Author: Darren Hibbs Categories: Philosophy of Language, Metaphysics Word Count: 1000 How tall do you have to be to be tall? How much hair do you have to lose to be bald? How old do you have to be to be old? It is an unremarkable feature of language that words such as ‘tall’, ‘bald’, and … Continue reading Vagueness
Author: Ian Tully Category: Philosophy of Mind and Language Word Count: 1000 From roughly §243 to §315 in his Philosophical Investigations, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein lays out what later commentators have dubbed ‘the private language argument.’1 Wittgenstein imagines a case roughly like the following. Suppose a person is stranded on a deserted island and … Continue reading Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument
Author: Rebecca Renninger Category: Philosophy of Mind and Language Word Count: 1000 Can your mind be outside of your body? Typically we think that the mind—including our thoughts, beliefs, memories, experiences, attitudes, etc.—is internal to our bodies. A number of philosophers challenge this commonsense view. The view of the mind that these philosophers propose is knows as an extended view, … Continue reading The Extended Mind
Author: Addison Ellis Category: Philosophy of Mind and Language Word Count: 1000 Imagine: You direct your web browser to Google Translate. You select English as the input language and Chinese as the output language. You type 'Horses are really cool!' into the input field. In the blink of an eye, the output field reads '马是真的很酷!' We know … Continue reading Intentionality
Author: Rebecca Renninger Category: Philosophy of Mind and Language Word Count: 1000 1. Internalism and Externalism Examples of mental phenomena are things like pain, joy, and perceptual states. Internalism about mental phenomena is the view that all mental phenomena are spatially located inside the brain or skin of the creature that possesses them. Externalism about mental phenomena … Continue reading Semantic Externalism
