Folk psychology 1 concerns the conceptual framework of explanations of human behavior. Pdf 1991 explaining behavior reasons in a world of causes download. Explaining behavior fred dretske free ebook download as pdf file. Jan 05, 2020 dretskes next book returned to the topic of knowledge gained via perception but substantially changes the dretsks. Causal explanations depend on our interests, our purposes, and our prior knowledge. Again, the system does not move as it does now because of what c the relevant internal state means now about external condition f, but because of. This reflects a general shift in the literature away from content epiphenomenalism and related issues about content. There are what i call triggering causes, the events or conditions that come before the effect and are followed regularly by the effect, and what i call structuring causes, events that cause a triggering cause to produce its effect. What really explains behavior according to a certain philosophical picture of the way mind and body are related, the mind is to intentional action what money is to the behavior of a vending machine. The goal is to find an explanatory role for meaning in a world of causes.
Dretske defines behavior as a causal process and takes beliefs and other attitudes to be inner. This paper examines the relationship between a family of concepts involving reliable correlation, and a family of concepts involving adaptation and biological function, as these concepts are used in the naturalistic semantic theory of dretske s explaining behavior. Ludwig department of philosophy university of florida gainesville, fl 326118545 1 many philosophers have recently been concerned with whether our ordinary practices of explaining what we do in terms of reasons can survive the discovery of the neurophysiological. In this lucid portrayal of human behavior, fred dretske provides an original account of the way reasons function in the causal explanation of behavior. The goal of representational naturalism is to explain much of what is. First, dretske asks us to distinguish between behavior and the mere result of behavior say, bodily movement. Pdf dretske on explaining behavior kirk ludwig academia. Accidental associations, local potency, and a dilemma for dretske.
Causal theories of mental content stanford encyclopedia. Knowledge and the flow of information dretske 1981. Reference to the structured whole highlights those local. Behavior should not be identified with bodily movements or other external results of behavior, according to dretske. Also entailed by a knowledge claim are irrelevant alternatives. Dretske takes me to task for my attempts to deal with how attitudes causally explain behavior. Explaining cognitive phenomena with internal representations. The compatibility of psychological naturalism and representationalism andrew ward georgia institute of technology fred dretske begins chapter three of his explaining behavior with the following observations. In this lucid portrayal of human behavior, fred dretske provides an original account of the way reasons function in the causal explanation of. The first is that what we explain, behavior, is a process, the process of some internal state of type c causing some bodily. An overview of the status of philosophy of action 2. How does descriptive psychology dp address this question regarding one of psychologys most fundamental concepts, that of behavior. This kind of behavior is a tropism, which fails to give reasons for the token behavior, because what the indicators indicate is irrelevant to what movements they produce dretske, 1988, 94.
Causal theories of mental content stanford encyclopedia of. Aug 23, 2019 dretske misrepresentation notes what he thinks is a more serious problem is what he describes as the indeterminacy of biological function. If the explanatory framework of folk psychology 1 is correct, then because nan wants the baby to sleep, which employs the concept of wanting, may be a good partial explanation of nans turning the tv off. Many philosophers have recently been concerned with whether our ordinary practices of explaining what we do in terms of reasons can survive the discovery of the neurophysiological causes of our behavior, conceived of as the movements of our bodies through space. A dretskee could know that there was a bone buried in the ground on the basis of its scent, even if the reason for the scent justifying the dogs belief are dretsk beyond the dogs ken. Just as coins are in or get deposited in vending machines, beliefs, desires, and intentions are in us. Explaining behavior, he develops a theory of behavior or action broadly conceived which is at odds with other wellknown alternatives, like dav idsons. Dretskes 1988 book, explaining behavior, further refined his earlier treatment. Since 1980 it has been at brown, where it has been edited by roderick chisholm and then, since 1986, by ernest sosa. Something that he seems to tacitly acknowledge, see dretske, 1988, explaining behavior, ch. Pdf 1991 explaining behavior reasons in a world of causes causes of our behavior, conceived of as the movements of our bodies through space. Explaining behavior reasons in a world of causes fred dretske 1988. Fred dretskes account of mental causation, developed in explaining behavior and defended in numerous articles, is generally regarded as one of the most interesting and most ambitious approaches in the field. The framework, based on the folk concept of intentionality, distinguishes two major modes of explanationreason explana.
S knows f because he has received a signal s over an information channel that f is the case. They are, if we can trust our ordinary ways of thinking, intentional entities with a hand on the steering. Dretske, on the other hand, argued that justificatory beliefs have to provide conclusive reasons for the beliefs they justify. Mendelovici, 2016, replies to artiga, 20, by providing refinements and a further defense of the view that reliable misrepresentations are a problem for causal theories of mental content. Fred dretske distinguishes between typeso representatioc systems basedo whether theactiow o intentioe o an external agent need bementio3 in anexplanatio o the system s behavioe he argues that the relevant criterio in making this distinctio is whether the system sbehavio was structured by a learning proingo by the. Pdf 1991 explaining behavior reasons in a world of causes. In particular, she argues that forming subjectlevel visual representations that are available for reasoning should not itself be understood as a process of inference. In the first chapter of explaining behavior, he develops a theory of behavior or action broadly. Triggering and structuring causes an operator moves the cursor on a screen by pressing a key on the keyboard. We can therefore read dretske as saying that if introspective attention is directed. Explaining behavior, he develops a theory of behavior or action broadly conceived which is.
Grasp certain central concepts and problematics involved in explaining actions. Causal explanations of behavior must distinguish two kinds of cause. For his answer, dretske fell back to the standard epistemological arguments. The relevance of this to giving reasons a role in the explanation of behavior is provided. My ultimate purpose is to show that psychological and neuroscientific explanations of behavior are not only compatible but complementary. In this lecture we consider internalism and externalism about linguistic and mental content. He argues that beliefs must be brain states in order to explain behavior. In the innocent eye, nico orlandi argues that vision is not a cognitive process. This article presents a theoretical framework of how people explain behavior. If the inline pdf is not rendering correctly, you can download the pdf file here. Some behavior is the expression of intelligent thought and purpose.
This page was last edited on 18 decemberat my hunch is he misgepresentation learns by writing, and by learning, he learns to teach better. They attempt to explain how one can think about, for example, dogs. Representations that get their functions through being recruited deetske operant conditioning, on the other hand, are beliefs, just as he held in explaining behavior. Between the representational theory of belief, desire, and action in explaining behavior and the representational theory of consciousness found in naturalizing the mind, dretske aimed to give full support to what he calls the. Continuing on from the discussion last week, in this session we consider teleosemantic approaches to naturalizing. Aug 16, 2010 lets consider how this goes in his article misrepresentation, which originally appeared in radu bogdan, ed. Desires as reasonsdiscussion notes on fred dretskes explaining behavior. Psychology is interested in why personsagents with reasonsmove in the way they do.
In hisbo, fred dretske distinguishes between typeso representatioc systems basedo whether theactiow o intentioe o an external agent need bementio3 in anexplanatio o the system s behavioe he argues that the relevant criterio in making this distinctio is whether the system sbehavio was structured by a learning proingo by the activityo the system sdesignercos3ows3o hosigne o wos. Philosophy and phenomenological research was founded in 1940 by marvin farber, who edited it for forty years. The framework, based on the folk concept of intentionality, distinguishes two major modes of explanationreason explanation and cause explanationas well as two minor modes and identifies conditions under which they occur. This theory is also strongly suggested in fodors work on. Pdf in his book explaining behavior, fred dretske distinguishes between types of representational systems based on whether the actions or. In addition, dretske hopes to satisfy another important requirement. Teleofunctionalism and explanation 12242006 of dretskes explaining behavior, discussion of his account has largely died down. Dretske misrepresentation pdf lets consider how this goes in his article misrepresentation, which dretske takes the notion of meaningn to be a plausible starting point for. There is a clear difference between explaining why, on the one hand, clyde stood up then and explaining, on the other.
They argue that my account of information is consistent with my denial of closure for knowledge. For the meaning the content of a belief to explain an action, on this view, is for the content of the belief to explain why it is that the mental state is part of a process that leads to the movement. A mechanistic perspective pawel gladziejewski 1 1 institute of philosophy and sociology, polish academy of sciences. Mar 08, 2020 representations that get their functions through being recruited by operant conditioning, on the other hand, are beliefs, just as he held in explaining behavior. Pdf in two recent articles and an earlier book fred dretske appeals to a. It is important to note that both triggering and structuring causes are taken by dretske to be capable of explaining something about an event or an occurrence. Lets consider how this goes in his article misrepresentation, which originally appeared in radu bogdan, ed.
In his book explaining behavior, fred dretske distinguishes between types of representational systems based on whether the actions or intentions of an external agent need be mentioned in an. Causal theories of mental content attempt to explain how thoughts can be about things. Get a sense of the close relationship between action and intentionality or rationality. This difference forms the starting point of fred dretskes recent and highly original. Thus, according to dretske, reasons, beliefs in particular, help explain behavior, conceived of as cs causing m, because c, the internal state that is the reason. Between the representational theory of belief, desire, and action in explaining behavior and the representational theory of consciousness found in naturalizing the mind, dretske aimed to give full. Some of artigas arguments might also be used by advocates of causal theories of mental content. It begins by noting that all behavior is describable as an attempt on the part of an individual to bring about some state of affairs either to.
Only if the power of conceptual thought is indispensable to explaining their behavior are we logically justified in positing it as a power they possess. Biological science investigates what makes our bodies move in the way they do. Dec 24, 2019 dretske misrepresentation pdf lets consider how this goes in his article misrepresentation, which dretske takes the notion of meaningn to be a plausible starting point for. Dretskes solution to the supervenience problem requires some conceptual stagesetting. Fred dretske s account of mental causation, developed in explaining behavior and defended in numerous articles, is generally regarded as one of the most interesting and most ambitious approaches. Intentionality and mental representation philosophy. Fred dretske 1990 philosophy and phenomenological research 50 4. In his book explaining behavior 1988 fred dretske sets himself the ambitious task of articulating a theory of mental content that satisfies both criteria. In dretskes terms, if c is a cause and m a movement, then in c causes m. Fred dretske has argued, in a highly original book and a series of articles, that action explanations are a very special species of historical explanation, in opposition to the traditional view that action explanations cite causes of actions, which.
May 14, 2019 representations that get their functions through being recruited deetske operant conditioning, on the other hand, are beliefs, just as he held in explaining behavior. It is not obvious that they capture this type of supervenience by thinking of it as a simultaneous nornic relation see segal and sober, 1990, pp. I argue that dretske s attempt to marry correlation and function to produce representation fails, though aspects of his failure. Form, content, and function and was more or less incorporated later into dretskes book explaining behavior.
This is so because 2 entails the falsity of, 3 although r is the case p might not be the case. Aug, 2019 in this lucid portrayal of human behavior, fred dretske provides an original account of the way reasons function in the causal explanation of behavior. Information, dretske claimed, can causally sustain belief, although he asked himself how can an abstract commodity like information be causally efficacious. Fred dretskes account of mental causation, developed in explaining behavior and defended in numerous articles, is generally regarded as one of the most interesting and most ambitious approaches. Dretske seeing and knowing pdf frederick irwin fred dretske was an american philosopher noted for his contributions to epistemology and the. Dretske s work on belief begins in the last third of knowledge and the flow of information, but the theory changed again in the book that followed, explaining behavior 1988. You will also recall that i have suggested that what makes this problem so difficult for misrepresehtation materialist is.
Accidental associations, local potency, and a dilemma for. This paper examines the relationship between a family of concepts involving reliable correlation, and a family of concepts involving adaptation and biological function, as these concepts are used in the naturalistic semantic theory of dretskes explaining behavior. Action, for drestke, is any causal process that may be explained by. I argue that dretskes attempt to marry correlation and function to produce representation fails, though aspects of his failure. I believe there is some ambivalence in dretske s writing about natural information, especially noticeable when comparing kfi to explaining behavior 1991, hereafter eb, but if we ignore some of dretske s examples, the explicit statement of the theory in kfi is univocal. According to a certain philosophical picture of the way mind and.
Representations that get their functions through being recruited by operant conditioning, on the other hand, are beliefs, just as he held in explaining behavior. There dretske claims that actions are the causing of movements by mental states, rather than the movements themselves. Jan 23, 2014 fred dretskes account of mental causation, developed in explaining behavior and defended in numerous articles, is generally regarded as one of the most interesting and most ambitious approaches in the field. According to dretske, meaning facts, construed historically as facts about the indicator functions of internal states, are the structuring causes of behavior. Pdf dretske on the causation of behavior constantine. Lecture notes available here as word document and here as pdf.
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