Experiential Metaphysics: Reality, Language and Mind As Explored
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Mentalism Versus Behaviourism in Economics: a Philosophy-Of-Science
Mentalism versus behaviourism in economics: aphilosophy-of-scienceperspective⇤ Franz Dietrich Christian List CNRS & University of East Anglia London School of Economics 18 November 2012 Abstract Behaviourism is the view that preferences, beliefs, and other mental states in social- scientific theories are nothing but constructs re-describing people’s behavioural dis- positions. Mentalism is the view that they capture real phenomena, no less existent than the unobservable entities and properties in the natural sciences, such as elec- trons and electromagnetic fields. While behaviourism has long gone out of fashion in psychology and linguistics, it remains influential in economics, especially in ‘re- vealed preference’ theory. We aim to (i) clear up some common confusions about the two views, (ii) situate the debate in a historical context, and (iii) defend a men- talist approach to economics. Setting aside normative concerns about behaviourism, we show that mentalism is in line with best scientific practice even if economics is treated as a purely positive science of economic behaviour. We distinguish men- talism from, and reject, the radical neuroeconomic view that behaviour should be explained in terms of people’s brain processes, as distinct from their mental states. 1 Introduction Economic theory seeks to explain the social and economic behaviour of human (and sometimes other) agents.1 It usually does so by (i) ascribing, at least in an ‘as if’ mode, ⇤This paper was presented at the LSE Choice Group workshop on ‘Rationalizability and Choice’, July 2011, the D-TEA workshop, Paris, July 2012, and the EIPE seminar, Rotterdam, September 2012. We are grateful to the participants and especially Nick Baigent, Walter Bossert, Richard Bradley, Mika¨el Cozic, Eddie Dekel, Ido Erev, Itzhak Gilboa, Conrad Heilmann, Johannes Himmelreich, Marco Mariotti, Friederike Mengel, Clemens Puppe, Larry Samuelson, David Schmeidler, Asli Selim, Daniel Stoljar, Kotaro Suzumura, and Peter Wakker for comments and discussion. -
And Peirce's Synechism
Elective Metaphysical Affi nities: Emerson’s “Natural History of Intellect” and Peirce’s Synechism Afi nidades Eletivas Metafísicas: A “História Natural do Intelecto” de Emerson e o Sinequismo de Peirce David A. Dilworth Philosophy Department State University of New York at Stony Brook – USA [email protected] Abstract: The paper suggests that Peirce’s late-phase metaphysical system af- termathed Emerson’s basic philosophical ideas elaborated over four decades before him. Peirce, with characteristic brilliance, transformed Emerson’s own luminous ideas into his categorial elaborations of abduction, cosmogonic synechism, universal semiosis, and the like. To illustrate this process of transformation, the paper provides a running synopsis of Emerson’s last signifi cant writing, “The Natural History of Intellect” (1870), which was ori- ginally part of a team-taught lecture series at Harvard that Emerson shared with six others, one of whom was the young C. S. Peirce. The synopsis evidences that virtually all of Peirce’s major metaphysical tenets had their precedent in Emerson. Among other places, Peirce acknowledged Emerson’s infl uence (together with that of Schelling) in his 1892 essay, “The Law of Mind.” Even before that, he referenced Emerson’s poem “The Sphinx” in his “A Guess at the Riddle” of 1887-88, the turning-point in Peirce’s career towarde metaphysical speculation. Peirce’s conscious awareness of Emerson’s philososphy and poetry traces back to many sources (including Emerson’s long friendship with his father, Benjamin Peirce). The elective affi nity be- tween his and Emerson’s views allows us to appreciate that the two authors forged a central strain of idealistic-cum-realistic metaphysical thinking that framed the later Pragmatisms of James and Dewey, among others. -
Manzotti Pepperell New Mind
Draft: AI & Society “A Faustian Exchange: What is to be human in the era of Ubiquitous Technology The New Mind: Thinking Beyond the Head Riccardo MANZOTTI*, Robert PEPPERELL** *Institute of Consumption, Communication and Behavior IULM University, Via Carlo Bo, 8, 16033 Milano [email protected] **Cardiff School of Art & Design Howard Gardens, Cardiff CF24 0SP, UK [email protected] Abstract Throughout much of the modern period the human mind has been regarded as a property of the brain, and therefore something confined to the inside of the head — a view commonly known as 'internalism'. But recent works in cognitive science, philosophy, and anthropology, as well as certain trends in the development of technology, suggest an emerging view of the mind as a process not confined to the brain but spread through the body and world — an outlook covered by a family of views labeled 'externalism'. In this paper we will suggest there is now sufficient momentum in favour of externalism of various kinds to mark a historical shift in the way the mind is understood. We dub this emerging externalist tendency the 'New Mind'. Key properties of the New Mind will be summarized and some of its implications considered in areas such as art and culture, technology, and the science of consciousness. 1 Introduction For much of recorded human history, in both the European and Asian traditions, the question of how to understand that most ever present yet elusive properties of our existence — that fact that we have conscious minds — has occupied some of our greatest thinkers and provoked endless controversy. -
Schelling's Naturalism: Motion, Space, and the Volition of Thought
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Scholarship@Western Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 9-23-2015 12:00 AM Schelling's Naturalism: Motion, Space, and the Volition of Thought Ben Woodard The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Tilottama Rajan The University of Western Ontario Joint Supervisor Joan Steigerwald The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Theory and Criticism A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Ben Woodard 2015 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the History of Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Woodard, Ben, "Schelling's Naturalism: Motion, Space, and the Volition of Thought" (2015). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 3314. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/3314 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Schelling's Naturalism: Motion, Space, and the Volition of Thought (Thesis Format: Monograph) by Benjamin Graham Woodard A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in Theory and Criticism The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Ben Woodard 2015 Abstract: This dissertation examines F.W.J. von Schelling's Philosophy of Nature (or Naturphilosophie) as a form of early, and transcendentally expansive, naturalism that is, simultaneously, a naturalized transcendentalism. -
Galen Strawson, Selves. an Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics
Review: Galen Strawson, Selves. An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics Ludwig Gierstl & Ludwig J. Jaskolla In 1929, Alfred North Whitehead wrote that philosophy never reverts to its old position after the shock of a great philosopher1. It might be the case that Galen Strawson's Selves2 causes such a shock. Selves is a brilliant piece of philosophy synthesizing deep insights into nature of human experience with speculative force3. Although, the book can- not be said to be easily accessible, studying it is rewarding and can be recommended to almost any philosopher interested in Metaphysics or Philosophy of Mind. In the following paragraphs, we are going to give a systematic sketch of Strawson's main line of thought and his central arguments. Basically, Selves can be divided into two main parts: The rst part addresses the phenomenology of the self as understood in our everyday approach to the world, while the second part discusses the phenomenological ndings of the rst part in terms of metaphysics. Despite this two-fold structure, we emphasize that due to our understanding both parts are interrelated systematically and methodologically forming a coherent whole. 1 The Phenomenology of the Self As everybody familiar with the debate concerning personal identity knows, there is abundant literature discussing the typical phenomenolog- ical features of the self or in particular: the human self. This ordinary account of the varieties of experiences tied to the self is merely deriva- tively Strawson's target. He is mainly interested in the discussion of one particular phenomenon which he calls SELF-experience. This phe- nomenon is best characterized in contrast to other experiences: While I may have a stinging pain in my left arm which is so strong that it eects my whole experiential pattern, the fact that my self is in some way part of this experience is not SELF-experience. -
From Locke to Berkeley
From Locke to Berkeley How Berkeley rejects Locke’s Metaphysical Realism in favor of what he calls “Idealism” Locke Summary Like Descartes, Locke believes that we perceive the “real” world only indirectly. • We do not directly perceive material objects, – Just as we do not directly perceive people we see on T.V.; • Rather, we directly perceive only ideas (sensations, things “in” our minds) that are caused by and represent material objects, – Just as, when watching T.V., we directly see only images on the screen. Locke’s Causal Theory of Perception: Indirectly Sensation aware of Matter Do our sensations resemble their objects? • Recall that Descartes’ big worry was whether or not there were any objects outside our minds. – (By the end of the 6th Meditation, he assures that there are.) • But he said we also make mistakes in thinking that our ideas always resembled the objects in the real world that caused us to have those sensations. Why should we believe that the ideas in our minds actually resemble the objects outside our minds that cause them? Mind’s Eye Idea Object Idea Object Mind In Locke’s Terms • Even if we accept that the ideas in our mind are caused by real objects that exist outside our minds – (Locke never really questions this) • Is it true that our ideas always resemble the qualities in the objects that caused us to have those ideas? Locke’s Answer • Only sometimes. Some of our ideas do resemble qualities in the objects, but some of them do not. • Our ideas of primary qualities resemble those qualities. -
Essential Chomsky
CURRENT AFFAIRS $19.95 U.S. CHOMSKY IS ONE OF A SMALL BAND OF NOAM INDIVIDUALS FIGHTING A WHOLE INDUSTRY. AND CHOMSKY THAT MAKES HIM NOT ONLY BRILLIANT, BUT HEROIC. NOAM CHOMSKY —ARUNDHATI ROY EDITED BY ANTHONY ARNOVE THEESSENTIAL C Noam Chomsky is one of the most significant Better than anyone else now writing, challengers of unjust power and delusions; Chomsky combines indignation with he goes against every assumption about insight, erudition with moral passion. American altruism and humanitarianism. That is a difficult achievement, —EDWARD W. SAID and an encouraging one. THE —IN THESE TIMES For nearly thirty years now, Noam Chomsky has parsed the main proposition One of the West’s most influential of American power—what they do is intellectuals in the cause of peace. aggression, what we do upholds freedom— —THE INDEPENDENT with encyclopedic attention to detail and an unflagging sense of outrage. Chomsky is a global phenomenon . —UTNE READER perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet. ESSENTIAL [Chomsky] continues to challenge our —THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW assumptions long after other critics have gone to bed. He has become the foremost Chomsky’s fierce talent proves once gadfly of our national conscience. more that human beings are not —CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT, condemned to become commodities. THE NEW YORK TIMES —EDUARDO GALEANO HO NE OF THE WORLD’S most prominent NOAM CHOMSKY is Institute Professor of lin- Opublic intellectuals, Noam Chomsky has, in guistics at MIT and the author of numerous more than fifty years of writing on politics, phi- books, including For Reasons of State, American losophy, and language, revolutionized modern Power and the New Mandarins, Understanding linguistics and established himself as one of Power, The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human the most original and wide-ranging political and Nature, On Language, Objectivity and Liberal social critics of our time. -
Introduction 1 What Motivated Hegel's Philosophical Project?
Notes Introduction 1 . PH 472. 1 What Motivated Hegel’s Philosophical Project? 1 . In recent decades, several important attempts have been made to fill this lacuna – the absence of a post-Kantian schema – the most salient of which has been that of Henrich (1982, 1991, 2003), who revisits the story of the genesis of German Idealism. See too Horstmann (1991). 2 . The English-speaking world has of late experienced a resurgence of interest in German Idealism, especially Hegel, attested to by the numerous books and articles on the subject published over the past decade. Although these studies are far from monolithic, we can safely say, without fear of over-simplification, that the interpretations offered tend to see Hegel’s philosophy as the culmi- nation of Kant’s epistemological project. See Pippin (1997, 6); Pinkard (1994, 230). 3 . Let me pre-empt a possible misunderstanding. The rupture thesis does not, of course, seek to claim that German Idealism is altogether free of Kantian influ- ence, which would be absurd. The rupture thesis can also be formulated as follows: Kant is the source of the problem of Kantian dualism, and its solution requires total rejection of his philosophy, which must be supplanted by a new philosophical program. 4 . For a thorough defense of the philosophical importance of this question, see Düsing (1983); Pippin (1989); Henrich (1991); Horstmann (1991). 5 . This route is also chosen both by those who seek to show that German Idealism provides insight only into highly speculative epistemological or ontological questions, a claim that is patently indefensible, and by those who seek to show how Idealism sheds profound light on the flaws of the philosophy of subjectivity, and on how accepting the suggested remedy will render the theo- retical position espoused by German Idealism less vulnerable to critique. -
Platonic Triangles and Fundamental Triads As the Basic Elements of the World
Athens Journal of Humanities & Arts - Volume 5, Issue 1 – Pages 29-44 Platonic Triangles and Fundamental Triads as the Basic Elements of the World By Mark Burgin Plato introduced and explored many influential ideas. However, later researchers and thinkers did not properly interpreted and correctly understood all of his ideas. In this paper, we evoke one of the clusters of such ideas, namely, Platoʼs ontology based on Platonic bodies and elementary triangles. The goal is to find a relevant scientific interpretation of this idea. Based on the scientific picture of the world, we show that the whole Plato ontology has its relevant counterpart in contemporary science and mathematics. Introduction Plato (427-347 B.C.E.) is one of the greatest philosophers of all times and all nations. Some of his ideas had a formative impact on a diversity of philosophers and scientists, who worked with these ideas discovering new realms in the philosophical milieu. These ideas have come to our time as the greatest achievements of the human mind and creativity finding their reflection in contemporary science. The World of Ideas or Forms is an example of such a groundbreaking idea, the scientific counterpart of which is explicated in.1 This explication cracks the problem, the solution of which escaped the best thinkers, who tried to comprehend how the world in which people live is organized and functions. However, there were other ides of Plato, which have attracted much less attention from other thinkers and have been treated as auxiliary and negligible. Triangles as the basic elements, from which everything in the world is created, are an example of such a forgotten idea. -
The Speculative Neuroscience of the Future Human Brain
Humanities 2013, 2, 209–252; doi:10.3390/h2020209 OPEN ACCESS humanities ISSN 2076-0787 www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities Article The Speculative Neuroscience of the Future Human Brain Robert A. Dielenberg Freelance Neuroscientist, 15 Parry Street, Cooks Hill, NSW, 2300, Australia; E-Mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +61-423-057-977 Received: 3 March 2013; in revised form: 23 April 2013 / Accepted: 27 April 2013 / Published: 21 May 2013 Abstract: The hallmark of our species is our ability to hybridize symbolic thinking with behavioral output. We began with the symmetrical hand axe around 1.7 mya and have progressed, slowly at first, then with greater rapidity, to producing increasingly more complex hybridized products. We now live in the age where our drive to hybridize has pushed us to the brink of a neuroscientific revolution, where for the first time we are in a position to willfully alter the brain and hence, our behavior and evolution. Nootropics, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), deep brain stimulation (DBS) and invasive brain mind interface (BMI) technology are allowing humans to treat previously inaccessible diseases as well as open up potential vistas for cognitive enhancement. In the future, the possibility exists for humans to hybridize with BMIs and mobile architectures. The notion of self is becoming increasingly extended. All of this to say: are we in control of our brains, or are they in control of us? Keywords: hybridization; BMI; tDCS; TMS; DBS; optogenetics; nootropic; radiotelepathy Introduction Newtonian systems aside, futurecasting is a risky enterprise at the best of times. -
An Interview with Noam Chomsky
FORUM The Interesting Part Is What Is Not Conscious: An Interview with Noam Chomsky Michael M. Schiffmann The following is the transcription of an interview held on 23 January 2013 at Chomsky’s MIT office in Cambridge, MA, between Michael Schiffmann (MS, in italics) and Noam Chomsky (NC, in regular typeface). OK, it’s January the 23rd, we are at the MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This will be a 60 minute interview with Noam Chomsky on the sixty to sixty-five years of his work, and we will try to cover as many topics as possible. To start off with this, I should put this into a context. I first started to interview Noam Chomsky about this [i.e. the history of generative grammar] two and a half years ago, right here at the MIT, and inadvertently, this grew into a whole series, and today’s interview is meant to be the end of the series, but not, hopefully, the end of our talks. [Both laugh.] Well, as I see it, and that’s a central part of the research project on your work I’m working on, there are, among many others, several red threads that run through your work, and that would be, first, the quest for simplicity in scientific description, and as we will see, that has several aspects, then the question of abstractness, which we will see in comparison to what went on before and what you started to work with. A closely related question that came to the forefront later was locality, local relations in mental computations. -
Theory of Intentionality *
Ronald McIntyre and David Woodruff Smith, “Theory of Intentionality,” in J. N. Mohanty and William R. McKenna, eds., Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook (Washington, D. C.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1989), pp. 147-79. Original page numbers are in <>. THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY * by Ronald McIntyre and David Woodruff Smith 1. INTENTIONALITY Intentionality is a central concept in philosophy of mind and in Husserl’s phenom enology. Indeed, Husserl calls intentionality the “fundamental property of consciousness” and the “principle theme of phenomenology”. Although ‘intentionality’ is a technical term in philosophy, it stands for something familiar to us all: a characteristic feature of our mental states and experiences, especially evident in what we commonly call being “conscious” or “aware”. As conscious beings, or persons, we are not merely affected by the things in our environment; we are also conscious of these things – of physical objects and events, of our own selves and other persons, of abstract objects such as numbers and propositions, and of anything else we bring before our minds. Many, perhaps most, of the events that make up our mental life – our perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, hopes, fears, and so on – have this characteristic feature of being “of” or “about” something and so giving us a sense of something in our world. When I see a tree, for example, my perception is a perception of a tree; when I think that 3 + 2 = 5, I am thinking of or about certain numbers and a relation among them; when I hope that nuclear war will never take place, my hope is about a possible future state of the world; and so on.