Readings (in Philosophy in the Flesh)

Reading for Tuesday, September 21, 1999: Read Chapter 11, pp. 206-234.

Due at the Beginning of Class Tuesday, September 21, 1999.

Ground Rules: Discuss the homework with the members of your group. No group notes are to be taken. Write up your homeworks individually. They should be in 12 point type, either 1 & 1/2 spaced or double spaced, with at least 1 inch margins. No late homeworks.

This homework raises most of the general questions in the course. It is longer than usual to make sure that you think about these questions in some depth before we go into the case studies presented in the succeeding chapters. The required reading is short this week in compensation for the length of the homework.

1. What initial assumptions, coming from formalist analytic philosophy, constrained "first-generation" or "disembodied" cognitive science?
2. What empirical results in "second generation" or "embodied" cognitive science contradicted the first-generation assumptions?
3. Why is discourse difficult if not impossible when the empirical findings of one scientific approach contradict the initial philosophical assumptions of another scientific approach?
4. Every approach to science comes with at least some initial commitments, either methodological or substantive. What were the initial assumptions of second-generation cognitive science? Were they substantive or methodological? Why do second-generation cognitive scientists say that their assumptions do not, in themselves, determine substantive results?
5. What is "convergent evidence"? Why is it claimed that a broad range of convergent evidence from different methodologies greatly reduces the likelihood that the assumptions behind particular methodologies will determine substantive results?
6. Nine types of convergent methodologies confirming conceptual metaphor are given in the chapter. Pick three and briefly discuss the question of whether the assumptions behind these methodologies determine the empirical results. Be sure to discuss the issue of whether the assumptions behind the methodologies are independent of each other.
7. What is the difference between classical scientific realism and embodied scientific realism?
8. The authors claim that conceptual metaphors have been shown to "really exist" on the basis of convergent evidence. What view of scientific realism lies behind this claim?

1. How does "symbol system realism" differ from "embodied realism"?
2. What are the "three gaps" in the formalist version of the correspondence theory of truth? What problems are there in bridging those gaps?
3. What are the levels of embodiment and what is real about each?
4. What is the "levels-of-truth dilemma" and what is its philosophical importance? What distinguishes functionalists, eliminative materialists, Searle, and the authors with respect to "levels of truth" issues?
5. What is the role of human cognition, human understanding, the brain, and the body in (a) the correspondence theory of truth, and (b) the embodied theory of truth?
6. How are stable truths possible in embodied scientific realism, which uses the embodied theory of truth?
7. What do the authors mean by "real"?
8. What is the "neural computation metaphor", who assumes it, and what approach to scientific realism does the use of that metaphor require?
9. Why are proponents of the NTL paradigm not eliminative materialists? How can you be a physicalist without being an eliminative materialist?
10. The NTL Paradigm makes use of neural computation. Is it a purely computational theory of mind, and if not, why not?
11. What kinds of conceptual structures occur in the cognitive unconscious and what is "efficacious" and "causal" about them?
12. Searle's theory of the "background" claims implicitly that there is no cognitive unconscious that is "causal" and that is capable of intentionality, representation, propositional content, truth, and inference. What role does this claim play in Searle's approach to philosophy? What would he have to give up if he were to accept the existence of such a cognitive unconscious?

1. What is "the commonsense theory of language and truth", what is the traditional theory of metaphor, and how are they related?
2. Why does an advocate of "the commonsense theory of language and truth" have to deny the existence of conceptual metaphor and claim that metaphor is just a matter of words?
3. Searle claims that metaphors have only indirect literal meanings, while Davidson claims that metaphors have no meanings at all? What do these claims have to do with the fact that both are advocates of some form of the correspondence theory of truth?
4. What empirical evidence is there again the traditional theory of metaphor?
5. Why does the existence of conceptual metaphor matter for the following philosophical questions?

1. Can our language and our concepts literally "fit" the external mind-free world?
2. Does social reality have a single, consistent, objective structure?
3. Is it possible to think purely literally, without metaphor?
4. Is scientific thought always literal? Can serious sophisticated scientific theories be metaphorical? If so, give an example.
5. Is the use of metaphorical thought always "incorrect", "wrong", or "misleading"?
6. Can metaphor "add conceptual structure" to concepts?
7. Can concepts that are conceptualized metaphorically also have some literal meaning? And if so, why does that literal part not characterize all of the concept's meaning?
8. Can metaphorical thought impose a conceptual ontology? If so, how?
9. How does embodied realism change the concept of "ontology" in philosophy?