We undergo a traumatic experience, such as a life-threatening accident or a brutal attack. We survive a period of relentless stress, perhaps because we are in a war zone and witness or commit atrocities. Raised by parents who are alcoholic or mentally ill, we endure traumatic experiences on a daily basis. Or, we are ignored, neglected, or treated as playthings by narcissistic parents, who themselves were ignored and neglected, and on and on through generations. To survive these experiences, perhaps we (...) dissociate. This can take various forms. In the extreme form, we remove ourselves, psychically speaking, from the situation, perhaps by adopting the role... (shrink)

[David Papineau] This paper disputes the common assumption that the normativity of conceptual judgement poses a problem for naturalism. My overall strategy is to argue that norms of judgement derive from moral or personal values, particularly when such values are attached to the end of truth. While there are philosophical problems associated with both moral and personal values, they are not special to the realm of judgement, nor peculiar to naturalist philosophies. This approach to the normativity of judgement is made (...) possible by naturalist views of truth, that is, views which do not presuppose normativity in explaining truth. /// [Julia Tanney] This paper attempts to describe why it is not possible to account for normative phenomena in non-normative terms. It argues that Papineau's attempt to locate norms of judgement 'outside' content, grounded in an individual's desires or reasons, mislocates the normativity that is thought to resist appropriation within a 'world that conceives nature as the realm of law'. It agrees, however, that a theory of content that locates norms 'inside' content will not be forthcoming-at least if this is to require fashioning the norms that in some sense govern judgment or thought into individually necessary conditions for contentful states. (shrink)

[David Papineau] This paper disputes the common assumption that the normativity of conceptual judgement poses a problem for naturalism. My overall strategy is to argue that norms of judgement derive from moral or personal values, particularly when such values are attached to the end of truth. While there are philosophical problems associated with both moral and personal values, they are not special to the realm of judgement, nor peculiar to naturalist philosophies. This approach to the normativity of judgement is made (...) possible by naturalist views of truth, that is, views which do not presuppose normativity in explaining truth. /// [Julia Tanney] This paper attempts to describe why it is not possible to account for normative phenomena in non-normative terms. It argues that Papineau's attempt to locate norms of judgement 'outside' content, grounded in an individual's desires or reasons, mislocates the normativity that is thought to resist appropriation within a 'world that conceives nature as the realm of law'. It agrees, however, that a theory of content that locates norms 'inside' content will not be forthcoming-at least if this is to require fashioning the norms that in some sense govern judgment or thought into individually necessary conditions for contentful states. (shrink)

[David Papineau] This paper disputes the common assumption that the normativity of conceptual judgement poses a problem for naturalism. My overall strategy is to argue that norms of judgement derive from moral or personal values, particularly when such values are attached to the end of truth. While there are philosophical problems associated with both moral and personal values, they are not special to the realm of judgement, nor peculiar to naturalist philosophies. This approach to the normativity of judgement is made (...) possible by naturalist views of truth, that is, views which do not presuppose normativity in explaining truth. /// [Julia Tanney] This paper attempts to describe why it is not possible to account for normative phenomena in non-normative terms. It argues that Papineau's attempt to locate norms of judgement 'outside' content, grounded in an individual's desires or reasons, mislocates the normativity that is thought to resist appropriation within a 'world that conceives nature as the realm of law'. It agrees, however, that a theory of content that locates norms 'inside' content will not be forthcoming-at least if this is to require fashioning the norms that in some sense govern judgment or thought into individually necessary conditions for contentful states. (shrink)

Tanney challenges not only the cognitivist approach that has dominated philosophy and the special sciences for fifty years, but metaphysical-empirical approaches to the mind in general. Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge advocates a return to the world-involving, circumstance-dependent, normative practices where the rational mind has its home.

[David Papineau] This paper disputes the common assumption that the normativity of conceptual judgement poses a problem for naturalism. My overall strategy is to argue that norms of judgement derive from moral or personal values, particularly when such values are attached to the end of truth. While there are philosophical problems associated with both moral and personal values, they are not special to the realm of judgement, nor peculiar to naturalist philosophies. This approach to the normativity of judgement is made (...) possible by naturalist views of truth, that is, views which do not presuppose normativity in explaining truth. /// [Julia Tanney] This paper attempts to describe why it is not possible to account for normative phenomena in non-normative terms. It argues that Papineau's attempt to locate norms of judgement 'outside' content, grounded in an individual's desires or reasons, mislocates the normativity that is thought to resist appropriation within a 'world that conceives nature as the realm of law'. It agrees, however, that a theory of content that locates norms 'inside' content will not be forthcoming-at least if this is to require fashioning the norms that in some sense govern judgment or thought into individually necessary conditions for contentful states. (shrink)

In the introduction to the special volume, Gilbert Ryle: Intelligence, Practice and Skill, Julia Tanney introduces the contributions of Michael Kremer, Stina Bäckström and Martin Gustafsson, and Will Small, each of which indicates concern about the appropriation of Ryle’s distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that in seminal work in contemporary epistemology. Expressing agreement with the authors that something has gone awry in these borrowings from Ryle, Tanney takes this criticism to a deeper level. She argues that the very (...) notion of content-bearing, causally-efficacious mental states, let alone representational states of knowledge-that or knowledge-how, embodies the very presuppositions that Ryle calls into question in his rejection of classical theories of meaning and his related warning of the type-errors involved in conflating rational and mechanistic explanation. That these mental posits are presupposed, unchallenged, in today’s debates make his arguments against intellectualism particularly difficult to discern. (shrink)

This paper considers Davidson's (1963) arguments for construing reasons as causes and attempts to show that he has failed to provide positive reasons for introducing causation into his analysis of rationalizing explanation. I consider various ways of spelling out his intuition that something is missing from explanation if we consider only the justificatory relation between reasons and action, and I argue that to the extent that there is anything missing, it should not be provided by construing reasons as causes. What (...) is ostensibly missing, and what I think Davidson is after, is some kind of determinate relation between explanans and explanandum. I argue that this is too strong a requirement to place on rationalizing explanation. (shrink)

forthcoming in New Essays on the Explanation of Action Abstract Philosophers influenced by Wittgenstein rejected the idea that the explanatory power of our ordinary interpretive practices is to be found in law-governed, causal relations between items to which our everyday mental terms allegedly refer. Wittgenstein and those he inspired pointed to differences between the explanations provided by the ordinary employment of mental expressions and the style of causal explanation characteristic of the hard sciences. I believe, however, that the particular non-causalism (...) espoused by the Wittgensteinians is today ill- understood. The position does not, for example, find its place on a map that charts the territory disputed by mental realists and their irrealist opponents. In this paper, I take a few steps toward reintroducing this ill-understood position by sketching my own understanding of it and explaining why it fits so uncomfortably within the contemporary metaphysical landscape. (shrink)

Although Gilbert Ryle published on a wide range of topics in philosophy (notably in the history of philosophy and in philosophy of language), including a series of lectures centred on philosophical dilemmas, a series of articles on the concept of thinking, and a book on Plato, The Concept of Mind remains his best known and most important work. Through this work, Ryle is thought to have accomplished two major tasks. First, he was seen to have put the final nail in (...) the coffin of Cartesian dualism. Second, as he himself anticipated, he is thought to have argued on behalf of, and suggested as dualism's replacement, the doctrine known as philosophical (and sometimes analytical) behaviourism. Sometimes known as an “ordinary language”, sometimes as an “analytic” philosopher, Ryle—even when mentioned in the same breath as Wittgenstein and his followers—is considered to be on a different, somewhat idiosyncratic (and difficult to characterise), philosophical track. (shrink)

i> This paper takes a close look at the kinds of considerations we use to reach agreement in our ordinary (non-philosophical and non- theoretical) judgments about a person.

This paper considers insoluble difficulties for the supposition that intentions, “acts of will”, and reasons for acting, construed as mental events, could be the special ingredient that would render bodily movements into voluntary or intentional actions. Yet, the distinction between mere bodily movements and actions is often made by introducing intentions, acts of will, and reasons for acting. How is this to be reconciled? Criticising the tendency to view the “thick descriptions” of everyday discourse through a metaphysical scheme that relies (...) on the topic-neutral lens of an extensional calculus, the paper proposes a different solution that rejects the original supposition that a mental cause of some sort is required to accommodate the differences. (shrink)

In this paper 1 argue that it would be unprincipled to withhold mental predicates from our behavioural duplicates however unlike us they are “on the inside.” My arguments are unusual insofar as they rely neither on an implicit commitment to logical behaviourism in any of its various forms nor to a verificationist theory of meaning. Nor do they depend upon prior metaphysical commitments or to philosophical “intuitions”. Rather, in assembling reminders about how the application of our consciousness and propositional attitude (...) concepts are ordinarily defended, 1 argue on explanatory and moral grounds that they cannot be legitimately withheld from creatures who behave, and who would continue to behave, like us. I urge that we should therefore reject the invitation to revise the application of these concepts in the ways that would be required by recent proposals in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is something deeply wrong with the attempt to give rule-following explanations of broadly rational activities. It thus supports the view that rational norms are part of the ”bedrock’ and it challenges the widespread strategy of attempting to explain an individual’s rational or linguistic abilities by attributing to her knowledge of a theory of some kind. The theorist who would attempt to attribute knowledge of norms to an individual in order to explain her ability to act (...) rationally is presented with a dilemma: either she is committed to a explanatory regress or she destroys the normative nature of these rational practices or activities, thus making it pointless to attribute knowledge of the norms to an individual who participates in these practices. The appeal to tacit or implicit knowledge does not help in avoiding the basic dilemma. (shrink)

How are we to account for the authority granted to first-person reports of mental states? What accounts for the immediacy of these self-ascriptions; the fact that they can be ascribed without appeal to evidence and without the need for justification? A traditional, Cartesian conception of the mind, which says that our thoughts are presented to us directly, completely, and without distortion upon mere internal inspection, would account for these facts, but there is good reason to doubt the cogency of the (...) Cartesian view. Wittgenstein, in his later writings, offered some of the most potent considerations against the traditional view, and contemporary philosophy of mind is practically unanimous in rejecting some of the metaphysical aspects of Cartesianism. But anyone who repudiates Cartesianism shoulders the burden of finding another way to accommodate its apparent epistemological strengths. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that it would be unprincipled to withhold mental predicates from our behavioural duplicates however unlike us they are "on the inside." My arguments are unusual insofar as they rely neither on an implicit commitment to logical behaviourism in any of its various forms nor to a verificationist theory of meaning. Nor do they depend upon prior metaphysical commitments or to philosophical "intuitions". Rather, in assembling reminders about how the application of our consciousness and propositional attitude (...) concepts are ordinarily defended, I argue on explanatory and moral grounds that they cannot be legitimately withheld from creatures who behave, and who would continue to behave, like us. I urge that we should therefore reject the invitation to revise the application of these concepts in the ways that would be required by recent proposals in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

He tried to look into her face, to find out what she thought, but she was smelling the lilac and the lilies of the valley and did not know herself what she was thinking—what she ought to say or do.OblomovMuch of modern and contemporary philosophy of mind in the ‘analytic’ tradition has presupposed, since Descartes, what might be called a realist view about the mind and the mental. According to this view there are independently existing, determinate items that are the (...) truth-conferrers of our ascriptions of mental predicates. The view is also a cognitivist one insofar as it holds that when we correctly ascribe such a predicate to an individual the correctness consists in the discovery of a determinate fact of the matter about the state the individual is in—a state which is somehow cognized by the ascriber. Disputes have arisen about the nature of the truth-conferrers and about the status and the nature of the individual's own authority about the state he is in. A dissenting position in philosophy of mind would have to be handled carefully. It would, most importantly, need to allow for the objectivity of ascriptions of mental predicates at least insofar as it made sense to reject some and accept others on appropriate grounds. Perhaps such a position in the philosophy of mind can be likened in at least one way to what David Wiggins has characterized as a doctrine of ‘cognitive underdetermination’ about moral or practical judgments. (shrink)

This paper considers Davidson's (1963) arguments for construing reasons as causes and attempts to show that he has failed to provide positive reasons for introducing causation into his analysis of rationalizing explanation. I consider various ways of spelling out his intuition that something is missing from explanation if we consider only the justificatory relation between reasons and action, and I argue that to the extent that there is anything missing, it should not be provided by construing reasons as causes. What (...) is ostensibly missing, and what I think Davidson is after, is some kind of determinate relation between explanans and explanandum. I argue that this is too strong a requirement to place on rationalizing explanation. (shrink)

Wright is correct in surmising that Wittgenstein's refusal to be drawn into the metaphysical and epistemological questions that his own discussion of rules allegedly raises results from his rejection of the assumptions that pit the Platonist against the communitarian. This paper shows why the entire idea (which continues to dazzle philosophers)—that in speaking a language or in engaging in other normative practices we are operating a calculus according to strict rules—has to be rejected. It results, in part, from the conflation (...) of different understandings of 'knowing the rules': one in which rules can be 'read off' from the practice by a theorist and those in which expressions of rules are consulted within the course of the practice. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind was published over 50 years ago to wide acclaim, but his legacy has been tempered because of important misconceptions, including a) that contemporary philosophy has sufficiently absorbed what is valuable about his contribution; b) that he is responsible for propounding a version of philosophical behaviourism; and c) that Ryle travels down a substantially different philosophical track from that of Wittgenstein. This critical introduction sets out to overturn these misconceptions. It is extremely rare for a (...) UK-based philosopher to be invited to produce a critical introduction for a book published (in French) in France. The French publication has led to a) an invitation to produce an entry for Ryle for Stanford’s (on-line) Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, b) an AHRC research leave award to turn the introduction into a (English) book; an invitation to give lectures on the book at the Université de Picardie. The English version of the critical has received warm praise from a number of philosophers, including Cora Diamond. (shrink)

Reviews the book 'The Mechanical Mind - A Philosophical Introduction to Minds, Machines and Mental Representation,' by Tim Cranes.

1. Much of modern and contemporary philosophy of mind in the ‘analytic’ tradition has presupposed, since Descartes, what might be called a realist view about the mind and the mental. According to this view there are independently existing, determinate items (states, events, dispositions or relations) that are the truth-conferrers of our ascriptions of mental predicates.[1] The view is also a cognitivist one insofar as it holds that when we correctly ascribe such a predicate to an individual the correctness consists in (...) the discovery of a determinate fact of the matter about the state the individual is in ( a state which is somehow cognized by the ascriber. Disputes have arisen about the nature of the truth-conferrers (e.g., whether they are physical or not) and about the status and the nature of the individual’s own authority about the state he is in. A dissenting position in philosophy of mind would have to be handled carefully. It would, most importantly, need to allow for the objectivity of ascriptions of mental predicates at least insofar as it made sense to reject some and accept others on appropriate grounds. Perhaps such a position in the philosophy of mind can be likened in at least one way to what David Wiggins has characterised as a doctrine of ‘cognitive underdetermination’ about moral or practical judgments.[2] In comparing his position of cognitive underdetermination about moral or practical judgments to some things Wittgenstein has said about the philosophy of mathematics, Wiggins suggests that, ‘In the assertibility (or truth) of mathematical statements we see what perhaps we can never see in the assertibility of empirical (such as geographical or historical) statements: the compossibility of objectivity, discovery, and invention.’[3]. (shrink)

The more empirical, ‘naturalistic’ turn in the approach of many contemporary philosophers, their search for ‘theories’ and their appeal to general ‘theoretical’ considerations apparently continuous with natural science...puts [contemporary] philosophy...farther from the spirit as well as the letter of Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophical problems. He thought that ‘philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads (...) the philosopher into complete darkness.’1 A report on the main activity in the philosophy of mind in the period since [the mid-sixties when Wittgensteinian influences could still be discerned] would therefore be a report of activity within what Wittgenstein would regard as ‘darkness’; it would not be a report of developments and extensions of his own ideas during that period. (1983, 320). (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Normativity of Action Concepts The Difficulties A Diagnosis of the Error Conceptual Cartography References: primary sources Further reading.

Almost a half century after the publication of the Philosophical Investigations, it seems important to ask why Wittgenstein"s ideas have had so little impact on contemporary discussions in the philosophy of mind. A clue can be discerned by what Georges Rey says in the introduction to his book on contemporary philosophy of mind. Rey announces at the outset to his readers that his treatment of the mind aspires to be continuous with science, not with literature. He explains that there is (...) a recent resurgence of interest in the philosophy of mind with "explanatory questions� about what sort of thing a pain, a thought, a mental image, a desire, or an emotion is. Neither materialism nor dualism provides a "serious� theory about the mind, which will give us a "serious� explanation of mental phenomena. According to Rey, although old-style grammatical investigations may have given us a "heightened sensitivity to complexities and nuances of our ordinary mental talk,� they "tended to occur at the expense of further theorizing about the mental phenomena themselves� (Rey, 4). (shrink)

This essay argues that the logical significance of most natural language expressions is indefinitely elastic. This, it is argued, undermines the idea that the meaning of a word is an item for which it stands, and puts pressure on the methods of conceptual analysis and theoretical elucidation that require context-invariant stable application conditions. Furthermore, it is argued that the insistence that such semantic content is needed which—impervious to local pragmatic concerns—remains stable and available for reasoning, gets things back to front. (...) For in order to determine the correct inflection of any given use of an expression, its inferential relations—in the context of an utterance—must already be discerned. The lack of contextually independent content, however, presents no mystery about language use. For the ability to understand what is said is explained not only by shared practices and common interests, but also by the capacity for interlocutors to ask questions and explain what they mean. (shrink)

This paper considers Dan Sperber’s arguments that a more scientific, ‘natural’, approach to anthropology might be pursued by abstracting from interpretive questions as much as possible, and replacing them with questions amenable to a cognitive psychological investigation. It attempts to show that Sperber’s main argument rests on controversial assumptions about the nature of the mental states that are ascribed within our commonsense psychological practices and that any theoretical psychology that accepts these assumptions will be revisionist concerning mental concepts. Sperber is (...) right to point out that there must be constraints on what should count as appropriate interpretations of cultural phenomena. It is argued however, that in hoping to assimilate anthropological investigations to scientific ones, Sperber misconstrues the nature of anthropological claims. (shrink)

Zombies are presently generating much discussion in the philosophy of mind and consciousness studies.2 For if a creature could be physically, functionally and behaviourally indistinguishable from humans (in the rich sense implied) yet lack conscious experience, then the theories of mind that tie the nature of the mental too closely to physical, functional, or behavioural conditions will seem to have left something crucially mental out of their theories. If having conscious experiences is necessary for being conscious – as these discussions (...) assume – then the theories that cannot accommodate it will fail as theories of mind. (shrink)

The notion of the author’s intention is logically tied to the interpretation we give to her work as the notion of the agent’s intention is logically tied to the interpretation we give to her action. When we find a discrepancy between what the author or agent says and the meaning we find in her work or the sense we make of what she does, this does not show that the intention is irrelevant in determining this meaning or sense. As Frank (...) Cioffi has argued, we are rather favouring one criterion of intention over another. Taking a close look at the early criticism surrounding The Turn of the Screw I draw attention to this phenomenon—much discussed by Wittgenstein—of favouring one criterion of intention over another. Because Wittgenstein’s views, though mentioned frequently, are still ill-understood, I go on to tease out the philosophical assumptions that lurk in the background of disputes about the relevance of intention for interpretation. (shrink)