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Ordinary Language Arguments and the Philosophy of Mind

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Ordinary Language Arguments and the Philosophy of Mind Ordinary Language Arguments and the Philosophy of Mind Submitted by Timb D. Hoswell B. A. Hons A thesis submitted in complete fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Philosophy Faculty of Theology and Philosophy Australian Catholic University Research Services Office 40 Edward Street North Sydney New South Wales 2060 P.O. Box 968 North Sydney, New South Wales, 2059 July 2020 1 To my mother, Elisabeth Moore, who, despite the death of my father, raised me as best she could around the hospitals, psyche wards and nursing homes she worked in, and I spent much of my early years, and to her complete, unapologetic and incorrigible love of medicine and the medical sciences. To Myf. This is what I was doing at the university. With special thanks to Dr John Gerad Quilter, my Pater Philosophici, who fought for this thesis the entire way. Also, many thanks to Louise Clayton-Jones for her patient editing and grammatical notes. With further thanks to Associate Professor Michael Griffith for supporting me and encouraging my originality in something of a guardian spirit role. Dr Edward, ‘Ted’, Sadler for teaching me to be painstakingly thorough in my scholarship and historical research as an undergraduate. Such lessons have stayed with me through my life. To all of my lecturers of past, present and future. Lastly to all of the Philosophy and Theology Department at ACU for all of their support over the years. Thank you. 2 A note on the text Where I introduce an important term either from a philosopher or author, or refer back to that term after a considerable break I use quotation marks. For instance, the term ‘report’ is very important within Wilfrid Sellars’ work and when I introduce such a term in the paper I put it in quotations. However, when I adopt a philosopher’s term, and change its meaning either through consideration of peer review, my own arguments or by augmenting it with considerations from other philosophers I will treat the term with capital letters referring to the concept I am developing. For instance, ‘report’ which refers to Sellars’ use of the term will become ‘Report’ once I consider Andrew Gleeson’s points about affective vocabularies and develop what is meant by that term further through the thesis. The reason why some terms are treated this way, while others are not, depends on whether I take the terms as the original authors and philosophers intended them, or whether I develop them conceptually for the purposes of the argument presented in this paper. At times it is neccessary to refer to differences between my development of a term, and the author’s original use of that term. At other times it is necessary to compare an author’s specific technical use of a term, with what is meant in ordinary language when somebody uses the same term. Here I will use quotations for the author’s use and leave the ordinary everyday English use without alteration. 3 Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 8 The Languages of Mind ..................................................................................................... 8 Ordinary Language Arguments and the Project of Anti-Psychologism in the Philosophy of Mind. .............................................................................................................................58 Anti-Psychologism and the Occult Phenomenology.........................................................65 Can the Chalmerian zombie in the Sellarsian Village learn to speak Rylean? ..............76 The Three Tiers of Solving the Indeterminacy of Reference Problem in the Philosophy of Mind. .............................................................................................................................80 Part One: ..................................................................................................................................94 Ordinary Language and The Cartography of the Mind ..........................................................94 Chapter One Dissection of Ryle’s Ordinary Language Account of the Mind .....................94 Linguistic Behaviourism and Logical Behaviourism .......................................................94 David Chalmers .............................................................................................................. 100 Morris Weitz ................................................................................................................... 111 Chapter Two ....................................................................................................................... 127 Linguistic Behaviourism ................................................................................................ 127 Episodes and dispositions. ............................................................................................. 127 What exemplifies Ryle’s Linguistic Behaviourist Claims? ............................................ 127 Chapter Three .................................................................................................................... 134 Ryle and Analytic Philosophy ........................................................................................ 134 Ryle’s Two Most Fundamental Insights on the Mind and the Relationship between these Insights and Linguistic Behavioural Arguments. ................................................ 134 Chapter Four ...................................................................................................................... 146 The Primacy of the Sentence and Propositional thought .............................................. 146 Capacity and Tendency configurations. ......................................................................... 153 Chapter Five ...................................................................................................................... 159 Gilbert Ryle, Wilfrid Sellars and science. ...................................................................... 159 Chapter Six ........................................................................................................................ 193 Ryle’s Moodology and ‘Flash Bangs’. .............................................................................. 193 Chapter Seven .................................................................................................................... 206 Chalmers, Judgements and Phenomenal Zombies. ....................................................... 206 4 Part Two ................................................................................................................................ 212 Introspection, Retrospection, Consciousness and the Log Keeper of the mind ...................... 212 Chapter Eight .................................................................................................................... 212 Introspection ................................................................................................................... 212 Chapter Nine ...................................................................................................................... 227 Sea Water, Consciousness and Introspection. Gilbert Ryle on Mindfulness. ............... 227 Chapter Ten ....................................................................................................................... 236 Ryle’s Log Keeper of the Mind. ...................................................................................... 236 Chapter Eleven .................................................................................................................. 240 The Three Examples of what you cannot do with language alone. ............................... 240 Chapter Twelve .................................................................................................................. 243 Ryle’s Diachronic attack on consciousness. ................................................................... 243 Part Three: ............................................................................................................................. 249 The Ghost in Ryle’s Grammatical Machinery ....................................................................... 249 Chapter Thirteen ............................................................................................................... 249 Ordinary Language Arguments and their ability to affirm or negate claims about the mind. ............................................................................................................................... 249 Chapter Fourteen ............................................................................................................... 258 Phenomenological arguments. ....................................................................................... 258 Chapter Fifteen .................................................................................................................. 269 Midway map of the paper ............................................................................................... 269 The Three Chief Types of Argument Found in The Concept of Mind ........................... 269 Dummett and the Implicit Language Philosophers ...................................................... 278 Chalmerian zombies and the ‘flash-bangs’. ................................................................... 280 The end for the Ordinary Language Philosophy thesis as
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