| Description |
1 online resource |
| Contents |
Cover; Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information; Copyright; Contents; Part I: Unicepts; Introduction to Part I; 0.1 Overview; 0.2 Selection Processes; 0.3 Ontology and Language; 0.4 Unicepts and Unitrackers; 0.5 Organization and Method; 0.6 Acknowledgments; 1: A Clumpy World; 1.1 Overview; 1.2 Real Kinds; 1.3 Reproduction and Mass Production; 1.4 Historical Kinds; 1.5 Individuals; 1.6 Eternal Kinds; 1.7 Shapes and Divisions of Historical Kind Clumps; 1.8 Real Categories; 2: Direct Reference for Extensional Terms; 2.1 Overview; 2.2 Conventions of Language |
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2.3 Following Precedent2.4 Direct Reference to Clumps; 2.5 Identifying through Language; 2.6 Real Definitions; 2.7 Names for Properties; 2.8 Boundaries and Slippage; 2.9 Communication with Names for Clumps and Peaks; 3: Introducing Unitrackersand Unicepts; 3.1 Overview; 3.2 Initial Examples of Unitracker Function; 3.3 Discarding Concepts; 3.4 Details on the Nature and Function of Unicepts; 3.5 Life Span and Growth of Unitrackers and Unicepts; 3.6 How Names Connect with Unicepts; 3.7 The Role of Language in Unicept Development; 3.8 On Modeling Unicepts |
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4: Functions of Same-Tracking4.1 Overview; 4.2 Perceptual Constancy Mechanisms; 4.3 Self-Relative Location Trackers; 4.4 Object Constancy; 4.5 Same-Tracking for Application of Unicept Templates; 4.6 Practical Stuffs and Affording Unicepts; 4.6.1 "Stuffs"; 4.6.2 Affording unicepts; 4.6.3 Affording unicepts for natural continua; 4.7 Factic Unicepts: Substantive and Attributive; 4.8 Two Closing Remarks; 5: How Unicepts Get Their Referents; 5.1 Overview; 5.2 How Unicept Referents Are Fixed: The Quarry; 5.3 Two General Principles Concerning Functions; 5.4 Imprinting |
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5.5 More General Mechanisms for Priming Unitrackers5.6 Some Mechanisms that Set Targets, Specifically, for Affording Unicepts; 5.7 The Problem of Location-Detached Signs; 5.8 A Third General Principle: Proxy Functions; 5.9 Natural Epistemology for Substantive and Attributive Unicepts; 6: Misrepresentation, Redundancy, Equivocity, Emptiness (and Swampman); 6.1 Overview; 6.2 Failures of Biological Function; 6.3 False Beliefs; 6.4 Redundant Unitrackers and Fregean Senses; 6.5 Equivocepts; 6.6 Vacucepts; 6.7 How Unicepts Fit with Biosemantics; 6.8 Swampman; 7: Philosophical Analysis |
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Referents of Names: Theory Change Observation versus Theory; Theory of Mind; 7.1 Overview; 7.2 Philosophical Analysis; 7.3 Referents of Names; 7.4 Theory Change in Science; 7.5 Observation versus Theory; 7.6 "Theory of Mind"; Part II: Infosigns, Intentional Signs, and their Interpretation; 8: Introduction to Part II; 8.1 Overview; 8.2 Infosigns and Natural Information; 8.3 Infosigns and Intentional Signs; 8.4 Interpreting Linguistic Signs; 9: Indexicals and Selfsigns; 9.1 Overview; 9.2 Assumptions to be Questioned; 9.3 Components of Conventional Linguistic Signs |
| Summary |
Ruth Garrett Millikan presents a highly original account of cognition - of how we get to grips with the world in thought. The question at the heart of her book is Kant's 'How is knowledge possible?', but answered from a contemporary naturalist standpoint. The starting assumption is that we are evolved creatures that use cognition as a guide in dealing with the natural world, and that the natural world is roughly as natural science has tried to describe it. Very unlike Kant, then, we must begin with ontology, with a rough understanding of what the world is like prior to cognition, only later developing theories about the nature of cognition within that world and how it manages to reflect the rest of nature. And in trying to get from ontology to cognition we must traverse another non-Kantian domain: questions about the transmission of information both through natural signs and through purposeful signs including, especially, language. Millikan makes a number of innovations. Central to the book is her introduction of the ideas of unitrackers and unicepts, whose job is to recognize the same again as manifested through the jargon of experience. She offers a direct reference theory for common nouns and other extensional terms; a naturalist sketch of conceptual development; a theory of natural information and of language function that shows how properly functioning language carries natural information; a novel description of the semantics/pragmatics distinction; a discussion of perception as translation from natural informational signs; new descriptions of indexicals, demonstratives and intensional contexts; and a new analysis of the reference of incomplete descriptions |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Cognition.
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Ontology.
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Cognition
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cognition.
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ontology (metaphysics)
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PHILOSOPHY -- History & Surveys -- General.
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PHILOSOPHY -- History & Surveys -- Modern.
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PSYCHOLOGY -- Cognitive Psychology.
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SCIENCE -- Cognitive Science.
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Cognition
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Ontology
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9780191026720 |
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0191026727 |
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9780191785948 |
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0191785946 |
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