Representational Content And The Objects Of Thought

Author : Nicholas Rimell
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9789811635182
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Representational Content and the Objects of Thought written by Nicholas Rimell and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is commonly held that our beliefs are attitudes towards propositions, and that a belief's truth value (true or false) depends on the truth value of the proposition toward which it is an attitude. From this plausible view Rimell builds a theory of mental representation with two striking features. First, our "I" beliefs have private content-content that only a single subject can entertain. Second, it is impossible to think about nonexistents (e.g., Santa Claus, the fountain of youth). In light of the latter claim, Rimell offers an error theory meant to explain what we are doing when we think we're thinking about nonexistents. To non-specialists, this book serves as a clear, careful introduction to central questions at the intersection of metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind: Are thought and meaning entirely in the head? What's special about first-personal thought and speech? How (if at all) can we think about nonexistents, given that prima facie thinking involves a relation between a subject and an object of thought? To specialists, this book is designed to challenge the standard ways of thinking about these questions and to offer a unified response to them.

Author : Nicholas Rimell
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 981163517X
Total Pages : 215 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Representational Content and the Objects of Thought written by Nicholas Rimell and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book defends a novel view of mental representation—of how, as thinkers, we represent the world as being. The book serves as a response to two problems in the philosophy of mind. One is the problem of first-personal, or egocentric, belief: how can we have truly first personal beliefs—beliefs in which we think about ourselves as ourselves—given that beliefs are supposed to be attitudes towards propositions and that propositions are supposed to have their truth values independent of a perspective? The other problem is how we can think about nonexistents (e.g., Santa Claus) given the widespread view that thought essentially involves a relation between a thinker and whatever is being thought about. The standard responses to this puzzle are either to deny that thought is essentially relational or to insist that it is possible to stand in relations to nonexistents. This book offers an error theory to the problem. The responses from this book arise from the same commitment: a commitment to treating talk of propositions—as the things towards which our beliefs are attitudes—as talk of entities that actually exist and that play a constitutive and explanatory role in the activity of thought.

Author : Tim Crane
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199682747
Total Pages : 195 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Objects of Thought written by Tim Crane and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tim Crane addresses the ancient question of how it is possible to think about what does not exist. He argues that the representation of the non-existent is a pervasive feature of our thought about the world, and that to understand thought's representational power ('intentionality') we need to understand the representation of the non-existent.

Author : J. Christopher Maloney
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190854774
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book What It Is Like To Perceive written by J. Christopher Maloney and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Naturalistic cognitive science, when realistically rendered, rightly maintains that to think is to deploy contentful mental representations. Accordingly, conscious perception, memory, and anticipation are forms of cognition that, despite their introspectively manifest differences, may coincide in content. Sometimes we remember what we saw; other times we predict what we will see. Why, then, does what it is like consciously to perceive, differ so dramatically from what it is like merely to recall or anticipate the same? Why, if thought is just representation, does the phenomenal character of seeing a sunset differ so stunningly from the tepid character of recollecting or predicting the sun's descent? J. Christopher Maloney argues that, unlike other cognitive modes, perception is in fact immediate, direct acquaintance with the object of thought. Although all mental representations carry content, the vehicles of perceptual representation are uniquely composed of the very objects represented. To perceive the setting sun is to use the sun and its properties to cast a peculiar cognitive vehicle of demonstrative representation. This vehicle's embedded referential term is identical with, and demonstrates, the sun itself. And the vehicle's self-attributive demonstrative predicate is itself forged from a property of that same remote star. So, in this sense, the perceiving mind is an extended mind. Perception is unbrokered cognition of what is real, exactly as it really is. Maloney's theory of perception will be of great interest in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

Author : John R. Searle
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199385157
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Seeing Things as They are written by John R. Searle and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive account of the intentionality of perceptual experience. With special emphasis on vision Searle explains how the raw phenomenology of perception sets the content and the conditions of satisfaction of experience. The central question concerns the relation between the subjective conscious perceptual field and the objective perceptual field. Everything in the objective field is either perceived or can be perceived. Nothing in the subjective field is perceived nor can be perceived precisely because the events in the subjective field consist of the perceivings, whether veridical or not, of the events in the objective field. Searle begins by criticizing the classical theories of perception and identifies a single fallacy, what he calls the Bad Argument, as the source of nearly all of the confusions in the history of the philosophy of perception. He next justifies the claim that perceptual experiences have presentational intentionality and shows how this justifies the direct realism of his account. In the central theoretical chapters, he shows how it is possible that the raw phenomenology must necessarily determine certain form of intentionality. Searle introduces, in detail, the distinction between different levels of perception from the basic level to the higher levels and shows the internal relation between the features of the experience and the states of affairs presented by the experience. The account applies not just to language possessing human beings but to infants and conscious animals. He also discusses how the account relates to certain traditional puzzles about spectrum inversion, color and size constancy and the brain-in-the-vat thought experiments. In the final chapters he explains and refutes Disjunctivist theories of perception, explains the role of unconscious perception, and concludes by discussing traditional problems of perception such as skepticism.

Author : Tyler Burge
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199581401
Total Pages : 645 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Origins of Objectivity written by Tyler Burge and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-04 with total page 645 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tyler Burge's study investigates the most primitive ways in which individuals represent the physical world. By reflecting on the science of perception and related psychological and biological sciences, Burge outlines the constitutive conditions for perceiving the physical world, thus locating the origins of representational mind.

Author : A. B. Dickerson
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 113943893X
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kant on Representation and Objectivity written by A. B. Dickerson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-11-06 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of the second-edition version of the 'Transcendental Deduction' (the so-called 'B-Deduction'), which is one of the most important and obscure sections of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. By way of a close analysis of the B-Deduction, Adam Dickerson makes the distinctive claim that the Deduction is crucially concerned with the problem of making intelligible the unity possessed by complex representations - a problem that is the representationalist parallel of the semantic problem of the unity of the proposition. Along the way he discusses most of the key themes in Kant's theory of knowledge, including the nature of thought and representation, the notion of objectivity, and the way in which the mind structures our experience of the world.

Author : María Ponte
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198714211
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reference and Representation in Thought and Language written by María Ponte and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers novel views on the precise relation between reference to an object by means of a linguistic expression and our mental representation of that object, long a source of debate in the philosophy of language, linguistics, and cognitive science. Chapters in this volume deal with our devices for singular reference and singular representation, with most focusing on linguistic expressions that are used to refer to particular objects, persons, or places. These expressions include proper names such as Mary and John; indexicals such as I and tomorrow; demonstrative pronouns such as this and that; and some definite and indefinite descriptions such as The Queen of England or a medical doctor. Other chapters examine the ways we represent objects in thought, particularly the first-person perspective and the self, and one explores a notion common to reference and representation: salience. The volume includes the latest views on these complex topics from some of the most prominent authors in the field and will be of interest to anyone working on issues of reference and representation in thought and language.

Author : Dr Henrik Lagerlund
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN 13 : 1409485242
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Representation and Objects of Thought in Medieval Philosophy written by Dr Henrik Lagerlund and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notions of mental representation and intentionality are central to contemporary philosophy of mind and it is usually assumed that these notions, if not originated, at least were made essential to the philosophy of mind by Descartes in the seventeenth century. The authors in this book challenge this assumption and show that the history of these ideas can be traced back to the medieval period. In bringing out the contrasts and similarities between early modern and medieval discussions of mental representation the authors conclude that there is no clear dividing line between western late medieval and early modern philosophy; that they in fact represent one continuous tradition in the philosophy of mind.

Author : Grant Gillett
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Representation, Meaning, and Thought written by Grant Gillett and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the relationship between thought and language by considering the views of Kant and the later Wittgenstein along with many strands of contemporary debate in the area of mental content. Building on an analysis of the nature of concepts and conceptions of objects, Gillett provides an account of psychological explanation and the subject of experience, offers a novel perspective on mental representation and linguistic meaning, looks at the difficult topics of cognitive roles and singular thought, and concludes with an outline of certain considerations relevant to skeptical arguments and the nature of perception. The resulting synthesis demonstrates interesting correlations with current work in cognitive and developmental psychology, and is directly relevant to continuing work in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophical psychology.