Sarah Patterson

This paper takes issue with Tyler Burge's claim that intentional states are nonindividualistically individuated in cognitive psychology. A discussion of current models of children's acquisition of semantic knowledge is used to motivate a thought-experiment which shows that psychologists working in this area are not committed to describing the concepts children attach to words in terms of the concepts standardly attached to those words in the child's community. The content of the child's representational states are thus not individuated with reference to linguistic environment in the manner that Burge's nonindividualistic view requires. The paper concludes that the explanatory states of cognitive psychology are sometimes individualistically individuated

In giving psychological explanations in science and in everyday contexts, we explain how mental states cause actions in terms of the contents of the states. This thesis consists of three papers, each of which explores an issue raised by this fact. ;The first paper, 'The Anomalism of Psychology,' addresses Donald Davidson's claim that cognitive psychology is anomalous among the sciences, since its use of content as an explanatory notion makes it incapable of producing strict laws. His argument against psychophysical laws is based on the claim that the rational cannot be lawfully correlated with the rational. So construed, the argument does not appear to succeed. His argument that there cannot be strict laws within psychology relies on the claim that we cannot have access to all the causal influences acting in the psychological domain. Examination of these arguments suggests that the features of psychology which, for Davidson, are signs that it is incapable of producing serious laws, are actually consequences of the fact that it explains by functional analysis rather than by subsumption under strict causal laws. Since these are features shared by other special sciences employing this explanatory strategy, psychology is not anomalous among the sciences. ;The second and third papers are contributions to the debate about whether mental content is individuated individualistically, so that it depends only on features of the individual thinker. Tyler Burge has argued that physically and functionally identical thinkers may have different thoughts if they occupy different linguistic environments. The second paper, 'Constraints on Content,' disputes this claim of Burge's as he applies it to everyday discourse about mental states. Cases are presented which show that in giving common sense explanations of actions, thoughts are individualistically individuated. The conclusion is that thoughts are sometimes individuated with respect to linguistic environment, sometimes individualistically, depending on the purposes of the report. ;The third paper, 'Individualism and Semantic Development,' takes issue with Burge's claim that content individuation in scientific psychology is uniformly non-individualistic. The paper outlines current models of semantic development and presents a thought-experiment showing that psychologists in this field do not individuate psychological states with respect to linguistic environment. Possible Burgean objections to the individualistic interpretation of the thought-experiment are considered, and comparison is made with Burge's non-individualistic analysis of Marr's theory of vision.

The chapter revolves around Tyler Burge's interpretation of David Marr's theory of vision, and the chapter's arguments against such construal. Burge asserts that through evolution, our sensory systems have become adapted to our current environment, and can be assumed to be “successful” in that we are able to generate veridical perceptions of the same. According to Burge, this ascribes a “success-orientation” to Marr's theory. This chapter argues that Marr's own assumption of success in his work is merely a methodological dictate necessary to solve or understand the initial query and purpose of the study. In the same way that artificial intelligence is developed, one has to make intelligent choices on which types of human cognitive abilities should the project be patterned after. Thus, Marr's employment of this practice does not automatically warrant the assumption of veridical perception in his work.

Descartes says that the Meditations contains the foundations of his physics. But how does the work advance his geometrical view of the corporeal world? His argument for this view of matter is often taken to be concluded with the proof of the existence of bodies in the Sixth Meditation. This paper focuses on the work that follows the proof, where Descartes pursues the question of what we should think about qualities such as light, sound and pain, as well as the size and shape of particular bodies. His inquiry makes crucial use of the notion of a teaching of nature originating from God, as contrasted with an apparent teaching of nature originating from habit. I attempt to reconstruct Descartes's use of these notions in order to clarify the way in which he makes space for his geometrical conception of the corporeal world.

Descartes first invokes the errors of the senses in the Meditations to generate doubt; he suggests that because the senses sometimes deceive, we have reason not to trust them. This use of sensory error to fuel a sceptical argument fits a traditional interpretation of the Meditations as a work concerned with finding a form of certainty that is proof against any sceptical doubt. If we focus instead on Descartes's aim of using the Meditations to lay foundations for his new science, his appeals to sensory error take on a different aspect. Descartes's new science is based on ideas innate in the intellect, ideas that are validated by the benevolence of our creator. Appeals to sensory error are useful to him in undermining our naïve faith in the senses and guiding us to an appreciation of innate ideas. However, the errors of the senses pose problems in the context of Descartes's appeals to God's goodness to validate innate ideas and natural propensities to belief. A natural tendency to sensory error is hard to reconcile with the benevolence of our creator. This paper explores Descartes's responses to the problems of theodicy posed by various forms of sensory error. It argues that natural judgements involved in our visual perception of distance, size and shape pose a problem of error that resists his usual solutions.

Descartes is well known for his employment of the method of doubt. His most famous work, the Meditations, begins by exhorting us to doubt all our opinions, including our belief in the existence of the external world. But critics have charged that this universal doubt is impossible for us to achieve because it runs counter to human nature. If this is so, Descartes must be either misguided or hypocritical in proposing it. Hume writes:There is a species of scepticism, antecedent to all study and philosophy, which is much inculcated by Des Cartes and others, as a sovereign preservative against error and precipitate judgement. It recommends an universal doubt, not only of all our former opinions and principles, but also of our very faculties… The Cartesian doubt, …were it ever possible to be attained by any human creature would be entirely incurable; and no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance and conviction upon any subject.