\def \ititle {Lecture 03}
\def \isubtitle {Mind \& Reality}
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\section{The Question (recap)}
\section{Next Steps: Acquaintance and Cognitive Penetration}
\section{Pragmatists}
\emph{Reading:} §Putnam, H. (1981). Reason, truth and history. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge., §Dewey, J. (1907). The control of ideas by facts i. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 4(8):197–203., §James, W. (1909). The Meaning of Truth : a Sequel to ”Pragmatism”. Longmans Green, London.
‘there are these objects out there. Here is the mind/brain, carrying on its thinking/computing. How do the thinker’s symbols ... get into a unique correspondence with objects and sets out there?’
\citep[p.~51]{Putnam:1981sw}
‘I say that we know an object by means of an idea whenever we ambulate towards the object under the impulse which the idea communicates’
\citep[p.~140]{James:1909vm}
‘The pointing of our thought to the tigers is known simply and solely as a procession of mental associates and motor consequences that follow on the thought, and that would lead harmoniously, if followed out, into some ideal or real context, or even into the immediate presence, of the tigers. … It is even known, if we take the tigers very seriously, as actions of ours which may terminate in directly intuited tigers, as they would if we took a voyage to India for the purpose of tiger-hunting and brought back a lot of skins of the striped rascals which we had laid low’
\citep[p.~44--5]{James:1909vm}
\section{What Is Perception?}
\emph{Reading:} §Davidson, D. (1999). Replies to critics. In Hahn, L. E., editor, The Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Open Court, Chicago., §Davidson, D. (1997). Seeing through language. In Preston, J., editor, Thought and Language, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, vol. 42. Oxford University Press, Oxford., §Dretske, F. (2000). Simple seeing. In Perception, Knowledge and Belief. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge., §Dretske, F. (1969). Seeing and Knowing. Routledge, London.
Dretske introduces the notion of \emph{simple seeing}
(see \citealp[chapter 6]{Dretske:2000ky}; the same thing is called as ‘nonepistemic seeing’ in \citep{Dretske:1969td}).
The key characteristic of simple seeing: if X is the F, then \emph{S sees X} is equivalent to \emph{S sees the F}.
\citep[p.~54]{Dretske:1969td}.
‘Seeing objects is a way of getting information about them. What makes it
seeing (rather than, say, hearing) is the intrinsic character of those
events occurring in us that carry the information. What makes it X
(rather than Y) that we see is that the information these internal events
carry is information about X (rather than Y). Everything else [...]
is [...] something the scientist, not
the philosopher, should provide’
\citep[p.~112]{Dretske:2000ky}.
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\section{Exercises}
These exercises will be discussed in seminars the week after this lecture.
The numbers below refer to the numbered exercises in the course textbook, e.g.\ `1.1' refers to exercise 1.1. on page 39 of the second edition of \emph{Language, Proof and Logic}. Exercises marked `*' are optional.
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/ex/q/State the basic question about thought (from memory if you can--otherwise it's visible from 2:29 in the video).
/ex/TorF/qq/On the pragmatist view, there is something more primitive than thought which explains the possibility of thought.|On the Acquaintance View, there is something more primitive than thought which explains the possibility of thought.
/ex/TorF/qq/The statement, ‘I see Ayesha’ plausibly reports a case of simple seeing.|The statement, ‘I see Ayesha’s hand’ plausibly reports a case of simple seeing.|The statement, ‘I see that Ayesha has a question’ plausibly reports a case of simple seeing.|The statement, ‘I see that Ayesha wants to ask question’ plausibly reports a case of simple seeing.
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