Content Externalism and Brute Logical Error

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 549-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Collins
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Physical Characteristics ◽  
Content Externalism ◽  
Twin Earth ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Logical Error ◽  
The Individual

Externalism with respect to content is the thesis that the contents of an individual's mental states are fixed, not just by the intrinsic physical characteristics of the individual, but also in part by the external circumstances of the individual. This idea can be illustrated by means of thought experiments involving pairs of ‘twins’ who are identical with respect to their intrinsic features yet who differ mentally because of differences in their environments. The thoughts of a thirsty earthling may turn to water. Suppose that an earthling has a molecule-for-molecule twin on a very distant planet, a planet identical to Earth except that wherever Earth has H2O, Twin Earth has XYZ, which is superficially indistinguishable from water. When the twin is thirsty, her thoughts will turn instead to twater, as we may call it. Externalism about content is a metaphysical thesis, but it has epistemological implications. Many have argued that externalism is incompatible with a suitably rigorous thesis about the authoritative, introspective self-knowledge we seem to have with respect to our own thought contents.

Psychological Determinants of Personaliti Bullying in the Sociometric Dimension

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
International Partnership ◽  
Psychological Determinants ◽  
Exchange Program ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
The Individual ◽  
High Degree

The article considers the main problems that arise when conflicts of interest between people in the sociometric dimension. The need for their comprehensive study will help to eliminate the negative consequences and use positive solutions to these conflicts for the development of the individual, his integration into society. The urgency of the work lies in the search for rational approaches to the origin and prevention of psychological bullying in the sociometric dimension as a consequence of the conflict of personality in agreement with its characterological education, psychological attitudes and beliefs. that is why the problem of bullying deserves in-depth study. The aim of the article is to study the influence of bullying on the uncertainty of adolescents in the sociometric dimension. The work is based on the provisions of prevention and reduction of external discrimination, isolation, humiliation and harassment, which will serve as factors to prevent personal uncertainty in the future. Bullying undermines the victim's self-confidence, destroys health, self-esteem and human dignity. There is a bullying structure, which is a social system that includes the offender, the victim and observers. Methods of measuring the manifestations of psychological bullying are determined, the corresponding set of methods of psychodiagnostics is presented and tested. Empirical data show that with insufficient and excessive mobilization of the individual there are with a high degree of probability such mental states that disturb the adaptive balance. Thus, with insufficient mobilization in a difficult life situation, it is likely to appear apathy and reduce energy expenditure. On the other hand, in a situation of excessive mobilization there is a state of high voltage against the background of excessive energy consumption. The results of this study are important in establishing international cooperation in the study of programs and projects in the context of transforming the human health system in accordance with international partnership standards and implementing a cultural exchange program for education and culture between countries.

Coming to Understand the Social and Physical Worlds

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydney Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Theory Change ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Load Force ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Underlying Processes ◽  
Adaptation Task

Children’s conceptual development has been described as a process of“theory change.” Specifically, children begin with an idea and then iteratively update that idea by combining existing and new information, making and testing predictions and then revising their idea based on new data again. Similar processes have been postulated to account for adaptive phenomenon in perceptual psychology and motor control. The similarities between the two processes suggest that performance on tasks that measure conceptual and sensory‐motor “theory change”respectively may be related. The goal of the present study is to determine whether children’s development in a complex conceptual domain, theory of mind, is associated with children’s performance in a load force adaptation paradigm. Theory of mind is broadly defined as the ability to understand how mental states, such as beliefs and desires, motivate ourown and other people’s actions. In contrast, load force adaptation is the ability to gradually adjust the amount of force exerted on an object in order to smoothly lift it up, as experience with the weight of the object is gained. To explore the mechanisms underlying these two processes, children between the ages of 3.5 and 4.5 years participate in a load force adaptation task and a battery of theory of mind tasks. We predict that since the underlying processes appear to be theoretically similar, the individual differences in the ability to adapt load force and in theory of mind ability will be positively correlated.   

The Angler in the Environment: Social, Economic, Biological, and Ethical Dimensions

2011 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Ethical Challenge ◽  
Recreational Fishing ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Catch And Release ◽  
Individual Fish ◽  
Recreational Angling ◽  
The Individual

<i>Abstract</i>.—Ever since fishing was called recreational fishing, a cruelty charge has hovered around somewhere in the background. In recent times, however, it has made it to the fore substantiated by anthropomorphic reasoning and fuelled by high-visibility papers claiming that fish can feel pain and suffer. Because some segments of the public perceive the infliction of these mental states to fish as abhorrent and not outweighing the costs imposed on the individual fish by appropriate benefits to the human, recreational fishing is coming under attack on moral grounds. Other challenges have also emerged that do not center on the issue of whether fish are sentient or not. In this paper, we describe five of the most prevalent moral challenges to recreational angling, two of which—animal welfare and wilderness-centered perspectives—can offer a constructive outlook by calling upon improved treatment of individual fish (animal welfare) and generally more sustainable management (wilderness perspective). In contrast, if one subscribes to animal liberation or animal rights philosophies, the outlook for recreational fishing is generally negative: it has to stop. A final challenge is associated with the motivations of anglers. The moral argument there is that the activity is carried out largely for angler pleasure rather than as a means of securing survival. The outlook of this ethical challenge sometimes leans towards only accepting one form of recreational fishing: catching, killing, and eating. Voluntary catch-and-release fishing and practices such as tournament fishing with a strict total catch-and-release policy would then not be ethically permissible. In this paper, we highlight the origin and background of each of the five ethical challenges and explain their implications for recreational fishing.

Externalism, Twin Earth, and Self‐Knowledge

2000 ◽  
pp. 285-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian P. McLaughlin ◽  
Michael Tye
Keyword(s):  
Twin Earth ◽  
Self Knowledge

The Unity of the Rational Mind

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-142
Author(s):  
Eric Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Metaphysical Necessity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Rational Mind ◽  
The Individual

I argue that inference is a self-conscious act. The account appeals to the ‘being-in-mind-together’ of beliefs. Beliefs that are in mind together are subject to rationally grounded metaphysical necessity. Because one believes p, one can’t or must believe q. But what ultimately explains this sort of necessity? If it is impossible to hold a pair of mental states in mind at once and the impossibility has its source in our understanding of the necessary falsehood of a conjunction, then the subject has knowledge not just of the individual states they’re in but also of their combination. What, then, is the relation between the unity of our beliefs and consciousness of this unity? My answer: the unity of the rational mind consists in the subject’s consciousness of that unity.

Who Do You Think You Are?

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-57
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bommarito
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
What Works ◽  
Special Challenge ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Tools And Methods

This chapter explores self-knowledge, which is critical for solving the practical problems involved in getting through life. An awareness of your own quirks, character, and preferences is important for figuring out what works for you. However, self-knowledge is also tricky because it is especially elusive. People commonly learn about themselves only indirectly; often it is only by reading the reactions of others that people can see how harsh, kind, or annoying they are. It is also because when trying to know the self, the thing the individual is trying to see is the very thing that does the looking. Buddhism offers many evocative images to illustrate this special challenge: Just as a knife cannot cut itself, the mind cannot be directed toward itself. This makes knowing the self, especially in a deep way, an especially difficult task. Knowing the self thus requires special kinds of tools and methods. The chapter then considers the concept of Buddha Nature.

Disagreement, Semantics, and Meta-Semantics

2020 ◽  
pp. 14-52
Author(s):  
Billy Dunaway
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Twin Earth ◽  
Moral Twin Earth

Moral Twin Earth thought experiments appear to show that practical language is highly stable, and that many possible users of practical language are capable of having genuine disagreements with each other. This chapter clarifies a tempting generalization of this idea, which is that the members of every pair of possible users of moral language are capable of having a genuine disagreement. This is the Universal Disagreement thesis. It then shows how this thesis can be adapted to a contextualist semantics for ‘ought’ and other practical terms. It concludes by arguing that, for the realist, the central explanatory target is a claim about the stability of practical language.

How To Make No Sense of Marx

1989 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 105-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Mandel
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
Individual Action ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intentional Explanation ◽  
Individual Actions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Methodological Collectivism

Professor Jon Elster advances the proposal that Marx – and Marxists–really stand for ‘methodological individualism,’ as opposed to ‘methodological collectivism.’ He defines ‘methodological individualism’ in the following terms: Social science explanations are seen as three-tiered. First, there is a causal explanation of mental states, such as desires and beliefs … Next, there is intentional explanation of individual action in terms of the underlying beliefs and desires … Finally, there is causal explanation of aggregated phenomena in terms of the individual actions that go into them. The last form is the specifically Marxist contribution to the methodology of the social sciences.1

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