Jose Luis Bermudez

Rodriguez’s book offers an intriguing account of self-knowledge and privileged access in terms of how we non-relationally express our minds through behaviour. This paper argues that non-relational expressivism is fundamentally unstable, because it attempts to preserve a privileged, first-person perspective on one’s own mental states while rejecting the epistemic reading of the privileged access thesis. Section 2 explores the problems non-relational expressivism faces in accounting for psychological phenomena such as (in)sincerity and pretence, while Sect. 3 considers Rodriguez’s semantic analysis of expressive and descriptive first-person mental utterances, showing how he cannot avoid giving an account of the truth conditions of first-person self-ascriptions of belief. Section 4 formulates a dilemma for Rodriguez: in order to coherently explain how mental states can be non-relationally expressed, he must either give them an ontological status independent of the behavior that expresses them, or accept that, ultimately, there is nothing besides behavior. Neither option appears attractive for Rodriguez.

The widely used Fregean criterion for thought-identity, holds that two thoughts are different (at the level of sense), even if they correspond to a single state of affairs (at the level of reference) just if it is possible for a rational thinker to take different attitudes to them. It is also widely accepted that if the thinker becomes aware of the identity at the level of reference, then she is rationally required to take the same attitude to the two thoughts. This paper argues that preference and value create what I term _ultra-intensional_ contexts. These are contexts in which it can be rational to take different attitudes to a single state of affairs (at the level of reference) when it is _framed_ in different ways, even though the thinker is aware of this.

Frege wrote: “The thought, in itself imperceptible by the senses, gets clothed in the perceptible garb of a sentence, and thereby we are enabled to grasp it.” This chapter defends a version of Frege’s claim, namely, that we can only think _about_ thoughts when they are linguistically formulated. Section 7.1 makes the general argument that intentional ascent (thinking about thinking) requires semantic ascent (thinking about language). Section 7.2 addresses Martínez-Manrique & Vicente’s objection that the need to disambiguate indeterminacy in inner speech makes inner speech redundant as a potential vehicle for consciously thinking about thoughts. Section 7.3 takes issue with Langland-Hassan’s proposal that episodes of inner speech cannot carry the right kind of content to serve as vehicles for intentional ascent. The final section rebuts the objection that conscious inner speech presupposes the ability to bring a thought to consciousness, and so this latter ability is the true _explanandum_.

This chapter approaches self-control via a problem arising in decision theoretic discussions of sequential choice within a broadly Humean conception of action and motivation. How can agents stick to their plans and honor their commitments in the face of temptation, if at the moment of choice the short-term temptation motivationally outweighs the long-term goal? After introducing the sequential choice puzzle in section 19.1, section 19.2 surveys suggestive psychological work on the mechanisms of self-control, pointing to the importance of how outcomes are framed. Section 19.3 offers a solution to the sequential choice problem in terms of frame-sensitive reasoning—i.e. reasoning that allows outcomes to be valued differently depending on how they are framed, even when the agent knows that she is dealing with two (or more) different ways of framing the same outcome. Section 19.4 argues that this type of quasi-cyclical, frame-sensitive reasoning can indeed be rational.

Forms of thinking that involve thinking about thought are only available to creatures participating in a public language. Thoughts can only be the objects of further thoughts if they have suitable vehicle and the only suitable vehicle is public language sentences. These language-dependent cognitive abilities range from second-order reflection on one's own beliefs and desires and the capacity to attribute thoughts to others to the ability to entertain tensed thoughts and to deploy logical concepts. Many of these language-dependent cognitive abilities, however, have primitive analogues that do not involve intentional ascent and hence are available at the nonlinguistic level. This chapter considers the practical implications this has for the scope and limits of nonlinguistic thought. The chapter explores the question: what types of thinking are in principle unavailable to nonlinguistic creatures? There are two types of intentional ascent, which might be termed explicit and implicit intentional ascent respectively.

Reasoning and rationality are, of course, correlative notions, and this chapter pursues the question of the forms of inference available at the nonlinguistic level. This chapter provides the psychological explanation by exploring how the notion of practical reasoning might be applied at the nonlinguistic level. It also explores the idea that practical reasoning should be understood in decision-theorem terms. The decision-theoretic model is not required for the explanation of behaviors that are rational either in the level 1 or the level 2 sense. Certain forms of practical reasoning, however, are available at the nonlinguistic level. The chapter also shows how it is possible to identity at the nonlinguistic level certain very basic forms of protological thinking. These basic forms of protological thinking include what is termed as protonegation and protoconditional reasoning.

This chapter provides an argument that intentional ascent requires semantic ascent, on the grounds that intentional ascent requires the ability “to hold a thought in mind” in a way that can only be done if the thought is linguistically vehicled. It tries to explain that there is an important class of thoughts that is in principle unavailable to nonlinguistic creatures. It also explores how language can function as a cognitive tool. Many of these functions do not actually require a full-fledged language. If language is to have a distinctive, unique, and essential cognitive function, so that the difference between linguistic and nonlinguistic cognition is qualitative rather than merely quantitative, then it should be investigated further. The chapter takes into account many aspects of language where language functions as a cognitive tool: memory augmentation; environmental simplification; coordination; transcending path-dependent learning; control loops; and data manipulation and representation.

This chapter explores how a semantics can be provided for nonlinguistic thoughts in a way that both does justice to philosophical constraints on acceptable theories of content and provides the ethologist or developmental psychologist with a workable method of assigning content to the beliefs and desires of nonlinguistic creatures. The utility condition of a belief is a state of affairs construable in purely extensional terms. Determining an ontology can be no more than the first stage in resolving the problem of indeterminacy. A single state of affairs can be apprehended by a creature in many different ways, and in order to explain how its representations of the environment cause it to behave in the way it does, one can specify not simply the state of affairs it is representing but also how it apprehends that state of affairs.

A theory of nonlinguistic thought is incomplete without an account of nonlinguistic reasoning and the norms of rationality by which such reasoning is governed. This chapter tries to show how an account of nonlinguistic rationality emerges when we pose the question: What could count as evidence that a nonlinguistic creature is behaving rationally? There are several different forms of evidence that can come into play here. At the most sophisticated level, a creature is behaving rationally when it is sensitive to the consequences of different courses of action, but there are types of rationality that do not involve such consequence-sensitivity. Different forms of rationality are appropriate to different types of explanation, and this chapter draws a distinction between level 1 rationality and level 2 rationality that maps onto the distinction between explanations of the type proposed by the minimalist and explanations that make use of belief-desire psychology.

This chapter explains how a theorist might fix an ontology in a way that will allow the theorist to determine what objects a particular non-language-using creature is capable of thinking about—or, in other words, that will elucidate how the creature “carves up” its world into bounded individuals. Among other issues, it explores a version of successful semantics based on the idea that the content of a belief is its utility condition and the content of a desire its satisfaction-condition. Existing versions of success semantics generate a significant problem of indeterminacy. Success semantics originated with some fleeting comments by Frank Ramsey about the beliefs of a chicken in his 1927 article ‘Facts and Propositions’. He commented that the chicken's belief that a certain type of caterpillar is poisonous should be equated with the chicken's abstaining from eating such caterpillars on account of unpleasant experiences connected with them.

This chapter considers a deflationary or minimalist construal of the nature of nonlinguistic thought that might be deployed to finesse the apparent need to attribute thoughts to creatures that are not language-users. The aim of the minimalist proposal is to show that thinking behavior in nonlinguistic creatures can be understood in nonpropositional and perceptual terms, rather than through the attribution of propositional attitudes such as beliefs and desires. In opposition to this the book suggest that there are important types of nonlinguistic thought that cannot be accommodated in the manner proposed by the minimalists. The requirements of psychological explanation often demand that we attribute to nonlinguistic creatures thoughts that are structured, represent the world in a highly determinate way, and reflect the particular mode of presentation under which the creature apprehends its environment.

This chapter examines two theories related to the human character. It explores the differing responses to the questions of psychological explanations of the behavior of nonlinguistic creatures given by the two approaches to the nature of thought outlined earlier, and shows how neither can provide a fully satisfying account of thinking without words. They are Ferge's conception of thoughts as the senses of sentences and Fodor's language of thought hypothesis to the effect that thinking should be understood in terms of the operation of sentence-like formulae in an internal language of thought. Both approaches start off from a single basic assumption, which is that the nature of thought can best be analyzed through the nature of language, but each approach takes a very different view of the essence of language. The chapter reveals Ferge's greater interest in mathematical thoughts than in those expressible by means of a natural language.

This chapter outlines the different types of question posed by the forms of psychological explanations of the behavior of nonlinguistic creatures given in various parts of the cognitive and behavioral sciences. Due to the cognitive turn in the behavioral and cognitive sciences in the modern age, high-level cognitive abilities are being investigated in an ever-increasing number of species and at earliest stages of human development. This chapter explores the development in the scientific study of human characteristics and animal behavior. The new discipline of cognitive ethology is essential in the study of the mental states of animals and of how those mental states manifest themselves in behavior. The three areas of cognitive ethology, developmental, psychological, and cognitive archaeology are becoming ever more closely integrated. Research into animal cognition is now employing the dishabituation paradigm.

This chapter argues that the Dummett (2001) position is well-motivated. The position restricts the knowability principle to atomic statements, and defines intuitionistic truth inductively from there. An instructive account of Dummett's development in (1990) and (1996) is offered. There Dummett attempts to clarify the notion of indefinite extensibility of such concepts as set, natural number, and real number, and argues that only intuitionistic logic can illuminate a proper understanding of the notion. If this is correct, then the Dummett (2001) theory of truth is well-motivated, and so, we have a principled solution to the knowability paradox.

_Art and Morality_ is a collection of groundbreaking new papers on the theme of aesthetics and ethics, and the link between the two subjects. A group of distinguished contributors tackle the important questions that arise when one thinks about the moral dimensions of art and the aesthetic dimension of moral life. The volume is a significant contribution to philosophical literature, opening up unexplored questions and shedding new light on more traditional debates in aesthetics. The topics explored include: the relation of aesthetic to ethical judgement; the relation of artistic experience to moral consciousness; the moral status of fiction; the concepts of sentimentality and decadence; the moral dimension of critical practice, pictorial art and music; the moral significance of tragedy; and the connections between artistic and moral issues elaborated in the writings of central figures in modern philosophy, such as Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The contributors share the view that progress in aesthetics requires detailed study of the practice of criticism. This volume will appeal both to the philosophical community and to researchers in areas such as literary theory, musicology and the theory of art.

_Philosophy of Psychology: Contemporary Readings _is a comprehensive anthology that includes classic and contemporary readings from leading philosophers. Addressing in depth the major topics within philosophy of psychology, the editor has carefully selected articles under the following headings: pictures of the mind commonsense psychology representation and cognitive architecture. Articles by the following philosophers are included: Blackburn, Churchland, Clark, Cummins, Dennett, Davidson, Fodor, Kitcher, Lewis, Lycan, McDowell, McLeod, Rey, Segal, Stich. Each section includes a helpful introduction by the editor which aims to guide the student gently into the topic. The book is highly accessible and provides a broad-ranging exploration of the subject, including discussion of the leading philosophers in the field. Ideal for any student of philosophy of psychology or philosophy of mind.

José Luis Bermúdez introduces the philosophy of psychology as an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature and mechanisms of cognition. _Philosophy of Psychology_ charts out four influential 'pictures of the mind' and uses them to explore central topics in the philosophical foundations of psychology, including the relation between different levels of studying the mind/brain; the nature and scope of psychological explanation; the architecture of cognition; and the relation between thought and language. Chapters cover all the core concepts, including: models of psychological explanation the nature of commonsense psychology arguments for the autonomy of psychology functionalist approaches to cognition computational models of the mind neural network modeling rationality and mental causation perception, action and cognition the language of thought and the architecture of cognition. _Philosophy of Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction_ is a very clear and well-structured textbook from one of the leaders in the field.

Featuring contributions from Matthew Kieran, Aaron Ridley, Roger Scruton and Mary Mothersill to name but a few, this collection of groundbreaking new papers on aesthetics and ethics, highlights the link between the two subjects. These leading figures tackle the important questions that arise when one thinks about the moral dimensions of art and the aesthetic dimension of moral life. The volume is a significant contribution to philosophical literature, opening up unexplored questions and shedding new light on more traditional debates in aesthetics. The topics explored include: the relation of aesthetic to ethical judgment the relation of artistic experience to moral consciousness the moral status of fiction the concepts of sentimentality and decadence the moral dimension of critical practice, pictorial art and music the moral significance of tragedy the connections between artistic and moral issues elaborated in the writings of central figures in modern philosophy, such as Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The contributors share the view that progress in aesthetics requires detailed study of the practice of criticism. This volume will appeal to both the philosophical community and to researchers in areas such as literary theory, musicology and the theory of art.

Philosophical work on the nature of thought has, until recently, focused primarily on what it is for an individual to think, leaving aside important questions about the intersubjective dimension of thought. For example: in what sense, if any, can thoughts really be shared? Is there a shareability requirement on successful communication, disagreement or the transmission of knowledge? Do particular types of thought such as those based on perception or self-location raise distinctive challenges to their shareability? More generally, how should we understand the communication and coordination of our thoughts in exchanges with others? Are there distinctive rationality constraints governing the intersubjective aspects of thought? Sharing Thoughts brings together original work by established and emerging philosophers to address these and related foundational issues, while also paying attention to more specific questions such as the interplay between the intersubjectivity of thought and the internalism/externalism debate, the elucidation of first-person or egocentric thought, our capacity for joint thinking, the conditions for knowledge transmission and collective inquiry, the expression of thought in music, and more.