Heartley Slater - Against the Realisms of the Age

Having established the central relevance of Wittgenstein, and the above intensional logics, to Cognitive Science, in , to deal with three recent specific thinkers in this area, Schiffer, Fodor and Dretske, finding them struggling, or in error, for want of the clarity logic provides. Specifically I show how we must have, for instance, a use account of meaning, a non-causal account of content, and the separation of reasons from causes. That ends us up with a non-realist view of propositional attitudes, somewhat akin to Dennetts.

The related view of phenomenological states I have put in the , reviving certain thinkers of the Wittgensteinian period, and specifically correcting Davidson on mental causation, and the Realists Thomason and Belnap for their views on Branching Time.

The relation between choice and the epsilon calculus is explained in the next chapter, where Edelbergs recent and prominent views on mental objects are attacked. It is there shown that a correct grammatical analysis of propositional attitudes makes all the objects on our minds physical, with only our conceptions of those objects differing. Another two contemporary philosophers of mind are taken to task on related matters, in , which discusses critically Lewis views on de dicto and de se attitudes, also Perrys views on the essential indexical. I show, amongst other things, that there are no de se attitudes, properly so called (because the self is not a physical thing), and contrariwise that all de dicto attitudes are about physical things (i.e. are de re), on account of a central Wittgensteinian thesis regarding externalism, which is now provable. That externalism is what provides us with public access to the objects of propositional attitudes, and was what faced Edelbergs account of mental objects with its major theoretical difficulty. Edelberg wanted to talk about the objects on peoples minds as private items only existing in their separate theories. But by referring to them he himself necessarily makes them public, i.e. objects in anyones theory.

Lewis, Perry and Edelberg are all Realists, and it is Realism in other areas I tackle next, with an inspection of the Situation Semantics tradition, of Barwise, Perry, and Etchemendy, also Zalta and Linsky. We must take an anti-realist view of properties and propositions, unless we are to be illogical, and this has a great bearing on many of Situation Theorys results. I give a more positive account of Situations in the following chapter, , in which I show that the bulk of Zaltas 25 Theorems in Situation Theory, which he takes to define such things, can be obtained quite easily without his ontological baggage.

The remaining three chapters look at Realisms of some other sorts, in other locations. First, in , I re-focus the philosophy of mathematics towards Wittgensteinian concerns, specifically criticising Gdel, Langendoen and Postal, and Katz for their views about infinity; also the generality of thinkers in this area for their continuing interest in meta-mathematics, and Gdels theorems. I mention, in the course of this chapter, some difficulties with Set Theory, which I expand on in the chapter following. Set Theory would seem to have been founded on a grammatical mistake, namely the supposition that numbers are first order properties of certain objects (sets). But as Kessler, in tune with certain remarks of Frege, saw, while certain cards might number 52, the object which includes them, namely the pack of cards in question, also consists in 4 suits. So numbers do not attach to objects absolutely, and must be recognized to be second order properties, specifically second order relations between objects and (first order) properties, like being a card. Maddy and Chihara, amongst others, have had a debate about the reality of sets which is cleared up, in this chapter, once the distinction between first and second order properties is set out. The consequent nature of