This article provides a survey of Wittgenstein’s remarks in which he discusses various kinds of technology. I argue that throughout his career, his use of technological examples displays a thematic unity: technologies are invoked in order to illustrate a certain mechanical conception of the mind. I trace how his use of such examples evolved as his views on the mind and on meaning changed. I also discuss an important and somewhat radical anti-mechanistic strain in his later thought and suggest that (...) Wittgenstein’s attitude to mechanistic explanations in psychology was ultimately quite ambivalent. (shrink)

Psychological experiments allegedly show that people have a tendency to confabulate explanations of their behavior, because their conscious selves do not know why they do what they do, and therefore create the explanations that make most sense. This article explains why confabulation is neither a threat to interpretivist social science nor a threat to the presumption of first-person authority in Davidson’s interpretation theory. The reason is that the interpretative endeavor, which is necessary in order to identify and provide evidence for (...) confabulation is governed by a presumption of first-person authority. Explanations of confabulation thus depend on prior interpretations. (shrink)

The problem of consciousness seems to arise from experience itself. As we shall consider in more detail below, we are strongly disposed to contrast conscious experience with the physical states or events by which we take it to be realized. This contrast gives rise to dualism and other problems of mind and body. In this chapter I argue that these problems can usefully be considered in the perspective of evolution.

Michael Beaney ha sugerido recientemente que la distinción fregeana entre sentido y referencia fue propuesta para resolver la famosa paradoja del análisis. Casi diez años antes, Michael Dummett ya insistia en que Frege fue uno de los prirneros en buscar una soluci6n satisfactoria de esta paradoja. En esre articulo, discuto algunas sugerencias de Beaney y Dummett de cómo resolver la paradoja al estilo fregeano y tarnbién sus propias contribuciones no fregeanas al debate en torno de la corrección y de la (...) informatividad del análisis. Mi intención en esta discusión es mostrar que ninguna de ellas funciona. Concluyo con una propuesta de inspiración witttgensteiniana --el enfoque de los conceptos abiertos- para apoyar la idea de que la apelación a contertidos abiertos es la rnejor rnanera de disolver la paradoja.Michael Beaney has recently suggested that the Fregean distinction between sense and reference was proposed to solve the famous paradox of analysis. Not as recently, Michael Dummett has insisted that Frege was one of the first to look for a satisfactory solution to this paradox. In this paper, I discuss Beanry’s and Dummett’s various suggestions for solving the paradox in a Fregean style as well as their own non Fregean contributions to the debate around analysis’s correction and informativeness. My intention in this discussion is to show that none of them works. I conclude with a proposal inspired by Wittgenstein’s later work -the open concepts’ proposal- designed to support the idea that the appeal to open contents is the best way to dissolve the paradox. (shrink)

The project of this chapter is to explore some relations between the rule-following considerations and radical interpretation. I spell out the sense in which the rule-following considerations are about meaning determination, and investigate whether the principle of meaning determination used in the early Davidson's account of meaning determination - the principle of charity - provides an answer to what I shall call "Wittgenstein's paradox". More precisely, I am interested in one aspect of the paradox: the "problem of objectivity". My question (...) then is whether meaning, as determined by charity, is such that the correctness of the applications of meaningful expressions is an objective matter. After running us through the basics of the radical interpretation account of meaning determination I argue that the principle of charity does seem to fall prey to the problem of objectivity. After unsuccessfully trying to rescue objectivity by means of Lewisian natural properties, this is the verdict I in the end endorse. (shrink)