Jean Mandler proposes an original and richly detailed theory of how concepts relate to sensory and motor capacities. I focus on her claims about conceptual representations and the processes that produce them. On her view, concepts are declarative representations of object kind information. First, I argue that since sensorimotor representations may be declarative, there is no bar to percepts being constituents of concepts. Second, I suggest that concepts track kinds and other categories not by representing kind information per se, but (...) rather by being subject to the appropriate sort of inferential dispositions. These dispositions themselves may apply equally to perceptual and non-perceptual representations. Third, I argue that Mandler's proposed redescriptive mechanism for producing conceptual primitives can be viewed as a kind of Fodorian triggering device. Hence there may be less distance between her view and Fodor's than either one has supposed. I suggest that redescription needs to be supplemented with several other kinds of more flexible and open-ended concept learning mechanisms. Finally, I briefly sketch the view of conceptual development that results from adopting these proposals and contrast it with Mandler's. (shrink)

In this essay, I deal with the problem of the attribution of psychological predicates to non-human animals. The first section illustrates three research topics where it has become scientifically legitimate to explain the conduct of non-human animals by means of the attribution of psychological predicates. The second section discusses several philosophical objections to the legitimacy of such attributions provided by central thinkers from the last decades. I try to show that these objections —which are related among other questions to the (...) holism of the mental, the indeterminacy of the attributions, and the strangeness of animal concepts— can be alleviated. In the third section, I propose to adopt a literalist view of the attributions in the sense articulated by Figdor. At the same time, I argue that one must draw limits to the conceptual change forwarded by her literalist view, taking into account holistic considerations and the fact that the psychological concepts must retain their core notes. (shrink)

This paper proposes a social account for the origin of the truth value and the emergence of the first declarative sentence. Such a proposal is based on two assumptions. The first is known as the social intelligence hypothesis: that the cognitive evolution of humans is first and foremost an adaptation to social demands. The second is the function-first approach to explaining the evolution of traits: before a prototype of a new trait develops and the adaptation process begins, something already existing (...) is used for a new purpose. Applied to the emergence of declarative sentences, this suggests something already existing—natural signs (which have a logical or causal relation to what they denote)—were used for the declarative function and thereby integrated (in the form of indexical objects implying a past action) into communication. I show that the display of an indexical object (such as the display of hunting trophies) can imply a conceptual structure similar to that informing the syntax of sentences. The view developed in this paper is broadly consistent with the argumentative theory of Mercier and Sperber, which suggests that reasoning is less adapted to decision making than to social purposes such as winning disputes or justifying one’s actions. In this paper I extend this view to the origin of the concept of truth. According to my proposal, the first declarative sentence (articulated in a simple sign language) emerged as a negation of a negation of an implicit statement expressed by the display of an indexical object referring to a past action. Thereby, I suggest that the binary structure of the truth value underlying any declarative sentence is founded on disagreements based on conflicts of interest. Thus, I deny that the concept of truth could have evolved for instrumental reasons such as solving problems, or through self-questioning about what one ought to believe. (shrink)

Models of memory in cognitive science and philosophy have traditionally explained human remembering in terms of storage and retrieval. This tendency has been entrenched by reliance on computationalist explanations over the course of the twentieth century; even research programs that eschew computationalism in name, or attempt the revision of traditional models, demonstrate tacit commitment to computationalist assumptions. It is assumed that memory must be stored by means of an isomorphic trace, that memory processes must divide into conceptually distinct systems and (...) phases, and that human remembering consists in inner, cognitive processes that are implemented by distinct neural processes. This dissertation draws on recent empirical work, and on philosophical arguments from Ludwig Wittgenstein and others, to demonstrate that this latent computationalism in the study of memory is problematic, and that it can and should be eliminated. Cognitive psychologists studying memory have encountered numerous data in recent decades that belie archival models. In cognitive neuroscience, establishing the neural basis of storage and retrieval processes has proven elusive. A number of revised models on offer in memory science, that have taken these issues into account, fail to sufficiently extricate the archival framework. Several impasses in memory science are products of these underlying computationalist assumptions. Wittgenstein and other philosophers offer a number of arguments against the need for, and the efficacy of, the storage and retrieval of traces in human remembering. A study of these arguments clarifies the ways that these computationalist assumptions are presently impeding the science of memory, and provides ways forward in removing them. We can and should characterize and model human memory without invoking the storage and retrieval of traces. A range of work in connectionism, dynamical systems theory, and recent philosophical accounts of memory demonstrate how the science of memory can proceed without these assumptions, toward non-archival models of remembering. (shrink)

Descartes famously argued that animals were mere machines, without thought or consciousness. Few would now share this view. But if other animals have conscious lives, what are they like, how do they differ from ours, and how would we ever know anything about them? This lecture will address this question by looking at the kinds of thoughts we might share with animals, and looking at philosophical and empirical arguments for how our thoughts might differ from theirs.

Davidson’s well-known language skepticism—the claim that there is no such a thing as a language—has recognizably Gricean underpinnings, some of which also underlie his continuity skepticism—the claim that there can be no philosophically illuminating account of the emergence of language and thought. My first aim in this paper is to highlight aspects of the complicated relationship between central Davidsonian and Gricean ideas concerning language. After a brief review of Davidson’s two skeptical claims and their Gricean underpinnings, I provide my own (...) take on how Davidson’s continuity skepticism can be resisted consistently with his rejection of the Gricean priority claim, yet without giving up some of Grice’s own insights regarding the origins of meaning. (shrink)

The topic of this article is the dependency or, maybe, the interdependency of rationality and self-knowledge. Here two questions may be distinguished, viz. (1) whether being rational is a necessary condition for a creature to have self-knowledge, and (2) whether having self-knowledge is a necessary condition for a creature to be rational. After a brief explication of what I mean by self-knowledge, I deal with the first question. There I defend the Davidsonian position, according to which rationality is, indeed, a (...) necessary condition for self-knowledge. In addition, I distinguish two aspects of rationality which I call basic and local rationality. After that I concentrate on the second question for the remaining larger part of this article. Here I proceed in two stages: first I examine whether self-knowledge is necessary for basic rationality, and then whether it is necessary for local rationality. (shrink)

Are there sensory states that, unlike mere sensory registrations, require an explanatory framework that goes beyond biology? Based on a reconstruction of Kant’s a priori, transcendental psychology, contemporary Kantians answer this question in the positive but dramatically limit the scope of psychology. In contrast, naturalistically oriented deflationists answer it in the negative, thereby not giving psychology any explanatory role whatsoever. In his recent monumental book Origins of Objectivity, Burge argues against both of these approaches and seeks to develop an intermediate (...) approach between them. This he does by embedding Kantian transcendental psychology in contemporary science of perception, thereby naturalizing the former and considerably broadening the scope of psychology. In this paper I critically examine Burge’s naturalized Kantianism, thereby defending transcendental Kantianism. To this end, I first outline Kantian transcendental psychology of perception, highlighting the features that distinguish it from biology. I then show how Burge naturalizes this psychology by embedding its most fundamental notions in contemporary science of perception. Based on all this, I conclude the paper by arguing for two closely related claims. First, that transformed into empirical psychology, Kantian transcendental psychology loses the features that distinguish it from biology. Second, that genuine perception starts at the high cognitive level for which transcendental psychology accounts and not at the rather low or elementary level on which Burge focuses. (shrink)

Self-consciousness in non-human animals is a complex phenomenon which raises both conceptual and methodological problems. First, what do we mean by the concept of ‘self-consciousness’? Secondly, what is the best experimental approach to self-consciousness? This paper gives a short overview of the concept of self-consciousness in section 1. We can understand the concept of self-consciousness as capturing the ability of subjects to consciously think about themselves as themselves. If this is accurate, then it is prudent to look at a broad (...) bundle of abilities which are related to this ability. The paper then focuses on advantages and problems of the multipronged approach, a kind of empirical approach which uses several different test criteria to determine whether a subject is self-conscious or not. Section 2 briefly contrasts this kind of approach with other possibilities. The main disparity is to singlepronged approaches, which have been discussed and dismissed in greater detail elsewhere. Section 3 discusses the advantages of a multipronged approach, whereas section 4 is dedicated to the discussion of some of its problems. (shrink)

Against the view that the normativity of mental content is social content, I argue that it is not, examining the views of Wittgenstein, Davidson, Brandom and Pettit.

In a couple of short papers, Donald Davidson holds that a creature cannot think unless it is the interpreter of the speech of another. At first blush, speaking a language is, therefore, a necessary condition for thought. His controversial claims has led many to regard him as a follower of the Cartesian tradition wherein languageless creatures are nothing but mindless machines. Against this widely shared interpretation, in this paper we put forward a more charitable interpretation of Davidson’s claims. According to (...) our reading, Davidson never meant to argue that languageless creatures do not think. Instead, the only thing his arguments purport to show is that one will never be in a position to confirm that they do. This paper consists of a defense of the idea that Davidson is better seen as endorsing radical skepticism as to whether languageless creatures think. (shrink)

It is shown that at least part of the terminology of the theory of speech acts can be methodically introduced within the constructive ortholanguage-programm. There is evidence that a methodical constraint leads the reconstruction of the basic speech-act-types from requests via statements to questions. Moreover there is evidence that requests and questions don't involve "propositional acts".

Herder already very early in his career, in the 1760s, established two vitally important and epoch-making principles in the philosophy of language: that thought is essentially dependent on and bounded by language; and that meanings or concepts should be identified - not with such items as the referents involved, Platonic forms, or empiricist 'ideas' - but with word-usages. What did Herder do for an encore? His Treatise on the Origin of Language from 1772 might seem the natural place to look (...) for an answer to this question (since it is his best known work in the philosophy of language by far), but it is really the wrong place to look, because it temporarily regresses to a more conventional and less philosophically interesting position. However, Herder did succeed in making impressive progress in a broader array of works, namely by striving to identify prima facie problem cases confronting his two principles and to reconcile them with the latter. The main ones which he identified were God, animals, and non-linguistic art. In each of these cases, having initially proposed a reconciliation which did not work, he went on to develop a much more plausible one, indeed one which (at least in the two cases that really require one: animals and non-linguistic art) seems broadly correct. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I examine three philosophically important concepts that play a foundational role in developmental psychology: theory, representation, and belief. I describe different ways in which the concepts have been understood and present reasons why a developmental psychologist, or a philosopher attuned to cognitive development, should prefer one understanding of these concepts over another.

Radical interpretation is used by Davison in his linguistic theory not only as an interesting thought experiment but also a general pattern that is believed to be able to give an essential and general account of linguistic interpretation. If the principle of charity is absolutely necessary to radical interpretation, it becomes, in this sense, a general methodological principle. However, radical interpretation is a local pattern that is proper only for exploring certain interpretation in a specific case, and consequently the principle (...) of charity is an applicable principle in the limited scope. It is neither the case that every linguistic interpretation is in nature radical nor that the principle of charity is the primary and fundamental principle for all linguistic interpretation as Davidson believes. (shrink)

I take as my starting point recent concerns from within educational psychology about the need to treat the conceptual and philosophical underpinnings of empirical research in the field more seriously, specifically in the context of work on the self, mind and agency. Developing this theme, I find such conceptual support in the writings of P. F. Strawson and Donald Davidson, two giants of analytic philosophy in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Drawing particularly on Davidson’s later work, in which (...) he seeks to integrate key claims about subjectivity, objectivity, belief, truth and knowledge, within what he refers to as a triangular framework of two speakers and a common world, I find support for pedagogic and classroom organizational structures based on collaborative thinking and dialogue. While Davidson did not write about education, I argue that his framework has much to offer, most particularly in view of the priority it affords language and dialogue as the necessary and sufficient conditions for reason, belief and thought—in short, for being a person in the world. (shrink)

This paper is an account of the co-construction of categorical identity and personal identity among human beings. As people recognize themselves within a socially sanctioned categorical scheme, they reproduce that scheme, and hence institutional and personal reflexivity occur as a joint movement that, at the same time, can be seen as an exercise in social control. The inspirations for this account are lan Hacking's view about the distinctiveness of social kinds from natural kinds, and Dan Sperber's idea about cultural communication (...) as a form of social epidemiology. (shrink)

RESUMEN Una vez que el foco de la reflexión pasa de las teorías ideales a la aplicación de la justicia social, centrada en las instituciones de las sociedades democráticas, se requiere prestar especial atención a los estilos de vida. Estos tienen una alta incidencia en cómo la justicia es realizada y afectan tanto a la desigualdad económica como a la disponibilidad de los recursos naturales. En nuestras sociedades es posible establecer restricciones a los estilos de vida, especialmente en aquellos casos (...) en que, por el efecto de algunas dinámicas sociales, aquellos se desacoplan de las concepciones del bien. Se defiende que, en tales casos, la base normativa que permite exigir el respeto a los estilos de vida se disuelve y por ello es posible justificar su restricción. ABSTRACT Now that the focus of reflection has shifted from ideal theories to the application of social justice, centered on the institutions of democratic societies, it is necessary to pay special attention to lifestyles, since they not only influence the realization of justice, but also have an effect on economic inequality and the availability of natural resources. In our societies, it is possible to place restrictions on lifestyles, especially in those cases in which, influenced by certain social dynamics, they disengage from conceptions of the good. The article argues that, in those cases, the normative base grounding the demand that lifestyles be respected is dissolved, thus justifying their restriction. (shrink)

The relation between conceptual analysis and empirical observations when ascribing or denying concepts and beliefs to non-human animals is not straightforward. In order to reflect on this relation, I focus on two theoretical proposals and one empirical case, the three of which are permanently discussed and considered in the literature on animal cognition. First, I review briefly Davidson’s arguments for denying thought to non-linguistic animals. Second, I review Allen’s criteria for ascribing concepts to creatures capable of correcting their discriminatory powers (...) by taking into account their previous errors. Allen affirms that this is an empirical proposal which offers good reasons, but not necessary or sufficient conditions, for concept attribution. Against Allen, I argue that his important proposal is not an empirical, but a conceptual one. Third, I resort to vervet monkeys to show that Allen’s criteria, and not Davidson’s, are very relevant for ascribing first-order and denying second-order beliefs to this species and thus make sense of the idea of animal cognition. (shrink)

Philosophers have traditionally held that propositions mark the domain of rational thought and inference. Many philosophers have held that only conceptually sophisticated creatures like us could have propositional attitudes. But in recent decades, philosophers have adopted increasingly liberal views of propositional attitudes that encompass the mental states of various non-human animals. These views now sit alongside more traditional views within the philosophical mainstream. In this paper I argue that liberalized views of propositional attitudes are so liberal that they encompass states (...) of all sorts of apparently mindless systems like circadian clocks in plants. I begin by arguing that on the most well-developed and widely endorsed theories of underived representation in philosophy, circadian clocks qualify as representations. I then argue that standard reasons for thinking that perceptual states and pictures have propositional content carry over to circadian clocks. Finally, I argue that circadian representations in plants play the kind of functional role that is widely taken to be partly constitutive of belief-like attitudes. So according to mainstream theories of representation, propositions, and attitudes, plants have propositional attitudes. Yet on other more traditional views, this conclusion would seem absurd. So, contrary to appearances, there is no shared, stable understanding of what propositional attitudes are in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Two new books—Creating Language: Integrating Evolution, Acquisition, and Processing by Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater, and Why Only Us: Language and Evolution by Robert C. Berwick and Noam Chomsky—present a good opportunity to assess the state of the debate about whether or not language was made possible by language-specific adaptations for syntax. Berwick and Chomsky argue yes: language was made possible by a single change to the computation Merge. Christiansen and Chater argue no: our syntactic abilities developed on the (...) back of natural selection for general-purpose sequence learning mechanisms. While Christiansen and Chater’s book testifies to impressive developments in constructivist approaches to language development, it’s not obvious that it has the resources to explain the hierarchical nature of syntactic binding. Despite this, the views have much in common. (shrink)

Is it possible to construct a machine that can act of its own accord? There are a number of skeptical arguments which conclude that autonomous machine agency is impossible. Yet if autonomous machine agency is impossible, then serious doubt is cast on the possibility of autonomous human action, at least on the widely held assumption that some form of materialism is true. The purpose of this dissertation is to show that autonomous machine agency is possible, thereby showing that the autonomy (...) of human action is compatible with materialism. ;I proceed as follows. Chapter 1 casts the problem of autonomous machine agency. Chapter 2 sets out the skeptic's case against autonomous machine agency by canvassing arguments against the possibility of machine agency and arguments against the possibility of autonomous machine agency. Chapter 3 begins work on a theory of autonomous machine agency by developing and defending axioms of a theory of agency from thought experiments and examples. Chapter 4 expands the theory of agency to a theory of autonomous agency by adding axioms of autonomy. ;The axioms of autonomous agency contain the primitive terms 'belief', 'desire', and 'deliberation', which require further explication if the theory is to be of any use in arguing for the possibility of autonomous machine agency. Chapters 5 and 6 take up this challenge by developing mathematically tractable axioms of deliberation, belief, and desire. ;Chapter 7 completes the theory by developing axioms of mechanism derived from the substantial literature in the foundations of computer science. Chapter 8 employs the resulting theory of autonomous machine agency to show just how the functional prerequisites of autonomous agency can in principle be met by machines, thereby demonstrating the possibility of autonomous machine agency. ;Chapter 9 serves as a cautionary postscript. In spite of having shown that autonomous machine agency is possible, the implications are not always happy for current efforts in artificial intelligence or current philosophical theories of autonomous human agency. Nevertheless, the argument for autonomous machine agency suggests several research programs at the nexus of Philosophy of Mind and Artificial Intelligence. (shrink)

This volume concerns Rational Agents - humans, players in a game, software or institutions - which must decide the proper next action in an atmosphere of partial information and uncertainty. The book collects formal accounts of Uncertainty, Rationality and Agency, and also of their interaction. It will benefit researchers in artificial systems which must gather information, reason about it and then make a rational decision on which action to take.

This paper attempts to clarify and justify the attribution of mental states to animals by focusing on two different conceptions of intentionality: instrumentalist and realist. I use each of these general views to interpret and discuss the behavior and cognitive states of piping plovers in order to provide a substantive way to frame the question of animal minds. I argue that attributing mental states to plovers is warranted for instrumentalists insofar as it is warranted for similar human behavior. For realists (...) about intentionality, the complexity, adaptability and flexibility of the plovers’ behavior, along with its ability to utilize the content of its representations and to satisfy the conditions of concept attribution, justifies attributing intentionality to plovers. Getting clearer on what is meant by animal minds, provides a better idea of what to look for in animal behavior. In many respects, investigating such phenomena is similar to investigations in other sciences. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I reconcile our knowledge of our own minds with philosophical naturalism. Philosophers traditionally hold that our knowledge of our own minds is especially direct and authoritative in comparison with other domains of knowledge. I introduce the subject in the first chapter. In the second and third chapters, I address the idea that we know our own minds directly. If self-knowledge is direct, it must not be grounded on anything more epistemically basic. This creates a puzzle for all (...) epistemologists. For the naturalist, the puzzle is especially tricky. To say that self-knowledge has no epistemic ground threatens the naturalist's ability to understand it as psychologically real. I argue that the idea that self-knowledge is direct is not well motivated and that models of direct self-knowledge have fundamental problems. In the fourth and fifth chapters, I examine first-person authority. I distinguish between epistemic authority, or being in a better position than others to know, and non-epistemic authority, or being immune to challenge according to some conventional norm. I argue that we have only limited epistemic authority over our own minds. I then consider whether there may be an interesting non-epistemic authority attached to the first-person perspective. This would locate first-person authority in connection with our responsibility for our own minds. I argue that this sort of authority may exist, but is unlikely to threaten naturalism without further anti-naturalist commitments in the philosophy of mind. In the final two chapters, I explore the possibility that the underlying disagreements between naturalists and anti-naturalists are about the nature of belief. I consider what failures of self-knowledge might demonstrate about the nature of belief. I show how, with the proper understanding of belief, a theory of self-knowledge can assuage some of these worries. Having adopted a conception of belief that makes sense for philosophy and empirical psychology, I outline a positive theory of self-knowledge and suggest directions for future research. (shrink)

In the origin of syntax, primitive, holophrastic signs had to be weakened and to lose their previous status of whole message. The original syntax was probably thema/rhema syntax. The earliest themas repeat the hearer’s message: the speaker embeds the hearer’s message in his own message. In this way a holophrase could be weakened, and turn into a part of a syntactic combination. This pregrammatical, interpersonal ‘recursive embedding’ is embodied in sensorimotor processes. The upper level is embodied in the intonation; the (...) lower level, in the articulatory-phonetic word. This decoupling of intonation and articulatory pattern—i.e. the emergence of intonation capable of comprising more than one word—facilitated the weakening of previous holophrases and the genesis of syntax. In time, that facilitation determined the preeminence of voice over gesture, regardless of whether or not that preeminence existed before syntax. (shrink)