Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge

Julia Tanney

Published by Harvard University Press 2012

Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge

Julia Tanney

https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674067837

Overview
Contents

About this book

Julia Tanney offers a sustained criticism of today’s canon in philosophy of mind, which conceives the workings of the rational mind as the outcome of causal interactions between mental states that have their bases in the brain. With its roots in physicalism and functionalism, this widely accepted view provides the philosophical foundation for the cardinal tenet of the cognitive sciences: that cognition is a form of information-processing. Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge presents a challenge not only to the cognitivist approach that has dominated philosophy and the special sciences for the last fifty years but, more broadly, to metaphysical-empirical approaches to the study of the mind.

Responding to a tradition that owes much to the writings of Davidson, early Putnam, and Fodor, Tanney challenges this orthodoxy on its own terms. In untangling its internal inadequacies, starting with the paradoxes of irrationality, she arrives at a view these philosophers were keen to rebut—one with affinities to the work of Ryle and Wittgenstein and all but invisible to those working on the cutting edge of analytic philosophy and mind research today. This is the view that rational explanations are embedded in “thick” descriptions that are themselves sophistications upon ever ascending levels of discourse, or socio-linguistic practices.

Tanney argues that conceptual cartography rather than metaphysical-scientific explanation is the basic tool for understanding the nature of the mind. Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge clears the path for a return to the world-involving, circumstance-dependent, normative practices where the rational mind has its home.

Author / Editor information

Julia Tanney is Reader in Philosophy of Mind at the University of Kent.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
I. Rules and Normativity
1. De-Individualizing Norms of Rationality (1995) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
2. Normativity and Thought (1999) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	46
3. Playing the Rule-Following Game (2000) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
4. Real Rules (2008) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
II. Reason-Explanation and Mental Causation
5. Why Reasons May Not Be Causes (1995) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
6. Reason-Explanation and the Contents of the Mind (2005) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
7. Reasons as Non-Causal, Context-Placing Explanations (2009) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
8. Pain, Polio, and Pride: Some Reflections on “Becausal” Explanations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
III. Philosophical Elucidation and Cognitive Science
9. How To Resist Mental Representations (1998) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
10. On The Conceptual, Psychological, And Moral Status Of Zombies, Swamp-Beings, And Other “Behaviorally Indistinguishable” Creatures (2004) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	208
11. Conceptual Analysis, Theory Construction, and Philosophical Elucidation in the Philosophy of Mind Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	226
12. Ryle’s Regress and the Philosophy of Cognitive Science (2011) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
IV. Self-Knowledge
13. Some Constructivist Thoughts about Self-Knowledge (1996) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279
14. Self-Knowledge, Normativity, and Construction (2002) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	300
15. Speaking One’s Mind (2007) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	322
16. Conceptual Amorphousness, Reasons, and Causes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	334
Acknowledgments Provenance of Essays Index
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	359
Provenance of Essays Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	361
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	365

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: Academics, Students, Libraries, Institutes
Pages
- Main content: 328

eBook

Published: January 8, 2013
ISBN: 9780674067837