The article considers pros and cons for a theoretic-measurement analogy, proposed by some philosophers as an illustration of semantic indeterminacy. Within this analogy ascribing of meanings to a certain linguistic expressions is compared with attribution of numbers according to a certain theory of measurement. Donald Davidson used this analogy in order to extend W.V.O. Quine's thesis of indeterminacy of translation to the interpretation of all human behavior. In other words, not only linguistic meanings, but all mental states are considered as (...) indeterminate. The article explains the failure of some counter-arguments put forward against Davidson's use of this analogy and against the thesis of indeterminacy on the whole. Particularly, instrumentalist version of the analogy is rejected for there is no direct relation between indeterminacy and underdetermination of theories by empirical evidences. The article concludes that the semantic indeterminacy is largely based on indeterminacy of rationality. (shrink)

Normative dualism between descriptions of the mental and the physical is still a problem for many philosophers that provokes more and more attempts to justify it, or, on the contrary, to overcome it by means of reduction. The problem of a special normative status of mental states is usually considered in isolation from the concept of truth. Moreover, the definition of truth is often construed only as a part of the problem of normativity: in this case, truth is only a (...) kind of norm, for example, a goal of scientific research. Donald Davidson, however, believed that truth is not the norm and that, on the contrary, norms are possible only through the use of the primitive and original concept of truth already available to us. In this paper, we propose that if one develops an idea of such a conceptual dependence between truth and norms in a certain way, then it will become possible to solve the problem of a normative gap between our descriptions of the mental and the physical. In other words, if the assimilation of the concept of truth precedes the learning of norms pertaining to the mental and the physical, then the solution for the problem of the gap between these norms can be directly related to conditions and differences in the use of the notion of truth. (shrink)

Playing chess is one of the first sectors of human thinking that were conquered by computers. From the historical win of Deep Blue against chess champion Garry Kasparov until today, computers have completely dominated the world of chess leaving no room for question as to who is the king in this sport. However, the better computers become in chess the more obvious their basic disadvantage becomes: Even though they can defeat any human in chess and play phenomenally great and (...) intuitive moves, they do not seem to know what chess it. Recently, the advent of AlphaZero brought the level of computers to even higher grounds, but made that disadvantage even more obvious. Nowadays the best chess algorithm can find the best moves in any position without having any knowledge of any chess principle whatsoever. A new world of capabilities and knowledge lays open in front of us, but the darkness behind it is deeper than we could ever imagine. The neural network algorithms seem capable of being best in something without even knowing what that something is, making questions regarding the essence of what thought is more important than ever. (shrink)

The study of remembering is both compelling and challenging, in part, because of the multiplicity and the complexity of influences on memory. Whatever their interests, memory researchers are always aware of the many different factors that can drive the processes they care about. A search for the phrase ‘influences on memory’ confirms this daunting and exhilarating array of influences, of many different kinds, operating at many different timescales, and presumably often interacting in ways that we can’t yet imagine, let alone (...) model. There are hormonal and neuromodulatory, genetic and pharmacological, developmental and age-related influences; there are influences of arousal, stress, gender, mood, emotion, sleep and personality; there are unconscious, schematic or semantic influences, and there are influences of context, situation, task and environment. There are many aspects of ‘media influence on memory’ (Loftus and Banaji, 1989; Strange and Garry, 2007), and, of course, there are both ‘social influences on memory’ (Echterhoff and Hirst, 2009) and ‘cultural influences on memory’ (Gutchess and Indeck, 2009). Notoriously, there are numerous ‘suggestive influences’ on memory (Loftus, 2003): influences of misinformation (Seifert, 2002; Wright and Loftus, 1998), or of ‘memory conformity’ (Gabbert et al., 2006) and ‘memory contagion’ (Roediger et al., 2002). People who know each other well, such as intimate couples, ‘may be well practised in yielding to each other’s influence and incorporating their partner’s information into their own memories of the past’ (French et al., 2008: 264). (shrink)