Pub Date : 2021-07-29DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0006
Cristina Borgoni
This chapter deals with the question of which notion of rationality best fits with a fragmentation picture of belief that holds that we are mostly rational. According to this picture, coherence is not a requirement of rationality for the entire belief system. Coherence is only rationally required within belief fragments. The chapter argues, however, that fragmentation still needs to offer a different rationality criterion across belief fragments to account for a variety of cases in which we would intuitively ascribe irrationality to the subject. It proposes that the requirement of evidence responsiveness is a good candidate for making sense of the idea that there are certain normative relations in place among beliefs from different belief fragments.
{"title":"Rationality in Fragmented Belief Systems","authors":"Cristina Borgoni","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter deals with the question of which notion of rationality best fits with a fragmentation picture of belief that holds that we are mostly rational. According to this picture, coherence is not a requirement of rationality for the entire belief system. Coherence is only rationally required within belief fragments. The chapter argues, however, that fragmentation still needs to offer a different rationality criterion across belief fragments to account for a variety of cases in which we would intuitively ascribe irrationality to the subject. It proposes that the requirement of evidence responsiveness is a good candidate for making sense of the idea that there are certain normative relations in place among beliefs from different belief fragments.","PeriodicalId":149092,"journal":{"name":"The Fragmented Mind","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115566959","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 : 2021-07-29DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0009
D. Kindermann
Presuppositions—information speakers mutually take for granted in conversation—play important explanatory roles in pragmatics and semantics. This chapter argues that not all presuppositions in a conversation are equally available, or accessible, to speakers at a given stage in a conversation. Contrary to common assumption, some pieces of information may be presupposed yet not be available to speakers for conversational actions. Standard conceptions of the conversation’s common ground—the set of presuppositions—cannot account for such differences in availability. This chapter presents an account of the common ground that makes room for a notion of availability of presuppositions relative to a conversational task. The notion is implemented in a conception of a Fragmented Common Ground that draws on three independently motivated ideas: the notion of context as common ground, mental fragmentation, and questions as guiding and structuring discourse.
{"title":"On the Availability of Presuppositions in Conversation","authors":"D. Kindermann","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Presuppositions—information speakers mutually take for granted in conversation—play important explanatory roles in pragmatics and semantics. This chapter argues that not all presuppositions in a conversation are equally available, or accessible, to speakers at a given stage in a conversation. Contrary to common assumption, some pieces of information may be presupposed yet not be available to speakers for conversational actions. Standard conceptions of the conversation’s common ground—the set of presuppositions—cannot account for such differences in availability. This chapter presents an account of the common ground that makes room for a notion of availability of presuppositions relative to a conversational task. The notion is implemented in a conception of a Fragmented Common Ground that draws on three independently motivated ideas: the notion of context as common ground, mental fragmentation, and questions as guiding and structuring discourse.","PeriodicalId":149092,"journal":{"name":"The Fragmented Mind","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115411953","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 : 2021-07-29DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0013
J. Toribio
This chapter discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the belief fragmentation thesis vis-à-vis the attitudinal dissonance illustrated by implicit biases. It argues that, depending on the notion of belief at hand, the fragmentation strategy faces a dilemma: either it is a mere restatement of the phenomena it is intended to explain (when belief is understood in non-reductive, dispositional terms) or, when apparently successful, the explanatory grip on the dissonance comes from the notion of access, not fragmentation (when beliefs are understood as representations stored in the mind). More positively, it argues that a representational, contextualist, non-fragmentationalist, and affect-laden account of the dissonance between implicit and explicit biases provides a more plausible and parsimonious explanation of the target phenomenon than fragmentationalism.
{"title":"Implicit Bias and the Fragmented Mind","authors":"J. Toribio","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the belief fragmentation thesis vis-à-vis the attitudinal dissonance illustrated by implicit biases. It argues that, depending on the notion of belief at hand, the fragmentation strategy faces a dilemma: either it is a mere restatement of the phenomena it is intended to explain (when belief is understood in non-reductive, dispositional terms) or, when apparently successful, the explanatory grip on the dissonance comes from the notion of access, not fragmentation (when beliefs are understood as representations stored in the mind). More positively, it argues that a representational, contextualist, non-fragmentationalist, and affect-laden account of the dissonance between implicit and explicit biases provides a more plausible and parsimonious explanation of the target phenomenon than fragmentationalism.","PeriodicalId":149092,"journal":{"name":"The Fragmented Mind","volume":"259 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123362633","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 : 2021-07-29DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0012
J. Bendaña
Most psychologists and philosophers maintain that implicit attitudes are not beliefs. This chapter argues that they are by presenting a dilemma for criteria of belief that are supposed to distinguish implicit attitudes from beliefs. It then argues that if we adopt an independently motivated, fragmented model of the human mind, we can explain frequently cited and prima facie puzzling empirical data that can appear to distinguish implicit attitudes from beliefs. Finally, the chapter sketches some simple predictions that fall out of the combination of a fragmented model of the mind and the view that implicit attitudes are beliefs, hopefully opening the door for empirical investigations into novel strategies for altering implicit attitudes.
{"title":"Implicit Attitudes Are (Probably) Beliefs","authors":"J. Bendaña","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"Most psychologists and philosophers maintain that implicit attitudes are not beliefs. This chapter argues that they are by presenting a dilemma for criteria of belief that are supposed to distinguish implicit attitudes from beliefs. It then argues that if we adopt an independently motivated, fragmented model of the human mind, we can explain frequently cited and prima facie puzzling empirical data that can appear to distinguish implicit attitudes from beliefs. Finally, the chapter sketches some simple predictions that fall out of the combination of a fragmented model of the mind and the view that implicit attitudes are beliefs, hopefully opening the door for empirical investigations into novel strategies for altering implicit attitudes.","PeriodicalId":149092,"journal":{"name":"The Fragmented Mind","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134555063","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 : 2021-07-29DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0010
F. Récanati
This chapter argues that the mental file approach makes it possible to treat so-called Frege cases as an instance of fragmentation; that is, as cases in which conflicting pieces of information are stored in the subject’s mind but remain insulated from each other in such a way that the inconsistency cannot be detected. The argument rests on a constraint on files which derives from Strawson’s work, to the effect that two coreferential files should be merged. The linking model, widely accepted in the mental file literature as a substitute for Strawson’s merge model, is shown to rest on the mistaken construal of recognition as a state, where in fact it is a transition between states.
{"title":"Do Mental Files Obey Strawson’s Constraint?","authors":"F. Récanati","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter argues that the mental file approach makes it possible to treat so-called Frege cases as an instance of fragmentation; that is, as cases in which conflicting pieces of information are stored in the subject’s mind but remain insulated from each other in such a way that the inconsistency cannot be detected. The argument rests on a constraint on files which derives from Strawson’s work, to the effect that two coreferential files should be merged. The linking model, widely accepted in the mental file literature as a substitute for Strawson’s merge model, is shown to rest on the mistaken construal of recognition as a state, where in fact it is a transition between states.","PeriodicalId":149092,"journal":{"name":"The Fragmented Mind","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122462183","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 : 2021-07-29DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198850670.001.0001
D. Kindermann, A. Onofri
Mental fragmentation is the thesis that the mind is fragmented, or compartmentalized. Roughly, this means that an agent’s overall belief state is divided into several sub-states—fragments. These fragments need not make for a consistent and deductively closed belief system. The thesis of mental fragmentation became popular through the work of philosophers like Christopher Cherniak, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker in the 1980s. Recently, it has attracted great attention again. This volume is the first collection of essays devoted to the topic of mental fragmentation. It features important new contributions by leading experts in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Opening with an accessible Introduction providing a systematic overview of the current debate, the fourteen essays cover a wide range of issues: foundational issues and motivations for fragmentation, the rationality or irrationality of fragmentation, fragmentation’s role in language, the relationship between fragmentation and mental files, and the implications of fragmentation for the analysis of implicit attitudes.
{"title":"The Fragmented Mind","authors":"D. Kindermann, A. Onofri","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198850670.001.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198850670.001.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Mental fragmentation is the thesis that the mind is fragmented, or compartmentalized. Roughly, this means that an agent’s overall belief state is divided into several sub-states—fragments. These fragments need not make for a consistent and deductively closed belief system. The thesis of mental fragmentation became popular through the work of philosophers like Christopher Cherniak, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker in the 1980s. Recently, it has attracted great attention again. This volume is the first collection of essays devoted to the topic of mental fragmentation. It features important new contributions by leading experts in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Opening with an accessible Introduction providing a systematic overview of the current debate, the fourteen essays cover a wide range of issues: foundational issues and motivations for fragmentation, the rationality or irrationality of fragmentation, fragmentation’s role in language, the relationship between fragmentation and mental files, and the implications of fragmentation for the analysis of implicit attitudes.","PeriodicalId":149092,"journal":{"name":"The Fragmented Mind","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126013536","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 : 2021-07-29DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0003
Daniel Greco
This chapter defends the possible worlds framework for modeling the contents of belief. Both the threats against which the chapter defends it—the problems of coarse grain—and the ‘fragmentationist’ response it offers are familiar. At least as a sociological matter, the fragmentationist response has been unpersuasive, likely because it can look like an ad hoc patch—an unmotivated epicycle aimed at saving a flailing theory from decisive refutation. The chapter offers two responses to this charge. First, the problems of coarse grain aren’t unique to the possible worlds framework and indeed arise for anyone who accepts certain very attractive views about the relationship between beliefs, desires, and action. Second, the fragmentationist response to these problems is in fact a special case of an independently motivated, ‘modest’ approach to model-building in philosophy.
{"title":"Fragmentation and Coarse-Grained Content","authors":"Daniel Greco","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter defends the possible worlds framework for modeling the contents of belief. Both the threats against which the chapter defends it—the problems of coarse grain—and the ‘fragmentationist’ response it offers are familiar. At least as a sociological matter, the fragmentationist response has been unpersuasive, likely because it can look like an ad hoc patch—an unmotivated epicycle aimed at saving a flailing theory from decisive refutation. The chapter offers two responses to this charge. First, the problems of coarse grain aren’t unique to the possible worlds framework and indeed arise for anyone who accepts certain very attractive views about the relationship between beliefs, desires, and action. Second, the fragmentationist response to these problems is in fact a special case of an independently motivated, ‘modest’ approach to model-building in philosophy.","PeriodicalId":149092,"journal":{"name":"The Fragmented Mind","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127158401","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 : 2021-07-29DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0011
Michael Murez
Belief fragments and mental files are based on the same idea: that information in people’s minds is compartmentalized rather than lumped all together. Philosophers mostly use the two notions differently, though the exact relationship between fragments and files has yet to be examined in detail. This chapter has three main goals. The first is to argue that fragments and files, properly understood, play distinct yet complementary explanatory roles; the second is to defend a model of belief that includes them both; and the third is to raise and address a shared dilemma that confronts them: that they threaten to be either explanatorily lightweight or empirically refuted. This chapter contends that it is better to embrace the horn of this dilemma that opens up files and fragments to empirical refutation or confirmation, by adopting a psychofunctionalist approach.
{"title":"Belief Fragments and Mental Files","authors":"Michael Murez","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Belief fragments and mental files are based on the same idea: that information in people’s minds is compartmentalized rather than lumped all together. Philosophers mostly use the two notions differently, though the exact relationship between fragments and files has yet to be examined in detail. This chapter has three main goals. The first is to argue that fragments and files, properly understood, play distinct yet complementary explanatory roles; the second is to defend a model of belief that includes them both; and the third is to raise and address a shared dilemma that confronts them: that they threaten to be either explanatorily lightweight or empirically refuted. This chapter contends that it is better to embrace the horn of this dilemma that opens up files and fragments to empirical refutation or confirmation, by adopting a psychofunctionalist approach.","PeriodicalId":149092,"journal":{"name":"The Fragmented Mind","volume":"85 11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122666308","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 : 2021-07-29DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0014
Brie Gertler
According to an influential view known as agentialism, our capacity to believe and intend directly on the basis of reasons—our rational agency—has a normative significance that distinguishes it from other kinds of agency. Agentialists maintain that insofar as we exercise rational agency, we bear a special kind of responsibility for our beliefs and intentions, and those attitudes are truly our own. This chapter will challenge these agentialist claims. The argument centers on a case in which a thinker struggles to align her belief to her reasons and succeeds only by resorting to non-rational methods. The chapter argues that she is responsible for the attitude generated by this struggle, that this process expresses her capacities for rationality and agency, and that the belief she eventually arrives at is truly her own. So rational agency is not distinctive in the ways that agentialists contend.
{"title":"Rational Agency and the Struggle to Believe What Your Reasons Dictate","authors":"Brie Gertler","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0014","url":null,"abstract":"According to an influential view known as agentialism, our capacity to believe and intend directly on the basis of reasons—our rational agency—has a normative significance that distinguishes it from other kinds of agency. Agentialists maintain that insofar as we exercise rational agency, we bear a special kind of responsibility for our beliefs and intentions, and those attitudes are truly our own. This chapter will challenge these agentialist claims. The argument centers on a case in which a thinker struggles to align her belief to her reasons and succeeds only by resorting to non-rational methods. The chapter argues that she is responsible for the attitude generated by this struggle, that this process expresses her capacities for rationality and agency, and that the belief she eventually arrives at is truly her own. So rational agency is not distinctive in the ways that agentialists contend.","PeriodicalId":149092,"journal":{"name":"The Fragmented Mind","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121646026","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 : 2021-07-29DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0008
Robert Stalnaker
Two puzzles are described: a problem about necessary a posteriori truths and a problem about propositional attitudes with singular propositions as their contents. Two strategies for solving them are compared. The first is the diagonalization strategy, which distinguishes possible worlds that are compatible with what is actually expressed by a given sentential clause from possible worlds that are compatible with what would be expressed by the clause if that possible world were actual. The second strategy is the fragmentation strategy, which represents the intentional states described by sentential clauses as separate nonintegrated representational states. It is argued that these are complementary, not competing, strategies. Both play a role in the solutions to the problems. In conclusion, it is suggested that these strategies can also help to clarify a number of further problems—about self-locating attitudes, about the nature of computation, and about knowledge of phenomenal experience.
{"title":"Fragmentation and Singular Propositions","authors":"Robert Stalnaker","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198850670.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Two puzzles are described: a problem about necessary a posteriori truths and a problem about propositional attitudes with singular propositions as their contents. Two strategies for solving them are compared. The first is the diagonalization strategy, which distinguishes possible worlds that are compatible with what is actually expressed by a given sentential clause from possible worlds that are compatible with what would be expressed by the clause if that possible world were actual. The second strategy is the fragmentation strategy, which represents the intentional states described by sentential clauses as separate nonintegrated representational states. It is argued that these are complementary, not competing, strategies. Both play a role in the solutions to the problems. In conclusion, it is suggested that these strategies can also help to clarify a number of further problems—about self-locating attitudes, about the nature of computation, and about knowledge of phenomenal experience.","PeriodicalId":149092,"journal":{"name":"The Fragmented Mind","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116475858","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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