Neo-Pragmatism, Primitive Intentionality and Animal Minds.
According to Hutto and Satne (Philosophia, 43(3), 521-536, 2015), an "essential tension" plagues contemporary neo-Pragmatist accounts of mental contents: their explanation of the emergence and constitution of intentional mental contents is circular. After identifying the problem, they also propose a...
| Published in: | Philosophia Vol. 47; no. 1; pp. 39 - 59 |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
Springer Nature
Mar2019
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=135024386&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 135024386 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00483893 1VPF jtl: Philosophia issn: 00483893 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Mar2019 vid: 47 iid: 1 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 135024386 10.1007/s11406-018-9963-z ppf: 39 ppct: 20 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 526KB tig: atl: Neo-Pragmatism, Primitive Intentionality and Animal Minds. aug: au: Danón, Laura affil: Centro de Investigaciones de Filosofía y Humanidades, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (National University of Córdoba), Pabellón Agustín Tosco s/n Piso 1°, Ciudad Universitaria, Córdoba, Argentina su: Pragmatism Animal cognition Content (Psychology) Cognitive ability Sociocultural theory sug: subj: Pragmatism Animal cognition Content (Psychology) Cognitive ability Sociocultural theory keyword: Animal minds Mental content Neo-pragmatism Primitive intentionality ab: According to Hutto and Satne (Philosophia, 43(3), 521-536, 2015), an "essential tension" plagues contemporary neo-Pragmatist accounts of mental contents: their explanation of the emergence and constitution of intentional mental contents is circular. After identifying the problem, they also propose a solution: what neo-Pragmatists need to do, to overcome circularity, is to appeal to a primitive content-free variety of intentionality, different from the full-blown intentionality of propositional attitudes. In this paper, I will argue that, in addition to the problem of circularity, there is another important problem that both neo-Pragmatist accounts, and Hutto and Satnes's refinement of them, should also deal with: their difficulty to accommodate a host of recent empirical evidence and theoretical developments on the interdisciplinary field of animal cognition. I will call this difficulty the objection from animal minds, and I will present several arguments designed to show that, even though the notion of primitive intentionality, introduced by Hutto and Satne, may be useful to account for some of the most basic ways of dealing with the environment of nonhuman animals, it falls short of providing an adequate explanation of the full-range of cognitive capacities and behavioral dispositions that many animal species display. Thus, their proposal ends up being insufficient to help neo-Pragmatist approaches to overcome the problem of animal minds. Finally, I will suggest that overcoming this objection requires attributing to (several species of) non-human animals some basic, yet content involving, kinds of intentional mental states. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Philosophia is a copyright of Springer, 2019. All Rights Reserved. item: Philosophia holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2019 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|