Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

It may happen that you have a picture in mind with which the colour recognised is compared, but this is rare.

I find it useful to characterize beliefs as having the mind-to-world direction of fit (the belief in the mind is supposed to fit the state of affairs in the world) and desires and intentions as having the world-to-mind direction of fit (if all goes well with the desires and intentions, the world comes to fit how it is represented in the mind).

And, during the nine subsequent years, I did nothing but roam from one place to another, desirous of being a spectator rather than an actor in the plays exhibited on the theater of the world; and, as I made it my business in each matter to reflect particularly upon what might fairly be doubted and prove a source of error, I gradually rooted out from my mind all the errors which had hitherto crept into it.

These cases, such as pride and shame, gratitude and regret, contain beliefs and desires, which do have a mind-world or world-mind direction of fit In addition to the problem of expressive speech acts there is a special problem about declarations, speech acts that make something the case by declaring it to be the case, for example, adjourning a meeting by saying.

This method, from the time I had begun to apply it, had been to me the source of satisfaction so intense as to lead me to, believe that more perfect or more innocent could not be enjoyed in this life; and as by its means I daily discovered truths that appeared to me of some importance, and of which other men were generally ignorant, the gratification thence arising so occupied my mind that I was wholly indifferent to every other object.

But I confess there is need of prolonged discipline and frequently repeated meditation to accustom the mind to view all objects in this light; and I believe that in this chiefly consisted the secret of the power of such philosophers as in former times were enabled to rise superior to the influence of fortune, and, amid suffering and poverty, enjoy a happiness which their gods might have envied.

If chimpanzees could talk, they would have things to talk about that we would recognize. HCF also argue that some aspects of the human conceptual system, such as Theory of Mind (intuitive psychology) and parts of intuitive physics, are absent in monkeys, and questionable or at best rudimentary in chimpanzees.

It is possible that these abilities, like Theory of Mind, are absent or discernable only in rudimentary form in other primates.

Rather, they argued that word-learning is accomplished by the child’s Theory of Mind, a mechanism specific to the domain of intuitive psychology, possibly unique to humans.

Markson and Bloom’s case that word learning can be reduced to a Theory of Mind mechanism is most tenable for the basic act of learning that a noun is the label for a perceptible object.