We make how a person acts intelligible by revealing it as rational in the light of what she perceives, thinks, wants and so on. For example, we might explain that she reached out and picked up a glass because she was thirsty and saw that it contained water. In doing this, we are giving a causal explanation of her behaviour in terms of her antecedent beliefs, desires and other attitudes. Her wanting a drink and realizing that the glass contained one (...) caused her reaching out and grasping for it. This tells us how the action came about and makes sense of why it happened. At least, something broadly along these lines strikes me as a fairly crude and partial regimentation of our pretheoretic understanding of everyday action explanation. (shrink)

ionality which is processed by non-systematic connectionist networks and has its correctness conditions provided by a modest biose- mantics; but this type of content is not properly rep- resentational. Finally, I consider the consequences that such a verdict has on eliminativist views that look to connectionism as a means of radically re- conceiving our understanding of cognition.

The distinction between token and type physicalism is a familiar feature of discussion of psychophysical relations. Token physicalism, or ontological physicalism, is the view that every token, or particular, in the spatiotemporal world is a physical particular. It is contrasted with type physicalism, or property physicalism -- the view that every first-order type, or property, instantiated in the spatiotemporal world is a physical property. Token physicalism is commonly viewed as a clear thesis, strictly weaker than property physicalism, strictly stronger than (...) substance physicalism, and as a good statement on its own or in conjunction with other theses of minimal physicalism.[i] It is also generally simply assumed to be true, though Davidson has offered a famous argument for its truth, and some have argued against it. Many of those arguing against it are substance physicalists, indicating that they believe token physicalism to be a strictly stronger view.[ii]. (shrink)

Physicalism constrains philosophical thought in general, perhaps most powerfully when such thought is turned to the nature of the mind. The thought that everything mental must also be physical has been a demanding muse for most philosophers of mind, requiring the construction of ever more elaborate theories to surmount the formidable obstacles lying in the way of its substantiation. The core of any such theory is that something is both mental and physical. But which something? Objects, properties, events, states, processes, (...) and facts among some others, have historically served as the metaphysical hooks on which physicalists have attempted to hang their various identity- theses. Over the last half-century, most of the debate has surrounded property- or type- identity theories, and particular or token-identity theories. But the thesis that mental properties or types are identical to physical properties or types has been largely abandoned on account of the ‘multiple-realizability’ of mental types.1 To the extent that type-identity theory survives at all, it is often limited to a restricted class of mental types—to sensations, as opposed to propositional attitudes.2 But identity-theses stated in terms of particulars—token events, token states, and token processes—are largely taken for granted. (shrink)