Wow! eBook
Explaining the Mental: Naturalist and Non-Naturalist Approaches to Mental Acts and Processes Unabridged Edition
Author(s): Carlo Penco (Author, Editor), Massimiliano Vignolo and Michael Beaney (Author, Editor)
- Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- Publication Date: 1 Oct. 2007
- Edition: Unabridged
- Language: English
- Print length: 350 pages
- ISBN-10: 1847182976
- ISBN-13: 9781847182975
Book Description
The aim of this collection of papers is to present different philosophical perspectives on the mental, exploring questions about how to define, explain and understand the various kinds of mental acts and processes, and exhibiting, in particular, the contrast between naturalistic and non-naturalistic approaches. There is a long tradition in philosophy of clarifying concepts such as those of thinking, knowing and believing. The task of clarifying these concepts has become ever more important with the major developments that have taken place over the last century in the human and cognitive sciences – most notably, psychology, sociology, linguistics, neurophysiology, AI, and cognitive science itself. In all these sciences, there is a need to delineate the domain of the mental and to elucidate the key concepts and underlying assumptions. This need is widely recognized, but approaches and answers vary significantly. Some stress the representational features involved in most of our mental processes, others the inferential dimension; some stress the necessity of using empirical data, others the need to refine ideas before pursuing and drawing on empirical research. The papers collected in this volume are grouped into four parts, on language and thought, on knowledge, belief and action, on intentionality, and on naturalism. The volume will be welcomed by all those engaged and interested in debates about the mental in philosophy and the human and cognitive sciences. Table of Contents PART I: LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT Andrew Woodfield, Public Words Considered as Vehicles of Thinking Andrea Bianchi, Speaking and Thinking (Or: A More Kaplanian Way to a Unified Account of Language and Thought) Stefano Predelli, The Strange Case of the Missing Constituent PART II: KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF AND ACTION Pascal Engel, Taking Seriously Knowledge as a Mental State Carlo Gabbani, Epistemology and the Eliminative Stance Jennifer Hornsby, Knowledge, Belief and Reasons for Acting Wolfgang Künne, Some Varieties of Deception PART III: INTENTIONALITY Sandro Nannini, Intentionality Naturalised Elisabetta Sacchi, Thought and Thinking: the Ontological Ground of Intentionality Elisabeth Pacherie, Is Collective Intentionality Really Primitive? PART IV: NATURALISM Marcello Frixione, Do Concepts exist? A Naturalistic Point of View Tim Crane, Cosmic Hermeneutics vs. Emergence: the Challenge of the Explanatory Gap Achim Stephan and Robert C. Richardson, What Physicalism Should Provide Us With Mario De Caro, The Claims of Naturalism
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Hedda Friberg is Senior Lecturer in English at Mid Sweden University, Härnösand, Sweden. Among her recent publications are In the Murky Sea of Memory: Memorys Miscues in John Banvilles The Sea in An Sionnach 1.2. (2005) and an article on Banvilles Eclipse and Shroud in the Irish University Review special issue on Banville (June 2006). A monograph tentatively entitled The Fleetingly Real in John Banvilles Recent Work is in the making. Irene Gilsenan Nordin is Senior Lecturer in English at Dalarna University College, Sweden. She is director of DUCIS, Dalarna University Centre for Irish Studies, and editor of NIS (Nordic Irish Studies). Her most recent books are Re-Mapping Exile (Aarhus University Press, 2005) and The Body and Desire in Contemporary Irish Poetry (Irish Academic Press, 2006) and she is currently completing a monograph entitled The Element of the Spiritual in the Poetry of Eiléan Ni Chuilleanáin for Mellen Press. Lene Yding Pedersen is a Senior Lecturer in English at Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research focuses on contemporary literature and culture of the English-speaking world, and her publications include articles on cultural text studies, narrative theory, and Irish literature. Among her recent publications are Atlanticized: Joseph OConnors America in Cultural Text Studies 2: Transatlantic (Aalborg University Press, 2006) and Colliding Words: Banvilles Art Trilogy in Literature and Visual Culture (University of Iceland Press, 2005).
