Demonstrative Thought : : A Pragmatic View / / Felipe Nogueira de Carvalho.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2016 Part 1
• VerfasserIn: Nogueira de Carvalho, Felipe,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2016]; ©2016
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Epistemische Studien / Epistemic Studies : Philosophy of Science, Cognition and Mind , 34
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (IX, 275 p.)

How can we explain our capacity to think about particulars in our external environment? Many philosophers have answered this question in terms of a sophisticated conception of space and time and the movement of objects therein. A more recent reaction against this view sought to explain this capacity solely in terms of perceptual mechanisms of object individuation. Neither explanation remains fully satisfactory.This book argues for a more desirable middle ground in terms of a pragmatist approach to demonstrative thought, where this capacity is explained through graded practical knowledge of objects.This view allows us to do justice to important insights put forward by both positions criticized in the book, while avoiding their potential shortcomings. It also paves the way to a more pragmatist approach to the theory of mental representation, where the notion of practical knowledge is allowed to play a central role in our cognitive life. Finally, it shows how practical knowledge may be firmly rooted in neurobiological processes and mechanisms that conform to what the empirical sciences tell us about the mind.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Foreword -- Contents -- 1. Introduction: What is Demonstrative Thought and How to Explain it? -- 2. Perceptualist Approaches to Demonstrative Thought -- 3. Attention-based Perceptualist Theories of Demonstrative Thought -- 4. Non-attentional Perceptualist Theories of Demonstrative Thought -- 5. The Conceptualist Challenge to Demonstrative Thought -- 6. The Pragmatic View of Demonstrative Thought (I): Practical Knowledge -- 7. The Pragmatic View of Demonstrative Thought (II): Object Representation -- Bibliography -- Index