Sofia I . A . Stein | Unisinos (original) (raw)
Papers by Sofia I . A . Stein
Philosophies
The use of new paradigms of false belief tasks (FBT) allowed to reduce the age of children who pa... more The use of new paradigms of false belief tasks (FBT) allowed to reduce the age of children who pass the test from the previous 4 years in the standard version to only 15 months or even a striking 6 months in the nonverbal modification. These results are often taken as evidence that infants already possess an-at least implicit-theory of mind (ToM). We criticize this inferential leap on the grounds that inferring a ToM from the predictive success on a false belief task requires to assume as premise that a belief reasoning is a necessary condition for correct action prediction. It is argued that the FBT does not satisfactorily constrain the predictive means, leaving room for the use of belief-independent inferences (that can rely on the attribution of non-representational mental states or the consideration of behavioral patterns that dispense any reference to other minds). These heuristics, when applied to the FBT, can achieve the same predictive success of a belief-based inference because information provided by the test stimulus allows the recognition of particular situations that can be subsumed by their 'laws'. Instead of solving this issue by designing a single experimentum crucis that would render unfeasible the use of non-representational inferences, we suggest the application of a set of tests in which, although individually they can support inferences dissociated from a ToM, only an inference that makes use of false beliefs is able to correctly predict all the outcomes.
Revista Dissertatio de Filosofia
In this paper, I intend to justify a positive approach to social neuroscience that takes into con... more In this paper, I intend to justify a positive approach to social neuroscience that takes into consideration restrictive philosophical arguments about our-common and scientific-use of mental concepts. I will start with a clarification of the philosophical point of view, which holds that it is impossible to identify others' mental states as neural states because the language we use to speak about others' mental states-and our own, too-is a public language. Second, I will show the gap between explanations of social linguistic communication of intentions and reasons for acting and neurological explanations of the human mind. Third, I will use M. D. Lieberman's (2007) Internal/External Reference dichotomy to question whether recent findings in the social neurosciences confirm that many folk psychological concepts refer to external social events rather than internal states. If this is the case, neuroscientific findings show that part of the psychological language use is fundamentally behavioristic, i.e., not about neural states, but about social actions (see Suzanne Oosterwijk et al., 2015). These actions obviously include bodily and neurological processes, but they are not defined by these. Therefore, if all this is true, neuroscientists are right to be confident that neuroscience can help us to investigate social interactions, but certainly not in a reductive mannerthat is, not by reducing socially used concepts, such as the concept of "intending" to do something, to neural activities; instead, neuroscience can help to establish new and more precise classifications of social behaviors, that have, among their parts, scientifically identifiable flexible neural processes.
Veritas (Porto Alegre)
[Texto não tem resumo - Eduardo]
Intuitio, 2012
Thought and Action, Springer, 2005), if one wants to determine the truth of a theory, it is neces... more Thought and Action, Springer, 2005), if one wants to determine the truth of a theory, it is necessary to determine the reference and the sense of terms for objects in that theory. Quine, as Lauener interprets it, contradicts himself when he sustains a physicalist realism, from an ontological point of view, and, at the same time, argues for the inscrutability of the reference of terms, as his naturalistic-behavioristic analysis shows. Moreover, Lauener argues that the notion of meaning would be related to the notion of rule, that is to say, intensions and extensions would be "fixed by the totality of the rules which prescribe the correct use of the expressions". That notion of meaning has, so, according to Lauener, a transcendental status and is opposed to any concept of meaning that could be formulated by a naturalistic perspective. The normativity intrinsic to linguistic activity isn't, as Lauener states, something that one could describe solely by a naturalistic and extensional discourse. I intend to question the relevance of Lauener's criticism against the naturalistic point of view in semantics, starting from a distinction between Quine's naturalistic-behavioristic standpoint and other possible naturalistic standpoints in semantics that wouldn't exclude the discourse about intensions and intentions.
Kriterion Revista De Filosofia, 2004
Trends in psychiatry and psychotherapy, 2012
Scientiae Studia, 2004
Durante a década de 1930, verdadeiramente intensa em descobertas teóricas para Willard Van Orman ... more Durante a década de 1930, verdadeiramente intensa em descobertas teóricas para Willard Van Orman Quine, ele dedicou-se primordialmente à pesquisa e redação de textos sobre lógica formal matemática. Sua tese de doutorado, como ele próprio a descreve em sua autobiografia, vale ser lembrada pelos esclarecimentos de 'confusões' entre uso e menção de expressões no Principia mathematica de Russell & Whitehead (1910-13). Tais esclarecimentos eram, na época, bastante inovadores, dado que, no meio em que Quine pesquisava, ainda não era corrente a distinção entre uso e menção de expressões. A dissertação, orientada pelo próprio Whitehead, basicamente, pretendia mostrar que era possível derivar o Principia de oito axiomas, algumas regras de inferência e seis definições selecionados por Quine.
In this article, I want to explore the possibility of seeing private phenomenal experiences along... more In this article, I want to explore the possibility of seeing private phenomenal experiences along the line with Russell’s thought: as having objectivity, which would allow seeing them as objects of scientific research. Or, in other words, to ask if it would be possible to speak scientifically about mental events usually called impressions. Although some philosophers still consider this problem to be inscrutable —the so-called explanatory gap that leads to all the complex and extense debate about qualia, my hypothesis is, as Sellars indicated, that it is highly probable that only errors or limitations in our use of vocabulary impede us in finding a solution according to Russell’s intention.
Abstract: “Theory of Mind” (ToM) means the ability to attribute representational mental states to... more Abstract: “Theory of Mind” (ToM) means the ability to attribute representational mental states to others, such as beliefs and desires, and to explain/predict behaviors taking into account how these mental states commonly interact. “Moral Cognition” (CM), in a broad sense, refers to the way people make moral judgments, evaluating behaviors in the light of a system of norms. ToM and CM, skills that are part of human social cognition, although being distinct in computational terms (i.e. about their functional roles—domain of input processed and types of outputs produced) and neural embodiment, are processes that interact in various forms, with cognitive tasks that require them jointly. It is intended in this paper to analyze types of cognitive tasks in which ToM and CM interact (ToM taking as input an output of CM and CM taking as input an output of ToM), and in which ToM and CM are recruited separately. Due to the existence of clinical groups (e.g. individuals in the autism spectrum) having anomalous performance in certain cognitive tasks that recruit ToM and CM together (e.g. judging the behavior of an agent who, wanting to accomplish something good, caused an accidental injury to another person), it is necessary to investigate the exact role of each process in the production of these complex outputs to clarify the origin of the errors. Without taking into account experimental results that recruit ToM and CM alone it is not possible to determine whether the poor performance on a task that depends on the collective use of the two processes is the result of an impairment in ToM, CM or both.
This article will expose theoretical assumptions and philosophical hypotheses that can be tested ... more This article will expose theoretical assumptions and philosophical hypotheses that can be tested using electroencephalography. Using the ERP technique (Event-Related Potentials), which makes use of EEG data, it is expected to be possible to find patterns of electrophysiological responses that "carry information" about the possession or absence of epistemic mental states, while participants are reading philosophical sentences ending in a true or false way. The idea is to include participants in the group of philosophers (graduate students in philosophy) or the group of non-philosophers (students of unrelated courses) and assuming greater familiarity with philosophical facts among philosophers, will be analyzed the signal evoked in the two conditions (i.e. false and true sentences) in both groups, especially in electrodes located in the central and parietal regions. The component of interest of the ERP will be the N400 (negative deflection whose latency occurs about 400 milliseconds after a stimulus), which is mainly associated with the difficulty of integrating a word - in semantic terms – into the context in which it appears. From the mere brain response to satisfied semantic expectations (attenuated N400) or violated (strong N400), it is conjectured to be possible to understand the causal role of the underlying epistemic beliefs that are modulating the signals and how they are recruited during reading to predict the next lexical items
Keywords: Mindreading, Philosophy of Mind, Electroencephalography, N400.
Neste artigo, quero explorar a possibilidade de ver as experiências fenomênicas privadas, na linh... more Neste artigo, quero explorar a possibilidade de ver as experiências fenomênicas privadas, na linha do que pensava Russell, como detentoras de objetividade, o que possibilitaria vê-las como objetos de investigações científicas. Ou, dito de outro modo, perguntar se seria possível falar cientificamente sobre eventos mentais que chamamos ordinariamente de impressões. Apesar desse problema ser ainda considerado imperscrutável por uma certa filosofia, minha hipótese é a de que, como sustentava Sellars, podemos estar sendo apenas impedidos por erros ou limitações no uso de nosso vocabulário a encontrar uma solução consoante com ao que ambicionava Russell.
My goal in this paper is to present a possible theoretical link between naturalized semantics – i... more My goal in this paper is to present a possible theoretical link between naturalized semantics
– in particular, biosemantics – and traditional metaphysical approaches to ontology.
Naturalized semantics needs to establish some ontological presuppositions, such as exist
in traditional ontology. However, the method of the two disciplines is very different, and
this seems to lead to different results. This is only partly correct. Metaphysical conceptual
analysis, which is one of several new metaphysical approaches, uses diverse forms of scientific
knowledge, as does naturalized semantics. There are significant links: both disciplines engage
in philosophical reflections over mental and linguistic structures, over linguistic expressions
and their functions, and over the reference and content of these expressions. There exists,
then, an overlap of method and content and also a complementarity between naturalized
semantics and traditional contemporary analytical ontology, in that both focus on mental
and linguistic functions, in order to think about what objects are.
In this paper I analyze recent neo-pragmatic views that have followed Wittgenstein’s anti-represe... more In this paper I analyze recent neo-pragmatic views that have followed Wittgenstein’s anti-representationalist perspective on meaning. One can find a bifurcation in recent literature on the question of how human understanding and communication actually take place in society. Some are convinced that natural science can explain all our communicative capacities. Others still believe that there is something special about meaning. On both sides we find representationalists and anti-representationalists. I present here the main features of this bifurcation so as to argue in favor of a neural-pragmatic semantic, that still has a Wittgensteinian flavor, but that incorporates lessons received from embodied cognition theories and from biosemantics.
Key words: Meaning, Representationalism, Wittgensteinian pragmatism, Embodied cognition, Neural-pragmatism
A. Sense in the midst of life, laws and norms, Dec 7, 2013
I will show, starting from a confrontation of their main theses related to human language, why on... more I will show, starting from a confrontation of their main theses related to human language, why one of the major sources of disagreement between Ruth Millikan (1993) and John McDowell (1999) concerning the naturalization of rationality is how Millikan uses the concept of representation (1984, 2004, 2005). That is to say that one of the main questions raised by the naturalization of philosophical discourse in Millikan’s semantics lies in her emphasis that representations as vehicles of meanings are something that could be explained by science, by biology and psychology. If we expect, like McDowell does, that representations are a kind of proposition, at first glance there would be no problem in speaking about them from a traditional point of view. But when they are transformed in an empirical phenomenon, they lose the kind of quality necessary for meaning in a classical sense: they are linked to empirical phenomena or by laws or by norms. My final purpose in this paper will be to indicate the possibility of an alternative to both views. It consists in weakening the notion of representation so as to retrieve it from the center of the discussion about meaning and focus on social behavior instead, although admitting the value of scientific explanations of mind and brain.
In: Moyal-Sharrock, D.; Munz, V. A.; Coliva, A. (Org.). Geist, Sprache und Handlung (Mind, Language and Action): Papers. Beiträge der Österreichischen Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft. Band XXI. , Aug 2013
In this paper I intend to show that Russell’s called neutral monism in the philosophy of mind isn... more In this paper I intend to show that Russell’s called neutral monism in the philosophy of mind isn’t, as presented in The Analysis of Mind (1921), a metaphysical reductionism that establish sense-data as a kind of indefinite entities that are the basis of mental and physical world. On the contrary, sense-data are established as a necessary link between physical and mental discourse because of the lack of a scientific link between these two discourses, but scientific discourse is presupposed to be the fundamental discourse in a philosophy of mind. It is just because of the limitations of scientific theories that philosophical analysis must intervene and establish sense-data as the link between what is called a physical fact and what is called mental fact.
One of the key questions of the philosophy of mind is that of other minds. The problem consists i... more One of the key questions of the philosophy of mind is that of other minds. The problem consists in questioning whether it is possible to achieve a state of reliable knowledge about what other persons feel, think, and intend. This was one of the central questions of modern philosophy, first raised by Renée Descartes.1 Initially, his response to this question was a skeptic one: there is no ultimate guarantee for our affirmations concerning the content, states and mental processes of other minds. Indeed, modern skepticism goes even further: we have no guarantee for what we believe happens in the exterior world, and therefore not even the content of our own thoughts is reliable. We can infer from the fact that we are sometimes misled by our own senses that we may always be wrong about what the objects in the world really are, and about what actually happens in the world. Our own body and the bodies and minds of other persons are part of something we have doubtful knowledge of, since this knowledge must be filtered by our own limited sensory capacities. (…)
Verbete sobre vida e obra de Quine.
Seguindo a argumentação de Quine contra a viabilidade da lógica modal, procurarei mostrar as tent... more Seguindo a argumentação de Quine contra a viabilidade da lógica modal, procurarei mostrar as tentativas, em primeiro lugar, de Rudolf Carnap e, em segundo lugar, de Ruth Barcan Marcus e Dagfinn Follesdal de superar as dificuldades apontadas por Quine para a construção de um cálculo de predicados com operadores modais.
Objetivo do artigo: Demonstrar que a tendência contemporânea de alguns grupos de filósofos de obs... more Objetivo do artigo: Demonstrar que a tendência contemporânea de alguns grupos de filósofos de observar a epistemologia como ‘integrada’ às ciências empíricas —sendo que é questionável qual seria propriamente o seu grau de integração— representa, um tanto paradoxalmente, um tipo de pensamento próximo ao ideal de unificação das ciências dos neoempiristas.
Philosophies
The use of new paradigms of false belief tasks (FBT) allowed to reduce the age of children who pa... more The use of new paradigms of false belief tasks (FBT) allowed to reduce the age of children who pass the test from the previous 4 years in the standard version to only 15 months or even a striking 6 months in the nonverbal modification. These results are often taken as evidence that infants already possess an-at least implicit-theory of mind (ToM). We criticize this inferential leap on the grounds that inferring a ToM from the predictive success on a false belief task requires to assume as premise that a belief reasoning is a necessary condition for correct action prediction. It is argued that the FBT does not satisfactorily constrain the predictive means, leaving room for the use of belief-independent inferences (that can rely on the attribution of non-representational mental states or the consideration of behavioral patterns that dispense any reference to other minds). These heuristics, when applied to the FBT, can achieve the same predictive success of a belief-based inference because information provided by the test stimulus allows the recognition of particular situations that can be subsumed by their 'laws'. Instead of solving this issue by designing a single experimentum crucis that would render unfeasible the use of non-representational inferences, we suggest the application of a set of tests in which, although individually they can support inferences dissociated from a ToM, only an inference that makes use of false beliefs is able to correctly predict all the outcomes.
Revista Dissertatio de Filosofia
In this paper, I intend to justify a positive approach to social neuroscience that takes into con... more In this paper, I intend to justify a positive approach to social neuroscience that takes into consideration restrictive philosophical arguments about our-common and scientific-use of mental concepts. I will start with a clarification of the philosophical point of view, which holds that it is impossible to identify others' mental states as neural states because the language we use to speak about others' mental states-and our own, too-is a public language. Second, I will show the gap between explanations of social linguistic communication of intentions and reasons for acting and neurological explanations of the human mind. Third, I will use M. D. Lieberman's (2007) Internal/External Reference dichotomy to question whether recent findings in the social neurosciences confirm that many folk psychological concepts refer to external social events rather than internal states. If this is the case, neuroscientific findings show that part of the psychological language use is fundamentally behavioristic, i.e., not about neural states, but about social actions (see Suzanne Oosterwijk et al., 2015). These actions obviously include bodily and neurological processes, but they are not defined by these. Therefore, if all this is true, neuroscientists are right to be confident that neuroscience can help us to investigate social interactions, but certainly not in a reductive mannerthat is, not by reducing socially used concepts, such as the concept of "intending" to do something, to neural activities; instead, neuroscience can help to establish new and more precise classifications of social behaviors, that have, among their parts, scientifically identifiable flexible neural processes.
Veritas (Porto Alegre)
[Texto não tem resumo - Eduardo]
Intuitio, 2012
Thought and Action, Springer, 2005), if one wants to determine the truth of a theory, it is neces... more Thought and Action, Springer, 2005), if one wants to determine the truth of a theory, it is necessary to determine the reference and the sense of terms for objects in that theory. Quine, as Lauener interprets it, contradicts himself when he sustains a physicalist realism, from an ontological point of view, and, at the same time, argues for the inscrutability of the reference of terms, as his naturalistic-behavioristic analysis shows. Moreover, Lauener argues that the notion of meaning would be related to the notion of rule, that is to say, intensions and extensions would be "fixed by the totality of the rules which prescribe the correct use of the expressions". That notion of meaning has, so, according to Lauener, a transcendental status and is opposed to any concept of meaning that could be formulated by a naturalistic perspective. The normativity intrinsic to linguistic activity isn't, as Lauener states, something that one could describe solely by a naturalistic and extensional discourse. I intend to question the relevance of Lauener's criticism against the naturalistic point of view in semantics, starting from a distinction between Quine's naturalistic-behavioristic standpoint and other possible naturalistic standpoints in semantics that wouldn't exclude the discourse about intensions and intentions.
Kriterion Revista De Filosofia, 2004
Trends in psychiatry and psychotherapy, 2012
Scientiae Studia, 2004
Durante a década de 1930, verdadeiramente intensa em descobertas teóricas para Willard Van Orman ... more Durante a década de 1930, verdadeiramente intensa em descobertas teóricas para Willard Van Orman Quine, ele dedicou-se primordialmente à pesquisa e redação de textos sobre lógica formal matemática. Sua tese de doutorado, como ele próprio a descreve em sua autobiografia, vale ser lembrada pelos esclarecimentos de 'confusões' entre uso e menção de expressões no Principia mathematica de Russell & Whitehead (1910-13). Tais esclarecimentos eram, na época, bastante inovadores, dado que, no meio em que Quine pesquisava, ainda não era corrente a distinção entre uso e menção de expressões. A dissertação, orientada pelo próprio Whitehead, basicamente, pretendia mostrar que era possível derivar o Principia de oito axiomas, algumas regras de inferência e seis definições selecionados por Quine.
In this article, I want to explore the possibility of seeing private phenomenal experiences along... more In this article, I want to explore the possibility of seeing private phenomenal experiences along the line with Russell’s thought: as having objectivity, which would allow seeing them as objects of scientific research. Or, in other words, to ask if it would be possible to speak scientifically about mental events usually called impressions. Although some philosophers still consider this problem to be inscrutable —the so-called explanatory gap that leads to all the complex and extense debate about qualia, my hypothesis is, as Sellars indicated, that it is highly probable that only errors or limitations in our use of vocabulary impede us in finding a solution according to Russell’s intention.
Abstract: “Theory of Mind” (ToM) means the ability to attribute representational mental states to... more Abstract: “Theory of Mind” (ToM) means the ability to attribute representational mental states to others, such as beliefs and desires, and to explain/predict behaviors taking into account how these mental states commonly interact. “Moral Cognition” (CM), in a broad sense, refers to the way people make moral judgments, evaluating behaviors in the light of a system of norms. ToM and CM, skills that are part of human social cognition, although being distinct in computational terms (i.e. about their functional roles—domain of input processed and types of outputs produced) and neural embodiment, are processes that interact in various forms, with cognitive tasks that require them jointly. It is intended in this paper to analyze types of cognitive tasks in which ToM and CM interact (ToM taking as input an output of CM and CM taking as input an output of ToM), and in which ToM and CM are recruited separately. Due to the existence of clinical groups (e.g. individuals in the autism spectrum) having anomalous performance in certain cognitive tasks that recruit ToM and CM together (e.g. judging the behavior of an agent who, wanting to accomplish something good, caused an accidental injury to another person), it is necessary to investigate the exact role of each process in the production of these complex outputs to clarify the origin of the errors. Without taking into account experimental results that recruit ToM and CM alone it is not possible to determine whether the poor performance on a task that depends on the collective use of the two processes is the result of an impairment in ToM, CM or both.
This article will expose theoretical assumptions and philosophical hypotheses that can be tested ... more This article will expose theoretical assumptions and philosophical hypotheses that can be tested using electroencephalography. Using the ERP technique (Event-Related Potentials), which makes use of EEG data, it is expected to be possible to find patterns of electrophysiological responses that "carry information" about the possession or absence of epistemic mental states, while participants are reading philosophical sentences ending in a true or false way. The idea is to include participants in the group of philosophers (graduate students in philosophy) or the group of non-philosophers (students of unrelated courses) and assuming greater familiarity with philosophical facts among philosophers, will be analyzed the signal evoked in the two conditions (i.e. false and true sentences) in both groups, especially in electrodes located in the central and parietal regions. The component of interest of the ERP will be the N400 (negative deflection whose latency occurs about 400 milliseconds after a stimulus), which is mainly associated with the difficulty of integrating a word - in semantic terms – into the context in which it appears. From the mere brain response to satisfied semantic expectations (attenuated N400) or violated (strong N400), it is conjectured to be possible to understand the causal role of the underlying epistemic beliefs that are modulating the signals and how they are recruited during reading to predict the next lexical items
Keywords: Mindreading, Philosophy of Mind, Electroencephalography, N400.
Neste artigo, quero explorar a possibilidade de ver as experiências fenomênicas privadas, na linh... more Neste artigo, quero explorar a possibilidade de ver as experiências fenomênicas privadas, na linha do que pensava Russell, como detentoras de objetividade, o que possibilitaria vê-las como objetos de investigações científicas. Ou, dito de outro modo, perguntar se seria possível falar cientificamente sobre eventos mentais que chamamos ordinariamente de impressões. Apesar desse problema ser ainda considerado imperscrutável por uma certa filosofia, minha hipótese é a de que, como sustentava Sellars, podemos estar sendo apenas impedidos por erros ou limitações no uso de nosso vocabulário a encontrar uma solução consoante com ao que ambicionava Russell.
My goal in this paper is to present a possible theoretical link between naturalized semantics – i... more My goal in this paper is to present a possible theoretical link between naturalized semantics
– in particular, biosemantics – and traditional metaphysical approaches to ontology.
Naturalized semantics needs to establish some ontological presuppositions, such as exist
in traditional ontology. However, the method of the two disciplines is very different, and
this seems to lead to different results. This is only partly correct. Metaphysical conceptual
analysis, which is one of several new metaphysical approaches, uses diverse forms of scientific
knowledge, as does naturalized semantics. There are significant links: both disciplines engage
in philosophical reflections over mental and linguistic structures, over linguistic expressions
and their functions, and over the reference and content of these expressions. There exists,
then, an overlap of method and content and also a complementarity between naturalized
semantics and traditional contemporary analytical ontology, in that both focus on mental
and linguistic functions, in order to think about what objects are.
In this paper I analyze recent neo-pragmatic views that have followed Wittgenstein’s anti-represe... more In this paper I analyze recent neo-pragmatic views that have followed Wittgenstein’s anti-representationalist perspective on meaning. One can find a bifurcation in recent literature on the question of how human understanding and communication actually take place in society. Some are convinced that natural science can explain all our communicative capacities. Others still believe that there is something special about meaning. On both sides we find representationalists and anti-representationalists. I present here the main features of this bifurcation so as to argue in favor of a neural-pragmatic semantic, that still has a Wittgensteinian flavor, but that incorporates lessons received from embodied cognition theories and from biosemantics.
Key words: Meaning, Representationalism, Wittgensteinian pragmatism, Embodied cognition, Neural-pragmatism
A. Sense in the midst of life, laws and norms, Dec 7, 2013
I will show, starting from a confrontation of their main theses related to human language, why on... more I will show, starting from a confrontation of their main theses related to human language, why one of the major sources of disagreement between Ruth Millikan (1993) and John McDowell (1999) concerning the naturalization of rationality is how Millikan uses the concept of representation (1984, 2004, 2005). That is to say that one of the main questions raised by the naturalization of philosophical discourse in Millikan’s semantics lies in her emphasis that representations as vehicles of meanings are something that could be explained by science, by biology and psychology. If we expect, like McDowell does, that representations are a kind of proposition, at first glance there would be no problem in speaking about them from a traditional point of view. But when they are transformed in an empirical phenomenon, they lose the kind of quality necessary for meaning in a classical sense: they are linked to empirical phenomena or by laws or by norms. My final purpose in this paper will be to indicate the possibility of an alternative to both views. It consists in weakening the notion of representation so as to retrieve it from the center of the discussion about meaning and focus on social behavior instead, although admitting the value of scientific explanations of mind and brain.
In: Moyal-Sharrock, D.; Munz, V. A.; Coliva, A. (Org.). Geist, Sprache und Handlung (Mind, Language and Action): Papers. Beiträge der Österreichischen Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft. Band XXI. , Aug 2013
In this paper I intend to show that Russell’s called neutral monism in the philosophy of mind isn... more In this paper I intend to show that Russell’s called neutral monism in the philosophy of mind isn’t, as presented in The Analysis of Mind (1921), a metaphysical reductionism that establish sense-data as a kind of indefinite entities that are the basis of mental and physical world. On the contrary, sense-data are established as a necessary link between physical and mental discourse because of the lack of a scientific link between these two discourses, but scientific discourse is presupposed to be the fundamental discourse in a philosophy of mind. It is just because of the limitations of scientific theories that philosophical analysis must intervene and establish sense-data as the link between what is called a physical fact and what is called mental fact.
One of the key questions of the philosophy of mind is that of other minds. The problem consists i... more One of the key questions of the philosophy of mind is that of other minds. The problem consists in questioning whether it is possible to achieve a state of reliable knowledge about what other persons feel, think, and intend. This was one of the central questions of modern philosophy, first raised by Renée Descartes.1 Initially, his response to this question was a skeptic one: there is no ultimate guarantee for our affirmations concerning the content, states and mental processes of other minds. Indeed, modern skepticism goes even further: we have no guarantee for what we believe happens in the exterior world, and therefore not even the content of our own thoughts is reliable. We can infer from the fact that we are sometimes misled by our own senses that we may always be wrong about what the objects in the world really are, and about what actually happens in the world. Our own body and the bodies and minds of other persons are part of something we have doubtful knowledge of, since this knowledge must be filtered by our own limited sensory capacities. (…)
Verbete sobre vida e obra de Quine.
Seguindo a argumentação de Quine contra a viabilidade da lógica modal, procurarei mostrar as tent... more Seguindo a argumentação de Quine contra a viabilidade da lógica modal, procurarei mostrar as tentativas, em primeiro lugar, de Rudolf Carnap e, em segundo lugar, de Ruth Barcan Marcus e Dagfinn Follesdal de superar as dificuldades apontadas por Quine para a construção de um cálculo de predicados com operadores modais.
Objetivo do artigo: Demonstrar que a tendência contemporânea de alguns grupos de filósofos de obs... more Objetivo do artigo: Demonstrar que a tendência contemporânea de alguns grupos de filósofos de observar a epistemologia como ‘integrada’ às ciências empíricas —sendo que é questionável qual seria propriamente o seu grau de integração— representa, um tanto paradoxalmente, um tipo de pensamento próximo ao ideal de unificação das ciências dos neoempiristas.
Sustentarei que ainda há uma forma legítima de ver a linguagem como um objeto público, e também u... more Sustentarei que ainda há uma forma legítima de ver a linguagem como um objeto público, e também uma forma legítima de observar funções da linguagem, que Chomsky não levou em conta. Aprender a linguagem não é meramente adquirir uma “eu-linguagem”. Não é apenas alcançar um estado relativamente estável da faculdade da linguagem. Aprender a linguagem é essencialmente vir a conhecer várias convenções públicas e, com exceções triviais, essas convenções estão aí para serem aprendidas apenas porque têm funções.
Palavras-chave: Linguagem pública, Noan Chomsky, Convenções linguísticas.
The contrast between the space of reasons and the realm of law to which Sellars implicitly appeal... more The contrast between the space of reasons and the realm of law to which Sellars
implicitly appeals was not available before modern times. Ancient philosophers didn’t feel a
tension between the idea that knowledge is a normative status and the idea of an exercise of
natural powers. Therefore the contrast Sellars draws can set an agenda for philosophy
nowadays. I want to distinguish two ways of undertaking such a project. The idea is that the
organization of the space of reasons is not, as Sellars suggests, alien to the kind of structure
natural science discovers in the world. Thinking and knowing are part of our way of being
animals. To show that, I will distinguish between two kinds of naturalism: a restrictive
naturalism and liberal naturalism. I want to suggest that Millikan’s argument in favor of a
restrictive naturalism when criticizing Frege’s semantic is vitiated by adherence to a residual
Cartesianism. This is the result of a familiar trade-off; the price of discarding Cartesian
immaterialism, while staying within restrictive naturalism, is that one’s singled-out part of
nature is no longer special enough to be credited with powers of thought. I will argue that the
proper home of the idea of “grasping senses” is in describing patterns in our lives – our
mental lives in this case – that are intelligible only in terms of the relations that structure the
space of reasons. This patterning involves genuine rationality, not just “mechanical
rationality” (so called). Liberal naturalism needs no more, to make the idea of “grasping
senses” unproblematic, than a perfectly reasonable insistence that such patterns really do
shape our lives.