The Mundane Matter of the Mental Language (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)
Cambridge University Press, 2/22/1990
EAN 9780521370318, ISBN10: 0521370310
Hardcover, 304 pages, 21.6 x 14 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Christopher Maloney offers an explanation of the fundamental nature of thought. He posits the idea that thinking involves the processing of mental representations that take the form of sentences in a covert language encoded in the mind. The theory relies upon traditional categories of psychology, including such notions as belief and desire. It also draws upon and thus inherits some of the problems of artificial intelligence which it attempts to answer, including what bestows meaning or content upon a thought and what distinguishes genuine from simulated thought.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. The Mental Language
1. Mentalistic constructs
2. The Representational Theory of the Mind
3. Folk psychology and Representationalism
4. Sententialism
5. The regress of embedded agents
6. Notation and content
Part II. The Frame Problem and Scripts
7. Combinatorial explosion
8. The range and context of scripts
9. Modular cognitive systems
Part III. Intelligence, Rationality and Behavior
10. Intelligent behavior and brute reaction
11. Rationality and behavior
12. Causal waywardness
13. Empirical tests of rationality
Part IV. Along the Cognitive Spectrum
14. The scope of Sententialism
15. From infant to adult
16. Doxastic holism and Mentalese ambiguity
Part V. The Matter of Intentionality
17. Searle's argument against Artificial Intelligence
18. Artificial Intelligence at bay
19. Language comprehension and translation
20. Fragmented agents
21. Cognitive psychology as a formal theory
22. The mundane matter of mind
Part VI. Fixing the Content of Mental Sentences
23. Empiricism and mental representations
24. A causal explanation of sensuous representation
25. Objections and replies
26. Sensory doppelgängers
27. Up from sensation
28. Meaning and definition
Part VII. The Quality of Consciousness
28. Functional accounts of consciousness
29. Could qualia be non-psychological?
30. Sententialism and consciousness
31. Sensation and qualia
32. Moods
33. The subjectivity of consciousness
34. What it is like to be different
35. Artificial consciousness
References
Index.
"The book is lively, well informed, and very well written. It will be of considerable interest to philosophers and cognitive scientists concerned with mental representation, intentionality, consciousness and rationality." Stephen P. Stich, University of California, San Diego