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Single Idea 2344

[filed under theme 17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism ]

Full Idea

Why don't the eliminationists speak of "folk logic" as well as "folk psychology"?

Gist of Idea

If we are going to eliminate folk psychology, we must also eliminate folk logic

Source

Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §4 p.60)

Book Ref

Putnam,Hilary: 'Representation and Reality' [MIT 1992], p.60


A Reaction

I think Putnam considers that if you can prove 'truth' to be a necessary feature of mental life, that connects mind and world, but marking a sentence as 'T' doesn't make any connections.


The 22 ideas from 'Representation and Reality'

Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms [Putnam]
Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation [Putnam]
Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible [Putnam]
Reference (say to 'elms') is a social phenomenon which we can leave to experts [Putnam]
Aristotle implies that we have the complete concepts of a language in our heads, but we don't [Putnam]
Reference may be different while mental representation is the same [Putnam]
We should separate how the reference of 'gold' is fixed from its conceptual content [Putnam]
Like names, natural kind terms have their meaning fixed by extension and reference [Putnam]
"Water" is a natural kind term, but "H2O" is a description [Putnam]
If we are going to eliminate folk psychology, we must also eliminate folk logic [Putnam]
Semantic notions do not occur in Tarski's definitions, but assessing their correctness involves translation [Putnam]
Meaning and translation (which are needed to define truth) both presuppose the notion of reference [Putnam]
Asserting the truth of an indexical statement is not the same as uttering the statement [Putnam]
Is there just one computational state for each specific belief? [Putnam]
Realists believe truth is correspondence, independent of humans, is bivalent, and is unique [Putnam]
Aristotle says an object (e.g. a lamp) has identity if its parts stay together when it is moved [Putnam]
The job of the philosopher is to distinguish facts about the world from conventions [Putnam]
"Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning [Putnam]
Functionalism says robots and people are the same at one level of abstraction [Putnam]
Functionalism can't explain reference and truth, which are needed for logic [Putnam]
Can we give a scientific, computational account of folk psychology? [Putnam]
If concepts have external meaning, computational states won't explain psychology [Putnam]