The philosophy of mind is one of the fastest-growing areas in philosophy, not least because of its connections with related areas of psychology, linguistics and computation. This _Companion_ is an alphabetically arranged reference guide to the subject, firmly rooted in the philosophy of mind, but with a number of entries that survey adjacent fields of interest. The book is introduced by the editor's substantial _Essay on the Philosophy of Mind_ which serves as an overview of the subject, and is closely (...) referenced to the entries in the Companion. Among the entries themselves are several "self-profiles" by leading philosophers in the field, including Chomsky, Davidson, Dennett, Dretske, Fodor, Lewis, Searle and Stalnaker, in which their own positions within the subject are articulated. In some more complex areas, more than one author has been invited to write on the same topic, giving a polarity of viewpoints within the book's overall coverage. All main entries have a full bibliography, and the book is indexed to the high standards set by other volumes in the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series. (shrink)

Book synopsis: The philosophy of mind is one of the fastest-growing areas in philosophy, not least because of its connections with related areas of psychology, linguistics and computation. This Companion is an alphabetically arranged reference guide to the subject, firmly rooted in the philosophy of mind, but with a number of entries that survey adjacent fields of interest. The book is introduced by the editor's substantial Essay on the Philosophy of Mind which serves as an overview of the subject, and (...) is closely referenced to the entries in the Companion. Among the entries themselves are several ""self-profiles"" by leading philosophers in the field, including Chomsky, Davidson, Dennett, Dretske, Fodor, Lewis, Searle and Stalnaker, in which their own positions within the subject are articulated. In some more complex areas, more than one author has been invited to write on the same topic, giving a polarity of viewpoints within the book's overall coverage. (shrink)

Objects of Metaphor puts forward a philosophical account of metaphor radically different from those currently on offer. Powerful and flexible enough to cope with the syntactic complexity typical of genuine metaphor, it offers novel conceptions of the relationship between simile and metaphor, the notion of dead metaphor, and the idea of metaphor as a robust theoretic kind. Without denying that metaphor can sometimes be merely ornamental, Guttenplan justifies the view of metaphor as fundamental to language and the study of language. (...) His book will be of great interest not only to philosophers in this field, but also to those working across psychology and linguistics. (shrink)

Samuel Guttenplan; V*—Moral Realism and Moral Dilemmas, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 80, Issue 1, 1 June 1980, Pages 61–80, https://doi.org/1.

The notion of semantic descent made familiar by Quine is extended to a movement from the first-floor level of language use to the level of objects that language typically describes; descent here is to a basement level. The idea of such a descent is combined with the idea of qualification to produce what is called the ‘Semantic Descent’ account of metaphor. According to this account, metaphor first requires semantic descent to a level of non-linguistic objects, and these objects then fulfill (...) the predicative function described as qualification. The account is presented in a relatively minimalist way, to show how it copes with the features of metaphor discussed in Chapter 1, as well as provide a clear view of the obvious objections that might be raised against it. The latter centrally includes the fear that the use of objects as qualifiers might be too indeterminate. This is countered with a discussion of a notion called ‘attunement’. (shrink)

_Mind's Landscape_ is an engaging introduction to the philosophical study of mind and an elegantly persuasive account of how best to understand the nature of mental phenomena. It serves as both a text and as a contribution to the philosophy of mind. Its engaging narrative style will appeal to students, instructors, and general readers alike.

With the same intellectual goals as the first edition, this innovative introductory logic textbook explores the relationship between natural language and logic, motivating the student to acquire skills and techniques of formal logic. This new and revised edition includes substantial additions which make the text even more useful to students and instructors alike. Central to these changes is an Appendix, 'How to Learn Logic', which takes the student through fourteen compact and sharply directed lessons with exercises and answers.

Virtually all discussions of the propositional attitudes center around belief. I suggest that, when one takes a broad look at the kinds of constraint which affect our attributions of attitude, this is a mistake. Not only is belief not properly representative of the propositional attitudes generally, but, more seriously, taking it to be representative can be positively distorting. In this paper I offer reasons why we should give knowledge a more central role in discussions of the propositional attitudes and suggest (...) that its almost complete neglect in current philosophy of mind is unjustified. In essence, I argue that we should consider knowledge to be the central attitude and think of belief as a later and special development of the attitude scheme. In place of the usual explanation of knowledge as belief plus something, we should think of belief as knowledge minus something. The final sections choose Kripke's puzzle about belief as an example of where the conventional wisdom leads us astray. (shrink)

This introductory text encourages students to engage with key problems and arguments in ethics through a series of classic and contemporary readings. The text will inspire students to think about the distinctive nature of moral philosophy, and to draw comparisons between different traditions of thought, between ancient and modern philosophies, and between theoretical and literary writing about the place of value in human life. Each of the book's six chapters focuses on a particular theme: the nature of goodness, subjectivity and (...) objectivity in ethical thinking, justice and virtue, moral motivation, the place of moral obligation, and the idea that literature can be a form of moral philosophy. Each chapter features two or three key readings, drawn from texts as diverse as Plato's Republic, J. S. Mill's Utilitarianism, Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and Rawls' A Theory of Justice. The readings are all accompanied by interactive commentary from the editors. (shrink)

Three recent and important accounts of metaphor are discussed in detail. These are: Stern’s Demonstrative account, White’s Conflated Sentence account, and Fogelin’s Simile account. What is right and wrong with these accounts can best be understood from the perspective of the Semantic Descent account, and the materials in this chapter provide some indirect further support for this account.

This chapter has three aims: to offer a comprehensive and transparent tripartite classification of philosophical accounts of metaphor; to consider three truths about metaphor which cannot be jointly accommodated by familiar accounts in this classification, for example, those of Black, Searle and Davidson; to carve out a space for a further account which fits the classificatory scheme but which does accommodate these features of metaphor. The truths concern: the aptness of metaphor for assertion and truth, the inappropriateness of paraphrase of (...) metaphor, and what is called the transparency of the understanding of metaphor. There is a brief description of the view offered in subsequent chapters, suggesting that it fills a void left by other accounts. (shrink)

The Semantic Descent account is extended to realistically complex examples, both in terms of syntactic complexity and vividness. A detailed treatment of a wide range of examples is followed by discussions of phenomena such as dead metaphor, simile, metonymy, synecdoche, mixed and extended metaphor, as well as observations about the relationship between synaesthesia and metaphor, the robustness of metaphor as a theoretical kind, the so-called ‘cognitive’ account of metaphor and visual metaphor.

Eliminativists believe there to be something fundamentally mistaken about the common‐sense (sometimes called ‘folk psychological’) conception of the mind, and they suggest that the way forward is to drop part or all of this conception in favour of one which does not use notions such as belief, experience, sensation and the like. The rationale for this suggestion is, in the main, because these notions are fraught with conceptual difficulties as well as being recalcitrant to any REDUCTION to natural science. Since (...) the conception with which they propose to replace the common‐sense conception is invariably physicalist or materialist, one finds eliminativism also called ‘eliminative materialism’. (see connectionism; dennett; An Essay on Mind section 3.7; folk psychology; lewis; supervenience.). (shrink)

Descartes (1596–1650) insisted that the mind was as a special kind of substance, one which contrasts sharply with material substance (see history). Hence, the label ‘Cartesian’ tends to be applied to any view that is DUALIST in thinking of the mind as fundamentally different from matter. Accompanying this Cartesian dualism of substances is a dualism of ways of knowing about minds and about matter. The Cartesian conception has it that we have access to the contents of our own minds in (...) a way denied us in respect of matter. That is, we can know what we think, feel and want, and know this with a special kind of certainty that contrasts with our knowledge of the physical world. Indeed, Descartes thought that we could be mistaken about even the existence of our own bodies, whilst we could not be in error about what passes in our minds. (shrink)

This introductory chapter provides a brief discussion on what a philosophical account of metaphor should aim for, as well as a characterization of the goals and strategy in providing yet another such account.

ISSUES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE edited by Alfred M. MacKay and Daniel D. Merrill. (Oberlin Colloquium, 1972.) Yale U.P., 1976. xiv+161 pp. £7.50.TRUTH AND MEANING: Essays in Semantics, edited by Gareth Evans and John McDowell. Clarendon Press: O.U.P., 1976. xxiii+420 pp. £11.50.

The central idea of the Semantic Descent account, namely qualification, can be used in a substantial way to clarify the debates about the relationship between thought and language, both within philosophy and psychology. Some remarks by Henle on how this notion has been just below the surface in writings about metaphor are highlighted. Brief suggestions are made about how it bears on debates about thought and language.

Virtually all currently discussed accounts advert to a shift or replacement of a property or properties in describing what happens to the ordinary words in metaphors. And the mechanism of this shift tends to involve an overt or sometimes hidden appeal to similarity, or to some notion that is essentially connected to it. In the first part of the paper, I argue that this route is a dead end, and in the second part I offer my own preferred alternative. That (...) alternative is not argued for, or developed in detail – that is done in my book Objects of Metaphor – but my main aim in the paper is simply showing how radically it differs from the property route. (shrink)

Beginning with Nelson Goodman’s notion of exemplification, the possibility of using non-word objects to fulfil the predicative function ordinarily accomplished by words and expressions in language is described. It is shown that there are in fact many kinds of cases in which this function called ‘qualification’ does figure, albeit unnoticed, in dealings with objects. This notion of qualification is intended to be correlative with, and of the same generality as, reference, and with reference it enables a better understanding of the (...) primitive structure that Quine and Strawson call the ‘basic combination’. Aside from its importance to philosophical logic, qualification serves as one of the main ingredients in the account of metaphor. (shrink)

Ontology is the branch of metaphysics centrally concerned with determining what there is. (The name comes from the present participle of the Greek verb corresponding to the English verb ‘to be’.) Thus, if one asks whether there are numbers and other abstract objects, or whether there are PROPERTIES, one is asking ontological questions. Given the fundamental nature of these questions, ontology plays a part in virtually all areas of philosophical investigation, but it has a specific importance to certain debates within (...) the philosophy of mind. For example, suppose one agrees that, besides particular things such as books and tables, there are also properties of these things (such as being made of wood or paper) and relations among them (such as the book's lying on the table). Allowing properties and relations the same sort of reality or existence as particular things is by no means uncontroversial. Many philosophers think that one should keep one's ontological commitments to the minimum, and these philosophers – known as ‘nominalists’‐ would count only particular physical objects as ontologically suitable. But even if you are willing to accept properties and relations into your ontology, it is still a further question whether you would count, e.g. beliefs as properties of persons and/or as relations between persons and belief contents. This sort of question about belief is ontological, and such questions figure widely in most areas of philosophy of mind. Discussions of consciousness and action are often cast as debates about the ontological status of such things as pains, sensations of colour, qualia and particular instances of action. (See An Essay on Mind section 2.1; DENNETT; FODOR; LEWIS.). (shrink)

Though not meant as a practical procedure, it can help our thinking about language and the mind if we ask what would be involved in interpreting someone's words and actions. Moreover, if we imagine ourselves beginning this interpretative process without any prior knowledge of what the person means by her words or what propositional attitudes she has, then we are engaged in what is called ‘radical interpretation’, quine originally discussed the idea of radical translation in respect of another's language and (...) Davidson, generalizing on this so that interpretation and not merely translation is at issue, has made this notion central to his account of the mind. (See also rationality.). (shrink)

This flexible introductory textbook explores several key themes in philosophy, and helps the reader learn to engage with the key arguments by introducing and analysing a selection of classic readings. Fully integrated introductory text with readings for beginning students of philosophy. Each chapter focusses on a core philosophical topic, and contains an introduction to the topic, 2 classic readings and interactive commentaries on the readings. An introductory book which doesn't merely _tell_ the reader about the subject, but requires them to (...) engage philosophically with the text. A pedagogical resource developed in the classroom by the authors at the University of London. (shrink)

Derived from the Greek word ‘telos’ meaning purpose or goal, ‘teleology’, as it is most often used in the philosophy of mind, is thought of as the study of the purposes, goals or, more broadly, biological functions of various elements of the mental realm. For example, it has been suggested that we can better understand the propositional attitudes when we have discerned their evolutionary function. It has even been suggested that one can begin to understand specific propositional attitude contents in (...) this way. (see content.). (shrink)

"With the same intellectual goals as the first edition, this innovative introductory logic textbook explores the relationship between natural language and logic, motivating the student to acquire skills and techniques of formal logic. This new and revised edition includes substantial additions which make the text even more useful to students and instructors alike. Central to these changes is an Appendix, 'How to Learn Logic', which takes the student through fourteen compact and sharply directed lessons with exercises and answers"--Google books viewed (...) Feb. 19, 2021. (shrink)

In the first section of the paper, I set out a tripartite scheme for classifying philosophical accounts of metaphor. In the second and longest section, I explore a major difficulty for certain of these accounts, namely the need to explain what I describe as the 'transparency' of metaphor. In the third section, I describe two accounts which can overcome the difficulty. The first is loosely based on Davidson's treatment of metaphor, and, finding this to be inadequate for reasons having nothing (...) to do with transparency, it will be used solely to show the way. The second is my own, and, without attempting to defend it at length, I will content myself with suggesting how it can cope with the difficulty discussed in this paper in a way which mimics the Davidsonian proposal. Finally, in the fourth section, I shall briefly mention several considerations independent of transparency for adopting my account. (shrink)

In the article, I set out to outline the state of play in contemporary philosophy of mind. Given the wide range of issues and contributions which now make up the subject, the article sketches only some of the main areas of investigation, and their interconnections without attempting to give a complete listing of the positions (and arguments for them) within these areas.

The notion of weakness of will or ‘akrasia’(to use its Greek name) figures importantly in moral philosophy. Agents are said to be weak‐willed when they have reached conclusions about their moral duties, but then fail to act on these conclusions. Since it is often difficult to be moral – to live up to one's moral principles – there would seem to be nothing particularly surprising or troubling about this notion, and certainly nothing especially pressing for the philosophy of mind. But (...) this appearance is wrong on both counts. (shrink)