Category: Representation
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A ‘Feuerbachian’ Objection to Descartes’ First Meditation III God Argument
Descartes gives three arguments for the existence of God in his Meditations on First Philosophy. This entry discusses the first argument and commenter Elliot's objection to it. We can call it the argument from the representational content of the God-idea. In a subsequent entry I hope to set forth the argument in full dress and…
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Mark Sainsbury on Intentional Relations
Following A. N. Prior, Sainsbury sets up the problem of intentionality as follows: We are faced with a paradox: some intentional states are relational and some are not. But all intentional states are the same kind of thing, and things of the same kind are either all relational or all non-relational. (Intentional Relations, 327) Cast…
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Kant’s Letter to Marcus Herz, 21 February 1772
The brief missive to Herz sheds considerable light on Kant's Critical project. Herewith, some notes for my edification if not yours. 1) How is metaphysica specialis possible as science, als Wissenschaft? Having been awakened by David Hume from his "dogmatic slumber," Kant was puzzling over this. It occurred to him that the key to the…
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Secure Epistemic Foundations, Language, and Reality
This from Grigory Aleksin: I have been doing some reading and thinking, and there are a few things that I cannot quite get my head around. I was wondering whether you could help me, or point me in the direction of some work on the issue. My somewhat naive task has been to try and…
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Intentionality for Third-World Entities?
Commenter John and I are having a very productive discussion about intentionality. I thank him for helping me clarify my thoughts about this fascinating topic. I begin with some points on which (I think) John and I agree. a) There is a 'third world' or third realm and it is the realm of abstracta. (I…
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Thinking Meat?
Argument A. Meat can't think. My brain is meat. Therefore, what thinks in me when I think is not my brain. A in Reverse: What thinks in me when I think is my brain. My brain is meat. Therefore, meat can think. The proponent of A needn't deny that we are meatheads. Of course we…
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Memory, Memory Traces, and Causation
Passing a lady in the supermarket I catch a whiff of patchouli. Her scent puts me in mind of hippy-trippy Pamela from the summer of '69. An olfactory stimulus in the present causes a memory, also in the present, of an event long past, a tête-à-tête with a certain girl. How ordinary, but how strange! Suddenly…
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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…
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Representation and Causation, with Some Help from Putnam
1. Materialism would be very attractive if only it could be made to work. Unfortunately, there are a number of phenomena for which it has no satisfactory explanation. One such is the phenomenon ofrepresentation, whether mental or linguistic. Some mental states are of or about worldly individuals and states of affairs. This fact comes under…
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A Coherent Representing of the Incoherent
It is broadly logically impossible that there be a hand that both draws itself and is drawn by itself. So what the Escher print represents is B-L impossible, and in this sense 'incoherent' and 'unintelligible.' But the Escher drawing itself is coherent and intelligible as a representation. And so we can say that we understand…