Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter One: Atheistic Arguments from Improvability Chapter Two: Rational Choice and No Best World Chapter Three: On Evil's Vague Necessity Chapter Four: The Problem of No Maximum Evil Chapter Five: On the Logic of Imperfection Chapter Six: Supervenience, Divine Freedom and Absolute Orderings Chapter Seven: Vague Eschatology Chapter Eight: Theistic Modal Realism, Multiverses and Hyperspace Appendices Notes Bibliography Index

background

Knowing One’s Own Mind

The Metaphysics of Perfect Beings

Thought and Meaning As a mode of sensory representation, phantasia is well placed to secure the reference of a common noun such as cat. An image derived from the perception of one cat resembles other cats. Aristotle's theory of meaning interpreted in light of his conception of phantasia faces several challenges, as we saw at the end of Chapter 7. The extension of his theory of meaning thus interpreted to include scientific definition raises additional questions. At best the image of a cat seems to convey minimal information about the essence of a cat, and so it appears to have little relevance for the logos that is captured in the real definition and is constitutive of knowledge. The image, moreover, presents as salient characteristics features that may be unique to the individual cat(s) perceived, yet ex hypothesi the mind derives the meaning of the generic term 'cat' from images of individual cats. How the mind grasps the essence remains a mystery, as does how the mind grasps the meanings of the terms that are common names of macroscopic objects. Aristotle's answer to these puzzles, if he has one, must be found in his conception of thought. The challenge he faces is to give an account that allows phantasia to play a crucial role in determining reference while avoiding the pitfalls sketched above. Were he to envisage thinking in a way that forced sensory representation to the sidelines by treating it as little more than a backdrop of moving imagery, sensory representation 1 There is a problem about deriving meanings from perceptions when attention is focused on the actual world. When thought experiments appealing to possible worlds are brought into the picture, the problems are compounded. For instance, let us borrow Putnam's (1988) example of the use of 'water' on earth prior to the discovery of the atomic composition of water and the use of 'water' on twin earth; on earth, the actual but unknown composition is H2O and on twin earth the actual but unknown composition is XYZ. The reference of the term 'water' is different on earth and twin earth, and if reference is a function of meaning it looks as if there are two different meanings of 'water' that would elude any specification of the meaning on earth or twin earth. Similarly, if the meaning of the term just is the associated image, there would seem to be no way to make sense of the difference between the use of 'water' on earth and on twin earth.

Aristotle’s Theory of Language and Meaning

Context: The dominant approach to the study of perception is representational/computational, with an emphasis on the achievements of the brain and the nervous system, which are taken to construct …

https://constructivist.info/11/2/298.fultot.pdf

Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction

I give an analysis of how empirical terms do their work in communication and the gathering of knowledge that is fully externalist and that covers the full range of empirical terms. It rests on claims about ontology. A result is that armchair analysis fails as a tool for examining meanings of ‘basic’ empirical terms because their meanings are not determined by common methods or criteria of application passed from old to new users, by conventionally determined ‘intensions’. Nor do methods of application used by individual speakers constitute definitive referencedetermining intensions for their idiolect terms or associated concepts. Conventional intensions of non-basic empirical terms ultimately rest on basic empirical concepts, so no empirical meaning is found merely ‘in the head’. I discuss the nature of lexical definition, why empirical meanings cannot ultimately be modelled as functions from possible worlds to extensions, and traps into which armchair analysis of meaning can lead us. A coda explains how ‘Swampman’ examples, as used against teleosemantic theories of content, illustrate such traps.

On Knowing the Meaning; With a Coda on Swampman

This paper argues that a minimal notion of function and a notion of normal-proper function are used in explaining how bodies and brains operate. Neither is Cummins’ (1975) notion, as originally defined, and yet his is often taken to be the clearly relevant notion for such an explanatory context. This paper also explains how adverting to normal-proper functions, even if these are selected functions, can play a significant scientific role in the operational explanations of complex systems that physiologists and neurophysiologists provide, despite a lack of relevant causal efficacy on the part of such functions.

/pdf/functional-analysis-and-the-species-design-3cftzvsz4z.pdf

Knowing One’s Own Mind

Citations

The Metaphysics of Perfect Beings

Aristotle’s Theory of Language and Meaning

Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction

On Knowing the Meaning; With a Coda on Swampman

Functional analysis and the species design

Related Papers (5)

The Meaning of "Meaning"

The Concept of Mind

Naming and Necessity

The Intentional Stance

Knowledge and the Flow of Information