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The Mental States of Persons and their Brains

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2015

Tim Crane
Tim Crane*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

Cognitive neuroscientists frequently talk about the brain representing the world. Some philosophers claim that this is a confusion. This paper argues that there is no confusion, and outlines one thing that ‘the brain represents the world’ might mean, using the notion of a model derived from the philosophy of science. This description is then extended to make apply to propositional attitude attributions. A number of problems about propositional attitude attributions can be solved or dissolved by treating propositional attitudes as models.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 76: Mind, Self and Person , May 2015 , pp. 253 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2015 

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References

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2 See Bennett, M.R. and Hacker, P.M.S., Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003).Google Scholar

3 Ibid., 72.

4 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953)Google Scholar, §281.

5 M.K. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, 3.

6 Stephen Mulhall, Stanton lectures 2014, University of Cambridge (unpublished).

7 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §67.

8 Dennett, Content and Consciousness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1969)Google Scholar 95.

9 Ibid., 95.

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15 See e.g., Giere, Ronald N., ‘Using Models to Represent Reality’ in Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery, (ed.) Magnani, L., Nersessian, N. J., and Thagard, P. (New York: Kluwer/Plenum, 1999), 41–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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20 See Giere, ‘Using Models to Represent Reality’.

21 See Crane, Tim, The Mechanical Mind (London: Routledge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar chapter 4, for an exposition of this argument.

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23 For defences of the latter thesis, see John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, and Galen Strawson, Mental Reality.

24 See Davidson, Donald, ‘Mental Events’ in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. In chapter 4 of The Objects of Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013)Google Scholar I offer a critique of propositionalism which is independent of the present paper.

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31 See in particular, ‘Beyond Belief’.

32 Thanks to Ali Boyle, Dan Brigham, Katalin Farkas, Anthony O'Hear and Michael Weisberg for discussion, to members of the audience at the Royal Institute of Philosophy for helpful comments at the RIP meeting in February 2014, and to Stephen Mulhall for permitting me to quote from his unpublished work. An earlier version of this talk was given at the University of London's Institute of Philosophy in June 2012, at a workshop on Dennett's personal/sub-personal distinction; thanks to Dan Dennett for his comments on that occasion.