Reconceiving Experience: A Solution to a Problem Inherited from Descartes

Kearns, John T.

ISBN 10: 0791430723 / ISBN 13: 9780791430729

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, 1996

About this Item

474 pp. Tightly bound. Spine not compromised. Text is free of markings.

Seller Inventory # 018030

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Reconceiving Experience: A Solution to a Problem Inherited from Descartes
• Publisher: State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0791430723
• ISBN 13: 9780791430729
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good to Near Fine

About this title

Synopsis

Presents a new framework for understanding language, thought, and experience, and for carrying out research.

Kearns investigates representation and intentional activity to determine how experience contributes to propositional thought and belief, and how experience is based on neural states and events. This speech-act theory shows using language to be intentional (purposive) activity which cannot be explained computationally or causally. Learning language makes propositional thinking possible and provides conceptual structure to experience.

The account of language and its acquisition sheds light on further issues such as reference and proper names, the difference between syllogistic and modern logic, and the paradoxes of self-reference. As for experience, the nonrelational analysis of representing explains our awareness of the world, which doesn't give us access to the world, and our access, which isn't provided by awareness. Reconceiving Experience presents a new framework for understanding language, thought, and experience, and for carrying out research.

About the Author

John T. Kearns is Professor of Philosophy at State University of New York at Buffalo. He has also written The Principles of Deductive Logic and Using Language: The Structures of Speech Acts, both published by SUNY Press; and Deductive Logic, A Programed Introduction. He is also editor of the SUNY Press publication series in Logic and Language.