P. M. S. Hacker

This book traces the history and coherence of the use of the word ‘representations’ from its origins, particularly in the description of artefacts, to its use in the description of so-called mental and neural representations in the mind and in the brain. It is shown that there are no good reasons for this transition. Experimental psychology is confused in taking what one perceives to be a mental representation. Neuroscientists need to avoid moving readily between the notions of neural and mental representations; indeed even the logic of taking a pattern of neural activity as standing for some sensibly experienced characteristic requires elucidation. It is concluded that the word ‘representation’ when used in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience is confounding.

We conceive of the natural world as populated by relatively persistent material things standing in spatio-temporal relations to each other. They come into existence, exist for a time, and then pass away. We locate them relative to landmarks and to other material things in the landscape which they, and we, inhabit. We characterize them as things of a certain kind, and identify and re-identify them accordingly. The expressions we typically use to do so are, in the technical terminology derived from Aristotle, names of substances.1 The term ‘substance’ has two distinct, but importantly linked, meanings. In the Aristotelian sense, a substance (more accurately, ‘a primary substance’) is a concrete individual thing of a given kind, such as a particular human being (Socrates), a given tree (such as Gautama’s Bo-tree) or a certain stone (the Kohinoor). The general kind (the ‘secondary substance’ in Aristotle’s terminology) to which the individual substance belongs is specified by a substance-name (‘human being’, ‘pipal tree’, ‘diamond’). Individual substances are the basic objects of reference and subjects of predication in our conceptual scheme. They are things of one kind or another (specified by a substance-name, as when we say that Socrates is a man). They are qualified by numerous properties, specified by non-substantial predicates (for example, is in the agora, is snub-nosed, or is a philosopher), but they are not themselves predicable of things – Socrates cannot be said to qualify anything or to be true of anything (as opposed to being like Socrates, which is a relational property some rare people may have) . Nor can the proper name ‘Socrates’ be said to be true of anything, by contrast with the identifying phrase ‘is Socrates’, which is true of the teacher of Plato, and tells us who he is. Characterizing an individual as a thing of a given kind by using such a (secondary) substance-name answers the question of what the thing is. Grasp of the substance name implies knowledge of what being a such-and-such consists in, in so far as that is logically (or, in the extended sense of the term, grammatically) determined..

Sir Anthony Kenny is one of the most distinguished and prolific philosophers of our time. In the wide range and historical breadth of his interests, he has influenced many parts of the philosophical landscape, especially in the philosophy of mind and the theory of human action and responsibility. In contrast to many of his contemporaries, who have played down philosophy's debt to its past, Kenny's work has always been rooted in the great tradition of Western philosophical inquiry. Mind, Method and Morality celebrates Kenny's work by focusing on the four great philosophers to whom Kenny has given special attention, namely Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, and Wittgenstein. It contains sixteen essays (four on each philosopher) written by leading specialists in the relevant area. Strongly linked together by their focus on philosophy of mind, action and responsibility, the papers make a significant contribution to those areas of philosophy that Kenny has made particularly his own, and constitute a timely celebration of his work. While keeping to the highest standards of scholarship and philosophical rigour, the volume aims to be engaging and comprehensible to a wide audience, thus mirroring the clarity and accessibility that are the hallmarks of Kenny's own philosophical writings. A preface by the Editors describes Anthony Kenny's philosophical career, and the volume also includes a complete bibliography of his writings.

The phrase ‘Lebensform’ had a long and varied history prior to Wittgenstein’s use of it on a mere three occasions in the Philosophical Investigations. It is not a pivotal concept in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. But it is a minor signpost of a major reorientation of philosophy, philosophy of language and logic, and philosophy of mathematics that Wittgenstein instigated. For Wittgenstein sought to replace the conception of a language as a meaning calculus by an anthropological or ethnological conception. A language is not a class of sentences that can be formed from a set of axioms, formation and transformation rules and the meanings of which is given by their truth-conditions, but an open-ended series of interlocking language-games constituting a form of life or way of living. Wittgenstein’s uses of ‘Lebensform’ and its cognates, both in the Investigations and in his Nachlass are severally analysed, and various exegetical misinterpretations are clarified.

Wittgenstein wrote in the Preface to the Investigations that he would have liked to write a good book, but it didn’t turn out that way. This may superficially seem to be false modesty, given that what he wrote is a masterpiece. This paper argues that it is not false modesty, and attempts to pin down various flaws in the book, some structural and others not. These include the opening quotation from Augustine, the thin character of language game 2, the rule following considerations, the private language arguments, and the poorly located, well-disguised and over-compressed discussion of the pictoriality of the proposition and critique of the picture theory of meaning in §§428–65.

The McNaughton rules for determining whether a person can be successfully defended on the grounds of mental incompetence were determined by a committee of the House of Lords in 1843. They arose as a consequence of the trial of Daniel McNaughton for the killing of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel’s secretary. In retrospect it is clear that McNaughton suffered from schizophrenia. The successful defence of McNaughton on the grounds of mental incompetence by his advocate Sir Alexander Cockburn involved a profound shift in the criteria for such a defence, and was largely based on the then recently published “scientific” thesis of the great US psychiatrist Isaac Ray, entitled A Treatise on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity. Subsequent discussion of this defence in the House of Lords led to the McNaughton rules, still the basis of the defence of mental incompetence in the courts of much of the English-speaking world. This essay considers one of these rules in the light of the discoveries of cognitive neuroscience made during the 160 years since Ray’s treatise. A major consideration is the relationship between “the power of self-control” and “irresistible impulse” as conceived by Cockburn on the one hand, and by cognitive neuroscience on the other. The essay concludes with an analysis of the notion of “free will” and of the extent to which a subject can exert restraint in the absence of particular synaptic connections in the brain.

The Intellectual Powers is a philosophical investigation into the cognitive and cogitative powers of mankind. It develops a connective analysis of our powers of consciousness, intentionality, mastery of language, knowledge, belief, certainty, sensation, perception, memory, thought, and imagination, by one of Britain’s leading philosophers. It is an essential guide and handbook for philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists. The culmination of 45 years of reflection on the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the nature of the human person No other book in epistemology or philosophy of psychology provides such extensive overviews of consciousness, self–consciousness, intentionality, mastery of a language, knowledge, belief, memory, sensation and perception, thought and imagination Illustrated with tables, tree–diagrams, and charts to provide overviews of the conceptual relationships disclosed by analysis Written by one of Britain’s best philosophical minds A sequel to Hacker’s Human Nature: The Categorial Framework An essential guide and handbook for all who are working in philosophy of mind, epistemology, psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience.

Este artículo analiza el proyecto filosófico de Quine y, específicamente, la epistemología naturalizada. Respecto a este proyecto, el autor argumenta que la epistemología naturalizada no contribuye a la solución o disolución de los problemas de la epistemología tradicional, que las respuestas epistemológicas de Quine no resuelven tales cuestiones y que la imaginaria ciencia quineana es ininteligible y filosóficamente inútil. En contraste con esta postura, el autor propone concebir a la filosofía como una disciplina de análisis conceptual a priori.