Overview
- Examines the consequences of re-evaluating the dichotomies of apparent and real, and that of the internal and external
- Discusses the notion of habit of action as vehicle of knowing
- Gives an analysis of mind as a property of organism environment interaction
- Shows the connection between facts and values in naturalism
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics (SAPERE, volume 18)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
The book questions two key dichotomies: that of the apparent and real, and that of the internal and external. This leads to revised notions of the structure of experience and the object of knowledge. Our world is experienced as possibilities of action, and to know is to know what to do. A further consequence is that the mind is best considered as a property of organisms’ interactions with their environment. The unit of analysis is the loop of action and perception, and the central concept is the notion of habit of action, which provides the embodied basis of cognition as the anticipation of action. This holds for non-linguistic tacit meanings as well as for linguistic meanings. Habit of action is a teleological notion and thus opens a possibility for defining intentionality and normativity in terms of the soft naturalism adopted in the book. The mind is embodied, and this embodiment determines our physical perspective on the world. Our sensory organs and other instruments give us instrumental access to the world, and this access is epistemic in character. The distinction between the physical and conceptual viewpoint allows us to define truth as the correspondence with operational fit. This embodied epistemic truth is however not a sign of antirealism, as the instrumentally accessed theoretical objects are precisely those objects that experimental science deals with.
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Mind in Action
Book Subtitle: Experience and Embodied Cognition in Pragmatism
Authors: Pentti Määttänen
Series Title: Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17623-9
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-17622-2Published: 21 April 2015
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-36960-0Published: 06 October 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-17623-9Published: 11 April 2015
Series ISSN: 2192-6255
Series E-ISSN: 2192-6263
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 94
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Epistemology, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Psychology, Philosophy of Science