Download or read book New Essays on Singular Thought written by Robin Jeshion and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-05-27 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Essays on Singular Thought presents ten new, specially written essays on an issue central to philosophy of mind, language, and perception: the nature of our thought about the external world. Is our thought about objects in the world always descriptive, mediated by our conceptions of those objects? Or is some of our thought somehow more direct, singular, associated more intimately with our perceptual, linguistic, and socially mediated relations to them? Leading experts in the field contributing to this volume make the case for the singularity of thought and debate a broad spectrum of issues it raises, including the structure of singular thought, the role of acquaintance in perception- and communication-based reference, the semantics of fictional and mythical terms, and the merits of epistemic, cognitive, and linguistic conditions on singular thought. Their essays explore new directions for future research and will be an important resource for anyone working at the interface of semantics and mental representation.

Download or read book New Essays on Singular Thought written by Robin Jeshion and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-27 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading philosophers present essays on an issue central to philosophy of mind, language, and perception: the nature of our thought about the external world. The essays explore directions for future research, an important resource for anyone working at the interface of semantics and mental representation.

Download or read book Appearance versus Reality New Essays on Bradley s Metaphysics written by Guy Stock and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1998-02-26 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Appearance versus Reality is a collection of new studies of the work of F. H. Bradley, a leading British philosopher of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and one of the key figures in the emergence of Anglo-American analytic philosophy. In recent years there has been a widespread revaluation of Bradley's philosophy: it has been found to offer alternative approaches to those inherited from Frege, Descartes, the British Empiricists, and Quinean naturalism, which have dominated analytic philosophy for some time. The nine well-known contributors to this volume, from Britain, North America, and Australia, focus on Bradley's views on truth, meaning, knowledge, and reality. These essays show that his work not only was crucial to the development of twentieth-century philosophy, but can illuminate contemporary debates in metaphysics, logic, and epistemology.

Download or read book Singular Thought and Mental Files written by Rachel Goodman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-06 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of singular (or de re) thought has become central in philosophy of mind and language, yet there is still little consensus concerning the best way to think about the nature of singular thought. Coinciding with recognition of the need for more clarity about the notion, there has been a surge of interest in the concept of a mental file as a way to understand what is distinctive about singular thought. What isn't always clear, however, is what mental files are meant to be, and why we should believe that thoughts that employ them are singular as opposed to descriptive. This volume brings together original chapters by leading scholars which aim to examine and evaluate the viability of the mental files framework for theorizing about singular thought. The first section of the volume addresses the central issues of the definition and nature of singular thought, as well as how it relates to the notion of a mental file. The second section addresses the legitimacy of the mental files conception of singular thought by assessing the philosophical motivations or the purported empirical support for the view, or by laying out a specific version of it. The third section helps to clarify both the notion of a mental file and the mental files conception of singular thought by focusing on their role in explaining de jure coreference in thought and language. The volume then concludes with a final section that casts doubt on the mental files conception and the legitimacy of the file-theoretic framework more generally.

Download or read book Virtuous Thoughts The Philosophy of Ernest Sosa written by John Turri and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection is a major contribution to the understanding and evaluation of Ernest Sosa’s profound and wide-ranging philosophy, in epistemology and beyond. A balanced, fair and critical volume, it offers a sensitive appreciation of his wide philosophical purview, a nuanced assessment of the detail of his thought, and a spur to exploring the linkages between the varied topics explored by the subtle mind of this great American scholar. The papers explore a wealth of Sosa’s academic interests, including his work on philosophical method, the philosophy of mind and language, metaphysics, and value theory, in addition to his output on epistemology itself. It offers, for example, a rebuttal of the counterarguments to Sosa’s reliabilist theory of introspective justification, which itself concludes with some objections to Sosa’s stated views on the ‘speckled hen’ problem. Other authors track the connections of his virtue theory to his advocacy of bi-level epistemology, provide reflections on Sosa’s views on the epistemological tradition, and examine the nexus of his beliefs on intuition and philosophical methodology. This volume is an insightful reckoning of Sosa’s academic account.

Download or read book The Singular Voice of Being written by Andrew T. LaZella and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Singular Voice of Being reconsiders John Duns Scotus’s well-studied theory of the univocity of being in light of his less explored discussions of ultimate difference. Ultimate difference is a notion introduced by Aristotle and known by the Aristotelian tradition, but one that, this book argues, Scotus radically retrofits to buttress his doctrine of univocity. Scotus broadens ultimate difference to include not only specific differences, but also intrinsic modes of being (e.g., finite/infinite) and principles of individuation (i.e., haecceitates). Furthermore, he deepens it by divorcing it from anything with categorical classification, such as substantial form. Scotus uses his revamped notion of ultimate difference as a means of dividing being, despite the longstanding Parmenidean arguments against such division. The book highlights the unique role of difference in Scotus’s thought, which conceives of difference not as a fall from the perfect unity of being but rather as a perfective determination of an otherwise indifferent concept. The division of being culminates in individuation as the final degree of perfection, which constitutes indivisible (i.e., singular) degrees of being. This systematic study of ultimate difference opens new dimensions for understanding Scotus’s dense thought with respect to not only univocity, but also to individuation, cognition, and acts of the will.

Download or read book Thought Its Origin and Reach written by Alex Grzankowski and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-03-29 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work of Mark Sainsbury has made a significant and challenging contribution to several central areas of philosophy, especially philosophy of language and logic. He has made significant contributions to puzzles concerning the nature of thought and language and pioneered research in the philosophical theory known as fictionalism. In this outstanding volume, 20 contributors engage with Sainsbury’s work but also go beyond it, exploring fundamental problems in the philosophy of language, mind, and logic. Topics covered include propositional thought, intentionality, the mind-body problem, singular thoughts, the individuation of concepts, nominalisation, logical form, non-existent objects, and vagueness. Thought: Its Origin and Reach will be of interest to professional philosophers and students working in philosophy of mind, language, epistemology, and metaphysics.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Reference written by Stephen Biggs and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-24 with total page 789 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook offers students and more advanced readers a valuable resource for understanding linguistic reference; the relation between an expression (word, phrase, sentence) and what that expression is about. The volume’s forty-one original chapters, written by many of today’s leading philosophers of language, are organized into ten parts: I Early Descriptive Theories II Causal Theories of Reference III Causal Theories and Cognitive Significance IV Alternate Theories V Two-Dimensional Semantics VI Natural Kind Terms and Rigidity VII The Empty Case VIII Singular (De Re) Thoughts IX Indexicals X Epistemology of Reference Contributions consider what kinds of expressions actually refer (names, general terms, indexicals, empty terms, sentences), what referring expressions refer to, what makes an expression refer to whatever it does, connections between meaning and reference, and how we know facts about reference. Many contributions also develop connections between linguistic reference and issues in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science.

Download or read book Acquaintance written by Jonathan Knowles and published by . This book was released on 2019-11 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bertrand Russell famously distinguished between "knowledge by acquaintance" and "knowledge by description". For much of the latter half of the twentieth century, many philosophers viewed the notion of acquaintance with suspicion, associating it with Russellian ideas that they would wish toreject. However in the past decade or two the concept has undergone a striking revival in mainstream "analytic" philosophy - acquaintance is, it seems, respectable again. This volume showcases the great variety of topics in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language for whichphilosophers are currently employing the notion of acquaintance. It is the first collection of new essays devoted to the topic of acquaintance, featuring chapters from many of the world's leading experts in this area. Opening with an extensive introductory essay, which provides some historicalbackground and summarizes the main debates and issues concerning acquaintance, the remaining thirteen contributions are grouped thematically into four sections: phenomenal consciousness, perceptual experience, reference, and epistemology.

Download or read book Singular Thought and Mental Files written by Rachel Goodman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of singular (or de re) thought has become central in philosophy of mind and language, yet there is still little consensus concerning the best way to think about the nature of singular thought. Coinciding with recognition of the need for more clarity about the notion, there has been a surge of interest in the concept of a mental file as a way to understand what is distinctive about singular thought. What isn't always clear, however, is what mental files are meant to be, and why we should believe that thoughts that employ them are singular as opposed to descriptive. This volume brings together original chapters by leading scholars which aim to examine and evaluate the viability of the mental files framework for theorizing about singular thought. The first section of the volume addresses the central issues of the definition and nature of singular thought, as well as how it relates to the notion of a mental file. The second section addresses the legitimacy of the mental files conception of singular thought by assessing the philosophical motivations or the purported empirical support for the view, or by laying out a specific version of it. The third section helps to clarify both the notion of a mental file and the mental files conception of singular thought by focusing on their role in explaining de jure coreference in thought and language. The volume then concludes with a final section that casts doubt on the mental files conception and the legitimacy of the file-theoretic framework more generally.

Download or read book Referring to the World written by Kenneth A. Taylor and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our words and ideas refer to objects and properties in the external world; this phenomenon is central to thought, language, communication, and science. But great works of fiction are full of names that don't seem to refer to anything! In this book Kenneth A. Taylor explores the myriad of problems that surround the phenomenon of reference. How can words in language and perturbations in our brains come to stand for external objects? Reference is essential to truth, but which is more basic: reference or truth? How can fictional characters play such an important role in imagination and literature, and how does this use of language connect with more mundane uses? Taylor develops a framework for understanding reference, and the theories that other thinkers-past and present-have developed about it. But Taylor doesn't simply tell us what others thought; the book is full of new ideas and analyses, making for a vital final contribution from a seminal philosopher.

Download or read book Rethinking Intentionality Person and the Essence written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-02-26 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the relationship between the concept of person and the concept of intentionality? Is the phenomenological notion of essence somehow related to that of medieval philosophies? What kind of entity is the person understood in her irreducible singularity? These are some of the questions that the chapters in this book seek to address and develop by focusing on the thought of Aquinas, Scotus and Edith Stein. Indeed, the editors of the book are led by the conviction that a fruitful dialogue between medieval philosophy and 20th century phenomenology may prove useful in addressing questions and problems that are still relevant in contemporary debates. The book is divided into three sections, devoted respectively to medieval philosophy, phenomenology and some of the possible systematic and historical intersections between them. Contributors are Sarah Borden Sharkey, Antonio Calcagno, Therese Cory, Daniele De Santis, Andrew LaZella, Dominik Perler, Giorgio Pini, Francesco Valerio Tommasi, Anna Tropia, and Ingrid Vendrell Ferran.

Download or read book Empty Representations written by Manuel García-Carpintero and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-08-14 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is the linguistic job of singular terms to pick out the objects that we think or talk about. But what about singular terms that seem to fail to designate anything, because the objects they refer to don't exist? We can employ these terms in meaningful thought and talk, which suggests that they are succeeding in fulfilling their representational task. A team of leading experts presents new essays on the much-debated problem of empty reference and thought. In the 1960s and 1970s Keith Donnellan, David Kaplan, Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam initiated a revolution in the then standard conception of reference—a concept at the core of philosophical inquiry. The repercussions of the revolution, particularly felt in metaphysics and epistemology, were soon refined by other influential writers such as Tyler Burge, Gareth Evans, and John Perry. They argued that some linguistic and mental representations have contents individuated by what they are about—by ordinary referents of expressions such as proper names, indexicals, definite descriptions and common nouns, i.e. by planets, people or natural kinds. The view was at odds with a central philosophical presumption at that time: that cognitive and linguistic access to objective reality is indirect and accidental, mediated by general descriptive characterizations, the only constitutive semantic feature of the expressions; hence its ontological and epistemological repercussions. A turning-point in the debate about how linguistic and mental representation reach external contents concerned the nature of empty mental and linguistic representations, framed by means of the very same expressions crucially invoked in the Donnellan-Kaplan-Kripke-Putnam arguments. The papers in this volume address different aspects of reference and thought about the (apparently) non-existent.

Download or read book The Indexical Point of View written by Vojislav Bozickovic and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-22 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that there is a common cognitive mechanism underlying all indexical thoughts, in spite of their seeming diversity. Indexical thoughts are mental representations, such as beliefs and desires. They represent items from a thinker's point of view or her cognitive perspective. We typically express them by means of sentences containing linguistic expressions such as 'this (F)' or 'that (F)', adverbs like 'here', 'now', and 'today', and the personal pronoun ‘I’. While generally agreeing that representing the world from a thinker's cognitive perspective is a key feature of indexical thoughts, philosophers disagree as to whether a thinker's cognitive perspective can be captured and rationalized by semantic content and, if so, what kind of content this is. This book surveys competing views and then advances its own positive account. Ultimately, it argues that a thinker's cognitive perspective - or her indexical point of view - is to be explained in terms of the content that is believed and asserted as the only kind of content that there is which thereby serves as the bearer of cognitive significance. The Indexical Point of View will be of interest to philosophers of mind and language, linguists, and cognitive scientists.

Download or read book Immunity to Error Through Misidentification written by Simon Prosser and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-05 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Devoted exclusively to the topic, this book analyses immunity to error through misidentification as an important feature of personal judgments.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Propositions written by Chris Tillman and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-30 with total page 837 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Propositions are routinely invoked by philosophers, linguists, logicians, and other theorists engaged in the study of meaning, communication, and the mind. To investigate the nature of propositions is to investigate the very nature of our connection to each other, and to the world around us. As one of the only volumes of its kind, The Routledge Handbook of Propositions provides a comprehensive overview of the philosophy of propositions, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Comprising 33 original chapters by an international team of scholars, the volume addresses both traditional and emerging questions concerning the nature of propositions, and our capacity to engage with them in thought and in communication. The chapters are clearly organized into the following three sections: I. Foundational Issues in the Theory of Propositions II. Historical Theories of Propositions III. Contemporary Theories of Propositions Essential reading for philosophers of language and mind, and for those working in neighboring areas, The Routledge Handbook of Propositions is suitable for upper-level undergraduate study, as well as graduate and professional research.

Download or read book Language and World written by Richard Gaskin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-06 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book defends a version of linguistic idealism, the thesis that the world is a product of language. In the course of defending this radical thesis, Gaskin addresses a wide range of topics in contemporary metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and syntax theory. Starting from the context and compositionality principles, and the idea of a systematic theory of meaning in the Tarski–Davidson tradition, Gaskin argues that the sentence is the primary unit of linguistic meaning, and that the main aspects of meaning, sense and reference, are themselves theoretical posits. Ontology, which is correlative with reference, emerges as language-driven. This linguistic idealism is combined with a realism that accepts the objectivity of science, and it is accordingly distinguished from empirical pragmatism. Gaskin contends that there is a basic metaphysical level at which everything is expressible in language; but the vindication of linguistic idealism is nuanced inasmuch as there is also a derived level, asymmetrically dependant on the basic level, at which reality can break free of language and reach into the realms of the unnameable and indescribable. Language and World will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and linguistics.