Of course, to claim that the mind is ‘nothing beyond’ such-and-such kinds of behaviour, construed as either physical or agential behaviour in the widest sense, is not necessarily to be a behaviourist. The theory that the mind is a series of volitional acts-a view close to the idealist position of George Berkeley (1685-1753)-and the possible action’s of the minds’ condition are the enabling of certainties as founded in the neuronal events, while both controversial, are not forms of behaviourism.
Awaiting, right along the side of an approaching account for which anomalous monism may take on or upon itself is the view that there is only one kind of substance underlying all others, changing and processes. It is generally used in contrast to ‘dualism’, though one can also think of it as denying what might be called ‘pluralism’-a view often associated with Aristotle which claims that there are several substances, as the corpses of times generations have let it be known. Against the background of modern science, monism is usually understood to be a form of ‘materialism’ or ‘physicalism’. That is, the fundamental properties of matter and energy as described by physics are counted the only properties there are.
The position in the philosophy of mind known as ‘anomalous monism’ has its historical origins in the German philosopher and founder of critical philosophy Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), but is universally identified with the American philosopher Herbert Donald Davidson (1917-2003), and it was he who coined the term. Davidson has maintained that one can be a monist-indeed, a physicalist-about the fundamental nature of things and events, while also asserting that there can be no full ‘reduction’ of the mental to the physical. (This is sometimes expressed by saying that there can be an ontological, though not a conceptual reduction.) Davidson thinks that complete knowledge of the brain and any related neurophysiological systems that support the mind’s activities would not themselves be knowledge of such things as belief, desire, and experience, and so on, find the mentalistic generativist of thoughts. This is not because he thinks that the mind is somehow a separate kind of existence: Anomalous monism is after all monism. Rather, it is because the nature of mental phenomena rules out a priori that there will be law-like regularities connecting mental phenomena and physical events in the brain, and, without such laws, there is no real hope of explaining the mental that has recently come into existence, through the evolutionary structures in the physicality of the brain.
All and all, one central goal of the philosophy of science is to provided explicit and systematic accounts of the theories and explanatory strategies explored in the science. Another common goal is to construct philosophically illuminating analyses or explanations of central theoretical concepts involved in one or another science. In the philosophy of biology, for example, there is a rich literature aimed at understanding teleological explanations, and thereby has been a great deal of work on the structure of evolutionary theory and on such crucial concepts. If concepts of the simple (observational) sorts were internal physical structures that had, in this sense, an information-carrying function, a function they acquired during learning, then instances of these structure types would have a content that (like a belief) could be either true or false. In that of ant information-carrying structure carries all kinds of information if, for example, it carries information ‘A’, it must also carry the information that ‘A’ or ‘B’. Conceivably, the process of learning is supposed to b e a process in which a single piece of this information is selected for special treatment, thereby becoming the semantic content-the meaning-of subsequent tokens of that structure type. Just as we conventionally give artefacts and instruments information-providing functions, thereby making their flashing lights, and so forth-representations of the conditions in the world in which we are interested, so learning converts neural state that carries imparting information, as ‘pointer readings’ in the head, so to speak-int structures that have the function of providing some vital piece of information they carry when this process occurs in the ordinary course of learning, the functions in question develop naturally. They do not, as do the functions of instruments and artefacts, depends on the intentions, beliefs, and attitudes of users. We do not give brain structure these functions. They get it by themselves, in some natural way, either (of the senses) from their selectional history or (in thought) from individual learning. The result is a network of internal representations that have (in different ways) the power representation, of experience and belief.
To recognizing the existence or meaning of apprehending to know of the progression of constant understanding that this approach to ‘thought’ and ‘belief’, the approach that conceives of them as forms of internal representation, is not a version of ‘functionalism’-at least, not if this dely held theory is understood, as it is often, as a theory that identifies mental properties with functional properties. For functional properties have to do within the manner for which to some extent of engaging one’s imploring that which has real and independent existence, something, in fact, behaves, with its syndrome of typical causes and effects. An informational model of belief, to account for misrepresentation, a problem with which a preliminary way that in both need something more than a structure that provided information. It needs something having that as its function. It needs something supposed to provide information. As Sober (1985) comments for an account of the mind we need functionalism with the function, the ‘teleological’, is put back in it.
Philosophers’ need not charge a pressing lack of something essential, 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 the scientists themselves.
Cognitive psychology is, in many ways a curious and puzzling science. Many theories put forward by cognitive psychologists make use of a family of ‘intentional’ concepts-like believing that ‘, 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 explanations offered by these theories.
It is characteristic of dialectic awareness that discussions of intentionality appeared as the paradigm cases discussed which are usually beliefs or sometimes beliefs and desires, however, the biologically most basic forms of intentionality are in perception and in intentional action. These also have certain formal features that are not common to beliefs and desire. Consider a case of perceptual experience. Suppose that I see my hand in front of my face. What are the conditions of satisfaction? First, the perceptual experience of the hand in front of my face has as its condition of satisfaction that there is a hand in front of my face. Thus far, the condition of satisfaction is the same as the belief than there is a hand in front of my face. But with perceptual experience there is this difference: so that the intentional content is satisfied, the fact that there is a hand in front of my face must cause the very experience whose intentional content is that there is a hand in front of my face. This has the consequence that perception has a special kind of condition of satisfaction that we might describe as ‘causally self-referential’. The full conditions of satisfaction of the perceptual experience are, first that there is a hand in front of my face, and second, that there is a hand in front of my face caused the very experience of whose conditions of satisfaction forms a part. we can represent this in our acceptation of the form. S(p), such as:
Visual experience (that there is a hand in front of face
and the fact that there is a hand in front of my face, in which
is causing this very experience.)
Furthermore, visual experiences have a kind of conscious immediacy not characterised of beliefs and desires. A person can literally be said to have beliefs and desires while sound asleep. But one can only have visual experiences of a non-pathological kind when one is fully awake and conscious because the visual experiences are themselves forms of consciousness.
People’s decisions and actions are explained by appeal to their beliefs and desires. Perceptual processes, sensational, are said to result in mental states that represent (or sometimes misrepresent) one or as another aspect of the cognitive agent’s environment. Other theorists have offered analogous acts, if differing in detail, perhaps, the most crucial idea in all of this is the one about representations. There is perhaps a sense in which what happens to be said, is the level of the retina, that constitute the anatomical processes of occurring in the process of stimulation, some kind of representation of what produces 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 characteristic of the object of perception and the structure and nature of the retinal processes. One might say that the nature of that relation is such as to provide information about the part of the world perceived, in the sense of ‘information’ presupposed when one says that the rings in the sectioning of a tree’s truck provide information of its age. This is because there is an appropriate causal relation between the things that make it impossible for it to be a matter of chance. Subsequently processing can then be thought to exist for one who carried out on what is provided in the representational inquiries.
However, if there are such representations, they are not representations for the perceiver, it is the thought that perception involves representations of that kind that produced the old, and now largely discredited philosophical theories of perception that suggested that perception be 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 is 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 mental object of content is distinct from the content provided by the subsumption of what is perceived adjunct to concept. It must be emphasised that, that content is not one for the perceiver. What the information-processing story is to maintain, 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 is 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 because there is presupposed in that perception the possession of concepts of objects, and more particular, a concept of space and how objects occupy space.
It is, that, nonetheless, cognitive psychologists occasionally say a bit about the nature of intentional concepts and 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 grounds 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 Alan Jerry Fodor’s (1935-), The Language of Thought (1975) was a pioneering study in th genre on the field. Philosophers have, also, done important and widely discussed work in what might be called the ‘descriptive philosophy’ or ‘cognitive psychology’.
These philosophical accounts 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 scientists’ actual practice. But if the account they give of cognitive theories diverges significantly from the theories that psychologists actually produce, then the philosophers have just got it wrong. There is, however, a very different way in which philosopher’s 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 o or upon the narratives that scientific applications are but to criticize and improve it. The most common target of this critical approach is the use of intentional concepts in cognitive psychology. Intentional notions have been criticized on various grounds. The two situated considerations are that they fail to supervene on the physiology of the cognitive agent, and that they cannot be ‘naturalized’.
Perhaps e easiest way to make the point about ‘supervenience is to use a thought experiment of the sort originally proposed by the American philosopher Hilary Putnam (1926-). Suppose that in some distant corner of the universe there is a planet, Twin Earth, which is very similar to our own planet. On Twin Earth, there is a person who is an atom for an atom replica of J.F. Kennedy. Past, assassinated President J.F. Kennedy, who lives on Earth believes that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Tennessee, and if you asked him ‘Was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. born in Tennessee, In all probability the answer would either or not it is yes or no. Twin, Kennedy would respond in the same way, but it is not because he believes that our Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.? Was, as, perhaps, very much in question of what is true or false? His beliefs are about Twin-Luther, and that Twin -Luther was certainly not born in Tennessee, and thus, that J.F. Kennedy’s belief is true while Twin-Kennedy’s is false. What all this is supposed to show is that two people, perhaps on opposite polarities of justice, or justice as drawn on or upon human rights, can share all their physiological properties without sharing all their intentional properties. To turn this into a problem for cognitive psychology, two additional premises are needed. The first is that cognitive psychology attempts to explain behaviour by appeal to people’s intentional properties. The second, is that psychological explanations should not appeal to properties that fall to supervene on an organism’s physiology. (Variations on this theme can be found in the American philosopher Allen Jerry Fodor (1987)).
The thesis that the mental are supervening on the physical-roughly, the claim that the mental characters of a determinant adaptation of its physical nature-has played a key role in the formulation of some influential positions of the ‘mind-body’ problem. In particular versions of non-reductive ‘physicalism’, and has evoked in arguments about the mental, and has been used to devise solutions to some central problems about the mind-for example, the problem of mental causation.
The idea of supervenience applies to one but not to the other, that this, there could be no difference in a moral respect without a difference in some descriptive, or non-moral respect evidently, the idea generalized so as to apply to any two sets of properties (to secure greater generality it is more convenient to speak of properties that predicates). The American philosopher Donald Herbert Davidson (1970), was perhaps first to introduce supervenience into the rhetoric discharging into discussions of the mind-body problem, when he wrote ‘ . . . mental characteristics are in some sense dependent, or supervening, on physical characteristics. Such supervenience might be taken to mean that there cannot be two events alike in all physical respects but differing in some mental respectfulness, or that an object cannot alter in some metal deferential submission without altering in some physical regard. Following, the British philosopher George Edward Moore (1873-1958) and the English moral philosopher Richard Mervyn Hare (1919-2003), from whom he avowedly borrowed the idea of supervenience. Donald Herbert Davidson, went on to assert that supervenience in this sense is consistent with the irreducibility of the supervient to their ‘subvenience’, or ‘base’ properties. Dependence or supervenience of this kind does not entail reducibility through law or definition . . . ‘
Thus, three ideas have purposively come to be closely associated with supervenience: (1) Property convariation, (if two things are indiscernible in the infrastructure of allowing properties that they must be indiscernible in supervening properties). (2) Dependence, (supervening properties are dependent on, or determined by, their subservient bases) and (3) non-reducibility (property convariation and dependence involved in supervenience can obtain even if supervening properties are not reducible to their base properties.)
Nonetheless, in at least, for the moment, supervenience of the mental-in the form of strong supervenience, or, at least global supervenience-is arguably a minimum commitment to physicalism. But can we think of the thesis of mind-body supervenience itself as a theory of the mind-body relation-that is, as a solution to the mind-body problem?
It would seem that any serious theory addressing the mind-body problem must say something illuminating about the nature of psychophysical dependence, or why, contrary to common belief, there is no dependence in either way. However, if we take to consider the ethical naturalist intuitivistic will say that the supervenience, and the dependence, for which is a brute fact you discern through moral intuition: And the prescriptivist will attribute the supervenience to some form of consistency requirements on the language of evaluation and prescription. And distinct from all of these is mereological supervenience, namely the supervenience of properties of a whole on properties and relations of its pats. What all this shows, is that there is no single type of dependence relation common to all cases of supervenience, supervenience holds in different cases for different reasons, and does not represent a type of dependence that can be put alongside causal dependence, meaning dependence, mereological dependence, and so forth.
There seems to be a promising strategy for turning the supervenience thesis into a more substantive theory of mind, and it is that to explicate mind-body supervenience as a special case of mereological supervenience-that is, the dependence of the properties of a whole on the properties and relations characterizing its proper parts. Mereological dependence does seem to be a special form of dependence that is metaphysically sui generis and highly important. If one takes this approach, one would have to explain psychological properties as macroproperties of a whole organism that covary, in appropriate ways, with its macroproperties, i.e., the way its constituent organs, tissues, and so forth, are organized and function. This more specific supervenience thesis may be a serious theory of the mind-body relation that can compete for the classic options in the field.
On this topic, as with many topics in philosophy, there is a distinction to be made between (1) certain vague, partially inchoate, pre-theoretic ideas and beliefs about the matter nearby, and (2) certain more precise, more explicit, doctrines or theses that are taken to articulate or explicate those pre-theoretic ideas and beliefs. There are various potential ways of precisifying our pre-theoretic conception of a physicalist or materialist account of mentality, and the question of how best to do so is itself a matter for ongoing, dialectic, philosophical inquiry.
The view concerns, in the first instance, at least, the question of how we, as ordinary human beings, in fact go about ascribing beliefs to one another. The idea is that we do this on the basis of our knowledge of a common-sense theory of psychology. The theory is not held to consist in a collection of grandmotherly saying, such as ‘once bitten, twice shy’. Rather it consists in a body of generalizations relating psychological states to each other to input from the environment, and to actions. Such may be founded on or upon the grounds that show or include the following:
(1) (x)(p)(if x fears that p, then x desires that not-p.)
(2) (x)(p)(if x hopes that p and ■ hope that p and ■ discover that p, then ■ is pleased that p.)
(3) (x)(p)(q) (If x believes that p and ■ believes that if p, then q, barring confusion, distraction and so forth. ■ believes that q.)
(4) (x)(p)(q) (If x desires that p and x believes that if q then p, and x are able to bring it about that q, then, barring conflict ting desires or preferred strategies, x brings it about that q.)
All of these generalizations should be most of the time, but variably. Adventurous types often enjoy the adrenal thrill produced by fear, this leads them, on occasion, to desire the very state of affairs that frightens them. Analogously, with (3). A subject who believes that ‘p’ nd believes that if ‘p’, then ‘q’. Would typically infer that ‘q?’. But certain atypical circumstances may intervene: Subjects may become confused or distracted, or they ma y finds the prospect of ‘q’ so awful that they dare not allow themselves to believe it. The ceteris paribus nature of these generalizations is not usually considered to be problematic, since atypical circumstances are, of course, atypical, and the generalizations are applicable most of the time.
We apply this psychological theory to make inference about people’s beliefs, desires and so forth. If, for example, we know that Julie believes that if she is to be at the airport at four, then she should get a taxi at half past two, and she believes that she is to be at the airport at four, then we will predict, using (3), that Julie will infer that she should get a taxi at half past two.
The Theory-Theory, as it is called, is an empirical theory addressing the question of our actual knowledge of beliefs. Taken in its purest form if addressed both first and third-person knowledge: we know about our own beliefs and those of others in the same way, by application of common-sense psychological theory in both cases. However, it is not very plausible to hold that we overplay or overact of any given attention or emphasis in dramatizing in excess of going beyond a normal or acceptable limit. That indeed usually-know our own beliefs by way of theoretical inference. Since it is an empirical theory concerning one of our cognitive abilities, the Theory-Theory is open to psychological scrutiny. Various issues of the hypothesized common-sense psychological theory, we need to know whether it is known consciously or unconsciously. Nevertheless, research has revealed that three-year-old children are reasonably gods at inferring the beliefs of others on the basis of actions, and at predicting actions on the basis of beliefs that others are known to possess. However, there is one area in which three-year-old’s psychological reasoning differs markedly from adults. Tests of the sorts are rationalized in such that: ‘False Belief Tests’, reveal largely consistent results. Three-year-old subjects are witnesses to the scenario about the child, Billy, see his mother place some biscuits in a biscuit tin. Billy then goes out to play, and, unseen by him, his mother removes the biscuit from the tin and places them in a jar, which is then hidden in a cupboard. When asked, ‘Where will Billy look for the biscuits’? The majority of three-year-olds answer that Billy will look in the jar in the cupboard-where the biscuits actually are, than where Billy saw them being placed. On being asked ‘Where does Billy think the biscuits are’? They again, tend to answer ‘in the cupboard’, rather than ‘in the jar’. Three-year-olds thus, appear to have some difficulty attributing false beliefs to others in case in which it would be natural for adults to do so. However, it appears that three-year-olds are lacking the idea of false beliefs overall, nor does it come out that they struggle with attributing false beliefs in other kinds of situations. For example, they have little trouble distinguishing between dreams and play, on the one hand, and true beliefs or claims on the other. By the age of four and some half years, most children pass the False Belief Tests fairly consistently. There is yet no general accepted theory of why three-year-olds fare so badly with the false beliefs tests, nor of what it reveals about their conception of beliefs.
Recently some philosophers and psychologists have put forward what they take to be an alternative to the Theory-Theory: However, the challenge does not end there. We need also to consider the vital element of making appropriate adjustments for differences between one’s own psychological states and those of the other. Nevertheless, it is implausible to think in every such case of simulation, yet alone will provide the resolving obtainability to achieve.
The evaluation of the behavioural manifestations of belief, desires, and intentions are enormously varied, every bit as suggested. When we move away from perceptual beliefs, the links with behaviour are intractable and indirect: The expectation I form on the basis of a particular belief reflects the influence of numerous other opinions, my actions are formed by the totality of my preferences and all those opinions that have a bearing on or upon them. The causal processes that produce my beliefs reflect my opinions about those processes, about their reliability and the interference to which they are subject. Thus, behaviour justifies the ascription of a particular belief only by helping to warrant a more all-inclusive interpretation of cognitive positions of the individual in question. Psychological descriptions, like translation, are a ‘holistic’ business. And once this is taken into account, it is all the less likely that a common physical trait will be found which grounds all instances of the same belief. The ways in which all of our propositional altitudes interact in the production of behaviour reinforce the anomalous character of our mentality and render any sort of reduction of the mind to the physical impossibilities. Such is not meant as a practical procedure, it can, however, generalize on this so that interpretation and merely translation is at issue, has made this notion central to methods of accounting responsibilities of the mind.
Theory and Theory-Theory are two, as many think competing, views of the nature of our common-sense, propositional attitude explanations of action. For example, when we say that our neighbour cut down his apple tree because he believed that it was ruining his patio and did not want it ruined, we are offering a typically common-sense explanation of his action in terms of his beliefs and desires. But, even though wholly familiar, it is not clear what kind of explanation is at issue. Connected of one view, is the attribution of beliefs and desires that are taken as the application to actions of a theory that, in its informal way, functions very much like theoretical explanations in science. This is known as the ‘theory-theory’ of every day psychological explanation. In contrast, it has been argued that our propositional attributes are not theoretical claims do much as reports of a kind of ‘simulation’. On such a ‘simulation theory’ of the matter, we decide what our neighbour will do (and thereby why he did so) by imagining ourselves in his position and deciding what we would do.
The Simulation Theorist should probably concede that simulations need to be backed up by the unconfined means of discovering the psychological states of others. But they need not concede that these independent means take the form of a theory. Rather, they might suggest that we can get by with some rules of thumb, or straightforward inductive reasoning of a general kind.
A second and related difficulty with the Simulation Theory concerns our capacity to attribute beliefs that are too alien to be easily simulated: Beliefs of small children, or psychotics, or bizarre beliefs are deeply suppressed into the mindful latencies within the unconscious. The small child refuses to sleep in the dark: He is afraid that the Wicked Witch will steal him away. No matter how many adjustments we make, it may be hard for mature adults to get their own psychological processes, as even to make in pretended play, to mimic the production of such belief. For the Theory-Theory alien beliefs are not particularly problematic: So long as they fit into the basic generalizations of the theory, they will be inferable from the evidence. Thus, the Theory-Theory can account better for our ability to discover more bizarre and alien beliefs than can the Simulation Theory.
The Theory-Theory and the Simulation Theory are not the only proposals about knowledge of belief. A third view has its origins in the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). On this view both the Theory and Simulation Theories attribute too much psychologizing to our common-sense psychology. Knowledge of other minds is, according to this alternative picture, more observational in nature. Beliefs, desires, feelings are made manifest to us in the speech and other actions of those with whom we share a language and way of life. When someone says. ‘Its going to rain’ and takes his umbrella from his bag. It is immediately clear to us that he believes it is going to rain. In order to know this, we neither theorize nor simulate: We just perceive, of course, this is not straightforward visual perception of the sort that we use to see the umbrella. But it is like visual perception in that it provides immediate and non-inferential awareness of its objects. we might call this the ‘Observational Theory’.
The Observational Theory does not seem to accord very well with the fact that we frequently do have to indulge in a fair amount of psychologizing to find in what others believe. It is clear that any given action might be the upshot of any number of different psychological attitudes. This applies even in the simplest cases. For example, because one’s friend is suspended from a dark balloon near a beehive, with the intention of stealing honey. This idea to make the bees behave that it is going to rain and therefore believe that the balloon as a dark cloud, and therefore pay no attention to it, and so fail to notice one’s dangling friend. Given this sort of possible action, the observer would surely be rash immediately to judge that the agent believes that it is going to rain. Rather, they would need to determine-perhaps, by theory, perhaps by simulation-which of the various clusters of mental states that might have led to the action, actually did so. This would involve bringing in further knowledge of the agent, the background circumstances and so forth. It is hard to see how the sort of complex mental process involved in this sort of psychological reflection could be assimilated to any kind of observation.
The attributions of intentionality that depend on optimality or reasonableness are interpretations of the assumptive phenomena-a ‘heuristic overlay’ (1969), describing an inescapable idealized ‘real pattern’. Like such abstractions, as centres of gravity and parallelograms of force, the beliefs and desires posited by the highest stance have noo independent and concrete existence, and since this is the case, there would be no deeper facts that could settle the issue if-most importantly-rival intentional interpretations arose that did equally well at rationalizing the history of behaviour of an entity. Orman van William Quine 1908-2000, the most influential American philosopher of the latter half of the 20th century, whose thesis on the indeterminacy of radical translation carries all the way in the thesis of the indeterminacy of radical interpretation of mental states and processes.
The fact that cases of radical indeterminacy, though possible in principle, is vanishingly unlikely ever to comfort us in the solacing refuge and shelter, yet, this is apparently an idea that 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 our
every day mentalistic discourse, and can be dubbed as folk-psychology
(1981)-such as beliefs, desires, pains, the self.
(2) Realism about content itself-the idea that there has 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 often manoeuvre themselves into a position from which they can see only two alternatives: Infinite regresses 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 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, some finites 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 disintegrate 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 sub-personal 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 an intentional system are unimpressive, bu t 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-appreciationality in our 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 instances of the ‘real’ thing. It is, for the same to reason a mistake must exist to answer all the questions our system of content attribution permits 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, accept perhaps, as history’s most slowly unwinding unintended reductio ad absurdum. Mostly, the disagreements explored in that literature cannot even be given an initial expression unless one takes on the assumption of an unsounded fundamentalist 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 a 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 state is 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, irregardless, produces on or upon the inflicting of 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 caused 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’. Suchlike some criteria can be applied only to cases where the fact that ‘p’, a sort that can enter 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 t 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 you is 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 only of being one or more of which there exist any other but manages not to require for justification is 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 too ‘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 tentative relevance for which alternate substitutions made for our consideration in view of its preservers that hold of both strands of 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’ entail’s ‘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 too ‘p’ is false. But, once an alternative ‘h’ too ‘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 ‘we 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 principles seems too 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 rise 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 there is any intensified replication that exist by 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 highly suggests that a criterion of relevance be 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? In the face of the fact that some exceptional version of empiricism have met many criticisms, and is nonetheless, overtaken 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 but by showing that its conclusions (and in particular its theoretical conclusions-those theories it presently accepts) are somehow legitimately based on agreed observational and experimental evidence? But, as is well known, theories usually pose a problem for empiricism.
Allowing the empiricist the assumptions that there are observational statements whose truth-values can be inter-subjectively agreeing, 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 establishing the unequalled independence of a theoretical interpretation. Experiments merely enable the production of (true) observation statements. Shared, replicable observations are the basis for a 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 evidently direct observability as made accessibly phenomenal, 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 restrictions if ‘T’ were quantified-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, in the unity as favourable contenders? There are notorious problems in formulating ths criteria at all precisely: But suppose, for present purposes, that we have heretofore, strong enough intuitive grasps 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 to 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 schema. For van Fraassen, if a theory say that there are electrons, then the theory should be taken as meaning to express in words, that which is said and 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 thinking 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 allow s 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 explications.
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, that in spite of the fact that, 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 (a 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 set), according to which some of the factors required for justification must be cognitively accessible while the requiring obligations of employment seem the lack of something essential, whereby the vital fundamental duty of the others need not and overall 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 usually 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 non-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 overall 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 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 possession of our reasons in the grasp for thinking that the various beliefs questioned by the sceptic is true-a conviction that the proponent of this argument must have a course reject.
The main objection to externalism rests on the intuition that the basic requirements for epistemic justification is that the acceptance of the belief in question be rational or responsible in relation to the cognitive goal of truth, which seems to necessitate for which 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 an externalist condition is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of such a cognitively accessible reason, it is nonetheless, 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 is the prerequisite 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 remonstrance 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. To a greater extent the more widely adopted response attempts to impose additional conditions, usually of a more or less 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 case’s well enough to avoid clear intuitive implausibility, the issue is whether there will always be equally problematic cases for issues that might not handle, and 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 will normally 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 views 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 adults’ posse’s cognition, in that 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 intuitivistic vortices in the pertaining extent in the clarification, that is to clear up justification than to knowledge. What is uncertain, is what ultimate philosophical significance the resulting conception of knowledge is taken for granted as of having, but being the occupant of having 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 to 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, etc.-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 usually 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 raise 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 we 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 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 acts, 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 ay 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 sentences 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 larger than b’ is true if and only if the referent of ‘a’ is larger than a 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 within the tenets A1-A6 construct and develop a form for which 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, theorists’ of truth conditions should insist that not every 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 ct 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 hypothesis which substitute the 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 align himself with the naming authenticity that ‘London’ is 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 which for a person’s language is 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 kinds 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, minimal, or redundancy theory treats true statements as predicated of anything linguistic, like its utterances, or even, the type-in-a-language, or whatever. Then the equivalence schemata will not cover all cases, but those in the theorist’s own language only. 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 postpone, 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 exists what may be called ‘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 to involve truth, and which are not derivable from the minimalist‘s creation. 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 for 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 contents 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 premises a relatively observational concepts such as grounding possibilities 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-sos, . . . 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. To such a degree, one would suppose something of this form, such as regarded of belief and desire of which impress firmly 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 for 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 describe his language correctly. 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 phrasing the A6 axiom. 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 the same language has to use 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 A6 axiom, 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’ be that of a 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 their forms:
pCq pCq pq
p q pCq
Here ‘p’ and ‘q’ range ov complete propositional thoughts, not sentences. When A6 axiom 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 conjuncture 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 exampling of a greater amount of an overall 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 be 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, but 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 is to be attributed with those contents at all. we contrast in what we want 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 responsible. But desire has also seemed to 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 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 set up 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 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. 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 belies about the environment-have contents which can only be elucidated by referring 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, 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 aa sentence-wi 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 as a causally mediating between a subject’s sensory inputs and that of the subject’s ensuing behaviour. Functionalism itself is the stronger doctrine that makes a mental state the type of state it-is-in. That of causing of being inflected by some distressful 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 is determined by the recollected 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 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 be explained predict, they’re dripping their cans into H2O and XYZ respectfully. Thus the conceptual role of semantics would seem as though not to Jerry Fodor, who rejects of the conceptual role of semantics for both external and internal problems.
Nonetheless, if, as Fodor contests that 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 domains. 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 is just 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 a conceptuality as a blank cheque, the options are open-ended. The conceptual role of a [mental] expression might be its causal association: Any disposition too 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 in a conceptual role not causative of but inferentially (these need be 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 form ‘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 the [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 support counter-factuals: It tells us what would satisfy the conception situations other than the actual ones (although all actual bachelors might turn out to be freckled, it’s 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: It’s 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 must 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 John Locke (1632-1704), George Berkeley (1685-1753) and David Hume (1711-76) were often thought to mean that concepts were somehow composed of introspectible categorized mental items, ‘images’, ‘impressions’, and so on, 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, fewer, 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 exposures to the evidence is that 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 are0 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 the minds and of the standard computer, since computer programs are linguistically complex sets of instruments whose execution explains the surface behaviour of computer. Just 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 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’.
Connectivism has provided a somewhat different reaction among 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 neurophilosophy 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 too 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.
The arena in which the innateness takes place has been prosecuted with the greatest vigour is that of language acquisition, and it is appropriately 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 their 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 have 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, often simply representing the incorrect setting of a parameter in the grammar. More generally, inanest’s argue (Chomsky 1966 & Crain, 1991) all grammatical rules that have ever been observed satisfy the structure-dependence constraint. That is, more 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, inanest’s 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 fewer 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 demonstrating 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 serves 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, sharpness either in 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. Th 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 disanalogousness 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 deriving from innate structures, such as chess playing or musical composition. Hence, they are taken into consideration. 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 deficits, 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, but 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 sound streams that are prosodically appropriate that 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.
Representationalism 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 John 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 inadequateness to 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 was mercilessly exposed by the French theologian and 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, with the exception 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 suggested that the mind or brain manipulate 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 or to 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 often 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 symbols’ 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 raise the thermometer but the mercury level is not a representation for the thermometer. In order for # to represent ▲ to S’s activities. The functionalities 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.
On that point, it remains 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 understands 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 John 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 maintained 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 or 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 distinguishes as 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 them of a certain pattern of interpretation. we ascribe that ever states enable 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 so extreme a degree revision enables people 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 th 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 shown 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 fo e cafêteria. If I believe the cafê 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 states-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, so 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 discourse 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. ‘Reliabilists’ tend to take as belief as justified by a reason only if it is held ast least in part for that reason, in a sense implying, but not entailed by, being causally based on that reason. ‘Internalists’ often 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 explanans/explanandum are held of a wide currency of philosophical discoursing because it allows a certain succinctness which is unobtainable in ordinary English. Whether in science philosophy or in everyday life, one does often offers explanation s. the particular statement, laws, theories or facts that are used to explain something are collectively called the ‘explanans’, and the target of the explanans-the thing to be explained-is called the ‘explanandum’. Thus, one might explain why ice forms on the surface of lakes (the explanandum) in terms of the special property of water to expand as it approaches freezing point together with the fact that materials less dense than liquid water float in it (the explanans). The terms come from two different Latin grammatical forms: ‘Explanans’ is the present participle of the verb which means explain: And ‘explanandum’ is a direct object noun derived from the same verb.
The assimilation in the likeness as to examine side by side or point by point in order to bring such in comparison with an expressed or implied standard where comparative effects are both considered and equivalent resemblances bound to what merely happens to us, or to parts of us, actions are what we do. My moving my finger is an action to be distinguished from the mere motion of that finger. My snoring likewise, is not something I ‘do’ in the intended sense, though in another broader sense it is something I often ‘do’ while asleep.
The contrast has both metaphysical and moral import. With respect to my snoring, I am passive, and am not morally responsible, unless for example, I should have taken steps earlier to prevent my snoring. But in cases of genuine action, I am the cause of what happens, and I may properly be held responsible, unless I have an adequate excuse or justification. When I move my finger, I am the cause of the finger’s motion. When I say ‘Good morning’ I am the cause of the sounding expression or utterance. True, the immediate causes are muscle contractions in the one case and lung, lip and tongue motions in the other. But this is compatible with me being the cause-perhaps, I cause these immediate causes, or, perhaps it just id the case that some events can have both an agent and other events as their cause.
All this is suggestive, but not really adequate. we do not understand the intended force of ‘I am the cause’ and more than we understand the intended force of ‘Snoring is not something I do’. If I trip and fall in your flower garden, ‘I am the cause’ of any resulting damage, but neither the damage nor my fall is my action. In the considerations for which we approach to explaining what are actions, as contrasted with ‘mere’ doings, are. However, it will be convenient to say something about how they are to be individuated.
If I say ‘Good morning’ to you over the telephone, I have acted. But how many actions have O performed, and how are they related to one another and associated events? we may describe of what is done:
(1) Move my tongue and lips in certain ways, while exhaling.
(2) sat ‘Good morning’.
(3) Cause a certain sequence of modifications in the current flowing in your telephone.
(4) Say ‘Good morning’ to you.
(5) greet you.
The list-not exhaustive, by any means-is of act types. I have performed an action of each relation holds. I greet you by saying ‘Good morning’ to you, but not the converse, and similarity for the others on the list. But are these five distinct actions I performed, one of each type, or are the five descriptions all of a single action, which was of these five (and more) types. Both positions, and a variety of intermediate positions have been defended.
How many words are there within the sentence? : ‘The cat is on the mat’? There are on course, at best two answers to this question, precisely because one can enumerate the word types, either for which there are five, or that which there are six. Moreover, depending on how one chooses to think of word types another answer is possible. Since the sentence contains definite articles, nouns, a preposition and a verb, there are four grammatical different types of word in the sentence.
The type/token distinction, understood as a distinction between sorts of things, particular, the identity theory asserts that mental states are physical states, and this raises the question whether the identity in question if of types or token’.
During the past two decades or so, the concept of supervenience has seen increasing service in philosophy of mind. The thesis that the mental is supervenient on the physical-roughly, the claim that the mental character of a thing is wholly determined by its physical nature-has played a key role in the formulation of some influence on the mind-body problem. Much of our evidence for mind-body supervenience seems to consist in our knowledge of specific correlations between mental states and physical (in particular, neural) processes in humans and other organisms. Such knowledge, although extersive and in some ways impressive, is still quite rudimentary and far from complete (what do we know, or can we expect to know about the exact neural substrate for, say, the sudden thought that you are late with your rent payment this month?) It may be that our willingness to accept mind-body supervenience, although based in part on specific psychological dependencies, has to be supported by a deeper metaphysical commitment to the primary of the physical: It may in fact be an expression of such a commitment.
However, there are kinds of mental state that raise special issues for mind-body supervenience. One such kind is ‘wide content’ states, i.e., contentful mental states that seem to be individuated essentially by reference to objects and events outside the subject, e.g., the notion of a concept, like the related notion of meaning. 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 make a survey of the geography of the area and gain some idea of how these phenomena might fit together, leaving aside for the nonce just which of them deserve to be called ‘concepts’ as ordinarily understood.
Concepts are the constituents of such propositions, just as the words ‘capitalist’, ‘exploit’, and ‘workers’ are constituents of the sentence. However, there is a specific role that concepts are arguably intended to play that may serve a point of departure. Suppose one person thinks that capitalists exploit workers, and another that they do not. Call the thing that they disagree about ‘a proposition’, e.g., capitalists exploit workers. It is in some sense shared by them as the object of their disagreement, and it is expressed by the sentence that follows the verb ‘thinks that’ mental verbs that take such verbs of ‘propositional attitude’. Nonetheless, these people could have these beliefs only if they had, inter alia, the concept’s capitalist exploit. And workers.
Propositional attitudes, and thus concepts, are constitutive of the familiar form of explanation (so-called ‘intentional explanation’) by which we ordinarily explain the behaviour and stares of people, many animals and perhaps, some machines. The concept of intentionality was originally used by medieval scholastic philosophers. It was reintroduced into European philosophy b y the German philosopher and psychologist Franz Clemens Brentano (1838-1917) whose thesis proposed in Brentano’s ‘Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint’(1874) that it is the ‘intentionality or directedness of mental states that marks off the mental from the physical.
Many mental states and activities exhibit the feature of intentionality, being directed at objects. Two related things are meant by this. First, when one desire or believes or hopes, one always desires or believes of hopes something. As, to assume that belief report (1) is true.
(1) That most Canadians believe that George Bush is a Republican.
As tenet (1) tells us that some subject ‘Canadians’ have a certain attitude, belief, to something, designated by the nominal phrase that George Bush is a Republican and identified by its content-sentence.
(2) George Bush is a Republican.
Following Russell and contemporary usage that the object referred to by the that-clause is tenet (1) and expressed by tenet (2) a proposition. Notice, too, that this sentence might also serve as most Canadians’ belief-text, a sentence whereby to express the belief that (1) reports to have. Such an utterance of (2) by itself would assert the truth of the proposition it expresses, but as part of (1) its role is not to rely on anything, but to identify what the subject believes. This same proposition can be the object of other attitude s of other people. However, in that most Canadians may regret that Bush is a Republican yet, Reagan may remember that he is. Bushanan may doubt that he is.
Nevertheless, Brentano, 1960, we can focus on two puzzles about the structure of intentional states and activities, an area in which the philosophy of mind meets the philosophy of language, logic and ontology, least of mention, the term intentionality should not be confused with terms intention and intension. There is, nonetheless, an important connection between intention and intension and intentionality, for semantical systems, like extensional model theory, that are limited to extensions, cannot provide plausible accounts of the language of intentionality.
The attitudes are philosophically puzzling because it is not easy to see how the intentionality of the attitude 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’. As most Canadians belief that Bush to be a Republican just by examining the ‘contents’ of his own mind: He does not need to investigate the world around him. we think of attitudes as being caused at certain times by events that impinge on the subject’s body, specially by perceptual events, such as reading a newspaper or seeing a picture of an ice-cream cone. In that, the psychological level of descriptions carries with it a mode of explanation which has no echo in ‘physical theory’. we regard ourselves and of each other as ‘rational purposive creatures, fitting our beliefs to the world as we inherently perceive it and seeking to obtain what we desire in the light of them’. Reason-giving explanations can be offered not only for action and beliefs, which will attain the most of all attentions, however, desires, intentions, hopes, dears, angers, and affections, and so forth. Indeed, their positioning within a network of rationalizing links is part of the individuating characteristics of this range of psychological states and the intentional acts they explain.
Meanwhile, these attitudes can in turn cause changes in other mental phenomena, and eventually in the observable behaviour of the subject. Seeing a picture of an ice cream cone leads to a desire for one, which leads me to forget the meeting I am supposed to attend and walk to the ice-cream pallor instead. All of this seems to require that attitudes be states and activities that are localized in the subject.
Nonetheless, the phenomena of intentionality call to mind that the attitudes 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 attitude seems to be individuated by the agent, the type of attitude (belief, desire, and so on), and the proposition at which it is directed. It seems essential to the attitude reported by its believing that, for example, that it is directed toward the proposition that Bush is a Republican. And it seems essential to this proposition that it is about Bush. But how can a mental state or activity of a person essentially involve some other individuals? The problem is brought out by two classical problems such that are called ‘no-reference’ and ‘co-reference’.
The classical solution to such problems is to suppose that intentional states are only indirectly related to concrete particulars, like George Bush, whose existence is contingent, and that can be thought about in a variety of ways. The attitudes directly involve abstract objects of some sort, whose existence is necessary, and whose nature the mind can directly grasp. These abstract objects provide concepts or ways of thinking of concrete particulars. That is to say, the involving characteristics of the different concepts, as, these, concepts corresponding to different inferential/practical roles in that different perceptions and memories give rise to these beliefs, and they serve as reasons for different actions. If we individuate propositions by concepts than individuals, the co-reference problem disappears.
The proposal has the bonus of also taking care of the no-reference problem. Some propositions will contain concepts that are not, in fact, of anything. These propositions can still be believed desired, and the like.
This basic idea has been worked out in different ways by a number of authors. The Austrian philosopher Ernst Mally thought that propositions involved abstract particulars that ‘encoded’ properties, like being the loser of the 1992 election, rather than concrete particulars, like Bush, who exemplified them. There are abstract particulars that encode clusters of properties that nothing exemplifies, and two abstract objects can encode different clusters of properties that are exemplified by a single thing. The German philosopher Gottlob Frége distinguished between the ‘sense’ and the ‘reference’ of expressions. The senses of George Bus hh and the person who will come in second in the election are different, even though the references are the same. Senses are grasped by the mind, are directly involved in propositions, and incorporate ‘modes of presentation’ of objects.
For most of the twentieth century, the most influential approach was that of the British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Russell (19051929) in effect recognized two kinds of propositions that assemble of a ‘singular proposition’ that consists separately in particular to properties in relation to that. An example is a proposition consisting of Bush and the properties of being a Republican. ‘General propositions’ involve only universals. The general proposition corresponding to someone is a Republican would be a complex consisting of the property of being a Republican and the higher-order property of being instantiated. The term ‘singular proposition’ and ‘general proposition’ are from Kaplan (1989.)
Historically, a great deal has been asked of concepts. As shareable constituents of the object 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, antinomy and semantic implication. Much work in the semantics of natural language takes itself to 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 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 known for 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 the [bachelor], which seems to be identical to [eligible unmarried male]. A more interesting, but problematic one has been [knowledge], whose 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 is, -, e.g., in virtue of what a bachelor is a bachelor? And it does so in a way that supports counter-factuals: It tells us what would satisfy the concept in situations other than the actual ones (although all actual bachelors might turn out to be freckled. It’s 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.
As it had been ascribed, in that Actions as Doings having Mentalistic Explanation: Coughing is sometimes like snoring and sometimes like saying ‘Good morning’-that is, sometimes in mere doing and sometimes an action. And deliberate coughing can be explained by invoking an intention to cough, a desired to cough or some other ‘pro-attitude’ toward coughing, a reason for coughing or purpose in coughing or something similarly mental. Especially if we think of actions as ‘outputs’ of the mental machine’. The functionalist thinks of ‘mental states’ as events as causally mediating between a subject’s sensory inputs and the subject 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 closed-minded belief that koalas are dangerous, are the functional relation it bears to the subject’s perceptual stimuli, behaviour responses and other mental states.
Twentieth-century functionalism gained as credibility in an indirect way, by being perceived as affording the least objectionable solution to 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. To refute the view that a certain level of behavioural dispositions is necessary for a mental life, we need convincing cases of thinking stones, or utterly incurable paralytics or disembodied minds. But these alleged possibilities are to some merely that.
To rebuttal against the view that a certain level of behavioural dispositions is sufficient for a mental life, we need convincing cases rich behaviour with no accompanying mental states. The typical example is of a puppet controlled by radio-wave links, by other minds outside the puppet’s hollow body. But one might wonder whether the dramatic devices are producing the anti-behaviorist intuition all by themselves. And how could the dramatic devices make a difference to the facts of the casse? If the puppeteers were replaced by a machine, not designed by anyone, yet storing a vast number of input-output conditionals, which was reduced in size and placed in the puppet’s head, do we still have a compelling counterexample, to the behaviour-as-sufficient view? At least it is not so clear.
Such an example would work equally well against the anti-eliminativist version of which the view that mental states supervene on behavioural disposition. But supervenient behaviourism could be refitted by something less ambitious. The ‘X-worlders’ of the American philosopher Hilary Putnam (1926-), who are in intense pain but do not betray this in their verbal or non-verbal behaviour, behaving just as pain-free human beings, would be the right sort of case. However, even if Putnam has produced a counterexample for pain-which the American philosopher of mind Daniel Clement Dennett (1942-), for one would doubtless deny-an ‘X-worlder’ narration to refute supervenient behaviourism with respect to the attitudes or linguistic meaning will be less intuitively convincing. Behaviourist resistance is easier for the reason that having a belief or meaning a certain thing, lack distinctive phenomemologies.
There is a more sophisticated line of attack. As, the most influential American philosopher of the latter half of the 20th century philosopher Willard von Orman Quine (1908-2000) has remarked some have taken his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation as a reductio of his behaviourism. For this to be convincing, Quines argument for the indeterminacy thesis and to be persuasive in its own and that is a disputed matter.
If behaviourism is finally laid to rest to the satisfaction of most philosophers, it will probably not by counterexamples, or by a reductio from Quine’s indeterminacy thesis. Rather, it will be because the behaviorists worries about other minds, and the public availability of meaning have been shown to groundless, or not to require behaviourism for their solution. But we can be sure that this happy day will take some time to arrive.
Quine became noted for his claim that the way one uses’ language determines what kinds of things one is committed to saying exist. Moreover, the justification for speaking one way rather than another, just as the justification for adopting one conceptual system rather than another, was a thoroughly pragmatic one for Quine (see Pragmatism). He also became known for his criticism of the traditional distinction between synthetic statements (empirical, or factual, propositions) and analytic statements (necessarily true propositions). Quine made major contributions in set theory, a branch of mathematical logic concerned with the relationship between classes. His published works include Mathematical Logic (1940), From a Logical Point of View (1953), Word and Object (1960), Set Theory and Its Logic (1963), and: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary (1987). His autobiography, The Time of My Life, appeared in 1985.
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 unto two main categories: Intentionality problems and Qualia problems.
Propositional attitudes such as beliefs and desires are directed upon states of affairs which may or may not actually obtain, e.g., that the Republican or let alone any in the Liberal party will win, and are about individuals who may or may not exist, e.g., King Arthur. Franz Brentano raised the question of how are purely physical entity or state could have the property of being ‘directed upon’ or about a non-existent state of affairs or object: That is not the sort of feature that ordinary, purely physical objects can have.
The standard functionalist reply is that propositional attitudes have Brentano’s feature because the internal physical states and events that realize them ‘represent’ actual or possible states of affairs. What they represent is determined at least in part, by their functional roles: Is that, mental events, states or processes with content involve reference to objects, properties or relations, such as a mental state with content can fail to refer, but there always exists a specific condition for a state with content to refer to certain things? As when the state gas a correctness or fulfilment condition, its correctness is determined by whether its referents have the properties the content specifies for them.
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? Firstly, there has been general agreement that the basic notion of a representation involves one thing’s ‘standing for’, ‘being about’, ‘pertain to’, ‘referring or denoting of something else entirely’. The major debates here have been over the nature of this connection between a representation and that which it represents. As to the second, perhaps the most famous and extensive attempt to organize and differentiated among alternative forms of the representation is found in the works of C.S. Peirce (1931-1935). Peirce’s theory of sign in complex, involving a number of concepts and distinctions that are no longer paid much heed. The aspect of his theory that remains influential and is widely cited, is his division of signs into Icons, Indices and Symbols. Icons are signs that are said to be like or resemble the things they represent, e.g., portrait paintings. Indices are signs that are connected to their objects by some causal dependency, e.g., smoke as a sign of fire. Symbols are those signs that are related to their object by virtue of use or association: They are arbitrary labels, e.g., the word ‘table’. The divisions 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 representation, between representation 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 theorists, moreover, have maintained that it is only the use of Symbols that exhibits or indicate s the presence of mind and mental states.
Representations, along with mental states, especially beliefs and thoughts, are said to exhibit ‘intentionality’ in that they refer or to 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, 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 as word and what it denotes, that, wherein, the problem also remains for Iconic representation.
In at least, there are two difficulties. One is that of saying exactly ‘how’ a physical item’s representational content is determined, in not by the virtue of what does a neurophysiological state represent precisely that the available candidate will win? An answer to that general question is what the American philosopher of mind, Alan Jerry Fodor (1935-) has called a ‘psychosemantics’, and several attempts have been made. Taking the analogy between thought and computation seriously, Fodor believes that mental representations should be conceived as individual states with their own identities and structures, like formulae transformed by processes of computations or thought. His views are frequently contrasted with those of ‘holiest’ such as the American philosopher Herbert Donald Davidson (1917-2003), whose constructions within a generally ‘holistic’ theory of knowledge and meaning. Radical interpreter can tell when a subject holds a sentence true, and using the principle of ‘clarity’ ends up making an assignment of truth condition is a defender of radical translation and the inscrutability of reference’, Holist approach has seemed to many has seemed to many to offer some hope of identifying meaning as a respectable notion, eve n within a broadly ‘extensional’ approach to language. Instructionalists about mental ascription, such as Clement Daniel Dennett (19420) who posits the particularity that Dennett has also been a major force in illuminating how the philosophy of mind needs to be informed by work in surrounding sciences.
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 reflation does the environment have to the belief? These questions involve taking sides in the externalism and internalism debate. To a first approximation, the externalist holds that one’s propositional attitude cannot be characterized without reference to the disposition of object and properties in the world-the environment-in which in is simulated. 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, beliefs about grass would not be available to you. However, 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 there was necessarily a time when 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 no longer exists anywhere in the environment, but your antecedent’s contact with it left some sort of genetic trace in you, and the trace is sufficient to give rise to a mental state that could be characterized as about grass.
At the more specific level that has been the focus in recent years: What do thoughts have in common in virtue of which they are thoughts? What is, what makes a thought a thought? What makes a pain a pain? Cartesian dualism said the ultimate nature of the mental was to be found in a special mental substance. Behaviourism identified mental states with behavioural disposition: Physicalism in its most influential version identifies mental states with brain states. One could imagine that the individual states that occupy the relevant causal roles turn out not to be bodily stares: For example, they might instead be states of an Cartesian unextended substance. But its overwhelming likely that the states that do occupy those causal roles are all tokens of bodily-state types. However, a problem does seem to arise about 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 neural firing, we identify that state in two different ways: As a pain and as neural firing. The state will therefore have certain properties in virtue of which we identify it as a pain and others in virtue of which we identify it as a pain will be mental properties, whereas those in virtue of which we identify it as neural firing will be physical properties. This has seemed to many to lead to a kind of dualism at the level of the properties of mental states. Even if we reject a dualism of substances and take people simply to be physical organisms, those organisms still have both mental and physical states. Similarly, even if we identify those mental states with certain physical states, those states will nonetheless have both mental and physical properties. So, disallowing dualism with respect to substances and their stares simply leads to its reappearance at the level of the properties of those states.
The problem concerning mental properties is widely thought to be most pressing for sensations, since the painful quality of pains and the red quality of visual sensation seem to be irretrievably physical. So, even 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 support a thoroughgoing mind-body physicalism.
A more sophisticated reply to the difficulty about mental properties is due independently to D.M. Armstrong (1968) and David Lewis (1972), who argue that for a state to be a particular sort of intentional state or sensation is for that state to bear characteristic causal relations to other particular occurrences. The properties in virtue of which we identify states as thoughts or sensations will still be neutral as between being mental or physical, since anything can bear a causal relation to anything else. But causal connections have a better chance than similarity in some unspecified respect t of capturing the distinguishing properties of sensation and thoughts.
It should be mentioned that the properties can be more complex and complicating than the above allows. For instance, in the sentence, ‘John is married to Mary’, we are attributing to John the property of being married. And, unlike the property of being bald, this property of John is essentially relational. Moreover, it is commonly said that ‘is married to’ expresses a relation, than a property, though the terminology is not fixed, but, some authors speak of relations as different from properties in being more complex but like them in being non-linguistic, though it is more common to treat relations as a sub-class of properties.
The Classical view, meanwhile, has always had to face the difficulty of ‘primitive’ concepts: It’s all well and good to claim that competence consists in some sort of mastery of a definition, but what about the primitive concepts in which a process of definition must ultimately end? There 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 discussions of that view, that all concepts are ‘derived from experience’: ‘Every idea is derived from a corresponding impression’. In the work of John Locke (1682-1704), George Berkeley (1685-1753) and David Hume (1711-76) as it was thought to mean that concepts were somehow ‘composed’ of introspectible mental items-images -, ‘impressions’-that were ultimately decomposable into basic sensory parts. Thuds, Hume analyzed the concept of [material object] as involving certain regularities in our sensory experience, and [cause] as involving conjunction.
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 imaging the general one. More recent, 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?) Whatever the role of such representation, full conceptual competence must involve something more.
Indeed, in addition to images and impressions and other sensory items, a full account of concepts needs to consider issues of logical structure. This is precisely what ‘logical postivists’ did, focussing on logically structured sentences instead of sensations and images, transforming the empiricalist claim into the famous’ Verifiability Theory of Meaning’: The meaning of a 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, as Jules Alfred Ayer (1910-89) proved to be one of the most important modern epistemologists, his first and most famous book, ‘Language, Truth and Logic’, to the extent that epistemology is concerned with the a priori justification of our ordinary or scientific beliefs, since the validity of such beliefs ‘is an empirical matter, which cannot be settled by such means. However, he does take positions which have been bearing on epistemology. For example, he is a phenomenalists, believing that material objects are logical constructions out of actual and possible sense-experience, and an anti-foundationalism, at least in one sense, denying that there is a bedrock level of indubitable propositions on which empirical knowledge can be based. As regards the main specifically epistemological problem he addressed, the problem of our knowledge of other minds, he is essentially behaviouristic, since the verification principle pronounces that the hypothesis of the occurrences intrinsically inaccessible experience is unintelligible.
Although his views were later modified, he early maintained that all meaningful statements are either logical or empirical. According to his principle of verification, a statement is considered empirical only if some sensory observation is relevant to determining its truth or falseness. Sentences that are neither logical nor empirical-including traditional religious, metaphysical, and ethical sentences-are judged nonsensical. Other works of Ayer include The Problem of Knowledge (1956), the Gifford Lectures of 1972-73 published as The Central Questions of Philosophy (1973), and Part of My Life: The Memoirs of a Philosopher (1977).
Ayer’s main contribution to epistemology are in his book, ‘The Problem of Knowledge’ which he himself regarded as superior to ‘Language, Truth and Logic’ (Ayer 1985), soon there after Ayer develops a fallibilist type of foundationalism, according to which processes of justification or verification terminate in someone’s having an experience, but there is no class of infallible statements based on such experiences. Consequently, in making such statements based on experience, even simple reports of observation we ‘make what appears to be a special sort of advance beyond our data’ (1956). And it is the resulting gap which the sceptic exploits. Ayer describes four possible responses to the sceptic: Naïve realism, according to which materia l objects are directly given in perception, so that there is no advance beyond the data: Reductionism, according to which physical objects are logically constructed out of the contents of our sense-experiences, so that again there is no real advance beyond the data: A position according to which there is an advance, but it can be supported by the canons of valid inductive reasoning and lastly a position called ‘descriptive analysis’, according to which ‘we can give an account of the procedures that we actually follow . . . but there [cannot] be a proof that what we take to be good evidence really is so’.
Ayer’s reason why our sense-experiences afford us grounds for believing in the existence of physical objects is simply that sentence which are taken as referring to physical objects are used in such a way that our having the appropriate experiences counts in favour of their truths. In other words, having such experiences is exactly what justification of or ordinary beliefs about the nature of the world ‘consists in’. This suggestion is, therefore, that the sceptic is making some kind of mistake or indulging in some sort of incoherence in supposing that our experience may not rationally justify our commonsense picture of what the world is like. Again, this, however, is the familiar fact that th sceptic’s undermining hypotheses seem perfectly intelligible and even epistemically possible. Ayer’s response seems weak relative to the power of the sceptical puzzles.
The concept of ‘the given’ refers to the immediate apprehension of the contents of sense experience, expressed in the first person, present tense reports of appearances. Apprehension of the given is seen as immediate both in a casual sense, since it lacks the usual causal chain involved in perceiving real qualities of physical objects, and in an epistemic sense, since judgements expressing it are justified independently of all other beliefs and evidence. Some proponents of the idea of the given maintain that its apprehension is absolutely certain: Infallible, incorrigible and indubitable. It has been claimed also that a subject is omniscient with regard to the given: If a property appears, then the subject knows this.
The doctrine dates back at least to Descartes, who argued in Meditation II that it was beyond all possible doubt and error that he seemed to see light, hear noise, and so forth. The empiricist added the claim that the mind is passive in receiving sense impressions, so that there is no subjective contamination or distortion here (even though the states apprehended are mental). The idea was taken up in twentieth-century epistemology by C.I. Lewis and A.J. Ayer. Among others, who appealed to the given as the foundation for all empirical knowledge. Nonetheless, empiricism, like any philosophical movement, is often challenged to show how its claims about the structure of knowledge and meaning can themselves be intelligible and known within the constraints it accepts, since beliefs expressing only the given were held to be certain and justified in themselves, they could serve as solid foundations.
The second argument for the need for foundations is sound. It appeals to the possibility of incompatible but fully coherent systems of belief, only one of which could be completely true. In light of this possibility, coherence cannot suffice for complete justification, as coherence has the power to produce justification, while according to a negative coherence theory, coherence has only the power to nullify justification. However, by contrast, justification is solely a matter of how a belief coheres with a system of beliefs. Nonetheless, another distinction that cuts across the distinction between weak and strong coherence theories of justification. It is the distinction between positive and negative coherence theory tells us that if a belief coheres with a background system of belief, then the belief is justified.
Coherence theories of justification have a common feature, namely, that they are what are called ‘internalistic theories of justification’ they are theories affirming that coherence is a matter of internal relations between beliefs and 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 condition 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 considerations of coherence theories of justification. What is required may be put by saying that the justification one must be undefeated by errors in the background system of belief. A justification is undefeated by error in the background system of belied would 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 that coheres with the background belief system and corrected versions of that system. In short, knowledge is true belief plus justification resulting from coherence and undefeated by error.
Without some independent indication that some of the beliefs within a coherent system are true, coherence in itself is no indication of truth. Fairy stories can cohere. But our criteria for justification must indicate to us the probable truth of our beliefs. Hence, within any system of beliefs there must be some privileged class of beliefs which others must cohere to be justified. In the case of empirical knowledge, such privileged beliefs must represent the point of contact between subject and the world: They must originate in perception. When challenged, however, we justify our ordinary perceptual beliefs about physical properties by appeal to beliefs about appearances. Nonetheless, it seems more suitable as foundations since there is no class of more certain perceptual beliefs to which we appeal for their justification.
The argument that foundations must be certain was offered by the American philosopher David Lewis (1941-2002). He held that no proposition can be probable unless some are certain. If the probability of all propositions or beliefs were relative to evidence expressed in others, and if these relations were linear, then any regress would apparently have to terminate in propositions or beliefs that are certain. But Lewis shows neither that such relations must be linear nor that regresses cannot terminate in beliefs that are merely probable or justified in themselves without being certain or infallible.
Arguments against the idea of the given originate with the German philosopher and founder of critical philosophy. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), whereby the intellectual landscape in which Kant began his career was largely set by the German philosopher, mathematician and polymath of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), filtered through the principal follower and interpreter of Leibniz, Christian Wolff, who was primarily a mathematician but renowned as a systematic philosopher. Kant, who argues in Book I to the Transcendental Analysis that percepts without concepts do not yet constitute any form of knowing. Being non-epistemic, they presumably cannot serve as epistemic foundations. Once we recognize that we must apply concepts of properties to appearances and formulate beliefs utilizing those concepts before the appearances can play any epistemic role. It becomes more plausible that such beliefs are fallible. The argument was developed in this century by Sellars (1912-89), whose work revolved around the difficulties of combining the scientific image of people and their world, with the manifest image, or natural conception of ourselves as acquainted with intentions, meaning, colours, and other definitive aspects by his most influential paper ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’ (1956) in this and many other of his papers, Sellars explored the nature of thought and experience. According to Sellars (1963), the idea of the given involves a confusion between sensing particular (having sense impression) which is non-epistemic, and having non-inferential knowledge of propositions referring to appearances be necessary for acquiring perceptual knowledge, but it is itself a primitive kind of knowing. Its being non-epistemic renders it immune from error, also, unsuitable for epistemological foundations. The apparentness to the non-inferential perceptual knowledge, is fallible, requiring concepts acquired through trained responses to public physical objects.
The contention that even reports of appearances are fallible can be supported from several directions. First, it seems doubtful that we can look beyond our beliefs to compare them with an unconceptualized reality, whether mental of physical. Second, to judge that anything, including an appearance, is ‘F’, we must remember which property ‘F’ is, and memory is admitted by all to be fallible. Our ascribing ‘F’ is normally not explicitly comparative, but its correctness requires memory, nevertheless, at least if we intend to ascribe a reinstantiable property. we must apply the concept of ‘F’ consistently, and it seems always at least logically possible to apply it inconsistently. If that be, it is not possible, if, for example, I intend in tendering to an appearance e merely to pick out demonstratively whatever property appears, then, I seem not to be expressing a genuine belief. My apprehension of the appearance will not justify any other beliefs. Once more it will be unsuitable as an epistemological foundation. This, nonetheless, nondifferential perceptual knowledge, is fallible, requiring concepts acquiring through trained responses to public physical objects.
Ayer (1950) sought to distinguish propositions expressing the given not by their infallibility, but by the alleged fact that grasping their meaning suffices for knowing their truth. However, this will be so only if the purely demonstratives meaning, and so only if the propositions fail to express beliefs that could ground others. If in uses genuine predicates, for example: C≠ as applied to tones, then one may grasp their meaning and yet be unsure in their application to appearances. Limiting claims of error in claims eliminates one major source of error in claims about physical objects-appearances cannot appear other than they are. Ayer’s requirement of grasping meaning eliminates a second source of error, conceptual confusion. But a third major source, misclassification, is genuine and can obtain in this limited domain, even when Ayer ‘s requirement is satisfied.
Any proponent to the given faces the dilemma that if in terms used in statements expressing its apprehension are purely demonstrative, then such statements, assuming they are statements, are certain, but fail to express beliefs that could serve as foundations for knowledge. If what is expressed is not awareness of genuine properties, then awareness does not justify its subject in believing anything else. However, if statements about what appears use genuine predicates that apply to reinstantiable properties, then beliefs expressed cannot be infallible or knowledge. Coherentists would add that such genuine belief’s stand in need of justification themselves and so cannot be foundations.
Contemporary foundationalist deny the coherent’s claim while eschewing the claim that foundations, in the form of reports about appearances, are infallible. They seek alternatives to the given as foundations. Although arguments against infallibility are strong, other objections to the idea of foundations are not. That concepts of objective properties are learned prior to concepts of appearances, for example, implies neither that claims about objective properties, nor that the latter are prior in chains of justification. That there can be no knowledge prior to the acquisition and consistent application of concepts allows for propositions whose truth requires only consistent application of concepts, and this may be so for some claims about appearances.
Coherentist will claim that a subject requires evidence that he apply concepts consistently to distinguish red from other colours that appear. Beliefs about red appearances could not then be justified independently of other beliefs expressing that evidence. Save that to part of the doctrine of the given that holds beliefs about appearances to be self-justified, we require an account of how such justification is possible, how some beliefs about appearances can be justified without appeal to evidence. Some foundationalist’s simply assert such warrant as derived from experience but, unlike, appeals to certainty by proponents of the given, this assertion seem ad hoc.
A better strategy is to tie an account of self-justification to a broader exposition of epistemic warrant. On such accounts sees justification as a kind of inference to the best explanation. A belief is shown to be justified if its truth is shown to be part of the best explanation for why it is held. A belief is self-justified if the best explanation for it is its truth alone. The best explanation for the belief that I am appeared to redly may be that I am. Such accounts seek ground knowledge in perceptual experience without appealing to an infallible given, now universally dismissed.
Nonetheless, it goes without saying, that many problems concerning scientific change have been clarified, and many new answers suggested. Nevertheless, concepts central to it, like ‘paradigm’. ‘core’, problem’, ‘constraint’, ‘verisimilitude’, many devastating criticisms of the doctrine based on them have been answered satisfactorily.
Problems centrally important for the analysis of scientific change have been neglected. There are, for instance, lingering echoes of logical empiricism in claims that the methods and goals of science are unchanging, and thus are independent of scientific change itself, or that if they do change, they do so for reasons independent of those involved in substantive scientific change itself. By their very nature, such approaches fail to address the changes that actually occur in science. For example, even supposing that science ultimately seeks the general and unaltered goal of ‘truth’ or ‘verisimilitude’, that injunction itself gives no guidance as to what scientists should seek or how they should go about seeking it. More specific scientific goals do provide guidance, and, as the transition from mechanistic to gauge-theoretic goals illustrates, those goals are often altered in light of discoveries about what is achievable, or about what kinds of theories are promising. A theory of scientific change should account for these kinds of goal changes, and for how, once accepted, they alter the rest of the patterns of scientific reasoning and change, including ways in which more general goals and methods may be reconceived.
To declare scientific changes to be consequences of ‘observation’ or ‘experimental evidence’ is again to overstress the superficially unchanging aspects of science. we must ask how what counts as observation, experiments, and evidence themselves alter in the light of newly accepted scientific beliefs. Likewise, it is now clear that scientific change cannot be understood in terms of dogmatically embraced holistic cores: The factors guiding scientific change are by no means the monolithic structure which they have been portrayed as being. Some writers prefer to speak of ‘background knowledge’ (or ‘information’) as shaping scientific change, the suggestion being that there are a variety of ways in which a variety of prior ideas influence scientific research in a variety of circumstances. But it is essential that any such complexity of influences be fully detailed, not left, as by the philosopher of science Raimund Karl Popper (1902-1994), with cursory treatment of a few functions selected to bolster a prior theory (in this case, falsification). Similarly, focus on ‘constraints’ can mislead, suggesting too negative a concept to do justice to the positive roles of the information utilized. Insofar as constraints are scientific and not trans-scientific, they are usually ‘functions’, not ‘types’ of scientific propositions.
Traditionally, philosophy has concerned itself with relations between propositions which are specifically relevant to one another in form or content. So viewed, a philosophical explanation of scientific change should appeal to factors which are clearly more scientifically relevant in their content to the specific directions of new scientific research and conclusions than are social factors whose overt relevance lies elsewhere. Nonetheless, in recent years many writers, especially in the ‘strong programme’ practices must be assimilated to social influences.
Such claims are excessive. Despite allegations that even what counted as evidence is a matter of mere negotiated agreement, many consider that the last word has not been said on the idea that there is in some deeply important sense of a ‘given’ to experience in terms with which we can, at least partially, judge theories (‘background information’) which can help guide those and other judgements. Even if ewe could, no information to account for what science should and can be, and certainly not for what it is often in human practice, neither should we take the criticism of it for granted, accepting that scientific change is explainable only by appeal to external factors.
Equally, we cannot accept too readily the assumption (another logical empiricist legacy) that our task is to explain science and its evolution by appeal to meta-scientific rules or goals, or metaphysical principles, arrived at in the light of purely philosophical analysis, and altered (if at all) by factors independent of substantive science. For such trans-scientific analysis, even while claiming to explain ‘what science is’, do so in terms ‘external’ to the processes by which science actually changes.
Externalist claims are premature by enough is yet understood about the roles of indisputably scientific considerations in shaping scientific change, including changes of methods and goals. Even if we ultimately cannot accept the traditional ‘internalist’ approach to philosophy of science, as philosophers concerned with the form and content of reasoning we must determine accurately how far it can be carried. For that task. Historical and contemporary case studies are necessary but insufficient: Too often the positive implications of such studies are left unclear, and their too hasty assumption is often that whatever lessons are generated therefrom apply equally to later science. Larger lessons need to be extracted from concrete studies. Further, such lessons must, there possible, be given a systematic account, integrating the revealed patterns of scientific reasoning and the ways they are altered into a coherent interpretation of the knowledge-seeking enterprise-a theory of scientific change. Whether such efforts are successful or not, or through understanding our failure to do so, that it will be possible to assess precisely the extent to which trans-scientific factors (meta-scientific, social, or otherwise) must be included in accounts of scientific change.
Much discussion of scientific change on or upon the distinction between contexts of discovery and justification that is to say about discovery that there is usually thought to be no authoritative confirmation theory, telling how bodies of evidence support, a hypothesis instead science proceeds by a ‘hypothetico-deductive method’ or ‘method of conjectures and refutations’. By contrast, early inductivists held that (1) science e begins with data collections (2) rules of inference are applied to the data to obtain a theoretical conclusion, or at least, to eliminate alternatives, and (3) that conclusion is established with high confidence or even proved conclusively by the rules. Rules of inductive reasoning were proposed by the English diplomat and philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and by the British mathematician and physicists and principal source of the classical scientific view of the world, Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) in th e second edition of the Principia (‘Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy’). Such procedures were allegedly applied in Newton’s ‘Opticks’ and in many eighteenth-century experimental studies of heat, light, electricity, and chemistry.
According to Laudan (1981), two gradual realizations led to rejection of this conception of scientific method: First, that inferences from facts to generalizations are not established with certain, hence sectists were more willing to consider hypotheses with little prior empirical grounding, Secondly, that explanatory concepts often go beyond sense experience, and that such trans-empirical concepts as ‘atom’ and ‘field’ can be introduced in the formulation of such hypothesis, thus, as the middle of the eighteenth century, the inductive conception began to be replaced by the middle of hypothesis, or hypothetico-deductive method. On the view, the other of events in science is seen as, first, introduction of a hypothesis and second, testing of observational production of that hypothesis against observational and experimental results.
Twentieth-century relativity and quantum mechanics alerted scientists even more to the potential depths of departures from common sense and earlier scientific ideas, e.g., quantum theory. Their attention was called from scientific change and direct toward an analysis of temporal ‘formal’ characteristics of science: The dynamical character of science, emphasized by physics, was lost in a quest for unchanging characteristics definitary of science and its major components, i.e., ‘content’ of thought, the ‘meanings’ of fundamental ‘meta-scientific’ concepts and method-deductive conception of method, endorsed by logical empiricist, was likewise construed in these terms: ‘Discovery’, the introduction of new ideas, was grist for historians, psychologists or sociologists, whereas the ‘justification’ of scientific ideas was the application of logic and thus, the proper object of philosophy of science.
The fundamental tenet of logical empiricism is that the warrant for all scientific knowledge rests on or upon empirical evidence I conjunction with logic, where logic is taken to include induction or confirmation, as well as mathematics and formal logic. In the eighteenth century the work of the empiricist John Locke (1632-1704) had important implications for other social sciences. The rejection of innate ideas in book I of the Essay encouraged an emphasis on the empirical study of human societies, to discover just what explained their variety, and this toward the establishment of the science of social anthropology.
Induction (logic), in logic, is the process of drawing a conclusion about an object or event that has yet to be observed or occur, based on previous observations of similar objects or events. For example, after observing year after year that a certain kind of weed invades our yard in autumn, we may conclude that next autumn our yard will again be invaded by the weed; or having tested a large sample of coffee makers, only to find that each of them has a faulty fuse, we conclude that all the coffee makers in the batch are defective. In these cases we infer, or reach a conclusion based on observations. The observations or assumptions on which we base the inference-the annual appearance of the weed, or the sample of coffee makers with faulty fuses-form the premises or assumptions.
In an inductive inference, the premises provide evidence or support for the conclusion; this support can vary in strength. The argument’s strength depends on how likely it is that the conclusion will be true, assuming all of the premises to be true. If assuming the premises to be true makes it highly probable that the conclusion also would be true, the argument is inductively strong. If, however, the supposition that all the premises are true only slightly increases the probability that the conclusion will be true, the argument is inductively weak.
The truth or falsity of the premises or the conclusion is not at issue. Strength instead depends on whether, and how much, the likelihood of the conclusion’s being true would increase if the premises were true. So, in induction, as in deduction, the emphasis is on the form of support that the premises provide to the conclusion. However, induction differs from deduction in a crucial aspect. In deduction, for an argument to be correct, if the premises were true, the conclusion would have to be true as well. In induction, however, even when an argument is inductively strong, the possibility remains that the premises are true and the conclusion false. To return to our examples, although it is true that this weed has invaded our yard every year, it remains possible that the weed could die and never reappear. Likewise, it is true that all of the coffee makers tested had faulty fuses, but it is possible that the remainder of the coffee makers in the batch is not defective. Yet it is still correct, from an inductive point of view, to infer that the weed will return, and that the remainder of the coffee makers has faulty fuses.
Thus, strictly speaking, all inductive inferences are deductively invalid. Yet induction is not worthless; in both everyday reasoning and scientific reasoning regarding matters of fact - for instance in trying to establish general empirical laws - induction plays a central role. In an inductive inference, for example, we draw conclusions about an entire group of things, or a population, based on data about a sample of that group or population; or we predict the occurrence of a future event because of observations of similar past events; or we attribute a property to a non-observed thing as all observed things of the same kind have that property; or we draw conclusions about causes of an illness based on observations of symptoms. Inductive inference is used in most fields, including education, psychology, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology. Consequently, because the role of induction is so central in our processes of reasoning, the study of inductive inference is one major area of concern to create computer models of human reasoning in Artificial Intelligence.
The development of inductive logic owes a great deal to 19th - century British philosopher John Stuart Mill, who studied different methods of reasoning and experimental inquiry in his work ‘A System of Logic’‘(1843), by which Mill was chiefly interested in studying and classifying the different types of reasoning in which we start with observations of events and go on to infer the causes of those events. In, ‘A Treatise on Induction and Probability’ (1960), 20th - century Finnish philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright expounded the theoretical foundations of Mill’s methods of inquiry.
Philosophers have struggled with the question of what justification we have to take for granted induction’s common assumptions: that the future will follow the same patterns as the past; that a whole population will behave roughly like a randomly chosen sample; that the laws of nature governing causes and effects are uniform; or that we can presume that several observed objects give us grounds to attribute something to another object we have not yet observed. In short, what is the justification for induction itself? This question of justification, known as the problem of induction, was first raised by 18th - century Scottish philosopher David Hume in his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). While it is tempting to try to justify induction by pointing out that inductive reasoning is commonly used in both everyday life and science, and its conclusions are, largely, been corrected, this justification is itself an induction and therefore it raises the same problem: Nothing guarantees that simply because induction has worked in the past it will continue to work in the future. The problem of induction raises important questions for the philosopher and logician whose concern it is to provide a basis of assessment of the correctness and the value of methods of reasoning.
In the eighteenth century, Lock’s empiricism and the science of Newton were, with reason, combined in people’s eyes to provide a paradigm of rational inquiry that, arguably, has never been entirely displaced. It emphasized the very limited scope of absolute certainties in the natural and social sciences, and more generally underlined the boundaries to certain knowledge that arise from our limited capacities for observation and reasoning. To that extent it provided an important foil to the exaggerated claims sometimes made for the natural sciences in the wake of Newton’s achievements in mathematical physics.
This appears to conflict strongly with Thomas Kuhn’s (1922 - 96) statement that scientific theory choice depends on considerations that go beyond observation and logic, even when logic is construed to include confirmation.
Nonetheless, it can be said, that, the state of science at any given time is characterized, in part, by the theories accepted then. Presently accepted theories include quantum theory, and general theory of relativity, and the modern synthesis of Darwin and Mendel, as well as lower - level, but still clearly theoretical assertions such as that DNA has a double - helical structure, that the hydrogen atom contains a single electron, and so firth. What precisely is involved in accepting a theory or factors in theory choice.
Many critics have been scornful of the philosophical preoccupation with under - determination, that a theory is supported by evidence only if it implies some observation categories. However, following the French physician Pierre Duhem, who is remembered philosophically for his La Thêorie physique, (1906), translated as, ‘The Aim and Structure of Science, is that it simply is a device for calculating science provides a deductive system that is systematic, economic and predicative: Following Duhem, Orman van Willard Quine (1918 - 2000), who points out that observation categories can seldom if ever be deduced from a single scientific theory taken by itself: Rather, the theory must be taken in conjunction with a whole lot of other hypotheses and background knowledge, which are usually not articulated in detail and may sometimes be quite difficult to specify. A theoretical sentence does not, in general, have any empirical content of its own. This doctrine is called ‘Holism’, which the basic term refers to a variety of positions that have in common a resistance to understanding large unities as merely the sum of their parts, and an insistence that we cannot explain or understand the parts without treating them as belonging to such larger wholes. Some of these issues concern explanation. It is argued, for example, that facts about social classes are not reducible to facts about the beliefs and actions of the agents who belong to them, or it is claimed that we only understand the actions of individuals by locating them in social roles or systems of social meanings.
But, whatever may be the case with under - determination, there is a very closely related problem that scientists certainly do face whenever two rival theories or more encompassing theoretical frameworks are competing for acceptance. This is the problem posed by the fact that one framework, usually the older, longer - established framework can accommodate, that is, produce post hoc explanation of particular pieces of evidence that seem intuitively to tell strongly in favour of the other (usually the new ‘revolutionary’) framework.
For example, the Newtonian particulate theory of light is often thought of as having been straightforwardly refuted by the outcome of experiments - like Young ‘s two - slit experiment - whose results were correctly predicted by the rival wave theory. Duhem’s (1906) analysis of theories and theory testing already shows that this cannot logically have been the case. The bare theory that light consists of some sort of material particle has no empirical consequence s in isolation from other assumptions: And it follows that there must always be assumptions that could be added to the bare corpuscular theory, such that some combined assumptions entail the correct result of any optical experiment. A d indeed, a little historical research soon reveals eighteenth and early nineteenth - century emissionists who suggested at least outline ways in which interference result s could be accommodated within the corpuscular framework. Brewster, for example, suggested that interference might be a physiological phenomenon: While Biot and others worked on the idea that the so - called interference fringes are produced by the peculiarities of the ‘diffracting forces’ that ordinary gross exerts on the light corpuscles.
Both suggestions ran into major conceptual problems. For example, the ‘diffracting force’ suggestion would not even come close to working with any forces of kinds that were taken to operate in other cases. Often the failure was qualitative: Given the properties of forces that were already known about, for example, it was expected that the diffracting force would depend in some way on the material properties of the diffracting object: But, whatever the material of the double - slit screen is Young’s experiment, and whatever its density, the outcome is the same. It could, of course, simply be assumed that the diffracting forces are an entirely novel kind, and that their properties just had to be ‘read - off’ the phenomena - this is exactly the way that corpusularists worked. But, given that this was simply a question of attemptive to write the phenomena into a favoured conceptual framework. And given that the writing - in produced complexities and incongruities for which there was no independent evidence, the majority view was that interference results strongly favour the wave theory, of which they are ‘natural’ consequences. (For example, that the material making up the double slit and its density have no effect at all on the phenomenon is a straightforward consequence of the fact that, as the wave theory says it, the only effect on the screen is to absorb those parts of the wave fronts that impinges on it.)
The natural methodological judgement (and the one that seems to have been made by the majority of competent scientists at that time) is that, even given the interference effects could be accommodated within the corpuscular theory, those effects nonetheless favour the wave account, and favour it in the epistemic sense of showing that theory to be more likely to be true. Of course, the account given by the wave theory of the interference phenomena is also, in certain senses, pragmatically simpler: But this seems generally to have been taken to be, not a virtue in itself, but a reflection of a deeper virtue connected with likely truth.
Consider a second, similar case: That of evolutionary theory and the fossil record. There are well - known disputes about which particular evolutionary account for most support from fossils. Nonetheless, the relative weight the fossil evidence carries for some sort of evolutionist account versus the special creationist theory, is yet well - known for its obviousness - in that the theory of special creation can accommodate fossils: A creationist just needs to claim that what the evolutionist thinks of as bones of animals belonging to extinct species, are, in fact, simply items that God chose to included in his catalogue of the universe’s content at creatures: What the evolutionist thinks of as imprints in the rocks of the skeletons of other such animals are they. It nonetheless surely still seems true intuitively that the fossil records continue to give us better reason to believe that species have evolved from earlier, now extinct ones, than that God created the universe much as it presently is in 4004 Bc. An empiricist - instrumentalist t approach seems committed to the view that, on the contrary, any preference that this evidence yields for the evolutionary account is a purely pragmatic matter.
Of course, intuitions, no matter how strong, cannot stand against strong counter arguments. Van Fraassen and other strong empiricists have produced arguments that purport to show that these intuitions are indeed misguided.
What justifies the acceptance e of a theory? Although h particular versions of empiricism have met many criticisms, that is, of support by the available evidence. How else could empiricists term? : In terms, that is, of support by the available evidence. How else could the objectivity of science be defended except by showing that its conclusion (and in particularly its theoretical conclusions - those theories? It presently on any other condition than that excluding exemplary base on which are somehow legitimately based on or agreed observationally and experimental evidences, yet, as well known, theoretics in general, pose a problem for empiricism.
Allowing the empiricist the assumptions that there are observational statements whose truth - values can be inter - subjectively agreeing. A definitive formulation of the classical view was finally provided by 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 work that the main achievements (and difficulties) of logical positivism are best exhibited. His first major works were Der Logische Aufban der welts (1928, translated as ‘The Logical Structure of the World, 1967) this phenomenological work attempts a reduction of all the objects of knowledge, by generating equivalence classes of sensations, related by a primitive relation of remembrance of similarity. This is the solipsistic basis of the construction of the external world, although Carnap later resisted the apparent metaphysical priority as given to experience. His hostility to metaphysics soon developed into the characteristic positivist view that metaphysical questions are pseudo - problems. Criticism from the Austrian philosopher and social theorist Otto Neurath (1882 - 1945) shifted Carnap’s interest toward a view of the unity of the sciences, with the concepts and theses of special sciences translatable into a basic physical vocabulary whose protocol statements describe not experience but the qualities of points in space - time. Carnap pursued the enterprise of clarifying the structures of mathematics and scientific language (the only legitimate task for scientific philosophy) in Logische Syntax fer Sprache (1943, translated as, ‘The Logical Syntax of Language’, 1937) refinements to his syntactic and semantic views continued with Meaning and Necessity (1947) while a general 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.
Wherefore, the observational terms were presumed to be given a complete empirical interpretation, which left the theoretical terms with only an ‘indirect’ empirical interpretation provided by their implicit definition within an axiom system in which some of the terms possessed a complete empirical interpretation.
Among the issues generated by Carnap’s formulation was the viability of ‘the theory - observation distinction’. Of course, one could always arbitrarily designate some subset of nonlogical terms as belonging to the observational vocabulary, however, that would compromise the relevance of the philosophical analysis for any understanding of the original scientific theory. But what could be the philosophical basis for drawing the distinction? Take the predicate ‘spherical’, for example. Anyone can observe that a billiard ball is spherical, but what about the moon, or an invisible speck of sand? Is the application of the term ‘spherical’ of these objects ‘observational’?
Another problem was more formal, as introduced of Craig’s theorem seemed to show that a theory reconstructed in the recommended fashion could be re - axiomatized in such a way as to dispense with all theoretical terms, while retaining all logical consequences involving only observational terms. Craig’s theorem in mathematical logic, held to have implications in the philosophy of science. The logician William Craig showed how, if we partition the vocabulary of a formal system (say, into the ‘T’ or theoretical terms, and the ‘O’ or observational terms), then if there is a fully ‘formalized’ system ‘T’ with some set ‘S’ of consequences containing only the ‘O’ terms, there is also a system ‘O’ containing only the ‘O’ vocabulary but strong enough to give the same set ‘S’ of consequences. The theorem is a purely formal one, in that ‘T’ and ‘O’ simply separate formulae into the preferred ones, containing non - logical terms only one kind of vocabulary, and the others. The theorem might encourage the thought that the theoretical terms of a scientific theory are in principle, dispensable, since the same consequences can be derived without them.
However, Craig’s actual procedure gives no effective way of dispensing with theoretical terms in advance, i.e., in the actual process of thinking about and designing the premises from which the set ‘S’ follows, in this sense ‘O’ remains parasitic upon its parent ‘T’.
Thus, as far as the ‘empirical’ content of a theory is concerned, it seems that we can do without the theoretical terms. Carnap’s version of the classical view seemed to imply a form of instrumentation. A problem which the German philosopher of science, Carl Gustav Hempel (1905 - 97) christened ‘the theoretician’s dilemma’.
Meanwhile Descartes identification of matter with extension, and his comitans theory of all of space as filed by a plenum of matter. The great metaphysical debate over the nature of space and time has its roots in the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. An early contribution to the debate was the French mathematician and founding father of modern philosophy, Réne Descartes (1596 - 1650). His interest in the methodology of a unified science culminated in his first work, the Regulae ad Directionem Ingenti (1628/9), was never completed. Nonetheless, between 1628 and 1649, Descartes first wrote and then cautiously suppressed, Le Monde (1634) and in 1637 produced the Discours de la Méthode as a preface to the treatise on mathematics and physics in which he introduced the notion of Cartesian coordinates.
His best known philosophical work, the Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Meditations of First Philosophy), together with objections by distinguished contemporaries and relies by Descartes (the Objections and Replies) appeared in 1641. The author of the objections is First advanced, by the Dutch theologian Johan de Kater, second set, Mersenne, third set, Hobbes: Fourth set, Arnauld, fifth set, Gassendim, and sixth set, Mersnne. The second edition (1642) of the Meditations included a seventh set by the Jesuit Pierre Bourdin. Descartes’s penultimate work, the Principia Philosophiae (Principles of Philosophy) of 1644 was designed partly for use in theological textbooks: His last work was Les Passions de I áme (the Passions of the Soul) and published in 1649. In that year Descartes visited the court of Kristina of Sweden, where he contracted pneumonia, allegedly through being required to break his normal habit of a late rising in order to give lessons at 5:00 a.m. His last words are supposed ‘Ça, mon sme il faut partur’, - ‘So my soul, it is time to part’.
It is nonetheless said, that the great metaphysical debate over the nature of space and time has its roots in the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. An early contribution to the debate was Réne Descartes’s (1596 - 1650), identification of matter with extension, and his comitant theory of all of space as filled by a plenum of matter.
Far more profound was the German philosopher, mathematician and polymath, Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz (1646 - 1716), whose characterization of a full - blooded theory of relationism with regard to space and time, as Leibniz elegantly puts his view: ‘Space is nothing but the order of coexistence . . . time is the order of inconsistent ‘possibilities’. Space was taken to be a set of relations among material objects. The deeper monadological view to the side, were the substantival entities, no room was provided for space itself as a substance over and above the material substance of the world. All motion was then merely relative motion of one material thing in the reference frame fixed by another. The Leibnizian theory was one of great subtlety. In particular, the need for a modalized relationism to allow for ‘empty space’ was clearly recognized. An unoccupied spatial location was taken to be a spatial relation that could be realized but that was not realized in actuality. Leibniz also offered trenchant arguments against substantivalism. All of these rested upon some variant of the claim that a substantival picture of space allows for the theoretical toleration of alternative world models that are identical as far as any observable consequences are concerned.
Contending with Leibnizian relationalism was the ‘substantivalism’ of Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727), and his disciple S. Clarke, thereby he is mainly remembered for his defence of Newton (a friend from Cambridge days) against Leibniz, both on the question of the existence of absolute space and the question of the propriety of appealing to a force of gravity, actually Newton was cautious about thinking of space as a ‘substance’. Sometimes he suggested that it be thought of, rather, as a property - in particular as a property of the Deity. However, what was essential to his doctrine was his denial that a relationist theory, with its idea of motion as the relative change of position of one material object with respect to another, can do justice to the facts about motion made evident by empirical science and by the theory that does justice to those facts.
The Newtonian account of motion, like Aristotle’s, has a concept of natural or unforced motion. This is motion with uniform speed in a constant direction, so - called inertial motion. There is, then, in this theory an absolute notion of constant velocity motion. Such constant velocity motions cannot be characterized as merely relative to some material objects, some of which will be non - inertial. Space itself, according to Newton, must exist as an entity over and above the material objects of the world. In order to provide the standard of rest relative to which uniform motion is genuine inertial motion.
Such absolute uniform motions can be empirically discriminated from absolutely accelerated motion by the absence of inertial forces felt when the test object is moving genuinely inertially. Furthermore, the application of force to an object is correlated with the object’s change of absolute motion. Only uniform motions relative to space itself are natural motions requiring no force and explanation. Newton also clearly saw that the notion of absolute constant speed requires a motion of absolute time, for, relative to an arbitrary cyclic process as defining the time scale, any motion can be made uniform or not, as we choose. Nonetheless, genuine uniform motions are of constant speed in the absolute time scale fixed by ‘time itself; . Periodic processes can be at best good indicators of measures of this flaw of absolute time.
Newton’s refutation of relationism by means of the argument from absolute acceleration is one of the most distinctive examples of the way in which the results of empirical experiment and of the theoretical efforts to explain these results impinge on or upon philosophical objections to Leibnizian relationism - for example, in the claim that one must posit a substantival space to make sense of Leibniz’s modalities of possible position - it is a scientific objection to relationism that causes the greatest problems for that philosophical doctrine.
Then, again, a number of scientists and philosophers continued to defend the relationist account of space in the face of Newton’s arguments for substantivalism. Among them were Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz, Christian Huygens, and George Berkeley when in 1721 Berkeley published De Motu (‘On Motion’) attacking Newton ‘s philosophy of space, a topic he returned too much later in The Analyst of 1734.the empirical distinction, however, to frustrate their efforts.
In the nineteenth century, the Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (1838 - 1916), made the audacious proposal that absolute acceleration might be viewed as acceleration relative not to a substantival space, but to the material reference frame of what he called the ‘fixed stars’ - that is, relative to a reference frame fixed by what might now be called the ‘average smeared - out mass of the universe’. As far as observational data went, he argued, the fixed stars could be taken to be the frames relative to which uniform motion was absolutely uniform. Mach’s suggestion continues to play an important role in debates up to the present day.
The nature of geometry as an apparently a priori science also continued to receive attention. Geometry served as the paradigm of knowledge for rationalist philosophers, especially for Descartes and the Dutch Jewish rationalist Benedictus de Spinoza (1632 - 77), whereby the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) attempts to account for the ability of geometry to go beyond the analytic truths of logic extended by definition - was especially important. His explanation of the a priori nature of geometry by its ‘transcendentally psychological’ nature - that is, as descriptive of a portion of mind’s organizing structure imposed on the world of experience - served as his paradigm for legitimated a priori knowledge in general.
A peculiarity of Newton’s theory, of which Newton was well aware, was that whereas acceleration with respect to space itself had empirical consequences, uniform velocity with respect to space itself had none. The theory of light, particularly in J.C. Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetic waves, suggested, however, that there was only one reference frame in which the velocity of light would be the same in all directions, and that this might be taken to be the frame at rest in ‘space itself’. Experiments designed to find this frame seen to sow, however, that light velocity is isotropic and has its standard value in all frames that are in uniform motion in the Newtonian sense. All these experiments, however, measured only the average velocity of the light relative to the reference frame over a round - trip path.
It was the insight of the German physicist Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) who took the apparent equivalence of all inertial frames with respect to the velocity of light to be a genuine equivalence, It was from an employment within the Patent Office in Bern, wherefrom in 1905 he published the papers that laid the foundation of his reputation, on the photoelectric theory of relativity. In 1916 he published the general theory and in 1933 Einstein accepted the position at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies which he occupied for the rest of his life. His deepest insight was to see that this required that we relativize the notion of the simultaneity of events spatially separated from one distanced between a non - simultaneous event’s reference frame. For any relativist, the distance between non - simultaneous events simultaneity is relative as well. This theory of Einstein’s later became known as the Special Theory of Relativity.
Eienstein’s proposal account for the empirical undetectability of the absolute rest frame by optical experiments, because in his account the velocity of light is isotropic and has its standard value in all inertial frames. The theory had immediate kinematic consequences, among them the fact that spatial separation (lengths) and intervals are frame - of motion - relative. New dynamics was needed if dynamics were to be, as it was for Newton, equivalence in all inertial frames.
Einstein’s novel understanding of space and time was given an elegant framework by H. Minkowski in the form of Minkowski Space - time. The primitive elements of the theory were point - like. Locations in both space and time of unextended happenings. These were called the ‘event locations’ or the ‘events’‘ of a four - dimensional manifold. There is a frame - invariant separation of an event frame event called the ‘interval’. But the spatial separation between two noncoincident events, as well as their temporal separation, are well defined only relative to a chosen inertial reference frame. In a sense, then, space and time are integrated into a single absolute structure. Space and time by themselves have a derivative and relativize existence.
Whereas the geometry of this space - time bore some analogies to a Euclidean geometry of a four - dimensional space, the transition from space and time by them in an integrated space - time required a subtle rethinking of the very subject matter of geometry. ‘Straight lines’ are the straightest curves of this ‘flat’ space - time, however, they include ‘null straight lines’, interpreted as the events in the life history of a light ray in a vacuum and ‘time - like straight lines’, interpreted as the collection of events in the life history of a free inertial contribution to the revolution in scientific thinking into the new relativistic framework. The result of his thinking was the theory known as the general theory of relativity.
The heuristic basis for the theory rested on or upon an empirical fact known to Galileo and Newton, but whose importance was made clear only by Einstein. Gravity, unlike other forces such as the electromagnetic force, acts on all objects independently of their material constitution or of their size. The path through space - time followed by an object under the influence of gravity is determined only by its initial position and velocity. Reflection upon the fact that in a curved spac e the path of minimal curvature from a point, the so - called ‘geodesic’, is uniquely determined by the point and by a direction from it, suggested to Einstein that the path of as an object acted upon by gravity can be thought of as a geodesic followed by that path in a curved space - time. The addition of gravity to the space - time of special relativity can be thought of s changing the ‘flat’ space - time of Minkowski into a new, ‘curved’ space - time.
The kind of curvature implied by the theory in that explored by B. Riemann in his theory of intrinsically curved spaces of an arbitrary dimension. No assumption is made that the curved space exists in some higher - dimensional flat embedding space, curvature is a feature of the space that shows up observationally in those in the space longer straight lines, just as the shortest distances between points on the Earth’s surface cannot be reconciled with putting those points on a flat surface. Einstein (and others) offered other heuristic arguments to suggest that gravity might indeed have an effect of relativistic interval separations as determined by measurements using tapes’ spatial separations and clocks, to determine time intervals.
The special theory gives a unified account of the laws of mechanics and of electromagnetism (including optics). Before 1905 the purely relative nature of uniform motion had in part been recognized in mechanics, although Newton had considered time to be absolute and also postulated absolute space. In electromagnetism the ‘ether’ was supposed to provide an absolute basis with respect to which motion could be determined and made two postulates. (The laws of nature are the same for all observers in uniform relative e motion. (2) The speed of light is the same for all such observes, independently of the relative motion of sources and detectors. He showed that these postulates were equivalent to the requirement that coordinates of space and time was put - upon by different observers should be related by the ‘Lorentz Transformation Equation Theory’: The theory has several important consequences.
That is to say, a set of equations for transforming the position - motion parameter from an observer at point 0(x, y, z) to an observer at 0'(x’, y’, z’), moving relative to one another. The equations replace the ‘Galilean transformation equations of Newtonian mechanics in Relative problems. If the x - axis are chosen to pass through 00' and the time of an even t is (t) and (t’) in the frame of reference of the observer at 0 and 0' respectively y (where the zeros of their time scales were the instants that 0 and 0' coincided) the equations are:
x’ = β(x - vt)
y’ = y
z’ = z
t’ = β(t - vx/c2),
Where v is the relative velocity y of separation of 0, 0', c is the speed of light, and β is the function (1 - v2/c2).
The transformation of time implies that two events that are simultaneous according to one observer will not necessarily be so according to another in uniform relative motion. This does not affect in any way violate any concepts of causation. It will appear to two observers in uniform relative motion that each other’s clock rums slowly. This is the phenomenon of ‘time dilation’, for example, an observer moving with respect to a radioactive source finds a longer decay time than that found by an observer at rest with respect to it, according to:
Tv = T0/(1 - v2/c2)½,
Where Tv is the mean life measured by an observer at relative speed v. T0 is the mean life measured by an observer relatively at rest, and c is the speed of light.
Among the results of the ‘exact’ form optics is the deduction of the exact form io f the Doppler Effect. In relativity mechanics, mass, momentum and energy are all conserved. An observer with speed v with respect to a particle determines its mass to be m while an observer at rest with respect to the [article measure the ‘rest mass’ m0, such that:
m = m0/(1 - v2/c2)½
This formula has been verified in innumerable experiments. One consequence is that no body can be accelerated from a speed below c with respect to any observer to one above c, since this would require infinite energy. Einstein deduced that the transfer of energy δE by any process entailed the transfer of mass δm, where δE = δmc2, hence he concluded that the total energy E of any system of mass m would be given by:
E = mc2
The kinetic energy of a particle as determined by an observer with relative speed v is thus (m - m0)c2, which tends to the classical value ½mv2 if v ≪c.
Attempts to express Quantum Theory in terms consistent with the requirements of relativity were begun by Sommerfeld (1915). Eventually Dirac (1928) gave a relativistic formulation of the wave mechanics of conserved particles (fermions). This explained the concepts of sin and the associated magnetic moment for certain details of spectra. The theory led to results of elementary particles, the theory of Beta Decay, and for Quantum statistics, the Klein - Gordon Equation is the relativistic wave equation for ‘bosons’.
A mathematical formulation of the special theory of relativity was given by Minkowski. It is based on the idea that an event is specified by four coordinates: Three spatial coordinates and one of time. These coordinates define a four - dimensional space and time motion of a particle can be described by a curve in this space, which is called ‘Minkowski space - time’.
The special theory of relativity is concerned with relative motion between non - accelerated frames of reference. The general theory deals with general relative motion between accelerated frames of reference. In accelerated systems of reference, certain fictitious forces are observed, such as the centrifugal and Coriolis forces found in rotating systems. These are known as fictitious forces because they disappear when the observer transforms to a non - accelerated system. For example, to an observer in a car rounding a bend at constant velocity, objects in the car appear to suffer a force acting outwards. To an observer outside the car, this is simply their tendency to continue moving in a straight line. The inertia of the objects is seen to cause a fictitious force and the observer can distinguish between non - inertial (accelerated) and inertial (non - accelerated) frames of reference.
A further point is that, to the observer in the car, all the objects are given the same acceleration irrespective of their mass. This implies a connection between the fictitious forces arising from accelerated systems and forces due to gravity, where the acceleration produced is independent of the mass. For example, a person in a sealed container could not easily determine whether he was being driven toward the floor by gravity of if the container were in space and being accelerated upwards by a rocket. Observations extended between these alternatives, but otherwise they are indistinguishable from which it follows that the inertial mass is the same as a gravitational mass.
The equivalence between a gravitational field and the fictitious forces in non - inertial systems can be expressed by using ‘Riemannian space - time’, which differs from Minkowski space - time of the special theory. In special relativity the motion of a particle that is not acted on by any forces is presented by a straight line in Minkowski space - time. In general relativity, using Riemannian space - time, the motion is presented by a line that is no longer straight (in the Euclidean sense) but is the line giving the shortest distance. Such a line is called a ‘geodesic’. Thus, space - time is said to be curved. The extent of this curvature is given by the ‘metric tensor’ for space - time, the components of which are solutions to Einstein’s ‘field equations’. The fact that gravitational effects occur near masses is introduced by the postulate that the presence e of matter produces this curvature of space - time. This curvature of space - time controls the natural motions of bodies.
The predictions of general relativity only differ from Newton’s theory by small amounts and most tests of the theory have been carried out through observations in astronomy. For example, it explains the shift on the perihelion of Mercury, the bending of light in the presence of large bodies, and the Einstein shift. Very close agreements between their accurately measured values have now been obtained.
So, then, using the new space - time notions, a ’curved space - time’ theory of Newtonian gravitation can be constructed. In this space - time is absolute, as in Newton. Furthermore, space remains flat Euclidean space. This is unlike the general theory of relativity, where the space - time curvature can induce spatial curvature as well. But the space - time curvature of this ‘curved neo - Newtonian space - time’ shows up in the fact that particles under the influence of gravity do not follow straight lines paths. Their paths become, as in general relativity, the curved time - like geodesics of the space - time. In this curved space - time account of Newtonian gravity, as in the general theory of relativity, the indistinguishable alternative worlds of theories that take gravity as a force s superimposed in a flat space - time collapsed to a single world model.
The strongest impetus to rethink epistemological issues in the theory of space and time came from the introduction of curvature and of non - Euclidean geometries in the general theory of relativity. The claim that a unique geometry could be known to hold true of the world a priori seemed unviable, at least in its naive form. In a situation where our best available physical theory allowed for a wide diversity of possible geometries for the world and in which the geometry of space - time was one more dynamical element joining the other ‘variable’ features of the world. Of course, skepticism toward an a priori account of geometry could already have been induced by the change from space time to space - time in the special theory, even though the space of that world remained Euclidean.
The natural response to these changes in physics was to suggest that geometry was, like all other physical theories, believable only on the basis of some kind of generalizing inference from the law - like regularities among the observable observational data - that is, to become an empiricists with regard to geometry.
But a defence of a kind of a priori account had already been suggested by the French mathematician and philosopher Henri Jules Poincaré (1854 - 1912), even before the invention of the relativistic theories. He suggested that the limitation of observational data to the domain of what was both material and local, i.e., or, space - time in order to derive a geometrical world of matter and convention or decision on the part of the scientific community. If any geometric posit could be made compatible with any set of observational data, Euclidean geometry could remain a priori in the sense that we could, conventionally, decide to hold to it as the geometry of the world in the face of any data that apparently refuted it.
The central epistemological issue in the philosophy of space and time remains that of theoretical under - determination, stemming from the Poincaré argument. In the case of the special theory of relativity the question is the rational basis for choosing Einstein’s theory over, for example, on of the ‘aether reference frame plus modification of rods and clocks when they are in motion with respect to the aether’ theories tat it displaced. Among the claims alleged to be true merely by convention in the theory, for which of asserting the simultaneity of distant events, those asserting the ‘flatness’ of the chosen space - time. Crucial to the fact that Einstein’s arguments themselves presuppose a strictly delimited local observation basis for the theories and that in fixing on or upon the special theory of relativity, one must make posits about the space - time structure y that outrun the facts given strictly by observation. In the case of the general theory of relativity, the issue becomes one of justifying the choice of general relativity over, for example, a flat space - time theory that treats gravity, as it was treated by Newton, as a ‘field of force’ over and above the space - time structure.
In both the cases of special and general relativity, important structural features pick out the standard Einstein theories as superior to their alternatives. In particular, the standard relativistic models eliminate some of the problems of observationally equivalent but distinguishable worlds countenanced by the alternative theories. However, the epistemologists must still be concerned with the question as to why these features constitute grounds for accepting the theories as the ‘true’ alternatives.
Other deep epistemological issues remain, having to do with the relationship between the structures of space and time posited in our theories of relativity and the spatiotemporal structures we use to characterize our ‘direct perceptual experience’. These issues continue in the contemporary scientific context the old philosophical debates on the relationship between the ram of the directly perceived and the realm of posited physical nature.
First reaction on the part of some philosophers was to take it that the special theory of relativity provided a replacement for the Newtonian theory of absolute space that would be compatible with a relationist account of the nature of space and time. This was soon seen to be false. The absolute distinction between uniform moving frames and frames not in or upon its uniform motion, invoked by Newton in his crucial argument against relationism, remains in the special theory of relativity. In fact, it becomes an even deeper distinction than it was in the Newtonian account, since the absolutely uniformly moving frames, the inertial frames, now become not only the frames of natural unforced motion, but also the only frames in which the velocity of light is isotropic.
At least part of the motivation behind Einstein’s development of the general theory of relativity was the hope that in this new theory all reference frames, uniformly moving or accelerated, would be ‘equivalent’ to one another physically. It was also his hope that the theory would conform to the Machian idea of absolute acceleration as merely acceleration relative to the smoothed - out matter of the universe.
Further exploration of the theory, however, showed that it had many features uncongenial to Machianism. Some of these are connected with the necessity of imposing boundary conditions for the equation connecting the matter distribution of the space - time structure. General relativity certainly allows as solutions model universes of a non - Machian sort - for example, those which are aptly described as having the smoothed - out matter of the universe itself in ‘absolute rotation’. There are strong arguments to suggest that general relativity. Like Newton’s theory and like special relativity, requires the positing of a structure of ‘space - time itself’ and of motion relative to that structure, in order to account for the needed distinctions of kinds of motion in dynamics. Whereas in Newtonian theory it was ‘space itself’ that provided the absolute reference frames. In general relativity it is the structure of the null and time - like geodesics that perform this task. The compatibility of general relativity with Machian ideas is, however, a subtle matter and one still open to debate.
Other aspects of the world described by the general theory of relativity argue for a substantivalist reading of the theory as well. Space - time has become a dynamic element of the world, one that might be thought of as ‘causally interacting’ with the ordinary matter of the world. In some sense one can even attribute energy (and hence mass) to the spacer - time (although this is a subtle matter in the theory), making the very distinction between ‘matter’ and ‘spacer - time itself’ much more dubious than such a distinction would have been in the early days of the debate between substantivalists and explanation forthcoming from the substantivalist account is.
Nonetheless, a naive reading of general relativity as a substantivalist theory has its problems as well. One problem was noted by Einstein himself in the early days of the theory. If a region of space - time is devoid of non - gravitational mass - energy, alternative solutions to the equation of the theory connecting mass - energy with the space - time structure will agree in all regions outside the matterless ‘hole’, but will offer distinct space - time structures within it. This suggests a local version of the old Leibniz arguments against substantivalism. The argument now takes the form of a claim that a substantival reading of the theory forces it into a strong version of indeterminism, since the space - time structure outside the hld fails to fix the structure of space - time in the hole. Einstein’s own response to this problem has a very relationistic cast, taking the ‘real facts’ of the world to be intersections of paths of particles and light rays with one another and not the structure of ‘space - time itself’. Needless to say, there are substantival attempts to deal with the ‘hole’ argument was well, which try to reconcile a substantival reading of the theory with determinism.
There are arguments on the part of the relationist to the effect that any substantivalist theory, even one with a distinction between absolute acceleration and mere relative acceleration, can be given a relationistic formulation. These relationistic reformations of the standard theories lack the standard theories’ ability to explain why non - inertial motion has the features that it does. But the relationist counters by arguing that the explanation forthcoming from the substantivalist account is too ‘thin’ to have genuine explanatory value anyway.
Relationist theories are founded, as are conventionalist theses in the epistemology of space - time, on the desire to restrict ontology to that which is present in experience, this taken to be coincidences of material events at a point. Such relationist conventionalist account suffers, however, from a strong pressure to slide full - fledged phenomenalism.
As science progresses, our posited physical space - times become more and more remote from the space - time we think of as characterizing immediate experience. This will become even more true as we move from the classical space - time of the relativity theories into fully quantized physical accounts of space - time. There is strong pressure from the growing divergence of the space - time of physics from the space - time of our ‘immediate experience’ to dissociate the two completely and, perhaps, to stop thinking of the space - time of physics for being anything like our ordinary notions of space and time. Whether such a radical dissociation of posited nature from phenomenological experience can be sustained, however, without giving up our grasp entirely on what it is to think of a physical theory ‘realistically’ is an open question.
Science aims to represent accurately actual ontological unity/diversity. The wholeness of the spatiotemporal framework and the existence of physics, i.e., of laws invariant across all the states of matter, do represent ontological unities which must be reflected in some unification of content. However, there is no simple relation between ontological and descriptive unity/diversity. A variety of approaches to representing unity are available (the formal - substantive spectrum and respective to its opposite and operative directions that the range of naturalisms). Anything complex will support man y different partial descriptions, and, conversely, different kinds of thing s many all obey the laws of a unified theory, e.g., quantum field theory of fundamental particles or collectively be ascribed dynamical unity, e.g., self - organizing systems.
It is reasonable to eliminate gratuitous duplication from description - that is, to apply some principle of simplicity, however, this is not necessarily the same as demanding that its content satisfies some further methodological requirement for formal unification. Elucidating explanations till there is again no reason to limit the account to simple logical systemization: The unity of science might instead be complex, reflecting our multiple epistemic access to a complex reality.
Biology provides as useful analogy. The many diverse species in an ecology nonetheless, each map, genetically and cognitively, interrelatable aspects of as single environment and share exploitation of the properties of gravity, light, and so forth. Though the somantic expression is somewhat idiosyncratic to each species, and the incomplete representation, together they form an interrelatable unity, a multidimensional functional representation of their collective world. Similarly, there are many scientific disciplines, each with its distinctive domains, theories, and methods specialized to the condition under which it accesses our world. Each discipline may exhibit growing internal metaphysical and nomological unities. On occasion, disciplines, or components thereof, may also formally unite under logical reduction. But a more substantive unity may also be manifested: Though content may be somewhat idiosyncratic to each discipline, and the incomplete representation, together the disciplinary y contents form an interrelatable unity, a multidimensional functional representation of their collective world. Correlatively, a key strength of scientific activity lies, not formal monolithicity, but in its forming a complex unity of diverse, interacting processes of experimentations, theorizing, instrumentation, and the like.
While this complex unity may be all that finite cognizers in a complex world can achieve, the accurate representation of a single world is still a central aim. Throughout the history of physics. Significant advances are marked by the introduction of new representation (state) spaces in which different descriptions (reference frames) are embedded as some interrelatable perspective among many thus, Newtonian to relativistic space - time perspectives. Analogously, young children learn to embed two - dimensional visual perspectives in a three - dimensional space in which object constancy is achieved and their own bodies are but some among many. In both cases, the process creates constant methodological pressure for greater formal unity within complex unity.
The role of unity in the intimate relation between metaphysics and metho in the investigation of nature is well - illustrated b y the prelude to Newtonian science. In the millennial Greco - Christian religion preceding the founder of modern astronomy, Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630), nature was conceived as essentially a unified mystical order, because suffused with divine reason and intelligence. The pattern of nature was not obvious, however, a hidden ordered unity which revealed itself to a diligent search as a luminous necessity. In his Mysterium Cosmographicum, Kepler tried to construct a model of planetary motion based on the five Pythagorean regular or perfect solids. These were to be inscribed within the Aristotelian perfect spherical planetary orbits in order, and so determine them. Even the fact that space is a three - dimensional unity was a reflection of the one triune God. And when the observational facts proved too awkward for this scheme. Kepler tried instead, in his Harmonice Mundi, to build his unified model on the harmonies of the Pythagorean musical scale.
Subsequently, Kepler trod a difficult and reluctant path to the extraction of his famous three empirical laws of planetary motion: Laws that made Newtonian revolution possible, but had none of the elegantly simple symmetries that mathematical mysticism required. Thus, we find in Kepler both the medieval methods and theories of metaphysically y unified religio - mathematical mysticism and those of modern empirical observation and model fitting. A transition figures in the passage to modern science.
To appreciate both the historical tradition and the role of unity in modern scientific method, consider Newton’s methodology, focussing just on Newton’s derivation of the law of universal gravitation in Principia Mathematica, book iii. The essential steps are these: (1) The experimental work of Kepler and Galileo (1564 - 1642) is appealed to, so as to establish certain phenomena, principally Kepler’s laws of celestial planetary motion and Galileo’s terrestrial law of free fall. (2) Newton’s basic laws of motion are applied to the idealized system of an object small in size and mass moving with respect to a much larger mass under the action of a force whose features are purely geometrically determined. The assumed linear vector nature of the force allows construction of the centre of a mass frame, which separates out relative from common motions: It is an inertial frame (one for which Newton’s first law of motion holds), and the construction can be extended to encompass all solar system objects.
(3) A sensitive equivalence is obtained between Kepler’s laws and the geometrical properties of the force: Namely, that it is directed always along the line of centres between the masses, and that it varies inversely as the square of the distance between them. (4) Various instances of this force law are obtained for various bodies in the heavens - for example, the individual planets and the moons of Jupiter. From this one can obtain several interconnected mass ratios - in particular, several mass estimates for the Sun, which can be shown to cohere mutually. (5) The value of this force for the Moon is shown to be identical to the force required by Galileo’s law of free fall at the Earth’s surface. (6) Appeal is made again to the laws of motion (especially the third law) to argue that all satellites and falling bodies are equally themselves sources of gravitational force. (7) The force is then generalized to a universal gravitation and is shown to explain various other phenomena - for example, Galileo’s law for pendulum action is shown suitably small, thus leaving the original conclusions drawn from Kepler’s laws intact while providing explanations for the deviations.
Newton’s constructions represent a great methodological, as well as theoretical achievement. Many other methodological components besides unity deserve study in their own right. The sense of unification is here that a deep systemization, as given the laws of motion, the geometrical form of the gravitational force and all its significant parameters needed for a complete dynamical description - that is, the component G, of the geometrical form of gravity Gm1m2/rn, - are uniquely determined from phenomenons and, after the of universal gravitation has been derived, it plus the laws of motion determine the space and time frames and a set of self - consistent attributions of mass. For example, the coherent mass attributions ground the construction of the locally inertial ventre of a mass frame, and Newton’s first law then enables us to consider time as a magnitude e: Equal tomes are those during which a freely moving body transverses equal distances. The space and time frames in turn ground use of the laws of motion, completing the constructive circle. This construction has a profound unity to it, expressed by the multiple interdependency of its components, the convergence of its approximations, and the coherence of its multiplying determined quantized. Newton’s Rule IV: (Loosely) do not introduce a rival theory unless it provides an equal or superior unified construction - in particular, unless it is able to measure its parameters in terms of empirical phenomena at least as thorough and cross - situationally invariably (Rule III) as done in current theory. this gives unity a central place in scientific method.
Kant and Whewell seized on this feature as a key reason for believing that the Newtonian account had a privileged intelligibility and necessity. Significantly, the requirement to explain deviations from Kepler’s laws through gravitational perturbations has its limits, especially in the cases of the Moon and Mercury: These need explanations. The former through the complexities of n - body dynamics (which may even show chaos) and the latter through relativistic theory. Today we no longer accept the truth, let alone the necessity, of Newton’s theory. Nonetheless, it remains a standard of intelligibility. It is in this role that it functioned, not jus t for Kant, but also for Reichenbach, and later Einstein and even Bohr: Their sense of crisis with regard to modern physics and their efforts to reconstruct it is best seen as stemming from their acceptance of an essential recognition of the falsification o this ideal by quantum theory. Nonetheless, quantum theory represents a highly unified, because symmetry - preserving, dynamics, reveals universal constants, and satisfies the requirement of coherent and invariant parameter determinations.
Newtonian method provides a central, simple example of the claim that increased unification brings increased explanatory power. A good explanation increases our understanding of the world. And clearly a convincing story an do this. Nonetheless, we have also achieved great increases in our understanding of the world through unification. Newton was able to unify a wide range of phenomena by using his three laws of motion together with his universal law of gravitation. Among other things he was able to account for Johannes Kepler’s three was of planetary motion, the tides, the motion of the comets, projectile motion and pendulums. Still, his laws of planetary motion are the first mathematical, scientific, laws of astronomy of the modern era. They state (1) that the planets travel in elliptical orbits, with one focus of the ellipse being the sun. (2) That the radius between sun and planets sweeps equal areas in equal time, and (3) that the squares of the periods of revolution of any two planets are in the same ratio as the cube of their mean distance from the sun.
we have explanations by reference of causation, to identities, to analogies, to unification, and possibly to other factors, yet philosophically we would like to find some deeper theory that explains what it was about each of these apparently diverse forms of explanation that makes them explanatory. This we lack at the moment. Dictionary definitions typically explicate the notion of explanation in terms of understanding: An explanation is something that gives understanding or renders something intelligible. Perhaps this is the unifying notion. The different types of explanation are all types of explanation in virtue of their power to give understanding. While certainly an explanation must be capable of giving an appropriately tutored person a psychological sense of understanding, this is not likely to be a fruitful way forward. For there is virtually no limit to what has been taken to give understanding. Once upon a time, many thought that the facts that there were seven virtues and seven orifices of the human head gave them an understanding of why there were (allegedly) only seven planets. we need to distinguish between real and spurious understanding. And for that we need a philosophical theory of explanation that will give us the hall - mark of a good explanation.
In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the pragmatic aspect of explanation. What counts as a satisfactory explanation depends on features of the context in which the explanation is sought. Willy Sutton, the notorious bank robber, is alleged to have answered a priest’s question, ‘Why do you rob banks’? By saying ‘That is where the money is’, we need to look at the context to be clear about for what exactly of an explanation is being sought. Typically, we are seeking to explain why something is the case than something else. The question which Willy’s priest probably had in mind was: ‘Why do you rob banks rather than have a socially worthwhile jobs’? And not the question ‘Why do you rob banks rather than have a socially worthwhile jobs’? And not the question ‘Why do you rob banks rather than churches’? we also need to attend to the background information possessed by the questioner. If we are asked why a certain bird has a long beaks, it is no use answering (as the D - N approach might seem to license) that the birds are an Aleutian tern and all Aleutian terns have long beaks if the questioner already knows that it is an Aleutian tern. A satisfactory answer typically provides new information. In this case, however, the speaker may be looking for some evolutionary account of why that species has evolved long beaks. Similarly, we need to attend to the level of sophistication in the answer to be given. we do not provide the same explanation of some chemical phenomena to a school child as to a student of quantum chemistry.
Van Fraassen whose work has been crucially important in drawing attention to the pragmatic aspects of exaltation has gone further in advocating a purely pragmatic theory of explanation. A crucial feature of his approach is a notion of relevance. Explanatory answers to ‘why’ questions must be relevant but relevance itself is a function of the context for van Fraassen. For that reason he has denied that it even makes sense to talk of the explanatory power of a theory. However, his critics (Kitcher and Salmon) pint out that his notion of relevance is unconstrained, with the consequence that anything can explain anything. This reductio can be avoided only by developing constraints on the relation of relevance, constraints that will not be a functional forming context, hence take us away from a purely pragmatic approach to explanation.
The resolving result is increased explanatory power for Newton’s theory because of the increased scope and robustness of its laws, since the data pool which now supports them is the largest and most widely accessible, and it brings its support to bear on a single force law with only two adjustable, multiply determined parameters (the masses). Call this kind of unification (simpler than full constructive unification) ‘coherent unification’. As much has been made of these ideas in recent philosophy of method, representing something of a resurgence of the Kant - Whewell tradition.
Unification of theories is achieved when several theories T1, T2, . . . Tn previously regarded s distinct are subsumed into a theory of broader scope T*. Classical examples are the unification of theories of electricity, magnetism, and light into Maxwell’s theory of electrodynamics. And the unification of evolutionary and genetic theory in the modern synthetic thinking.
In some instances of unification, T* logically entails T1, T2, . . . Tn under particular assumptions. This is the sense in which the equation of state for ideal gases: pV = nRT, is a unification of Boyle’s law, pV = constant for constant temperature, and Charle’s law, V/T = constant for constant pressure. Frequently, however, the logical relations between theories involve in unification are less straightforward. In some cases, the claims of T* strictly contradict the claim of T1, T2, . . . Tn. For instance, Newton’s inverse - square law of gravitation is inconsistent with Kepler’s laws of planetary motion and Galileo’s law of free fall, which it is often said to have unified. Calling such an achievement ‘unification’ may be justified by saying that T* accounts on its own for the domains of phenomena that had previously been treated by T1, T2, . . . Tn. In other cases described as unification, T* uses fundamental concepts different from those of T1, T2, . . . Tn so the logical relations among them are unclear. For instance, the wave and corpuscular theories of light are said to have been unified in quantum theory, but the concept of the quantum particle is alien to classical theories. Some authors view such cases not as a unification of the original T1, T2, . . . Tn, but as their abandonment and replacement by a wholly new theory T* that is incommensurable with them.
Standard techniques for the unification of theories involve isomorphism and reduction. The realization that particular theories attribute isomorphic structures to a number of different physical systems may point the way to a unified theory that attributes the same structure to all such systems. For example, all instances of wave propagation are described by the wave equation:
∂2y/∂x2 = (∂2y/∂t2)/v2
Where the displacement y is given different physical interpretations in different instances. The reduction of some theories to a lower - level theory, perhaps through uncovering the micro - structure of phenomena, may enable the former to be unified into the latter. For instance, Newtonian mechanics represent a unification of many classical physical theories, extending from statistical thermodynamics to celestial mechanics, which portray physical phenomena as systems of classical particles in motion.
Alternative forms of theory unification may be achieved on alternative principles. A good example is provided by the Newtonian and Leibnizian programs for theory unification. The Newtonian program involves analysing all physical phenomena as the effects of forces between particles. Each force is described by a causal law, modelled on the law of gravitation. The repeated application of these laws is expected to solve all physical problems, unifying celestial mechanics with terrestrial dynamics and the sciences of solids and of fluids. By contrast, the Leibnizian program proposes to unify physical science on the basis of abstract and fundamental principles governing all phenomena, such as principles of continuity, conservation, and relativity. In the Newtonian program, unification derives from the fact that causal laws of the same form apply to every event in the universe: In the Leibnizian program, it derives from the fact that a few universal principles apply to the universe as a whole. The Newtonian approach was dominant in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but more recent strategies to unify physical sciences have hinged on or upon the formulating universal conservation and symmetry principles reminiscent of the Leibnizian program.
There are several accounts of why theory unification is a desirable aim. Many hinge on simplicity considerations: A theory of greater generality is more informative than a set of restricted theories, since we need to gather less information about a state of affairs in order to apply the theory to it. Theories of broader scope are preferable to theories of narrower scope in virtue of being more vulnerable to refutation. Bayesian principles suggest that simpler theories yielding the same predictions as more complex ones derive stronger support from common favourable evidence: On this view, a single general theory may be better confirmed than several theories of narrower scope that are equally consistent with the available data.
Theory unification has provided the basis for influential accounts of explanation. According to many authors, explanation is largely a matter of unifying seemingly independent instances under a generalization. As the explanation of individual physical occurrences is achieved by bringing them within th scope of a scientific theory, so the explanation of individual theories is achieved by deriving them from a theory of a wider domain. On this view, T1, T2, . . . Tn, are explained by being unified into T*.
The question of what theory unification reveals about the world arises in the debate between scientific realism and instrumentals. According to scientific realists, the unification of theories reveals common causes or mechanisms underlying apparently unconnected phenomena. The comparative case with which scientists interpretation, realists maintain, but can be explained if there exists a substrate underlying all phenomena composed of real observable and unobservable entities. Instrumentalists provide a mythological account of theory unification which rejects these ontological claims of realism and instrumentals.
Arguments in a like manner, are of statements which purported provides support for another. The statements which purportedly provide the support are the premises while the statement purportedly supported is the conclusion. Arguments are typically divided into two categories depending on the degree of support they purportedly provide. Deduction arguments purportedly provide conclusive arguments purportedly provide any probable support. Some, but not all, arguments succeed in supporting arguments, successful in providing support for their conclusions. Successful deductive arguments are valid while successful inductive arguments are strong. An argument is valid just in case if all its ptr=muses are true then its conclusion must be true. An argument is strong just in case if all its premises are true its conclusion is only probable. Deductive logic provides methods for ascertaining whether or not an argument is valid whereas inductive logic provides methods for ascertaining the degree of support the premiss of an argument confer on its conclusion.
The argument from analogy is intended to establish our right to believe in the existence and nature of ‘other minds’, it admits that it is possible that the objects we call persona are, other than themselves, mindless automata, but claims that we nonetheless have sufficient reason for supposing this are not the case. There is more evidence that they cannot mindless automata than that they are:
The classic statement of the argument comes from J.S. Mill. He wrote:
I am conscious in myself of a series of facts connected by an
uniform sequence, of which the beginning is modification
of my body, the middle, in the case of other human beings, I have
the evidence of my senses for the first and last links of the series, but not for the intermediate link. I find, however, that the sequence
Between the first and last is regular and constant in the other
cases as it is in mine. In my own case I know that the first link produces the last through the intermediate link, and could not produce it without. Experience, therefore, obliges me to conclude that there must
be an intermediate link, which must either be the same in others
as in myself, or a different one, . . . by supposing the link to be of the Same nature . . . I confirm to the legitimate rules of experimental enquiry.
As an inductive argument this is very weak, because it is condemned to arguing from a single case. But to this we might reply that nonetheless, we have more evidence that there is other minds than that there is not.
The real criticism of the argument is due to the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 - 1951). It is that the argument assumes that we at least understand the claims that there are subjects of experience other than themselves, who enjoy experiences which are like ours but not ours: It only asks what reason we have to suppose that claim true. But if the argument does indeed express the ground of our right to believe in the existence of others. It is impossible to explain how we are able to achieve that understanding. So if there is a place for argument from analogy, the problem of other minds - the real, hard problem, which is how we acquire a conception of another mind - is insoluble. The argument is either redundant or worse.
Even so, the expression ‘the private language argument’ is sometimes used broadly to refer to a battery of arguments in Wittgenstein’s ‘Philosophical Investigations’, which are concerned with the concepts of, and relations between, the mental and its behavioural manifestations (the inner and the outer), self - knowledge and knowledge of other’s mental states. Avowals of experience and description of experiences. It is sometimes used narrowly to refer to a single chain of argument in which Wittgenstein demonstrates the incoherence of the idea that sensation names and names of experiences given meaning by association with a mental ‘object’, e.g., the word ‘pain’ by association with the sensation of pain, or by mental (private) ‘ostensive definition’. In which a mental ‘entity’ supposedly functions as a sample, e.g., a mental image, stored in memory y, is conceived as providing a paradigms for the application of the name.
A ‘private language’ is not a private code, which could be cracked by another person, nor a language spoken by only one person, which could be taught to others, but a putative language, the individual words of which refer to what can (apparently) are known only by the speaker, i.e., to his immediate private sensations or, to use empiricist jargon, to the ‘ideas’ in his mind. It has been a presupposition of the mainstream of modern philosophy, empiricist, rationalist and Kantian alike, of representationalism that the languages we speak are such private languages, that the foundations of language no less than the foundations of knowledge lie in private experience. To determine this picture with all its complex ramifications is the purpose of Wittgenstein’s private arguments.
There are various ways of distinguishing types of foundationalist epistemology, whereby Plantinga (1983) has put forward an influential conception of ‘classical foundationalism’, specified in terms of limitations on the foundations. He construes this as a disjunction of ancient and medieval foundationalism’, which takes foundations to comprise what is self - evident and ‘evident to the senses’ and ‘modern foundationalism’, that replaces ‘evidently to the senses’ with ‘incorrible’, which in practice what taken to apply to beliefs about one’s present states of consciousness. Plantinga himself developed this notion in the context of arguing that items outside this territory, in particular certain beliefs about God, could also be immediately justified. A popular recent distinction is between what is variously called ‘strong’ or ‘extreme’ foundationalism and ‘moderate’ or ‘minimal’ foundationalism, with the distinction depending on whether various epistemic immunities are required of foundations. Finally, ‘simple’ and ‘iterative’ foundationalism are dependent on whether it is required of as foundations only that it is immediately justified, or whether it is also required that the higher level belief that the former belief is immediately justified is itself immediately justified.
However, classic opposition is between foundationalism and coherentism. Coherentism denies any immediate justification. It deals with the regress argument by rejecting ‘linear’ chains of justification and, in effect, taking the total system of belief to be epistemically primary. A particular belief is justified to the extent that it is integrated into a coherent system of belief. More recently, ‘pragmatists’ like American educator, social reformer and philosopher of pragmatism John Dewey (1859 - 1952), have developed a position known as contextualism, which avoids ascribing any overall structure to knowledge. Questions concerning justification can only arise in particular context, defined in terms of assumptions that are simply taken for granted, though they can be questioned in other contexts, where other assumptions will be privileged.
Meanwhile, it is, nonetheless, the idea that the language each of us speaks is essentially private, that leaning a language is a matter of associating words with, or ostensibly defining words by reference to, subjective experience (the ‘given’), and that communication is a matter of stimulating a pattern of associations in the mind of the hearer qualitatively identical with what in the mind of the speaker is linked with multiple mutually supporting misconceptions about language, experiences and their identity, the mental and its relation to behaviour, self - knowledge and knowledge of the states of minds of others.
1. The idea that there can be such a thing as a private language is one manifestation of a tactic committed to what Wittgenstein called ‘Augustine’s picture of language’ - pre - theoretical picture according to which the essential function of words is to name items in reality, that the link between word and world is affected by ‘ostensive definition’, and describe a state of affairs. Applied to the mental, this knows that what a psychological predicate such as ‘pain’ means if one knows, is acquainted with, what it stands for - a sensation one has. The word ‘pain’ is linked to the sensation it names by way of private ostensive definition, which is affected by concentration (the subjective analogue of pointing) on the sensation and undertaking to use the word of that sensation. First - person present tense psychological utterances, such as ‘I have a pain’ are conceived to be descriptions which the speaker, as it was, reads off the facts which are private accessibility to him.
2. Experiences are conceived to be privately owned and inalienable - no on else can have my pain, but not numerically, identical with mine. They are also thought to be epistemically private - only I really know that what I have is a pain, others can at best only believe or surmise that I am in pain.
3. Avowals of experience are expressions of self - knowledge. When I have an experience, e.g., a pain, I am conscious or aware that I have by introspection (conceived as a faculty of inner sense). Consequently, I have direct or immediate knowledge of my subjective experience. Since no one else can have what I have, or peer into my mind, my access is privileged. I know, and an certain, that I have a certain experience whenever I have it, for I cannot doubt that this, which I now have, in a pain.
4. One cannot gain introspective access to the experience of others, so one can obtain only indirect knowledge or belief about them. They are hidden behind the observable, behaviour, inaccessible to direct observation, and inferred either analogically. Whereby, this argument is intended to establish our right to believe in the existence and nature of other minds, it admits it is possible that the objects we call persons are, other than ourselves, mindless automata, but claims that we nonetheless, have sufficient reason for supposing this not to be the case. There is more evidence that they are not mindless automata than they are.
The real criticism of the argument is du e to Wittgenstein (1953). It is that the argument assumes that we at least understand the claims that there are subjects of experience other than ourselves, who enjoy experiences which are like ours but not ours: It only asks what reason we have to suppose that claim true. But if the argument does indeed express the ground of our right to believe in the existence of others, it is impossible to explain how we are able to achieve that understanding. So if there is a place for argument from analogy, the problem of other minds - the real, hard problem, which is how we acquire a conception of another mind - is insoluble. The argument is either redundant or worse.
Even so, the inference to the best explanation is claimed by many to be a legitimate form of non - deductive reasoning, which provides an important alternative to both deduction and enumerative induction. Indeed, some would claim that it is only through reasoning to the best explanation that one can justify beliefs about the external world, the past, theoretical entities in science, and even the future. Consider belief about the external world and assume that we know what we do about the external world through our knowledge of the subjective and fleeting sensations. It seems obvious that we cannot deduce any truths about the existence of physical objects from truths describing the character of our sensations. But either can we observe a correlation between sensations and something other than sensations since by hypothesis all we ever nave to rely on ultimately is knowledge of our sensations. Nevertheless, we may be able to posit physical objects as the best explanation for the character and order of our sensations. In the same way, various hypotheses about the past, might best be explained by present memory: Theoretical postulates in physics might best explain phenomena in the macro - world. And it is even possible that our access to the future to explain past observations. But what exactly is the form of an inference to the best explanation? However, if we are to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate reasoning to the best explanation it would seem that we need a more sophisticated model of the argument form. It would seem that in reasoning to an explanation we need ‘criteria’ for choosing between alternative explanation. If reasoning to the best explanation is to constitute a genuine alterative to inductive reasoning, it is important that these criteria not be implicit premises which will convert our argument into an inductive argument
However, in evaluating the claim that inference to best explanation constitutes a legitimate and independent argument form, one must explore the question of whether it is a contingent fact that at least most phenomena have explanations and that explanations that satisfy a given criterion, simplicity, for example, is more likely to be correct and writers of texts, if the universe structure in such a way that simply, powerful, familiar explanations were usually the correct explanation. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is true, but It would be an empirical fact about our universe discovered only a posterior. If the reasoning to the best explanation relies on such criteria, it seems that one cannot without circularity use reasoning to the best explanation to discover that the reliance on such criteria is safe. But if one has some independent was of discovering that simple, powerful, familiar explanations are more often correct, then why should we think that reasoning of the best explanation is an independent source of information about the world? Indeed, why should we not conclude that it would be more perspicuous to represent the reasoning this way. That is, simply an instance of familiar inductive reasoning.
5. The observable behaviour from which we thus infer consists of bare bodily movements caused by inner mental events. The outer (behaviour) are not logically connected with the inner (the mental). Hence, the mental are essentially private, known ‘strictu sensu’, only to its owner, and the private and subjective is better known than the public.
The resultant picture leads first to scepticism then, ineluctably to ‘solipsism’. Since pretence and deceit are always logically possible, one can never be sure whether another person is really having the experience behaviourally appears to be having. But worse, if a given psychological predicate means ‘this’ (which I have no one else could logically have - since experience is inalienable), then any other subjects of experience. Similar scepticism about defining samples of the primitive terms of a language is private, then I cannot be sure that what you mean by ‘red’ or ‘pain’ is not quantitatively identical with what I mean by ‘green’ or ‘pleasure’. And nothing can stop us frm concluding that all languages are private and strictly mutually unintelligible.
Philosophers had always been aware of the problematic nature of knowledge of other minds and of mutual intelligibly of speech of their favour red picture. It is a manifestation of Wittgenstein’s genius to have launched his attack at the point which seemed incontestable - namely, not whether I can know of the experiences of others, but whether I can understand the ‘private language’ of another in attempted communication, but whether I can understand my own allegedly private language.
The functionalist thinks of ‘mental states’ and events as causally mediating between a subject’s sensory inputs and that subject’s ensuing behaviour that what makes a mental state the 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 relation it bears to the subject’s perceptual stimuli it beards to the subject’s perceptual stimuli, behavioural responses and other mental states. That’s not to say, that, functionalism is one of the great ‘isms’ that have been offered as solutions to the mind/body problem. The cluster of questions that all of these ‘isms’ promise to answer can be expressed as: What is the ultimate nature of the mental? At the most overall level, what makes a mental state mental? At the more specific level that has been the focus in recent years: What do thoughts have in common in virtue of which they are thoughts? That is, what makes a thought a thought? What makes a pain a pain? Cartesian Dualism said the ultimate nature of the mental of the mental was said the ultimate nature of the mental was to be found in a special mental substance. Behaviouralism identified mental states with behavioural disposition: Physicalism in its most influential version identifies mental states with brain states. Of course, the relevant physical state s are various sorts of neutral states. Our concepts of mental states such as thinking, and feeling are of course different from our concepts of neural states, of whatever.
Disaffected by Cartesian dualism and from the ‘first - person’ perspective of introspective psychology, the behaviouralists had claimed that there is nothing to the mind but the subject’s behaviour and disposition to behave equally well against the behavioural betrayal, behaving just as pain - free human beings, would be the right sort of case. 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 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 objects to dualism (notably Descartes’ admitted problem of mind - body interaction), some theorists were uneasy, they felt that it 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 the Cambridge - born Australian philosopher J.J.C. 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 disposition to behave. But, contrary to dualism, the episodic mental items are not ghostly or non - physical either. Rather, they are neurophysiological of an experience that seems to resist ‘reduction’ in terms of behaviour. Although ‘pain’ obviously has behavioural consequences, being unpleasant, disruptive and sometimes overwhelming, there is also something more than behaviour, something ‘that it is like’ to be in pain, and there is all the difference in the world between pain behaviour accompanied by pain and the same behaviour without pain. Theories identifying pain with neural events subserving it have been attacked, e.g., Kripke, on the grounds that while a genuine metaphysical identity y should be necessarily true, the association between pain and any such events would be contingent.
Nonetheless, the American philosopher’s Hilary Putnam (1926 - ) and American philosopher of mind Alan Jerry Fodor (1935 - ), 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 s pain has always and everywhere the neurophysiological characterization initially assigned to it. For example, if the identity theorist identified 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. However, such a 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 pain? The identity theorists had overreacted to the behaviourists’ difficulties and focussed too narrowly on the specifics of biological humans’ actual inner states, and in doing so, they had fallen into species chauvinism.
Fodor and Putnam advocated the obvious correction: What was important, were no t being c - fibres (per se) that were firing, but what the c - fibres was doing, what their firing contributed to the operation of the organism as a whole? The role of the c - fibres could have been preformed by any mechanically suitable component s long as that role was performed, the psychological containment for which the organism would have been 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 biochemical description that play the same functional role as did that plays the same in the human beings the firing of c - fibres in the human being. we may continue to maintain that pain ‘tokens’, individual instances of pain occurring in particular subjects at particular neurophysiological states of these subjects at those times, throughout which the states that happed to be playing the appropriate roles: This is the thesis of ‘token identity’ or ‘token physicalism’. But pan itself (the kind, universal or type) can be identified only with something mor e abstract: th e caudal or functional role that c - fibres share with their potential replacements or surrogates. Mental state - and identified not with neurophysiological types but with more abstract functional roles, as specified by ‘stare - tokens’ relations to the organism’s inputs, outputs and other psychological states.
Functionalism has in itself the distinct souses for which Putnam and Fodor saw mental states in terms of an empirical computational theory of the mind, also, Smart’s ‘topic neutral’ analyses led Armstrong and Lewis to a functional analysis of mental concepts. While Wittgenstein’s idea of meaning as use led to a version of functionalism as a theory of meaning, further developed by Wilfrid Sellars (1912 - 89) and later Harman.
One motivation behind functionalism can be appreciated by attention to artefact concepts like ‘carburettor’ and biological concepts like ‘kidney’. What it is for something to be a carburettor is for it to mix fuel and air in an internal combustion engine, and carburettor is a functional concept. In the case of ‘kidney’, the scientific concept is functional - defined in terms of a role in filtering the blood and maintaining certain chemical balances.
The kind of function relevant to the mind can be introduced through the parity - detecting automaton, wherefore according to functionalism, all there is to being in pain is having to say ‘ouch’, wonder whether you are ill, and so forth. Because mental states in this regard, entail for its method for defining automaton states is supposed to work for mental states as well. Mental states can be totally characterized in terms that involve only logico - mathematical language and terms for input signals and behavioural outputs. Thus, functionalism satisfied one of the desiderata of behaviourism, characterized the mental in entirely non - mental language.
Suppose we have a theory of mental states that specify all the causal relations among the stats, sensory inputs and behavioural outputs. Focussing on pain as a sample, mental state, it might say, among other things, that sitting on a tack causes pain an that pain causes anxiety and saying ‘ouch’. Agreeing for the sake of the example, to go along with this moronic theory, functionalism would then say that could define ‘pain’ as follows: Bing in pain - being in the first of two states, the first of which is causes by sitting on tacks, and which in turn cases the other state and emitting ‘ouch’. More symbolically:
Being in pain = Being an x such that ∃
P ∃ Q[sitting on a tack cause s P and P
causes both Q and emitting ‘ouch; and
x is in P]
More generally, if T is a psychological theory with ‘n’ mental terms of which the seventeenth is ‘pain’, we can define ‘pain’ relative to T as follows (the ‘F1' . . . ‘Fn’ are variables that replace the ‘n’ mental terms):
Being in pain = Being an x such that ∃
F1 . . . Fn[T(F1 . . . Fn) & x is in F17]
The existentially quantified part of the right - hand side before the ‘&’ is the Ramsey sentence of the theory ‘T’. In this ay, functionalism characterizes the mental in non - mental terms, in terms that involve quantification over realization of mental states but no explicit mention of them: Thus, functionalism characterizes the mental in terms of structures that are tacked down to reality only at the inputs and outputs.
The psychological theory ‘T’ just mentioned can be either an empirical psychological theory or else a common - sense ‘folk’ theory, and the resulting functionalisms are very different. In the former case, which is named ‘psychofunctionalism’. The functional definitions are supposed to fix the extensions of mental terms. In the latter case, conceptual functionalism, the functional definitions are aimed at capturing our ordinary mental concepts. (This distinction shows an ambiguity in the original question of what the ultimate nature of the mental is.) The idea of psychofunctionalism is that the scientific nature of the mental consists not in anything biological, but in something ‘organizational’, analogous to computational structure. Conceptual functionalism, by contrast, can be thought of as a development of logical behaviouralism. Logical behaviouralisms thought that pain was a disposition to pan behaviour. But as the Polemical British Catholic logician and moral philosopher Thomas Peter Geach (1916 - ) and the influential American philosopher and teacher Milton Roderick Chisholm (1916 - 99) pointed out, what counts as pain behaviour depends on the agent’s belief and desires. Conceptual functionalism avoid this problem by defining each mental state in terms of its contribution to dispositions to behave - and have other mental states.
The functional characterization is given to assume a psychological theory with a finite number of mental state terms. In the case of monadic states like pain, the sensation of red, and so forth. It does seem a theoretical option to simply list the states and the=ir relations to other states, inputs and outputs. But for a number of reasons, this is not a sensible theoretical option for belief - states, desire - states, and other propositional - attitude states. For on thing, the list would be too long to be represented without combinational methods. Indeed, there is arguably no upper bound on the number of propositions anyone which could in principle be an object of thought. For another thing, there are systematic relations among belies: For example, the belief that ‘John loves Mary’. Ann the belief that ‘Mary loves John’. These belief - states represent the same objects as related to each other in converse ways. But a theory of the nature of beliefs can hardly just leave out such an important feature of them. We cannot treat ‘believes - that - grass - is - green’, ‘believes - that - grass - is - green], and so forth, as unrelated’, as unrelated primitive predicates. So we will need a more sophisticated theory, one that involves some sort of combinatorial apparatus. The most promising candidates are those that treat belief as a relation. But a relation to what? There are two distinct issues at hand. One issue is how to formulate the functional theory, for which our acquiring of knowledge - that acquires knowledge - how, abilities to imagine and recognize, however, the knowledge acquired can appear in embedded as contextually represented. For example, reason commits that if this is what it is like to see red, then this similarity of what it is like to see orange, least of mention, that knowledge has the same problem as to infer that non - cognitive analysis of ethical language have in explaining the logical behaviour of ethical predicates. For a suggestion in terms of a correspondence between the logical relations between sentences and the inferential relations among mental states. A second issue is that types of states could possibly realize the relational propositional attitude states. Fodor (1987) has stressed the systematicity of propositional attitudes and further points out that the beliefs whose contents are systematically related exhibit th e following sort of empirical relation: If one is capable of believing that Mary loves John, one is also capable of believing that John love Mary. Jerry Fodor argues that only a language of thought in the brain could explain this fact.
Jerry Alan Fodor (1935 - ), an American philosopher of mind who is well known for a resolute realism about the nature of mental functioning. Taking the analogy between thought and computation seditiously. Fodor believes that mental representations should be conceived as individual states with their own identities and structure, like formulae transformed by processes of computation or those of the ‘Holist’ such as Donald Herbert Davidson (1917 - 2003) or, ‘instrumentalists about mental ascriptions, such as Daniel Clement Dennett (1952). In recent years he has become a vocal critic of some of the aspirations of cognitive science, literaturizing such books as ‘Language of Thought’ (1975, ‘The Modularity of Mind (1983), ‘Psychosemantics (1987), ‘The Elm and the Expert(1994), ‘Concepts: Where Cognitive Science went Wrong’ (1998), and ‘Hume Variations ‘(2003).
Purposively, ‘Folk psychology’ is primarily ‘intentional explanation’: It’s the idea that people’s behaviour can be explained b yy reference to the contents of their beliefs and desires. Correspondingly, the method - logical issue is whether intentional explanation can be co - opted to make science out of. Similar questions might be asked about the scientific potential of other folk - psychological concepts (consciousness for example), but, what make s intentional explanation problematic is that they presuppose that there are intentional states. What makes intentional states problematic is that they exhibit a pair of properties assembled in the concept of ‘intentionality’, in its current use the expression ‘intentionality refers to that property of the mind by which it is directed at, about, or of objects and stat es of affairs in the world. Intentionality, so defined, includes such mental phenomena as belief, desire, intention, hope, fear, memory, hate, lust, disgust, and memory as well as perception and intentional action, however, there is in remaining that of:
(1) Intentional states have causal powers. Thoughts (more precisely, having of thoughts) make things happen: Typically, thoughts make behaviour happen. Self - pit y can make one weep, as can onions.
(2) Intentional states are semantically evaluable, beliefs, for example, area about how things are and are therefore true or false depending on whether things are the way that they are believed to be. Consider, by contrast, tables, chairs, onions, and the cat’s being on the mat. Though they all have causal powers they are not about anything and are therefore not evaluable as true or false.
If there is to be an intentional science, there must be semantically evaluable things that have causal powers. Moreover, there must be laws about such things, including, in particular, laws that relate beliefs and desires to one another and to actions. If there are no intentional laws, then there is no intentional science. Perhaps, scientific explanation is not always explanation by law subsumption, but surely if often is, and there is no obvious reason why an intentional science should be exceptional in this respect. Moreover, one of the best reasons for supposing that common sense is right about there being intentional states is precisely that there seem to be many reliable intentional generalizations for such states to fall under. It is for us to assume that many of the truisms of folk psychology either articulate intentional laws or come pretty close doing so.
So, for example, it is a truism of folk psychology that rote repetition facilitates recall. (Moreover, and most generally, repetition improves performance ‘How do you get to Carnegie Hall’?) This generalization relates the content to what you learn to the content of what you say to yourself while you are learning it: So, what it expresses, is, ‘prima facie’, a lawful causal relation between types of intentional states. Real psychology y has lots more to say on this topic, but it is, nonetheless, much more of the same. To a first approximation, repetition does causally facilitate recall, and that it does is lawful.
There are, to put it mildly, many other case of such reliable intentional causal generalizations. There are also many, many kinds of folk psychological generalizations about ‘correlations’ among intentional states, and these to are plausible candidates for flushing out as intentional laws. For example that anyone who knows what 7 + 5 is also to know what 7+ 6 is: That anyone who knows what ‘John love’s Mary’ means who knows what ‘Mary love’s John’ means, and so forth.
Philosophical opinion about folk psychological intentional generalizations runs the gamut from ‘there are not any that are really reliable’ to. They are all platitudinously true, hence not empirical at all. Nevertheless, suffice to say, that the necessity of ‘if 7 +5 = 12 then 7 + 6 =13' is quite compatible with the ‘contingency’ of ‘if someone knows that 7 + 5 = 12, then he knows that 7 + 6 =13: And, then, part of the question ‘how can there be an intentional science’ is ‘how can there be an intentional practice of law’?
Let us assume most generally, that laws support counter-factuals and are confirmed by their instances. Further, to assume that every law is either basic or not. Basic laws are either exceptionless or intractably statistical. The only basic laws are laws of basic physics.
All Non - basic laws, including the laws of all the Non - basic sciences, including, in particular, the intentional laws of psychology, are ‘c[eteris] p[aribus] laws: They hold only ‘all else being equal’. There is - anyhow. There ought to be that a whole department of the philosophy of science devoted to the construal of cp laws: To making clear, for instances, how they can be explanatory, how they can support counter-factuals, how they can subsume the singular causal truths that instance them . . . and so forth. Omitting only these issues in what gives presence to the future, is, because they do not belong to philosophical psychology as such. If the laws of intentional psychology is a special, I, e., Non - basic science. Not because it is an intentional science.
There is a further quite general property that distinguishes cp laws from basic ones: Non - basic laws want mechanisms for their implementation. Suppose, for a working example, that some special science states that being ‘F’ causes xs to be ‘G’. (Being irradiated by sunlight causes plants to photo - synthesize, as for being freely suspended near the earth’s surface causes bodies to fall with uniform accelerating, and so on.) Then it is a constraint on this generalization’s being lawful that ‘How does, being ‘F’ cause’s xs to be ‘G’? There must be an answer, this is, however, if we are continued to suppose that one of the ways special science; laws are different from basic laws. A basic law says that ‘F’s causes (or are), if there were, perhaps that aby explaining how, or why, or by what means F’s cause G’s, the law would have not been basic but derived.
Typically - though variably - the mechanism that implements a special science law is defined over the micro - structure of the thing that satisfy the law. The answer to ‘how does. Sunlight make plants photo - synthesize’? Its function implicates the chemical structure of plants: The answer to ‘how does freezing make water solid’? This question surely implicates the molecular structure of waters’ foundational elements, and so forth. In consequence, theories about how a law is implemented usually draw on or upon the vocabularies of two, or more levels of explanation.
If you are specially interested in the peculiarities of aggregates of matter at the Lth level (in plants, or minds, or mountains, as it might be) then you are likely to be specially interested in implementing mechanisms at the L - 1th level (the ‘immediately’ mechanisms): This is because the characteristics of L - level laws can often be explained by the characteristics of their L - 1th level implementations. You can learn a lot about plants qua plants by studying their chemical composition. You learn correspondingly less by studying their subatomic constituents, though, no doubt, laws about plants are implemented, eventually, sub - atomically. The question thus arises of what mechanisms might immediately implement the intentional laws of psychology with that accounting for their characteristic features.
Intentional laws subsume causal interactions among mental processes, that much is truistic. But, in this context, something substantive, something that a theory of the implementation of intentional laws will account for. The causal processes that intentional states enter into have a tendency to preserve their semantic properties. For example, thinking true thoughts are so, that an inclining inclination to casse one to think more thoughts that are also true. This is not small matter: The very rationality of thought depends on such fact, in that ewe can consider or place them for interpretations as that true thoughts that ((P ➞ Q) and (P)) makes receptive to cause true thought that ‘Q’.
A good deal has happened in psychology - notably since the Viennese founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) - has consisted of finding new and surprising cases where mental processes are semantically coherent under intentional characterizations. Freud made his reputation by showing that this was true even much of the detritus of behaviours, dreams, verbal slips and the like, even to free or word association and ink - blob coloured identification cards (the Rorschach test). Even so, it turns out that psychology of normal mental processes is largely a grist for the same normative intention. For example, it turns out to be theoretically revealing to construe perceptual processes as inferences that take specifications of proximal stimulations as premises and yield specifications, and that are reliably truth preserving in ecologically normal circumstances. The psychology of learning cries out for analogous treatment, e.g., for treatment as a process of hypothesis formation and ratifying confirmation.
Intentional states, as or common - sense understands them, have both causal and semantic properties and that the combination appears to be unprecedented: Propositions are semantically evaluable, but they are abstract objects and have no casual powers. Onions are concrete particulars and have casual powers, however, they are not semantically evaluable. Intentional states seem to be unique in combining the two that is what so many philosophers have against them.
Suppose, once, again, that ‘the cat is on the mat’. On the one hand, the thing as stated about the cat on the mat, is a concrete particular in good standing and it has, qua material object, an open - ended galaxy of causal powers. (It reflects light in ways that are essential to its legibility; It exerts a small but in particular detectable gravitational effect upon the moon, and whatever. On the other hand, what stands concrete is about something and is therefore semantically evaluable: It’s true if and only if there is a cat where it says that there is. So, then, the inscription of ‘the cat is on the mat,’ has both content and causal powers, and so does my thought that the cat is on the mat.
At this point, we are asked of how many words are there in the sentence. ‘The cat is on the mat’? There are, of course, at least two answers to this question, precisely because one can either count word types, of which there are five, or individual occurrences - known as tokens - of which there are six. Moreover, depending on how one chooses to think of word types, another answer is possible. Since the sentence contains definite articles, noun, a proposition and a verb, there are four grammatically different types of word in the sentence.
The type/token distinction, understood as a distinction between sorts of thing and instances, is commonly applied to mental phenomena. For example, one can think of pain in the type way as when we say that we have experienced burning pain many times: Or, in the token way, as when we speak of the burning pain currently being suffered. The type/token distinction for mental states and events becomes important in the context of attempts to describe the relationship between mental and physical phenomena. In particular, the identity theory asserts that mental states are physical states, and this raises the question whether the identity in question is of types or tokens.
Appreciably, if mental states are identical with physical states, presumably the relevant physical states are various sorts of neural state. Our concept of mental states such as thinking, sensing, and feeling and, and, of course, are different from our concepts of neural states, of whatever sort. Still, that is no problem for the identity theory. As J.J. Smart (1962) who first argued for the identity theory, and, emphasizes the requisite identity does not depend on our concepts of mental states or the meaning of mental terminology. For ‘a’ to be identical with ‘b’, both ‘a’ and ‘b’ must have exactly the same properties, however, the terms ‘a’ and ‘b’ need not mean the same. The principle of the indiscernibility of identical states that if ‘a’ is identical with ‘b’. Then every property that ‘a’ has ‘b’ has, and vice versa. This is sometimes known as Leibniz’s law.
However, the 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 state in two different ways: As a pain and as a neural firing. The state will therefore have certain properties in virtue of which we identify it as 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 too many to lead to a kind of duality, at which the level of the properties of mental states. Even so, if we reject a dualism of substances and take people simply to be physical organisms, those organisms still have both mental and physical states.
The problem just sketched about mental properties is widely thought to be most pressing for sensations, since the painful quality of pains and the red quality of visualization in sensations that seem to be irretrievably non - physical. So even if mental states are all identicals 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 the thoroughgoing mind - body materialism.
A more sophisticated reply to the difficultly about mental properties is due independently to the forth - right Australian ‘materialist and together with J.J.C. Smart, the leading Australian philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. D.M. Armstrong (1926 - ) and the American philosopher David Lewis (1941 - 2002), who argue that for a state to be a particular sort of intentional state or sensation is for that state to bear characteristic causal relations to other particular occurrences. The properties in virtue of which we identify states as thoughts or sensations will still be neutral as between being mental or physical, since anything can bear a causal relations to anything else. But causal connections have a better chance than simplify in some unspecified respect of capturing the distinguishing properties of sensations and thoughts.
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. That leaves open the question of whether such identities would be necessarily true on other construals of necessity.
American logician and philosopher, Saul Aaron Kripke (1940 - ) made his early reputation as a logical prodigy, especially through the work on the completeness of systems of modal logic. The three classic papers are ‘A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic’ (1959, ‘Journal of Symbolic Logic’) ‘Semantical Analysis of Modal Logic’ (1963, Zeltschrift fur Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik) and ‘Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic (1963, Acta Philosohica Fennica). In Naming and Necessity’ (1980), Kripke gave the classic modern treatment of the topic of reference, both clarifying the distinction between names and ‘definite descriptions, and opening the door to many subsequent attempts to understand the notion of reference in terms of a causal link between the use of a term and an original episode of attaching a name to a subject. His Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1983) also proved seminal, putting the rule - following considerations at the centre of Wittgenstein studies, and arguing that the private language argument is an application of them. Kripke has also written influential work on the theory of truth and the solution of the ‘semantic paradoxes’.
Nonetheless, Kripke (1980) 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 Post - master General of the us of A, 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, these terms are rigid designators.
If the term ‘a’ and ‘b’ refer to the same thing and both determine that thing necessarily, the identity statement ‘a = b’ is necessarily true. Kripke maintains that the term ‘pain’ and the term for the various brain states all determine the states they refer to necessarily: No circumstances are possible in which these terms would refer to different things. So, if pain were identical d with some particular brain state. But be necessarily identical with that state. Yet, Kripke argues that pain cannot be necessarily identical with any brain state, since the tie between pains and brain states plainly seems contingent. He concludes that they cannot be identical at all.
Kripke notes that our intuition 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 phenomena, but it appears that this way, Kripke argues only because we pick out heat by our sensation of heat, which bears only a contingent - bonding to mean molecular kinetic energy. It is the sensation of heat that actually seems to be connected contingently with mean molecular kinetic energy, not with mean 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. This is, because for a state to be pain is necessity 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 state is felt, and intuitions about the one are perforce intuitions about the other one are perforce intuitions about the other.
Kripke’s assumption and 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 causal theory explicitly allows that it may not. And if it does not, it may be that pains and brain states are contingently identicals. But there is also a problem about some substantive assumption Kripke makes about the nature of pains, namely, those pains are necessarily felt as pains. First impression notwithstanding, there is reason to think not. There are times when we are not aware of our pains, for example, when we are suitably distracted, so the relationship between pains and our being aware of them may not be contingent after all, just as the relationship between physical heat and our sensation of heat is. And that would disarm the intuitions that pain is connected only contingently with brain states.
Kripke’s argument focuses on pains and other sensations, which, because they have qualitative properties, are frequently held to cause the greater of problems for the identity theory. The American moral and political theorist Thomas Nagel (1937 - ) traces to 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 it is 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 it is independents 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 central to what that creature’s conscious states are like, because different kinds of crenatures have conscious states with different kinds of qualitative property. However, the qualitative properties of a creature’s conscious states depend, in an objective way, on that creature’s perceptual apparatus. we cannot always predict what anther 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 like depends in an objective way on its bodily endowment, which is itself objective. So, these considerations give us no reason to think that those conscious states are like is not also an objective matter.
If a sensation is not conscious, there is nothing it’s like to have it. So Nagel’s idea that what it is like to 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 ae aware of them, and thus no objective nature. Nonetheless, only conscious sensations seem to cause problems of the independent theory.
The notion of subjectivity, as Nagel again, see, is the notion of a point of view, what psychologists call a ‘constructionist theory of mind’. Undoubtedly, this notion is clearly tied to the notion of essential subjectivity. This kind of subjectivity is constituted by an awareness of the world’s being experienced differently by different subjects of experience. (It is thus possible to see how the privacy of phenomenal experience might be easily confused with the kind of privacy inherent in a point of view.)
Point - of - view subjectivity seems to take time to develop. The developmental evidence suggests that even toddlers are abl e to understand others as being subjects of experience. For instance, as a very early age, we begin ascribing mental states to other things - generally, to those same things to which we ascribe ‘eating’. And at quite an early age we can say what others would see from where they are standing. We early on demonstrate an understanding that the information available is different from different perceiver. It is in these perceptual senses that we first ascribe the point - of view - subjectivity.
Nonetheless, some experiments seem to show that the point - of - view subjectivity then ascribes to others is limited. A popular, and influential series of experiments by Wimmer and Perner (1983) is usually taken to illustrate these limitations (though there are disagreements about the interpretations, as such.) Two children - Dick and Jane - watch as an experimenter puts a box of candy somewhere, such as in a cookie jar, which is opaque. Jane leaves the room. Dick is asked where Jane will look for the candies, and he correctly answers. ‘In the cookie jar’. The experimenter, in dick’s view, then takes the candy out of the cookie jar and puts it in another opaque place, a drawer, ay. When Dick is asked where to look for the candy, he says quite correctly. ‘In the drawer’. When asked where Jane will look for the candy when she returns. But Dick answers. ‘In the drawer’. Dick ascribes to Jane, not the point - of - view subjectivity she is likely ton have, but the one that fits the facts. Dick is unable to ascribe to Jane belief - his ascription is ‘reality driven - and his inability demonstrates that Dick does not as yet have a fully developed point - of - view subjectivity.
At around the age of four, children in Dick’s position do ascribe the like point - of - view subjectivity to children in Jane’s position (‘Jane will look in the cookie jar’): But, even so, a fully developed notion of a point - of - view subjectivity is not yet attained. Suppose that Dick and Jane are shown a dog under a tree, but only Dick is shown the dog’s arriving there by chasing a boy up the tree. If Dick is asked to describe, what Jane, who he knows not to have seen the dog under the tree. Dick will display a more fully developed point - of - view subjectivity only those description will not entail the preliminaries that only he witnessed. It turns out that four - year - olds are restricted by the age’s limitation, however, only when children are six to seven do they succeed.
Yet, even when successful in these cases’ children’s point - of - view subjectivity is reality - driven. Ascribing a point - of - view, subjectivity to others is still in terms relative to information available. Only in our teens do we seem capable of understanding that others can view the world differently from ourselves, even when given access to the same information. Only then do we seem to become aware of the subjectivity of the knowing procedure itself: Interring the ‘facts’ can be coloured by one’s knowing procedure and history. There are no ‘merely’ objective facts.
Thus, there is evidence that we ascribe a more and more subjective point of view to others: from the point - of - view subjectivity we ascribe being completely reality - drive, to the possibility that others have insufficient information, to they’re having merely different information, and finally, to their understanding the same information differently. This developmental picture seems insufficient familiar to philosophers - and yet well worth our thinking about and critically evaluating.
The following questions all need answering. Does the apparent fact that our point - of - view subjectivity ascribed to others develop over time, becoming more and more of the ‘private’ notions, shed any light on the sort of subjectivity we ascribe to our own self? Do our self - ascriptions of subjectivity themselves become more and more ‘private’, metre and more removed both from the subjectivity of others and from the objective world? If so, what is the philosophical importance of these facts? At the last, this developmental history shows that disentangling our self from the world we live in is a complicate matter.
Based in the fundament of reasonableness, it seems plausibility that we share of our inherented perception of the world, that ‘self - realization as ‘actualized’ of an ‘undivided whole’, drudgingly we march through the corpses to times generations in that we are founded of the last two decades. Here we have been of a period of extraordinary change, especially in psychology. Cognitive psychology, which focuses on higher mental processes like reasoning, decision masking, problem solving, language processing and higher - level visual processing, has become - 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.
Nevertheless, developmental psychology was for a time dominated by the ideas of the Swiss psychologist and pioneer of learning theory, Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980), whose primary concern was a theory of cognitive developments (his own term was ‘genetic epistemology). What is more, like modern - day cognitive psychologists, Piaget was interested in the mental representations and processes that underlie cognitive skills. However, Piaget’s genetic epistemology y never co - existed happily with cognitive psychology, though Piaget’s idea that reasoning is based in an internalized version of predicate calculus has influenced research into adult thinking and reasoning. One reason for the lack of declining side by side interactions between genetic epistemology and cognitive psychology was that, as cognitive psychology began to attain prominence, developmental psychologists were starting to question Piaget’s ideas. Many of his empirical claims about the abilities, or more accurately the inabilities, of children of various ages were discovered to be contaminated by his unorthodox, and in retrospect unsatisfactory, empirical methods. And many of his theoretical ideas were seen to be vague, or uninterpretable, or inconsistent, however.
More than one of the central goals of thee philosophy of science is to provide explicit and systematic accounts of the theories and explanatory strategies s exploited in th e sciences. Another common goal is to construct philosophically illuminating analysis or explanations of central theoretical concepts invoked in one or another science. In the philosophy of biology, for 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 on the structure of evolutionary theory and on such crucial concepts as fitness and biological function. The philosophy of physics is another are a 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 the y are studying. Their goal simply to provide e accounts of the theories, concepts, and explanatory strategies that scientists are using - accounts th at are more explicit, systematic and philosophically sophisticated that an offered rather rough - and - ready accounts offered by scientists themselves.
Cognitive psychology is in many was a curious and puzzling science. Many of the theorists put forward 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.
If a person ‘X’ thinks that ‘p’, desires that ‘p’, believes that ‘p’. Is angry at ‘p’ and so forth, then he or she is described as having a propositional attitude too ‘p?’. The term suggests that these aspects of mental life are well thought of in terms of a relation to a ‘proposition’ and this is not universally agreeing. It suggests that knowing what someone believes, and so on, is a matter of identifying an abstract object of their thought, than understanding his or her orientation towards more worldly objects.
Once, again, the directness or ‘aboutness’ of many, if not all, conscious states have side by side their summing ‘intentionality’. The term was used by the scholastics, but belief thoughts, wishes, dreams, and desires are about things. Equally, 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 am in some relation to a chair, for instance by sitting on it, then both it and I am in some relation to a chair, that is, 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 snakes. Secondly, if I sit on the chair, and the chair is the oldest antique chair in all of Toronto, then I am on the oldest antique chair in the city of Toronto. But if I plan to avoid the mad axeman, and the mad axeman is in fact my friendly postal - carrier. I do not therefore plan to avoid my friendly postal - carrier. The extension of such is the predicate, is the class of objects that is described: The extension of ‘red’ is the class of red things. The intension is the principle under which it picks them out, or in other words the condition a thing must satisfy to be truly described by the predicate. Two predicates ‘ . . . are a rational animal. ‘. . . is a naturally feathered biped might pick out the same class but they do so by a different condition? If the notions are extended to other items, then the extension of a sentence is its truth - value, and its intension a thought or proposition: And the extension of a singular term is the object referred to by it, if it so refers, and its intension is the concept by means of which the object is picked out. A sentence puts a predicate on other predicate or term with the same extension can be substituted without it being possible that the truth - value changes: If John is a rational animal and we substitute the coexistence ‘is a naturally feathered biped’, then ‘John is a naturally featherless biped’, other context, such as ‘Mary believes that John is a rational animal’, may not allow the substitution, and are called ‘intensional context’.`
What remains of a distinction between the context into which referring expressions can be put. A contest is referentially transparent if any two terms referring to the same thing can be substituted in a ‘salva veritate’, i.e., without altering the truth or falsity of what is aid. A context is referentially opaque when this is not so. Thus, if the number of the planets is nine, then the number of planets is odd, and has the same truth - value as ‘nine is odd’: Whereas, ‘necessarily the number of planets is odd’ or ‘x knows that the number of planets is odd’ need not have the same truth - value as ‘necessarily nine is odd have the same truth - value as ‘necessarily nine in odd’ or ‘x knows that nine is odd’. So while’ . . . in odd’ provides a transparent context, ‘necessarily . . . is odd’ and ‘x knows that . . . is odd’ do not.
Here, in a point, is the view that the terms in which we think of some area are sufficiently infected with error for it be better to abandon them than to continue to try to give coherence theories of their use. Eliminativism should be distinguished from scepticism which claims that we cannot know the truth about some area: Eliminativism claims that there is no truth there to be known, in the terms with which we currently think. An eliminativist about theology simply councils abandoning the terms or discourse of theology, and that will include abandoning worries about the extent of theological knowledge. Eliminativist in the philosophy of mind council abandoning the whole network of terms mind, consciousness’ self, Qualia that usher in the problems of mind and body. Sometimes the argument for doing this is that we should wait for a supposed future e understanding of ourselves, based on cognitive science and better than our current mental descriptions provide, something it is supposed that physicalism shows that no mental description could possibly be true.
It seems, nonetheless, that of a widespread view that either the concept is indispensable, we must either declare seriously that science be that it cannot deal with the central feature of the mind or explain how serious science may include intentionality. One approach in which we communicate fears and beliefs have a two - faced aspect, involving both the object referred to, and the mod e of presentation under which they are thought of. we can see the mind as essentially directed onto existent things, and extensionally relate to them. Intentionality then becomes a feature of language, than a metaphysical or ontological peculiarity of the mental world.
While cognitive psychologists 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. Jerry Fodor’s ‘Language of Thought’ (1975) was a pioneering study in this genre, one that continues to have a major impact on the field.
The relation between language and thought is philosophy’s chicken - or - egg problem. Language and thought are evidently importantly related, but how exactly are they related? Does language come first and make thought possible or vice versa? Or are they counter - balanced and parallel with each making the other possible?
When the question is stated this of such generality, however, no unqualified answer is possible. In some respect language is prior, in other respects thought is prior. For example, it is arguable that a language is an abstract pairing of expressions and meanings, a function, in the set - theatric sense, in that, this makes sense of the fact that Esperanto 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 speaking peoples. It is a necessary truth that it means that in French and English are abstract objects in this 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 prior to thought.
But even if languages are construed as abstractive expression - meaning pairing, they are construed what was as abstractions from actual linguistic practice - from the use of language in linguistic communicative behaviour - and there remains a clear sense in which language is dependent on thought. The sequence of marks, ‘Point Peelie is the most southern point of Canada’s geographical boundaries’, means among us that Point Peelie is the most southern lactation that hosts thousands of migrating species. Had our linguistic practice been different, Point Peelie is a home for migrating species and an attraction of hundreds of tourists, that in fact, that the province of Ontario is a home and a legionary resting point for thousands of migrating species, have nothing at all among us. Plainly means that Point Peelie is Canada’s most southern location in bordering between Canada and the Unites State of America. Nonetheless, Point Peelie is special to Canada has something to do with the belief and intentions underlying our use of words and structure that compose the sentence of Canada’s most southern point and yet nearest point in bordering of the United States. More generally, it is a platitude that the semantic features that marks and sounds have a population of tourist and migrating species are at least partly determined by the attitudinal values for which this is the platitude, of course, which says that meaning depends, partially, on the use in communicative behaviours. So, here, is one clear sense in which language is dependent on thought: Thought is required to imbue marks and sounds with the somantic features they have as to host of populations.
The sense in which language does depend on thought can be wedded to the sense in which language does not depend on thought in the following way. we can say, that a sequence of marks or sounds (or, whatever) ‘ς’ means ‘q’ in a language ‘L’, construed as a function from expressions onto meaning, iff L(ς) = q. This notion of meaning - in - a - language, like the notion of a language, is a mere set - theoretic notion that is independent of thought in that it presupposes nothing about the propositional attitude of language users: ‘ς’ can mean ‘q’ in ‘L’ even if ‘L’ has never very been used? But then, we can say that ‘ς’ also means ‘q’ in a population ‘P’. The question of moment then becomes: What relation must a population ‘P’ bear to a language ‘L’ in order for it to be the case that ‘L’ is a language of ‘P’, a language member s of ‘P’ actually speak? In whatever the answer to this question is, this much seems right: In order for a language to be a language of a population of speakers, those speakers must produce sentences of the language in their communicative behaviour. Since such behaviour is intentional, we know that the notion of a language’s being the language of a population of speakers presupposes the notion of thought. And since that notion presupposes the notion of thought, we also know that the same is true of the correct account of the semantic features expression have in populations of speakers.
This is a pretty thin result, not on likely to be disputed, and the difficult question remain. we know that there is some relation ’R’ such that a adaptive ‘L’ is used by a population ‘P’ iff ‘L’ bears ‘R’ to ‘P’. Let us call this reflation, whatever it turns out to be, the ‘actual - language relation’. we know that to explain the semantic features expressions have among those who are apt to produce those expressions, and we know that any account of the relation must require language users to have certain propositional attitudes. But how exactly is the actual language relation to be explained in terms of the propositional attitudes of language users? And what sort of dependence might those propositional attitude in turn have on language or on the semantic factures that are fixed by the actual - language relation? Further, what of the relation of language to thought, before turning to the relation of thought to language.
All must agree that the actual - language relation, and with it the semantic features linguistic items have among speakers, is at least, partly determined by the propositional attitudes of language users. This, however, leaves plenty of room for philosophers to disagree both about the extent of the determination and the nature of the determining propositional attitude. At one end of the determination spectrum, we have those who hold that the actual - language relation is wholly definable in terms on non - semantic propositional attitudes. This position in logical space is most taken as occupied by the programme, sometimes called intention - based semantics, of the English philosopher of language Paul Herbert Grice (1913 - 1988), introducing the important concept of an ‘implicature’ into the philosophy of language, arguing that not everything that is said is direct evidence for the meaning of some term, since many factors my determine the appropriateness of remarks independently of whether they are actually true. The point, however, undermines excessive attention to the niceties in conversation as reliable indicators of meaning, a methodology characteristic of ‘linguistic philosophy’. In a number of elegant papers which identities is with a complex of sentences which it is uttered. The psychological is thus used to explain the semantic, and the question of whether this is the correct priority has prompted considerable subsequent discussion.
The foundational notion in this enterprise is a certain notion of ‘speaker - semantics’. It is the species of communicative behaviour reported when we say, for example, that in uttering ‘II pleut’. Pierre meant that it was raining, or that in waving her hand, the Queen meant that you were to leave the room. Intention - based semantics seeks to define this notion of speaker meaning wholly in terms of communicators’ audience - directed intentions and without recourse to any semantic notions. Then it seeks to define the actual - language relation in terms of the now - defined notion of speaker meaning, together with certain ancillary notions such as that of a conventional regularity or practice, themselves defined wholly in terms of non - semantic propositional attitudes. The definition in terms of speaker meaning of other agent - semantic notions, such as the notions of an illocutionary act, and this, is part of the intention - based semantics programme.
Some philosophers object to intention - based semantics because they think it precludes a dependence of thought on the communicative use of language. This is a mistake, in that if intention - based semantics definitions are given a strong reductionist reading, as saying that public - language semantic properties (i.e., those semantic properties that supervene on use in communicative behaviour) just are psychological properties, it might still be that one could not have propositional attitudes unless one had mastery of a public - language, insofar as the concept of supervenience has seen increasing service in philosophy of mind. The thesis that the mental is supervenient on the physical - roughly, the claim that the mental character of a thing is wholly determine d by its physical nature - has played a key role in the formulation of some influential positions on the mind - bod y problem. In particular, versions of non - reductive physicalism. Mind - body supervenience has also been invoked in arguments for or against certain specific claims about the mental, and has been used to devise solutions to some central problems about the mind - for example, the problem of mental causation - such that the psychological level of description carries with it a mode of explanation which ‘has no echo in physical theory’.
The ‘content as to infer about mental events, states or processes with content include seeing that the door is shut: Believing you are being followed, and calculating the square root of 2. What centrally distinguishes states, events, or processes - are basic to simply being states - with content is that they involve reference to objects, properties or relations. A mental state with content can fail to refer, but there always exists 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. It leaves open the possibility that unconscious states, as well as conscious states, have content. It equally allows the states identified by an empirical, computational psychology to have content. A correct philosophical understanding of this general notion of content is fundamental not only to the philosophy of mind and psychology, but also to the theory of knowledge and to metaphysics.
There is a long - standing tradition that emphasizes that the reason - giving relation is a logical or conceptual one. One way of bringing 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 reason for belief where the contents of the reason - providing beliefs inductively or deductively support the content of the rationalized belief. For example, I believe my colleague is in her room now, and my reasons are (1) she usually has a meeting in her room at 9:30 on Mondays and (2) it 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.
The causal explanatorial 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 characterization as to extensional ones, in an attempt to fit such intentional causality into a fundamentally materialist 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 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 explanatorial frameworks.
The idea that mentality is physically realized is integral to the ‘functionalist’ conception of mentality, and this commits most functionalists to mind - body supervenience in one form or another. As a theory of mind, supervenience of the mental - in the form of strong supervenience, or at least global supervenience - is arguably a minimum commitment of physicalism. But can we think of the thesis of mind - body supervenience itself as a theory of the mind - body relation - that is, as a solution to the mind - body problem?
A supervenience claim consists of covariance and a claim of dependence e (leaving aside the controversial claim of non - reducibility). This means that the thesis th at the mental supervenience on the physical amounts to the conjunction of the two claims (1) strong or global supervenience, and (2) the mental depends on the physical. However, the fact that the thesis says nothing about just what kind of dependence is involved in mind - body supervenience. When you compare the supervenience thesis with the standard positions on the mind - body problem, you are struck by what the supervenience thesis does not say. For each of the classic mind - body theories has something to say, not necessarily anything veery plausible, about the kind of dependence that characterizes the mind - body relationship. According to epiphenomenalism, for example, the dependence is one of causal dependence is one of casual dependence: On logical behaviourism, dependence is rooted in meaning dependence, or definability: On the standard type physicalism, the dependence is one that is involved in the dependence of macro - properties and son forth. Even Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz (1646 - 1716) and Nicolas Malebranche (1638 - 1715) had something to say about this: The observed property convariation is due not to a direct dependancy relation between mind and body but rather to divine plans and interventions. That is, mind - body convariation was explained in terms of their dependence on a third factor - a sort of ‘common cause’ explanation.
It would seem that any serious theory addressing the mind - body problem must say something illuminating about the nature of psychophysical dependence, or why, contrary to common belief, there is no dependence. However, there is reason to think that ‘supervenient dependence’ does not signify a special type of dependence reflation. This is evident when we reflect on the varieties of ways in which we could explain the supervenience relation holds in a given case. For example, consider the supervenience of the moral on the descriptive the ethical naturalist will explain this on the basis of definability: The ethical intuitionist will say that the supervenience, and also the dependence, seems the brute fact that you discern through moral intuition. And the prescriptivist will attribute the supervenience to some form of consistency requirement on the language of evaluating and prescription. And distinct from all of these is mereological supervenience, namely the supervenience of properties of a whole on properties and relations of its parts. What all this shows is that there is no single type of dependence relation common to all cases of supervenience: Supervenience holds in different cases for different reasons, and does not represent a type of dependence that can be put alongside causal dependence, meaning dependence, mereological dependence and so forth.
If this is right, the supervenience thesis concerning the mental does not constitute an explanatory account of the mind - body relation, on a par with the classic alternatives on the mind - body problem. It is merely the claim that the mental covaried in a systematic way with the physical, an that this is due to a certain dependence relation yet to be specified and explained. In this sense, the supervenience thesis states the mind - bod y problem than offering a solution to it.
There seems to be a promising strategy for turning the supervenience thesis into a more substantive theory of mind, and it is this: To explicate mind - body supervenience as a special case of mereological supervenience - that is, the dependence of the properties of a whole on the properties and relations characterizing its proper parts. Mereological dependence does seem to be a special form of dependence that is metaphysical and highly important. If one takes this approach, one would have to explain psychological properties as macroproperties of a whole organism that covary, in appropriate ways, with its microproperties, i.e., the way its constituents, tissue, and do on, are organized and function. This more specific supervenience thesis may well be a serious theory of the mind - body relation that can compete with the classic options in the field.
Previously, our considerations had fallen to arrange in making progress in the betterment of an understanding, fixed on or upon the alternatives as to be taken, accepted or adopted, even to bring into being by mental or physical selection, among alternates that generally are in agreement. These are minded in the reappearance of confronting or agreeing with solutions precedently recognized. That is of saying, whether or not this is plausible (that is a separate question), it would be no more logically puzzling than the idea that one could not have any propositional attitude unless one had one’s with certain sorts of contents. Tyler Burge’s insight is partly determined by the meanings of one’s words in one’s linguistic community. Burge (1979) is perfectly consistent with any intention - based semantics, reduction of the semantic to the psychological. Nevertheless, there is reason to be sceptical of the intention - based semantic programme. First, no intention - based semantic theorist has succeeded in stating a sufficient condition for more difficult task of starting a necessary - and - sufficient condition. And is a plausible explanation of this failure is that what typically makes an utterance an act of speaker meaning is the speaker’s intention to be meaning or saying something, where the concept of meaning or saying used in the content of the intention is irreducibly semantic. Second, whether or not an intention - based semantic way of accounting for the actual - language relation in terms of speaker meaning. The essence of the intention - based semantic approach is that sentences used as conventional devices for making known a speaker’s communicative understanding is an inferential process wherein a hearer perceives an utterance and, thanks to being party to relevant conventions or practices, infers the speaker’s communicative intentions. Yet it appears that this inferential model is subject to insuperable epistemological difficulties, and. Third, there is no pressing reason to think that the semantic needs to be definable in terms of the psychological. Many intention - based semantic theorists have been motivated by a strong version of physicalism which requires the reduction of all intentional properties (i.e., all semantic and propositional - attitude properties) to physical or at least topic - neutral, or functional, properties, for it is plausible that there could be no reduction to the semantic and the psychological to the physical without a prior reduction of the semantic to the psychological. But it is arguable that such a strong version of physicalism is not what is required in order to fit the intentional into the natural order.
What is more, in the dependence of thought on language for which this claim is that propositional attitudes are relations to linguistic items which obtain, at least, partially, by virtue of the content those items have among language users. Thus, position does not imply that believers have to be language users, but it does make language an essential ingredient in the concept of belief. The position is motivated by two considerations (a) The supposition that believing is a relation to things that believing is a relation to things believed, for which of things have truth values and stand in logical relations to one another, and (b) The desires not to take things believed to be propositions - abstract things believed to be propositions - abstract, mind - and essentially the truth conditions that have. Now the tenet (a) is well motivated: The relational construal of propositional attitude s is probably the best way to account forms the quantitative in, ‘Harvey believes something nasty about you’. But there are probable mistakes with taking linguistic items, rather than propositions, as the objects of belief In the first place, If Harvey believes that Flounders snore’ is represented along the lines that of (‘Harvey, but flounder snore’), then one could know the truth expressed by the sentience about Harvey without knowing the content of his beliefs: For one could know that he stands in the belief relation to ‘flounders snore’ without knowing its content. This is unacceptable, as in the second place, if Harvey believes that flounders snore, then what he believes that flounders snore, then what he believes - the reference of ‘that flounders snore’ - is that flounders snore. But what is this thing that flounders snore? well, it is abstract, in that it has no spatial location. It is mind and language independent, in that it exists in possible worlds for which there are neither thinkers nor speakers: and, necessarily, it is true if flounders snore. In short, it is a proposition - an abstract mind, and language - independent thing that has a truth condition and has essentially the truth condition it has.
A more plausible way that thought depend s on language is suggested b y the topical thesis that we think in a ‘language of thought’. On one reading, this is nothing more than the vague idea that the neural states that realize our thoughts ‘have elements and structure in a way that is analogous to the way in which sentences have elements and structure’. Nonetheless, we can get a more literal rendering by relating it to the abstract conception of languages already recommended. On this conception, a language is a function from ‘expressions’ - sequences of marks or sounds or neural states or whatever - onto meaning, for which meanings will include the propositions of our propositional altitudes relations relate us to. we could then read the language of though t hypothesis as the claim that having propositional altitudes require s standing in a certain relation to a language whose expressions are neural state. There would now be more than one ‘actualized - language relations. The one earlier of mention, the one discussed earlier might be better called the ‘public - language relation’. Since the abstract notion of a language ha been so weakly construed. It is hard to see how the minimal language - of - thought proposal just sketched could fail to be true. At the same time, it has been given no interesting work to do. In trying to give it more interesting work, further dependencies of thought on language might come into play. For example, it has been claimed that the language of thought of a claim that the language of thought of a public - language user is the public language she uses: Her neural sentences are related to her spoken and written sentences in something like the way the written sentences are related to her spoken sentences. For another example, I that it might be claimed that even if one’s language of thought is something like the way her written sentences are related to he r spoken sentences. For example, it might be claimed that even if one’s language of thought is distinct from one’s public language, the language - of thought relations makes presuppositions about the public - language relations in way that make the content of one’s words in one’s public language community.
Tyler Burge, has in fact shown that there is a sense for which though t content is dependent on the meanings of words in one’s linguistic communications. Alfred’s use of ‘arthritis’ is fairly standard, except that he is under the misconception that arthritis is not confined to the joints, he also applies the word to rheumatoid ailments not in the joints. Noticing an ailment in his thigh that is symptomatically like the disease in his hands and ankles, he says, to his doctor, ‘I have arthritis in the thigh’: Here Alfred is expressing his false belief that he has arthritis in the thigh. But now consider a counter - factual situation that differs in just one respect (and, whatever it entails): Alfred’s use of ‘arthritis’ is the correct use in his linguistic community. In this situation, Alfred would be expressing a true belief when he says ’I have arthritis in the thigh’. Since the proposition he believes is true while the proposition that he has arthritis in the thigh is false, he believes some other proposition. This shows that standing in the belief relation to a proposition can be partly determined by the meanings of words on one’s public language. The Burge phenomenon seems real, but it would be nice to have a deep explanation of why thought content should be dependent on language in this way.
Finally, there is the old question of whether, or to what extent, a creature who does not understand a natural language can have thoughts. Now it seems pretty compelling that higher mammals and humans raised without language have their behaviour controlled by mental state that are sufficiently like our beliefs, desires, and intentions to share those labels. It also seems easy to imagine non - communicating creatures who have sophisticated mental lives (the yy build weapons, dams, bridges, have clever hunting devices, and so on). At the same time, ascription of particular contents to non - language - using creatures typically seem exercises in loose speaking (does the dog really believe that there is a bone in the yard?), and it is no accident that, as a matter of fact, creatures who do not understand a natural language have at best primitive mental lives. There is no accepting the primitive mental lives of animals account for their failure to master natural language, but the better explanation may be Chomsky’s faculty unique to our species. As regards the inevitably primitive mental life of another wise normal humans raised without language, this might simply be due to the ignorance and lack of intellectual stimulation such a person would be doomed to. On the other hand, it might also be that higher thought requirements of a neural language with structures comparable to that of a natural language, and that such neural language ss are somehow acquired as the ascription of content to the propositional - attitude states of language less creatures is a difficult topic that needs more attention. It is possible of our ascriptions of propositional content, we will realize that these ascriptions are egocentrically based on a similarity to the language in which we express our beliefs. we might then learn that we have no principled basis for ascribing propositional content to a creature who does not speak something, or who does not have internal states with natural - language - like structure. It is somewhat surprising how little we know about thought’s dependence on language.
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 plays a certain functional role in an internal processing economy. So that the functionalist thinks of mental states and events as causally mediating between a subject’s sensory inputs and that subjects 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 relationist bears to the subject’s perceptual stimuli, behavioural responses, and other mental states.
The representational theory of the mind arises with the recognition that thoughts have contents carried by mental representations.
Nonetheless, theorists seeking to account for the mind’s activities have long sought analogues to the mind. In modern cognitive science, these analogues have provided the basses for simulation or modelling of cognitive performance seeing that cognitive psychology simulate one way of testings in a manner comparable to the mind, that offers support for the theory underlying the analogue upon which the simulation is based simulation, however, also serves a heuristic function, suggesting ways for which the mind might gainfully characteristically operate in physical 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 denotes (the problem remains for Iconic representation). What kind of mental representation might support denotation and attribution if not linguistic representation? Perhaps, when thinking within the peculiarities that the mind and attributions thereof, being among the semantic properties of thoughts, are that ‘thoughts’ in having content, posses semantic properties, however, if thoughts denote and precisely attribute, sententialism may be best positioned to explain how this is possible.
Beliefs are true or false. If, as representationalism had it, beliefs are relations to mental representations, then beliefs must be relations to representations that have truth values among their semantic properties. Beliefs serve a function within the mental economy. They play a central part in reasoning and, thereby, contribute to the control of behaviour. To be rational, a set of beliefs, desires, and actions, also perceptions, intentions, 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 concerns a cluster of personal identity conditions. That is, ‘Holistic’ coherence requirements on or upon the system of elements comprising a person’s mind, related conception and epistemic or normative rationality are key linkages among the cognitive, as distinct rom qualitative mental stats. The main issue is characterizing these types of mental coherence.
Closely related to thought’s systematicity is its productivity to have a virtual unbounded competence to think ever more complex novel thoughts having certain clear semantic ties to their less complex predecessor. Systems of mental representation apparently exhibit mental representation apparently exhibit the sort of productivity distinctive of spoken languages. Sententialism accommodates this fact by identifying the productive system of mental representation with a language of thought, the basic terms of which are subject to a productive grammar.
Possibly, in reasoning mental representations stand to one another just as do public sentences in valid ‘formal derivations’. 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 sententialist 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 classical programmed computers. Thinking, according to sententialism, may then be like quoting. To quote an English sentence is to issue, in a certain way, a token of a given English sentence type: It is certainly not similarly to issue a token of every semantically equivalent type. Perhaps, thought is much the same. If to think is to token, a sentence in the language of thought, the sheer tokening of one mental sentence need not insure the tokening of another formally distinct equivalents, hence, thought’s opacity.
Objections to the language of thought come from various quarters. Some will not tolerate any edition of representationalism, including Sententialism: Others endorse representationalism while denying that mental representations could involve anything like a language. Representationalism is launched by the assumption that psychological stat es ae relational, that being in psychological state minimally involves being related to something. But perhaps, psychological states are not at all relational. Verbalism begins by denying that expressions of psychological states are relational, infers that psychological states themselves are monadic and, thereby, opposes classical versions of representationalism, including sententialism.
What all this is supposed to show, was that Chomsky and advances in computer science, the 1960s saw a rebirth of ‘mentalistic’ or ‘cognitivist’ approaches to psychology and the study of mind.
These philosophical accounts o 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 scientists’ actual practice. But if the account they give of cognitive theories diverges significantly from the theories that psychologists 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 concepts in cognitive psychology. Intentional notions have been criticized on various grounds. The two taken for our considerations are that they fail to supervene on the physiology of the cognitive agent, and that they cannot be ‘naturalized’.
Perhaps, to an approach that is mos radical is the proposal that cognitive psychology should recast its theories and explanations in a way that does not appeal to intentional properties or ‘syntactic’ properties. Somewhat less radical is the suggestion that we can define a species of representation, which does supervene an organism’s physiology, and that psychological explanations that appeal to ordinary (‘wide’) intentional properties can be replaced by explanations that invoke only their narrow counterparts. Nonetheless, many philosophers have urged that the problem lies in the argument, not in the way that cognitive psychology might be modified. However, many philosophers have urged that the problem lis in the argument, not in the way that cognitive psychology goes about its business. The most common critique of the argument focuses on the normative premise - the one that insists that psychological explanations ought not to appeal to ‘wide’ properties that fail to supervene on physiology. Why should it bot be that psychological explanations appeal to wide properties, the critics ask? : What exactly is wrong with psychological explanations invoking properties that do not supervene on physiology? Various answers have been proposed in the literature, though they typically end up invoking metaphysical principles that are less clear and less plausible than the normative thesis they are supposed to support.
Given to any psychological property that fails to supervene on physiology, it is trivial to characterize a narrow correlated property that does supervene. The extension of the correlate property includes all actual and possible objects in the extension of the original property, plus all actual and possible physiological duplicates of those objects. Theories originally stated in terms of wide psychological properties sated in terms of wide psychological properties can be recast in terms of their descriptive or explanatory power. It might be protested that when characterized in this way, narrow belief and narrow content are not really species of belief and content at all. Nevertheless, it is far from clear how this claim could be defended, or why we should care if it turns out to be right.
The worry about the ‘naturalizability’ of intentional properties is much harder to pin down. According to Fodor, the worry derives from a certain ontological intuition: That there is no place for intentional categories in a physicalistic view of the world, and thus, that the semantic and/or intentionality will prove permanently recalcitrant to integration in the natural order. If, however, intentional properties cannot be integrated into the natural order, then presumably they ought to be banished from serious scientific theorizing. Psychology should have no truck with them. Indeed, if intentional properties have no place in the natural order, then nothing in the natural world has intentional properties, and intentional states do not exist at all. So goes the worry. Unfortunately, neither Fodor nor anyone else has said anything very helpful about what is required to ‘integrate’ intentional properties into the natural order. There are, to be sure, various proposals to be found in the literature. But all of them seem to suffer from a fatal defect. On each account of what is required to naturalize a property or integrate it into the natural order, there are lots of perfectly respectable non - intentional scientific or common - sense properties that fail to meet the standards. Thus, all the proposals that have been made so far, end up being declined and thrown out.
Now, or course, the fact that no one has been able to give a plausible account of what is required to ‘naturalize’ the intentional may indicate nothing more than that their project is a difficult one. Perhaps with further work a more plausible account will be forthcoming. But one might also offer a very different diagnosis of the failure of all accounts of ‘naturalizing’ that have so far been offered. Perhaps the ‘ontological intuition’ that underlies the worry about integrating the intentional into the natural order is simply muddled. Perhaps, there is no coherent criterion of naturalization or naturalizability that all properties invoked in respectable science must meet, as, perhaps, that this diagnosis is the right one. Until those who are worried about the naturalizability of the intentional provide us with some plausible account of what is required of intentional categories if they are to find a place in ‘a physicalistic view of the world’. Possibly we are justified in refusing to take their worry seriously.
Recently, John Searle (1992) has offered a new set of philosophical arguments aimed at showing that certain theories in cognitive psychology are profoundly wrong - headed. The theories that are the target of computational explanations of various psychological capacities - like the capacity to recognize grammatical sentences, or the capacity to judge which of two objects in one ‘s visual field is further away. Typically, these theories are set out in the form of a computer program - a set of rules for manipulating symbols - and the explanations offered for the exercise of the capacity in question is that people’s brains are executing the program. The central claim in Searle’ s critique is that being a symbol or a computational stat e is not an ‘intrinsic’ physical feature of a computer state or a brain state. Rather, being a symbol is an ‘observer relative’ feature. However, Searle maintains, only intrinsic properties of a system can play a role in causal explanations of how they work. Thus, appeal to symbolic or computational states of the brain could not possibly play a role in a ‘casual account of cognition in knowledge’.
All of which, the above aforementioned surveyed, does so that implicate some of the philosophical arguments aimed at showing that cognitive psychology is confusing and in need of reform. My reaction to those arguments was none too sympathetic. In each case, it was maintained to the philological argument that is problematic, not the psychology it is criticizing.
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 and more than vast than black holes. Nonetheless, 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 evidenced 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 we work with a fixed, innate repertoire of elements whose combination and construction must express any content we an ever learn to understand. And note that it is not the trivial claim that in some sense the resources a system starts with must set limits on what knowledge it can acquire. For these are limits which flow not, for example, from sheer physical size, number of neurons, connectivity of neurons, and so forth. But from a base class of genuinely representational elements. They are more like the limits that being restricted to the propositional calculus would place on the expressive power of a system than, say, the limits that having a certain amount of available memory storage would place on one.
But this picture of representational stasis in which all change consists in the redeployment of existing representational resources, is one that is fundamentally alien to much influential theorizing in developmental psychology. The prime example of a developmentalist who believed in a much stronger forms a much stronger form in genuine expansion of representational power at the very heart of a model of human development. In a similar vein, recent work in the field of connectivism seems to open up the possibility of putting well - specified models of strong representational change back into the centre of cognitive scientific endeavours.
Nonetheless, the understanding of how the underlying combinatoric code ‘develops’ the deep understanding of cognitive processes, than understanding the structure and use of the code itself (though, doubtless the projects would need to be pursued hand - in - hand).
The language of thought depicts thoughts as structures of concepts, for which in turn exist as elements (for any basic concept) or concatenations of elements (for the rest) in the inner code. The intentional states, as common - sense understands them, have both causal and semantic properties and that the combination appears to be unprecedented. However, a further problem about inferential role semantics is that it is, almost invariably, suicidally holistic. it seems, that, if externalism is right, then (some of) the intentional properties of thought are essentially ‘extrinsic’: They essentially involve mind - to - world relations. All and all, in assuming that the computational role of a mental representation is determined entirely by its intrinsic properties, such properties of its weigh t, shape, or electrical conductivity as it might be. , hard to see how the extrinsic properties: Which is to say, that it is hard to see how there could be computationally sufficient conditions for being in an intentional state, for which is to say that it is hard to see how the immediate implementation of intentional laws could be computational.
However, there is little to be said about intrinsic relation s between basic representational items. Even bracketing the (difficult) question of which, if any words in our public language may express content s which have as their vehicles atomic items in the language of thought (an empirical question on which it is to assume that Fodor to be officially agnostic), the question of semantic relations between atomic items in the language of thought remains. Are there any such relations? And if so, in what do they consist? Two thought s are depicted as semantically related just in casse they share elements themselves (like the words of public language on which they are modelled) seem to stand in splendid isolation from one another. An advantage of some connectionist approaches lies precisely in their ability to address questions of the interrelation of basic representational elements (in act, activation vectors) by representing such items as location s in a kind of semantic space. In such a space related contents are always expressed by related representational elements. The connectionist’s conception of significant structure thus goes much deeper than the Fodorian’s. For the connectionist representations need never be arbitrary. Even the most basic representational items will bear non - accidental relations of similarity and difference to one another. The Fodorian, having reached representational bedrock, must explicitly construct any such further relations. They do not come for free as a consequence ee of using an integrated representational space. Whether this is a bad thing or a goo one will depend, of course, on what kind of facts we need to explain. But it is to suspect that representational atomism may turn out to be a conceptual economy that a science of the mind cannot afford.
The approach for ascribing contents must deal with the point that it seems metaphysically possible for here to be something that in actual and counterfactual circumstances behaves as if it enjoys states with content, when in fact it does not. If the possibility is not denied, this approach must add at least that the states with content causally interact in various ways with one - another, and also causally produce intentional action. For most causal theories, however, 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.
On most accounts of causation an acceptance of the causal explanatory role of reason - giving connections requires empirical causal laws employing intentional vocabulary. It is arguments against the possibility of such laws that have, however, been fundamental for those opposing a causal explanatorial view of reasons. What is centrally at issue in these debates is the status of the generalizations linking intentional states to each other, and to ensuing intentional acts. An example of such a generalization would be, ‘If a person desires ‘X’, believes ‘A’ would be a way of promoting ‘X’, is able to ‘A’ and has no conflicting desires than she will do ‘A’. For many theorists such generalizations are between desire, belief and action. Grasping the truth of such a generalization is required to grasp the nature of the intentional states concerned. For some theorists the a priori elements within such generalization s as empirical laws. That, however, seems too quick, for it would similarly rule out any generalizations in the physical sciences that contain a priori elements, as a consequence of the implicit definition of their theoretical kinds in a causal explanation theory. Causal theorists, including functionalist in philosophy of mind, can claim that it is just such implicit definition that accounts for th a priori status of our intentional generalizations.
The causal 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, on an attempt to fit intentional causality into a fundamentally materialist 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 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 explanatorial frameworks.
The existence of such causal links could well be written into the minimal core of rational transitions required for the ascription of the contents in question. Yet, it is one thing to agree that the ascription of content involves a species of rational intelligibility. It is another to provide an explanation of this fact. There are competing explanations. One treatment regards rational intelligibility as ultimately dependent on or upon what we find intelligible, or on what we could come to find intelligible in suitable circumstances. This is an analogue of classical treatments of secondary qualities, and as such is a form of subjectivism about content. An alternative position regards the particular conditions for correct ascription of given contents as more fundamental. This alternative states that interpretation must respect these particular conditions. In the case of conceptual contents, this alternative could be developed in tandem with the view that concepts are individuated by the conditions for possessing them. These possession conditions would then function as constraints upon correct interpretation. If such a theorist also assigns references to concepts in such a way that the minimal rational transitions are also always truth - preserving, he will also have succeeded in explaining why such transitions are correct. Under an approach that treats conditions for attribution as fundamental, intelligibility need not be treated as a subjective property. There may be concepts we could never grasp because of our intellectual limitations, as there will be concepts that members of other species could not grasp. Such concepts have their possession conditions, but some thinkers could not satisfy those conditions.
Ascribing states with content to an actual person has to proceed simultaneously with attribution of a wide range of non - rational states and capacities. In general, we cannot understand a person’s 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 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. A perception of the world as being a certain way is not (and could not be) under a subject’s rational control. Though it is true and important that perceptions give reasons for forming beliefs, the beliefs for which they fundamentally provide reasons - observational beliefs about the environment - have contents which can only be elucidated by referencing back to perceptual experience. In this respect (as in others) perceptual states differ from those beliefs and desires that are individuated by mentioning what they provide reasons for judging or doing: For frequently these latter judgements and actions can be individuated without reference back to the states that provide reasons for them.
What is the significance for theories of content of the fact that it is almost certainly adaptive for members of a species to have a system of states with representational contents which are capable of influencing their actions appropriately? According to teleological theories of content, a constitutive account of content - one which says what it is for a state to have a given content - must make use 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 function b(perhaps derivatively) of producing that state 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 hem. It is not clear that a content’s holding unknowably can influence the replication of belief - forming mechanics. Bu t even if content itself proves to resist elucidation in terms of natural function and selection. It is still a very attractive view that selection must be mentioned in an account of what associate ss something - such as 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 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’s 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 are directed 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 type 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 non - conceptual content will respond that these demonstratives themselves cannot be elucidated without mentioning the spatial types for which lack sentence - like structure.
The actions made rational by content - involving states are actions individuated in part by reference to the agent’s relations to things and properties in his environment. Wanting to see a particular movie and believing that, that building over thee is a cinema showing it makes rational the action of walking in the direction of that building. Similarly, for the fundamental casse of a subject who has knowledge about his environment, a crucial factor in making rational the formations of particular attitude is the way the world is around him. One may expect, the n, that any theory that links the attribution of contents to states with rational intelligibility will be commit to the thesis that the content of a person’s states depends in part on his relations to the world outside him. We call this thesis the thesis of externalism about content.
Externalism about content should steer a middle course. On the one had, it should not ignore the truism that the relations of rational intelligibility involve not things and properties in the world, but the way they are presented as being - an externalist should use some version of Frége’s notion of mode of presentation. On the other hand, the externalist for whom considerations of rational intelligibility are pertinent to the individuation of content is likely to insist that we cannot dispense with the notion of something in the world - being presented in a certain way. If we dispense with the notion of something external bing presented in a certain way, we are in danger of regarding attributions of content as having no consequence for how an individual relates to his environment, in a way that is quite contrary to our intuitive understanding of rational intelligibility.
Externalism comes in more and fewer extreme versions. Consider a mind of a thinker who sees or perceives of a particular pear, and thinks a thought that the pear is ripe, where the demonstrative way of thinking of the pear expressed by ‘that pear’ is made available to him by his perceiving the pear. Some philosophers have held that the thinker would be employed of thinking were he perceiving a different perceptually based way of thinking were he perceiving a different pear. But externalism need not be committed to this. In the perceptual state that makes available the way on thinking pear is presented as being in a particular distance, and as having certain properties. A position will still be externalist if it holds that what is involved in the pear’s being so presented is the collective role of these components of content in making intelligible in various circumstances the subject’s relations to environmental directions distance and properties of object. This can be held without committed to the object - dependence of the way of thinking expressed by ‘that pear’. This less strenuous form of externalism must, though, address the epistemological arguments offered in favour of the more extreme versions, to the effect that only they are sufficiently world - involving.
The apparent dependence of the content of belief on factors external to the subject can be formulated as a failure of supervenience of belief content upon facts about what is the case within the boundaries of the subject’s body. To claim that such supervenience fails is to make a model claim: That there can be two persons the same in respect of their internal physical states (and so in respect to those of their dispositions that are independent of content - involving states), who nevertheless differ in respect of which beliefs they have. Hilary Putnam (1926 - ), the American philosopher of science, who became more prominent in his writing about ‘Reason, Truth, and History’ (1981) marked of a subtle position that he call’s internal realism, initially related to a n ideal limit theory of truth, and apparently maintaining affinities with verificationism, but in subsequent work more closely aligned with minimalism. Putnam’s concern in the later period has largely been to deny any serious asymmetry between truth and knowledge as obtained in moral s, and even theology.
Nonetheless, in the case of content - involving perceptual states. It is a much more delicate matter to argue for the failure of supervenience. The fundamental reason for this is answerable not only to factors ion the input side - what in certain fundamental cases causing the subject to be in the perceptual state - but also to factors on the perceptual state - but also to factors on the output side - what the perceptual state is capable of helping to explain amongst the subject’s actions. If differences in perceptual content always involve differences in bodily - described actions in suitable counter - factual circumstances, and if these different actions always will after all be supervenience of content - involving perceptual states on internal states. But if this should turn ut to be so, that is not a refutation of externalism for perceptual contents. A different reaction to this situation of dependence ads one of supervenience is in some cases too strong. A better is given by a constitutive claim: That what makes a state have the content it does are certain of its complex relations to external states of affairs. This can be held without commitment to the model separability of certain internal states from content - involving perceptual states.
Attractive as externalism about content ma be, it has been vigorously contested notably by the American philosopher of mind Jerry Alan Fodor (1935 - ), who is known for a resolute realism about the nature of mental functioning. Taking the analogy between thought and computation seriously, Fodor believes that mental representations should be conceived as individual states with their own identities and structure, like formulae transformed by processes of computation or thought. His views are frequently contrasted with those of ‘Holist’ such as Herbert Donald Davidson (1917 - 2003), although Davidson is a defender of the doctrines of the ‘indeterminacy’ of radical translation and the ‘inscrutability’ of reference, his approach has seemed to many to offer some hope of identifying meaning as a respectable notion, even within a broadly ‘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 in 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. Nevertheless, Fodor (1981) endorses the importance of explanation by content - involving states, but holds that content must be narrow, constituted by internal properties of an individual.
One influential motivation for narrow content is a doctrine about explanation that molecule - for - molecule counter - parts must have the same causal powers. Externalists have replied that the attributions of content - involving states presuppose some normal background or context for the subject of the states, and that content - involving explanations commonly take the presupposed background for granted. Molecular counter - parts can have different presuppose d backgrounds, and their content - involving states may correspondingly differ. Presupposition of a background of external relations in which something stands is found in other sciences outside those that employ the notion of content, including astronomy and geology.
A more specific concern of those sympathetic to narrow content is that when content is externally individuated, the explanatorial principles postulated in which content - involving states feature will be a priori in some way that is illegitimate. For instance, it appears to be a priori that behaviour is intentional under some description involving the concept ‘water’ will be explained by mental states that have the externally individuated concept about ‘water’ in their content. The externalist about content will have a twofold response. First, explanations in which content - involving states are implicated will also include explanations of the subject’s standing in a particular relation to the stuff water itself, and for many such relations, it is in no way a priori that the thinker’s so standing has a psychological explanation at all. Some such cases will be fundamental to the ascription of externalist content on treatments that tie such content to the rational intelligibility of actions relationally characterized. Second, there are other cases in which the identification of a theoretically postulated state in terms of its relations generates a priori truths, quite consistently with that state playing a role in explanation. It arguably is phenotypical characteristic, then it plays a causal role in the production of that characteristic in members of the species in question. Far from being incompatible with a claim about explanation, the characterization of genes that would make this a priori also requires genes to have a certain casual explanatory role.
Of anything, it is the friend of narrow content who has difficulty accommodating the nature content are fit to explain bodily movements in environment - involving terms. But we note, that the characteristic explananda of content - involving states, such as walking towards the cinema, are characterized in environment - involving terms. How is the theorist of narrow content to accommodate this fact? He may say, that we merely need to add a description of the context of the bodily movement, which ensures that the movement is in fact a movement toward the cinema. But mental property of an event to an explanation of that event does not give one an explanation of the event’s having that environmental property, let alone a content - involving explanation of the fact. The bodily movement may also be a walking in the direction of Moscow, but it does not follow that we have a rationally intelligible explanation of the event as a walking in the direction of Moscow. Perhaps the theorist of narrow content would at this point add further relational proprieties of the internal states of such a kind that when his explanation is fully supplemented, it sustains the same counter - factuals and predications as does the explanation that mentions externally individuated content. But such a fully supplemented explanation is not really in competition with the externalist’s account. It begins to appear that if such extensive supplementation is adequate to capture the relational explananda it is also sufficient to ensure that the subject is in states with externally individuated contents. This problem, however, affects not only treatments of content as narrow, but any attempt to reduce explanation by content - involving states to explanation by neurophysiological states.
One of the tasks of a sub - personal computational psychology is to explain how individuals come to have beliefs, desires, perceptions and other personal - level content - involving properties. If the content of personal - level states is externally individuated, then the contents mentioned in the sub - personal psychology that is explanatory of those personal states must also be externally individuated. One cannot fully explain the presence of an externally individuated state by citing only states that are internally individuated. On an externalist conception of sub - personal psychology, a content - involving computation commonly consists in the explanation of some externally individuated states by other externally individuated states.
This view of sub - personal content has, though, to be reconciled with the fact that the first states in an organism involved in the explanation - retinal states in the case of humans - are not externally individuated. The reconciliation is affected by the presupposed normal background, whose importance to the understanding of content we have already emphasized. An internally individuated state, when taken together with a presupposed external background, can explain the occurrence of an externally individuated state.
An externalist approach to sub - personal content also has the virtue of providing a satisfying explanation of why certain personal - level states are reliably correct in normal circumstances. If the sub - personal computations that cause the subject to be in such states are reliably correct, and the final commutation is of the content of the personal - level state, then the personal - level state will be reliably correct. A similar point applies to reliable errors, too, of course. In either case, the attribution of correctness condition to the sub - personal state is essentially to the explanation.
Externalism generates its own set of issues that need resolution, notably in the epistemology of attributions. A content - involving state may be externally individuated, but a thinker does not need to check on his relations to his environment to know the content of his beliefs, desires, and perceptions. How can this be? A thinker’s judgements about his beliefs are rationally responsive to his own conscious beliefs. It is a first step to note that a thinker’s beliefs about his own beliefs will then inherit certain sensitivities to his environment that are present in his original (first - order) beliefs. But this is only the first step, for many important questions remain. How can there be conscious externally individuated states at all? Is it legitimate to infer from the content of one’s states to certain general facts about one’s environment, and if so, how, and under what circumstances?
Ascription of attitudes to others also needs further work on the externalist treatment. In order knowledgeably to ascribe a particular content - involving attitude to another person, we certainly do not need to have explicit knowledge e of the external relations required for correct attribution of the attitude. How then do we manage it? Do we have tacit knowledge of the relation on which content depends, or do we in some way take our own case as primary, and think of the relations as whatever underlies certain of our own content - involving states? In the latter, in what wider view of other - ascription should this point be embedded? Resolution of these issues, like so much else in the theory of content, should provide us with some understanding of the conception each one has of himself as one mind amongst many, interacting with a common world which provides the anchor for the ascription of content.
There seems to have the quality of being an understandably comprehensive characteristic as ‘thought’, attributes the features of ‘intentionality’ or ‘content’: In thinking, as one thinks about certain things, and one thinks certain things about those things - one entertains propositions that maintain a position as promptly categorized for the 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. It is thus, hard to see why we would bother to talk of thought at all unless we were also prepared to recognize the intentionality of thought. So we are naturally curious about the nature of content: 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 question about what thought depends on, and about the consequences of its so depending (or not depending). These potential dependencies concern: (1) The world outside of the thinker himself, (2) language, (3) logical truth (4) consciousness. In each casse 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 aid items? And this question determining what the intrinsic nature of thought is.
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 on or upon the world in which I happen to think it? This question was given impetus and definition by a thought experiment due to Hilary Putnam, concerning a planet called ‘twin earth’. On twin earth there live thinkers who are duplicates of us in all internal respects but whose surrounding environment contain different kinds of natural objects. The suggestion then is that what these thinkers refer to and think about is individuality dependent upon their actual environment, so that where we think about cats when we say ‘cat’ they think about that word - the different species that actually sits on their mats and so on. The key point is that since it is impossible to individuate natural kinds like cats solely by reference to the way they strike the people who think about them cannot be a function simply of internal properties of the thinker. The content, here, is relational in nature, 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 to when I say ‘that bomb’, of different bombs, depends on or upon the particular bomb in front 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 antonymous states of the individual, capable of transcending the contingent facts of the surrounding world. One is therefore not free to think whatever one’s liking, as it was, 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 an internal states we are in? What kind of explanation are we giving when we cite thoughts? Can there be a science of thought if content does not generalize across environments? These questions have received many different answers, and, of course, not everyone agrees that thought has the kind of world - dependence claimed. Nonetheless, what has not been considered carefully enough, is the scope of the externalist thesis - whether it applies to all forms of thought, all concepts. For unless this questions be answered affirmatively we cannot rule out the possibility that though 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 whom internalism was generally correct? Is external individuation the rule or the exception? And might it take the rule or the exception? 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 comment to be derivative upon linguistic content, so that there can be no thought without a bedrock of language. Thus, arise controversies about whether animals really think, being non - speakers, or computers really use language. , being non - thinkers. All such question 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 assert (or deny)that there is an inner language of thought. If it means merely that concepts (thought constituents) are structured in such a way as to be isomorphic with spoken language, then the claim is trivially true, given some natural assumptions. But if it means that concepts just are ‘syntactic’ items orchestrated into springs of the same, then the claim is acceptable only in so far as syntax is an adequate basis for meaning - which, on the face of it, it is not. Concepts no doubt have combinatorial powers compactable to those of words, but the question is whether anything else can plausible be meant by the hypothesis of an inner language.
On the other hand, it appears undeniable that spoken language does have autonomous intentionality, but instead derives its meaning from the thought of speakers - though language may augment one’s conceptual capacities. So thought cannot postdate spoken language. The truth seems to be that in human psychology speech and thought are interdependent in many ways, but there is no conceptual necessity about this. The only ‘language’ on which thought essentially depends itself: Thought indeed, depends upon there being insoluble concepts that can join with others to produce complete propositional statements. But this 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 so. Appeals to language at this point, are apt to flounder on circularity, since words take on the power of concepts only insofar as they express them. Thus, there seems little philosophical illumination to be got from making thought depend on or upon language.
This third dependency question is prompted by the reflection that, while people are no doubt often irrational, woefully so, there seems to be sme kind of intrinsic limit to their unreason. Even the sloppiest thinker will not infer anything from anything. To do so is a sign of madness The question then is what grounds this apparent concession to logical prescription. Whereby, the hold of logic over thought? For the dependence there can seem puzzling: Why should the natural causal processes relations of logic, I am free to flout the moral law to any degree I desire, but my freedom to think unreasonably appears to encounter an obstacle in the requirement of logic? My thoughts are sensitive to logical truth in somewhat the way they are sensitive to the world surrounding me: They have not the independence of what lies outside my will or self that I fondly imagined. I may try to reason contrary to modus ponens, but my efforts will be systematically frustrated. Pure logic takes possession of my reasoning processes and steers them according to its own indicates, variably, of course, but in a systematic way that seems perplexing.
One view of tis is that ascriptions of thought are not attempts to map a realm of independent causal relations, which might then conceivably come apart from logical relations, but are rather just a useful method of summing up people’s behaviours. Another view insists that we must acknowledge that thought is not a natural phenomenon in the way merely, and physical facts are: Thoughts are inherently normative in their nature, so that logical relations constitute their inner essence. Thought incorporates logic in somewhat the way externalists say it incorporates the world. Accordingly, the study of thought cannot be a natural science in the way the study of (say) chemistry compounds is. Whether this view is acceptable, depends upon whether we can make sense of the idea that transitions in nature, such as reasoning appear to be, can also be transitions in logical space, i.e., be confined by the structure of that space. What must be thought, in such that this combination n of features is possible. Put differently, what is it for logical truth to be self - evident?
This dependency question has been studied less intensively than the previous three. The question is whether intentionality ids dependent on or 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 consciousness beings at all? Unfortunately, it is difficult to see how to mount an argument in either direction. On one hand, it can hardly be an accident that our thoughts are conscious and that this 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 here stems from our exceedingly poor understanding of the nature of consciousness could arise from grain tissue (the mind - body problem), so that we fill to grasp the 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 word, 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, or is it that pain, could only have its aversion function in virtue of the conscious feedings? This is part of the more general question of the epiphenomenal character of consciousness: Is conscious awareness just a dispensable accompaniment of some mental feature - such as content or causal power - or is 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 alterative 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 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.
It is extremely tempting to picture thought as some kind of inscription in a mental medium and of reasoning as a temporal sequence of such inscriptions. On this picture all that a particulars thought requires in order to exist is that the medium in question should be impressed with the right inscription. This makes thought independent of anything else. On some views the medium is conceived as consciousness itself, so that thought depends on consciousness as writing depends on paper and ink. But ever since Wittgenstein wrote, we have seen that this conception of thought has to be mistaken, in particular of intentionality. The definitive characteristics of thought cannot be captured within this model. Thus, it cannot make room for the idea of intrinsic world - dependence. Since any inner inscription would be individualatively independent of items outside the putative medium of thought. Nor can it be made to square with the dependence of thought on logical pattens, since the medium could be configured in any way permitted by its intrinsic nature, within regard for logical truth - as sentences can be written down in any old order one likes. And it misconstrues the relation between thought and consciousness, since content cannot consist in marks on the surface of consciousness, so to speak. States of consciousness do contain particular meanings but not as a page contains sentences: The medium conception of the relation between content and consciousness is thus deeply mistaken. The only way to make meaning enter internally into consciousness is to deny that it as a medium for meaning to be expressed. However, it is marked and noted as the difficulty to form an adequate conception of how consciousness does carry content - one puzzle being how the external determinants of content find their way into the fabric of consciousness.
Only the alleged dependence of thought upon language fits the naïve tempting inscriptional picture, but as we have attested to, this idea tends to crumble under examination. The indicated conclusion seems to be that we simply do not posses a conception of thought that makes its real nature theoretically comprehensible: Which is to say, that we have no adequate conception of mind? Once we form a conception of thought that makes it seem unmysterious as with the inscriptional picture. It turns out to have no room for content as it presents itself: While building in a content as it is leaves’ us with no clear picture of what could have such content. Thought is ‘real’, then, if and only if it is mysterious.
In the philosophy of mind ‘epiphenomenalism’ means that while there exist mental events, states of consciousness, and experience, they have themselves no causal powers, and produce no effect on the physical world. The analogy sometimes used is that of the whistle on the engine that makes the sound (corresponding to experiences), but plays no part in making the machinery move. Epiphenomenalism is a drastic solution to the major difficulties the existence of mind with the fact that according to physics itself only a physical event can cause another physical event an epiphenomenalism may accept one - way causation, whereby physical events produce mental events, or may prefer some kind of parallelism, avoiding causation either between mind and body or between body and mind. And yet, occasionalism considers the view that reserves causal efficacy to the action of God. Events in the world merely form occasions on which God acts so as to bring about the events normally accompanying them, and thought of as their effects. Although, the position is associated especially with the French Cartesian philosopher Nicolas Malebranche (1638 - 1715), inheriting the Cartesian view that pure sensation has no representative power, and so adds the doctrine that knowledge of objects requires other representative ideas that are somehow surrogates for external objects. These are archetypes of ideas of objects as they exist in the mind of God, so that ‘we see all things in God’. In the philosophy of mind, the difficulty to seeing how mind and body can interact suggests that we ought instead to think of hem as two systems running in parallel. When I stub my toe, this does so cause pain, but there is a harmony between the mental and the physical (perhaps due yo God) that ensures that there will be a simultaneous pain, when I form an intention and then act, the same benevolence ensures that my action is appropriated to my intention. The theory has never been wildly popular, and many philosophers would say that it was the result of a misconceived ‘Cartesian dualism’. Nonetheless, a major problem for epiphenomenalism is that if mental events have no causal relationship it is not clear that they can be objects of memory, or even awareness.
The metaphor used by the founder of revolutionary communism, Karl Marx (1805 - 1900) and the German social philosopher and collaborator of Marx, Friedrich Engels (1820 - 95), to characterize the relation between the economic organization of society, which is its base, an the political, legal, and cultural organizations and social consciousness of a society, which is the super - structure. The sum total of the relations of production of material life conditions the social political, and intellectual life process in general. The way in which the base determines of much debate with writers from Engels onwards concerned to distance themselves from that the metaphor might suggest. It has also in production are not merely economic, but involve political and ideological relations. The view that all causal power is centred in the base, with everything in the super - structure merely epiphenomenal. Is sometimes called economicism? The problems are strikingly similar to those that are arisen when the mental is regarded as supervenience upon the physical, and it is then disputed whether this takes all causal power away from mental properties.
Just the same, for if, as the causal theory of action implies, intentional action requires that a desire for something and a belief about how to obtain what one desires play a causal role in producing behaviour, then, if epiphenomenalism is true, we cannot perform intentional actions. Nonetheless, in describing events that happen does not of itself permit us to talk of rationality and intention, which are the categories we may apply if we conceive of them as actions. Ewe think of ourselves not only passively, as creatures within which things happen, but actively, as creatures that make things happen. Understanding this distinction gives rise to major problems concerning the nature of agency, of 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 the structures involved when we do one thing ‘by’ doing another thing. Even the placing and dating of action can give ruse to puzzles, as one day and in one place, and the victim then dies on another day and in another place. Where and when did the murder take place? The notion of applicability inherits all the problems of ‘intentionality’. The specific problems it raises include characterizing the difference between doing something accidentally and doing it intentionally. The suggestion that the difference lies in a preceding act of mind or volition is not very happy, since one may automatically do what is nevertheless intensional, for example, putting one’s foot forwards while walking. Conversely, unless the formation of a volition is intentional, and thus raises the same questions, the presence of a violation might be unintentional or beyond one’s control. Intentions are more finely grained than movements, one set of movements may both be answering the question and starting a war, yet the one may be intentional and the other not.
However, according to the traditional doctrine of epiphenomenalism, things are not as they seem: In reality, mental phenomena can have no causal effects: They are casually inert, causally impotent. Only physical phenomena are casually efficacious. Mental phenomena are caused by physical phenomena, but they cannot cause anything. In short, mental phenomena are epiphenomenal.
The epiphenomenalist claims that mental phenomena seem to be causes only because there are regularities that involve types (or kinds) of mental phenomena. For example, instances of a certain mental type ‘M’, e.g., trying to raise one’s arm might tend to be followed by instances of a physical type ‘P’, e.g., one’s arms rising. To infer that instances of ‘M’ tend to cause instances of ‘P’ would be, however, to commit the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Instances of ‘M’ cannot cause instances of ‘P’: Such causal transactions are casually impossible. P - typ e events tend to be followed by M - type events because instances of such events are dual - effects of common physical causes, not because such instances causally interact. Mental events and states can figure in the web of causal relations only as effects, never as causes.
Epiphenomenalism is a truly stunning doctrine. If it is true, then no pain could ever be a cause of our wincing, nor could something’s looking red to us ever be a cause of our thinking that it is red. A nagging headache could never be a cause of a bad mood. Moreover, if the causal theory of memory is correct, then, given epiphenomenalism, we could never remember our prior thoughts, or an emotion we once felt, or a toothache we once had, or having heard someone say something, or having seen something: For such mental states and events could not be causes of memories. Furthermore, epiphenomenalism is arguably incompatible with the possibility of intentional action. For if, s the casual theory of action implies, intentional action requires that a desire for something and a belief about how to obtain what one desires lay a causal role in producing behaviour, then, if epiphenomenalism is true, we cannot perform intentional actions. As it strands, to accommodate this point - most obviously, specifying the circumstances in which belief - desire explanations are to be deployed. However, matter are not as simple as the seem. Ion the functionalist theory, beliefs are casual functions from desires to action. This creates a problem, because all of the different modes of psychological explanation appeal to states that fulfill a similar causal function from desire to action. Of course, it is open to a defender of the functionalist approach to say that it is strictly called for beliefs, and not, for example, innate releasing mechanisms, that interact with desires in a way that generates actions. Nonetheless, this sort of response is of limited effectiveness unless some sort of reason - giving for distinguishing between a state of hunger and a desire for food. It is no use, in that it is simply to describe desires as functions from belief to actions.
Of course, to say the functionalist theory of belief needs to be expanded is not to say that it needs to be expanded along non - functionalist lines. Nothing that has been said out the possibility that a correct and adequate account of what distinguishes beliefs from non - intentional psychological states can be given purely in terms of respective functional roles. The core of the functionalist theory of self - reference is the thought that agents can have subjective beliefs that do not involve any internal representation of the self, linguistic or non - linguistic. It is in virtue of this that the functionalist theory claim to be able to dissolve such the paradox. The problem that has emerged, however, is that it remains unclear whether those putative subjective beliefs really are beliefs. Its thesis, according to which all cases of action to be explained in terms of belief - desire psychology have to be explained through the attribution of beliefs. The thesis is clearly at work as causally given to the utility conditions, and hence truth conditions, of the belief that causes the hungry creature facing food to eat what I in front of him - thus, determining the content of the belief to be. ‘There is food in front of me’, or ‘I am facing food’. The problem, however, is that it is not clear that this is warranted. Chances would explain by the animal would eat what is in front of it. Nonetheless, the animal of difference, does implicate different thoughts, only one of which is a purely directive genuine thought.
Now, the content of the belief that the functionalist theory demands that we ascribe to an animal facing food is ‘I am facing food now’ or ‘There is food in front of me now’. These are, it seems clear, structured thoughts, so too, for that matter, is the indexical thought ‘There is food here now’. The crucial point, however, is that the casual function from desires to actions, which, in itself, is all that a subjective belief is, would be equally well served by the unstructured thought ‘Food’.
At the heart of the reason - giving relation is a normative claim. An agent has a reason for believing, acting and so forth. If, given here to other psychological states this belief/action is justified or appropriate. Displaying someone’s reasons consist in making clear this justificatory link. Paradigmatically, the psychological states that prove an agent with logical states that provide an agent with treason are intentional states individuated in terms of their propositional content. There is a long tradition that emphasizes that the reason - giving relation is a logical or conceptual representation. In the case of reason for actions the premises of any reasoning are provided by intentional states other than belief.
Notice that we cannot then, assert that epiphenomenalism is true, if it is, since an assertion is an intentional speech act. Still further, if epiphenomenalism is true, then our sense that we are enabled is true, then our sense that we are agents who can act on our intentions and carry out our purposes is illusory. We are actually passive bystanders, never the agent in no relevant sense is what happens up to us. Our sense of partial causal control over our exert no causal control over even the direction of our attention. Finally, suppose that reasoning is a causal process. Then, if epiphenomenalism is true, we never reason: For there are no mental causal processes. While one thought may follow anther, one thought never leads to another. Indeed, while thoughts may occur, we do not engage in the activity of thinking. How, the, could we make inferences that commit the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, or make any inferences at all for that matter?
As neurophysiological research began to develop in earnest during the latter half of the nineteenth century. It seemed to find no mental influence on what happens in the brain. While it was recognized that neurophysiological events do not by themselves casually determine other neurophysiological events, there seemed to be no ‘gaps’ in neurophysiological causal mechanisms that could be filled by mental occurrences. Neurophysiological appeared to have no need of the hypothesis that there are mental events. (Here and hereafter, unless indicated otherwise, ‘events’ in the broadest sense will include states as well as changes.) This ‘no gap’ line of argument led some theorists to deny that mental events have any casual effects. They reasoned as follows: If mental events have any effects, among their effects would be neurophysiological ones: Mental events have no neurophysiological effects: Thus, mental events have no effect at all. The relationship between mental phenomena and neurophysiological mechanisms is likened to that between the steam - whistle which accompanies the working of a locomotive engine and the mechanisms of the engine, just as the steam - whistle which accompanies the working of a locomotive engine and the mechanisms of the engine: just as the steam - whistle is an effect of the operations of the mechanisms but has no casual influence on those operations, so too mental phenomena are effects of the workings of neurophysiological mechanisms, but have no causal influence on their operations. (The analogy quickly breaks down, as steam whistles have casual effects but the epiphenomenalist alleges that mental phenomenons have no causal effects at all.)
An early response to this ‘no gap’ line of argument was that mental events (and states) are not changes in (and states of) an immaterial Cartesian substance e, they are, rather changes in (and states of) the brain. While mental properties or kinds are not neurophysiological properties or kinds, nevertheless, particular mental events are neurophysiological events. According to the view in question, a given events can be an instance of both a neurophysiological type and a mental type, and thus be both a mental event and a neurophysiological event. (Compare the fact that an object might be an instance of more than one kind of object: For example, an object might be both a stone and a paper - weight.) It was held, moreover, that mental events have causal effects because they are neurophysiological events with causal effects. This response presupposes that causation is an ‘extensional’ relation between particular events that if two events are causally related, they are so related however they are typed (or described). Given that assumption is today widely held. And given that the causal relation is extensional, if particular mental events are indeed, neurophysiological events are causes, and epiphenomenalism is thus false.
This response to the ‘no gap’ argument, however, prompts a concern about the relevance of mental properties or kinds to causal relations. And in 1925 C.D. Broad tells us that the view that mental events are epiphenomenal is the view that mental events either (a) do not function at all as causal - factors, or hat (b) if they do, they do so in virtue of their physiological characteristics and not in virtue of their mental characteristics. If particular mental events are physiological events with causal effects, then mental events function as case - factors: They are causes, however, the question still remains whether mental events are causes in virtue of their mental characteristics. , yet, neurophysiological occurrences without postulating mental characteristics. This prompts the concern that even if mental events are causes, they may be causes in virtue of their physiological characteristics. But not in virtue of their mental characteristics.
This concern presupposes, of course, that events are causes in virtue of certain of their characteristics or properties. But it is today fairly widely held that when two events are causally related, they are so related in virtue of something about each. Indeed, theories of causation assume that if two events ‘x’ and ‘y’ are causally related, and two other events ‘a’ and ‘b’ are not, then there must be some difference between ‘x’ and ‘y’ and ‘a’ and ‘b’ in virtue of which ‘x’ and ‘y’ are. But ‘a’ and ‘b’ are not, causally related. And they attempt to say what that difference is: That is, they attempt to say what it is about causally related events in virtue of which they are so related. For example, according to so - called ‘nomic subsumption views of causation’, causally related events will be so related in virtue of falling under types (or in virtue of having properties) that figure in a ‘causal law’. It should be noted that the assumption that casually related events are so related in virtue of something about each is compatible with the assumption that the causal relation is an ‘extensional’ relationship between particular events. The weighs - less - than relation is an extensional relation between particular objects: If O weighs less than O*, then O and O* are so related, have them of a typed (or characterized, or described, nevertheless, if O weighs less than O*, then that is so in virtue of something about each, namely their weights and the fact that the weight of one is less than the weight of the other. Examples are readily multiplied. Extensional relations between particulars typically hold in virtue of something about the particular. It is, nonetheless, that we will grant that when two events are causally related, they are so related in virtue of something about each.
Invoking the distinction between types and tokens, and using the term ‘physical’, rather than the more specific term ‘physiological’. Of the following are two broad distinctions of epiphenomenalism:
Token Epiphenomenalism: Mental events cannot cause anything.
Type Epiphenomenalism: No event can cause anything in virtue of
falling under a mental type.
So in saying. That property epiphenomenalism is the thesis that no event can cause anything in virtue of having a mental property. The conjunction of token epiphenomenalism and the claim those physical events cause mental events is, that, of course, the traditional doctrine of epiphenomenalism, as characterized earlier. Ton epiphenomenalism implies type epiphenomenalism, for if an event could cause something in virtue of falling under a mental type, then an event could be both epiphenomenalism would be false. Thus, if mental events cannot be causes, then events cannot be causes in virtue of falling under mental types. The denial of token epiphenomenalism does not, however, imply the denial of type epiphenomenalism, if a mental event can be a physical event that has causal effects. For, if so, then token epiphenomenalism may still be true. For it may be that events cannot be causes in virtue of falling under mental types. Mental events may be causes in virtue of falling under mental types. Thus, even if token epiphenomenalism is false, the question remains whether type epiphenomenalism is.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that type epiphenomenalism is true. Why would that be a concern if mental events are physical events with causal effects? In our assumption that the causal relation is extensional, it could be true, consist with type epiphenomenalism, that pains cause winces, that desires cause behaviour, that perceptual experience cause beliefs and mental states cause memories, and that reasoning processes are causal processes. Nevertheless, while perhaps not as disturbing a doctrine as token epiphenomenalism, type epiphenomenalism can, upon reflection, seen disturbing enough.
Notice to begin with that ‘in virtue of’ expresses an explanatory relationship. In so doing, that ‘in virtue of’ is arguably a near synonym of the more common locution ‘because of’. But, in any case, the following seems true so as to be adequate: An event causes a G - event in virtue of being an F - event if and only if it causes a G - event because of being an F - event.’In virtue of’ implies ‘because of’, and in the case in question at least the implication seems to go in the other direction as well. Suffice it to note that were type epiphenomenalism consistent with its being the case that an event could have a certain effect because of falling under a certain mental type, then we would, indeed be owed an explanation of why it should be of any concern if type epiphenomenalism is true. We will, however, assume that type epiphenomenalism is inconsistent with that. We will assume that type epiphenomenalism could be reformulated as: No event can cause anything because of falling under a mental type. (And we will assume that property epiphenomenalism can be reformulated thus: No event can cause anything because of having a mental property.) To say that ‘a’ causes ‘b’ in virtue of being ‘F’ is too say that ‘a’ causes ‘b’ because of being ‘F’; that is, it is to say that it is because ‘a’ is ‘F’ that it causes ‘b’. So, understood, type epiphenomenalism is a disturbing doctrine indeed.
If type epiphenomenalism is true, then it could never be the case that circumstances are such that it is because some event or states is a sharp pain, or a desire to flee, or a belief that danger is near, that it has a certain sort of effect. It could never be the case that it is because some state in a desire of ‘X’ (impress someone) and another is a belief that one can ‘X’ by doing ‘Y’ (standing on one’s head) that the states jointly result in one’s doing ‘Y’ (standing on one’s head). If type (property) epiphenomenalism is true, then nothing has any causal powers whatever in virtue of (because of) being an instance of a mental type, then, never be the case of a certain mental type that a state has the causal power in certain circumstances to provide some effect. For example, it could never the case that it is in virtue of being an urge to scratch (or a belief that danger is near) that a state has the causal power in certain circumstances to produce scratching behaviour (or fleeing behaviour) if type - epiphenomenalism is true, then the mental qua mental, so to speak, is casually impotent. That may very well seem disturbing enough.
What reason is there, however, for holding type epiphenomenalism? Even if neurophysiology does not need to postulate types of mental events, perhaps the science of psychology does. Note that physics has no need to postulate types of neurophysiological events: But that may well not lead one tp doubt that an event can have effects in virtue of being (say) a neuron firing. Moreover, mental types figure in our every day, casual explanations of behaviour, intentional action, memory, and reasoning. What reason is there, then, for holding that events cannot have effects in virtue of being instances of mental types? This question naturally leads to the more general question of which event types are such that events have effects in virtue of falling under them. This more general question is best addressed after considering a ‘no gap’ line of argument that has emerged in recent years.
Current physics includes quantum mechanics, a theory which appears able, in principle, to explain how chemical processes unfold in terms of the mechanics of sub - atomic particles. Molecular biology seems able, in principle, to explain how the physiological operations of systems in living things in terms of biochemical pathways, long chains of chemical reactions. On the evidence, biological organisms are complex physical objects, made up of molecular particles (there are noo entelechies or élan vital). Since we are all biological organisms, the movements of our bodies and of their minute parts, including the chemicals in our brains, and so forth, are causally determined, too whatsoever subatomic particles and fields. Such considerations have inspired a lin e of argument that only events within the domain of physics are causes.
Before presenting the argument, let us make some terminological stipulations: Let us henceforth use ‘physical events’ (states) and ’physical property’ in as strict and narrow sense to mean, respectfully, a type of event (state) physics (or, by some improved version of current physics). Event if they figure in laws of physics. Finally, by ‘a physical event (states) we will mean an even (state) that falls under a physical type. Only events within the domain of (current) physics (or, some improved eversion of current physics) count as physical in this strict and narrow sense.
Consider, then:
The Token - Exclusion Thesis Only physical events can have
causal effects (i.e., as a matter of causal necessity, only physical
events have casual effects).
The premises of the basis argument for the token - exclusion thesis are:
Physical Caudal Closure Only physical events can cause
physical events.
Causation by way of Physical Effects As a matter of at least
casual necessity, an event is a cause of another event if and only if it
is a cause of some physical event?
These principles jointly imply the exclusion thesis. The principle of causation through physical effects is supported on the empirical grounds that every event occurs within space - time, and by the principle that an event is a cause of an event that occurs within a given region of space - time if and only if it is a cause of some physical event that occurs within that region of space - time. The following claim is offered in support of physical closure:
Physical causal Determination, For any (caused) physical
event, ‘P’, there is a chain of entirely physical events leading to ‘P’,
each link of which casually determines its successor.
(A qualification: If strict determinism is not true, then each link will determine the objective probability of its successor.) Physics is such that there is compelling empirical reason to believe that physical causal determination holds. Every physical event will have a sufficient physical cause. More precisely, there will be a deterministic casual chan of physical events leading to any physical event, ‘P’. Butt such links there will be, and such physical causal chains are entirely ‘gap - less’. Now, to be sure, physical casual determination does not imply physical causal closure, the former, but not the latter, is consistent with non - physical events causing physical events. However, a standard epiphenomenalist response to this is that such non - physical events would be, without exception, over - determining causes of physical events, and it is ad hoc are over - determining non - physical events. Nonetheless, a standard epiphenomenalist response of this is that such non - physical events would be, without exception, over - determining causes of physical events, and it is ad hoc to maintain that non - physical events are over - determining causes of physical events.
Are mental events within the domain of physics? Perhaps, like objects, events can fall under many different types or kinds. We noted earlier that a given object might, for instance, be both a stone and a paper wight, however, we understand how a stone could be a paper - wight, but how, for instance could an event of subatomic particles and fields be a mental event? Suffice e it to note for a moment that if mental events are not within the domain of physics, then if the token - exclusion thesis is true, no mental event can ever cause anything: Token epiphenomenalism is true.
One might reject the token - exclusion thesis, however, on the grounds that, typical events within the domains of the special sciences - chemistry, the life sciences, and so on - are not within the domain of physics, but nevertheless have causal effects. One might maintain that neuron firing, for instance, cause either neuron firing, even though neurophysiological events are not within the domain of physics. Rejecting the token - exclusion either, however, requires arguing either that physical causal closure is false or that the principle of causation by way of physical effects is.
But one response to the ‘no - gap’ argument from physics is to reject physical casual closure. Recall that physical causal determination is consistent with non - physical events being over - determining causes of physical events. One might concede that it would be ad hoc to maintain that a non - physical event, ‘N’, is an over - determining cause of a physical event ‘P’, and that ‘N’ causes ‘P’ in a way that is independent of the causation of ‘P’ by other physical events. Nonetheless, ‘N’ can be a cause of another event, that ‘N’ can cause a physical event ‘P’ in a way that is dependent upon P’s being caused by physical events. Again, one might argue that physical events ‘underlie’ non - physical events, and that a non - physical event ‘N’ can be a cause of anther event ‘X’ (physical or non - physical), in virtue of the physical event that ‘underlie’ ‘N’ being a cause of ‘X’.
Another response is to deny the principle of causation through physical effects. Physical causal closure is consistent with non - physical events. One might concede physical causal closure but deny the principle of causation by way of physical effects, and argue that non - physical events cause other non - physical events without causing physical events. This would not require denying that (1) Physical events invariably ‘underlie’ non - physical events or that (2) Whenever a non - physical event causes another non - physical event, some physical event that underlies the first event causes a physical event that underlies the second. Clams of both tenets (1) and (2) do not imply the principle of causation through physical effects. Moreover, from the fac t that a physical event ‘P’, causes another physical event ‘P*’. It may not allow that ‘P’ causes every non - physical event that ‘P*’ underlies. That may not follow it the physical events that underlie non - physical events casually suffice for those non - physical events. It would follow from that, which for every non - physical event, there is a causally sufficient physical event. But it may be denied that causal sufficiency suffices for causation: It may be argued that there are further constraints on causation that can fail to be met by an event that causally suffices for another. Moreover, it ma be argued that given the further constraints, non - physical events are the causes of non - physical events.
However, the most common response to the ‘no - gap’ argument from physics is to concede it, ad thus to embrace its conclusion, the token - exclusion these, but to maintain the doctrine of ‘token physicalism’, the doctrine that every event (state) is within the domain of physics. If special science events and mental events are within the domain of physics, then they can be causes consistent with the token - exclusion thesis.
Now whether special science events and mental events are within the domain of physics depends, in part, on the nature of events, and that is a highly controversial topic about which there is nothing approaching a received view. The topic raises deep issues that are beyond the scope of this essay, yet the issues concerning the ‘essence’ of events and the relationship between causation and causal explanation, are in any case, . . . suffice it to note here that it is believed that the sme fundamental issues concerning the causal efficacy of the mental arise for all the leading theories of the ‘relata’ of casual relation. The issues just ‘pop - up’ in different places. However, that cannot be argued at this time, and it will not be for us to be assumed.
Since the token physicalism response to the no - gap argument from physics is the most popular response, is that special science events, and even mental events, are within the domain of physics. Of course, if mental events are within the domain of physics then, token epiphenomenalism can be false even if the token - exclusion is true: For mental events may be physical events which have causal effects.
Nevertheless, concerns about the causal relevance of mental properties and event types would remain. Indeed, token physicalism together with a fairly uncontroversial assumption, naturally leads to the question of whether events can be causes only in virtue of falling under types postulated by physics. The assumption is that physics postulates a system of event types that has the following features:
Physical Causal Comprehensiveness: When two physical
events are causally related, they are so related in virtue of falling
under physical types.
That thesis naturally invites the question of whether the following is true:
The Type - Exclusion Thesis: An event can cause something
only in virtue of falling under a physical type, i.e., a type
postulated by physics.
The type - exclusion thesis offers one would - be answer to our earlier question of which effects types are such that events have effects in virtue of falling under them. If the answer is the correct one, it may, however, be in fact (if it is correct) that special science events and mental events are within the domain of physics will be cold comfort. For type physicalism, the thesis that every event type is a physical type, seems false. Mental types seem not to be physical types in our strict and narrow sense. No mental type, it seems, is necessarily coextensive (i.e., coextensive in every ‘possible world’) with any type postulated by physics. Given that, and given the type - exclusion thesis, type epiphenomenalism is true. However, typical special science types also fail to be necessarily coextensive with any physical types, and thus typical special science types fail to be physical types. Indeed, we individuate the sciences in part by the event (state) types they postulate. Given that typical special science types are not physical types (in our strict sense), then typical special science types are not such that even can have causal effects in virtue of falling under them.
Besides, a neuron firing is not a type of event postulated by physics, given the type exclusion thesis, no event could ever have any causal effects in virtue of being a firing of a causal effect. The neurophysiological qua neurophysiological is causally impotent. Moreover, if things have casual powers only in virtue of their physical properties, then an HIV virus, qua HIV virus, does not have the causal power to contribute to depressing the immune system: For being an HIV virus is not a physical property (in our strict sense). Similarly, for the same reason the SALK vaccine, qua SALK vaccine, would not have the causal power to contribute to producing an immunity to polio. Furthermore, if, as it seems, phenotype properties are not physical properties, phenotypic properties do not endow organisms with casual powers conducive to survival. Having hands, for instance, could never endow nothing with casual powers conducive to survival since it could never endow anything with any causal powers whatsoever. But how, then, could phenotypic properties be units of natural selection? And if, as it seems, genotypes are not physical types, then, given the type exclusion thesis, genes do not have the causal power, qua genotypes, to transmit the genetic bases for phenotypes. How, then, could the role of genotypes as units of heredity be a causal role? There seem to be ample grounds for scepticism that any reason for holding the type - exclusion thesis could outweigh our reasons for rejecting it.
We noted that the thesis of universal physical causal comprehensiveness or ‘upc - comprehensiveness’ for short, invites the question of whether the type - exclusion thesis is true. But does upc - comprehensiveness while rejecting the type - exclusion thesis?
Notice that there is a crucial one - word difference between the two theses: The exclusion thesis contains the word ‘only’ in front of ‘in virtue of’, while thesis of upc - comprehensiveness does not. This difference is relevant because ‘in virtue of’ does not imply ‘only in virtue of’, I am a brother in virtue of being a male with a sister, but I am also a brother in virtue of being a male with a brother, and, of course, being a male with a brother, and conversely. Likewise, I live in the province of Ontario in virtue of living in the city of Toronto, but it is also true that I live in Canada in virtue of living in the County of York. Moreover, in the general case, if something ‘x’ bears a relation ‘R’, to something ‘y’ in virtue of x’s being ‘F’ and y’s being ‘G’. Suppose that ‘x’ weighs less than ‘y’ in virtue of x’s weighing lbs., and y’s weighing lbs. Then, it is also true that ‘x’ weighs less than ‘y’ in virtue of x’s weighing under lbs., and y’s weighing over lbs. And something can, of course, weigh under lbs., without weighing lbs. To repeat, ‘in virtue of’ does not imply ‘only in virtue of’.
Why, then, think that upc - comprehensiveness implies the type - exclusion thesis? The fact that two events are causally related in virtue of falling under physical types does not seem to exclude the possibility that they are also causally related in virtue of falling under non - physical types, in virtue of the one being (say) a firing of a certain other neuron, or in virtue of one being a secretion of enzymes and the other being a breakdown of amino acids. Notice that the thesis of upc - comprehensiveness implies that whenever an event is an effect of another, it is so in virtue of falling under a physical type. But the thesis does not seem to imply that whenever an event vis an effect of another, it is so only in virtue of falling under a physical type. Upc - comprehensiveness seems consistent with events being effects in virtue of falling under non - physical types. Similarly, the thesis seems consistent with events being causes in virtue of falling under non - physical types.
Nevertheless, an explanation is called for how events could be causes in virtue of falling under non - physical types if upc - comprehensiveness is true. The most common strategy for offering such an explanation involves maintaining there is a dependence - determination relationship between non - physical types and physical types. Upc - comprehensiveness, together with the claim that instances of non - physical event types are causes or effects, implies that, as a matter of causal necessity, whenever an event falls under a non - physical event type, if falls under some physical type or other. The instantiation of non - physical types by an event thus depends, as a matter of causal necessity, on the instantiation of some or other physical event type by the event. It is held that non - physical types in physical context: Although as given non - physical type might be ‘realizable’ by more than one physical type. The occurrence o a physical type in a physical context in some sense determines the occurrence of any non - physical type that it ‘realizes’.
Recall the considerations that inspired the ‘no gap’ arguments from physics: Quantum mechanics seems able, in principle, to explain how chemical processes unfold in terms of the mechanics of subatomic particles: Molecular biology seems able, in principle, to explain how the physiological operations of systems in living things occur in terms of biochemical pathways, long chains of chemical reactions. Types of subatomic causal processes ‘implement’ types of chemical processes. Many in the cognitive science community hold that computational processes implement that mental processes, and that computational processes are implemented, in turn, by neurophysiological processes.
The Oxford English Dictionary gives the everyday meaning of ‘cognition’ as ‘the action or faculty of knowing’. The philosophical meaning is the same, but with the qualification that it is to be ‘taken in its widest sense, including sensation, perception, conception, and volition’. Given the historical link between psychology and philosophy, it is not surprising that ‘cognitive’ in ‘cognitive psychology’ has something like this broader sense, than the everyday one. Nevertheless, the semantics of ‘cognitive psychology’, like that of many adjective - noun combinations, is not entirely transparent. Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology, and its subject matter approximates to the psychological study that are largely historical, its scope is not exactly what one would predict.
Many cognitive psychologists have little interest in philosophical issues, as cognitive scientists are, in general, more receptive. Fodor, because of his early involvement in sentence processing research, is taken seriously by many psycholinguistics. 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 as unhelpful, and his prescription that cognitive psychology is primarily ignored. Dennett’s recent work on consciousness treats a topic that is highly controversial, but his detailed discussion of psychological research findings has enhanced his credibility among psychologists. Overall, psychologists are happy to get on with their work without philosophers telling them about their ‘mistakes’.
The hypotheses driving most of modern cognitive science is simple to state - the mind is a computer. What are the consequences for the philosophy of mind? This question acquires heightened interest and complexity from new forms of computation employed in recent cognitive theory.
Cognitive science has traditionally been based on or upon symbolic computation systems: Systems of rules for manipulating structures built up of tokens of different symbol types. (This classical kind of computation is a direct outgrowth of mathematical logic.) Since the mid - 1980s, however, cognitive theory has increasingly employed connectionist computation: The spread of numerical activation across units - the view that one of the most impressive and plausible ways of modelling cognitive processes in by means of a connectionist, or parallel distributed processing computer architecture. In such a system data is input into a number of cells as one level, or hidden units, which in turn delivers an output.
Such a system can be ‘trained’ by adjusting the weights a hidden unit accords to each signal from an earlier cell. The’ training’ is accomplished by ‘back propagation of error’, meaning that if the output is incorrect the network makers the minimum adjustment necessary to correct it. Such systems prove capable of producing differentiated responses of great subtly. For example, a system may be able to task as input written English, and deliver as output phonetically accurate speech. Proponents of the approach also, point pout that networks have a certain resemblance to the layers of cells that make up a human brain, and that like us. But unlike conventional computing programs, networks degrade gracefully, in the sense that with local damage they go blurry rather than crashed altogether. Controversy has concerned the extent to which the differentiated responses made by networks deserve to be called recognitions, and the extent to which non - recognizable cognitive function, including linguistic and computational ones, are well approached in these terms.
Some terminology will prove useful: that is, for which we are to stipulate that an event type ‘T’ is a casual type if and only if there is, at least one type T*, such that something can case a T* in virtue of being a ‘T’. And by saying that an event type is realizable by physical event types or physical properties. For that of which is least causally possible for the event to be realized by a physical event type. Given that non - physical causal types must be realizable by physical types, and given that mental types are non - physical types, there are two ways that mental types might to be causal. First, mental types may fail to be realizable by physical types. Second, mental types might be realizable by physical types but fail to meet some further condition for being causal types. Reasons of both sorts can be found in the literature on mental causation for denting that any mental types are causal. However, there has been much attention paid to reasons for the first sort in this casse of phenomenal mental types (pain states, visual states, and so forth). And there has been much attention to reasons of the second sort in the case of intentional mental states (i.e., beliefs that P, desires that Q, intentions that R, and so on).
Notice that intentional states figure in explanations of intentional actions not in virtue of their intentional mode (whether they are beliefs or desires, and so on) but also in virtue of their contents, i.e., what is believed, or desired, and so forth. For example, what causally explains someone’s doing ‘A’ (standing on his head) is that the person wants to ‘X’ (impress someone) and believes that by doing ‘A’ he will ‘X’. The contents of the belief and desire (what is believed and what is desired) sem essential to the causal explanation of the agent’s doing ‘A’. Similarly, we often causally explain why someone came to believe that ‘P’ by citing the fact that the individual came to believe that ‘Q’ and inferred ‘P’ from ‘Q’. In such cases, the contents of the states in question are essential to the explanation. This is not, of course, to say that contents themselves are causally efficacious, contents are not among the relata of causal relations. The point is, however, that we characterize states when giving such explanations not only as being as having intentional modes, but also as having certain contents: We type states for having certain contents, we type states for the purpose of such explanations in terms of their intentional modes and their contents. We might call intentional state types that might include content properties ‘conceptual intentional state types’, but to avoid prolixity, let us call them ‘intentional state types’ for short: Thus, for present purposes, b y ‘intentional state types’ we will mean types such as the belief that ‘P; the desire that ‘Q’, and so on, and not types such as belief, desire and the like, and not types such as belief, desire, and so forth.
Although it was no part of American philosopher Hilary Putnam, who in 1981 marked a departure from scientific realism in favour of a subtle position that he called internal realism, initially related to an ideal limit theory of truth and apparently maintaining affinities with verification, but in subsequent work more closely aligned with ‘minimalism’, Putnam’s concepts in the later period has largely to deny any serious asymmetry between truth and knowledge as it is obtained in natural science, and as it is obtained in morals and even theology. Still, purposively of raising concerns about whether ideational states are causal, the well - known ‘twin earth’ thought experiment have prompted such concerns. These thought - experiments are fairly widely held to show alike in every intrinsic physical respect can have intentional states with different contents. If they show that, then intentional state type fail to supervene on intrinsic physical state types. The reason is that with contents an individual’s beliefs, desires, and the like, have, depends, in part, on extrinsic, contextual factors. Given that, the concern has been raised toast states cannot have effects in virtue of falling under intentional state types.
One concern seems to be that state cannot have effects in virtue of falling under intentional state types because individuals who are in all and only the same intrinsic states must have all and only the same causal powers. In response to that concern, it might be pointed out that causal power ss often depend on context. Consider weight. The weight of objects do not supervene on their intrinsic properties: Two objects can be exactly alike in every intrinsic respect (and thus have the same mass) yet have different weights. Weight depends, in part on extrinsic, contextual factors. Nonetheless, it seems true that an object can make a scale read 10lbs in virtue of weighing 10lbs. Thus, objects which are in exactly the am e type of intrinsic states may have different causal powers due to differences in their circumstances.
It should be noted, however, that on some leading ‘externalist’ theories of content, content, unlike weight, depends on a historical context, such as a certain set of content - involving states is for attribution of those states to make the subject as rationally intelligible as possible, in the circumstances. Call such as theory of content ‘historical - externalist theories’. On one leading historical - externalist theory, the content of a state depends on the learning history of the individual on another. It depends on the selection history of the species of which the individual is a member. Historical - externalist theories prompt a concern that states cannot have causal effects in virtue of falling under intentional state types. Causal state types, it might be claimed, are never such that their tokens must have a certain causal ancestry. But, if so, then, if the right account of content is a historical - externalist account, then intentional types are not casual types. Some historical - externalists appear to concede this line of argument, and thus to effects in virtue of falling under intentional state types. However, explain how intentional - externalists attempt to explain how intentional types can be casual, even though their tokens must have appropriated causal ancestries. This issue is hotly debated, and remains unresolved.
Finally, by noting, why it is controversial, whether phenomenal state types can be realized by physical state types. Phenomenal state types are such that it is like something for a subject to be in them: It is, for instance, like something to have a throbbing pain. It has been argued that phenomenal state types are, for that reason, subjective to fully understand what it is to be in them. One must be able to take up is to be in them, one must be able to take up a certain experiential point of view. For, it is claimed, an essential aspect of what it is to be in a phenomenal state is what it is like to be in a phenomenal state is what it is like to be in the state, only by tasking up certain experiential point of view can one understand that aspect (in our strict and narrow sense) are paradigms’ objective state, i.e., non - subjective states. The issue arises, then, as to whether phenomenal state types can be realized by physicalate types. How could an objective state realize a subjective one? This issue too is hotly debated, and remains unresolved. Suffice it to say, that only physical types and types realizable by physical types and types realizable by physical types are causal, and if phenomenal types are neither, then nothing can have any causal effects, so, then, in virtue of falling under a phenomenal type. Thus, it could never be the case, for example, that a state causally results in a bad mood in virtue of being a throbbing pain.
Philosophical theories are unlike scientific ones, scientific theories ask questions in circumstances where there are agreed - upon methods for answering the question and where the answers themselves are generally agreed upon. Philosophical theory: They attempt to model the known data to be seen from a new perspectives, a perspective that promotes the development of genuine scientific theory. Philosophical theories are, thus, proto - theories, as such, they are useful precisely in areas where no large - scale scientific theory exist. At present, which is exactly the state psychology it is in. Philosophy of mind, is to be a kind of propaedeutics to a psychological science. What is clear is that at the moment no universally accepted paradigm for a scientific psychological science exists. It is exactly in this kind of circumstance for a scientific psychology exists. It is exactly in this kind of circumstance that the philosophers of mind in the present context is to consider the empirical data available and to ry to form a generalized, coherent way of looking at those data tat will guide further empirical research, i.e., philosophers can provide a highly schematized model that will structure that research. And the resulting research will, in turn, help bring about refinements of the schematized theory, with the ultimate hope being that a closer, viable, scientific theory, one wherein investigators agree on the question and on the methods to be used to answer them, and will emerge. In these respects, philosophical theories of mind, though concerned with current empirical data, are too general in respect of the data to be scientific theories. Moreover, philosophical theories aimed primarily at a body of accepted data. As such, philosophical theories merely give as ‘picture’ of those data. Scientific theories not only have to deal with the given data but also have to make predictions, in that can be gleaned from the theory together with accepted data. This removal go unknown data is what forms the empirical basis of a scientific theory and allows it to be justified in a way quite distinct from the way in which philosophical theories are justified. Philosophical theories are only schemata, coherent pictus of the accepted data, only pointers toward empirical theory, and as the history of philosophy makers manifest, usually unsuccessful one - though I think this lack of success is any kind of a fault, these are different tasks.
In the philosophy of science, a generalization or set of generalizations purportedly making reference to unobservable entities, e.g., atoms, genes, quarks, unconscious wishes, and so forth. The ideal gas law, for example, refers only to such observables as pressure, temperature and volume and their properties. Although an older usage suggests lack of adequate evidence in support thereof (‘merely a theory’), current philosophical usage does not carry that connotation. Einstein’s special theory of relativity, for example, is considered extremely well founded.
There are two main views on the nature of theories. According to the ‘received view’ theories are partially interpreted axiomatic systems, according to the semantic view a theory is a collection of models.
The axiomatization or axiomatics belongs of a theory that usually emerges as a body of (supposed) truths that are not neatly organized, making the theory difficult to survey or study as a whole. The axiomatic method is an idea for organizing a theory: One tries to select from among the supposed truths a small number from which all the others can be seen to be deductively inferrable. This make the theory rather more tractable since, in a sense, all the truths are contained in those few. In a theory so organised, the few truths from which all others are deductively inferred are called ‘axioms’. David Hilbert had argued that, just as algebraic and differential equations and physical precesses, could themselves be made mathematical objects, so axiomatic theories, like algebraic and differential equations, which are means of representing physical processes and mathematical structures, could be made objects of mathematical investigation.
Wherein, a credibility programme of a speech given in 1900, the mathematician David Hilbert (1862 - 1943) identified 23 outstanding problems in mathematics. The first was the ‘continuum hypothesis’. The second was the problem of the consistency of mathematics. This evolved into a programme of formalizing mathematic - reasoning, with the aim of giving meta - mathematical proofs of its consistency. (Clearly there is no hope of providing a relative consistency proof of classical mathematics, by giving a ‘model’ in some other domain. Any domain large and complex enough to provide a model would be raising the same doubts.) The programme was effectively ended by Kurt Gödel (1906 - 78), whose theorem of 1931, which showed that any system 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 hidden inconsistencies.
In the tradition (as in Leibniz, 1704), many philosophers had the conviction that all truths, or all truths about a particular domain, followed from a few principles. These principles were taken to be either metaphysically prior or epistemologically prior or both. In the first sense, they were taken to be entities of such a nature that what exist is ‘caused’ by them. When the principles were taken as epistemically prior, that is, as axioms, either they were taken to be epistemically privileged, e.g., self - evident, not needing to be demonstrated, or again, inclusive ‘or’, to be such that all truths do in need follow from them, in at least, by deductive inferences. Gödel (1984) showed - in the spirit of Hilbert, treating axiomatic theories as themselves mathematical objects - that mathematics, and even a small part of mathematics, elementary number theory, could not be axiomatized that more precisely, any class of axioms which is such that we could effectively decide, of that class, would be too small to capture all of the truths.
‘Philosophy is to be replaced by the logic of science - that is to say, by the logical analysis of the concepts and sentences of the sciences, for the logic of science is nothing other than the logical syntax of the language of science’, has a very specific meaning. The background was provided by Hilbert’s reduction of mathematics to purposes of philosophical analysis, any scientific theory could ideally be reconstructed as an axiomatic system formulated within the framework of Russell’ s logic. Further analysis of a particular theory could then proceed a the logical investigation of its ideal logical reconstruction. Claims about theories in general were couched as claims about such logical systems.
In both Hilbert’s geometry and Russell’s logic had an attempt made to distinguish between logical and non - logical terms. Thus the symbol ‘&’ might be used to indicate the logical relationship of conjunction between two statements, while ‘P’ is supposed to stand for a non - logical predicate. As in the case of geometry, the idea was that underlying any scientific theory is a purely formal logical structure captured in a set of axioms formulated in the appropriated formal language. A theory of geometry, for example, might include an axiom stating that for ant two distinct P’s (points), ‘p’ and ‘q’, there exist a number ‘L’ (Line) such that O(p, I) and O(q, I), where ‘O’ is a two place relationship between P’s and L’s (p lies on I). Such axioms, taken all together, were said to provide an implicit definition of the meaning of the non - logical predicates. In whatever of all the P’s and L’s might be, they must satisfy the formal relationships given by the axioms.
The logical empiricists were not primarily logicians: They were empiricists first. From an empiricist point of view, it is not enough that the non - logical terms of a theory be implicitly defined: They also require an empirical interpretation. This was provided by the ‘correspondence rules’ which explicitly linked some of the non - logical terms of a theory with terms whose meaning was presumed to be given directly through ‘experience’ or ‘observation’. The simplest sort of correspondence rule would be one that takes the application of an observationally meaningful term, such as ‘dissolve’, as being both necessary and sufficient for the applicability of a theoretical term, such as ‘soluble’. Such a correspondence rule would provide a complete empirical interpretation of the theoretical term.
A definitive formulation of the classical view was provided by the German logical positivist Rudolf Carnap (1891 - 1970), who divided the non - logical vocabulary of theories into theoretical and observational components. The observational terms were presumed to be given a complete empirical interpretation, which left the theoretical terms with only an indirect empirical interpretation provided by their implicit definition within an axiom system in which some of the terms possessed a complete empirical interpretation.
Among the issues generated by Carnap’s formulation was the viability of ‘the theory - observation distinction’, of course, one could always arbitrarily designate some subset of non - logical terms as belonging to the observational vocabulary, but that would compromise the relevance of the philological analysis for an understanding of the original scientific theory. But what could be the philosophical basis for drawing the distinction? Take the predicate ‘spherical’, for example. Anyone can observe that a billiard ball is spherical. But what about the moon, on the one hand, or an invisible speck of sand, on the other. Is the application of the term? For which the ’spherical’ in these objects are ‘observational’?
Another problem was more formal, as did, that Craig’s theorem seem to show that a theory reconstructed in the recommendations fashioned could be re - axiomatized in such a way as to dispense with all theoretical terms, while retaining all logical consequences involving only observational terms. Craig’s theorem continues as a theorem in mathematical logic, held to have implications in the philosophy of science. The logician William Craig at Berkeley showed how, if we partition the vocabulary of a formal system (say, into the ‘T’ or theoretical terms, and the ‘O’ or observational terms) then if there is a fully ‘formalized system’ ‘T’ with some set ‘S’ of consequences containing only ‘O’ terms, there is also a system ‘O’ containing only the ‘O’ vocabulary but strong enough to give the same set ‘S’ of consequences. The theorem is a purely formal one, in that ‘T’ and ‘O’ simply separate formulae into the preferred ones, containing as non - logical terms only one kind of vocabulary, and the objects. The theorem might encourage the thought that the theoretical terms of a scientific theory are in principle dispensable, since the same consequences can be derived without them.
However, Craig’s actual procedure gives no effective way of dispensing with theoretical terms in advance, i.e., in the actual process of thinking about and designing the premises from which the set ‘S’ follows. In this sense ‘O’ remains parasitic upon its parent ‘T’. Thus, as far as the ‘empirical’ content of a theory is concerned, it seems that we can do without the theoretical terms. Carnap’s version of the classical vew seemed to imply a form of instrumentionalism, a problem which Carl Gustav Hempel (1905 - 97) christened ‘the theoretician’s dilemma’.
In the late 1940s, the Dutch philosopher and logician Evert Beth published an alternative formalism for the philosophical analysis of scientific theories. He drew inspiration from the work of Alfred Tarski, who studied first biology and then mathematics. In logic he studied with Kotarinski, Lukasiewicz and Lesniewski publishing a succession of papers from 1923 onwards. Yet he worked on decidable and undecidable axiomatic systems, and in the course in his mathematical career he published over 300 papers and books, on topics ranging from set theory to geometry and algebra. And also, drew further inspiration from Rudolf Carnap, the German logical positivist who left Vienna to become a professor at Prague in 1931, and felt Nazism to become professor in Chicago in 1935. He subsequently worked at Los Angeles from 1952 to 1951. All the same, Evert Beth drew inspirations from von Neumann’s work on the foundations of quantum mechanics. Twenty years later, Beth’s emigrant who left Holland around the time Beth’s and van Fraassen. Here we are consider the comprehensibility in following the explication for which as preconditions between the ‘syntactic’ approach of the classical view and the ‘semantic’ approach of Beth and van Fraassen, and further consider the following simple geometrical theory as van Fraassen in 1989, presented first in the form of:
A1: For any two lines, at most one point lies on both.
A2: For any two points, exactly one line lies on both.
A3: On every line are at least two points.
Note first, that these axioms are stated in more or less everyday language. On the classical view one would have first to reconstruct these axioms in some appropriate formal language, thus introducing quantifiers and other logical symbols. And one would have to attach appropriate correspondence rules. Contrary to common connotations of the word ‘semantic’, the semantic approach down - plays concerns with language as such. Any language will do, so long as it is clear enough to make reliable discriminations between the objects which satisfy the axiom and those which do not. The concern is not so much with what can be deduced from their axioms, valid deduction being matter of syntax alone. Rather, the focus is on ‘satisfaction’, what satisfies the axioms - a semantic notion. These objects are, in the technical, logical sense of the term, models of the axioms. So, on the semantic approach, the focus shifts from the axiom as linguistic entities, to the models, which are non - linguistic entities.
It is not enough to be in possession of a general interpretation for the terms used to characterize the models, one must also be able to identify particular instances - for example, a particular nail in a particular board. In real science must effort and sophisticated equipment may be required to make the required identification, for example, of a star as a white dwarf or of a formation in the ocean floor as a transformed fault. On a semantic approach, these complex processes of interpretation and identification, while essential in being able t use a theory, have no place within the theory itself. This is inn sharp contrast to the classical view, which has the very awkward consequence that various innovations in instrumenting itself. The semantic approach better captures the scientist’s own understanding of the difference between theory and instrumentation.
On the classical view the question ‘What is a scientific theory’‘? Receives a straightforward answer. A theory is (1) a set of uninterrupted axioms in a specific formal language plus (2) a set of correspondence rules that provide a partial empirical interpretation in terms of observable entities and processes. A theory is thus true if and only if the interpreted axioms are all true. To obtain a similarly straightforward answer a little differently. Return to the axiom for placements as considered as free - standing statements. The definition could be formulated as follows: Any set of points and lines constitute a seven - pointed geometry is not even a candidate for truth or falsity, one can hardly identify a theory with a definition. But claims to the effect that various things satisfy the definition may be true or false of the world. Call these claims theoretical hypotheses. So we may say that, on the semantic approach, a theory consists of (1) a theoretical definition plus (2) a number of theoretical hypotheses. The theory may be said to be true just in case all its associated theoretical hypotheses are true.
Adopting a semantic approach to theories still leaves wide latitude in the choice of specific techniques for formulating particular scientific theories. Following Beth, van Fraassen adopts a ‘state space’ representation which closely mirrors techniques developed in theoretical physics during the nineteenth century - techniques were carried over into the developments of quantum and relativistic mechanics. The technique can be illustrated most simply for classical mechanics.
Consider a simple harmonic oscillator, which consists of a mass constrained to move in one dimension subject to a linear restoring force - a weight bouncing gently while from a spring provides a rough example of such a system. Let ‘x’ represent the single spatial dimension, ‘t’ the time., ‘p’ the momentum, ‘k’ the strength of the restoring force, ands ‘m’ the mass. Then a linear harmonic oscillator may be ‘defined’ as a system which satisfies the following differential equation of motion:
dx/dt = DH/Dp. Dp/dt = - DH/Dx, where H = (k/2)x2 + (1/2m)p2
The Hamiltonian, ‘H’, represents the sun of the kinetic and potential energy of the system. The state of the system at any instant of time is a point in a two - dimensional position - momentum space. The history of any such system is this state space is given by an ellipse, as in time, the system repeatedly traces by revealing the ellipse onto the ‘x’ axis covering classical mechanics. It remains to be any real world system, such as a bouncing spring, satisfies this definition.
Other advocates of a semantic approach defer from the Beth - van Fraassen point of view in the type of formalism they would employ in reconstructing actual scientific theories. One influential approach derives from the word of Pattrick Suppes during he 1950s and 1960s, some of which inspired Suppes was by the logician J.C.C. Mckinsey and Alfred Tarski. In its original form. Suppes’s view was that theoretical definition should be formulated in the language of set theory. Suppes’s approach, as developed by his student Joseph Sneed (1971), has been adopted widely in Europe, and particularly in Germany, by the late Wolfgang Stegmüller (1976) and his students. Frederick Suppe has shares features of both the state space and the set - theoretical approaches.
Most of those who have developed ‘semantic’ alternatives to the classical ‘syntactic’ approach to the nature of scientific theories were inspired by the goal of reconstructing scientific theories - a goal shared by advocates of the classical view. Many philosophers of science now question whether there is any point in treating philosophical reconstructions as scientific theories. Rather, insofar as the philosophy of science focuses on theories at all, it is the scientific versions, in their own terms, that should be of primary concern. But many now argue that the major concern should be directed toward the whole practice of science, in which theories are but a part. In these latter pursuits what is needed is not a technical framework for reconstructing scientific theories, but merely a general imperative framework for talking about required theories and their various roles in the practice of science. This becomes especially important when considering science such as biology, in which mathematical models play less of a role than in physics.
At this point, at which there are strong reasons for adopting a generalized model - based understanding of scientific theories which makes no commitments to any particular formalism - for example, state spaces or set - theoretical predicates. In fact, one can even drop the distinction between ‘syntactic’ and ‘semantic’ as a leftover from an old debate. The important distinction is between an account of theories that takes models as fundamental versus that takes statements, particularly laws, as fundamental. A major argument for a model - based approach is that just given. There seem in fact to be few, if any, universal statements that might even plausibly be true, let alone known to be true, and thus available to play the role which laws have been thought to play in the classical account of theories, rather, what have often been taken to be universal generalisations should be interpreted as parts of definitions. Again, it may be helpful to introduce explicitly the notion of an idealized, theoretical model, an abstract entity which answers s precisely to the correspondence theoretical definition. Theoretical models thus provide, though only by fiat, something of which theoretical definitions may be true. This makes it possible to interpret much of scientific’ theoretical discourse as being about theoretical models than directly about the world. What have traditionally been interpreted as laws of nature thus out to be merely statements describing the behaviour of theoretical models?
If one adopts such a generalized model - based understanding of scientific theories, one must characterize the relationship between theoretical models and real systems. Van Fraassen (1980) suggests that it should be one of isomorphism. But the same considerations that count against there being true laws in the classical sense also count against there being anything in the real world strictly isomorphic in any theoretical model, or even isomorphic to an ‘empirical’ sub - model. What is needed is a weaker notion of similarity, for which it must be specified both in which respect the theoretical model and the real system are similar, and to what degree. These specifications, however, like the interpretation of terms used in characterizing the model and the identification of relevant aspects of real systems, are not part of the model itself. They are part of a complex practice in which models are constructed and tested against the world in an attempt to determine how well they ‘fit’.
Divorced from its formal background, a model - based understanding of theories is easily incorporated into a general framework of naturalism in the philosophy of science. It is particularly well - suited to a cognitive approach to science. Today the idea of a cognitive approach to the study of science means something quite different - indeed, something antithetical to the earlier meaning. A ‘cognitive approach’ is now taken to be one that focuses on the cognitive structures and processes exhibited in the activities of individual scenists. The general nature of these structures and processes is the subject matter of the newly emerging cognitive science. A cognitive approach to the study of science appeals to specific features of such structures and processes to explain the model and choices of individual scientists. It is assumed that to explain the overall progress of science one must ultimately also appeal to social factors and social approaches, but not one in which the cognitive excludes the social. Both are required for an adequate understanding of science as the product of human activities.
What is excluded by the newer cognitive approach to the study of science is any appeal to a special definition of rationality which would make rationality a categorical or transcendent feature of science. Of course, scientists have goals, both individual and collective, and they employ more or less effective means for achieving these goals. So one may invoke an ‘instrumental’ or ‘hypothetical’ notion of rationality in explaining the success or failure of various scientific enterprise. But what is it at issue is just the effectiveness of various goal - directed activities, not rationality in any more exalted sense which could provide a demarcation criterion distinguishing science from other activities, sch as business or warfare. What distinguishes science is its particular goals and methods, not any special form of rationality. A cognitive approach to the study of science, then, is a species of naturalism in the philosophy of science.
Naturalism in the philosophy of science, and philosophy generally, is more an overall approach to the subject than a set of specific doctrines. In philosophy it may be characterized only by the most general ontological and epistemological principles, and then more by what it opposes than by what it proposes.
Besides ontological naturalisms and epistemological type naturalism, it seems that its most probably the single most important contributor to naturalism in the past century was Charles Robert Darwin (1809 - 82), who, while not a philosopher, naturalist is both in the philosophical and the biological sense of the term. In ‘The Descent of Man’ (1871) Darwin made clear the implications of natural selection for humans, including both their biology and psychology, thus undercutting forms of anti - naturalism which appealed not only to extra - natural vital forces in biology, but to human freedom, values, morality, and so forth. These supposed indicators of the extra - natural are all, for Darwin, merely products of natural selection.
All and all, among advocates of a cognitive approach there is near unanimity in rejecting the logical positivist leal of scientific knowledge as being represented in the form of an interpreted, axiomatic system. But there the unanimity ends. Many employ a ‘mental models’ approach derived from the work of Johnson - Laird (1983). Others favour ‘production rules’ if this, infer that, a long usage for which the continuance by researchers in computer science and artificial intelligence, while some appeal to neural network representations.
The logical positivist are notorious for having restricted the philosophical study of science to the ‘context of justification’, thus relegating questions of discovery and conceptual change to empirical psychology. A cognitive approach to the study of science naturally embraces these issues as of central concern. Again, there are differences. The pioneering treatment, inspired by the work of Herbert Simon, who employed techniques from computer science and artificial intelligence to generate scientific laws from finite data. These methods have now been generalized in various directions, while appeals to study of analogical reasoning in cognitive psychology, while Gooding (1990) develops a cognitive model of experimental procedure. Both Nersessian and Gooding combine cognitive with historical methods, yielding what Neressian calls a ‘cognitive - historical’ approach. Most advocates of a cognitive approach to conceptual change are insistent that a proper cognitive understanding of conceptual change avoids the problem of incommensurability between old and new theories.
No one employing a cognitive approach to the study of science thinks that there could be an inductive logic which would pick out the uniquely rational choice among rival hypotheses. But some, such as Thagard (1991) think it possible to construct an algorithm that could be run on a computer which would show which of two theories is best. Others seek to model such judgements as decisions by individual scientists, whose various personal, professional, and social interests are necessarily reflected in the decision process. Here, it is important to see how experimental design and the result of experiments may influence individual decisions as to which theory best represents the real world.
The major differences in approach among those who share a general cognitive approach to the study of science reflect differences in cognitive science itself. At present, ‘cognitive science’ is not a unified field of study, but an amalgam of parts of several previously existing fields, especially artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Linguistic, anthropology, and philosophy also contribute. Which particular approach a person takes has typically been determined more by developing a cognitive approach may depend on looking past specific disciplinary differences and focussing on those cognitive aspects of science where the need for further understanding is greatest.
Broadly, the problem of scientific change is to give an account of how scientific theories, proposition, concepts, and/or activities alter over the corpuses of times generations. Must such changes be accepted as brute products of guesses, blind conjectures, and genius? Or are there rules according to which at least some new ideas are introduced and ultimately accepted or rejected? Would such rules be codifiable into coherent systems, a theory of ‘the scientific method’? Are they more like rules of thumb, subject to exceptions whose character may not be specifiable, not necessarily leading to desired results? Do these supposed rules themselves change over time? If so, do they change in the light of the same factors as more substantive scientific beliefs, or independently of such factors? Does science ‘progress’? And if so, is its goal the attainment of truth, or a simple or coherent account (true or not) of experience, or something else?
Controversy exists about what a theory of scientific change should be a theory of the change ‘of’. Philosophers long assumed that the fundamental objects of study of study are the acceptance or rejection of individual belief or propositions, change of concepts, positions, and theories being derivative from that. More recently, some have maintained that the fundamental units of change are theories or larger coherent bodies of scientific belief, or concepts or problems. Again, the kinds of causal factors which an adequate theory of scientific change should consider are far from evident. Among the various factors said to be relevant are observational data: The accepted background of theory, higher - level methodological constraints, psychological, sociological, religious, meta - physical, or aesthetic factors influencing decisions made by scientists about what to accept and what to do.
These issues affect the very delineation of the field of philosophy of science, in what ways, if any, does it, in its search for a theory of scientific change, differ from and rely on other areas, particularly the history and sociology of science? One traditional view was that those others are not relevant at all, at least in any fundamental way. Even if they are, exactly how do they relate to the interest peculiar to the philosophy of science? In defining their subject many philosophers have distinguished maltsters internal to scientific development - ones relevant to the discovery and/or justification of scientific claims - from ones external thereto - psychological, sociological, religious, metaphysical, and so forth, not directly relevant but frequently having a causal influence. A line of demarcation is thus drawn between science and non - science, and simultaneously between philosophy of science, concerned with the internal factors which function as reasons (or count as reasoning), and other disciplines, to which the external, nonrational factors are relegated.
This array of issues is closely related to that of whether a proper theory of scientific change is normative or descriptive. Is philosophy of science confined in description of what scientific cases be described with complete accuracy as it is descriptive, to what extent must scientific cases be described with compete accuracy? Can the theory of internal factors be a ‘rational reconstruction’ a retelling that partially distorts what actually happened in order to bring out the essential reasoning involved?
Or should a theory of scientific change be normative, prescribing how science ought to proceed? Should it counsel scientists about how to improve their procedures? Or would it be presumptuous of philosophers to advise them about how to do what they would it be presumptuous of philosophers to advise them about how to do what they are far better prepared to do? Most advocates of normative philosophy of science agree that their theories are accountable somehow to the actual conduct of science. Perhaps philosophy should clarify what is done in the best science: But can what qualifies as ‘best science’ be specified without bias? Feyerabend objects to taking certain developments as paradigmatic of good science. With others, he accepts the ‘Pessimistic induction’ according to which, since all past theories have proved incorrect, present ones can be expected to do so also, what we consider good science, eve n the methodological rules we rely on, may be rejected in the future.
Much discussion of scientific change since Hanson centres on the distinction between context of discovery and justification. The distinction is usually ascribed to the philosopher of science and probability theorist Hans Reichenbach (1891 - 1953) and, as generally interpreted, reflective attitude of the logical empiricist movement and of the philosopher of science Raimund Karl Popper (1902 - 1994) who overturns the traditional attempts to found scientific method in the support that experience gives in suitably formed generalizations and theories. Stressing the difficulty, the problem of ‘induction’ put in front of any such method. Popper substitutes an epistemology that starts with the hold,, imaginative formation of hypotheses. These face the tribunal of experience, which has the power to falsify, but not to confirm them. A hypotheses that survives the ordeal of attempted refutation between science and metaphysics, that an unambiguously refuted law statement may enjoy a high degree of this kind of ‘confirmation’, where can be provisionally accepted as ‘corroborated’, but never assigned a probability.
The promise of a ‘logic’ of discovery, in the sense of a set of algorithmic, content - neutral rules of reasoning distinct from justification, remains unfulfilled. Upholding the distinction between discovery and justification, but claiming nonetheless that discovery is philosophically relevant, many recent writers propose that discovery is a matter of a ‘methodology’, ‘rationale’, or ‘heuristic;’ rather than a ‘logic’. That is, only a loose body of strategies or rules of thumb - still formulable discoveries, there is content of scientific belief - which one has some reason to hope will lead to the discovery of a hypothesis.
In the enthusiasm over the problem of scientific change in the 1960s nd 1970s, the most influential theories were based on holistic viewpoints within which scientific ‘traditions’ or ‘communities’ allegedly worked. The American philosopher of science Samuel Thomas Kuhn (1922 - 96) suggested that the defining characteristic of a scientific tradition is its ‘commitment’ to a shared ‘paradigm’. A paradigm is ‘the source of the methods, problem - field, and standards of solution accepted by any mature scientific community at any given time’. Normal science e, the working out of the paradigm, gives way to scientific revolution when ‘anomalies’ in it precipitate a crisis leading to adoptions of a new paradigms. Besides many studies contending that Kuhn’s model fails for some particular historical case, three major criticisms of Kuhn’s view are as follows. First, ambiguities exist in his notion of a paradigm. Thus a paradigm includes a cluster of components, including ‘conceptual, theoretical, instrumental, and methodological’ communities: It involves more than is capturable in a single theory, or even in words. Second, how can a paradigm fall, since it determine s what count as facts, problems, and anomalies? Third, since what counts as a ‘reason’ is paradigm - dependent, there remains no trans - paradigmatic reason for accepting a new paradigm upon the failure of an older one.
Such radical relativism is exacerbated by the ‘incommensurability’ thesis shared by Kuhn (1962) and Feyerabend (1975), are, even so, that, Feyerabend’s differences with Kuhn can be reduced to two basic ones. The first is that Feyerabend’s variety of incommensurability is more global and cannot be localized in the vicinity of a single problematic term or even a cluster of terms. That is, Feyerabend holds that fundamental changes of theory lead to changes in the meaning of all the terms in a particular theory. The other significant difference concerns the reasons for incommensurability. Whereas Kuhn thinks that incommensurability stems from specific translational difficulties involving problematic terms. Feyerabend’s variety of incommensurability seems to result from a kin d of extreme holism about the nature of meaning itself. Feyerabend is more consistent than Kuhn in giving a linguistic characterization of incommensurability, and there seems to be more continuity in his usage over time. He generally frames the incommensurability claim in term’s of language, but the precis e reasons he cites for incommensurability are different from Kuhn’s. One of Feyerabend‘s most detailed attempts to illustrate the concept of incommensurability involves the medieval European impetus theory and Newtonian classical mechanics. He claims that ‘the concept of impetus, as fixed by the usage established in the impetus theory, cannot be defined in a reasonable way within Newton’s theory’.
Yet, on several occasions Feyerabend explains the reasons for incommensurability by saying that there are certain ‘universal rules’ or ‘principles of construction’ which govern the terms of one theory and which are violated by the other theory. Since the second theory violates such rules, any attempt to state the claims of that theory in terms of the first will be rendered futile. ‘We have a point of view (theory, framework, cosmos, modes of representation) whose elements (concepts, facts, picture) are built up in accordance e with certain principles of construction. The principle s involve e something ;like a ‘closure’, there are things that cannot be said, or ‘discovered’, without violating the principles (which does not mean contradicting them). Stating such terms as ‘universal’ he states: ‘Let us call a discovery, or a statement, or an attitude incommensurable with the cosmos (the theory, the framework) if it suspends some of its universal principles’. As an example, of this phenomena, consider two theories, ‘T’ and T*, where ‘T’ is classical celestial mechanics, including the space - time framework, and ‘T’ is general relativity theory. Such principles as the absence of an upper limit for velocity, governing all the terms in celestial mechanics, and these terms cannot be expressed at once such principles are violated, as they will be by general relativity theory. Even so, the meaning of terms is paradigm - dependent, so that a paradigm tradition is ‘not only incompatible but often actually incommensurable with that which has gone before’. Different paradigms cannot even be compared, for both standards of comparison and meaning are paradigm - dependent.
Response to incommensurability have been profuse in the philosophy of science, and only a small fractions can be sampled at this point, however, two main trends may be distinguished. The first denies some aspects of the claim, and suggests a method of forging a linguistic comparison among theories, while the second, though not necessarily accepting the claim of linguistic incommensurability proceeds to develop other ways of comparing scientific theories.
Inn the first camp are those who have argued that at least one component of meaning is unaffected by untranslatability: Namely, reference, Israel Scheller (1982) enunciates this influential idea in responses to incommensurability, but he does not supply a theory of reference to demonstrate how the reference of terms from different theories can be compared. Later writers seem to be aware of the need for a full - blown theory of reference to make this response successful. Hilary Putnam (1975) argues that the causal theory of reference can be used to give an account of the meaning of natural kind terms, and suggests that the same can be done for scientific terms in general, but the causal theory was first proposed as a theory of reference for proper names, and there are serious problems with the attempt to apply it to science. An entirely different language response to the incommensurability claim is found in the American philosopher Herbert Donald Davidson (1917 - 2003), where the construction takes place within a generally ‘holistic’ theory of knowledge and meaning. A radial interpreter can tell when a subject holds a sentence term and using the principle of ‘charity’ ends up making an assignment of truth conditions to individual sentences, although Davidson is a defender of the doctrine of the ‘indeterminacy’ of radical translation and the in reusability ‘ of reference, his approach has seemed to many to offer some hope of identifying meaning as an extensional approach to language. Davidson is also known for rejection of the idea of a conceptual scheme, thought of s something peculiar to one language or one way of looking at the world.
The second kind of response to incommensurability proceeds to look or non - linguistic ways of making a comparison between scientific theories. Among these responses one can distinguish two main approaches. One approach advocates expressing theories in model - theoretic terms, thus espousing a mathematical mode of comparisons. This position has been advocated by writers such as Joseph Sneed and Wolfgang Stegmüller, who have shown how to discern certain structural similarities among theories in mathematical physics. But the methods of this ‘structural approach‘ do not seem applicable t any but the most highly mathematized scientific theories. Moreover, some advocate of this approach have claimed that it lends support to a model - theoretic analogue of Kuhn’s incommensurability claim. Another trend which has scientific theories to be entities in the minds or brains of scientists, and regard them as amendable to the techniques of recent cognitive science, proponents include Paul Churchlands, Ronald Gierre, and Paul Thagard. Thagard’s (1992) s perhaps the most sustained cognitive attempt to rely to incommensurability. He uses techniques derived from the connectionist research program in artificial intelligence, but relies crucially from a linguistic mode of representing scientific theories without articulating the theory of meaning presupposed. Interestingly, neither cognitivist who urges acing connectionist methods to represent scientific theories. Churchlands (1992), argues that connectionist models vindicate Feyerabend’s version of incommensurability.
The issue of incommensurability remains a live one. It does not arise just for a logical empiricist account of scientific theories, but for any account that allows for the linguistic representation of theories. Discussions of linguistic meaning cannot be banished from the philosophical analysis of science, simply because language figures prominently in the daily work of science itself, and its place is not about to be taken over by any other representational medium. Therefore, the challenge facing anyone who holds that the scientific enterprise sometimes requires us to mk e a point - by - point linguistic comparison of rival theories is to respond to the specific semantic problem raised by Kuhn and Feyerabend. However, if one does not think that such a piecemeal comparison of theories is necessary, then the challenge is tp articulate another way of putting scientific theories in the balance and weighing them against one - another.
The state of science at any given time is characterized, in part at least, by the theories that are ‘accepted’ at that time. Presently, accepted theories include quantum theory, the general theory of relativity, and the modern synthesis of Darwin and Mendel, as well as lower level (but still clearly theoretical) assertions such as that DNA has a double helical structure, that the hydrogen atom contains a single electron and so firth. What precisely involves the accepting of a theory?
The commonsense answer might appear to be that given by the scientific realist, to accept a theory means, at root, to believe it to be true for at any rate, ‘approximately’ or ‘essentially’ true. Not surprising, the state of theoretical science at any time is in fact too complex to be captured fully by any such single notion.
For one thing, theories are often firmly accepted while being explicitly recognized to be idealizations. The use of idealizations raises as number of problems for the philosopher of science. One such problem is that of confirmation. On the deductive nomological model of scientific theories, which command virtually universal assent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is that confirming evidence for a hypothesis of evidence which increases its probability. Nonetheless, presumably, if it could be shown that any such hypothesis is sufficiently well confirmed by the evidence, then that would be grounds for accepting it. If, then, it could be shown that observational evidence could confirm such transcendent hypotheses at all, then that would go some way to solving the problem of induction. Nevertheless, thinkers as diverse in their outlook as Edmund Husserl and Albert Einstein have pointed to idealizations as the hall - mark of modern science.
Once, again, theories may be accepted, not be regarded as idealizations, and yet be known not to be strictly true - for scientific, rather than abstruse philosophical, reasons. For example, quantum theory and relativity theory were uncontroversially listed as among those presently accepted in science. Yet, it is known that the two theories, yet relativity requires all theories are not quantized, yet quantum theory say that fundamentally everything is. It is acknowledged that what is needed is a synthesis of the two theories, a synthesis which cannot of course (in view of their logical incommutability) leave both theories, as presently understood, fully intact, (This synthesis is supposed to be supplied by quantum field theory, but it is not yet known how to articulate that theory fully) none of this means, that the present quantum and relativistic theories regarded as having an authentically conjectural character. Instead, the attitude seems to be that they are bound to survive in modified form as limited cases in the unifying theory of the future - this is why a synthesis is consciously sought.
In addition, there are theories that are regarded as actively conjectured while nonetheless being accepted in some sense: It is implicitly allowed that these theories might not live on as approximations or limiting cases in further sciences, though they are certainly the best accounts we presently have of their related range of phenomena. This used to be (perhaps still is) the general view of the theory of quarks, few would put these on a par with electrons, say,, but all regard them as more than simply interesting possibilities.
Finally, the phenomenon of change in accepted theory during the development of science must be taken into account: But from the beginning, the distance between idealization and the actual practice of science was evident. Karl Raimund Popper (1902 - 1994), the philosopher of science, was to note, that an element of decision is required in determining what constitute a ‘good’ observation, a question of this sort, which leads to an examination of the relationship between observation and theory, has prompted philosophers of science to raise a series of more specific questions. What reasoning was in fact used to make inferences about light waves, which cannot be observed from diffraction patterns that can be? Was such reasoning legitimate? Are they to be construed as postulating entities just as real as water waves only much smaller? Or should the wave theory be understood non realistically as an instrumental device for organizing the predicting observable optical phenomena such ass the reflection, refraction, and diffraction of light? Such questions presuppose that here is a clear distinction between what can and cannot be observed. Is such a distinction clear? If so, how is it to be drawn? As, these issues are among the central ones raised by philosophers of science about theory that postulates unobservable entities
Reasoning begins in the ‘context of justification’, as this is accomplished by deriving conclusions deductively from the assumptions of the theory. Among these conclusions at least some will describe states of affairs capable of being establish ed as true or false by observations. If these observational conclusions turns out to be true, the theory is shown to be empirically supported or probable. On a weaker version due to Karl Popper (1959), the theory is said to be ‘corroborated’, meaning simply that it has been subjected to test and has not been falsified. Should any of the observational conclusions turn out to be false, the theory is refuted, and must be modified or replaced. So a hypothetico - deductivist can postulate any unobservable entities or events he or she wishes in the theory, so long as all the observational conclusions of the theory are true.
However, against the then generally accepted view that the empirical science are distinguished by their use of an inductive method. Popper’s 1934 book had tackled two main problems: That of demarcating science from non - science (including pseudo - science and metaphysics), and the problem of induction. Again, Popper proposed a falsifications criterion of demarcation: Science advances unverifiable theories and tries to falsify them by deducing predictive consequences and by putting the more improbable of these to searching experimental tests. Surviving such testing provided no inductive support for the theory, which remain a conjecture, and may be overthrown subsequently. Popper’s answer to the Scottish philosopher, historian and essayist David Hume (1711 - 76), was that he was quite right about the invalidity of inductive inference, but that this does not matter, because these play no role in science, in that the problem of induction drops out.
Then, is a scientific hypothesis to be tested against protocol statements, such that the basic statements in the logical positivist analysis of knowledge, thought as reporting the unvanishing and pre - theoretical deliverance of experience: What it is like here, now, for me. The central controversy concerned whether it was legitimate to couch them in terms of public objects and their qualities or whether a less theoretical committing, purely phenomenal content could be found. The former option makes it hards to regard then as truly basic, whereas the latter option ,makes it difficult to see how they can be incorporated into objectives science. The controversy is often thought to have been closed in favour of a public version by the ‘private language’ argument. Difficulties at this point led the logical positivist to abandon the notion of an epistemological foundation altogether, 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 sentences depends on an untenable ‘myth of the given’.
Popper advocated a strictly non - psychological reading of the empirical basis of science. He required ‘basic’ statements to report events that are ‘observable’ only in that they involve relative position and movement of macroscopic physical bodies in certain space - time regions, and which are relatively easy to tests. Perceptual experience was denied an epistemological role (though allowed a causal one),: Basic statements are accepted as a result of a convention or agreement between scientific observers. Should such an agreement break down, the disputed basic statements would need to be tested against further statements that are still more ‘basic’ and even easier to test.
But there is an easy general result as well: Assuming that a theory is any deductively closed set of sentences as assuming, with the empiricist, that the language in which these sentences are expressed has two sorts of predates (observational and theoretical) and, finally, assuming that the entailment of the evidence is the only constraint on empirical adequacy, then there are always indefinitely many different theories which are equally empirically adequate as any given theory. Take a theory as the deductive closure of some set of sentences in a language in which the two sets of predicates are differentiated: Consider the restriction of ‘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 statement as - ‘T’. Unless very special conditions apply (conditions which do not apply to any real scientific theory), then some of these empirically equivalent theories will formally contradict ‘T’. (A similarly straightforward demonstration works for the currently a fashionable account of theories as set of models.)
Many of the problems concerning scientific change have been clarified, and many new answers suggested. Nevertheless,, concepts central to it (like ‘paradigm’, ‘core’, ‘problem’, constraint’, ‘verisimilitude’) still remain formulated in highly general, even programmatic ways. Many devastating criticisms of the doctrine based of them have not been answered satisfactory.
Problems centrally important for the analysis of scientific change have been neglected, there are, for instance, lingering echoes of logical empiricism in claims that the methods and goals of science are unchanging, and thus are independent of scientific change itself, or that if they do change, they do so for reasons independent of those involved in substantive scientific change itself. By their very nature, such approaches fail to address the change that actually occur in science. For example, even supposing that science ultimately seeks the general and unalterable goal of ‘truth’ or ‘verisimilitude’, that injunction itself gives guidance ass to what scenists should seek or others should go about seeking it. More specific goals do provide guidance, and, as the transition from technological mechanistic to gauge - theoretic goals illustrate, those goals are often altered in light of discoveries about what is achieved, or about what kinds of theories are promising. A theory of scientific change should account for these kinds of goal changes, and for how, once accepted, they alter the rest of the patterns of scientific reasoning and change, including ways in which mor general goals and methods may be reconceived.
Traditionally, philosophy has concerned itself with relations between propositions which are specifically relevant to one another in form or content. So viewed, philosophical explanation of scientific change should appeal to factors which are clearly more scientifically relevant in their content to the specific direction of new scientific research and conclusions than are social factors whose overt relevance lies elsewhere. However, in recent years many writers, especially in the ‘strong programme’ in the sociology of science have maintained that all purported ‘rational’ practices must be assimilated to social influences.
Such claims are excessive. Despite allegations that even what is counted as evidence is a matter of mere negotiated agreement, many consider that the last word has not been said on the idea tat there is in some deeply important sense a ‘given’, inn experience in terms of which we can, at least partially, judge theories. Again, studies continue to document the role of reasonably accepted prior beliefs (‘background information’) which can help guide those and other judgements. Even if we can no longer naively affirm the sufficiency of ‘internal’ givens and background scientific information to account for what science should and can be, and certainly for what it is often in human practice, neither should we take the criticisms of it or granted, accepting that scientific change is explainable only by appeal to external factors.
Equally, we cannot accept too readily the assumption (another logical empiricist legacy) that our task is to explain science and its evolution by appeal to meta - scientific rules or goals, or metaphysical principles, arrived at in the light of purely philosophical analysis, and altered (if at all) by factors independent of substantive science. For such trans - scientific analysis, even while claiming to explain ‘what science is’, do so in terms ‘external’ to the processes bty which science actually changes.
Externalist claims are premature: Not enough is yet understood about the roles of indisputable scientific consecrations in shaping scientific change, including changes of method and goals. Even if we ultimately cannot accept the traditional ‘internalist’ approach in philosophy of science, as philosophers concerned with the form and content of reasoning we must determine accurately how far it can be carried. For that task, historical and contemporary case studies are necessary but insufficient: Too often the positive implications of such studies are left unclear, and their too hasty assumption is often that whatever lessons are generated therefrom apply equally to later science. Larger lessons need to be a systematic account integrating the revealed patterns of scientific reasoning and the ways they are altered into a coherent interpretation of the knowledge - seeking enterprise - a theory of scientific change. Whether such efforts are successful or not, it only nr=e through attempting to give sch a coherent account in scientific terms , or through understanding our failure ton do so, that it will be possible to assess precisely the extent to which trans - scientific factors (meta - scientific, social, or otherwise) must be included in accounts of scientific change.
That for being on one side, it is noticeable that the modifications for which of changes have conversely been revealed as a quality specific or identifying to those of something that makes or sets apart the unstretching obligation for ones approaching the problem. That it has echoed over times generations in making different or become different, to transforming substitution for or among its own time of change. Finding in the resulting grains of residue that history has amazed a gradual change of attitudinal values for which times changes in 1925, where the old quantum mechanics of Planck, Einstein, and Bohr was replaced by the new (matrix) quantum mechanics of Born, Heisenberg, Jordan, and Dirac. In 1926 Schrödinger developed wave mechanics, which proved to be equivalent to matrix mechanics in the sense that they ked to the same energy levels. Dirac and Jordan joined the two theories into pone transformation quantum theory. In 1932 von Neumann presented his Hilbert space formations of quantum mechanics and proved a representation theorem showing that sequences in transformation theory were isomorphic notions of theory identity are involved, as theory individuation of theoretical equivalence and empirical equivalences.
What determines whether theories T1 and T2, are instances of the same theory or distinct theories? By construing scientific theories as partially interpreted syntactical axiom system TC, positivism made specific of the axiomatization individuating factures of the theory. Thus, different choices of axioms T or alternations in the correspondence rules - say, to accommodate a new measurement procedure - resulting in a new scientific meaning of the theorized descriptive terms τ. Thus, significant alternations in the axiomatization would result not only in a new theory T’C’ but one with changed meaning τ’. Kuhn and Feyerabend maintained that the resulting change could make TC and T’C’ non-comparable, or ‘incommensurable’. Attempts to explore individuation issues for theories through the medium of meanings change or incommensurability proved unsuccessful and have been largely abandoned.
Individuation of theories in actual scientific practice is at odds with the positivistic analyses. For example, difference equation, differential equations, and Hamiltonian versions of classical mechanics, are all formulations of one theory, though they differ in how fully they characterize classical mechanics. It follows that syntactical specifics of theory formulation cannot be undeviating features, which is to say that scientific theories are not linguistic entities. Rather, theories must be some sort of extra-linguistic structure which can be referred to through th medium of alterative and even in equivalent formulations (as with classical mechanics). Also, the various experimental designs, and so forth, incorporated into positivistic correspondence rules cannot be individuating features of theories. For improved instrumentation or experimental technique does not automatically produce a new theory. Accommodating these individuation features was a main motivation for the semantic conception of theories where theories are state spaces or other extra-linguistic structures standing in mapping relations to phenomena.
Scientific theories undergo developments, are refined, and change. Both syntactic and semantic analysis of theories concentrate on theories at mature stages of development, and it is an open question either approach adequately individuates theories undergoing active development.
Under what circumstances are two theories equivalent? On syntactical approaches, axiomatizations T1 and T2 having a common definitional extension would be sufficient Robinson’s theorem which says that T1 and T2 must have a model in common t be compatible. They will be equivalent if theory have precisely the same (or equivalent) sets of models. On the semantic conception the theories will be two distinct sets of structures (models) M1 and M2. The theories will be equivalent just in case we can prove a representation theorem showing that M1 and M2 are isomorphic (structurally equivalent). In this way von Neumann showed that transformation quantum theory and the Hilbert Space formulation were equivalent.
`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. Based on the assumption that there is no really necessary 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 favors reductionistic examination of phenomena at the expense of mind? It also seeks to reduce 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 shape 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, wherefor 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 to perpetuate the Cartesian two-world dilemma in an even more oppressive form. It also allows us better to understand the origins of cultural ambience and the ways in which they could resolve that conflict.
Nietzsche’s emotionally charged defense of intellectual freedom and radial empowerment of mind as the maker and transformer of the collective fictions that shape 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, wherefor 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 to perpetuate the Cartesian two-world dilemma in an even more oppressive form. It also allows us better to understand the origins of cultural ambience and the ways in which they could resolve that conflict.
The mechanistic paradigm of the late n 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 unsurmountable achievements, as remain 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. Before 1905 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 of the ‘progressive principal order’ of complementary relations 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.
Uncertain issues surrounding certainty are especially connected with those concerning ‘scepticism’. Although Greek scepticism entered on the value of enquiry and questioning, scepticism is now the denial that knowledge or even rational belief is possible, either about some specific subject-matter, e.g., ethics, or in any area whatsoever. Classical scepticism, springs from the observation that the best methods in some area seem to fall short of giving us contact with the truth, e.g., there is a gulf between appearances and reality, it frequently cites the conflicting judgements that our methods deliver, with the result that questions of truth-realizations become disintegrations of the undefinable. In classic thought the various examples of this conflict were systemized in the tropes of Aenesidemus. So that, the scepticism of Pyrrho and the new Academy was a system of argument and inasmuch as opposing dogmatism, and, particularly the philosophical system building of the Stoics.
As it has come down to us, particularly in the writings of Sextus Empiricus, its method was typically to cite reasons for finding our issue undecidable (sceptics devoted particular energy to undermining the Stoics conception of some truths as delivered by direct apprehension or some katalepsis). As a result the sceptics conclude eposhé, or the suspension of belief, and then go on to celebrate a way of life whose object was ataraxia, or the tranquillity resulting from suspension of belief.
Fixed by its will for and of itself, the mere mitigated scepticism which accepts every day or commonsense belief, is that, not s the delivery of reason, but as due more to custom and habit. Nonetheless, it is self-satisfied at the proper time, however, the power of reason to give us much more. Mitigated scepticism is thus closer to the attitude fostered by the accentuations from Pyrrho through to Sextus Expiricus. Despite the fact that the phrase ‘Cartesian scepticism’ is sometimes used. Descartes himself was not a sceptic, however, in the ‘method of doubt’ uses a sceptical scenario in order to begin the process of finding a general distinction to mark its point of knowledge. Descartes trusts in categories of ‘clear and distinct’ ideas, not far removed from the phantasiá kataleptikê of the Stoics.
For many sceptics have traditionally held that knowledge requires certainty, artistry. And, of course, they affirm of having being such beyond doubt that knowledge is not feigned to possibilities. In part, nonetheless, of the principle that every effect it’s a consequence of an antecedent cause or causes. For causality to be true it is not necessary for an effect to be predictable as the antecedent causes may be numerous, too complicated, or too interrelated for analysis. Nevertheless, in order to avoid scepticism, this participating sceptic has generally held that knowledge does not require certainty. Except for alleged cases of things that are evident for one just by being true. It has often been thought, that any thing known must satisfy certain criteria as well as true. It is often taught that anything is known must satisfy certain standards. In so saying, that by ‘deduction’ or ‘induction’, there will be criteria specifying when it is. As these alleged cases of self-evident truths, the general principle specifying the sort of consideration that will make such standard in the apparent or justly conclude in accepting it warranted to some degree.
Besides, there is another view - the absolute globular view that we do not have any knowledge whatsoever. In whatever manner,
It is doubtful that any philosopher seriously entertains of absolute or the completed consummation of scepticism. Even the Pyrrhonist sceptics, who held that we should refrain from accenting to any non-evident standards that no such hesitancy about asserting to ‘the evident’, the non-evident are any belief that requires evidences because it is warranted.
René Descartes (1596-1650), in his sceptical guise, never doubted the content of his own ideas. It’s challenging logic, inasmuch as of whether they ‘corresponded’ to anything beyond ideas.
All the same, Pyrrhonism and Cartesian conduct regulated by an appearance of something as distinguished from which it is made of a nearly global scepticism. Having been held and defended, that of assuming that knowledge is some form of true, sufficiently warranted belief, it is the warranted condition that provides the truth or belief conditions, in that of providing the grist for the sceptic’s mill about. The Pyrrhonist will call to mind that no non-evident, empirically deferring the sufficiency of giving in but warranted. Whereas, a Cartesian sceptic will agree that no inductive standard about anything other than one’s own mind and its contents is sufficiently warranted, because there are always legitimate grounds for doubting it. Whereby, the essential difference between the two views concerns the stringency of the requirements for a belief being sufficiently warranted to take account of as knowledge.
A Cartesian requires certainty, but a Pyrrhonist merely requires that the standards in case are more warranted then its negation.
Cartesian scepticism was unduly an in fluence with which Descartes agues for scepticism, than his reply holds, in that we do not have any knowledge of any empirical standards, in that of anything beyond the contents of our own minds. The reason is roughly in the position that there is a legitimate doubt about all such standards, only because there is no way to justifiably deny that our senses are being stimulated by some sense, for which it is radically different from the objects which we normally think, in whatever manner they affect our senses. Therefrom, if the Pyrrhonist is the agnostic, the Cartesian sceptic is the atheist.
Because the Pyrrhonist requires much less of a belief in order for it to be confirmed as knowledge than do the Cartesian, the argument for Pyrrhonism are much more difficult to construct. A Pyrrhonist must show that there is no better set of reasons for believing to any standards, of which are in case that any knowledge learnt of the mind is understood by some of its forms, that has to require certainty.
The underlying latencies that are given among the many derivative contributions as awaiting their presence to the future that of specifying to the theory of knowledge, is, but, nonetheless, the possibility to identify a set of shared doctrines, however, identity to discern two broad styles of instances to discern, in like manners, these two styles of pragmatism, clarify the innovation that a Cartesian approval is fundamentally flawed, nonetheless, of responding very differently but not fordone.
Repudiating the requirements of absolute certainty or knowledge, insisting on the connection of knowledge with activity, as, too, of pragmatism of a reformist distributing knowledge upon the legitimacy of traditional questions about the truth-unconductiveness of our cognitive practices, and sustain a conception of truth objectives, enough to give those questions that undergo of underlying the causalities that their own purposive latencies are yet given to the spoken word for which a dialectic awareness sparks too aflame from the ambers of fire.
Pragmatism of a determinant revolution, by contrast, relinquishing the objectivity of youth, acknowledges no legitimate epistemological questions over and above those that are naturally kindred of our current cognitive conviction.
It seems clear that certainty is a property that can be assembled to either a person or a belief. We can say that a person, ‘S’ are certain, or we can say that its descendable alinement is aligned as of ‘p’, are certain. The two uses can be connected by saying that ‘S’ has the right to be certain just in case the value of ‘p’ is sufficiently verified.
In defining certainty, it is crucial to note that the term has both an absolute and relative sense. More or less, we take a proposition to be certain when we have no doubt about its truth. We may do this in error or unreasonably, but objectively a proposition is certain when such absence of doubt is justifiable. The sceptical tradition in philosophy denies that objective certainty is often possible, or ever possible, either for any proposition at all, or for any proposition at all, or for any proposition from some suspect family (ethics, theory, memory, empirical judgement etc.) a major sceptical weapon is the possibility of upsetting events that Can cast doubts back onto what was hitherto taken to be certainties. Others include reminders of the divergence of human opinion, and the fallible source of our confidence. Fundamentalist approaches to knowledge look for a basis of certainty, upon which the structure of our system is built. Others reject the metaphor, looking for mutual support and coherence, without foundation.
However, in moral theory, the views that there are inviolable moral standards or absolute variable human desires or policies or prescriptions.
In spite of the notorious difficulty of reading Kantian ethics, a hypothetical imperative embeds a command which is in place only given some antecedent desire or project: ‘If you want to look wise, stay quiet’. The injunction to stay quiet only proves applicable to those with the antecedent desire or inclination. 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 to arouse to activity, animation, or life in case of those 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 through which you can at the same times 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 become through the ‘willingness’ of a universal law of nature’: (3) The formula of the end-in-itself: ‘act in such 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’. Moreover, the affirmative and negative, modern opinion 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 and 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 are force field’s pure potential, fully characterized by dispositional statements or conditionals, or are they categorical or actual? The former option seems to require within ungrounded dispositions, or regions of space that differ only 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. Although 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 led of their persuasive influenced, 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 mentioning 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. Communicated, so much as 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 conversely there 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 connect 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 individuated 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 Believe 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 verificationalist, who takes cognitive meaning to be a matter only of consequences in sensory experience. James’ took pragmatic meaning to include emotional and matter responses. Moreover, his, metaphysical standard of value, 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 sets of consequences were exhaustive of a term 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, we except that it would turn red: We except 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 sets clarification of the concept. This is relevant ti 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 most important, is the famed apprehension of the pragmatic principle, in so that, Pierces’s account of reality: When we take something to be rea 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 inquire into the finding measure into whether ‘p’, they would arrive at the belief that ‘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 deny that the entitles posited by the relevant discourse that exists or at least exists: The standard example is ‘idealism’, that a reality id somehow mind-curative or mind-co-ordinated - that real objects comprising the ‘external worlds’ are dependently of eloping 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 itself makes of some formative constellations and not of any mere understanding of the nature of the ‘real’ bit even the resulting charger we attributed 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 trat 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 Nothing, 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, whereas the former is afraid of nothing, and the latter think that there is nothing to be afraid of.
A rather different set of concerns arises 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. Almost any area of discourse may be the focus of this dispute: 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 ha to overcome counter-examples 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 laws of bivalence happily in mathematics, precisely because it had only 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 really exist 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 opposition to realism has been from philosopher 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 itself and 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 (ad 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 its crated 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 only an individual.
Possible worlds seem able to differ from each other purely in the presence or absence of individuals, and not merely in th distribution of exemplification of properties.
The philosophical ponderosity over which to set upon the unreal, as belonging to the domain 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 itself. 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, nd as long history of attempts to explain contingent existence, by which id to reference and a necessary ground.
In the transition, ever since Plato, this ground becomes a self-sufficient, perfect, unchanging, and external something, identified with the Well, Good or God, but whose relation with the everyday world remains to a finely grained residue of obscurity. The celebrated argument for the existence of God was first propounded by Anselm in his Proslogin. The argument by 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. Bu then, we can conceive of something greater than that than which nothing greater can be conceived, which is contradictory. 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 premisses are that all natural things are dependent for their existence on something else. The totality of dependents brings much more then itself, depending on or upon a non-dependent, or necessarily existent bring about in that 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, nonetheless, is 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 arises again. So, that ‘God’ that serves the ‘Kingdom of Ends’ deems to question must that essentially in lasting through all time existing of necessity, in that of having to occur of states or facts as having an independent reality: 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 confront the unconverted, but as an explanation of the deep meaning of religious belief. Collingwood, regards the argument s proving not that because our idea of God is that of id 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 pre-supposition 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 define something as unsurpassably great, if it exists and is perfect in every ‘possible world’. Then, to allow that it is at least possible that an unsurpassable great being existing. 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 possibly finding to the necessity held to ‘p’, we can device its necessity as ‘p’. A symmetrical proof starting from the assumption that it is possible that such a being 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 omnifarious knowledge the same result occurs. 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 result, 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 results are morally permissible. I 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) 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 tings (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 is, therefore, in some sense available to rescind of a new body, therefore, it is not I who remain indefinitely in existence or in a particular state or course of abiding to any-kind of body death, same personalized body 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 at this point led the logical positivist to abandon the notion of an epistemological foundation altogether, 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, 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 attested by its successive sages (the progress of rationality or of Spirit). This essential speculative philosophy of history is given a 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 their world of nature and of thought become identified. The work of Herder, Kant, Flichte and Schelling is synthesized by Hegel: History has a plot, as too, this to the moral development of man, accommodated with freedom within the 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 its 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, itself is such that speculations upon the history may that it is continued to be written, notably: late examples, by the late 19th century large-scale speculation of tis kind with the nature of historical understanding, and in particular with a comparison between methos 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 re-live 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, but it is nonetheless, the explanation from there actions, however, by re-living 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 re-living the situation
in or thereby an understanding of what they experience and thought.
The view that everyday attributions of intention, belief and meaning to other persons proceeded via tacit use of a theory that enables ne to construct these interpretations as explanations of their doings. The view is commonly hld 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 o 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 re-living the situation ‘in their moccasins’, or from their point of view, and thereby understanding what hey 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. The suggestion is a modern development of the ‘Verstehen’ tradition associated with Dilthey, Weber and Collngweood.
Much as much, it is therefore, 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 has no privileged 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 yet, the same limitations that do not apply of bringing further he 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 wold 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 reveal of himself is not Himself.
The immediate problem availed of ethics is posed b y the English philosopher Phillippa Foot, in her ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect’ (1967). A 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 itself, 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 yourself in ways that responsibility ends in a death of one person? After all, whom 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 itself permit us to talk of rationality and intention, 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;’ dong 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 by and for itself. 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 of the future. Events, Hume thought, are in themselves ‘loose and separate’: How then are we to conceive of others? The relationship seems not to 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 conception of everyday objects is 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 example’s of puzzles with 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?
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’ an d the laws. Since determinism is universal, these are in turn, fixed and induce to come into being 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 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 therefore deemed irrelevant on this option). (3) Libertarianism, as this is the view that while compatibilism is only an evasion, there is a substantive amount as immeasurably real for which its notion of freedom 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, the 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 an action is not the end of such a chain, then either of its causes occurs at random, in that no antecedent events brought it about, and in that case nobody is responsible for its ever to occur. 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 akrasia bad.
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 theory that there is such act is problematic, and the idea that they make the required difference is a case of explaining a phenomenon by citing another that raises exactly the same problem, since the intentional or voluntary nature of the set of volition now needs 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 of a commentary which is in place only given some antecedent desire or project. ‘If you want to look wise, stay quiet’. The injunction to stay quiet only applies to those with the antecedent desire or inclination: If one has no desire to look wise the injunction or advice lapses. 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 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 become through your will a universal law of nature’, (3) the formula of the end-in-itself, ‘Act in such a way that you always trat humanity of whether in your own person 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 formula of the Kingdom of Ends, which provides a model for systematic union of different 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 are 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 usual way to develop an imperative logic is to work in terms of the possibility of satisfying the other one command 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 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 involved 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 eve n reason, all of which are in principle capable of letting us down. This is eventually found in the celebrated ‘Cogito ergo sum’: 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 a various counter-attack on behalf of social and public starting-points. The metaphysics associated with this priority are the Cartesian dualism, or separation of mind and matter into two different but interacting substances. Descartes rigorously and rightly sees that 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: A Hume drily 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 very unexpected circuit.’
By dissimilarity, Descartes’s 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’s 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. A 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. Yet, the cosmos and unbroken evolution of all life, by that of the first self-replication molecule that was 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 results in the stark Cartesian division between mind and world that became one of the most characteristic features of Western thought. This is not, however, 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 objectifies our experience. Experiences per se are purely sensational experienced that do 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 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 objectifies 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 a 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 Cartesian 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 the ‘I,’ that is 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 aporia of subject-object, which has been the fundamental question in philosophy ever since. Shunning these metaphysical questions is no solution. Excluding something, by reducing it to a more material and verifiable level, is not only pseudo-philosophy but actually a depreciation and decadence of the great philosophical ideas of mankind.
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 crude language of the earliest users of symbolics must have been considerably gestured and nonsymbiotic 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 wold. 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 world and the idea that the subject is somewhere, and where he is given by what he can perceive.
Research, 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 stand-alone or unitary modules that evolved with the addition of 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 ben 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. As marked and noted by the appearance of a new profound complementarity in 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 confront 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 conclude that an undivided wholeness exists on the most primary and basic level in all aspects of physical reality. What we are dealing within science per se, however, are manifestations of tis reality, which are invoked or ‘actualized’ in making acts of observation or measurement. Since the reality that exists between the space-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 a willingness to follow arguments to their logical conclusions. 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 responsible for evaluating the benefits and risks associated with the use of these technologies, much less their potential impact on human needs and values, normally had expertise on only one side of a two-culture divide. Perhaps, more important, 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 of nature called non-locality cannot be properly understood without some familiarity wit the actual history of scientific thought. The intent is to suggest that what is most important about this back-ground can be understood in its absence. Those who do not wish to struggle with the small and perhaps, the fewer amounts of back-ground implications 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 functions in an effort to close the circle, resolves the equations of eternity and complete the universe to obtainably gain in its unification of which that holds within.
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, Hutcheson, Hume, Smith and Kant, a prime task as 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 as empathy, sympathy or self-interest. The task continues especially in the light of a post-Darwinian understanding of ourselves.
In some moral systems, notably that of Immanuel Kant, 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 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 situation that weigh 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 were 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 themselves, 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.
Nevertheless, some theories into ethics see the subject in terms of a number of laws (as in the Ten Commandments). Th status of these laws 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 th 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-religious 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, sides 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’. Like that of his contemporary - Locke. His conception of natural laws include rational and religious principles, making it only a partial forerunner of more resolutely empiricist and political treatment in 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 crates 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 is 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 good 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 facts entails 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 Knt, 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, syntetesis) 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, simple and immediate grasp of first moral principles. Conscience, by contrast, is ,more concerned with particular instances of right and 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 he 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 o exponent s of this theme include the British absolute idealist Herbert Francis Bradley (1846-1924) and Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek. The notably the idealism of Bradley, there ids the same doctrine that change is 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 towards this end may be to see time itself not as an infinite container within which discrete events are located, bu 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 in which it applies to species quickly 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 associations 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. Unfortunately, the pinnacle of nature in this sense is the mature adult male citizen, with he rest of hat 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 ie the Pythagorean conception of form as the key to physical nature, bu 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 preeminent among the four elements that Heraclitus distinguishes: Fire, air (breath, the stuff of which souls composed), earth, and water. Although he is principally remember 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 loses 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 with in integrated phenomenon 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 grounded 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 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 socially variable and potentially distorting picture of what thought and action should be. Again, there is a spectrum of concerns from the highly theoretical to he 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 o f 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 commit such errors, since the feature explained sociobiological may be indexed to environment: For instance, it ma y 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 advocated 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 voices. 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 whole system wooden, as if knocked together out of cracked hemlock.
The premises regarded by a 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 struggle, 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 say in which a variety of higher mental function may be adaptions applicable of a psychology of evolution, a formed 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 a
agreement or who free-ride on the work of others, our cognitive structure and many others. Evolutionary psychology goes hand-in-hand with neurophysiological 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 one’s self is to contribute to social and other ideals. However, truth as formulated in language is always partial, and dependent upon categories that themselves 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 continue 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 was Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), for categorical monadic properties over relations. He was particularly troubled by the relation between that which ids 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) foregathers nature of becoming a creative spirit whose aspiration is ever further and more to completed self-realization. Although a movement of more general to naturalized imperative. Romanticism drew on the same intellectual and emotional resources as German idealism was increasingly culminating in the philosophy of Hegal (1770-1831) and of absolute idealism.
Being such in comparison with nature 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 th world of gods and invisible agencies, (3) the world of rationality and intelligence, conceived of as distinct from the biological and physical order, (4) that which is manufactured and artefactual, 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 conception of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ often provide a justification for aggressive personal and political relations, or the idea that it is a women’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 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 mans 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 thing consist. They put u in our proper place, and failure to appreciate this value 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 cluster around the idea associated with the term ‘substance’. The substance of a thin 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 notion of substances tend to disappear in empiricist thought in 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 instance of qualities, not of quantities themselves. So the problem of what it is for a value quality to be the instance that remains.
Metaphysics inspired by modern science tends 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 deriving from the 1st century rhetorical treatise On the Sublime, 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 extent of that objects, and is filled with one grand sensation, which totally possessing it, composes it into a 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 might 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 ourselves as transcending nature, than in an awareness of ourselves 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 philosophers 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.
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