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4652Psychoanalysis, metaphor, and the concept of mindIn M. Levine (ed.), The Analytic Freud, Routledge. pp. 11--35. 2000.In order to understand both consciousness and the Freudian unconscious we need to understand the notion of innerness that we apply to the mind. We can partly do so via the use of the theory of conceptual metaphor, and this casts light on a number of related topics
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3442The Interpretation of DreamsIn J. Neu (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Freud, . 1991.Freud's account of dreams has a cogent interpretive basis.
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2037Conscience and Conflict: Darwin, Freud, and the Origins of Human AggressionIn Dylan Evans & Pierre Cruse (eds.), Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality, Oxford University Press. 2004.Darwin's and Freud's theories cohere in explaining human group conflict.
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1524Psychoanalysis, Philosophical IssuesIn SAGE Reference project Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences, Sage Publications. 2014.This paper briefly addresses questions of confirmation and disconfirmation in psychoanalysis. It argues that psychoanalysis enjoys Bayesian support as an interpretive extension of commonsense psychology that provides the best explanation of a large range of empirical data. Suggestion provides no such explanation, and recent work in attachment, developmental psychology, and neuroscience accord with this view.
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1506Psychoanalysis Representation and Neuroscience: the Freudian unconscious and the Bayesian brainIn A. Fotopoulu, D. Pfaff & M. Conway (eds.), From the Couch to the Lab: Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience and Cognitive Psychology in Dialoge, Oxford University Press. 2012.This paper argues that recent work in the 'free energy' program in neuroscience enables us better to understand both consciousness and the Freudian unconscious, including the role of the superego and the id. This work also accords with research in developmental psychology (particularly attachment theory) and with evolutionary considerations bearing on emotional conflict. This argument is carried forward in various ways in the work that follows, including 'Understanding and Healing', 'The Signi…Read more
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1407Visual geometryPhilosophical Review 82 (1): 3-34. 1973.We cannot imagine two straight lines intersecting at two points even though they may do so. In this case our abilities to imagine depend upon our abilities to visualise.
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1126Wittgenstein, Davidson, and Radical InterpretationIn F. Hahn (ed.), The Library of Living Philosophers: Donald Davidson, Open Court. 1999.Davidson's account of interpretation is closely related to that offered by Wittgenstein in his remarks on following a rule.
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1006Epistemology and Depth PsychologyIn C. Wright & P. Clark (eds.), Mind, Psychoanalysis, and Science, Blackwell. 1988.Psychoanalysis provides the best explanation of a range of empirical phenomena; epistemic criics do not take this fully into account.
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771Wittgenstein and the life of signsIn Max Kölbel & Bernhard Weiss (eds.), Wittgenstein's Lasting Significance, Routledge. 2004.Both Wittgenstein's account of following a rule and his private language argument turn on the notion of interpretation.
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768Rules, Privacy, and PhysicalismIn J. Ellis & D. Guevara (eds.), Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Mind, Oxford University Press. pp. 107-144. 2012.Wittgenstein's arguments about rule-following and private language turn both on interpretation and what he called our 'pictures' of the mind. His remarks about these can be understood in terms of the conceptual metaphor of the mind as a container, and enable us to give a better account of physicalism.
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750The Significance of Consilience: Psychoanalysis, Attachment, Neuroscience, and EvolutionIn S. Boag L. Brakel & V. Talvete (eds.), Psychoanalysis and Philosophy of Mind: Unconscious mentality in the 21st century, Karnac. forthcoming.This paper considers clinical psychoanalysis together with developmental psychology (particularly attachment theory), evolution, and neuroscience in the context a Bayesian account of confirmation and disconfrimation. In it I argue that these converging sources of support indicate that the combination of relatively low predictive power and broad explanatory scope that characterise the theories of both Freud and Darwin suggest that Freud's theory, like Darwin's, may strike deeply into natural ph…Read more
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716This paper argues that psychoanalysis enables us to see mental disorder as rooted in emotional conflicts, particularly concerning aggression, to which our species has a natural liability. These can be traced in development, and seem rooted in both parent-offspring conflict and in-group cooperation for out-group conflict. In light of this we may hope that work in psychoanalysis and neuroscience will converge in indicating the most likely paths to a better neurobiological understanding of mental …Read more
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714Infants apparently start to understand their experience via the linked concepts of numerical identity and spatio-temporally continuous objects during the forth month of life. As described by Piaget and Klein, this development requires them to synthesise their experience in a new ways: in particular they must start to acknowledge that the main target of their anger at frustration and the main target of their gratitude and love are the same person, who is unique and irreplaceable. This seems to …Read more
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684Wittgenstein, Interpretation, and the Foundations of PsychoanalysisNew Formations. 1995.In his work on following a rule Wittgenstein discerned principles of interpretation that apply to commonsense psychology and psychoanalysis. We can use these to assess the cogency of psychoanalytic reasoning.
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669Freud and the Science of MindIn G. Howie (ed.), The Edinburgh Encylopaedia of Continental Philosophy, Edinburgh University Press. 1999.Freudian theory as an extension of commonsense psychology that is potentially cogent, cumulative, and radical.
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627IX*—Wittgenstein and PhysicalismProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 75 (1): 121-146. 1975.James Hopkins; IX*—Wittgenstein and Physicalism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 121–146, https://doi.org/10.109.
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568Conflict Creates an Unconscious IdNeuropsychoanalysis 15. 2013.This note is part of a discussion of Mark Solm's 'The Conscious Id'. It seconds Solms' claim that recent work in neuroscience indicates that the subcortical mechanisms that generate motives also generate consciousness, and that his enables us to integrate neuroscience with the Freudian Ego and Id. Still this is not reason to regard the Id as conscious. If we take full account of the role of conflict, as described in terms of the Freudian superego, we can see that the complex role of aggressio…Read more
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533Kantian Neuroscience and Radical InterpretationIn Festschfrift for Mark Platts, . forthcoming.This is an unedited version of a paper written in 2012 accepted for publication in a forthcoming Festschrift for Mark Platts. In it I argue that the Helmholtz/Bayes tradition of free energy neuroscience begun by Geoffrey Hinton and his colleagues, and now being carried forward by Karl Friston and his, can be seen as a fulfilment of the Quine/Davidson program of radical interpretation, and also of Quine’s conception of a naturalized epistemology. This program, in turn, is rooted in Helmholtz’s …Read more
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519Free Energy and Virtual Reality in Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience: A Complexity Theory of Dreaming and Mental DisorderFrontiers in Psychology 7. 2016.This paper compares the free energy neuroscience now advocated by Karl Friston and his colleagues with that hypothesised by Freud, arguing that Freud's notions of conflict and trauma can be understood in terms of computational complexity. It relates Hobson and Friston's work on dreaming and the reduction of complexity to contemporary accounts of dreaming and the consolidation of memory, and advances the hypothesis that mental disorder can be understood in terms of computational complexity and t…Read more
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519Psychoanalytic and Scientific ReasoningBritish Journal of Psychotherapy 13 (1). 1996.Psychoanalytic reasoning is an instance of inference to the best explanation and provides an extension of commonsense psychology that is potentially cogent, cumulative, and radical.
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515Freud's biological notion of a death drive is not well founded but a number of closely associated notions (including those of a drive, and of aggression turned against the self) are.
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447Evolution, Consciousness, and the Internality of MindIn P. Carruthers & A. Chamberlen (eds.), Evolution and the Human Mind: Modularity, Language and Meta-Cognition, Cambridge University Press. pp. 276. 2000.Understanding the notion of innerness that we ascribe to mental items is central to understanding the problem of consciousness, and we can do so in evolutionary and physical terms.
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446Emotion, Evolution and ConflictIn Man Chung (ed.), Psychoanalytic Knowledge, . 2003.The psychoanalytic notions of identification and projection fit with Darwinian theory in explaining human group conflict and relating it to emotional conflict in individuals.
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442Psychoanalysis Interpretation and ScienceIn J. Hopkins & A. Savile (eds.), Psychoanalysis Mind and Art, Blackwell. 1992.Our commonsense understanding of meaning and motive is realized via the semantic encoding of causal role. Appreciating this together with other features of semantic theories enables us to see that methodological critiques of psychoanalysis, such as those by Popper and Grunbaum, systematically fail to take account of empirical data, and if taken seriously would render commonsense understanding of mind and language void. This is particularly problematic if we consider much of what we regard ours…Read more
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364The Problem of Consciousness and the Innerness of the MindIn Mary Margaret McCabe & Mark Textor (eds.), Perspectives on Perception, De Gruyter. 2007.The problem of consciousness is taken to concern items which are internal to the mind, and phenomenal, subjective, and private. Understanding the notion of innerness in this enables us to understand the rest in physical terms.
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316Introduction: Philosophical Essays on FreudIn R. Wollheim & J. Hopkins (eds.), Philosophical Essays on Freud, Cambridge University Press. 1982.Psychoanalytic theory can be regarded as a cogent extension of commonsense psychology by interpretive means internal to it.
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252Patterns of Interpretation: Speech, Action, and DreamIn L. Marcus (ed.), Cultural Documents: The Interpretation of Dream, Manchester University Press. 1999.Freud's account of dreams can be understood via interpretive patterns that span language and action, enabling an extension of common sense psychology that is potentially cogent, cumulative, and radical.
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116Mental States, Natural Kinds and Psychophysical LawsAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 52 (1): 195-236. 1978.
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52Mental States, Natural Kinds and Psychophysical LawsAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 52 (1): 195-236. 1978.