In a new paper by Andrea Scarantino and me, we outline the relations between cognition and (different notions of) computation and information processing, as well as the relations between the different notions of computation and information processing. To my knowledge, this has not been done before (except in an earlier, less sophisticated …
Jerry Fodor, LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited. Oxford, OUP, 2008. Some quick observations on Fodor’s new book: 1. As usual, a great book: ambitious, provocative, full of ideas and arguments, and as a bonus, funny (for those who like his humor). 2. He is still a computationalist, language-of-thought …
C.B. Martin, The Mind in Nature, OUP, 2007. C.B. Martin died on October 23, 2008, barely a year after his magnum opus came out. As Paul Snowdown writes in his obituary, Martin was one of the most “original, profound and important” philosophers of our time (hat tip Leiter Reports). Yet for a …
Over at Brainhammer, Pete Mandik set out the following problems for info-semantics: If it’s determinate specifications you are worried about, it’s worth keeping in mind that causal/informational stories haven’t been without their own problems. Regarding specificity, there are all sorts of problems concerning where in the causal chain to locate …
Consider the following argument: 1. Eve’s believing that p is realized by having a token of p in her head. 2. Having a token of p in one’s head is realized by some detailed, neural state. So, 3. Eve’s believing that p is realized by some detailed neural state. …
On my long, long list of “Things I Don’t Really Have Time to Think About But Wish I Did” is the following simple question: Does dualism make a difference to one’s overall view of the mind? Since some might assume that the obvious answer to the question is an obvious …
Which, if any, semantic properties would the utterances of a community of language users have, even if we assumed that the language users had no internal semantic states? My answer will come in multiple posts. Note that by ‘semantic properties’ I mean things like reference, truth, aboutness, and usability-in-an-inference. I will ultimately argue, with a couple of caveats, that their expressions would have a full suite of semantic properties.
In this, the first post in the series, I summarize, defend, and clarify the Standard View of the relationship between the semantic properties of internal states and public linguistic expressions. I’d be interested in comments, as these are ideas I’m slowly developing, and injections of criticism at this early juncture would be most welcome.
