The Metaphysics of Mental Files
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (3):657-676 (2020)
Abstract
There is much to be said for a diachronic or interpersonal individuation of singular modes of presentation (MOPs) in terms of a criterion of epistemic transparency between thought tokens. This way of individuating MOPs has been discussed recently within the mental files framework, though the issues discussed here arise for all theories that individuate MOPs in terms of relations among tokens. All such theories face objections concerning apparent failures of the transitivity of the ‘same MOP’ relation. For mental files, these transitivity failures most obviously occur because mental files can merge or undergo fission. In this paper I argue that this problem is easily resolved once mental files are properly construed as continuants, whose metaphysics is analogous to that of persons or physical objects. All continuants can undergo fission or fusion, leading to similar transitivity problems, but there are well-established theories of persistence that accommodate this. I suggest that, in particular, the stage theory best suits the purposes of a continuant theory of MOPs.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1111/phpr.12577
My notes
Similar books and articles
Mental Files, Blown Up by Indexed Files.Isidora Stojanovic & Neftalí Villanueva Fernández - 2015 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (4):393-407.
Frege Puzzles and Mental Files.Henry Clarke - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (2):351-366.
Mental Files and the Lexicon.Luca Gasparri - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (2):463-472.
Mental Files and Rational Inferences.Andrea Onofri - 2015 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (4):378-392.
On Recanati’s Mental Files.Dilip Ninan - 2015 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (4):368-377.
Against the Mental Files Conception of Singular Thought.Rachel Goodman - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (2):437-461.
Indexicality, Transparency, and Mental Files.Derek Ball - 2015 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (4):353-367.
A Mental Files Approach to Delusional Misidentification.Sam Wilkinson - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (2):389-404.
Perceptual concepts: in defence of the indexical model.François Recanati - 2013 - Synthese 190 (10):1841-1855.
Attitudes and Mental Files in Discourse Representation Theory.Emar Maier - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (2):473-490.
Mental Files and Non-Transitive De Jure Coreference.Filipe Drapeau Vieira Contim - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (2):365-388.
Analytics
Added to PP
2019-01-22
Downloads
458 (#23,683)
6 months
87 (#11,222)
2019-01-22
Downloads
458 (#23,683)
6 months
87 (#11,222)
Historical graph of downloads
Author's Profile
Citations of this work
Files are mental particulars: a rejoinder to the relationist challenge.Mieszko Tałasiewicz - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6).
References found in this work
On the Plurality of Worlds.David K. Lewis - 1986 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 178 (3):388-390.