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0-1976) and Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)) maintain that statements about the mental (including sense data) are reducible to statements about actual and potential behaviour. There is thus no gap to bridge. The reductionist methodology is identical in Behaviourism and that employed to justify Phenomenalism. The problem is, they can’t both be right. Phenomenalism reduces the material or physical to the mental, and Behaviourism reduces the mental to the physical. They are mutually incompatible forms of monism. Yet the route to both is methodologically identical. So, it would appear there must be something wrong with the methodology. That error is commonly located in the verification principle itself. Moreover both seem to lead to sceptical problems of their own. Phenomenalism is argued to lead to solipsism, the view that all that exists in the universe is my mind and its mental states. Behaviourism is argued to lead to denial of the existence of my own mind and its mental states. If these objections are sound then, if Phenomenalism is true all that exists is my mind, while if Behaviourism is true, the one thing that certainly does not exist is my mind!

• Linguistic Meaning and Interpretation. Consider an anthropologist learning (so as to develop a translation manual) a totally alien language (one with no linguistic connections to any other known language). A rabbit scurries by. The native points and says ‘Gavagai’. Following this and a few other examples the anthropologist hypothesises that ‘gavagai’ means ‘rabbit’. But has the anthropologist gone beyond the evidence. A rival anthropologist translates ‘gavagai as ‘complete set of undetatched rabbit parts’. All evidence seeming to confirm one translation will confirm the other. The anthropologists differ in the metaphysic (general theory of the structure of reality) they attribute to the natives. Harvard philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine (born June 25 (anti-Christmas) 1908 - died December 25 (Christmas) 2000 developed this argument. Quine’s general point is that linguistic meaning is under-determined by data, and that this applies to common speakers within a linguistic community (you and me) as much as to us and aliens.

The common moral of all these tales: All theory is under-determined by the totality of available evidence that might be proffered in its support. This is the source of the gaps. (For our purposes any entity or property of an entity that is evidenced by data that cannot add up to a direct confirmation of its existence is a theoretical entity or property.) One possible moral, in the -spirit of logical positivism: all these theoretical entities (minds, physical bodies, determinate meanings) are nonsensical suppositions that ought to be banished from any proper scientific understanding of the world. Philosophical epistemology should be scrapped in favour of cognitive psychology, making an empirical study of the causal relationships between sensory inputs, tentative belief formation, neural processes to make adjustment of that belief in accordance with the totality of beliefs in the neural network, and the consequent incorporation (or rejection) of that belief. What do you think?

4. Back to Theories – the Accidental (or is it?) Confluence of Postmodernism with the Epistemological Doctrine of Theory of Theories.

Your view about what any given English word means is, in W.V. Quine’s sense, just another example of a theory本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。