Abstract
In this chapter I introduce and defend verbialism, a metaphysical framework appropriate for accommodating the mind within the natural sciences and the mechanistic model of explanation that ties the natural sciences together. In a mechanistic explanation, the behaviour and features of a whole are explained in terms of their organized parts and the organized activities they engage in, and explaining the mind is explaining how it is composed out of brain parts and their activities (Bechtel 2005, 2008). Verbialism is the view that mental phenomena belong in the basic ontological category of activities (a term I use to refer to any type of occurrent).1 The name verbialism derives from the fact that activities are the referents of verbs and their linguistic forms or relatives (e.g., gerunds, nominals, and verbed nouns, such as to google or to hood). By intention it also brings to mind adverbialism, a theory of perceptual content that originally aimed to explain illusory perception. But verbialism is not a theory of perceptual content; it is not a theory of content at all. It is a metaphysics that prescribes that our theories of perceptual and cognitive content alike be consistent with the fact that mental phenomena are activities.2 If minds are what brains do, explaining the mind is explaining how it occurs (Anderson 2007), and the ontology of mind is verbialist.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, J. R. (2007) How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical Universe? Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bechtel, W. (2005) ‘The Challenge of Characterizing Operations in the Mechanisms Underlying Behavior’. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 84, 313–325.
Bechtel, W. (2008) Mental Mechanisms. New York: Erlbaum.
Campbell, J. (2002) Reference and Consciousness. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Crane, T. (2011) ‘The Problem of Perception’. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/perception-problem/.
Davidson, D. (1967) ‘The Logical Form of Action Sentences’. In The Logic of Decision and Action, N. Rescher (ed.), Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Davidson, D. (1970) ‘Events as Particulars’. Nous, 4(1), 25–32.
Dretske, F. (1988) Explaining Behavior. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Dretske, F. (1995) Naturalizing the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Figdor, C. (n.d.) Making Physicalism Matter. Manuscript.
Field, H. (1978) ‘Mental Representation’. Erkenntnis, 13(1), 9–61. Reprinted in vol. 1 of Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology, N. Block (ed.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.
Jackson, F. (1977) Perception: A Representative Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kriegel, U. (2007) ‘The Dispensability of (Merely) Intentional Objects’. Philosophical Studies, 141, 79–95.
Kriegel, U. (2012) The Sources of Intentionality New York: Oxford University Press.
Lakoff, G., and M. Johnson. (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Levin, B. (1993) English Verb Classes and Alternations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Machamer, P. (2004) ‘Activities and Causation: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Mechanisms’. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 18(1), 27–39.
Machamer, P., L. Darden and C. F. Craver. (2000) ‘Thinking about Mechanisms.’ Philosophy of Science, 67(1), 1–25.
Marcus, E. (2006) ‘Events, Sortais and the Mind-Body Problem’. Synthese, 150, 99–129.
Marcus, E. (2009) ‘Why There Are No Token States’. Journal of Philosophical Research, 34, 215–241.
Ryle, G. (1949) The Concept of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Schiffer, S. (1981) ‘Truth and the Theory of Content’. In Meaning and Understanding, H. Parret and J. Bouveresse (eds), Berlin: de Gruyter, 204–222.
Siegel, S. (2013) ‘The Contents of Perception’. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/perception-contents/.
Simons, P. J. (1987) Parts: A Study in Ontology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Simons, P. J. (2000) ‘Continuants and Occurrents: I’. Aristotelian Society Suppl., 74(1), 59–75.
Smart, J. C. C. (1959) ‘Sensations and Brain Processes’. Philosophical Review, 68, 141–156.
Steward, H. (1997) The Ontology of Mind: Events, Processes and States. Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Carrie Figdor
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Figdor, C. (2014). Verbs and Minds. In: Sprevak, M., Kallestrup, J. (eds) New Waves in Philosophy of Mind. New Waves in Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137286734_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137286734_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-28672-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-28673-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)