The Mind: A Synoptic Bonus To The Field of Gnoseology.
Far from the regular tradings of the Philosophy of mind, the concept of Gnoseology as an ambience within scholaric discourse is an offshoot of a synopsis. This synopsis has its root in the marvels that triggered seeming interests on the extent at which the mind bears relevance within human struggle. The mind, yes, the mind is surreal.
There is no gainsaying that, much work has been carried out by scholars in the past. The many works in this area reflects a revolution in psychology that began mid-century, a period marked with radical scienticism and pro-behaviouralism. Before then, largely in reaction to traditional claims about the mind being non-physical a-la- Rene Descartes, many thought that a scientific psychology should avoid talk of ‘private’ mental states. Investigation of such states had seemed to be based on unreliable introspection, and not subject to independent checking. Consequently, psychologists like B.F Skinner and J.B. Watson, and philosophers like W.V Quine and Gilbert Ryle argued that scientific psychology should confine itself to studying publicly observable relations between stimuli and responses. This fact is avid in their works on Behaviourism, Methodological and scientific findings towards Behaviourism on an analytic front.
In the late 1950s, there came several developments on the development of theories of the mind. The following comes within regard to the subject matter:
(i) The experiments behaviourists themselves ran on animals tended to refute behaviouristic hypotheses, suggesting that the behaviour of even rats had to be understood in terms of mental states.
(ii) The linguist Noam Chomsky drew attention to the surprising complexity of the natural languages that children effortlessly learn, and proposed ways of explaining this complexity in terms of largely unconscious mental phenomena.
(iii) The revolutionary work of Alan Turing led to the development of the modern digital computer. This seemed to offer the prospect of creating Artificial intelligence, and also of providing empirically testable models of intelligent processes in both humans and animals.
(iv) Philosophers came to appreciate the virtues of realism, as opposed to instrumentalism, about theoretical entities in general.
From the above, it is clear to argue that constructive individualism is a necessary factor for consideration when the theories of mind are put to the table. This is because, in other to arrive at a whole, an individual plot of concepts are put together towards amassing the multitudinal realism that arrives with the whole. This is a constant factor, one which over the years has proven to be vital to the theories of the mind. We shall see this clearly in the remaining course of this work.
There have been three main proposals about mental content. From this, we can deduce that a state might possess a specific content:
(i) by virtue of the role it plays in reasoning ; (ii) by virtue of certain causal and lawful relations the state bears to phenomena in the world ; or (iii) by virtue of the function it plays in the evolution and biology of the organism.
Related to these proposals above are traditional philosophical interests in Concepts, although this latter topic raises complicating metaphysical concerns with Universals, and epistemological concerns with A priori knowledge (in loose sense; knowledge from before).
Special problems are raised by indexical content, or the content of thoughts involving concepts expressed by, for example, ‘I myself’, ‘here’, ‘now’, ‘this’, and ‘that’. Does the thought that it is hot here, had in Ojota, have the same content as the thought that it is hot here, had in Calabar? The conditions under which such thoughts are true obviously depends upon the external context – for example, the time and place – of the thinking.
This dependence on external context is thought by many to be a pervasive feature of content. Drawing on recent work on reference, Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge have argued that what people think, believe and so on depends not only on how they are, but also upon features of their physical and social environment. This raises the important question of whether an organism’s psychology can be understood in isolation from the external world it inhabits. Defenders of methodological individualism insist that it can be ; Putnam, Burge and their supporters that it can’t. Some theorists respond to the debate by distinguishing between wide and narrow content: narrow content is what ‘from the skin in’ identical individuals would share across different environments, whereas wide content might vary from one environment to the next. These theorists then give distinctive roles to the two notions in theoretical psychology, although this is a matter of great controversy.
Research Credit:
JACKSON, FRANK and GEORGES REY (1998). Mind, philosophy of. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved November 07, 2013, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/V038
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To be continued.
Far from the regular tradings of the Philosophy of mind, the concept of Gnoseology as an ambience within scholaric discourse is an offshoot of a synopsis. This synopsis has its root in the marvels that triggered seeming interests on the extent at which the mind bears relevance within human struggle. The mind, yes, the mind is surreal.
There is no gainsaying that, much work has been carried out by scholars in the past. The many works in this area reflects a revolution in psychology that began mid-century, a period marked with radical scienticism and pro-behaviouralism. Before then, largely in reaction to traditional claims about the mind being non-physical a-la- Rene Descartes, many thought that a scientific psychology should avoid talk of ‘private’ mental states. Investigation of such states had seemed to be based on unreliable introspection, and not subject to independent checking. Consequently, psychologists like B.F Skinner and J.B. Watson, and philosophers like W.V Quine and Gilbert Ryle argued that scientific psychology should confine itself to studying publicly observable relations between stimuli and responses. This fact is avid in their works on Behaviourism, Methodological and scientific findings towards Behaviourism on an analytic front.
In the late 1950s, there came several developments on the development of theories of the mind. The following comes within regard to the subject matter:
(i) The experiments behaviourists themselves ran on animals tended to refute behaviouristic hypotheses, suggesting that the behaviour of even rats had to be understood in terms of mental states.
(ii) The linguist Noam Chomsky drew attention to the surprising complexity of the natural languages that children effortlessly learn, and proposed ways of explaining this complexity in terms of largely unconscious mental phenomena.
(iii) The revolutionary work of Alan Turing led to the development of the modern digital computer. This seemed to offer the prospect of creating Artificial intelligence, and also of providing empirically testable models of intelligent processes in both humans and animals.
(iv) Philosophers came to appreciate the virtues of realism, as opposed to instrumentalism, about theoretical entities in general.
From the above, it is clear to argue that constructive individualism is a necessary factor for consideration when the theories of mind are put to the table. This is because, in other to arrive at a whole, an individual plot of concepts are put together towards amassing the multitudinal realism that arrives with the whole. This is a constant factor, one which over the years has proven to be vital to the theories of the mind. We shall see this clearly in the remaining course of this work.
The Mind and Meaning
As these last issues indicate, any theory of the mind must face the hard topic of meaning just as is easier with semantics. In the philosophies of mind and psychology, the issue is not primarily the meanings of expressions in natural language, but of how a state of the mind or brain can have meaning or content: what is it to believe, for example, that snow is white or hope that you will win. These latter states are examples of Propositional attitudes: attitudes towards propositions such as that snow is white, or that you will win, that form the ‘content’ of the state of belief or hope. They raise the general issue of Intentionality, or how a mental state can be about things (for example, snow) and properties (for example, white), and, particularly, ‘about’ things that do not exist or will not happen, as when someone believes in Santa Claus or hopes in vain for victory.There have been three main proposals about mental content. From this, we can deduce that a state might possess a specific content:
(i) by virtue of the role it plays in reasoning ; (ii) by virtue of certain causal and lawful relations the state bears to phenomena in the world ; or (iii) by virtue of the function it plays in the evolution and biology of the organism.
Related to these proposals above are traditional philosophical interests in Concepts, although this latter topic raises complicating metaphysical concerns with Universals, and epistemological concerns with A priori knowledge (in loose sense; knowledge from before).
Special problems are raised by indexical content, or the content of thoughts involving concepts expressed by, for example, ‘I myself’, ‘here’, ‘now’, ‘this’, and ‘that’. Does the thought that it is hot here, had in Ojota, have the same content as the thought that it is hot here, had in Calabar? The conditions under which such thoughts are true obviously depends upon the external context – for example, the time and place – of the thinking.
This dependence on external context is thought by many to be a pervasive feature of content. Drawing on recent work on reference, Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge have argued that what people think, believe and so on depends not only on how they are, but also upon features of their physical and social environment. This raises the important question of whether an organism’s psychology can be understood in isolation from the external world it inhabits. Defenders of methodological individualism insist that it can be ; Putnam, Burge and their supporters that it can’t. Some theorists respond to the debate by distinguishing between wide and narrow content: narrow content is what ‘from the skin in’ identical individuals would share across different environments, whereas wide content might vary from one environment to the next. These theorists then give distinctive roles to the two notions in theoretical psychology, although this is a matter of great controversy.
Research Credit:
JACKSON, FRANK and GEORGES REY (1998). Mind, philosophy of. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved November 07, 2013, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/V038
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To be continued.
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