Yet More Anomalous Monism

I discussed yesterday my thinking about Davidson’s Anomalous Monism. I said that the problem is that causality in one set of descriptions (the mental) picks out occurrences in an unstable fashion. That is it is basically probabilistic. He contrasts this with physical law which is strict and deterministic. Thus one kind of law (probabilistic) can’t [...]

Anomalous Monism Again

What initially got me so interested in Davidson was Anomalous Monism. That is briefly the idea that the mental can’t be reduced to the physical yet the physical is all there is. It became rather popular the past 40 years as a way of recognizing the significance of the mental while remaining a materialist. Of [...]

A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs

OK, I love this paper of Davidson. I really liked Davidson before but this one completely made me rethink how I view him. Which is always nice. In a sense this brings Davidson a little closer to how I think. That’s sometimes a danger since I prefer something that challenges how I think. But in [...]

Davidson and Mental Objects

I’ve been thinking about Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida and Peirce a lot when I came upon this Davidson quote from the end of “What Is Present to the Mind.” It gets us back to the beginnings of phenomenology prior to Husserl – Brentano. According to Dummett, Brentano “refused to admit that a mental act…had any inner [...]

Davidson and Derrida

From Ludwig’s Donald Davidson comes this pithy footnote on the relationship of Derrida and Davidson by Samuel Wheeler III.

Doubt, Reasons and Imitating Mathematics

Here’s your Peirce quote of the day. This is from the early Peirce but it is a killer quote I like to go back to a lot. …the whole history of thought shows that men cannot doubt at pleasure or merely because they find they have no positive reason for the belief they already hold. [...]

What is a Concept?

So I’ve been doing a lot of reading of Davidson the last while. One of the fundamental questions I have with him is whether a “concept” to be a concept must be linguistic. This is, as I’ve discussed, a major issue in his conception of first person authority as well as the ground of communication. [...]

Davidson: Private Language

Yeah, I’m still doing Davidson. Last time was Davidson and Rational Animals. This time I’m taking a common theme from several essays (so I don’t get repetitive). The question is the possibility of a private language. Roughly, as I see it, Davidson is taking a Peircean like angle. To have a belief one must have [...]

Davidson & Rational Animals

Getting back to my Davidson readings in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, I found the paper “Rational Animals” rather interesting. This is the old idea that what separates man from the animals is reason. Now some, especially animal rights activists, don’t like this idea. While I agree that it’s likely there is a matter of degree in [...]

Davidson on Irreducible Concepts

A concept is irreducible only relative to specified resources. When it comes to the large, grand concepts that concern philosophers, like the good, truth, belief, knowledge, physical object, cause and event, I think of a concept as irreducible if it cannot be defined in terms that are as general as the concept to be reduced, [...]

Intentionality and Potentiality

Maverick Philosopher on Intentionality and Potentiality. “Reference to an object is thus an intrinsic feature of mental states and not a feature they have in virtue of a relation to an existing object. This is why Brentano speaks of the ‘intentional in-existence of an object.’ It is also why Husserl can ‘bracket’ the existence of [...]

Davidson: What Is Present to the Mind

I really am getting into Davidson as I read his latter works. It certainly at minimum gives a more nuanced view of his earlier works I was already familiar with. This paper continues the same topic as the prior one with a lot of overlap. The debate is over what identifies a thought with what [...]

Davidson: The Myth of the Subjective 2

My initial thoughts on the paper were here. I want to delve into the arguments here. I think I finally really get Davidson after this paper and the next one (“What Is Present to the Mind?”). I was rereading this one again and suddenly, click, a lot came together. Basically it all hinges on the [...]

Davidson: The Myth of the Subjective 1

Sorry for falling behind in the more general philosophy posts. It’s been a very busy summer and will continue to be a busy fall. I really did want to get back to Davidson. As you recall I’m going through the collections of Davidson’s more recent works starting with Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. I’d long had his [...]

Davidson: Knowing Ones Own Mind 2

This is a followup to my prior post on Davidson’s paper “Knowing Ones Own Mind” in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Sorry for the delay. The part that is left in the paper deals with the question of “where” thoughts are. It’s an interesting question and one I’ve switched my own views on. At one time I [...]

keep looking »

Quote of the Moment

Search

Try Amano Chocolate
First American Gold Medal Winner
at the
London Academy of Chocolate

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Archives

Blogroll

Admin

Unique Visitors