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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter March 19, 2007

Thinking, Calculation and Rationality: Remarks on Hobbes' Philosophy of Mind as a Paradigm of Failing Scientism

  • Michael Hampe

Abstract

Looking at Hobbes' theory of thinking as calculation and truth by convention shows that a certain type of scientism of the mind leads to fundamental problems. If truth is the artefact of social conventions about signs, and if thinking is nothing but the syntactical transformations of sign, a theory of thinking must have both: a strong concept of natural computation and a social theory of establishing sign-conventions. Hobbes does not, like modern physicalist theories of the mind, have both.

Published Online: 2007-03-19
Published in Print: 2007-03-20

© Walter de Gruyter

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