UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
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Item On the Representation of Objects in the Visual System(2012) Kirilov, Dimiter Iavorov; Rey, Georges; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)There is evidence in the psychological literature for representations of objects (Pylyshyn's visual indexes) that refer to and track, not properties, but what in our sort of world typically turn out to be individual physical objects. I am concerned with how such representations acquire their content. Two strategies for accounting for the content of representations are a) representations of particulars refer to the entity that caused them; and b) representations of particulars refer to the entity whose properties are represented by the visual system. The first strategy faces the "which link" problem: since any one of the links in the causal chain leading to the token representation counts as a cause of the token representation, no particular link is individuated as the referent. I examine a recent proposed solution to this problem (Fodor's counterfactual triangulation) and conclude that it fails to determine whether the referent of a visual index is an object, as opposed to a state of affairs, or an event. The problems with the first strategy are a reason to explore the second strategy: representations of objects refer to the entity whose properties are represented by the visual system. I adopt Fodor's asymmetric dependency account (ADA) of intentionality to account for how representations of properties get their content. Fodor's account is chosen not because it is free of problems, but because it has the structure of a theory that promises to deal with many of the classic problems that befall informational semantics (e.g. the disjunction problem). Since ADA is designed to work for causal relations between properties and not for causal relations between particulars, it cannot, by itself, account for how representations of particulars get their content. So I suggest that ADA be supplemented with conceptual role semantics to account for the logico-syntactic roles of representations of particulars. In particular, I suggest that to represent objects the visual system requires the capacity to form and store in memory definite descriptions containing: a) predicates referring to spatio-temporal relations; and b) temporal indexicals.Item Concepts: Taking Psychological Explanation Seriously(2005-07-26) Rives, Bradley; Rey, Georges; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)What do we need a theory of concepts for? Two answers to this 'meta-level' question about concepts figure prominently in the recent philosophical literature, namely, that concepts are needed primarily for the purposes of psychological explanation, and that concepts are needed primarily for the purposes of normative epistemology. I argue that the psychological perspective leads to what I call 'Judgment Pragmatism', which is a version of conceptual/inferential role semantics according to which concepts are not constitutively tied to rationality and knowledge. I begin in Chapter 1 by distinguishing two uses of the term 'concept' found in the literature, and laying out some constraints on any adequate theory of concepts. In Chapter 2, I articulate the two meta-level approaches under consideration, and explain how the work of Jerry Fodor and Christopher Peacocke is representative of the psychological and epistemological perspectives, respectively. I also show that the meta-level question is distinct from the object-level question of whether Fodor's Informational Atomism or Peacocke's 'Concept Pragmatism' is correct. In Chapter 3, I distinguish two versions of Concept Pragmatism: Judgment Pragmatism, which individuates concepts in terms of mere judgment, and Knowledge Pragmatism, which individuates some concepts in terms of knowledge. I argue against Peacocke's claim that the former leads to the latter, and show that the perspective of psychological explanation provides us with reasons to resist Knowledge Pragmatism. I then consider, in Chapter 4, one of Peacocke's arguments for Judgment Pragmatism, and articulate the Quinean Challenge it faces. In Chapter 5, I argue that Quine's arguments against the analytic/synthetic distinction are inadequate, and that Concept Pragmatism is not vulnerable to Fodor's empirical case against the analytic. I then make the empirical case for Judgment Pragmatism, in Chapter 6, by defending the view that positing the analytic/synthetic distinction is a piece of explanatory psychology. In Chapter 7, I consider the dialectical role of Frege cases, and argue that adopting the psychological perspective allows us to stake out a middle ground between Fodor's 'syntactic' treatment and Peacocke's claim that concepts are constitutively tied to reasons and rationality. Chapter 8 offers some concluding thoughts.