Behaviourism, analytic

By Braddon-Mitchell, David

Analytical behaviourism is the doctrine that talk about mental phenomena is really talk about behaviour, or tendencies to behave. For an analytical behaviourist, to say that Janet desires ...

Mind, philosophy of

By Jackson, Frank; Rey, Georges

‘Philosophy of mind’, and ‘philosophy of psychology’ are two terms for the same general area of philosophical inquiry: the nature of mental phenomena and their connection with behaviour ...

Materialism

By Stack, George J.

Materialism is a set of related theories which hold that all entities and processes are composed of – or are reducible to – matter, material forces or physical ...

Folk psychology

By Stich, Stephen P.; Rey, Georges

There is wide disagreement about the meaning of ordinary mental terms (such as ‘belief’, ‘desire’, ‘pain’). Sellars suggested that our use of these terms is governed by a ...

Private language argument

By Candlish, Stewart

Ludwig Wittgenstein argued against the possibility of a private language in his 1953 book Philosophical Investigations, where the notion is outlined at §243: ‘The words of this language ...

Dennett, Daniel Clement (1942–)

By Lycan, William G.

A student of Gilbert Ryle and a connoisseur of cognitive psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology, American philosopher Daniel Dennett has urged Rylean views in the philosophy of mind, ...

Imagination

By O'Leary-Hawthorne, J.

‘Imagination’ and ‘imagine’ enjoy a family of meanings, only some of which imply the use of mental imagery. If I ask you to imagine a red flower, I ...

Materialism in the philosophy of mind

By Robinson, Howard

Materialism – which, for almost all purposes, is the same as physicalism – is the theory that everything that exists is material. Natural science shows that most things ...

Mirror self-recognition

By Schilhab, Theresa

Mirror self-recognition (MSR) refers to the empirical investigation of self-awareness, also known as the ‘mirror and mark test’ introduced by psychologist Gordon G. Gallup (1970). The ability to ...

Ontology

By Craig, Edward

The word ‘ontology’ is used to refer to philosophical investigation of existence, or being. Such investigation may be directed towards the concept of being, asking what ‘being’ means, ...

Other Minds

By Hyslop, Alec

It has traditionally been thought that the problem of other minds is epistemological: how is it that we know other people have thoughts, experiences and emotions? After all, ...

Reduction, problems of

By Kim, Jaegwon

Reduction is a procedure whereby a given domain of items (for example, objects, properties, concepts, laws, facts, theories, languages, and so on) is shown to be either absorbable ...

Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann (1889–1951)

By Heal, Jane

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna on 26 April 1889 and died in Cambridge on 29 April 1951. He spent his childhood and youth in Austria and Germany, ...

Animal language and thought

By Jamieson, Dale

The question of animal language and thought has been debated since ancient times. Some have held that humans are exceptional in these respects, others that humans and animals ...

Language, philosophy of

By Crimmins, Mark

Philosophical interest in language, while ancient and enduring (see Language, ancient philosophy of; Language, medieval theories of; Language, Renaissance philosophy of; Language, early modern philosophy of), has blossomed ...

Mind, identity theory of

By Jackson, Frank

We know that the brain is intimately connected with mental activity. Indeed, doctors now define death in terms of the cessation of the relevant brain activity. The identity ...

Concepts

By Rey, Georges

The topic of concepts lies at the intersection of semantics and philosophy of mind. A concept is supposed to be a constituent of a thought (or ‘proposition’) rather ...

Emotions, nature of

By Solomon, Robert C.

What is an emotion? This basic question was posed by William James in 1884, and it is still the focus for a number of important arguments in the ...

Functionalism

By Papineau, David

The term ‘functionalism’ means different things in many different disciplines from architectural theory to zoology. In contemporary philosophy of mind, however, it is uniformly understood to stand for ...

Rationality, practical

By Hampton, Jean

Whereas theoretical reason is that form of reason that is authoritative over belief, practical reason is that form of reason that applies, in some way, to action: by ...

Ryle, Gilbert (1900–76)

By Lyons, William

Alongside Wittgenstein and Austin, Ryle was one of the dominant figures in that middle period of twentieth-century English language philosophy which became known as ‘Linguistic Analysis’. His views ...

Turing, Alan Mathison (1912–54)

By Moor, James H.

Alan Turing was a mathematical logician who made fundamental contributions to the theory of computation. He developed the concept of an abstract computing device (a ‘Turing machine’) which ...

Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann (1889–1951)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna on 26 April 1889 and died in Cambridge on 29 April 1951. He spent his childhood and youth in Austria and Germany, ...

Belief

By Jackson, Frank; Braddon-Mitchell, David

We believe that there is coffee over there; we believe the special theory of relativity; we believe the Vice-Chancellor; and some of us believe in God. But plausibly ...

Semantics, informational

By McLaughlin, Brian P.; Rey, Georges

Information-theoretic semantics (ITS) attempts to provide a naturalistic account of the conditions under which a psychological state such as a belief or desire has a particular mental content: ...