Pub Date : 2019-12-05DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198785880.003.0002
Eli Alshanetsky
The chapter introduces a new puzzle—albeit one that is reminiscent of Meno’s famous puzzle about investigation. The puzzle that Plato formulates challenges the possibility of inquiry in general, whereas this puzzle concerns the special case of inquiry into our thoughts. Our puzzle is that, in the difficult cases of articulation, coming to know what we are thinking seems to require knowing the words that capture our thoughts; yet, at the same time, having the latter knowledge itself seems to require already knowing what we are thinking. After characterizing the cases that give rise to the puzzle and honing its presentation, the chapter addresses several lines of response to it, including the worry that the puzzle simply reduces to Meno’s original paradox and the worry that it does not constitute a genuine philosophical paradox at all.
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Pub Date : 2019-12-05DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198785880.003.0004
Eli Alshanetsky
After rejecting deflationism, the central further question is whether our rejections and acceptances of words, in the articulation process, are based on reasons. Reasons-theorists say “yes” and look for some mental state that gives us a reason for accepting/rejecting a formulation. One kind of reasons-theorist argues that our reasons come from some knowledge we have of our thought. Another kind of reasons-theorist argues that our reasons come from feelings that result from sub-personally matching our thought with our words. Contra the reasons-theorists, this chapter maintains that we cannot make sense of the bulk of our responses in the articulation process by assimilating them into the reasons framework. Resolving the puzzle calls for an alternative model of rational control—one that may be implicated in learning and numerous other epistemologically central activities, ranging from basic perceptual categorization to sophisticated mathematical discovery.
{"title":"Reasons Theory","authors":"Eli Alshanetsky","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198785880.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198785880.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"After rejecting deflationism, the central further question is whether our rejections and acceptances of words, in the articulation process, are based on reasons. Reasons-theorists say “yes” and look for some mental state that gives us a reason for accepting/rejecting a formulation. One kind of reasons-theorist argues that our reasons come from some knowledge we have of our thought. Another kind of reasons-theorist argues that our reasons come from feelings that result from sub-personally matching our thought with our words. Contra the reasons-theorists, this chapter maintains that we cannot make sense of the bulk of our responses in the articulation process by assimilating them into the reasons framework. Resolving the puzzle calls for an alternative model of rational control—one that may be implicated in learning and numerous other epistemologically central activities, ranging from basic perceptual categorization to sophisticated mathematical discovery.","PeriodicalId":104427,"journal":{"name":"Articulating a Thought","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125673299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-12-05DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198785880.003.0007
Eli Alshanetsky
Once we are done articulating the thought, we can easily articulate it again, using different words with the same meaning. But the thought may become difficult to articulate again, with time. In many such cases (for example, during teaching, job interviews, and exams), our knowledge of the thought does not dissipate altogether, but switches back to an implicit format. We can regain our explicit knowledge by engaging in an effortful process of recollection. The memory process shares the key features of the process of articulation and lends itself to a variant of the initial puzzle. Placing the memory puzzle alongside analogous puzzles in the case of thought and perception brings out the general form of the puzzle that pertains to our knowledge of all foundational facts. Our knowledge of such facts, in all these cases, could be underwritten by our possession of certain bits of implicit knowledge.
{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"Eli Alshanetsky","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198785880.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198785880.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Once we are done articulating the thought, we can easily articulate it again, using different words with the same meaning. But the thought may become difficult to articulate again, with time. In many such cases (for example, during teaching, job interviews, and exams), our knowledge of the thought does not dissipate altogether, but switches back to an implicit format. We can regain our explicit knowledge by engaging in an effortful process of recollection. The memory process shares the key features of the process of articulation and lends itself to a variant of the initial puzzle. Placing the memory puzzle alongside analogous puzzles in the case of thought and perception brings out the general form of the puzzle that pertains to our knowledge of all foundational facts. Our knowledge of such facts, in all these cases, could be underwritten by our possession of certain bits of implicit knowledge.","PeriodicalId":104427,"journal":{"name":"Articulating a Thought","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126124355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-12-05DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198785880.003.0003
Eli Alshanetsky
Deflationists seek to reinterpret the puzzle cases so that the puzzle never arises. On this type of view, what we do in the difficult cases of articulation does not consist in articulating thoughts already in place, but rather in using language to form new thoughts. A moderate deflationist draws an analogy between what we do in these cases and the elaboration of a plan, whose detailed implementation we work out later, as we go. A radical deflationist denies that we search for any fixed type of formulation at all, arguing that our acceptance of a formulation is either a free choice or a consequence of reaching a natural stopping point in our thinking. Examining a wide range of deflationary views helps bring out many of the key features of the puzzle cases and map out the variety of ways in which we can think in words.
{"title":"Deflationism","authors":"Eli Alshanetsky","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198785880.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198785880.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Deflationists seek to reinterpret the puzzle cases so that the puzzle never arises. On this type of view, what we do in the difficult cases of articulation does not consist in articulating thoughts already in place, but rather in using language to form new thoughts. A moderate deflationist draws an analogy between what we do in these cases and the elaboration of a plan, whose detailed implementation we work out later, as we go. A radical deflationist denies that we search for any fixed type of formulation at all, arguing that our acceptance of a formulation is either a free choice or a consequence of reaching a natural stopping point in our thinking. Examining a wide range of deflationary views helps bring out many of the key features of the puzzle cases and map out the variety of ways in which we can think in words.","PeriodicalId":104427,"journal":{"name":"Articulating a Thought","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114692483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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