Conceptual atomism and the computational theory of mind : a defense of content-internalism and semantic externalism / John-Michael Kuczynski.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kuczynski, John-Michael.

Series:

Advances in consciousness research ; v. 69.

Advances in consciousness research ; v. 69

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Philosophy of mind.

Knowledge, Theory of.

Cognitive science.

Atomism.

Internalism (Theory of knowledge).

Externalism (Philosophy of mind).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (537 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins Pub., c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What is it to have a concept? What is it to make an inference? What is it to be rational? On the basis of recent developments in semantics, a number of authors have embraced answers to these questions that have radically counterintuitive consequences, for example: One can rationally accept self-contradictory propositions (e.g. Smith is a composer and Smith is not a composer). Psychological states are causally inert: beliefs and desires do nothing. The mind cannot be understood in terms of folk-psychological concepts (e.g. belief, desire, intention). One can have a single concept without having any others: an otherwise conceptless creature could grasp the concept of justice or of the number seven. Thoughts are sentence-tokens, and thought-processes are driven by the syntactic, not the semantic, properties of those tokens. In the first half of Conceptual Atomism and the Computational Theory of Mind, John-Michael Kuczynski argues that these implausible but widely held views are direct consequences of a popular doctrine known as content-externalism, this being the view that the contents of one's mental states are constitutively dependent on facts about the external world. Kuczynski shows that content-externalism involves a failure to distinguish between, on the one hand, what is literally meant by linguistic expressions and, on the other hand, the information that one must work through to compute the literal meanings of such expressions.The second half of the present work concerns the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM). Underlying CTM is an acceptance of conceptual atomism - the view that a creature can have a single concept without having any others - and also an acceptance of the view that concepts are not descriptive (i.e. that one can have a concept of a thing without knowing of any description that is satisfied by that thing). Kuczynski

shows that both views are false, one reason being that they presuppose the truth of content-externalism, another being that they are incompatible with the epistemological anti-foundationalism proven correct by Wilfred Sellars and Laurence Bonjour. Kuczynski also shows that CTM involves a misunderstanding of terms such as "computation", "syntax", "algorithm" and "formal truth"; and he provides novel analyses of the concepts expressed by these terms. (Series A).

Contents:

Conceptual Atomism and the Computational Theory of Mind

Editorial page

Title page

LCC data

Table of contents

Introduction

I. A defense of content-internalism and a descriptivist theory of concepts

1. Basic concepts

2. The predicative nature of sense-perception

3. Uniquely individuating descriptions

4. Some semantic consequences or our analysis: Tokens versus types, semantics versus pre-semantics

5. Modality, intensionality, and a posteriori necessity

6. Cognitive maps and causal connections: Why the causal story is an important part of the descriptive story

7. Concepts as knowledge of series of interlocking existence-claims

8. The problem of de re senses

9. Publicity problems and the natureof linguistic communication

10. Content-externalism and self-knowledge

11. Why one's mental content is fixed by one's epistemic situation

12. Jackson and Pettit on program-causalityand content-externalism

II. Fodor, Conceptual Atomism, and Computationalism

13. Content-externalism and atomism

14. The concept of a symbol

15. Event-causation and the root-problem with CTM

16. Fodor's first argument for conceptual atomism

17. Fodor's second argument forconceptual atomism

18. Fodor's third argument forconceptual atomism

19. Some arguments for the Symbolic Conception of Thought

20. A positive argument against SCT

21. Another argument against SCT

22. 'Propositional structure and the ineliminability of non-conceptual content

23. Conceptual content and the structure of the proposition

24. Peacocke on concept-possession

25. Semantics versus psychology

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

The series Advances in Consciousness Research.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [509]-516) and index.

ISBN:

9786612152856

9781282152854

1282152858

9789027292209

9027292205

OCLC:

191936556