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Dretske and His Critics

Cambridge: Blackwell (1991)

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  1. The Structuring Causes of Behavior: Has Dretske Saved Mental Causation?Frank Hofmann & Peter Https://Orcidorg288X Schulte - 2014 - Acta Analytica 29 (3):267-284.
    Fred Dretske’s account of mental causation, developed in Explaining Behavior and defended in numerous articles, is generally regarded as one of the most interesting and most ambitious approaches in the field. According to Dretske, meaning facts, construed historically as facts about the indicator functions of internal states, are the structuring causes of behavior. In this article, we argue that Dretske’s view is untenable: On closer examination, the real structuring causes of behavior turn out to be markedly different from Dretske’s meaning (...)
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  • Confusion and dependence in uses of history.David Slutsky - 2012 - Synthese 184 (3):261-286.
    Many people argue that history makes a special difference to the subjects of biology and psychology, and that history does not make this special difference to other parts of the world. This paper will show that historical properties make no more or less of a difference to biology or psychology than to chemistry, physics, or other sciences. Although historical properties indeed make a certain kind of difference to biology and psychology, this paper will show that historical properties make the same (...)
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  • Causally Inefficacious Moral Properties.David Slutsky - 2001 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 39 (4):595-610.
    In this paper, I motivate skepticism about the causal efficacy of moral properties in two ways. First, I highlight a tension that arises between two claims that moral realists may want to accept. The first claim is that physically indistinguishable things do not differ in any causally efficacious respect. The second claim is that physically indistinguishable things that differ in certain historical respects have different moral properties. The tension arises to the extent to which these different moral properties are supposed (...)
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  • Accidental associations, local potency, and a dilemma for Dretske.Paul Noordhof - 1996 - Mind and Language 11 (2):216-22.
    I argue that Fred Dretske's account of the causal relevance of content only works if another account works better, that put forward by Gabriel Segal and Elliot Sober. Dretske needs to appeal to it to deal with two problems he faces: one arising because he accepts that the mere association between indicators and indicated is causally relevant to the recruitment of indicators in causing behaviour, the other from the need to explain how a present token of a certain type of (...)
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  • The prospects for Dretske's account of the explanatory role of belief.Andrew Melnyk - 1996 - Mind and Language 11 (2):203-15.
    When a belief is cited as part of the explanation of an agent’s behaviour, it seems that the belief is explanatorily relevant in virtue of its content. In his Explaining Behavior, Dretske presents an account of belief, content, and explanation according to which this can be so. I supply some examples of beliefs whose explanatory relevance in virtue of content apparently cannot be accounted for in the Dretskean way. After considering some possible responses to this challenge, I end by discussing (...)
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  • Mental causation from the top-down.William Jaworski - 2006 - Erkenntnis 65 (2):277-299.
    Dual-attribute theories are alleged to face a problem with mental causation which commits them to either epiphenomenalism or overdetermination – neither of which is attractive. The problem, however, is predicated on assumptions about psychophysical relations that dual-attribute theorists are not obliged to accept. I explore one way they can solve the problem by rejecting those assumptions.
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  • Dretske on the causal efficacy of meaning.Manuel Garcia-Carpintero - 1994 - Mind and Language 9 (2):181-202.
    The object of this paper is to discuss several issues raised by Fred Dretske’s account of the causal efficacy of content, as given in his book Explaining Behavior. To warrant the causal efficacy of folk-psychological properties while keeping attached to a naturalistic framework, Fred Dretske proposes that these properties are causes of a peculiar type, what he calls structuring causes. Structuring causes are not postulated ad hoc, to somehow account for the causal efficacy of content. Dretske claims that we independently (...)
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  • L'inertie du mental.Renée Bilodeau - 1993 - Dialogue 32 (3):507-525.
    This paper addresses two objections raised against anomalous monism. Firstly, on the basis of Davidson's assertion that all causal relations fall under strict laws, many critics conclude mental properties are causally inert since they are non-nomic. I argue that this conclusion follows only on the further assumption that all causally efficacious properties are nomic properties. It is perfectly consistent, however, to hold that there is a law covering each causal relation without each causal statement being the instantiation of a law. (...)
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