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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Cognitive Creatures And Conceptuality, William J. Gamrat
Cognitive Creatures And Conceptuality, William J. Gamrat
Theses and Dissertations
What does it take for thought to be conceptual? And which creatures get to count as having conceptual thoughts? This paper explores these questions. The discussion follows Elisabeth Camp by contrasting two families of views. One family of views endorses that conceptual thought is the ability to represent the world in a way that brings about action. The other family wants more of conceptual thought: namely, that it exhibit objectivity and, in particular, that it come with the ability to speak a language. This discussion also follows Camp in looking for a better way to tie activeness to conceptual thought …
The Activity Of Finite Spirits In Berkeley: Willing Sensible Ideas, Benjamin Quinn Formanek
The Activity Of Finite Spirits In Berkeley: Willing Sensible Ideas, Benjamin Quinn Formanek
Theses and Dissertations
Throughout his unpublished and published works alike, George Berkeley repeatedly exclaims that finite spirits have the power to move our bodies by acts of volition. However, given the nature of the way in which Berkeley carves the division between objective and subjective experience, his remarks concerning our agency over our bodies in the real world appear inconsistent. In an attempt to exculpate Berkeley from inconsistency, Sukjae Lee and George Pitcher offer up an occasionalist interpretation of Berkeley. Their account situates finite spirits with agency that extends to producing acts of will which either serve as occasions for God to then …
Perdurance And Personhood: A Reply To Burge, Joel Knowles
Perdurance And Personhood: A Reply To Burge, Joel Knowles
Theses and Dissertations
This essay is a response to the attack on reductionist and perdurantist views of persons which Tyler Burge presents in a paper entitled "Memory and Perons". Burge's arguments appeal to a specific form of egocentric indexing called de se form, which he suggests is involved in the individuation conditions of the mental states entailed in the exercise of the core psychological competencies of personhood (i.e. intentional agency, perception with use, inference). Burge argues that the preservation of states with de se form requires the possession of a veridical de se memory competency, which in turn requires transtemporal agent identity. Burge …