Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories
About: This article is published in Philosophical Books.The article was published on 1985-07-01. It has received 1607 citations till now.
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01 Jan 1987TL;DR: The Intentional Stance as discussed by the authors is the first full-scale presentation of a theory of intentionality that has been developed for almost twenty years, and it can be seen as a pre-emptive strategy of interpretation that presupposes the rationality of the people or other entities we are hoping to understand and predict.
Abstract: How are we able to understand and anticipate each other in everyday life, in our daily interactions? Through the use of such "folk" concepts as belief, desire, intention, and expectation, asserts Daniel Dennett in this first full-scale presentation of a theory of intentionality that he has been developing for almost twenty years. We adopt a stance, he argues, a predictive strategy of interpretation that presupposes the rationality of the people - or other entities - we are hoping to understand and predict.These principles of radical interpretation have far-reaching implications for the metaphysical and scientific status of the processes referred to by the everday terms of folk psychology and their corresponding terms in cognitive science.While Dennett's philosophical stance has been steadfast over the years, his views have undergone successive enrichments, refinements, and extensions. "The Intentional Stance" brings together both previously published and original material: four of the book's ten chapters - its first and the final three - appear here for the first time and push the theory into surprising new territory. The remaining six were published earlier in the 1980s but were not easily accessible; each is followed by a reflection - an essay reconsidering and extending the claims of the earlier work. These reflections and the new chapters represent the vanguard of Dennett's thought. They reveal fresh lines of inquiry into fundamental issues in psychology, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary theory as well as traditional issues in the philosophy of mind.Daniel C. Dennett is Distinguished Arts and Sciences Professor at Tufts University and the author of "Brainstorms" and "Elbow Room." "The Intentional Stance," along with these works, is a Bradford Book.
4,288 citations
Cites background from "Language, Thought, and Other Biolog..."
...That was its "proper function" (Millikan 1984), and, quite literally, its raison d'Stre....
[...]
...This is the doctrine Ruth Millikan calls meaning rationalism, and it is one of the central burdens of her important book, Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories, to topple it from its traditional pedestal (Millikan 1984; see also Millikan, unpublished)....
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...Cf. Sober 1981 and Millikan 1984....
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...Russell's Principle The pernicious role of Russell's Principle has gradually come into better focus for me, thanks in large measure to the sustained attack on it (under the broader label of "meaning rationalism") by Millikan (1984, 1986)....
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...Quine (1960) gave us an extended examination of the evidential and theoretical tasks facing the "radical translator," the imaginary anthropologistlinguist who walks into an entirely alien community—with no string of interpreters or bilingual guides—and who must figure out, using whatever scientific methods are available, the language of the natives....
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Book•
01 Dec 1996TL;DR: Clark as mentioned in this paper argues that the mental has been treated as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world, and argues that a key to understanding brains is to see them as controllers of embodied activity.
Abstract: From the Publisher:
The old opposition of matter versus mind stubbornly persists in the way we study mind and brain. In treating cognition as problem solving, Andy Clark suggests, we may often abstract too far from the very body and world in which our brains evolved to guide us. Whereas the mental has been treated as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world, Clark forcefully attests that a key to understanding brains is to see them as controllers of embodied activity. From this paradigm shift he advances the construction of a cognitive science of the embodied mind.
3,745 citations
TL;DR: A new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning is proposed, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference, showing that the main assumptions are well supported by the data.
Abstract: Traditional approaches to human information processing tend to deal with perception and action planning in isolation, so that an adequate account of the perception-action interface is still missing On the perceptual side, the dominant cognitive view largely underestimates, and thus fails to account for, the impact of action-related processes on both the processing of perceptual information and on perceptual learning On the action side, most approaches conceive of action planning as a mere continuation of stimulus processing, thus failing to account for the goal-directedness of even the simplest reaction in an experimental task We propose a new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference Perceived events (perceptions) and to-be-produced events (actions) are equally represented by integrated, task-tuned networks of feature codes – cognitive structures we call event codes We give an overview of evidence from a wide variety of empirical domains, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility, sensorimotor synchronization, and ideomotor action, showing that our main assumptions are well supported by the data
2,736 citations
TL;DR: The Computational Brain this paper provides a broad overview of neuroscience and computational theory, followed by a study of some of the most recent and sophisticated modeling work in the context of relevant neurobiological research.
1,472 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a theory of affordances is outlined according to which affordances are relations between the abilities of animals and features of the environment, which are both real and perceivable but are not properties of either the environment or the animal.
Abstract: A theory of affordances is outlined according to which affordances are relations between the abilities of animals and features of the environment. As relations, affordances are both real and perceivable but are not properties of either the environment or the animal. I argue that this theory has advantages over extant theories of affordances and briefly discuss the relations among affordances and niches, perceivers, and events.
1,054 citations
Additional excerpts
...See also Millikan, 1984.)...
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References
More filters
Book•
01 Jan 1987TL;DR: The Intentional Stance as discussed by the authors is the first full-scale presentation of a theory of intentionality that has been developed for almost twenty years, and it can be seen as a pre-emptive strategy of interpretation that presupposes the rationality of the people or other entities we are hoping to understand and predict.
Abstract: How are we able to understand and anticipate each other in everyday life, in our daily interactions? Through the use of such "folk" concepts as belief, desire, intention, and expectation, asserts Daniel Dennett in this first full-scale presentation of a theory of intentionality that he has been developing for almost twenty years. We adopt a stance, he argues, a predictive strategy of interpretation that presupposes the rationality of the people - or other entities - we are hoping to understand and predict.These principles of radical interpretation have far-reaching implications for the metaphysical and scientific status of the processes referred to by the everday terms of folk psychology and their corresponding terms in cognitive science.While Dennett's philosophical stance has been steadfast over the years, his views have undergone successive enrichments, refinements, and extensions. "The Intentional Stance" brings together both previously published and original material: four of the book's ten chapters - its first and the final three - appear here for the first time and push the theory into surprising new territory. The remaining six were published earlier in the 1980s but were not easily accessible; each is followed by a reflection - an essay reconsidering and extending the claims of the earlier work. These reflections and the new chapters represent the vanguard of Dennett's thought. They reveal fresh lines of inquiry into fundamental issues in psychology, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary theory as well as traditional issues in the philosophy of mind.Daniel C. Dennett is Distinguished Arts and Sciences Professor at Tufts University and the author of "Brainstorms" and "Elbow Room." "The Intentional Stance," along with these works, is a Bradford Book.
4,288 citations
Book•
01 Dec 1996TL;DR: Clark as mentioned in this paper argues that the mental has been treated as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world, and argues that a key to understanding brains is to see them as controllers of embodied activity.
Abstract: From the Publisher:
The old opposition of matter versus mind stubbornly persists in the way we study mind and brain. In treating cognition as problem solving, Andy Clark suggests, we may often abstract too far from the very body and world in which our brains evolved to guide us. Whereas the mental has been treated as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world, Clark forcefully attests that a key to understanding brains is to see them as controllers of embodied activity. From this paradigm shift he advances the construction of a cognitive science of the embodied mind.
3,745 citations
TL;DR: A new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning is proposed, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference, showing that the main assumptions are well supported by the data.
Abstract: Traditional approaches to human information processing tend to deal with perception and action planning in isolation, so that an adequate account of the perception-action interface is still missing On the perceptual side, the dominant cognitive view largely underestimates, and thus fails to account for, the impact of action-related processes on both the processing of perceptual information and on perceptual learning On the action side, most approaches conceive of action planning as a mere continuation of stimulus processing, thus failing to account for the goal-directedness of even the simplest reaction in an experimental task We propose a new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference Perceived events (perceptions) and to-be-produced events (actions) are equally represented by integrated, task-tuned networks of feature codes – cognitive structures we call event codes We give an overview of evidence from a wide variety of empirical domains, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility, sensorimotor synchronization, and ideomotor action, showing that our main assumptions are well supported by the data
2,736 citations
TL;DR: The Computational Brain this paper provides a broad overview of neuroscience and computational theory, followed by a study of some of the most recent and sophisticated modeling work in the context of relevant neurobiological research.
1,472 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a theory of affordances is outlined according to which affordances are relations between the abilities of animals and features of the environment, which are both real and perceivable but are not properties of either the environment or the animal.
Abstract: A theory of affordances is outlined according to which affordances are relations between the abilities of animals and features of the environment. As relations, affordances are both real and perceivable but are not properties of either the environment or the animal. I argue that this theory has advantages over extant theories of affordances and briefly discuss the relations among affordances and niches, perceivers, and events.
1,054 citations