Showing papers in "Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume in 1988"

Folk Psychology and the Explanation of Human Behaviour

Abstract: Folk psychology, insist some, is just like folk mechanics, folk thermodynamics, folk meteorology, folk chemistry, and folk biology. It is a framework of concepts, roughly adequate to the demands of everyday life, with which the humble adept comprehends, explains, predicts, and manipulates a certain domain of phenomena. It is, in short, a folk theory. As with any theory, it may be evaluated for its virtues or vices in all of the dimensions listed. And as with any theory, it may be rejected in its entirety if it fails the measure of such evaluation. Call this the theoretical view of our self understanding. Folk psychology, insist others, is radically unlike the examples cited. It does not consist of laws. It does not support causal explanations. It does not evolve over time. Its central purpose is normative rather than descriptive. And thus it is not the sort of framework that might be shown to be radically defective by sheerly empirical findings. Its assimilation to theories is just a mistake. It has nothing to fear, therefore, from advances in cognitive theory or the neurosciences. Call this the anti-theoretical view of our self understanding. Somebody here is deeply mistaken. The first burden of this paper is to argue that it is the anti-theoretical view that harbors most, though not all, of those mistakes. In the thirty years since the theoretical view was introduced (see esp. Sellars 1956, Feyerabend 1963, Rorty 1965, Churchland 1970, 1979, 1981), a variety of objections have been levelled against it. The more interesting of those will be addressed shortly. My current view is that these objections motivate no changes whatever in the theoretical view.

Understanding the Logic of Obligation

Abstract: This paper is about two examples, and about what these two examples tell us about the famous deontic principle: 'O(A & B) D O(A)'. I will start by describing the first example and explaining the difficulty that it presents to philosophical theorizing about obligation. I will then use the second example to motivate a certain treatment of the difficulty presented by the first example. I will conclude by applying the treatment to the question of what to say about the famous principle.

Phenomenology, Solipsism and Egocentric Thought

Abstract: I want to try to connect some central themes from the writings of the phenomenologists with recent discussions of the content of thought. The common use of terms such as 'intentionality' suggests that there ought to be connections here: but because the works I shall be discussing belong to different philosophical traditions, it is often not easy to make them. Nonetheless, it is worth making the effort, if only to fight against the sterilising tendency which embalms the writings of the phenomenologists in the category of 'Continental Philosophy' and then withdraws ordinary standards of critical assessment from them.

History of philosophy: the analytical ideal

Abstract: It is sometimes said that the approach of analytical philosophers to the history of philosophy lacks sufficient self-consciousness.' In practice, a healthy variety of methods is displayed, often employed with great sophistication. Yet there is a particular methodological story that analytical philosophers, if provoked, do sometimes tell themselves, a set of assumptions about the history of philosophy as an activity, which collectively form what I shall call the 'Analytical Ideal', and which I shall argue to be highly questionable. An ideal is a particular kind of normative conception. It says that a type of activity would always be best carried out under such-and-such rules, however in fact tokens of it diverge from those rules. What I shall contend is that the Analytical Ideal has been, but should not be, a normative conception of this kind for the activity-type 'studying the history of philosophy'. My argument is not designed to repudiate every piece of discourse which conforms in some degree with the Ideal, nor even every work produced with the intention of conforming to it. If an ideal comes to be rejected, we are not thereby constrained to judge as bad all actions done in its name, or appropriated for its name by its sometime advocates. Indeed, our practices may not alter radically on rejecting an ideal-but that is not a reason to keep it. Let me then state as succinctly as possible the Analytical Ideal which I shall be discussing:

What Is Freud's Metapsychology?

Abstract: As believers have sometimes felt it necessary to try to'save Christ from the Christians'-that is, from Christians other than themselves-as a critical admirer of Freud's, I wish to try to save at least some of Freud from the Freudians. The part of Freud's work I propose to rescue is extremely unpopular both with contemporary Freudians and with historians of psychoanalysis. The definition of 'metapsychology' provided by The Language of Psychoanalysis gives ample hints about why the doctrine has so few friends: