Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'De arcanus motus' and 'Mental Files'

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3 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 5. Rationality / c. Animal rationality
Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji]
     Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial'
     A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 9. Indexical Thought
Indexicals apply to singular thought, and mental files have essentially indexical features [Recanati]
     Full Idea: I defend the applicability of the indexical model to singular thought, and to mental files qua vehicles of singular thought. Mental files, I will argue, possess the essential features of indexicals.
     From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 05.1)
     A reaction: I love mental files, but am now (thanks to Cappelen and Dever) deeply averse to giving great significance to indexicals. A revised account of files will be needed.
Indexicality is closely related to singularity, exploiting our direct relations with things [Recanati]
     Full Idea: Singularity and indexicality are closely related: for indexicals systematically exploit the contextual relations in which we stand to what we talk about.
     From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 2.2)
     A reaction: Recanati builds a nice case that we may only have an ontology of singular objects because we conceptualise and refer to things in a particular way. He denies the ontology, but that's the bit that interests me.