Doing Without Concepts: An Interpretation of C. I. Lewis' Action-Oriented Foundationalism (paper)
- From: Phi-Sci Online <liz_j@xxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 06:56:33 -0800 (PST)
Link: http://www.sorites.org/Issue_06/item2.htm
C. I. Lewis' action-oriented notion of cognition is consistent with a
minimally representational picture of mind. I aim to show why. Toward
this end, I explore some of the tensions between Lewis' theory of
knowledge and his theory of mind. At face value, the former renders
the latter implausible. Among other problems, no agent could act if
she were required to entertain the myriad beliefs that Lewis claims
figures in the guidance of action. But rather than abandon Lewis'
story, I attempt to rehabilitate it. Rehabilitation is possible, I
argue, because (i) Lewis isn't claiming that his epistemology
describes actual justificatory practices, but rather what an agent
could do; (ii) the social character of concepts [and meaning]
considerably reduces the need for appealing to internal concepts when
explaining why an agent does what she does; and (iii) among his
paradigm cases of cognitive behavior are paradigm cases of
nonreflective action. Here's the rub: not only do such actions account
for most of our behavior [as Lewis himself notes], nonreflective
actions, though cognitive, don't require conceptualization. Link:
http://www.sorites.org/Issue_06/item2.htm
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