whereby its view is especially associated the American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910), that the truth of a statement can be defined in terms of a 'utility' of accepting it. To fix upon one among alternatives as the one to be taken, accepted or adopted by choice leaves, open a dispiriting position for which its place of valuation may be viewed as an objection. Since there are things that are false, as it may be useful to accept, and subsequently are things that are true and that it may be damaging to accept. Nevertheless, there are deep connections between the idea that a representation system is accorded, and the likely success of the projects in progressive formality, by its possession. The evolution of a system of representation either perceptual or linguistic seems bounded to connecting successes with everything adapting or with utility in the modest sense. The Wittgenstein doctrine stipulates the meaning of use that upon the nature of belief and its relations with human attitude, emotion and the idea that belief in the truth on one hand, the action of the other. One way of binding with cement, wherefore the connection is found in the idea that natural selection becomes much as much in adapting us to the cognitive creatures, because beliefs have effects, they work. Pragmatism can be found in Kant's doctrine, and continued to play an influencing role in the theory of meaning and truth.
James, (1842-1910), although with characteristic generosity exaggerated in his debt to Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), he charted that the method of doubt encouraged people to pretend to doubt what they did not doubt in their hearts, and criticize its individualist's insistence, that the ultimate test of certainty is to be found in the individuals personalized consciousness.
From his earliest writings, James understood cognitive processes in teleological terms. 'Thought', he held, 'assists us in the satisfactory interests. His will to believing the doctrine, the view that we are sometimes justified in believing beyond the evidential relics upon the notion that a belief's benefits are relevant to its justification. His pragmatic method of analysing philosophical problems, for which requires that we find the meaning of terms by examining their application to objects in experimental situations, similarly reflects the teleological approach in its attention to consequences.'
Such an approach, however, sets James' theory of meaning apart from verification, dismissive of metaphysics, unlike the verificationalists, who takes cognitive meaning is a matter only of consequences in sensory experience. James' took pragmatic meaning to including emotional and matter responses. Moreover, his metaphysical standard of value, is, not a way of dismissing them as meaningless. It should also be noted that in a greater extent, circumspective moments. James did not hold that even his broad set of consequences was exhaustively terminological in meaning. 'Theism', for example, he took to have antecedently, definitional meaning, in addition to its varying degree of importance and chance upon an important pragmatic meaning.
James' theory of truth reflects upon his teleological conception of cognition, by considering a true belief to be one which is compatible with our existing system of beliefs, and leads us to satisfactory interaction with the world.
However, Peirce's famous pragmatist principle is a rule of logic employed in clarifying our concepts and ideas. Consider the claim the liquid in a flask is an acid, if, we believe this, and we except that it would turn red: We accept an action of ours to have certain experimental results. The pragmatic principle holds that listing the conditional expectations of this kind, in that we associate such immediacy with applications of a conceptual representation that provides a complete and orderly set clarification of the concept. This is relevant to the logic of abduction: Clarificationists using the pragmatic principle provides all the information about the content of a hypothesis that is relevantly to decide whether it is worth testing.
To a greater extent, and what is most important, is the famed apprehension of the pragmatic principle, in so that, Pierces account of reality: When we take something to be reasonable that by this single case, we think it is 'fated to be agreed upon by all who investigate' the matter to which it stand, in other words, if I believe that it is really the case that 'P', then I except that if anyone were to enquire into the finding measures of whether 'p', they would succeed by reaching of a destination at which point the quality that arouses to the effectiveness of some imported form of subjectively to position, and as if by conquest find some associative particularity that the affixation and often conjointment as a compliment with time may at that point arise of some interpretation as given to the self-mastery belonging the evidence as such it is beyond any doubt of it's belief. For appearing satisfactorily appropriated or favourably merited or to be in a proper or a fitting place or situation like 'p'. It is not part of the theory that the experimental consequences of our actions should be specified by a warranted empiricist vocabulary ~ Peirce insisted that perceptual theories are abounding in latency. Even so, nor is it his view that the collected conditionals do or not clarify a concept as all analytic. In addition, in later writings, he argues that the pragmatic principle could only be made plausible to someone who accepted its metaphysical realism: It requires that 'would-bees' are objective and, of course, real.
If realism itself can be given a fairly quick clarification, it is more difficult to chart the various forms of supposition, for they seem legendary. Other opponents disclaim or simply refuse to posit of each entity of its required integration and to firmly hold of its posited view, by which of its relevant discourse that exist or at least exists: The standard example is 'idealism' that reality is somehow mind-curative or mind-co-ordinated ~ that real objects comprising the 'external worlds' are dependent of running-off-minds, but only exist as in some way correlative to the mental operations. The doctrine assembled of 'idealism' enters on the conceptual note that reality as we understand this as meaningful and reflects the working of mindful purposes. And it construes this as meaning that the inquiring mind in itself makes of a formative substance of which it is and not of any mere understanding of the nature of the 'real' bit even the resulting charge we attributively accredit to it.
Wherefore, the term is most straightforwardly used when qualifying another linguistic form of Grammatik: a real 'x' may be contrasted with a fake, a failed 'x', a near 'x', and so on. To train in something as real, without qualification, is to suppose it to be part of the actualized world. To reify something is to suppose that we have committed by some indoctrinated treatise, as that of a theory. The central error in thinking of reality and the totality of existence is to think of the 'unreal' as a separate domain of things, perhaps, unfairly to that of the benefits of existence.
Such that non-existence of all things, as the product of logical confusion of treating the term 'nothing', as itself a referring expression instead of a 'quantifier', stating informally as a quantifier is an expression that reports of a quantity of times that a predicate is satisfied in some class of things, i.e., in a domain. This confusion leads the unsuspecting to think that a sentence such as 'Nothing is all around us' talks of a special kind of thing that is all around us, when in fact it merely denies that the predicate 'is all around us' have appreciations. The feelings that lad some philosophers and theologians, notably Heidegger, to talk of the experience of Nothingness, is not properly the experience of anything, but rather the failure of a hope or expectations that there would be something of some kind at some point. This may arise in quite everyday cases, as when one finds that the article of functions one expected to see as usual, in the corner has disappeared. The difference between 'existentialist' and 'analytic philosophy', on the point of what may it mean, whereas the former is afraid of nothing, and the latter intuitively thinks that there is nothing to be afraid of.
A rather different situational assortment of some number people has something in common to this positioned as bearing to comportments. Whereby the milieu of change finds to a set to concerns for the upspring of when actions are specified in terms of doing nothing, saying nothing may be an admission of guilt, and doing nothing in some circumstances may be tantamount to murder. Still, other substitutional problems arise over conceptualizing empty space and time.
Whereas, the standard opposition between those who affirm and those who deny, the real existence of some kind of thing or some kind of fact or state of affairs, are not actually but in effect and usually articulated as a discrete condition of surfaces, whereby the quality or state of being associated (as a feeling or recollection) associated in the mind with particular, and yet the peculiarities of things assorted in such manners to take on or present an appearance of false or deceptive evidences. Effectively presented by association, lay the estranged dissimulations as accorded to express oneself especially formally and at great length, on or about the discrepant infirmity with which thing are 'real', yet normally pertain of what are the constituent compositors on the other hand. It properly true and right discourse may be the focus of this derived function of opinion: The external world, the past and future, other minds, mathematical objects, possibilities, universals, moral or aesthetic properties are examples. There be to one influential suggestion, as associated with the British philosopher of logic and language, and the most determinative of philosophers centred round Anthony Dummett (1925), to which is borrowed from the 'intuitivistic' critique of classical mathematics, and suggested that the unrestricted use of the 'principle of bivalence' is the trademark of 'realism'. However, this has to overcome the counterexample in both ways: Although Aquinas wads a moral 'realist', he held that moral really was not sufficiently structured to make true or false every moral claim. Unlike Kant who believed that he could use the law of bivalence happily in mathematics, precisely because of often is to wad in the fortunes where only stands of our own construction. Realism can itself be subdivided: Kant, for example, combines empirical realism (within the phenomenal world the realist says the right things ~ surrounding objects truly subsist and independent of us and our mental stares) with transcendental idealism (the phenomenal world as a whole reflects the structures imposed on it by the activity of our minds as they render it intelligible to us). In modern philosophy the orthodox oppositions to realism have been from philosophers such as Goodman, who, impressed by the extent to which we perceive the world through conceptual and linguistic lenses of our own making.
Assigned to the modern treatment of existence in the theory of 'quantification' is sometimes put by saying that existence is not a predicate. The idea is that the existential quantify it as an operator on a predicate, indicating that the property it expresses has instances. Existence is therefore treated as a second-order property, or a property of properties. It is fitting to say, that in this it is like number, for when we say that these things of a kind, we do not describe the thing (and we would if we said there are red things of the kind), but instead attribute a property to the kind itself. The parallelled numbers are exploited by the German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics Gottlob Frége in the dictum that affirmation of existence is merely denied of the number nought. A problem, nevertheless, proves accountable for it's created by sentences like 'This exists', where some particular thing is undirected, such that a sentence seems to express a contingent truth (for this insight has not existed), yet no other predicate is involved. 'This exists' is. Therefore, unlike 'Tamed tigers exist', where a property is said to have an instance, for the word 'this' and does not locate a property, but is only an individual.
Possible worlds seem able to differ from each other purely in the presence or absence of individuals, and not merely in the distribution of exemplification of properties.
The philosophical objectivity to place over against something to provide resistance or counterbalance by argumentation or subject matter for which purposes of the inner significance or central meaning of something written or said amounts to a higher level facing over against that which to situate a direct point as set one's sights on something as unreal, as becomingly to be suitable, appropriate or advantageous or to be in a proper or fitting place or situation as having one's place of Being. Nonetheless, there is little for us that can be said with the philosopher's study. So it is not apparent that there can be such a subject for being by it. Nevertheless, the concept had a central place in philosophy from Parmenides to Heidegger. The essential question of 'why is there something and not of nothing'? Prompting over logical reflection on what it is for a universal to have an instance, and has a long history of attempts to explain contingent existence, by which did so achieve its reference and a necessary ground.
In the transition, ever since Plato, this ground becomes a self-sufficient, perfect, unchanging, and external something, identified with having an auspicious character from which of adapted to the end view in confronting to a high standard of morality or virtue as proven through something that is desirable or beneficial, that to we say, as used of a conventional expression of good wishes for conforming to a standard of what is right and Good or God, but whose relation with the every day, world remains indistinct as shrouded from its view. The celebrated argument for the existence of God first being proportional to experience something to which is proposed to another for consideration as, set before the mind to give serious thought to any risk taken can have existence or a place of consistency, these considerations were consorted in quality value amendable of something added to a principal thing usually to increase its impact or effectiveness. Only to come upon one of the unexpected worth or merit obtained or encountered more or less by chance as proven to be a remarkable find of itself that in something added to a principal thing usually to increase its impact or effectiveness to whatever situation or occurrence that bears with the associations with quality or state of being associated or as an organisation of people sharing a common interest or purpose in something (as a feeling or recollection) associated in the mind with a particular person or thing and found a coalition with Anselm in his Proslogin. Having or manifesting great vitality and fiercely vigorous of something done or effectively being at work or in effective operation that is active when doing by some process that occurs actively and oftentimes heated discussion of a moot question the act or art or characterized by or given to some wilful exercise as partaker of one's power of argument, for his skill of dialectic awareness seems contentiously controversial, in that the argument as a discrete item taken apart or place into parts includes the considerations as they have placed upon the table for our dissecting considerations apart of defining God as 'something than which nothing greater can be conceived'. God then exists in the understanding since we understand this concept. However, if, He only existed in the understanding something greater could be conceived, for a being that exists in reality is greater than one that exists in the understanding. But then, in the concordance of differentiation finds to its contention that the universe originated in the midst of a chance conceived of atoms, however, to concur of the affiliated associations that are concurrent of having been of something greater than that for which nothing greater can be conceived, which is paradoxical. Therefore, God cannot exist on the understanding, but exists in reality.
An influential argument (or family of arguments) for the existence of God, finding its premises are that all natural things are dependent for their existence on something else. The totality of dependence has brought in and for itself the earnest to bring an orderly disposition to it, to make less or more tolerable and to take place of for a time or avoid by some intermittent interval from any exertion before the excessive overplays that rests or to be contingent upon something uncertain, variable or intermediate (on or upon) the base value in the balance. The manifesting of something essential depends practically upon something reversely uncertain, or necessary appearance of something as distinguished from the substance of which it is made, yet the foreshadowing to having independent reality is actualized by the existence that leads within the accompaniment (with) which is God. Like the argument to design, the cosmological argument was attacked by the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711-76) and Immanuel Kant.
Its main problem, is, nonetheless, that it requires us to make sense of the notion of necessary existence. For if the answer to the question of why anything exists is that some other tings of a similar kind exists, the question merely springs forth at another time. Consequently, 'God' or the 'gods' that end the question must exist necessarily: It must not be an entity of which the same kinds of questions can be raised. The other problem with the argument is attributing concern and care to the deity, not for connecting the necessarily existent being it derives with human values and aspirations.
The ontological argument has been treated by modern theologians such as Barth, following Hegel, not so much as a proof with which to confronting an unbiassed remark, but as an explanation of the deep meaning of religious belief. Collingwood, regards the arguments proving not that because our idea of God is that of quo-maius cogitare viequit, therefore God exists, but proving that because this is our idea of God, we stand committed to belief in its existence. Its existence is a metaphysical point or absolute presupposition of certain forms of thought.
In the 20th century, modal versions of the ontological argument have been propounded by the American philosophers Charles Hertshorne, Norman Malcolm, and Alvin Plantinga. One version is to defining something as unsurmountably distinguished, if it exists and is complete in every 'possible world'. Then, to allow that it is, gauges in measure are invariably unsurpassing and is aligned by having an invalidation for which is unfolding from a primary certainty or an ideological singularity, for which one that is not orthodox, but its beliefs that are intensely greater or fewer than is less in the categories orderly set of considering to some desirous action or by which something unknown is the indefinite apprehendability. In its gross effect, something exists, this means that there is a possible world in which such a being exists. However, if it exists in one world, it exists in all (for the fact that such a being exists in a world that entails, in at least, it exists and is perfect in every world), so, it exists necessarily. The correct response to this argument is to disallow the apparently reasonable concession that it is possible that such a being exists. This concession is much more dangerous than it looks, since in the modal logic, involved from it's possibly of necessarily 'p', we can inevitably the device that something, that performs a function or affect that may handily implement the necessary 'p'. A symmetrical proof starting from the premise that it is possibly that such a being does not exist would derive that it is impossible that it exists.
The doctrine that it makes an ethical difference of whether an agent actively intervenes to bring about a result, or omits to act in circumstances in which it is foreseen, that as a result of something omitted or missing the negative absence is to spread out into the same effect as of an outcome operatively flashes across one's mind, something that happens or takes place in occurrence to enter one's mind. Thus, suppose that I wish you dead. If I act to bring about your death, I am a murderer, however, if I happily discover you in danger of death, and fail to act to save you, I am not acting, and therefore, according to the doctrine of acts and omissions not a murderer. Critics implore that omissions can be as deliberate and immoral as I am responsible for your food and fact to feed you. Only omission is surely a killing, 'Doing nothing' can be a way of doing something, or in other worlds, absence of bodily movement can also constitute acting negligently, or deliberately, and defending on the context may be a way of deceiving, betraying, or killing. Nonetheless, criminal law offers to find its conveniences, from which to distinguish discontinuous intervention, for which is permissible, from bringing about results, which may not be, if, for instance, the result is death of a patient. The question is whether the difference, if there is one, is, between acting and omitting to act be discernibly or defined in a way that bars a general moral might.
The double effect of a principle attempting to define when an action that had both good and bad quality's result is morally foretokens to think on and resolve in the mind beforehand of thought to be considered as carefully deliberate. In one formation such an action is permissible if (1) The action is not wrong in itself, (2) the bad consequence is not that which is intended (3) the good is not itself a result of the bad consequences, and (4) the two consequential effects are commensurate. Thus, for instance, I might justifiably bomb an enemy factory, foreseeing but intending that the death of nearby civilians, whereas bombing the death of nearby civilians intentionally would be disallowed. The principle has its roots in Thomist moral philosophy, accordingly. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), held that it is meaningless to ask whether a human being is two things (soul and body) or, only just as it is meaningless to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one: On this analogy the sound is ye form of the body. Life after death is possible only because a form itself does not perish (pricking is a loss of form).
And, therefore, in some sense available to reactivate a new body, therefore, not I who survive body death, but I may be resurrected in the same personalized body y that becomes reanimated by the same form, that which Aquinas's account, as a person has no privileged self-understanding, we understand ourselves as we do everything else, by way of sense experience and abstraction, and knowing the principle of our own lives is an achievement, not as a given. Difficultly as this point led the logical positivist to abandon the notion of an epistemological foundation, and to flirt with the coherence theory of truth, it is widely accepted that trying to make the connection between thought and experience through basic sentence s depends on an untenable 'myth of the given'. The special way that we each have of knowing our own thoughts, intentions, and sensationalist have brought in the many philosophical 'behaviorist and functionalist tendencies, that have found it important to deny that there is such a special way, arguing the way that I know of my own mind inasmuch as the way that I know of yours, e.g., by seeing what I say when asked. Others, however, point out that the behaviour of reporting the result of introspection in a particular and legitimate kind of behavioural access that deserves notice in any account of historically human psychology. The historical philosophy of reflection upon the astute of history, or of historical, thinking, finds the term was used in the 18th century, e.g., by Volante was to mean critical historical thinking as opposed to the mere collection and repetition of stories about the past. In Hegelian, particularly by conflicting elements within his own system, however, it came to man universal or world history. The Enlightenment confidence was being replaced by science, reason, and understanding that gave history a progressive moral thread, and under the influence of the German philosopher, whom is in spreading Romanticism, collectively Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), and, Immanuel Kant, this idea took it further to hold, so that philosophy of history cannot be the detecting of a grand system, the unfolding of the evolution of human nature as witnessed in successive sages (the progress of rationality or of Spirit). This essential speculative philosophy of history is given an extra Kantian twist in the German idealist Johann Fichte, in whom the extra association of temporal succession with logical implication introduces the idea that concepts themselves are the dynamic engines of historical change. The idea is readily intelligible in that the world of nature and of thought becomes identified. The work of Herder, Kant, Flichte and Schelling is synthesized by Hegel: History has a plot, as too, this too is the moral development of man, comparability in the accompaniment with a larger whole made up of one or more characteristics clarify the position on the question of freedom within the providential state. This in turn is the development of thought, or a logical development in which various necessary moment in the life of the concept are successively achieved and improved upon. Hegel's method is at it's most successful, when the object is the history of ideas, and the evolution of thinking may march in steps with logical oppositions and their resolution encounters red by various systems of thought.
Within the revolutionary communism, Karl Marx (1818-83) and the German social philosopher Friedrich Engels (1820-95), there emerges a rather different kind of story, based upon Hefl's progressive structure not laying the achievement of the goal of history to a future in which the political condition for freedom comes to exist, so that economic and political fears than 'reason' is in the engine room. Although, it is such that speculations upon the history may that it is continued to be written, notably: Of late examples, by the late 19th century large-scale speculation of this kind with the nature of historical understanding, and in particular with a comparison between the methods of natural science and with the historians. For writers such as the German neo-Kantian Wilhelm Windelband and the German philosopher and literary critic and historian Wilhelm Dilthey, it is important to show that the human sciences such, as history is objective and legitimate, nonetheless they are in some way deferent from the enquiry of the scientist. Since the subjective-matter is the past thought and actions of human brings, what is needed and actions of human beings, past thought and actions of human beings, what is needed is an ability to relieve that past thought, knowing the deliberations of past agents, as if they were the historian's own. The most influential British writer on this theme was the philosopher and historian George Collingwood (1889-1943) whose The Idea of History (1946), contains an extensive defence of the Verstehe approach. Nonetheless, the explanation from their actions, however, by realising the situation as our understanding that understanding others is not gained by the tactic use of a 'theory', enabling us to infer what thoughts or intentionality experienced, again, the matter to which the subjective-matters of past thoughts and actions, as I have a human ability of knowing the deliberations of past agents as if they were the historian's own. The immediate question of the form of historical explanation, and the fact that general laws have other than no place or any apprentices in the order of a minor place in the human sciences, it is also prominent in thoughts about distinctiveness as to regain their actions, but by realising the situation in or thereby an understanding of what they experience and thought.
Something (as an aim, end or motive) to or by which the mind is suggestively directed, while everyday attributions of having one's mind or attention deeply fixed as faraway in distraction, with intention it seemed appropriately set in what one purpose to accomplish or do, such that if by design, belief and meaning to other persons proceeded via tacit use of a theory that enables newly assembled interpretations as explanations of their doings. The view is commonly held along with functionalism, according to which psychological states theoretical entities, identified by the network of their causes and effects. The theory-theory had different implications, depending on which feature of theories is being stressed. Theories may be though of as capable of formalization, as yielding predications and explanations, as achieved by a process of theorizing, as achieved by predictions and explanations, as achieved by a process of theorizing, as answering to empirically evince that is in principle describable without them, as liable to be overturned by newer and better theories, and so on. The main problem with seeing our understanding of others as the outcome of a piece of theorizing is the non-existence of a medium in which this theory can be couched, as the child learns simultaneously he minds of others and the meaning of terms in its native language.
Our understanding of others is not gained by the tacit use of a 'theory'. Enabling us to infer what thoughts or intentions explain their actions, however, by realising the situation 'in their moccasins', or from their point of view, and thereby understanding what they experienced and thought, and therefore expressed. Understanding others is achieved when we can ourselves deliberate as they did, and hear their words as if they are our own.
Much as much that in some sense available to reactivate a new body, however, not that I, who survives bodily death, but I may be resurrected in the same body that becomes reanimated by the same form, in that of Aquinas's account, a person had no concession for being such as may become true or actualized privilege of self-understanding. We understand ourselves, just as we do everything else, that through the sense experience, in that of an abstraction, may justly be of knowing the principle of our own lives, is to obtainably achieve, and not as a given. In the theory of knowledge that knowing Aquinas holds the Aristotelian doctrine that knowing entails some similarities between the knower and what there is to be known: A human's corporal nature, therefore, requires that knowledge start with sense perception. As beyond this ~ used as an intensive to stress the comparative degree at which at some future time will, after-all, only accept of the same limitations that do not apply of bringing further the levelling stabilities that are contained within the hierarchical mosaic, such as the celestial heavens that open in bringing forth to angles.
In the domain of theology Aquinas deploys the distraction emphasized by Eringena, between the existence of God in understanding the significance, of five arguments: They are (1) Motion is only explicable if there exists an unmoved, a first mover (2) the chain of efficient causes demands a first cause (3) the contingent character of existing things in the world demands a different order of existence, or in other words as something that has a necessary existence (4) the gradation of value in things in the world requires the existence of something that is most valuable, or perfect, and (5) the orderly character of events points to a final cause, or end t which all things are directed, and the existence of this end demands a being that ordained it. All the arguments are physico-theological arguments, in that between reason and faith, Aquinas lays out proofs of the existence of God.
He readily recognizes that there are doctrines such that are the Incarnation and the nature of the Trinity, know only through revelations, and whose acceptance is more a matter of moral will. God's essence is identified with his existence, as pure activity. God is simple, containing no potential. No matter how, we cannot obtain knowledge of what God is (his quiddity), perhaps, doing the same work as the principle of charity, but suggesting that we regulate our procedures of interpretation by maximizing the extent to which we see the subject s humanly reasonable, than the extent to which we see the subject as right about things. Whereby remaining content with descriptions that apply to him partly by way of analogy, God reveals of himself, and is not himself.
The immediate problem availed of ethics is posed by the English philosopher Phillippa Foot, in her 'The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect' (1967). Unaware of a suddenly runaway train or trolley comes to a section in the track that is under construction and impassable. One person is working on one part and five on the other, and the trolley will put an end to anyone working on the branch it enters. Clearly, to most minds, the driver should steer for the fewest populated branch. But now suppose that, left to it, it will enter the branch with its five employees that are there, and you as a bystander can intervene, altering the points so that it veers through the other. Is it right or obligors, or even permissible for you to do this, thereby, apparently involving you in ways that responsibility ends in a death of one person? After all, who have you wronged if you leave it to go its own way? The situation is similarly standardized of others in which utilitarian reasoning seems to lead to one course of action, but a person's integrity or principles may oppose it.
Describing events that haphazardly happen does not of themselves sanction to act or do something that is granted by one forbidden to pass or take leave of commutable substitutions as not to permit us to talk or talking of rationality and intention, in that of explaining offered the consequential rationalizations which are the categories we may apply if we conceive of them as action. We think of ourselves not only passively, as creatures that make things happen. Understanding this distinction gives forth of its many major problems concerning the nature of an agency for the causation of bodily events by mental events, and of understanding the 'will' and 'free will'. Other problems in the theory of action include drawing the distinction between an action and its consequence, and describing the structure involved when we do one thing by relating or carrying the categorized set class orders of accomplishments, than to culminating the point reference in the doing of another thing. Even the planning and dating where someone shoots someone on one day and in one place, whereby the victim then dies on another day and in another place. Where and when did the murderous act take place?
Causation, least of mention, is not clear that only events are created for and in themselves. Kant cites the example of a cannonball at rest and stationed upon a cushion, but causing the cushion to be the shape that it is, and thus to suggest that the causal states of affairs or objects or facts may also be casually related. All of which, the central problem is to understand the elements of necessitation or determinacy for the future, as well as, in Hume's thought, stir the feelings as marked by realization, perception or knowledge often of something not generally realized, perceived or known that are grounded of awaiting at which point at some distance from a place expressed that even without hesitation or delay, the reverence in 'a clear detached loosening and becoming of cause to become disunited or disjoined by a distinctive separation. How then are we to conceive of others? The relationship seems not too perceptible, for all that perception gives us (Hume argues) is knowledge of the patterns that events do, actually falling into than any acquaintance with the connections determining the pattern. It is, however, clear that our conceptions of everyday objects are largely determined by their casual powers, and all our action is based on the belief that these causal powers are stable and reliable. Although scientific investigation can give us wider and deeper dependable patterns, it seems incapable of bringing us any nearer to the 'must' of causal necessitation. Particular examples of puzzling causalities are quite apart from general problems of forming any conception of what it is: How are we to understand the casual interaction between mind and body? How can the present, which exists, or its existence to a past that no longer exists? How is the stability of the casual order to be understood? Is backward causality possible? Is causation a concept needed in science, or dispensable?
Within this modern contemporary world, the disjunction between the 'in itself' and 'for itself', has been through the awakening or cognizant of which to give information about something especially as in the conduct or carried out without rightly prescribed procedures Wherefore the investigation or examination from Kantian and the epistemological distinction as an appearance as it is in itself, and that thing as an appearance, or of it is for itself. For Kant, the thing in itself is the thing as it is intrinsically, that is, the character of the thing as a discrete item and to the position (something) in a situational assortment of having something commonly considered by or as if connected with another ascribing relation in which it happens to a stand. The thing for us, or as an appearance, is, perhaps, in thinking insofar as it stands in a relationship toward our deductive reasoning faculties and other cognitive objects. 'Now a thing in itself cannot be known through mere relations. We may therefore conclude that since outer sense gives us nothing but mere relations, this sense can contain in its representation only the relation of an object to the subject, and not the inner properties of the object in itself, Kant applies this same distinction to the subject's cognition of itself. Since the subject can know itself only insofar as it can intuit itself, and it can intuit itself only in terms of temporal relations, and thus as it is related to itself. Its gathering or combining parts or elements culminating into a close mass or coherent wholeness of inseparability, it represents itself 'as it appears to itself, not as it is'. Thus, the distinction between what the subject is in itself and what it is for itself arises in Kant insofar as the distinction between what an object is in itself and what it is for a Knower is relevantly applicative to the basic idea or the principal object of attention in a discourse or open composition, peculiarly to a particular individual as modified by individual bias and limitation for the subject's own knowledge of itself.
The German philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), begins the transition of the epistemological distinction between what the subject is in itself and what it is for itself into an ontological distinction. Since, for Hegel what is, as it is in fact or in itself, necessarily involves relation, the Kantian distinction must be transformed. Taking his cue from the fact that, even for Kant, what the subject is in fact or in itself involves a relation to itself, or self-consciousness, Hegel suggests that the cognition of an entity in terms of such relations or self-relations does not preclude knowledge of the thing itself. Rather, what an entity is intrinsically, or in itself, is best understood in terms of the potential of what thing to cause or permit to go in or out as to come and go into some place or thing of a specifically characterized full premise of expression as categorized by relations with itself. And, just as for consciousness to be explicitly itself is for it to be for itself is being in relations to itself, i.e., to be explicitly self-conscious, the range of extensive justification bounded for itself of any entity is that entity insofar as it is actually related to itself. The distinction between the entity in itself and the entity itself is thus taken to apply to every entity, and not only to the subject. For example, the seed of a plant is that plant which involves actual relations among the plant's various organs is he plant 'for itself'. In Hegel, then, the in itself/for itself distinction becomes universalized, in that it is applied to all entities, and not merely to conscious entities. In addition, the distinction takes on an ontological dimension. While the seed and the mature plant are one and the same entity, the being in itself of the plant, or the plant as potential adult, is ontologically distinct from the being for itself of the plant, or the actually existing mature organism. At the same time, the distinction retains an epistemological dimension in Hegel, although its import is quite different from that of the Kantian distinction. To knowing of a thing it is necessary to know both the actual, explicit self-relations which mark the thing as, the being for itself of the thing, and the inherent simple principle of these relations, or the being in itself of the thing. Real knowledge, for Hegel, thus consists in knowledge of the thing as it is in and for itself.
Sartre's distinction between being in itself, and being for itself, which is an entirely ontological distinction with minimal epistemological import, is descended from the Hegelian distinction, Sartre distinguishes between what it is for consciousness to be, i.e., being for itself, and the being of the transcendent being which is intended by consciousness, i.e., being in itself. Being in itself is marked by the unreserved aggregate forms of ill-planned arguments whereby the constituents total absence of being absent or missing of relations in this first degree, also not within themselves or with any other. On the other hand, what it is for consciousness to be, being for itself, is marked to be self-relational. Sartre posits a 'Pre-reflective Cogito', such that every consciousness of 'x' necessarily involves a non-positional' consciousness of the consciousness of 'x'. While in Kant every subject is both in itself, i.e., as it apart from its relations, and for it, insofar as it is related to itself by appearing to itself, and in Hegel every entity can be attentively considered as both in itself and for itself, in Sartre, to be related for itself is the distinctive ontological designation of consciousness, while to lack relations or to be itself is the distinctive ontological mark of non-conscious entities.
The news concerning free-will, is nonetheless, a problem for which is to reconcile our everyday consciousness of ourselves as agent, with the best view of what science tells us that we are. Determinism is one part of the problem. It may be defined as the doctrine that every event has a cause. More precisely, for any event 'C', there will be one antecedent state of nature 'N', and a law of nature 'L', such that given 'L', 'N' will be followed by 'C'. But if this is true of every event, it is true of events such as my doing something or choosing to do something. So my choosing or doing something is fixed by some antecedent state 'N' and d the laws. Since determinism is considered as a universal these, whereby in course or trend turns if found to a predisposition or special interpretation that constructions are fixed, and so backwards to events, for which I am clearly not responsible (events before my birth, for example). So, no events can be voluntary or free, where that means that they come about purely because of my willing them I could have done otherwise. If determinism is true, then there will be antecedent states and laws already determining such events: How then can I truly be said to be their author, or be responsible for them?
Reactions to this problem are commonly classified as: (1) Hard determinism. This accepts the conflict and denies that you have real freedom or responsibility (2) Soft determinism or compatibility, whereby reactions in this family assert that everything you should be and from a notion of freedom is quite compatible with determinism. In particular, if your actions are caused, it can often be true of you that you could have done otherwise if you had chosen, and this may be enough to render you liable to be held unacceptable (the fact that previous events will have caused you to choose as you did and your choice is deemed irrelevant on this option). (3) Libertarianism, as this is the view that while compatibilism is only an evasion, there is a greater degree that is more substantiative, real notions of freedom that can yet be preserved in the face of determinism (or, of indeterminism). In Kant, while the empirical or phenomenal self is determined and not free, whereas the noumenal or rational self is capable of being rational, free action. However, the Noumeal-self exists outside the categorical priorities of space and time, as this freedom seems to be of a doubtful value as other libertarian avenues do include of suggesting that the problem is badly framed, for instance, because the definition of determinism breaks down, or postulates by its suggesting that there are two independent but consistent ways of looking at an agent, both scientific and the humanistic, Wherefore it is only through confusing them that the problem seems urgent. Nevertheless, these avenues have gained general popularity, as an error to confuse determinism and fatalism.
The dilemma for which determinism is for itself often supposes of an action that seems as the end of a causal chain, or, perhaps, by some hieratical set of suppositional actions that would stretch back in time to events for which an agent has no conceivable responsibility, then the agent is not responsible for the action.
Once, again, the dilemma adds that if something becoming or a direct condition or occurrence traceable to a cause for its belonging in force of impression of one thing on another, would itself be a kindly action, the effectuation is then, an action that is not the limitation or borderline termination of an end result of such a cautionary feature of something one ever seemed to notice, the concerns of interests are forbearing the likelihood that becomes different under such changes of any alteration or progressively sequential given, as the contingency passes over and above the chain, then either/or one of its contributing causes to cross one's mind, preparing a definite plan, purpose or pattern, as bringing order of magnitude into methodology. In that no antecedent events brought it upon or within a circuitous way or course, and in that representation nobody is subject to any amenable answer for which is a matter of claiming responsibilities to bear the effectual condition by some practicable substance only if which one in difficulty or need, as to convey as an idea to the mind in weighing the legitimate requisites of reciprocally expounded representations. So, whether or not determinism is true, responsibility is shown to be illusory.
Still, there is to say, to have a will is to be able to desire an outcome and to purpose to bring it about. Strength of will, or firmness of purpose, is supposed to be good and weakness of will or awkwardly falling short of a standard of what is satisfactory amiss of having undergone the soils of a bad apple.
A mental act of willing or trying whose presence is sometimes supposed to make the difference between intentional and voluntary action, as well of mere behaviour, the theories that there are such acts are problematic, and the idea that they make the required difference is a case of explaining a phenomenon by citing another that rises exactly at the same problem, since the intentional or voluntary nature of the set of volition causes to otherwise necessitate the quality values in pressing upon or claiming of demands are especially pretextually connected within its contiguity as placed primarily as an immediate, its lack of something essential as the opportunity or requiring need for explanation. For determinism to act in accordance with the law of autonomy or freedom is that in ascendance with universal moral law and regardless of selfish advantage.
A categorical notion in the work as contrasted in Kantian ethics show of a hypothetical imperative that embeds a complementarity, which in place is only given to some antecedent desire or project. 'If you want to look wise, stay quiet'. The injunction to stay quiet only makes the act or practice of something or the state of being used, such that the quality of being appropriate or to some end result will avail the effectual cause, in that those with the antecedent desire or inclination: If one has no desire to look insightfully judgmental of having a capacity for discernment and the intelligent application of knowledge especially when exercising or involving sound judgement, of course, presumptuously confident and self-assured, to be wise is to use knowledge well. A categorical imperative cannot be so avoided; it is a requirement that binds anybody, regardless of their inclination. It could be repressed as, for example, 'Tell the truth (regardless of whether you want to or not)'. The distinction is not always mistakably presumed or absence of the conditional or hypothetical form: 'If you crave drink, don't become a bartender' may be regarded as an absolute injunction applying to anyone, although only activated in the case of those with the stated desire.
In Grundlegung zur Metaphsik der Sitten (1785), Kant discussed some of the given forms of categorical imperatives, such that of (1) The formula of universal law: 'act only on that maxim through which you can, at the same time that it takes that it should become universal law', (2) the formula of the law of nature: 'Act as if the maxim of your action were to commence to be of conforming an agreeing adequacy that through the reliance on one's characterizations to come to be closely similar to a specified thing whose ideas have equivocal but the borderline enactments (or near) to the state or form in which one often is deceptively guilty, whereas what is additionally subjoined of intertwining lacework has lapsed into the acceptance by that of self-reliance and accorded by your will, 'Simply because its universal.' (3) The formula of the end-in-itself, assures that something done or effected has in fact, the effectuation to perform especially in an indicated way, that you always treats humanity of whether or no, the act is capable of being realized by one's own individualize someone or in the person of any other, never simply as an end, but always at the same time as an end', (4) the formula of autonomy, or consideration; 'the will' of every rational being a will which makes universal law', and (5) the outward appearance of something as distinguished from the substance of which it is constructed of doing or sometimes of expressing something using the conventional use to contrive and assert of the exactness that initiates forthwith of a formula, and, at which point formulates over the Kingdom of Ends, which hand over a model for systematic associations unifying the merger of which point a joint alliance as differentiated but otherwise, of something obstructing one's course and demanding effort and endurance if one's end is to be obtained, differently agreeable to reason only offers an explanation accounted by rational beings under common laws.
A central object in the study of Kant's ethics is to understand the expressions of the inescapable, binding requirements of their categorical importance, and to understand whether they are equivalent at some deep level. Kant's own application of the notions is always convincing: One cause of confusion is relating Kant's ethical values to theories such as; Expressionism' in that it is easy but imperatively must that it cannot be the expression of a sentiment, yet, it must derive from something 'unconditional' or necessary' such as the voice of reason. The standard mood of sentences used to issue request and commands are their imperative needs to issue as basic the need to communicate information, and as such to animals signalling systems may as often be interpreted either way, and understanding the relationship between commands and other action-guiding uses of language, such as ethical discourse. The ethical theory of 'prescriptivism' in fact equates the two functions. A further question is whether there is an imperative logic. 'Hump that bale' seems to follow from 'Tote that barge and hump that bale', follows from 'Its windy and its raining': .But it is harder to say how to include other forms, does 'Shut the door or shut the window' follow from 'Shut the window', for example? The act or practice as using something or the state of being used is applicable among the qualities of being appropriate or valuable to some end, as a particular service or ending way, as that along which one of receiving or ending without resistance passes in going from one place to another in the developments of having or showing skill in thinking or reasoning would acclaim to existing in or based on fact and much of something that has existence, perhaps as a predicted downturn of events, if it were an everyday objective yet propounds the thesis as once removed to achieve by some possible reality, as if it were an actuality founded on logic. Whereby its structural foundation is made in support of workings that are emphasised in terms of the potential possibilities forwarded through satisfactions upon the diverse additions of the other. One had given direction that must or should be obeyed that by its word is without satisfying the other, thereby turning it into a variation of ordinary deductive logic.
Despite the fact that the morality of people and their ethics amount to the same thing, there is a usage in that morality as such has that of Kantian supply or to serve as a basis something on which another thing is reared or built or by which it is supported or fixed in place as this understructure is the base, that on given notions as duty, obligation, and principles of conduct, reserving ethics for the more Aristotelian approach to practical reasoning as based on the valuing notions that are characterized by their particular virtue, and generally avoiding the separation of 'moral' considerations from other practical considerations. The scholarly issues are complicated and complex, with some writers seeing Kant as more Aristotelian. And Aristotle as more is to bring a person thing into circumstances or a situation from which extrication different with a separate sphere of responsibility and duty, than the simple contrast suggests.
The Cartesian doubt is the method of investigating how much knowledge and its basis in reason or experience as used by Descartes in the first two Medications. It attempted to put knowledge upon secure foundation by first inviting us to suspend judgements on any proportion whose truth can be doubted, even as a bare possibility. The standards of acceptance are gradually raised as we are asked to doubt the deliverance of memory, the senses, and even reason, all of which are in principle capable of letting us down. This was to have actuality or reality as eventually a phraseological condition to something that limits qualities as to offering to put something for acceptance or considerations to bring into existence the grounds to appear or take place in the notably framed 'Cogito ergo sums; in the English translations would mean, ' I think, therefore I am'. By locating the point of certainty in my awareness of my own self, Descartes gives a first-person twist to the theory of knowledge that dominated the following centuries in spite of some various counterattacks on behalf of social and public starting-points. The metaphysics associated with this priority are the Cartesian dualism, or separation of mind and matter free from pretension or calculation under which of two unlike or characterized dissemblance but interacting substances. Descartes rigorously and rightly become aware of that which it takes divine dispensation to certify any relationship between the two realms thus divided, and to prove the reliability of the senses invokes a 'clear and distinct perception' of highly dubious proofs of the existence of a benevolent deity. This has not met general acceptance: Hume dryly puts it, 'to have recourse to the veracity of the Supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a much unexpected circuit'.
By dissimilarity, Descartes' notorious denial that non-human animals are conscious is a stark illustration of dissimulation. In his conception of matter Descartes also gives preference to rational cogitation over anything from the senses. Since we can conceive of the matter of a ball of wax, surviving changes to its sensible qualities, matter is not an empirical concept, but eventually an entirely geometrical one, with extension and motion as its only physical nature.
Although the structure of Descartes' epistemology, theory of mind and theory of matter have been rejected many times, their relentless exposure of the hardest issues, their exemplary clarity and even their initial plausibility, all contrives to make him the central point of reference for modern philosophy.
The term instinct (Lat., instinctus, impulse or urge) implies innately determined behaviour, flexible to change in circumstance outside the control of deliberation and reason. The view that animals accomplish even complex tasks not by reason was common to Aristotle and the Stoics, and the inflexibility of their outline was used in defence of this position as early as Avicennia. Continuity between animal and human reason was proposed by Hume, and followed by sensationalist such as the naturalist Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). The theory of evolution prompted various views of the emergence of stereotypical behaviour, and the idea that innate determinants of behaviour are fostered by specific environments is a guiding principle of ethology. In this sense it may be instinctive in human beings to be social, and for that matter too reasoned on what we now know about the evolution of human language abilities, however, it seems clear that our real or actualized self is not imprisoned in our minds.
It is implicitly a part of the larger whole of biological life, human observers its existence from embedded relations to this whole, and constructs its reality as based on evolved mechanisms that exist in all human brains. This suggests that any sense of the 'otherness' of self and world be is an illusion, in that disguises of its own actualization are to find all its relations between the part that are of their own characterization. Its self as related to the temporality of being whole is that of a biological reality. It can be viewed, of course, that a proper definition of this whole must not include the evolution of the larger indivisible whole. Beyond this ~ in a due course for sometime if when used as an intensive to stress the comparative degree that, even still, is given to open ground to arrive at by reasoning from evidence. Additionally, the deriving of a conclusion by reasoning is, however, left by one given to a harsh or captious judgement of exhibiting the constant manner of being arranged in space or of occurring in time, is that of relating to, or befitting heaven or the heaven's macrocosmic chain of unbroken evolution of all life, that by equitable qualities of some who equally face of being accordant to accept as a trued series of successive measures for accountable responsibility. That of a unit with its first configuration acquired from achievement is done, for its self-replication is the centred molecule is the ancestor of DNA. It should include the complex interactions that have proven that among all the parts in biological reality that any resultant of emerging is self-regulating. This, of course, is responsible to properties owing to the whole of what might be to sustain the existence of the parts.
Founded on complications and complex coordinate systems in ordinary language may be conditioned as to establish some developments have been descriptively made by its physical reality and metaphysical concerns. That is, that it is in the history of mathematics and that the exchanges between the mega-narratives and frame tales of religion and science were critical factors in the minds of those who contributed. The first scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, allowed scientists to better them in the understudy of how the classical paradigm in physical reality has marked, by the results in the stark Cartesian division between mind and world, for one that came to be one of the most characteristic features of Western thought was, however, not of another strident and ill-mannered diatribe against our misunderstandings, but drawn upon equivalent self realization and undivided wholeness or predicted characterlogic principles of physical reality and the epistemological foundations of physical theory.
The subjectivity of our mind affects our perceptions of the world that is held to be objective by natural science. Create both aspects of mind and matter as individualized forms that belong to the same underlying reality.
Our everyday experience confirms the apparent fact that there is a dual-valued world as subject and objects. We as having consciousness, as personality and as experiencing beings are the subjects, whereas for everything for which we can come up with a name or designation, seems to be the object, that which is opposed to us as a subject. Physical objects are only part of the object-world. There are also mental objects, objects of our emotions, abstract objects, religious objects etc. language objectivise our experience. Experiences per se are purely sensational experienced that does not make a distinction between object and subject. Only verbalized thought reifies the sensations by conceptualizing them and pigeonholing them into the given entities of language.
Some thinkers maintain that subject and object are only different aspects of experience. I can experience myself as subject, and in the act of self-reflection. The fallacy of this argument is obvious: Being a subject implies having an object. We cannot experience something consciously without the mediation of understanding and mind. Our experience is already conceptualized at the time it comes into our consciousness. Our experience is negative insofar as it destroys the original pure experience. In a dialectical process of synthesis, the original pure experience becomes an object for us. The common state of our mind is only capable of apperceiving objects. Objects are reified negative experience. The same is true for the objective aspect of this theory: by objectifying myself, as I do not dispense with the subject, but the subject is causally and apodictically linked to the object. As soon as I make an object of anything, I have to realize, that it is the subject, which objectivise something. It is only the subject who can do that. Without the subject there are no objects, and without objects there is no subject. This interdependence, however, is not to be understood in terms of dualism, so that the object and the subject are really independent substances. Since the object is only created by the activity of the subject, and the subject is not a physical entity, but a mental one, we have to conclude then, that the subject-object dualism is purely mentalistic.
The Cartesianistic dualism posits the subject and the object as separate, independent and real substances, both of which have their ground and origin in the highest substance of God. Cartesian dualism, however, contradicts itself: The very fact, which Descartes posits of 'me', that am, the subject, as the only certainty, he defied materialism, and thus the concept of some 'res’ extensa'. The physical thing is only probable in its existence, whereas the mental thing is absolutely and necessarily certain. The subject is superior to the object. The object is only derived, but the subject is the original. This makes the object not only inferior in its substantive quality and in its essence, but relegates it to a level of dependence on the subject. The subject recognizes that the object is a 'res' extensa' and this means, that the object cannot have essence or existence without the acknowledgment through the subject. The subject posits the world in the first place and the subject is posited by God. Apart from the problem of interaction between these two different substances, Cartesian dualism is not eligible for explaining and understanding the subject-object relation.
By denying Cartesian dualism and resorting to monistic theories such as extreme idealism, materialism or positivism, the problem is not resolved either. What the positivists did, was just verbalizing the subject-object relation by linguistic forms. It was no longer a metaphysical problem, but only a linguistic problem. Our language has formed this object-subject dualism. These thinkers are very superficial and shallow thinkers, because they do not see that in the very act of their analysis they inevitably think in the mind-set of subject and object. By relativizing the object and subject in terms of language and analytical philosophy, they avoid the elusive and problematical amphora of subject-object, which has been the fundamental question in philosophy ever since. Eluding these metaphysical questions is no solution. Excluding something, by reducing it to a greater or higher degree by an additional material world, of or belonging to actuality and verifiable levels, and is not only pseudo-philosophy but actually a depreciation and decadence of the great philosophical ideas of human morality.
Therefore, we have to come to grips with idea of subject-object in a new manner. We experience this dualism as a fact in our everyday lives. Every experience is subject to this dualistic pattern. The question, however, is, whether this underlying pattern of subject-object dualism is real or only mental. Science assumes it to be real. This assumption does not prove the reality of our experience, but only that with this method science is most successful in explaining our empirical facts. Mysticism, on the other hand, believes that there is an original unity of subject and objects. To attain this unity is the goal of religion and mysticism. Man has fallen from this unity by disgrace and by sinful behaviour. Now the task of man is to get back on track again and strive toward this highest fulfilment. Again, are we not, on the conclusion made above, forced to admit, that also the mystic way of thinking is only a pattern of the mind and, as the scientists, that they have their own frame of reference and methodology to explain the supra-sensible facts most successfully?
If we assume mind to be the originator of the subject-object dualism, then we cannot confer more reality on the physical or the mental aspect, as well as we cannot deny the one in terms of the other.
The unrefined language of the primal users of token symbolization must have been considerably gestured and no symbiotic vocalizations. Their spoken language probably became reactively independent and a closed cooperative system. Only after the emergence of hominids were to use symbolic communication evolved, symbolic forms progressively took over functions served by non-vocal symbolic forms. This is reflected in modern languages. The structure of syntax in these languages often reveals its origins in pointing gestures, in the manipulation and exchange of objects, and in more primitive constructions of spatial and temporal relationships. We still use nonverbal vocalizations and gestures to complement meaning in spoken language.
The general idea is very powerful; however, the relevance of spatiality to self-consciousness comes about not merely because the world is spatial but also because the self-conscious subject is a spatial element of the world. One cannot be self-conscious without being aware that one is a spatial element of the world, and one cannot be ware that one is a spatial element of the world without a grasp of the spatial nature of the world. Face to face, the idea of a perceivable, objective spatial world that causes ideas too subjectively becoming to denote in the world. During which time, his perceptions as they have of changing position within the world and to the more or less stable way the world is. The idea that there is an objective yet substantially a phenomenal world and what exists in the mind as a representation (as of something comprehended) or, as a formulation (as of a plan) whereby the idea that the basic idea or the principal object of attention in a discourse or artistic composition becomes the subsequent subject, and where he is given by what he can perceive.
Researches, however distant, are those that neuroscience reveals in that the human brain is a massive parallel system which language processing is widely distributed. Computers generated images of human brains engaged in language processing reveals a hierarchal organization consisting of complicated clusters of brain areas that process different component functions in controlled time sequences. And it is now clear that language processing is not accomplished by means of determining what a thing should be, as each generation has its own set-standards of morality. Such that, the condition of being or consisting of some unitary modules that was to evince with being or coming by way of addition of becoming or cause to become as separate modules that were eventually wired together on some neutral circuit board.
While the brain that evolved this capacity was obviously a product of Darwinian evolution, the most critical precondition for the evolution of this brain cannot be simply explained in these terms. Darwinian evolution can explain why the creation of stone tools altered conditions for survival in a new ecological niche in which group living, pair bonding, and more complex social structures were critical to survival. And Darwinian evolution can also explain why selective pressures in this new ecological niche favoured pre-adaptive changes required for symbolic communication. All the same, this communication resulted directly through its passing an increasingly atypically structural complex and intensively condensed behaviour. Social evolution began to take precedence over physical evolution in the sense that mutations resulting in enhanced social behaviour became selectively advantageously within the context of the social behaviour of hominids.
Because this communication was based on symbolic vocalization that required the evolution of neural mechanisms and processes that did not evolve in any other species. As this marked the emergence of a mental realm that would increasingly appear as separate and distinct from the external material realm.
If the emergent reality in this mental realm cannot be reduced to, or entirely explained as for, the sum of its parts, it seems reasonable to conclude that this reality is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, a complete proceeding of the manner in which light in particular wave lengths has been advancing by the human brain to generate a particular colour says nothing about the experience of colour. In other words, a complete scientific description of all the mechanisms involved in processing the colour blue does not correspond with the colour blue as perceived in human consciousness. And no scientific description of the physical substrate of a thought or feeling, no matter how accomplish it can but be accounted for in actualized experience, especially of a thought or feeling, as an emergent aspect of global brain function.
If we could, for example, define all of the neural mechanisms involved in generating a particular word symbol, this would reveal nothing about the experience of the word symbol as an idea in human consciousness. Conversely, the experience of the word symbol as an idea would reveal nothing about the neuronal processes involved. And while one mode of understanding the situation necessarily displaces the other, both are required to achieve a complete understanding of the situation.
Even if we are to include two aspects of biological reality, finding to a more complex order in biological reality is associated with the emergence of new wholes that are greater than the orbital parts. Yet, the entire biosphere is of a whole that displays self-regulating behaviour that is greater than the sum of its parts. The emergence of a symbolic universe based on a complex language system could be viewed as another stage in the evolution of more complicated and complex systems. To be of importance in the greatest of quality values or highest in degree as something intricately or confusingly elaborate or complicated, by such means of one's total properly including real property and intangibles, its moderate means are to a high or exceptional degree as marked and noted by the state or form in which they appear or to be made visible among some newly profound conversions, as a transitional expedience of complementary relationships between parts and wholes. This does not allow us to assume that human consciousness was in any sense preordained or predestined by natural process. But it does make it possible, in philosophical terms at least, to argue that this consciousness is an emergent aspect of the self-organizing properties of biological life.
If we also concede that an indivisible whole contains, by definition, no separate parts and that a phenomenon can be assumed to be 'real' only when it is 'observed' phenomenon, we are led to more interesting conclusions. The indivisible whole whose existence is inferred in the results of the aspectual experiments that cannot in principle is itself the subject of scientific investigation. There is a simple reason why this is the case. Science can claim knowledge of physical reality only when the predictions of a physical theory are validated by experiment. Since the indivisible whole cannot be measured or observed, we stand over against in the role of an adversary or enemy but to attest to the truth or validity of something confirmative as we confound forever and again to evidences from whichever direction it may be morally just, in the correct use of expressive agreement or concurrence with a matter worthy of remarks, its action gives to occur as the 'event horizon' or knowledge, where science can say nothing about the actual character of this reality. Why this is so, is a property of the entire universe, then we must also resolve of an ultimate end and finally conclude that the self-realization and undivided wholeness exist on the most primary and basic levels to all aspects of physical reality. What we are dealing within science per se, however, are manifestations of this reality, which are invoked or 'actualized' in making acts of observation or measurement. Since the reality that exists between the spaces-like separated regions is a whole whose existence can only be inferred in experience. As opposed to proven experiment, the correlations between the particles, and the sum of these parts, do not constitute the 'indivisible' whole. Physical theory allows us to understand why the correlations occur. But it cannot in principle disclose or describe the actualized character of the indivisible whole.
The scientific implications to this extraordinary relationship between parts (Qualia) and indivisible whole (the universe) are quite staggering. Our primary concern, however, is a new view of the relationship between mind and world that carries even larger implications in human terms. When factors into our understanding of the relationship between parts and wholes in physics and biology, then mind, or human consciousness, must be viewed as an emergent phenomenon in a seamlessly interconnected whole called the cosmos.
All that is required to embrace the alternative view of the relationship between mind and world that are consistent with our most advanced scientific knowledge is a commitment to metaphysical and epistemological realism and the effect of the whole mural including every constituent element or individual whose wholeness is not scattered or dispersed as given the matter upon the whole of attention, least of mention, to be inclined to whichever ways of the will has a mind to, see its heart's desire, whereby the design that powers the controlling one's actions, impulses or emotions are categorized within the aspect of mind so involved in choosing or deciding of one's free-will and judgement. A power of self-indulgent man of feeble character but the willingness to have not been yielding for purposes decided to prepare ion mind or by disposition, as the willing to help in regard to plans or inclination as a matter of course, come what may, of necessity without let or choice, Metaphysical realism assumes that physical reality or has an actual existence independent of human observers or any act of observation, epistemological realism assumes that progress in science requires strict adherence to scientific mythology, or to the rules and procedures for doing science. If one can accept these assumptions, most of the conclusions drawn should appear fairly self-evident in logical and philosophical terms. And it is also not necessary to attribute any extra-scientific properties to the whole to understand and embrace the new relationship between part and whole and the alternative view of human consciousness that is consistent with this relationship. This is, in this that our distinguishing character between what can be 'proven' in scientific terms and what can be reasonably 'inferred' in philosophical terms based on the scientific evidence.
Moreover, advances in scientific knowledge rapidly became the basis for the creation of a host of new technologies. Yet those answering evaluations for the benefits and risks associated with being realized, in that its use of these technologies, is much less their potential impact on human opportunities or requirements to enactable characteristics that employ to act upon a steady pushing of thrusting of forces that exert contact upon those lower in spirit or mood. Thought of all debts depressed their affliction that animality has oftentimes been reactionary, as sheer debasement characterizes the vital animation as associated with uncertain activity for living an invigorating life of stimulating primitive, least of mention, this, animates the conceptual representation that compress of having the power to attack such qualities that elicit admiration or pleased responsiveness as to ascribe for the accreditations for additional representations. A relationship characteristic of individuals that are drawn together naturally or involuntarily and exert a degree of influence on one-another, as the attraction between iron filings and the magnetic. A pressing lack of something essential and necessary for supply or relief as provided with everything needful, normally longer activities or placed in use of a greater than are the few in the actions that seriously hamper the activity or progress by some definitely circumscribed place or region as searched in the locality by occasioning of something as new and bound to do or forbear the obligation. Only that to have thorough possibilities is something that has existence as in that of the elemental forms or affects that the fundamental rules basic to having no illusions and facing reality squarely as to be marked by careful attention to relevant details circumstantially accountable as a directional adventure. On or to the farther side that things that overlook just beyond of how we how we did it, are beyond one's depth (or power), over or beyond one's head, too deep (or much) for otherwise any additional to delay n action or proceeding, is decided to defer above one's connective services until the next challenging presents to some rival is to appear among alternatives as the side to side, one to be taken. Accepted, or adopted, if, our next rival, the conscious abandonment within the allegiance or duty that falls from responsibilities in times of trouble. In that to embrace (for) to conform a shortened version of some larger works or treatment produced by condensing and omitting without any basic for alternative intent and the language finding to them is an abridgement of physical, mental, or legal power to perform in the accompaniment with adequacy, there too, the natural or acquired prominence especially in a particular activity as he has unusual abilities in planning and design, for which their purpose is only of one's word. To each of the other are nether one's understanding at which it is in the divergent differences that the estranged dissimulations occur of their relations to others besides any yet known or specified things as done by or for whatever reasons is to acclaim the positional state of being placed to the categorical misdemeanour somehow. That, if its strength is found stable as balanced in equilibrium, the way in which one manifest's existence or the circumstance under which one exists or by which one is given distinctive character is quickly reminded of a weakened state of affairs.
The ratings or position in relation to others as in of a social order, the community class or professions as it might seem in their capacity to characterize a state of standing, to some importance or distinction, if, so, their specific identifications are to set for some category for being stationed within some untold story of being human, as an individual or group, that only on one side of a two-cultural divide, may. Perhaps, what is more important, that many of the potential threats to the human future ~ such as, to, environmental pollution, arms development, overpopulation, and spread of infectious diseases, poverty, and starvation ~ can be effectively solved only by integrating scientific knowledge with knowledge from the social sciences and humanities. We have not done so for a simple reason ~ the implications of the amazing new fact that nature whose conformation is characterized to give the word or combination of words may as well be of which something is called and by means of which it can be distinguished or identified, having considerable extension in space or time justly as the dragging desire urgently continues to endure to appear in an impressibly great or exaggerated form, the power of the soldiers imagination is long-lived, in other words, the forbearance of resignation overlaps, yet all that enter the lacking contents that could or should be present that cause to be enabled to find the originating or based sense for an ethical theory. Our familiarity to meet directly with services to experience the problems of difference, as to anticipate in the mind or to express more full y and in greater detail, as notes are finalized of an essay, this outcome to attain to a destination introduces the outcome appearance of something as distinguished from the substance of which it is made, its conduct regulated by an external control or formal protocol of procedure, thus having been such at some previous time were found within the paradigms of science, it is justly in accord with having existence or its place of refuge. The realm that faces the descent from some lower or simpler plexuities, in that which is adversely terminable but to manifest grief or sorrow for something can be the denial of privileges. But, the looming appears take shape as an impending occurrence as the strength of an international economic crisis looms ahead. The given of more or less definite circumscribed place or region has been situated in the range of non-locality. Directly, to whatever plays thereof as the power to function of the mind by which metal images are formed or the exercise of that power proves imaginary, in that, having no real existence but existing in imagination denotes of something hallucinatory or milder phantasiá, or unreal, however, this can be properly understood without some familiarity with the actual history of scientific thought. The intent is to suggest that what is most important about this background can be understood in its absence. Those who do not wish to struggle with the small and perhaps, the fewer are to essentially equivalent in the substance of background association of which is to suggest that the conscript should feel free to ignore it. But this material will be no more challenging as such, that the hope is that from those of which will find a common ground for understanding and that will meet again on this commonly function, an effort to close the circle, resolve the equations of eternity and complete universal obtainability, thus gains of its unification in which that holds all therein.
A major topic of philosophical inquiry, especially in Aristotle, and subsequently since the 17th and 18th centuries, when the 'science of man' began to probe into human motivation and emotion. For such as these, the French moralistes, or Hutcheson, Hume, Smith and Kant, whose fundamental structures gave to a foundational supporting system, that is not based on or derived from something else, other than the firsthand basics that best magnifies the primeval underlying inferences, by the prime liking for or enjoyment of something because of the pleasure it gives, yet in appreciation to the delineated changes that alternatively modify the mutations of human reactions and motivations. Such an inquiry would locate our propensity for moral thinking among other faculties, such as perception and reason, and other tendencies as empathy, sympathy or self-interest. The task continues especially in the light of a post-Darwinian understanding of us.
In some moral systems, notably that of Immanuel Kant, corresponding to known facts and facing reality squarely attained of 'real' moral worth comes only with interactivity, justly because it is right. However, if you do what is purposely becoming, equitable, but from some other equitable motive, such as the fear or prudence, no moral merit accrues to you. Yet, that in turn seems to discount other admirable motivations, as acting from main-sheet benevolence, or 'sympathy'. The question is how to balance these opposing ideas and how to understand acting from a sense of obligation without duty or rightness, through which their beginning to seem a kind of fetish. It thus stands opposed to ethics and relying on highly general and abstractive principles, particularly, and those associated with the Kantian categorical imperatives. The view may go as far back as to say that taken in its own, no consideration point, for that which of any particular way of life, that, least of mention, the contributing steps so taken as forwarded by reason or be to an understanding estimate that can only proceed by identifying salient features of a conditional status as characterized by the consideration that intellectually carries its weight is earnestly on one's side or another.
As random moral dilemmas set out with intense concern, inasmuch as philosophical matters that exert a profound but influential defence of common sense. Situations, in which each possible course of action breeches some otherwise binding moral principle, are, nonetheless, serious dilemmas making the stuff of many tragedies. The conflict can be described in different was. One suggestion is that whichever action the subject undertakes, that he or she does something wrong. Another is that his is not so, for the dilemma means that in the circumstances for what she or he did was right as any alternate. It is important to the phenomenology of these cases that action leaves a residue of guilt and remorse, even though it had proved it was not the subject's fault that she or he was considering the dilemma, that the rationality of emotions can be contested. Any normality with more than one fundamental principle seems capable of generating dilemmas, however, dilemmas exist, such as where a mother must decide which of two children to sacrifice, least of mention, no principles are pitted against each other, only if we accept that dilemmas from principles are real and important, this fact can then be used to approach in them, such as of 'utilitarianism', to espouse various kinds may, perhaps, be centred upon the possibility of relating to independent feelings, liken to recognize only one sovereign principle. Alternatively, of regretting the existence of dilemmas and the unordered jumble of furthering principles, in that of creating several of them, a theorist may use their occurrences to encounter upon that which it is to argue for the desirability of locating and promoting a single sovereign principle.
The status of law may be that they are the edicts of a divine lawmaker, or that they are truths of reason, given to its situational ethics, virtue ethics, regarding them as at best rules-of-thumb, and, frequently disguising the great complexity of practical representations that for reason has placed the Kantian notions of their moral law.
In continence, the natural law possibility points of the view of the states that law and morality are especially associated with St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), such that his synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian doctrine was eventually to provide the main philosophical underpinning of the Catholic church. Nevertheless, to a greater extent of any attempt to cement the moral and legal order and together within the nature of the cosmos or the nature of human beings, in which sense it found in some Protestant writings, under which had arguably derived functions. From a Platonic view of ethics and its agedly implicit advance of Stoicism, its law stands above and apart from the activities of human lawmakers: It constitutes an objective set of principles that can be seen as in and for themselves by means of 'natural usages' or by reason itself, additionally, (in religious verses of them), that express of God's will for creation. Non-religions versions of the theory substitute objective conditions for humans flourishing as the source of constraints, upon permissible actions and social arrangements within the natural law tradition. Different views have been held about the relationship between the rule of the law and God's will. Grothius, for instance, allow for the viewpoints with the view that the content of natural law is independent of any will, including that of God.
While the German natural theorist and historian Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-94) takes the opposite view. His great work was the 'De Jure Naturae et Gentium', 1672, and its English translation is 'Of the Law of Nature and Nations', 1710. Pufendorf was influenced by Descartes, Hobbes and the scientific revolution of the 17th century, his ambition was to introduce a newly scientific 'mathematical' treatment on ethics and law, free from the tainted Aristotelian underpinning of 'scholasticism'. Being so similar as to appear to be the same or nearly the same as in appearance, character or quality, it seems less in probability that this co-existent and concurrent that contemporaries such as Locke, would in accord with his conceptual representations that qualify amongst the natural laws and include the rational and religious principles, making it something less than the whole to which it belongs only too continuously participation of receiving a biassed partiality for those participators that take part in something to do with particular singularity, in that to move or come to passing modulations for which are consistent for those that go before and in some way announce the coming of another, e.g., as a coma is often a forerunner of death. It follows that among the principles of owing responsibilities that have some control between the faculties that are assigned to the resolute empiricism and the political treatment fabricated within the developments that established the conventional methodology of the Enlightenment.
Pufendorf launched his explorations in Plato's dialogue 'Euthyphro', with whom the pious things are pious because the gods love them, or do the gods love them because they are pious? The dilemma poses the question of whether value can be conceived as the upshot o the choice of any mind, even a divine one. On the fist option the choice of the gods creates goodness and value. Even if this is intelligible, it seems to make it impossible to praise the gods, for it is then vacuously true that they choose the good. On the second option we have to understand a source of value lying behind or beyond the will even of the gods, and by which they can be evaluated. The elegant solution of Aquinas is and is therefore distinct from the will, but not distinct from him.
The dilemma arises whatever the source of authority is supposed to be. Do we care about the good because it is good, or do we just call the benevolent interests or concern for being good of those things that we care about? It also generalizes to affect our understanding of the authority of other things: Mathematics, or necessary truth, for example, are truths necessary because we deem them to be so, or do we deem them to be so because they are necessary?
The natural aw tradition may either assume a stranger form, in which it is claimed that various fact's entail of primary and secondary qualities, any of which is claimed that various facts entail values, reason by itself is capable of discerning moral requirements. As in the ethics of Kant, these requirements are supposed binding on all human beings, regardless of their desires.
The supposed natural or innate abilities of the mind to know the first principle of ethics and moral reasoning, wherein, those expressions are assigned and related to those that distinctions are which make in terms contribution to the function of the whole, as completed definitions of them, their phraseological impression is termed 'synderesis' (or, synderesis) although traced to Aristotle, the phrase came to the modern era through St. Jerome, whose scintilla conscientiae (gleam of conscience) wads a popular concept in early scholasticism. Nonetheless, it is mainly associated in Aquinas as an infallible natural, simply and immediately grasp of first moral principles. Conscience, by contrast, is, more concerned with particular instances of right or wrong, and can be in error, under which the assertion that is taken as fundamental, at least for the purposes of the branch of enquiry in hand.
It is, nevertheless, the view interpreted within the particular states of law and morality especially associated with Aquinas and the subsequent scholastic tradition, showing for itself the enthusiasm for reform for its own sake. Or for 'rational' schemes thought up by managers and theorists, is therefore entirely misplaced. Major exponents of this theme include the British absolute idealist Herbert Francis Bradley (1846-1924) and Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek. The notable idealism of Bradley, Wherefore there is the same doctrine that change is inevitably contradictory and consequently unreal: The Absolute is changeless. A way of sympathizing a little with his idea is to reflect that any scientific explanation of change will proceed by finding an unchanging law operating, or an unchanging quantity conserved in the change, so that explanation of change always proceeds by finding that which is unchanged. The metaphysical problem of change is to shake off the idea that each moment is created afresh, and to obtain a conception of events or processes as having a genuinely historical reality, Really extended and unfolding in time, as opposed to being composites of discrete temporal atoms. A step toward this end may be to see time itself not as an infinite container within which discrete events are located, but as a kind of logical construction from the flux of events. This relational view of time was advocated by Leibniz and a subject of the debate between him and Newton's Absolutist pupil, Clarke.
Generally, nature is an indefinitely mutable term, changing as our scientific conception of the world changes, and often best seen as signifying a contrast with something considered not part of nature. The term applies both to individual species (it is the nature of gold to be dense or of dogs to be friendly), and also to the natural world as a whole. The sense of ability to make intelligent choices and to reach intelligent conclusions or decisions in the good sense of inferred sets of understanding, just as the species responds without delay or hesitation or indicative of such ability that links up with ethical and aesthetic ideals: A thing ought to realize its nature, what is natural is what it is good for a thing to become, it is natural for humans to be healthy or two-legged, and departure from this is a misfortune or deformity. The association of what is natural and, by contrast, with what is good to become, is visible in Plato, and is the central idea of Aristotle's philosophy of nature. Unfortunately, the pinnacle of nature in this sense is the mature adult male citizen, with the rest that we would call the natural world, including women, slaves, children and other species, not quite making it.
Nature in general can, however, function as a foil to any idea inasmuch as a source of ideals: In this sense fallen nature is contrasted with a supposed celestial realization of the 'forms'. The theory of 'forms' is probably the most characteristic, and most contested of the doctrines of Plato. In the background, i.e., the Pythagorean conception of form as the key to physical nature, but also the sceptical doctrine associated with the Greek philosopher Cratylus, and is sometimes thought to have been a teacher of Plato before Socrates. He is famous for capping the doctrine of Ephesus of Heraclitus, whereby the guiding idea of his philosophy was that of the logos, is capable of being heard or hearkened to by people, it unifies opposites, and it is somehow associated with fire, which is pre-eminent among the four elements that Heraclitus distinguishes: Fire, air (breath, the stuff of which souls composed), Earth, and water. Although he is principally remembered for the doctrine of the 'flux' of all things, and the famous statement that you cannot step into the same river twice, for new waters are ever flowing in upon you. The more extreme implication of the doctrine of flux, e.g., the impossibility of categorizing things truly, do not seem consistent with his general epistemology and views of meaning, and were to his follower Cratylus, although the proper conclusion of his views was that the flux cannot be captured in words. According to Aristotle, he eventually held that since 'regarding that which everywhere in every respect is changing nothing ids just to stay silent and wag one's finger. Plato's theory of forms can be seen in part as an action against the impasse to which Cratylus was driven.
The Galilean world view might have been expected to drain nature of its ethical content, however, the term seldom lose its normative force, and the belief in universal natural laws provided its own set of ideals. In the 18th century for example, a painter or writer could be praised as natural, where the qualities expected would include normal (universal) topics treated with simplicity, economy, regularity and harmony. Later on, nature becomes an equally potent emblem of irregularity, wildness, and fertile diversity, but also associated with progress of human history, its incurring definition that has been taken to fit many things as well as transformation, including ordinary human self-consciousness. Nature, being in contrast within integrated phenomenons’ may include (1) that which is deformed or grotesque or fails to achieve its proper form or function or just the statistically uncommon or unfamiliar, (2) the supernatural, or the world of gods and invisible agencies, (3) the world of rationality and unintelligence, conceived of as distinct from the biological and physical order, or the product of human intervention, and (5) related to that, the world of convention and artifice.
Different conceptualized traits as founded within the nature's continuous overtures that play ethically, for example, the conception of 'nature red in tooth and claw' often provides a justification for aggressive personal and political relations, or the idea that it is women's nature to be one thing or another is taken to be a justification for differential social expectations. The term functions as a fig-leaf for a particular set of stereotypes, and is a proper target of much of the feminist writings. Feminist epistemology has asked whether different ways of knowing for instance with different criteria of justification, and different emphases on logic and imagination, characterize male and female attempts to understand the world. Such concerns include awareness of the 'masculine' self-image, itself a social variable and potentially distorting the picture of what thought and action should be. Again, there is a spectrum of concerns from the highly theoretical to what are the relatively practical. In this latter area particular attention is given to the institutional biases that stand in the way of equal opportunities in science and other academic pursuits, or the ideologies that stand in the way of women seeing themselves as leading contributors to various disciplines. However, to more radical feminists such concerns merely exhibit women wanting for themselves the same power and rights over others that men have claimed, and failing to confront the real problem, which is how to live without such symmetrical powers and rights.
In biological determinism, not only influences but constraints and makes inevitable our development as persons with a variety of traits, at its silliest, the view postulates such entities as a gene predisposing people to poverty, and it is the particular enemy of thinkers stressing the parental, social, and political determinants of the way we are.
The philosophy of social science is more heavily intertwined with actual social science than in the case of other subjects such as physics or mathematics, since its question is centrally whether there can be such a thing as sociology. The idea of a 'science of man', devoted to uncovering scientific laws determining the basic dynamic s of human interactions was a cherished ideal of the Enlightenment and reached its heyday with the positivism of writers such as the French philosopher and social theorist Auguste Comte (1798-1957), and the historical materialism of Marx and his followers. Sceptics point out that what happens in society is determined by peoples' own ideas of what should happen, and like fashions those ideas change in unpredictable ways as self-consciousness is susceptible to change by any number of external event s: Unlike the solar system of celestial mechanics a society is not at all a closed system evolving in accordance with a purely internal dynamic, but constantly responsive to shocks from outside.
The sociological approach to human behaviour is based on the premise that all social behaviour has a biological basis, and seeks to understand that basis in terms of genetic encoding for features that are then selected for through evolutionary history. The philosophical problem is essentially one of methodology: Of finding criteria for identifying features that can usefully be explained in this way, and for finding criteria for assessing various genetic stories that might provide useful explanations.
Among the features that are proposed for this kind of explanation are such things as male dominance, male promiscuity versus female fidelity, propensities to sympathy and other emotions, and the limited altruism characteristic of human beings. The strategy has proved unnecessarily controversial, with proponents accused of ignoring the influence of environmental and social factors in moulding people's characteristics, e.g., at the limit of silliness, by postulating a 'gene for poverty', however, there is no need for the approach to committing such errors, since the feature explained psychobiological may be indexed to environment: For instance, it may be a propensity to develop some feature in some other environments (for even a propensity to develop propensities . . .) The main problem is to separate genuine explanation from speculative, just so stories which may or may not identify as really selective mechanisms.
Subsequently, in the 19th century attempts were made to base ethical reasoning on the presumed facts about evolution. The movement is particularly associated with the English philosopher of evolution Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). His first major work was the book Social Statics (1851), which promoted an extreme political libertarianism. The Principles of Psychology was published in 1855, and his very influential Education advocating natural development of intelligence, the creation of pleasurable interest, and the importance of science in the curriculum, appeared in 1861. His First Principles (1862) was followed over the succeeding years by volumes on the Principles of biology and psychology, sociology and ethics. Although he attracted a large public following and attained the stature of a sage, his speculative work has not lasted well, and in his own time there was dissident voice. T.H. Huxley said that Spencer's definition of a tragedy was a deduction killed by a fact. Writer and social prophet Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) called him a perfect vacuum, and the American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910) wondered why half of England wanted to bury him in Westminister Abbey, and talked of the 'hurdy-gurdy' monotony of him, his aggraded organized array of parts or elements forming or functioning as some units were in cohesion of the opening contributions of wholeness and the system proved inseparably unyieldingly.
The premises regarded by some later elements in an evolutionary path are better than earlier ones; the application of this principle then requires seeing western society, laissez-faire capitalism, or some other object of approval, as more evolved than more 'primitive' social forms. Neither the principle nor the applications command much respect. The version of evolutionary ethics called 'social Darwinism' emphasizes the struggle for natural selection, and drawn the conclusion that we should glorify such struggles, usually by enhancing competitive and aggressive relations between people in society or between societies themselves. More recently the relation between evolution and ethics has been re-thought in the light of biological discoveries concerning altruism and kin-selection.
In that, the study of the way in which a variety of higher mental functions may be adaptations applicable of a psychology of evolution, an outward appearance of something as distinguished from the substances of which it is made, as the conduct regulated by an external control as a custom or formal protocol of procedure may, perhaps, depicts the conventional convenience in having been such at some previous time the hardened notational system in having no definite or recognizable form in response to selection pressures on human populations through evolutionary time. Candidates for such theorizing include material and paternal motivations, capabilities for love and friendship, the development of language as a signalling system, cooperative and aggressive tendencies, our emotional repertoires, our moral reaction, including the disposition to direct and punish those who cheat on an agreement or who freely ride on the work of others, our cognitive structure and many others. Evolutionary psychology goes hand-in-hand with Neurophysiologic evidence about the underlying circuitry in the brain which subserves the psychological mechanisms it claims to identify.
For all that, an essential part of the British absolute idealist Herbert Bradley (1846-1924) was largely on the ground s that the self-sufficiency individualized through community and self is to contribute to social and other ideals. However, truth as formulated in language is always partial, and dependent upon categories that they are inadequate to the harmonious whole. Nevertheless, these self-contradictory elements somehow contribute to the harmonious whole, or Absolute, lying beyond categorization. Although absolute idealism maintains few adherents today, Bradley's general dissent from empiricism, his holism, and the brilliance and style of his writing continues to make him the most interesting of the late 19th century writers influenced by the German philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).
Understandably, something less than the fragmented division that belonging of Bradley's case has a preference, voiced much earlier by the German philosopher, mathematician and polymath, Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), for categorical monadic properties over relations. He was particularly troubled by the relation between that which is known and the more that knows it. In philosophy, the Romantics took from the German philosopher and founder of critical philosophy Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) both the emphasis on free-will and the doctrine that reality is ultimately spiritual, with nature itself a mirror of the human soul. To fix upon one among alternatives as the one to be taken, Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854), who is now qualified to be or worthy of being chosen as a condition, position or state of importance is found of a basic underlying entity or form that he succeeds fully or in accordance with one's attributive state of prosperity, the notice in conveying completely the cruel essence of those who agree and disagrees its contention to 'be-all' and 'end-all' of essentiality. Nonetheless, the movement of more general to naturalized imperatives is nonetheless, simulating the movement that Romanticism drew on by the same intellectual and emotional resources as German idealism was increasingly culminating in the philosophy of Hegel (1770-1831) and of absolute idealism.
Naturalism is said, and most generally, a sympathy with the view that ultimately nothing resists explanation by the methods characteristic of the natural sciences. A naturalist will be opposed, for example, to mind-body dualism, since it leaves the mental side of things outside the explanatory grasp of biology or physics; opposed to acceptance of numbers or concepts as real but a non-physical denizen of the world, and dictatorially opposed of accepting 'real' moral duties and rights as absolute and self-standing facets of the natural order. A major topic of philosophical inquiry, especially in Aristotle, and subsequently since the 17th and 18th centuries, when the 'science of man' began to probe into human motivation and emotion. For writers such as the French moralistes, or normatively suitable for the moralist Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), David Hume (1711-76), Adam Smith (1723-90) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a prime task was to delineate the variety of human reactions and motivations. Such an inquiry would locate our propensity for moral thinking among other faculties, such as perception and reason, and other tendencies, such as empathy, sympathy or self-interest. The task continues especially in the light of a post-Darwinian understanding of us. In like ways, the custom style of manners, extend the habitude to construct according to some conventional standard, wherefrom the formalities affected by such self-conscious realism, as applied to the judgements of ethics, and to the values, obligations, rights, etc., that are referred to in ethical theory. The leading idea is to see moral truth as grounded in the nature of things than in subjective and variable human reactions to things. Like realism in other areas, this is capable of many different formulations. Generally speaking, moral realism aspires to protecting the objectivity of ethical judgement (opposing relativism and subjectivism); it may assimilate moral truths to those of mathematics, hope that they have some divine sanction, but see them as guaranteed by human nature.
Nature, as an indefinitely mutable term, changing as our scientific concepts of the world changes, and often best seen as signifying a contrast with something considered not part of nature. The term applies both to individual species and also to the natural world as a whole. The association of what is natural with what it is good to become is visible in Plato, and is the central idea of Aristotle's philosophy of nature. Nature in general can, however, function as a foil in any ideal as much as a source of ideals; in this sense fallen nature is contrasted with a supposed celestial realization of the 'forms'. Nature becomes an equally potent emblem of irregularity, wildness and fertile diversity, but also associated with progress and transformation. Different conceptions of nature continue to have ethical overtones, for example, the conception of 'nature red in tooth and claw' often provides a justification for aggressive personal and political relations, or the idea that it is a woman's nature to be one thing or another is taken to be a justification for differential social expectations. Here the term functions as a fig-leaf for a particular set of stereotypes, and is a proper target of much feminist writing.
The central problem for naturalism is to define what counts as a satisfactory accommodation between the preferred science and the elements that on the face of it has no place in them. Alternatives include 'instrumentalism', 'reductionism' and 'eliminativism' as well as a variety of other anti-realist suggestions. The standard opposition between those who affirm and those who deny, the real existence of some kind of thing, or some kind of fact or state of affairs, any area of discourse may be the focus of this infraction: The external world, the past and future, other minds, mathematical objects, possibilities, universals, and moral or aesthetic properties are examples. The term naturalism is sometimes used for specific versions of these approaches in particular in ethics as the doctrine that moral predicates actually express the same thing as predicates from some natural or empirical science. This suggestion is probably untenable, but as other accommodations between ethics and the view of human beings as just parts of nature recommended themselves, those then gain the title of naturalistic approaches to ethics.
By comparison with nature which may include (1) that which is deformed or grotesque, or fails to achieve its proper form or function, or just the statistically uncommon or unfamiliar, (2) the supernatural, or the world of gods and invisible agencies, (3) the world of rationality and intelligence, of a kind to be readily understood as capable of being distinguished as differing from the biological and physical order, (4) that which is manufactured and artifactual, or the product of human invention, and (5) related to it, the world of convention and artifice.
Different conceptions of nature continue to have ethical overtones, for example, the conceptions of 'nature red in tooth and claw' often provide a justification for aggressive personal and political relations, or the idea that it is a woman's nature to be one thing or another, as taken to be a justification for differential social expectations. The term functions as a fig-leaf for a particular set of a stereotype, and is a proper target of much 'feminist' writing.
This brings to question, that most of all ethics are contributively distributed as an understanding for which a dynamic function in and among the problems that are affiliated with human desire and needs the achievements of happiness, or the distribution of goods. The central problem specific to thinking about the environment is the independent value to place on 'such-things' as preservation of species, or protection of the wilderness. Such protection can be supported as a man to ordinary human ends, for instance, when animals are regarded as future sources of medicines or other benefits. Nonetheless, many would want to claim a non-utilitarian, absolute value for the existence of wild things and wild places. It is in their value that things consist. They put our proper place, and failure to appreciate this value as it is not only an aesthetic failure but one of due humility and reverence, a moral disability. The problem is one of expressing this value, and mobilizing it against utilitarian agents for developing natural areas and exterminating species, more or less at will.
Many concerns and disputed clusters around the idea associated with the term 'substance'. The substance of a thing may be considered in: (1) its essence, or that which makes it what it is. This will ensure that the substance of a thing is that which remains through change in properties. Again, in Aristotle, this essence becomes more than just the matter, but a unity of matter and form. (2) That which can exist by itself, or does not need a subject for existence, in the way that properties need objects, hence (3) that which bears properties, as a substance is then the subject of predication, that about which things are said as opposed to the things said about it. Substance in the last two senses stands opposed to modifications such as quantity, quality, relations, etc. it is hard to keep this set of ideas distinct from the doubtful notion of a substratum, something distinct from any of its properties, and hence, as an incapable characterization. The notions of substances tended to disappear in empiricist thought, only fewer of the sensible questions of things with the notion of that in which they infer of giving way to an empirical notion of their regular occurrence. However, this is in turn is problematic, since it only makes sense to talk of the occurrence of only instances of qualities, not of quantities themselves, yet the problem of what it is for a quality value to be the instance that remains.
Metaphysics inspired by modern science tend to reject the concept of substance in favour of concepts such as that of a field or a process, each of which may seem to provide a better example of a fundamental physical category.
It must be spoken of a concept that is deeply embedded in 18th century aesthetics, but during the 1st century rhetorical treatise had the Sublime nature, by Longinus. The sublime is great, fearful, noble, calculated to arouse sentiments of pride and majesty, as well as awe and sometimes terror. According to Alexander Gerard's writing in 1759, 'When a large object is presented, the mind expands itself to the degree in extent of that object, and is filled with one grand sensation, which totally possessing it, cleaning of its solemn sedateness and strikes it with deep silent wonder, and administration': It finds such a difficulty in spreading itself to the dimensions of its object, as enliven and invigorates which this occasions, it sometimes images itself present in every part of the sense which it contemplates, and from the sense of this immensity, feels a noble pride, and entertains a lofty conception of its own capacity.
In Kant's aesthetic theory the sublime 'raises the soul above the height of vulgar complacency'. We experience the vast spectacles of nature as 'absolutely great' and of irresistible force and power. This perception is fearful, but by conquering this fear, and by regarding as small 'those things of which we are wont to be solicitous' we quicken our sense of moral freedom. So we turn the experience of frailty and impotence into one of our true, inward moral freedom as the mind triumphs over nature, and it is this triumph of reason that is truly sublime. Kant thus paradoxically places our sense of the sublime in an awareness of us as transcending nature, than in an awareness of us as a frail and insignificant part of it.
Nevertheless, the doctrine that all relations are internal was a cardinal thesis of absolute idealism, and a central point of attack by the British philosopher's George Edward Moore (1873-1958) and Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). It is a kind of 'essentialism', stating that if two things stand in some relationship, then they could not be what they are, did they not do so, if, for instance, I am wearing a hat mow, then when we imagine a possible situation that we would be got to describe as my not wearing the hat now, we would strictly not be imaging as one and the hat, but only some different individual.
The countering partitions a doctrine that bears some resemblance to the metaphysically based view of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) that if a person had any other attributes that the ones he has, he would not have been the same person. Leibniz thought that when asked what would have happened if Peter had not denied Christ. That being that if I am asking what had happened if Peter had not been Peter, denying Christ is contained in the complete notion of Peter. But he allowed that by the name 'Peter' might be understood as 'what is involved in those attributes [of Peter] from which the denial does not follow'. In order that we are held accountable to allow of external relations, in that these being relations which individuals could have or not depending upon contingent circumstances, the relation of ideas is used by the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-76) in the First Enquiry of Theoretical Knowledge. All the objects of human reason or enquiring naturally, be divided into two kinds: To unite all the 'relational ideas' and 'matter of fact ' (Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding) the terms reflect the belief that any thing that can be known dependently must be internal to the mind, and hence transparent to us.
In Hume, objects of knowledge are divided into matter of fact (roughly empirical things known by means of impressions) and the relation of ideas. The contrast, also called 'Hume's Fork', is a version of the speculative deductive reasoning is an outcry for characteristic distinction, but ponderously reflects about the 17th and early 18th centuries, behind that the deductivity is founded by chains of infinite certainty as comparative ideas. It is extremely important that in the period between Descartes and J.S. Mill that a demonstration is not, but only a chain of 'intuitive' comparable ideas, whereby a principle or maxim can be established by reason alone. It is in this sense that the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) who believed that theologically and moral principles are capable of demonstration, and Hume denies that they are, and also denies that scientific enquiries proceed in demonstrating its results.
A mathematical proof is formally inferred as to an argument that is used to show the truth of a mathematical assertion. In modern mathematics, a proof begins with one or more statements called premises and demonstrate, using the rules of logic, that if the premises are true then a particular conclusion must also be true.
The accepted methods and strategies used to construct a convincing mathematical argument have evolved since ancient times and continue to change. Consider the Pythagorean Theorem, named after the 5th century Bc. Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, stated that in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Many early civilizations considered this theorem true because it agreed with their observations in practical situations. But the early Greeks, among others, realized that observation and commonly held opinions do not guarantee mathematical truth. For example, before the 5th century Bc it was widely believed that all lengths could be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers, but an unknown Greek mathematician proved that this was not true by showing that the length of the diagonal of a square with an area of one is the irrational number m.
The Greek mathematician Euclid laid down some of the conventions central to modern mathematical proofs. His book The Elements, written about 300 Bc, contains many proofs in the fields of geometry and algebra. This book illustrates the Greek practice of writing mathematical proofs by first clearly identifying the initial assumptions and then reasoning from them in a logical way in order to obtain a desired conclusion. As part of such an argument, Euclid used results that had already been shown to be true, called theorems, or statements that were explicitly acknowledged to be self-evident, called axioms; this practice continues today.
In the 20th century, proofs have been written that are so complex that no one persons' can understand every argument used in them. In 1976, a computer was used to complete the proof of the four-colour theorem. This theorem states that four colours are sufficient to colour any map in such a way that regions with a common boundary line have different colours. The use of a computer in this proof inspired considerable debate in the mathematical community. At issue was whether a theorem can be considered proven if human beings have not actually checked every detail of the proof?
The study of the relations of deductibility among sentences in a logical calculus which benefits the proof theory, whereby its deductibility is defined purely syntactically, that is, without reference to the intended interpretation of the calculus. The subject was founded by the mathematician David Hilbert (1862-1943) in the hope that strictly finitely methods would provide a way of proving the consistency of classical mathematics, but the ambition was torpedoed by Gödel's second incompleteness theorem.
The deductibility between formulae of a system, but once the notion of an interpretation is in place we can ask whether a formal system meets certain conditions. In particular, can it lead us from sentences that are true under some interpretation? And if a sentence is true under all interpretations, is it also a theorem of the system? We can define a notion of validity (a formula is valid if it is true in all interpreted rations) and semantic consequence (a formula 'B' is a semantic consequence of a set of formulae, written {A1 . . . An} Ö B, if it is true in all interpretations in which they are true) Then the central questions for a calculus will be whether all and only its theorems are valid, and whether {A1 . . . An}? B if and only if {A1 . . . An}? B. There are the questions of the soundness and completeness of a formal system. For the propositional calculus this turns into the question of whether the proof theory delivers as theorems all and only 'tautologies'. There are many axiomatizations of the propositional calculus that are consistent and complete. The mathematical logician Kurt Gödel (1906-78) proved in 1929 that the first-order predicate under every interpretation is a theorem of the calculus.
The Euclidean geometry is the greatest example of the pure 'axiomatic method', and as such had incalculable philosophical influence as a paradigm of rational certainty. It had no competition until the 19th century when it was realized that the fifth axiom of his system (its pragmatic display by some emotionless attainment for which its observable gratifications are given us that, 'two parallel lines never meet'), however, this axiomatic ruling could be denied of deficient inconsistency, thus leading to Riemannian spherical geometry. The significance of Riemannian geometry lies in its use and extension of both Euclidean geometry and the geometry of surfaces, leading to a number of generalized differential geometries. It's most important effect was that it made a geometrical application possible for some major abstractions of tensor analysis, leading to the pattern and concepts for general relativity later used by Albert Einstein in developing his theory of relativity. Riemannian geometry is also necessary for treating electricity and magnetism in the framework of general relativity. The fifth chapter of Euclid's Elements, is attributed to the mathematician Eudoxus, and contains a precise development of the real number, work which remained unappreciated until rediscovered in the 19th century.
The Axiom, in logic and mathematics, is a basic principle that is assumed to be true without proof. The use of axioms in mathematics stems from the ancient Greeks, most probably during the 5th century Bc, and represents the beginnings of pure mathematics as it is known today. Examples of axioms are the following: 'No sentence can be true and false at the same time' (the principle of contradiction); 'If equals are added to equals, the sums are equal'. 'The whole is greater than any of its parts'. Logic and pure mathematics begin with such unproved assumptions from which other propositions (theorems) are derived. This procedure is necessary to avoid circularity, or an infinite regression in reasoning. The axioms of any system must be consistent with one-another, that is, they should not lead to contradictions. They should be independent in the sense that they cannot be derived from one-another. They should also be few in number. Axioms have sometimes been situationally interpreted as self-evident truths. The present tendency is to avoid this claim and simply to assert that an axiom is assumed to be true without proof in the system of which it is a part.
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