Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Mind

  • How Could I Be Wrong?

    I say that there are beliefs.  An eliminativist contradicts me, insisting that there are no beliefs.  He cannot, consistently with what he maintains, hold that I have a false belief.  For if there are no beliefs, then there are no false beliefs.  But he must hold that I am wrong.  For if there are no…

  • The Philosophizing Hiker: The Derivative Intentionality of Trail Markers

    You are out hiking and the trail becomes faint and hard to follow. You peer into the distance and see what appear to be three stacked rocks. Looking a bit farther, you see another such stack. Now you are confident which way the trail goes. Your confidence increases as further cairns come into view. On…

  • BonJour on Intentionality and Materialism

    Questions about intentionality can be divided into two groups. In logically first place there are questions about what it is, how it is possible, and what ontological resources are required to render it intelligible. And then there are more specific questions about what implications intentionality has for the mind-body problem.  Does it, for example, rule out…

  • The Primacy of the Intentional Over the Linguistic

    Following Chisholm, et al. and as against Sellars, et al. I subscribe to the broadly logical primacy of the intentional over the linguistic. But before we can discuss the primacy of the intentional, we must have some idea of (i) what intentionality is and (ii) what the problem of intentionality is.  Very simply, (mental) intentionality  is…

  • An Argument of Russell Against Mental Acts

    Bertrand Russell's (1872-1970) The Analysis of Mind first appeared in 1921.  Lecture I contains a discussion of Brentano, Meinong, and mental acts.  He quotes the famous Brentano passage from the 1874 Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, and then confesses that until very lately he believed "that mental phenomena have essential reference to objects . . .'" but…

  • An Argument for Mental Acts

    An earlier post explains the distinction between mental acts and mental actions.  But a logically prior question is whether there are any mental acts in the first place.  Suppose I hear the characteristic rumble of a Harley-Davidson engine and then suddenly think of Peter.  One cannot move straightaway from such a commonplace observation recorded in ordinary English…

  • Mental Acts Versus Mental Actions: Sellars and Bergmann

    I have been assuming that there are mental acts and that there are mental actions and that they must not be confused.  It's high time for a bit of exfoliation.  Suppose I note that the front door of an elderly neighbor's house has been left ajar.  That noting is a mental act, but it is…

  • The Mystery of Mind

    The mystery of mind is summed up in the seemingly oxymoronic phrase 'intrinsic relationality.'

  • The Aporetics of the Intentional Object, Part I

    Here is a puzzle that may be thought to motivate a distinction between intentional and real objects, a distinction that turns out to be problematic indeed. Puzzle.  One cannot think without thinking of something, but if one is thinking of something, it does not follow that  something is such that one is thinking of it.…

  • Aquinas on Intentionality: Towards a Critique

    Yesterday I quoted Peter Geach in exposition of Aquinas' theory of intentionality.  I will now quote Anthony Kenny in exposition of the same doctrine: The form is individuated when existing with esse naturale in an actual example of a species; it is also individuated, in quite a different way, when it exists with esse intentionale…

  • Two Puzzles Anent Brentano’s 1874 Locus Classicus on Intentionality

    All contemporary discussion of intentionality traces back to an oft-quoted passage from Franz Brentano's Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint.  First published in 1874 in German, this influential book  had to wait 99 years until it saw the light of day in the Anglosphere.  And in the Anglosphere to go untranslated is to go unread.  Here is…

  • Intentionality: Peter Lupu’s ‘Surrogate Object’ Solution

    I suggest we approach the problem, or one of the problems, of intentionality via the following aporetic triad: 1. We sometimes intend the nonexistent.2. Intentionality is a relation.3. Every relation R is such that, if R obtains,then all its relata exist. This is a nice neat way of formulating the problem because, on the one hand,…

  • God, Evil, Matter and Mind: How Both Theists and Materialists Stand Pat in the Face of Objections

    It is a simple point of logic that if propositions p and q are both true, then they are logically consistent, though not conversely. So if God exists and Evil exists are both true, then they are logically consistent, whence it follows that it is possible that they be consistent. This is so whether or…

  • Physical Pain: Some Distinctions and Theses

    The topic of evil brought us to the topic of pain. Herewith, some distinctions and theses for your examination. With regard to physical pain, at least, we ought to distinguish among: a) The physical substratum of the pain. The cause of the pain. In the case of lower back pain, for example, a pinched nerve.…

  • If the Universe Can Arise out of Nothing, then so can Mind

    Over breakfast yesterday morning, Peter Lupu uncorked a penetrating observation.  The gist of it I took to be as follows.  If a naturalist maintains that the physical universe can arise out of nothing without divine or other supernatural agency, then the naturalist cannot rule out the possibility that other things so arise, minds for example — a result that appears curiously…