Olivia Sultanescu | The Social Character of the Mind | Philosophy Speaker Series

Abstract: It is often thought that an account of the facts in virtue of which thoughts and linguistic expressions have the contents they do can be provided by drawing exclusively on features of the individual, such as her conscious experiences, the dispositions or capacities inherent in her, or the causal influence she receives from her environment. In this talk, I sketch and defend a view of the determination of content that brings to the fore the social character of both language and thought, without sacrificing either their normativity or their objectivity. What is jeopardized, however, is the ambition to give explanations of language and thought in terms that do not presuppose the notion of contentfulness. The view is inspired by the later writings of Donald Davidson, which revolve around his triangulation argument.