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Twin Earth Thought Experiment
Twin Earth is a thought experiment proposed by philosopher Hilary Putnam in his papers "Meaning and Reference" (1973) and "The Meaning of 'Meaning (1975). It is meant to serve as an illustration of his argument for semantic externalism, or the view that the meanings of words are not purely psychological. The ''Twin Earth'' thought experiment was one of three examples that Putnam offered in support of semantic externalism, the other two being what he called the ''Aluminum-Molybdenum'' case and the ''Beech-Elm'' case. Since the publication of these cases, numerous variations on the thought experiment have been proposed by philosophers. The thought experiment Putnam's original formulation of the experiment was this: We begin by supposing that elsewhere in the universe there is a planet exactly like Earth in virtually all aspects, which we refer to as "Twin Earth". (We should also suppose that the relevant surroundings are exactly the same as for Earth; it revolves around a star t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phil Hutchinson
Phil may refer to: * Phil (given name), a shortened version of masculine and feminine names * Phill, a given name also spelled "Phil" * Phil, Kentucky, United States * ''Phil'' (film), a 2019 film * -phil-, a lexical fragment, used as a root term for many words * Philippines, a country in Southeast Asia, frequently abbreviated as ''PHIL'' * Philosophy, abbreviated as "phil." * Philology, abbreviated as "phil." * University Philosophical Society of Trinity College, Dublin, nicknamed "the Phil" See also * Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) * Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil or Ph.D) * University Philosophical Society, known as "The Phil" * * Big Phil (other) * Dr. Phil (other) * Fil (other) * Fill (other) * Philip (other) * Philipp * Philippa * Philippic A philippic () is a fiery, damning speech, or tirade, delivered to condemn a particular political actor. The term is most famously associated with three noted orators of the ancient wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thought Experiments In Philosophy Of Mind
In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, and deliberation. But other mental processes, like considering an idea, memory, or imagination, are also often included. These processes can happen internally independent of the sensory organs, unlike perception. But when understood in the widest sense, any mental event may be understood as a form of thinking, including perception and unconscious mental processes. In a slightly different sense, the term ''thought'' refers not to the mental processes themselves but to mental states or systems of ideas brought about by these processes. Various theories of thinking have been proposed, some of which aim to capture the characteristic features of thought. ''Platonists'' hold that thinking consists in discerning and inspecting Platonic forms and their inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Concepts In The Philosophy Of Language
A concept is an abstract idea that serves as a foundation for more concrete principles, thoughts, and beliefs. Concepts play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied within such disciplines as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and these disciplines are interested in the logical and psychological structure of concepts, and how they are put together to form thoughts and sentences. The study of concepts has served as an important flagship of an emerging interdisciplinary approach, cognitive science. In contemporary philosophy, three understandings of a concept prevail: * mental representations, such that a concept is an entity that exists in the mind (a mental object) * abilities peculiar to cognitive agents (mental states) * Fregean senses, abstract objects rather than a mental object or a mental state Concepts are classified into a hierarchy, higher levels of which are termed "superordinate" and lower levels termed "subordinate". Additi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dagfinn Føllesdal
Dagfinn Føllesdal (born 22 June 1932) is a Norwegian-American philosopher. He is the Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Stanford University, and professor emeritus at the University of Oslo. Biography and career Føllesdal was born in Askim. After earning his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Oslo, he attended Harvard University and earned his Ph.D. in 1961 under Willard Van Orman Quine. He taught at Harvard University from 1961 to 1964, and began teaching at Stanford University in 1968. In March of 2009, Føllesdal was appointed Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav by King Harald V of Norway, thanks to his work in philosophy, ethics, and bridging the divide between Anglo-American analytic philosophy and European continental philosophy. Føllesdal is a member of the Norwegian Academy for Language and Literature, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the American Ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sanford Goldberg
Sanford Goldberg (born 1967) is an American philosopher and Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University. He is known for his works on epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the Body (biology), body and the Reality, external world. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a .... Books * ''Conversational Pressure: Normativity in Speech Exchanges'', Oxford University Press 2020 * ''To the Best of Our Knowledge: Social Expectations and Epistemic Normativity'', Oxford University Press 2018 * ''Assertion: On the Philosophical Significance of Assertoric Speech''. Oxford University Press 2015 * ''Relying on Others''. Oxford University Press 2010. * ''Anti-Individualism: Mind and Language, Knowledge and Justification''. Cambridge University Press 2007 * ''The Brain in a Vat'' (ed.). Cambridge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Pessin
Andrew Pessin is an American philosopher who is currently a professor of philosophy at Connecticut College. Biography Pessin is a graduate of Yale University and holds a PhD from Columbia University. He teaches at Connecticut College. In addition to his academic work he has published a number of philosophy books for the general reader, as well as two novels. His most recent novel, ''The Irrationalist: The Tragic Murder of René Descartes'', is a historical murder mystery based on real events: the life of the famous 17th-century philosopher and mathematician René Descartes, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death. According to Paul Cliteur, writing in Philosophy Now, Pessin's ''The God Question'' discusses "discussions about the existence of God," as quite often being, "discussions about the compatibility of the characteristics ascribed to the divine in the theistic tradition. Those who held that those characteristics are compatible were called 'theists': those wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy Of Language
Philosophy of language refers to the philosophical study of the nature of language. It investigates the relationship between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of Meaning (philosophy), meaning, intentionality, reference, the constitution of sentences, concepts, learning, and thought. Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell were pivotal figures in analytic philosophy's "linguistic turn". These writers were followed by Ludwig Wittgenstein (''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''), the Vienna Circle, Logical positivism, logical positivists, and Willard Van Orman Quine. History Ancient philosophy In the West, inquiry into language stretches back to the 5th century BC with philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Linguistic speculation predated systematic descriptions of grammar which emerged in India and in Greece. In the dialogue ''Cratylus (dialogue), Cratylus'', Plato considered the question of whether ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semantic Externalism
In the philosophy of language, semantic externalism (the opposite of semantic internalism) is the view that the meaning of a term is determined, in whole or in part, by factors external to the speaker. According to an externalist position, one can claim without contradiction that two speakers could be in exactly the same brain state at the time of an utterance, and yet mean different things by that utterance -- that is, at the least, that their terms could pick out different referents. Overview The philosopher Hilary Putnam (1975/1985) proposed this position and summarized it with the statement "meanings just ain't in the head!" Although he did not use the term "externalism" at the time, Putnam is thought to have pioneered semantic externalism in his 1975 paper "The Meaning of 'Meaning. His Twin Earth thought experiment, from the aforementioned paper, is widely cited to illustrate his argument for externalism to this day. Alongside Putnam, credit also goes to Saul Kripke and Tyle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Externalism
Externalism is a group of positions in the philosophy of mind which argues that the conscious mind is not only the result of what is going on inside the nervous system (or the brain), but also what ''occurs'' or ''exists'' outside the subject. It is contrasted with internalism which holds that the mind emerges from neural activity alone. Externalism is a belief that the mind is not just the brain or functions of the brain. There are different versions of externalism based on different beliefs about what the mind is taken to be. Externalism stresses factors external to the nervous system. At one extreme, the mind could ''possibly'' depend on external factors. At the opposite extreme, the mind ''necessarily'' depends on external factors. The extreme view of externalism argues either that the mind is ''constituted by'' or ''identical with'' processes partially or totally external to the nervous system. Another important criterion in externalist theory is to which aspect of the mind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internalism And Externalism
Internalism and externalism are two opposite ways of integrating and explaining various subjects in several areas of philosophy. These include human motivation, knowledge, justification, meaning, and truth. The distinction arises in many areas of debate with similar but distinct meanings. Internal–external distinction is a distinction used in philosophy to divide an ontology into two parts: an internal part concerning observation related to philosophy, and an external part concerning question related to philosophy. Internalism is the thesis that no fact about the world can provide reasons for action independently of desires and beliefs.Giuseppina D'Oro"Collingwood, psychologism and internalism,"''European Journal of Philosophy'' 12(2):163–177 (2004). Externalism is the thesis that reasons are to be identified with objective features of the world. Moral philosophy Motivation In contemporary moral philosophy, motivational internalism (or moral internalism) is the view that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swampman
Donald Herbert Davidson (March 6, 1917 – August 30, 2003) was an American philosopher. He served as Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1981 to 2003 after having also held teaching appointments at Stanford University, Rockefeller University, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago. Davidson was known for his charismatic personality and difficult writing style, as well as the systematic nature of his philosophy. His work exerted considerable influence in many areas of philosophy from the 1960s onward, particularly in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and action theory. While Davidson was an analytic philosopher, with most of his influence lying in that tradition, his work has attracted attention in continental philosophy as well, particularly in literary theory and related areas. Early life and education Donald Herbert Davidson was born on March 6, 1917 in Springfield, Massachusetts to Grace Cordelia (née Anthony) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
