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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Structuring Thought: Concepts, Computational Syntax, And Cognitive Explanation, Matthew B. Gifford
Structuring Thought: Concepts, Computational Syntax, And Cognitive Explanation, Matthew B. Gifford
Doctoral Dissertations
The topic of this dissertation is what thought must be like in order for the laws and generalizations of psychology to be true. I address a number of contemporary problems in the philosophy of mind concerning the nature and structure of concepts and the ontological status of mental content. Drawing on empirical work in psychology, I develop a number of new conceptual tools for theorizing about concepts, including a counterpart model of concepts' role in linguistic communication, and a deflationary theory of concepts' formal features. I also suggest some new answers to old problems, arguing, for example, that content realism …
Understanding And Its Role In Inquiry, Benjamin T. Rancourt
Understanding And Its Role In Inquiry, Benjamin T. Rancourt
Doctoral Dissertations
In this dissertation, I argue that understanding possesses unique epistemic value. I propose and defend a novel account of understanding that I call the management account of understanding, which is the view that an agent A understands a subject matter S just in case A has the ability to extract the relevant information and exploit it with the relevant cognitive capacities to answer questions in S. Since inquiry is the process of raising and answering questions, I argue that without understanding, it would be impossible to engage in successful inquiry. I argue that understanding is indispensable for effective cognition and …