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Do Mental Files Constitute A Psychological Natural Kind?| old_uid | 14916 |
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| title | Do Mental Files Constitute A Psychological Natural Kind? |
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| start_date | 2015/01/14 |
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| schedule | 16h-18h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | Mental files play a major role in contemporary philosophy of mind, where they are claimed to be the vehicles of singular thought. Cognitive scientists also appeal to similar notions of a file. Some philosophers optimistically interpret this convergence of metaphors as evidence of a convergence of views. Supposedly, there is much empirical evidence in favor of the file theory of singular thought. In this talk, I attempt to dampen such optimism. Any notion of 'mental file' broad enough to encompass the wide variety of phenomena which philosophers have wanted to classify as cases of singular thought threatens to be so broad as to be empirically vacuous. A narrower notion of 'file' can be given empirical content based on a close analogy with psychologists' more constrained notion of an 'object file'. However, this narrow notion of a file threatens to be far too restricted for philosophers' purpose, which is to ground all varieties of singular thinking. Much work still remains to be done in order to show that the file theory of singular thought carves the mind at its joints. |
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| responsibles | Ueda |
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