Cognitive Science 108/ Linguistics 108

The Challenge of Cognitive Science to Western Philosophy

Readings (in Philosophy in the Flesh)

Reading for Tuesday, September 28, 1999: Read Chapter 12, pp. 235-266.

Homework 5

Due at the Beginning of Class Tuesday, September 28, 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 is on the course website:

http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~bbergen/cs108/index.html

We suggest the following: Go to the website and download a copy of the homework. Copy the questions into a new file, and fill in your answers after each question, using a different font (e.g., put the questions in italics and the answers in roman). This way it will be clearer to the grader which answer goes with which question, and you will have an overview of all your answers to questions, one by one, at the end of the course.

Chapter 11, Part 2

1 Here is a list of inferential structures that go with one form of causation or another:
    1. The causer exerts force on an entity and, as a result, the entity comes to be in a new state.
    2. The cause occurs before the result.
    3. The cause is contiguous to the result in time and space.
    4. The cause is an essence and the result is a natural behavior of everything with that essence.
    5. The cause is a purpose and the result is the achievement of that purpose.
    6. The cause is a situation and the result is an inevitable consequence of that situation.
    7. The cause is a sequence of events or actions and the result is inevitably reached when events or actions in that sequence occur.
    8. The result occurs only after the cause has lasted a long enough time time.
    9. The cause and the result occur together.
    10. The cause and the result are single events.
    11. The cause and the result are separate events.
    12. There is an intermediate cause between the cause and the result.

Which of the following causal sentences go with which of the above inferential structures? Which causation metaphor is used in each of these sentences?

    1. The fall fog brought a chill to the air.
    2. Smoking marijuana leads to drug abuse.
    3. Communist economic policy brought about the break-up of the Soviet Union.
    4. The aspirin took away my headache.
    5. Brains cause minds.
    6. My intention to lift my arm causes my arm to rise.
    7. The city's failure to post a STOP sign caused the car crash.
    8. Pesticide use has been linked to a rise in cancer.
    9. Heat wave kills 12 in Chicago.
    10. Guns kill people.
    11. It's going to rain, because I see dark clouds over the bay.
    12. The constant criticism made him eventually blow his top.
    13. Things fall at the rate the do because of the law of gravity.

2. Philosophical implications.

  1. Why is it philosophically important if different concepts of causation have different inferential structures? Discuss scientific realism and the correspondence theory of truth.
  2. Consider the following position:

The types of causation correspond to different kinds of real phenomena in the world; there is just no unified phenomenon of "causation" in the world.

Would this position accord with the correspondence theory of truth? Would it accord with the embodied theory of truth? Discuss briefly.

3. In General Relativity, what we call the force of gravity is "really" the curvature of space-time. How is it possible, in the embodied theory of truth, for Einstein to be "right" and for those of us who conceptualize gravity as a force in our everyday lives to be "right." Is this possible with the correspondence theory of truth?