Consructivist ontology and beliefs

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Of what does a mental state, a belief about something, consist?

-- wendy iskra (wiskra@winmail.com.au), July 23, 2002

Answers

If you're a traditional symbolic cognitive scientist (or Jerry Fodor), it consists in an attitude acting as a function (i.e., "mapping") betweeen an individual and a proposition: e.g., John wants Mary to go home, where John is the individual, wanting is the attitude, and "Mary goes home" is the propositional content of the belief. See Fodor's "Three cheers for propositions" in _Representations_.

There are other views, of course. :-)

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), July 24, 2002.


Hi Wendy, If you're asking about the 'ontology' of mental states (ie, what are they based on), I would say most folks believe that the mind is a functon of the brain. However, that does not mean a neurological explanation is necessarily the best answer. I would say that the concept of 'intentionality' is perhaps part of what you're after here--see Franz Brentano and his 'intentionality thesis', which basically argues that ideas have an 'aboutness' that objects in the world lack (eg., my idea of the ocean has a relational quality that the actual ocean lacks).

-- Scott Greer (sgreer@upei.ca), July 30, 2002.

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