Mind Re-ascribed

Authors

  • Bruno Mölder Department of Philosophy, University of Tartu

Keywords:

interpretivism, mental states, folk psychology, self-knowledge, natural kinds, normativity

Abstract

This paper is a reply to commentaries on Mind Ascribed. My response is organised into three parts. In the first part I describe the relationship between folk psychology and the scientific study of the mind. The second part replies to objections to the central tenets and presuppositions of the ascription theory. I clarify the distinction between the nature and the possession of mental states and the notion of a pleonastic entity. I explain why the ascription theory is a version of interpretivism, and not a species of instrumentalism or fictionalism. I also argue that canonical ascription should not be spelled out in terms of the ideal interpreter. The third part deals with comments on miscellaneous topics such as normativity, self-knowledge, the necessity of the brain and the proper understanding of intentional patterns.

References

Armstrong, D. (1989). Universals: An Opinionated Introduction, Westview Press, Boulder.

Baker, L. R. (1987). Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Baker, L. R. (1994). Content meets consciousness, Philosophical Topics 22: 1-22.

Baker, L. R. (1995). Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Baker, L. R. (2003). Belief ascription and the illusion of depth, Facta Philosophica 5: 183-201.

Beisecker, D. (2012). Normative functionalism and its pragmatist roots, Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 2: 109-116.

Beisecker, D. (2017). Whither normativity?, Studia Philosophica Estonica 10.2: 46-54.

Bennett, J. (1991). Analysis without noise, in R. J. Bogdan (ed.), Mind and Common Sense: Philosophical Essays on Commonsense Psychology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 15-36.

Bilgrami, A. (1993). Norms and meaning, in R. Stoecker (ed.), Reflecting Davidson, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 121-144.

Block, N. (1995). An argument for holism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95: 151-169.

Boyd, R. (1991). Realism, anti-foundationalism and the enthusiasm for natural kinds, Philosophical Studies 61: 127-148.

Brandom, R. (1994). Making it Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Brook, A. & Ross, D. (2002). Dennett's position in the intellectual world, in A. Brook & D. Ross (eds), Daniel Dennett, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 3-37.

Buckwalter, W. & Phelan, M. (2014). Phenomenal consciousness disembodied, in J. Sytsma (ed.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind, Bloomsbury, London, pp. 45-73.

Buleandra, A. (2008). Normativity and correctness: A reply to Hattiangadi, Acta Analytica 23: 177-186.

Cash, M. (2008). Thoughts and oughts, Philosophical Explorations 11: 93-119.

Coliva, A. (2016). The Varieties of Self-Knowledge, Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Copp, D. (2015). Rationality and moral authority, in R. Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 10, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 134-159.

Davidson, D. (2001). Comments on Karlovy Vary papers, in P. Kotatko, P. Pagin & G. Segal (eds), Interpreting Davidson, CSLI Publications, Stanford, pp. 285-307.

Davies, M. (1995). The philosophy of mind, in A. C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 250-335.

Demeter, T. (2013). Mental fictionalism: The very idea, The Monist 96: 483-504.

Dennett, D. C. (1987). The Intentional Stance, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Dennett, D. C. (1988). Precis of The Intentional Stance, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 11: 495-546.

Dennett, D. C. (1991). Real patterns, Journal of Philosophy 87: 27-51.

Dennett, D. C. (1994). Get real, Philosophical Topics 22: 505-568.

Dennett, D. C. (2007). Heterophenomenology reconsidered, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 6: 247-270.

Ellis, B. (2001). Scientific Essentialism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Evans, G. (1982). The Varieties of Reference, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Finlay, S. (2010). Recent work on normativity, Analysis 70: 331-346.

Fodor, J. A. (1998). Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Francken, J. C. & Slors, M. (2014). From commonsense to science, and back: The use of cognitive concepts in neuroscience, Consciousness and Cognition 29: 248-258.

Francken, J. C. & Slors, M. (2018). Neuroscience and everyday life: Facing the translation problem, Brain and Cognition 120: 67-74.

Gauker, C. (2003). Words without Meaning, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Gibbard, A. (2003). Thoughts and norms, Philosophical Issues 13: 83-98.

Glüer, K. (1999). Sense and prescriptivity, Acta Analytica 14: 111-128.

Glüer, K. (2001). Dreams and nightmares: Conventions, norms and meaning in Davidson's philosophy of language, in P. Kotatko, P. Pagin & G. Segal (eds), Interpreting Davidson, CSLI Publications, Stanford, pp. 53-74.

Glüer, K. & Pagin, P. (1999). Rules of meaning and practical reasoning, Synthese 117: 207-227.

Glüer, K. & Wikforss, A. (2009). Against content normativity, Mind 118: 31-70.

Glüer, K. & Wikforss, A. (2018). The normativity of meaning and content, in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/meaning-normativity

Godfrey-Smith, P. (2004). On folk psychology and mental representation, in H. Clapin, P. Staines & P. Slezak (eds), Representation in Mind: New Approaches to Mental Representation, Elsevier, Oxford, pp. 147-162.

Hattiangadi, A. (2006). Is meaning normative?, Mind and Language 21: 220-240.

Hattiangadi, A. (2007). Oughts and Thoughts: Rule-Following and the Normativity of Content, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Hattiangadi, A. (2017). The normativity of meaning, in B. Hale, C. Wright & A. Miller (eds), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language: Second Edition, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 649-669.

Haugeland, J. (1990). The intentionality all-stars, Philosophical Perspectives 4: 383-427.

Häggqvist, S. (2017). But is it interpretivism?, Studia Philosophica Estonica 10.2: 8-17.

Hill, C. S. (1997). Critical study of Lynne Rudder Baker, Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind, Nous 31: 132-142.

Horwich, P. (1998). Meaning, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Jackman, H. (2017). Interpretivism and ``canonical'' ascriptions, Studia Philosophica Estonica 10.2: 28-37.

Kim, J. (2003). Blocking causal drainage and other maintenance chores with mental causation, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67: 151-176.

Knobe, J. & Prinz, J. (2008). Intuitions about consciousness: Experimental studies, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7: 67-85.

Kukla, R. & Lance, M. (2016). Speaking and thinking, in J. R. O'Shea (ed.), Sellars and His Legacy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 81-99.

Mackie, J. L. (1977). Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Penguin, New York.

Mameli, M. (2001). Mindreading, mindshaping, and evolution, Biology and Philosophy 16: 597-628.

McCulloch, G. (1990). Dennett's little grains of salt, The Philosophical Quarterly 40: 1-12.

McGeer, V. (2007). The regulative dimension of folk psychology, in D. D. Hutto & M. Ratcliffe (eds), Folk Psychology Re-Assessed, Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 137-156.

McLaughlin, B. & O'Leary-Hawthorne, J. (1994). Dennett's logical behaviourism, Philosophical Topics 22: 189-258.

Millikan, R. G. (2005). The father, the son, and the daughter: Sellars, Brandom, and Millikan, Pragmatics and Cognition 13: 59-71.

Mölder, B. (2008). Normativity and deflationary theories of truth, Studia Philosophica Estonica 1.2: 179-193.

Mölder, B. (2010). Mind Ascribed: An Elaboration and Defence of Interpretivism, John Benjamins, Amsterdam.

Mölder, B. (2011). Normatiivsuse mitu tahku, Studia Philosophica Estonica 4.1: 52-82.

Mölder, B. (2016). Mind and folk psychology: A partial introduction, Studia Philosophica Estonica 9.1: 1-21.

Moran, R. (2001). Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Murphy, D. (2017a). Ascribing minds and knowing what you think, Studia Philosophica Estonica 10.2: 38-45.

Murphy, D. (2017b). Can psychiatry refurnish the mind?, Philosophical Explorations 20: 160-174.

Nelkin, N. (1994). Patterns, Mind & Language 9: 56-87.

Peacocke, C. (1992). A Study of Concepts, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Quine, W. V. O. (1969). Natural kinds, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 114-138.

Ravenscroft, I. (2005). Philosophy of Mind: A Beginners Guide, Oxford University Press.

Schiffer, S. (2003). The Things We Mean, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Schroeder, T. (2003). Donald Davidson's theory of mind is non-normative, Philosophers' Imprint 3: 1-14.

Sehon, S. R. (1997). Natural-kind terms and the status of folk psychology, American Philosophical Quarterly 34: 333-344.

Sellars, W. (1997). Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Slors, M. V. P. (2001). The Diachronic Mind: An Essay on Personal Identity, Psychological Continuity and the Mind-Body Problem, Springer, Dordrecht.

Slors, M. V. P. (2017). Interpretivism and the meaning of mental state ascriptions, Studia Philosophica Estonica 10.2: 18-27.

Sytsma, J. (2016). Attributions of consciousness, in J. Sytsma & W. Buckwalter (eds), A Companion to Experimental Philosophy, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 259-278.

Wikforss, A. M. (2001). Semantic normativity, Philosophical Studies 102: 203-226.

Winch, P. (1964). Understanding a primitive society, American Philosophical Quarterly 1: 307-324.

Wright, C. (1995). Can there be a rationally compelling argument for anti-realism about ordinary (``folk'') psychology?, Philosophical Issues 6: 197-221.

Zawidzki, T. W. (2007). Dennett, Oneworld Publications, Oxford.

Zawidzki, T. W. (2013). Mindshaping: A New Framework for Understanding Human Social Cognition, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Zawidzki, T. W. (2015). Dennett's strategy for naturalizing intentionality: An innovative play at second base, Philosophia 43: 593-609.

Downloads

Published

2018-11-02

How to Cite

Mölder, B. (2018). Mind Re-ascribed. Studia Philosophica Estonica, 10(2), 55–104. Retrieved from https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/spe/article/view/14490