Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T22:19:19.204Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Social Externalism and Conceptual Diversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2010

Extract

Social externalism is a thesis about the individuation-conditions of thoughts. Actually, the thesis applies only to a special category of ‘trained’ thoughts, thoughts which issue from trained thinking. It isn't that the thinker of such a thought has to have had special training about the subject-matter. It is rather that he or she needs to have acquired certain basic linguistic skills and values. For trained thoughts are thoughts whose contents are tailored to the demands of communication. Social externalism, as I understand it, says that people who are competent in a public language are equipped to have certain thoughts whose contents are fixed (in part) by the lexical semantic norms of their language.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Referances

Bach, K. 1987. Thought and Reference. Oxford: Clarendon PressGoogle Scholar
Bach, K. 1988. ‘Burge's New Thought Experiment: Back to the Drawing Room’, Journal of Philosophy 85, 8897CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, M. 1969. ‘Some Troubles with Whorfianism’, in Hook, S. (ed.), Language and Philosophy. New York University PressGoogle Scholar
Burge, T. 1979. ‘Individualism and the Mental’ in French, P., Uehling, T. and Wettstein, H. K. (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy Vol IV: Studies in Metaphysics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota PressGoogle Scholar
Burge, T 1982. ‘Two Thought Experiments Reviewed’, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 23, 284–93Google Scholar
Burge, T 1986. ‘Intellectual Norms and Foundations of Mind’, Journal of Philosophy 83, 697720Google Scholar
Crane, T. 1991. ‘All the Difference in the World’, The Philosophical Quarterly 41, 125CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, D. 1974. ‘On The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’, in Davidson (1984)Google Scholar
Davidson, D. 1984. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon PressGoogle Scholar
Evans, G. 1982. The Varieties of Reference. Oxford: Clarendon PressGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. 1982. ‘Cognitive Science and the Twin Earth Problem’, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 23, 98118CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Føllesdal, D. 1990. ‘Indeterminacy and Mental States’, in Barrett, R. B. and Gibson, R. F. (eds.), Perspectives on Quine. Oxford: BlackwellGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, J. 1954. ‘Concerning Inferences from Linguistic to Nonlinguistic Data’, in Hoijer, H. (ed.), Language in Culture. University of Chicago PressGoogle Scholar
Loar, B. 1988. ‘Social Content and Psychological Content’, in Merrill, D. D. and Grimm, R. H. (eds.), Contents of Thought. Tucson: University of Arizona PressGoogle Scholar
Patterson, S. 1990. ‘The Explanatory Role of Belief Ascriptions’, Philosophical Studies 59, 313–32Google Scholar
Pinker, S. 1994. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. London: PenguinCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. 1981. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. 1988. Representation and Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT PressGoogle Scholar
Ryle, G. 1979. On Thinking. Oxford: BlackwellGoogle Scholar
Sapir, E. 1921. Language. (Page-numbers from the 1970 British edition, London: Hart-Davis)Google Scholar
Sapir, E. 1957. Culture, Language and Personality. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California PressGoogle Scholar
Spelke, E. S. 1988. ‘The Origins of Physical Knowledge’, in Weiskrantz, L. (ed.) Thought Without Language. Oxford: Clarendon PressGoogle Scholar
Whorf, B. L. 1956. Language, Thought, and Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT PressGoogle Scholar
Woodfield, A. 1991. ‘Conceptions’, Mind 100, 547–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodfield, A. 1993. ‘Do Your Concepts Develop?’ in Hookway, C. and Peterson, D. (eds.), Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Woodfield, A. 1996. ‘Which Theoretical Concepts Do Children Use?Philosophical Papers 25, 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar