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Burge-Foundations of Mind.Pdf Foundations of Mind This page intentionally left blank Foundations of Mind Philosophical Essays, Volume 2 TYLER BURGE CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Tyler Burge 2007 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Burge, Tyler. Foundations of mind / Tyler Burge. p. cm.—(Philosophical essays ; v. 2) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN-13: 978–0–19–921623–9 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0–19–921623–1 (alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978–0–19–921624–6 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0–19–921624–X (alk. paper) 1. Philosophy of mind. I. Title. BD418.3.B77 2007 128.2—dc22 2006103408 Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–921624–6 ISBN 978–0–19–921623–9 (Pb) 10987654321 DedicatedinLovingMemory to my Father DANIEL BURGE This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xii Introduction 1 1. On Knowledge and Convention (1975) 32 2. Kaplan, Quine, and Suspended Belief (1977) 38 3. Belief De Re (1977) 44 Postscript to “Belief De Re” (2006) 65 4. Other Bodies (1982) 82 5. Individualism and the Mental (1979) 100 Postscript to “Individualism and the Mental” (2006) 151 6. Two Thought Experiments Reviewed (1982) 182 7. Cartesian Error and the Objectivity of Perception (1986) 192 8. Authoritative Self-Knowledge and Perceptual Individualism (1988) 208 9. Individualism and Psychology (1986) 221 10. Intellectual Norms and Foundations of Mind (1986) 254 11. Wherein is Language Social? (1989) 275 12. Concepts, Definitions, and Meaning (1993) 291 13. Social Anti-individualism, Objective Reference (2003) 307 14. Individuation and Causation in Psychology (1989) 316 15. Intentional Properties and Causation (1995) 334 16. Mind–Body Causation and Explanatory Practice (1993) 344 Postscript to “Mind–Body Causation and Explanatory Practice” (2006) 363 17. Two Kinds of Consciousness (1995 in German, 1997 in English) 383 18. Reflections on Two Kinds of Consciousness (2006) 392 19. Descartes on Anti-individualism (2003, slightly supplemented 2006) 420 20. Philosophy of Mind: 1950–2000 (1992, addenda 2005) 440 Bibliography 465 Author Index 479 Subject Index 482 This page intentionally left blank Preface This volume of essays centers on basic aspects of mind. I discuss the main themes of the volume in the Introduction. Here I want to make a few more personal remarks. Some pertain to general attitudes toward the substance of the early essays in the volume. Some pertain to memories, feelings, and debts regarding the circumstances of their birth. The birth dates of the essays span a period of more than three decades. In this Preface, I will confine myself to the earlier essays in the volume. The early essays established a direction for the rest, with the exception of the two papers on consciousness. The volume includes the essays (“Belief De Re”and “Individualism and the Mental”) in which I learned to sing—communicate with a distinctive philosophical voice. It also includes the papers (those two, together with “Other Bodies”, “Intellectual Norms and Foundations of Mind”, and my early work on perception) that set the direction for what I think of as my primary philosophical work. In returning to these essays for this occasion, I experience a combination of familiarity and distance. I suppose that these feelings are common emotional embellishments of long-term memory. The feelings have particular substantive content as well as typical emotional coloring, however. The early papers in this volume were written during heady philosophical times. With regard to the work by Donnellan, Kripke, and Putnam on linguist- ic reference, there was a sense abroad in the philosophical community, which I shared, that something of long-term philosophical importance was occurring. This sense remains palpable and familiar. It has been confirmed with the passage of time. On the other hand, aspects of these developments now seem philosophically blinkered. The methodology of the time was to separate linguistic matters as sharply as possible from issues in the philosophy of mind and epistemology. There are scientific advantages in this procedure. It constitutes an idealization of the sort that often serves science and understanding well. A phenomenon is simplified, the better to study some of its basic features in as pure a form as possible. This methodology has, I think, yielded dividends, particularly in philosophy’s contribution as midwife to the birth and development of semantics in empirical linguistics. The methodology was, however, philosophically limiting. The roots of reference lie in mental capacities—in particular, in perception and in various x Preface mechanisms, especially memory and belief formation, that preserve perceptual reference. A serious philosophical limitation of the initial work on linguistic reference is that it was not coupled with comparably sophisticated reflection on mind. Perception, which clearly grounds the sorts of reference that drove the work on language, received little serious philosophical attention at all. Some of these limitations still weaken parts of philosophy of language, in my opin- ion, although, as noted, some parts of idealized, relatively “pure” approaches to philosophy of language have made steady, valuable contributions to knowledge through association with linguistics. A similar mix of identification and distance marks my attitude toward my philosophical contributions from the period immediately following the break- throughs on linguistic reference. Not surprisingly, the element of identification dominates. Seen at this distance, I think that my main contributions were, broadly, threefold. First, I developed philosophical issues about representation, including reference, in the domain in which I think they more fundamentally arise—the domain of mind. Second, I explained and systematically explored ways in which the natures of mental states constitutively depend on relations to an environment beyond the individual. Third, I extended (past the paradigms of demonstrative reference, proper names, and natural kind terms that had domin- ated the thinking about language) the types of representational phenomena that constitutively depend on relations to a broader environment. The sense that I was on to new, foundational directions in philosophy was vivid at the time of writing “Individualism and the Mental”. This sense remains vivid. On the other hand, there are passages in these early papers that show that I had not always adequately separated phenomena that are relevant to understanding language use from phenomena that are relevant to understanding mind. Some aspects of language serve communication rather than expression of thought. Some are relevant mainly to practical exigencies, and give only the most indirect clues to mental or even linguistic structures. I was aware of these general points, and made use of them. But I did not apply them as well as I might have. My improved understanding of these matters is marked in the postscripts. I was on sabbatical in Graz, Austria, during the Fall of 1977 and in London during the Winter and Spring of 1978. This was the period in which I conceived the ideas of “Other Bodies” and wrote “Individualism and the Mental”. The time in London was particularly stimulating. During the mornings, I worked. Afternoons, my wife Dorli and I got to know London. In the evenings, we attended concerts or the theater. Although I put fewer hours into philosophy than I sometimes do, I believe that I worked more efficiently than at any other time in my life. Inspiration from Rembrandt, Velasquez, Shakespeare, Mozart, Schubert, Wren, and Newton seemed to buoy my thinking. The joy of discovery was very intense during that period. Those two papers—and another on semantical paradox—developed toward birth in parallel with the pregnancy that led to our first son, Johannes. Preface xi After returning to California, I discussed final drafts of “Individualism and the Mental” in two long late-night sessions with Rogers Albritton. Albritton convinced me to make the arthritis example, which had been a secondary case, the lead example—suppressing an example about sofas to secondary status. (A variant of that sofa example eventually took center stage in “Intellectual Norms and Foundations of Mind”.) I remain grateful to Albritton, now deceased, for his searching criticism, for his perspective on the issues, for his charm in discussion, and especially for his encouragement. Many others helped in the gestation of the papers collected in this volume. I despair at recording my gratitude to most of these people individually, since most of the encounters are lost to memory.
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