The Mind's Provisions

A Critique of Cognitivism
Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-0-691-14666-9
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 304 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 474 g

Reihe: New French Thought Series

Vincent Descombes brings together an astonishingly large body of philosophical and anthropological thought to present a thoroughgoing critique of contemporary cognitivism and to develop a powerful new philosophy of the mind.Beginning with a critical examination of American cognitivism and French structuralism, Descombes launches a more general critique of all philosophies that view the mind in strictly causal terms and suppose that the brain--and not the person--thinks. Providing a broad historical perspective, Descombes draws surprising links between cognitivism and earlier anthropological projects, such as Lévi-Strauss's work on the symbolic status of myths. He identifies as incoherent both the belief that mental states are detached from the world and the idea that states of mind are brain states; these assumptions beg the question of the relation between mind and brain.In place of cognitivism, Descombes offers an anthropologically based theory of mind that emphasizes the mind's collective nature. Drawing on Wittgenstein, he maintains that mental acts are properly attributed to the person, not the brain, and that states of mind, far from being detached from the world, require a historical and cultural context for their very intelligibility.Available in English for the first time, this is the most outstanding work of one of France's finest contemporary philosophers. It provides a much-needed link between the continental and Anglo-American traditions, and its impact will extend beyond philosophy to anthropology, psychology, critical theory, and French studies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Descombes, Vincent

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologie / Allgemeines & Theorie Psychologische Theorie, Psychoanalyse Kognitivismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Kognitionspsychologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophische Psychologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophie des Geistes, Neurophilosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologie / Allgemeines & Theorie Psychologische Theorie, Psychoanalyse Philosophische Psychologie, Logotherapie, Existenzanalyse

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Translator's Introduction: The Complete Holist xi CHAPTER 1. The Phenomena of Mind 1
1.1. What is the place of the mental in the world? Common sense cannot decide: in ordinary usage, the adjective "mental" does not apply only to the subject's immanent activities, but may also be used to qualify anything dependent on intellectual competence--a book, for example, which is a mental commodity. 2
1.2. Philosophy of mind becomes a mental philosophy when the mind is defined as a sphere detached from the external world, a sphere for which a place must be found in the order of things. 9
1.3. Classification of the phenomenologies of mind: mental phenomena can be conceived as given to everyone (exteriority) or only to the subject (interiority); they can be conceived as indirect manifestations of mind (symptoms) or as direct manifestations (criteria, expressions). 11
1.4. The philosophy of consciousness detaches mind from the world by contrasting our indirect knowledge of events in the world with our infallible direct knowledge of mental events. 14
1.5. Theories of the unconscious contest the identification of the mental and the conscious, but maintain the dissociation between the representational mind and the world. Theories of mental causes extend the philosophy of representational mind into a third-person psychology. 17
1.6. The philosophy of intention does not define intentionality as a special relation between subject and object, but as an order of meaning imposed on a material. 19 CHAPTER 2. Two Sciences? 30
2.1. In the nineteenth century, the project for the scientific study of the human mind led to a debate regarding the unity of method in the sciences. 30
2.2. The hermeneutic dualism of explanation through laws, on the one hand, and the understanding of meaning, on the other, today takes the form of a conflict between two philosophies of action: the causal theory of action and the intentionalist conception. 32
2.3. The traditional opposition between explanation and understanding rests on a positivist philosophy of naturalistic explanation, one conceived as an explanation by means of laws, i.e., observed regularities. 35
2.4. Laws conceived as general propositions have no explicative power. In order for explanation to take place, the regularly observed link between two kinds of phenomena must correspond to a real connection. 39
2.5. Not every teleological explanation is an intentional explanation: thus, the functional explanation of a natural system makes no reference to intention. 42 CHAPTER 3. The Anthropological Investigation of the Mind 47
3.1. Structural anthropology is the project of explaining (the variety of) human institutions by (common) intellectual structures. 47
3.2. Levi-Strauss sees structural explanation as a way of overcoming the opposition between explanation of social phenomena by means of consciousness, on the one hand, and explanation by historical circumstances, on the other. The social totality has a rational meaning because it can be given (in the mind) before its parts. 51
3.3. According to Levi-Strauss, the holism of the social should be based on a theory of the structural unconscious. However, a naturalistic psychology cannot account for symbolic systems. 54
3.4. According to another brand of structural explanation (that of Louis Dumont), the opposition between voluntarist and historical explanation can be overcome by an understanding based in the radical comparison between our culture and other cultures. 58 CHAPTER 4. The New Mental Philosophy 66
4.1. According to cognitivism, the model provided by the computer makes it possible for a naturalistic psychology to study intellectual activities. 66
4.2. The materialism of contemporary mental philosophy is in fact a dualism for which the subject of mental operations is the brain. 69
4.3. The new mental philosophy advances three theses: (1) that mental life consists of a sequence of mental states; (2) that these mental stat

Über Autor(innen)

Descombes, Vincent
Vincent Descombes is the author of "Modern French Philosophy, Objects of All Sorts: A Philosophical Grammar, Proust: Philosophy of the Novel", and "The Barometer of Modern Reason: On the Philosophies of Current Events". Stephen Adam Schwartz, who teaches in the Department of French, University College Dublin, translated Descombe's "The Barometer of Modern Reason".