Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mind and Its Place in Nature', 'In Defense of a Dogma' and 'Semiology and Grammatology'

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3 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 6. Inference in Perception
Broad rejects the inferential component of the representative theory [Broad, by Maund]
     Full Idea: Broad, one of the most important modern defenders of the representative theory of perception, explicitly rejects the inferential component of the theory.
     From: report of C.D. Broad (Mind and Its Place in Nature [1925]) by Barry Maund - Perception Ch.1
     A reaction: Since the supposed inferences happen much too quickly to be conscious, it is hard to see how we could distinguish an inference from an interpretation mechanism. Personally I interpret things long before the question of truth arises.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 2. Meaning as Mental
Everything that is experienced in consciousness is meaning [Derrida]
     Full Idea: All experience is the experience of meaning (Sinn). Everything that appears to consciousness, everything that is for consciousness in general, is meaning.
     From: Jacques Derrida (Semiology and Grammatology [1968], p.26)
     A reaction: This an assertion, from a quite different philosophical tradition, of the centrality of linguistic meaning in philosophy. It links with the centrality of intentionality in our understanding of the mind.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 8. Synonymy
If we give up synonymy, we have to give up significance, meaning and sense [Grice/Strawson]
     Full Idea: If we are to give up the notion of sentence-synonymy as senseless, we must give up the notion of sentence-significance (of a sentence having meaning) as senseless too. But then perhaps we might as well give up the notion of sense.
     From: P Grice / P Strawson (In Defense of a Dogma [1956]), quoted by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4.2
     A reaction: This is very prescient. Nearly all American philosophers seem to embrace Quine's view of analyticity (the philosophical equivalent of Americans putting a man on the moon?), but have they digested the implications (which Quine later largely admits)?