Boundless thought. The case of conceptual mental episodes

2020

Theory & Psychology

Direct perception and theory–theory approaches to social cognition are opposed with respect to whether social cognition is inferential. The latter argues that it is inferential, the former that it is not. This article argues that the opposition in terms of inference is mistaken. A sense of inference is specified on which social cognition can be inferential and directly perceptual. Arguing for inferential social cognition does not commit to a defense of indirect social cognition if inferential access to other minds can be direct. Contrary convictions are symptomatic of working with too simplistic a notion of inference. The dispute between direct and inferentialist social cognition is one in which both sides can be right. The argument, then, is that inferentialism should not be called on to witness in favor or disfavor of advocates of either direct or indirect social cognition.

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Leave inference alone: Direct inferential social cognition

2020

Theory & Psychology

Individual and Collective Intentionality: Elaborating the Fundamentality-Question

2022

Philosophia

This is a contribution to the controversy which of individual or collective intentionality is more fundamental. I call it the fundamentality-question. In a first step, I argue that it is really two questions. One is about sense and one about reference. The first is: Can one grasp or understand the concept individual intentionality and, correspondingly, individuality, on the one hand, without grasping or understanding the concept collective intentionality and, correspondingly, collectivity, on the other? The second is: Can the concept individual intentionality and corresponding concept of individuality, on the one hand, refer to something without the concept of collective intentionality and corresponding concept of collectivity referring to something, on the other? Simplifying somewhat, this elaborated fundamentality-question admits of nine answers. In a second step, I pursue a tentative answer to the elaborated fundamentality-question. Given a disambiguation of individuality and, correspondingly, individual intentionality, the answer is the combination of claims that individuality and individual intentionality in one sense is fundamental in reference-dependence but that collectivity and collective intentionality is fundamental in reference-dependence in the other sense of individuality, while collectivity and collective intentionality is in both cases fundamental in sense-dependence.

Persons and Affordances

2019

Ecological Psychology

Interdisciplinary interest in affordances is increasing. This paper is a philosophical contribution. The question is: Do persons offer affordances? Analysis of the concepts 'person' and 'affordance' supports an affirmative answer. On a widely accepted understanding of what persons are, persons exhibit many of the features typical of socionormative affordances. However, to understand persons as offering affordances requires, on the face of it, stretching traditional understandings of the concept of affordance: persons, in contrast to the organisms that partially constitute persons, do not seem to be available to perception. This and similar worries are responded to. The environment for an individual is filled with animate features, and prominent among them are persons. That being the case, a full accounting of environmental perception would by necessity include consideration of the information and the processes underlying person perception.-Heft, 2007, p. 86 (emphases added). Two great theorists of the mid 20 th century help us think of persons as offering affordances for socionormative interaction. They are James J. Gibson and Wilfrid Sellars. To my knowledge, few have considered the possibility that two theorist, as opposed in interests as these, have a common lesson to tell. J. J. Gibson is a de-mentalizer of intelligence and perceptuomotor capacities. On his approach to capacities for intelligent environmental engagements, mediating inferences are taken out of the picture (e.g., 1979, p. 127; Lobo et al., 2018, p. 2). Sellars, in contrast, is a denier of direct perceptual (or empirical) givenness. Knowing and agency is for him necessarily inferential. Indeed, he spent large parts of his opus classicus (1956) to bury the "Myth of the Given." The myth as he conceived it is the possibility of direct non-inferential knowledge. Thus it seems that Gibsonian ecological psychology cannot account for knowledge or agency from Sellars's inferentialist point of view. Whether this is an apparent or real opposition is discussed in the concluding section (see also footnote 1). Adverse as J. J. Gibson and Sellars seemthe first, a radical empiricist (1967), advocating non-inferential direct perception and agency, the latter attacking radical