The Intellectual Powers A Study of Human Nature

by Hacker, P. M. S.

• ISBN13: 9781118651216
• ISBN10: 1118651219
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2013-09-10
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

The Intellectual Powers is a philosophical investigation into the cognitive and cogitative powers of mankind. It develops a connective analysis of our powers of consciousness, intentionality, mastery of language, knowledge, belief, certainty, sensation, perception, memory, thought, and imagination, by one of Britain’s leading philosophers. It is an essential guide and handbook for philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists.

• The culmination of 45 years of reflection on the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the nature of the human person
• No other book in epistemology or philosophy of psychology provides such extensive overviews of consciousness, self-consciousness, intentionality, mastery of a language, knowledge, belief, memory, sensation and perception, thought and imagination
• Illustrated with tables, tree-diagrams, and charts to provide overviews of the conceptual relationships disclosed by analysis
• Written by one of Britain’s best philosophical minds
• A sequel to Hacker’s Human Nature: The Categorial Framework
• An essential guide and handbook for all who are working in philosophy of mind, epistemology, psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience

Author Biography

P. M. S. Hacker is a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He is the author of numerous books and articles on philosophy of mind and philosophy of language as well as philosophical foundations of cognitive neuroscience, and is the leading authority on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. Among his many publications is the monumental four-volume Analytical Commentary on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (Wiley-Blackwell, 1991, first two volumes co-authored with G. P. Baker), and its epilogue Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 1996). His work (with Maxwell Bennett) on cognitive neuroscience, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (2003) and History of Cognitive Neuroscience (2008), is renowned. The first volume of his trilogy on human nature, Human Nature: the Categorial Framework, was published in 2007.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Project

Prolegomena

Chapter 1    Consciousness as the Mark of the Mental

            1. Consciousness as a mark of modernity

            2. The genealogy of the concept of consciousness

            3. The analytic of consciousness

            4. The early modern philosophical conception of consciousness

            5. The dialectic of consciousness I

            6. The contemporary philosophical conception of consciousness

            7. The dialectic of consciousness II

            8. The illusions of self-consciousness

 

Chapter 2   Intentionality as the Mark of the Mental

            1. Intentionality

            2. Intentional ‘objects’

            3. The central sun: the relation of thought to reality

            4. The first circle: what do we believe (hope, suspect, etc.)?

            5. The second circle: the relation of language to reality

            6. The third circle: the relation of thought to language

            7. The fourth circle: the epistemology of intentionality

            8. The fifth circle: meaning and understanding

 

Chapter 3   Mastery of a Language as the Mark of a Mind

            1. A language-using animal

            2. Linguistic communication

            3. Knowing a language

            4. Meaning something

            5. Understanding and interpreting

            6. Meaning and use

            7. The dialectic of understanding: the ‘mystery’ of understanding new sentences

 

Part I  The Cognitive and Doxastic Powers

 

Chapter 4   Knowledge

            1. The value of knowledge

            2. The grammatical groundwork

            3. The semantic field

            4. What knowledge is not

            5. Certainty

            6. Analyses of knowledge

            7. Knowledge and ability

            8. Knowing how

            9. What is knowledge? The role of ‘know’ in human discourse

 

Chapter 5   Belief

            1. The web of belief

            2. The grammatical groundwork

            3. The surrounding landscape

            4. Voluntariness and responsibility for belief

            5. Belief and feelings

            6. Belief and dispositions

            7. Belief and mental states

            8. Why believing something cannot be a brain state

            9. What is belief? The role of ‘believe’ in human discourse

 

Chapter 6   Knowledge, Belief and the Epistemology of Belief

            1. Knowledge and belief

            2. The epistemology of belief

            3. Non-standard cases: self-deception and unconscious beliefs

 

Chapter 7  Sensation and Perception

            1. The cognitive powers of the senses

            2. Sensation

            3. Perception and sensation

            4. Sensation, feeling and tactile perception

 

Chapter 8   Perception

            1. Perceptual organs, the senses and proper sensibles

            2. Perceptual powers: cognition and volition

            3. The classical causal theory of perception

            4. The modern causal theory of perception

 

Chapter 9   Memory

            1. Memory as a form of knowledge

            2. The objects of memory

            3. The faculty and its actualities

            4. Forms of memory

            5. Further conceptual links and contrasts

            6. The dialectic of memory I: the Aristotelian legacy

            7. The dialectic of memory II: trace theory

 

Part II The Cogitative Powers

 

Chapter 10   Thought and Thinking

            1. Floundering without an overview

            2. The varieties of thinking

            3. Is thinking an activity?

            4. What do we think in?

            5. Thought, language and the language of thought

            6. Can animals think?

            7. The agent, organ and location of thinking

            8. Thinking and the ‘inner life’

 

Chapter 11   Imagination

            1. A cogitative faculty

            2. The conceptual network of the imagination

            3. Perceiving and imagining

            4. Perceptions and ‘imaginations’: clarity and vivacity of mental imagery

            5. Mental images and imagining

            6. Imagination and the will

            7. The imaginable, the conceivable and the possible

 

Appendix: Philosophical Analysis and the Way of Words

            1. On method

            2. Methodological objections and misunderstandings

Index