This paper develops the situational model of primate beliefs from the Prior-Lurz line of thought. There is a strong skepticism concerning primate beliefs in the analytic tradition which holds that beliefs have to be propositional and non-human animals do not have them. The response offered in this paper is twofold. First, two arguments against the propositional model as applied to other animals are put forward: an a priori argument from referential opacity and an empirical argument from varieties of working memory. (...) Second, the Prior-Lurz situational model based on state of affairs as opposed to propositions is introduced and defended with two significant modifications. With this model of primate beliefs we can make progress in understanding how other primates can have certain mindreading capacity. (shrink)

In this special issue, we put together papers that explore the theme “objectivity, space, and mind” from various angles. In the introduction we minimally discuss what are involved in this theme.

This paper attempts to provide a defence for a narrative theory of the self in the face of criticisms from the anti‐narrative camp. It begins by addressing certain uncontroversial premises that both pro‐ and the anti‐narrative camps might be thought to agree on: the status of humans as homo significans or meaning‐makers, the natural form‐finding tendency and certain desiderata for significance and value that we possess, and the raw material of life and its constituents that we proceed from. Whereas the (...) pro‐narrative camp seeks to provide the narrative theory of the self as a valid argument for how we proceed from the raw material of life and undifferentiated experience and these desiderata and tendencies (i.e.: the premises) to a conception of both selfhood and moral responsibility (i.e.: the conclusion), the anti‐narrative camp holds the conclusion to be false and the narrative theory of the self to be invalid. The Parfitian view holds the conception of the self to be ultimately false, whereas the Strawsonian view holds both the conception of the self and the conception of moral responsibility to be ultimately false. The grounds they provide, however, tend to be metaphysical in nature, demonstrating that they have fundamentally misunderstood how the narrative theory of the self functions as a semantic thesis. I will demonstrate certain defects in the metaphysical arguments that anti‐narrativists like Parfit and Strawson have made against what is essentially a semantic thesis about how we make sense of our lives. I will also attempt to shore up the semantic thesis in other relevant aspects. (shrink)

Rational analysis (Anderson 1990, 1991a) is an empiricalprogram of attempting to explain why the cognitive system isadaptive, with respect to its goals and the structure of itsenvironment. We argue that rational analysis has two importantimplications for philosophical debate concerning rationality. First,rational analysis provides a model for the relationship betweenformal principles of rationality (such as probability or decisiontheory) and everyday rationality, in the sense of successfulthought and action in daily life. Second, applying the program ofrational analysis to research on human reasoning (...) leads to a radicalreinterpretation of empirical results which are typically viewed asdemonstrating human irrationality. (shrink)

W.V. Quine is committed to the claim that all beliefs are rationally revisable; Jerrold Katz has argued that this commitment is unstable on grounds of self-application. The subsequent discussion of this issue has largely proceeded in terms of the logic of belief revision, but there is also an issue here for the treatment of Quine’s views in a doxastic modal system. In this paper I explore the treatment of Quinean epistemology in modal terms. I argue that a set of formal (...) revisability desiderata can be distilled from Quine’s epistemic writings, and that there are demonstrably coherent and non-trivial systems that meet these conditions. (shrink)

Judea Pearl has argued that counterfactuals and causality are central to intelligence, whether natural or artificial, and has helped create a rich mathematical and computational framework for formally analyzing causality. Here, we draw out connections between these notions and various current issues in cognitive science, including the nature of mental “programs” and mental representation. We argue that programs (consisting of algorithms and data structures) have a causal (counterfactual-supporting) structure; these counterfactuals can reveal the nature of mental representations. Programs can also (...) provide a causal model of the external world. Such models are, we suggest, ubiquitous in perception, cognition, and language processing. (shrink)

In this paper I review some leading developments in the empirical theory of affect. I argue that (1) affect is a distinct perceptual representation governed system, and (2) that there are significant modular factors in affect. The paper concludes with the observation thatfeeler (affective perceptual system) may be a natural kind within cognitive science. The main purpose of the paper is to explore some hitherto unappreciated connections between the theory of affect and the computational theory of mind.

In this article, I analyze Quine’s conception of science, which is a radical defence of extensionalism on the grounds that first‐order logic is the most adequate logic for science. I examine some criticisms addressed to it, which show the role of modalities and probabilities in science and argue that Quine’s treatment of probability minimizes the intensional character of scientific language and methods by considering that probability is extensionalizable. But this extensionalizing leads to untenable results in some cases and is not (...) consistent with the fact that Quine himself admits confirmation which includes probability. Quine’s extensionalism does not account for this fact and then seems unrealistic, even if science ought to be extensional in so far as it is descriptive and mathematically expressible. (shrink)

In this paper I link two hitherto disconnected sets of results in the philosophy of emotions and explore their implications for the computational theory of mind. The argument of the paper is that, for just the same reasons that some computationalists have thought that cognition may be a natural kind, so the same can plausibly be argued of emotion. The core of the argument is that emotions are a representation-governed phenomenon and that the explanation of how they figure in behaviour (...) must as such be undertaken in those terms. I conclude with some interdisciplinary reflections in defence of the hypothesis that emotions might be more fundamental in the organization of behaviour than cognition; that, in effect, we may be emoters before we are cognizers . The aim of the paper is: (1) to introduce a number of promising results in philosophical and empirical emotion theory to a wider audience; and (2) to begin the task of organizing those results into a computational theoretical framework. (shrink)

Abstract:Much of Western speculative metaphysics has subscribed to what has been called “explanatory rationalism,” which holds that there is a reason for everything that is and for the way everything is. Theodicies, or metaphysical attempts to solve the problem of evil, have relied on a special application of this principle of explanatory rationalism, namely, the principle of plenitude, which holds that the evil in the world is a necessary ingredient in the world's overall perfection or degree of reality. This essay (...) argues that the principle of plenitude is aesthetically motivated, and that only in art and perhaps in revealed religion can the demands of explanatory rationalism be satisfied. (shrink)

Knowledge representation is a central issue in a number of areas, but few attempts are usually made to bridge different approaches accross different fields. As a contribution in this direction, in this paper I focus on one such approach, the theory of conceptual spaces developed within cognitive science, and explore its potential applications in the fields of philosophy of science and formal epistemology. My case-study is provided by the theory of truthlikeness, construed as closeness to “the whole truth” about a (...) given domain, as described in the underlying language. I show how modeling propositions and their relations within a conceptual space has interesting implications for two issues in truthlikeness theory: the so called problem of language dependence, and that of measure sensitivity. I conclude by pointing at some open issues arising from the application of conceptual spaces to the analysis of philosophical problems. (shrink)

The symmetries of a physical theory are often associated with two things: conservation laws and representational redundancies. But how can a physical theory's symmetries give rise to interesting conservation laws, if symmetries are transformations that correspond to no genuine physical difference? In this article, I argue for a disambiguation in the notion of symmetry. The central distinction is between what I call "analytic" and "synthetic" symmetries, so called because of an analogy with analytic and synthetic propositions. "Analytic" symmetries are the (...) turning of idle wheels in a theory's formalism, and correspond to no physical change; "synthetic" symmetries cover all the rest. I argue that analytic symmetries are distinguished because they act as fixed points or constraints in any interpretation of a theory, and as such are akin to Poincaré's conventions or Reichenbach's 'axioms of co-ordination', or 'relativized constitutive a priori principles'. (shrink)

This article develops an analogy proposed by Stachel between general relativity (GR) and quantum mechanics (QM) as regards permutation invariance. Our main idea is to overcome Pooley's criticism of the analogy by appeal to paraparticles. In GR, the equations are (the solution space is) invariant under diffeomorphisms permuting spacetime points. Similarly, in QM the equations are invariant under particle permutations. Stachel argued that this feature—a theory's ‘not caring which point, or particle, is which’—supported a structuralist ontology. Pooley criticizes this analogy: (...) in QM the (anti-)symmetrization of fermions and bosons implies that each individual state (solution) is fixed by each permutation, while in GR a diffeomorphism yields in general a distinct, albeit isomorphic, solution. We define various versions of structuralism, and go on to formulate Stachel's and Pooley's positions, admittedly in our own terms. We then reply to Pooley. Though he is right about fermions and bosons, QM equally allows more general types of particle symmetry, in which states (vectors, rays, or density operators) are not fixed by all permutations (called ‘paraparticle states’). Thus Stachel's analogy is revived. (shrink)

Using the Hilbert-Bernays account as a spring-board, we first define four ways in which two objects can be discerned from one another, using the non-logical vocabulary of the language concerned. Because of our use of the Hilbert-Bernays account, these definitions are in terms of the syntax of the language. But we also relate our definitions to the idea of permutations on the domain of quantification, and their being symmetries. These relations turn out to be subtle---some natural conjectures about them are (...) false. We will see in particular that the idea of symmetry meshes with a species of indiscernibility that we will call `absolute indiscernibility'. We then report all the logical implications between our four kinds of discernibility. We use these four kinds as a resource for stating four metaphysical theses about identity. Three of these theses articulate two traditional philosophical themes: viz. the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, and haecceitism. The fourth is recent. Its most notable feature is that it makes diversity weaker than what we will call individuality : two objects can be distinct but not individuals. For this reason, it has been advocated both for quantum particles and for spacetime points. Finally, we locate this fourth metaphysical thesis in a broader position, which we call structuralism. We conclude with a discussion of the semantics suitable for a structuralist, with particular reference to physical theories as well as elementary model theory. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers, Simon Saunders, Fred Muller, and Michael Seevinck have collectively argued, against the folklore, that some nontrivial version of Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles is upheld in quantum mechanics. They argue that all particles—fermions, paraparticles, anyons, even bosons—may be weakly discerned by some physical relation. Here I show that their arguments make illegitimate appeal to nonsymmetric, that is, permutation-noninvariant, quantities and that therefore their conclusions do not go through. However, I show that alternative, (...) symmetric quantities may be found to do the required work. I conclude that the Saunders-Muller-Seevinck heterodoxy can be saved. (shrink)

In his paper, “Identity Statements and Essentialism,” Loux seeks to demonstrate sortal essentialism based on Frege’s thesis that all statements of number concerning a collection require that the members fall under the same sortal concept. I shall attempt to argue that a detailed analysis of Loux’s argument reveals it as failing to imply the type of sortal dependency thesis necessary for the justification of sortal essentialism. However, if one construes the transworld identity relation as no different from our run of (...) the mill identity relation, then his argument can serve as the basis for a proof of a type of nontrivial essentialism, thereby showing that the possible worlds picture of modality is indeed committed to a robust essentialism. (shrink)

This essay reviews Theatre, Communication, Critical Realism (2010) by Tobin Nellhaus. It begins by outlining the objective of the book and proceeds to evaluate its central argument. The objective is to develop a theory of theatre founded on the premises of critical realism and thereby theoretically situate theatrical performance in its socio-cultural matrix. The argument is that critical realism is effective for developing a comprehensive account of theatrical performance because it has the capacity to reveal truths about the structure of (...) social reality (that correspond to those articulated by critical realism). In the second part of the review, employing the methods of conceptual analysis, I propose that Nellhaus’s thesis of ‘ontological doubling’ (which claims that performance doubles human agency) is undermined by certain epistemological presuppositions regarding the ontology of fictional characters. (shrink)

Naive physics beliefs can be systematically mistaken. They provide a useful test-bed because they are common, and also because their existence must rely on some adaptive advantage, within a given context. In the second part of the commentary we also ask questions about when a whole family of misbeliefs should be considered together as a single phenomenon.

This paper combines Alfred Shultz and Herbert Simon's theories of action in order to understand the grey area between dynamic and completely unstructured decision making better. As a result I have put together a specific scheme of how choice elements are represented from an agent's personal experience, so as to create a bridge between the phenomenological and cognitive-procedural approaches of decision making. I first look at the key points of their original models relating Alfred Schutz's “provinces of meaning” and Herbert (...) Simon's “satisficing” mechanism. I then consider the particular concept of intentionality and reasoning by analogy for different choice settings. Finally I have suggested a perspective based on creative behaviour and sense-making for ill-structured conditions. (shrink)

A theory of conceptual development must specify the innate representational primitives, must characterize the ways in which the initial state differs from the adult state, and must characterize the processes through which one is transformed into the other. The Origin of Concepts (henceforth TOOC) defends three theses. With respect to the initial state, the innate stock of primitives is not limited to sensory, perceptual, or sensorimotor representations; rather, there are also innate conceptual representations. With respect to developmental change, conceptual development (...) consists of episodes of qualitative change, resulting in systems of representation that are more powerful than, and sometimes incommensurable with, those from which they are built. With respect to a learning mechanism that achieves conceptual discontinuity, I offer Quinian bootstrapping. TOOC concludes with a discussion of how an understanding of conceptual development constrains a theory of concepts. (shrink)

The view that plural reference is reference to a set is examined in light of George Boolos's treatment of second-order quantification as plural quantification in English. I argue that monadic second-order logic does not, in Boolos's treatment, reflect the behavior of plural quantifiers under negation and claim that any sentence that properly translates a second-order formula, in accordance with his treatment, has a first-order formulation. Support for this turns on the use of certain partitive constructions to assign values to variables (...) in a way that makes Boolos's reading of second-order variables available for a first-order language and, with it, the possibility of interpreting quantification in an unrestricted domain.A first-order theory, T(D), is developed on the basis of Boolos's treatment of simple plural definite descriptions extended to Richard Sharvy's general theory of definite plural and mass descriptions. I introduce a primitive predicate, o, for the relation of the referent of a singular description to that of its plural. If o is simply added to T(D), is definable in T(D), and the result is inconsistent. If o is added to a theory with axioms for the fragment of T(D) I call D-mereology, the result is a natural basis for the development of a pluralized Zermelo set theory. This theory, however, is inconsistent in an unrestricted domain, unless it is recast as a second-order theory of sets interpreted in Boolos's way. (shrink)

Some forms of analytic reconstructivism take natural language (and common sense at large) to be ontologically opaque: ordinary sentences must be suitably rewritten or paraphrased before questions of ontological commitment may be raised. Other forms of reconstructivism take the commitment of ordinary language at face value, but regard it as metaphysically misleading: common-sense objects exist, but they are not what we normally think they are. This paper is an attempt to clarify and critically assess some common limits of these two (...) reconstructivist strategies. (shrink)

The contrast Rips et al. draw between and approaches to understanding the origin of the capacity for representing natural number is a false dichotomy. Its plausibility depends upon the sketchiness of the authors' own proposal. At least some of the proposals they characterize as bottom-up are worked-out versions of the very top-down position they advocate. Finally, they deny that the structures that these putative bottom-up proposals consider to be sources of natural number are even precursors of concepts of natural number. (...) This denial depends upon an idiosyncratic, and mistaken, idea of what a precursor is. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Quine's views on the epistemology of logic. According to Quine's influential holistic account, logic is central in the “web of belief” that comprises our overall theory of the world. Because of this, revisions to logic would have devastating systematic consequences, and this explains why we are loath to make such revisions. In section1, I clarify this idea and thereby show that Quine actually takes the web of belief to have asymmetrical internal structure. This raises two (...) puzzles. First, as I show in section 2, Quine's mature thoroughly naturalized view has it that logic is simply obvious, and this is explains why we do not typically consider revising it. While Quine presents this naturalized view as a way to make good on his earlier metaphor of centrality in a web of belief, I argue that the resources of Quine's naturalized epistemology cannot adequately explain why we are reluctant to revise logic. And, Quine seems to recognize this point himself. In light of this, I explain in section 3 how Quine can allow that our overall scientific theory has systematic structure in a way that is consistent with his naturalistic strictures. Second, the asymmetrical internal structure of the web of belief seems to be inconsistent with its being a holistic web at all. I defuse this problem in section 4 by showing how Quine distinguishes between structural and confirmational considerations. I close by using this distinction to show how Quine's view can evade Michael Friedman’s criticisms, and allow for important methodological distinctions between areas of the web of belief. (shrink)

Whether or not the particular view of generic sentences articulated above is correct, it is quite clear that the study of generic terms and the truth-conditions of generic sentences touches on the representation of other parts of the grammar, as well as on how the world around us is reflected in language. I would hope that the problems mentioned above will highlight the relevance of semantic analysis to other apparently distinct questions, and focus attention on the relevance of linguistic problems (...) to other already established areas of inquiry. (shrink)

Some utterances of imperative clauses have directive force—they impose obligations. Others have permissive force—they extend permissions. The dominant view is that this difference in force is not accompanied by a difference in semantic content. Drawing on data involving free choice items in imperatives, I argue that the dominant view is incorrect.

It is argued that the English bare plural (an NP with plural head that lacks a determiner), in spite of its apparently diverse possibilities of interpretation, is optimally represented in the grammar as a unified phenomenon. The chief distinction to be dealt with is that between the generic use of the bare plural (as in Dogs bark) and its existential or indefinite plural use (as in He threw oranges at Alice). The difference between these uses is not to be accounted (...) for by an ambiguity in the NP itself, but rather by explicating how the context of the sentence acts on the bare plural to give rise to this distinction. A brief analysis is sketched in which bare plurals are treated in all instances as proper names of kinds of things. A subsidiary argument is that the null determiner is not to be regarded as the plural of the indefinite article a. (shrink)

Kripke’s picture of how people use names to refer to things has been the dominant view in contemporary philosophy of language. When it is mentioned at all, Donnellan’s view of proper names is considered the same as Kripke’s. It is certainly true that both Donnellan and Kripke rejected descriptivism about proper names and appealed to historical facts to determine whom a speaker is referring to by using a proper name. However, the relevant historical facts Kripke and Donnellan appeal to are (...) ultimately quite different. In this paper, I argue that Donnellan’s view of proper name fares better than Kripke’s. (shrink)

Philosophical proponents of predictive processing cast the novelty of predictive models of perception in terms of differences in the functional role and information content of neural signals. However, they fail to provide constraints on how the crucial semantic mapping from signals to their informational contents is determined. Beyond a novel interpretative gloss on neural signals, they have little new to say about the causal structure of the system, or even what statistical information is carried by the signals. That means that (...) the predictive framework for perception can be relabeled in traditional, non-predictive terms, with no empirical consequences relevant to existing or future data. To the extent that neuroscientific research based on predictive processing is both innovative and productive, it will be due to the framework’s suggestive heuristic effects, or perhaps auxiliary empirical claims about implementation, rather than a difference in the information-processing structure that it describes. (shrink)

This article critically focuses on the methodological aspects of Scott Shapiro’s book Legality . Indeed Shapiro’s book sets out several original theses about not only the nature of law and the main problems of jurisprudence, but also about how the nature of law can be discovered by jurisprudence. In this sense, the method of inquiry adopted by Shapiro can be considered as one of the most challenging outcomes of his research. The article is divided into two parts. In the first (...) two sections I shall analyze Shapiro’s jurisprudential approach by focusing on its resort to metaphysical vocabulary, conceptual analysis, constructive reasoning, and institutional explanation of law. In the following sections I will consider some of the problems that this approach gives rise to, and outline an alternative view on the nature of law stimulated by the discussion of Shapiro’s work. (shrink)

Most of us create and use a panoply of non-sentential representations throughout our ordinary lives: we regularly use maps to navigate, charts to keep track of complex patterns of data, and diagrams to visualize logical and causal relations among states of affairs. But philosophers typically pay little attention to such representations, focusing almost exclusively on language instead. In particular, when theorizing about the mind, many philosophers assume that there is a very tight mapping between language and thought. Some analyze utterances (...) as the outer vocalizations of inner thoughts (e.g. Grice 1957, Devitt 2005), while others treat thought as a form of inner speech (e.g. Sellars 1956/1997, Carruthers 2002). But even philosophers who take no stand on the relative priority of language and thought still tend to individuate mental states in terms of the sentences we use to ascribe them. Indeed, Dummett (1993) claims that it is constitutive of analytic philosophy that it approaches the mind by way of language. In many ways, this linguistic model is salutary. Our thoughts are often intimately intertwined with their linguistic expression, and public language does provide a comparatively tractable proxy for, and a window into, the messier realm of thought. However, an exclusive focus on thought as it is expressed in language threatens to leave other sorts of thought unexplained, or even to blind us to their possibility. In particular, many cognitive ethologists and psychologists find it useful to talk about humans, chimpanzees, birds, rats, and even bees as employing cognitive maps. We need to make sense of this way of talking about minds as well as more familiar sentential descriptions. In what follows, I investigate the theoretical and practical possibility of non-sentential thought. Ultimately, I am most interested in the contours of distinctively human thought: what forms does human thought take, and how do those different forms interact? How does human thought compare with that of other animals? In this essay, however, I focus on a narrower and more basic theoretical question: could thought occur in maps? Many philosophers are convinced that in some important sense, thought per se must be language-like.. (shrink)

Here, I offer a rapid overview of the theory of metaphor, in order to situate the contributions to this volume in relation to one another and within the field more generally.

Argues that natural kind terms are token-reflexive, with reference ultimately fixed to the underlying explanatory properties of the surface qualities of local matter.

The traditional point of view on analyticity implies that truth in virtue only of meaning entails a priori acceptability and vice versa. The argument for this claim is based on the idea that meaning as it concerns truth and meaning as it concerns competence are one and the same thing. In this paper I argue that the extensions of these notions do not coincide. I hold that truth in virtue of meaning— truth for semantic reasons—doesn't imply a priori acceptability, and (...) that a priori reflection based only on knowledge of meaning—in the sense of competence—doesn't necessitate true conclusions.The main consequence of this view concerns conceptual analysis, as it presupposes we have a privileged—incorrigible in the face of empirical evidence—access to non-trivial truths about the world on the basis of mere a priori reflection founded on meaning. If, as I argue, such access is not incorrigible the project of conceptual analysis loses its special epistemological status. (shrink)

Davidson approaches the notions of meaning and interpretation with the aim of characterizing semantic competence in the syntactically characterized natural language. The objective is to provide a truth-theory for a language, generating T-sentences expressed in the semantic metalanguage, so that each sentence of the object language receives an appropriate interpretation. Proceeding within the constraints of referential semantics, I will argue for the viability of reconstructing the notion of linguistic meaning within the Tarskian theory of reference. However, the view proposed here (...) involves a revision of Davidson’s con-ception of the object of semantic investigation. Taking (idealized) language-theories as the proper object of semantic characterization, provides solutions to outstanding problems in Davidson’s views, better approximates the practice in standard model-theoretic semantics, and incorporates the elements of semantic competence sought for in tradi¬tional theories of lexical analysis. Sources of evidence beyond those emphasized by Davidson will be invoked in order to allow for the selection of interpre¬tive T-sentences. In the final section, possible Quinean objections will be considered. (shrink)

A chief aim of this paper is to provide common ground for discussion of outstanding issues between defenders of classical logic and contemporary advocates of intuitionistic logic. In this spirit, I draw upon (and reconstruct) here the relationship between dialogue and evidence as emphasized in German constructivist authors. My approach depends upon developments in the methodology of empirical linguistics. As a preliminary to saying how one might decide between these two versions of logic (this issue is most closely approached in (...) Section V. discussing the constructivist approach), it is well worth the effort to look closely at how logic is (or might be) learned and at questions concerning logic in translation, i.e., the question of how we might detect the variety of logic actually employed in a given speech community. (shrink)

Neste ensaio, enquadro a narrativa de Rorty com relação ao ego na história das filosofias moderna e contemporânea. Minha tese é que sua rejeição tanto do introspectivismo cartesiano quanto das explicações reducionistas psico-biológicas nasce originalmente de uma epistemologia do ego que está alinhada aos insights de Hume sobre a contingência da individualidade, mas também, introduz uma abordagem complexa à questão filosófica sobre a relação entre os reinos estético e racional. Além disso, avanço em uma leitura anticética, dinâmica e normativa do (...) modelo narrativo de Rorty do ego, a qual associa seu entendimento de ironia – nós podemos sempre duvidar que nosso vocabulário final é o melhor disponível – e de solidariedade – concebido não apenas como um movimento afetivo em direção ao outro, mas também, como uma condição lógica para o funcionamento da comunicação humana. (shrink)

Realism about the external world enjoys little philosophical support these days. I rectify this predicament by taking a relatively pragmatist line of thought to defend commonsense realism; I support commonsense realism through an interpretation and application of Donald Davidson’s notion of triangulation, the triangle composed of two communicators coordinating and correcting their responses with a shared causal stimulus. This argument is important because it has a crucial advantage over the often used abductive argument for realism. My argument avoids unwarranted conclusions, (...) whereas the abductive argument is “inflationary” because it reaches beyond the limits of evidence for its realist conclusion. To illustrate the problems of the abductive argument and motivate my Davidsonian approach, I take a brief look at the abductive argument for realism in Frederick Will’s work. (shrink)