Dispositionalism is a good starting point but doesn't inform us about the underlying principles/mechanisms in the brain that produce the patterns that we recognize as various kinds of attitudes (and more broadly, what are some principles of connection between the states of the mental substrate and attitude-like-behavior-patterns that extend beyond human/biological minds).
Wow! This article is pretty intellectually invigorating. My brain is exploding with questions, though. How consistent should the pattern be behaviorally, phenomenally, and cognitively to count as a genuine desire? Is there a tipping point somewhere on the spectrum? Does the conscious awareness of a desire still matter? If yes, would this framework benefit if you also integrate elements of internal awareness?
The disposition account has long struck me as right, but in a sense where it's the low level description while others, like the ones involving representations, are the higher level ones. To your final point, that means we can't talk about those higher level things as discrete phenomena, but as overlapping entities. Since these are likely distributed firing patterns of neural coalitions, that makes sense to me.
This reminds me of a distinction Antonio Damasio makes in one of his books, between neural images and dispositions. To me, what he called "images" were a composite entities of a vast galaxy of dispositions. So in my mind, even perceptions are dispositions, just earlier in the causal chain than the planning or motor ones.
But I have a tendency to be a pluralist, and may be missing incompatible theoretical details.
That approach is compatible with mine. But it's worth noting that it reverses the order of explanation of standard representational realism. The high level "representations" are explained/constituted by dispositional patterns, rather than vice versa.
It seems like representations have to be reducible to something else. I could see the stance that they cause dispositions, but it seems like dispositions can cause dispositions, so saying a representation causes a disposition would be like saying traffic caused me to be late, rather than describing every car I was stuck behind during the journey.
But I probably need to read more about what representational realism involves.
It's a super tricky issue! Fortunately, as a dispositionalist I can express neutrality about the ontological nature of representations in a way that representational realists cannot, or at least should not.
Dispositionalism is a good starting point but doesn't inform us about the underlying principles/mechanisms in the brain that produce the patterns that we recognize as various kinds of attitudes (and more broadly, what are some principles of connection between the states of the mental substrate and attitude-like-behavior-patterns that extend beyond human/biological minds).
Yes, I agree. However, I think standard philosophical representationalism about belief and desire overpromises, which is a worse shortcoming.
Wow! This article is pretty intellectually invigorating. My brain is exploding with questions, though. How consistent should the pattern be behaviorally, phenomenally, and cognitively to count as a genuine desire? Is there a tipping point somewhere on the spectrum? Does the conscious awareness of a desire still matter? If yes, would this framework benefit if you also integrate elements of internal awareness?
Yes, yes, and yes -- but no bright line, I suspect. Thanks for the kind words.
Interesting discussion Eric.
The disposition account has long struck me as right, but in a sense where it's the low level description while others, like the ones involving representations, are the higher level ones. To your final point, that means we can't talk about those higher level things as discrete phenomena, but as overlapping entities. Since these are likely distributed firing patterns of neural coalitions, that makes sense to me.
This reminds me of a distinction Antonio Damasio makes in one of his books, between neural images and dispositions. To me, what he called "images" were a composite entities of a vast galaxy of dispositions. So in my mind, even perceptions are dispositions, just earlier in the causal chain than the planning or motor ones.
But I have a tendency to be a pluralist, and may be missing incompatible theoretical details.
That approach is compatible with mine. But it's worth noting that it reverses the order of explanation of standard representational realism. The high level "representations" are explained/constituted by dispositional patterns, rather than vice versa.
It seems like representations have to be reducible to something else. I could see the stance that they cause dispositions, but it seems like dispositions can cause dispositions, so saying a representation causes a disposition would be like saying traffic caused me to be late, rather than describing every car I was stuck behind during the journey.
But I probably need to read more about what representational realism involves.
It's a super tricky issue! Fortunately, as a dispositionalist I can express neutrality about the ontological nature of representations in a way that representational realists cannot, or at least should not.