Non-Cognitivism and Rule-Following

McDowell, John

doi:10.4324/9780203449400_chapter_2

Cited by 61 publications

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“…Although Smith's response here strikes us as odd, his response is still compatible with the examples from which he learned to solve problems, which all involved numbers < 57. Again, this suggests "that his behavior hitherto was not guided by the psychological conformation we were picturing as guiding it" and that "the pictured [END PAGE 103] state, then, always transcends any grounds there may be for postulating it" (McDowell, 1981;pp. 147).…”

Section: Rule Following and Psychologically Grasping Independently Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such abstract rules are typically conceived as being fixed "objectively" in accord with the absolute conception, that is, "independently of the responses and reactions a propensity to which one acquires when one learns the practice [involving the rule] itself" (McDowell, 1981;pp. 146).…”

Section: Rule Following and Psychologically Grasping Independently Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…the same types of things, one must use the concept in accord with the rule for its application. Or as it is sometimes put, in order for "judgments or utterances to be intelligible as applications of a single concept to different objects, [they] must belong to a practice of going on doing the same thing" (McDowell, 1981;pp. 145).…”

Section: Rule Following and Psychologically Grasping Independently Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So on this view, one does not have genuinely aesthetic cognitions, but rather only genuinely descriptive cognitions with so-called aesthetic or affective responses. Aesthetic non-cognitivists deny that evaluation is itself "in some way percipient" or capable of "expanding our sensitivity to how things are" (McDowell, 1981;pp. 143).…”

Section: Concepts" Occur [End Page 93]mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This conception assumes that affective or evaluative states are non-cognitive and so are thereby devoid of a propositional content that could be implemented as the mental content of different cognizers; non-cognitive states such as desire are assumed to merely present "the world as it seems to us" and in some sense only accompany genuinely cognitive operations. Thus, this bifurcated conception of mind rules out the possibility that our sentimental nature can itself "in some way [be] percipient, or at least as [being capable of] expanding our sensitivity to how things [genuinely] are" (McDowell, 1981;p. 143).…”

Section: [End Page 92]mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Aesthetic Concepts, Perceptual Learning, and Linguistic Enculturation: Considerations from Wittgenstein, Language, and Music

Croom

2011

Integr. psych. behav.

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Aesthetic non-cognitivists deny that aesthetic statements express genuinely aesthetic beliefs and instead hold that they work primarily to express something noncognitive, such as attitudes of approval or disapproval, or desire. Non-cognitivists deny that aesthetic statements express aesthetic beliefs because they deny that there are aesthetic features in the world for aesthetic beliefs to represent. Their assumption, shared by scientists and theorists of mind alike, was that languageusers possess cognitive mechanisms with which to objectively grasp abstract rules fixed independently of human responses, and that cognizers are thereby capable of grasping rules for the correct application of aesthetic concepts without relying on evaluation or enculturation. However, in this article I use Wittgenstein's rulefollowing considerations to argue that psychological theories grounded upon this so-called objective model of rule-following fail to adequately account for concept acquisition and mastery. I argue that this is because linguistic enculturation, and the perceptual learning that's often involved, influences and enables the mastery of aesthetic concepts. I argue that part of what's involved in speaking aesthetically is to belong to a cultural practice of making sense of things aesthetically, and that it's within a socio-linguistic community, and that community's practices, that such aesthetic sense can be made intelligible. […] They do not have cognitive content, but they are responsible for a lot of cognitions" (pp. 290).Aesthetic non-cognitivists typically assume that there can be no genuinely aesthetic beliefs because they assume that there are no aesthetic features that genuinely obtain in the world for such beliefs to truth-aptly track. Accordingly, the non-cognitivist thinks that we should forego talk of aesthetic statements expressing beliefs with aesthetic content and more accurately speak of the feelings and cognitions that aesthetic statements are capable of causing. Aesthetic concepts, and metaphysical conceptions of mind and worldEmotivism is an early non-cognitivist position that Ayer (1952) proposed in Language, Truth, and Logic.

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Section: Rule Following and Psychologically Grasping Independently Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Rule Following and Psychologically Grasping Independently Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Rule Following and Psychologically Grasping Independently Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Concepts" Occur [End Page 93]mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: [End Page 92]mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Aesthetic Concepts, Perceptual Learning, and Linguistic Enculturation: Considerations from Wittgenstein, Language, and Music

Croom

2011

Integr. psych. behav.

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The Practical Turn

Stern¹

2003

The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences

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What is "practice theory"? The best short answer is that it is any theory that treats practice as a fundamental category, or takes practices as its point of departure .Naturally, this answer leads to further questions . What is meant by "practices" here? What is involved in taking practices as a point of departure or a fundamental category, and what does that commitment amount to? And what is the point of the contrast between a practice-based theory and one that starts elsewhere?Perhaps the most significant point of agreement among those who have taken the practical turn is that it offers a way out of Procustean yet seemingly inescapable categories, such as subject and object, representation and represented, conceptual scheme and content, belief and desire, structure and action, rules and their application, micro and macro, individual and totality . Instead, practice theorists propose that we start with practices and rethink our theories from the ground up. Bourdieu, for instance, insists that only a theory of practice can open up a way forward :

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Particularism

McNaughton¹,

Rawling²

2013

The International Encyclopedia of Ethics

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The term “particularist” was coined by Hare (1963: 18), and particularism arose, in part, as a response to his views ( see Hare, R. M.). As he defined it, moral particularism is, at least in its “extremest” form, the rejection of the supervenience of the moral upon the nonmoral – that is, the rejection of the notion that if two circumstances are alike in all nonmoral respects, then they must be alike in all moral respects. As contemporary exponents of the position use the term, however, it does not refer to a denial of supervenience. On one broad usage (e.g., Blum 1994), the particularist is someone who expresses hostility to the view that a decision about what we ought to do in some particular case can be mechanically ‘read off' from a general moral principle or principles. Rather, it is urged, a correct moral verdict can only be reached by paying close attention to the individual case – to what differentiates it from other cases as much as what it has in common with them. As well as an understanding of the correct moral principles, we need fine judgment, sensitivity, and even something approaching a perceptual capacity ( see Perception, Moral) to appreciate the saliences of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Particularism in this broad sense, which claims that a grasp of moral principles is insufficient for the correct moral appreciation of the particular case, has won many adherents in recent years. It is a position explicitly held, for example, by those known by some as intuitionists (Urmson 1975), as can be seen from Rawls' definition, which we shall adopt:

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Non-Cognitivism and Rule-Following

Cited by 61 publications

References 0 publications

Aesthetic Concepts, Perceptual Learning, and Linguistic Enculturation: Considerations from Wittgenstein, Language, and Music

Aesthetic Concepts, Perceptual Learning, and Linguistic Enculturation: Considerations from Wittgenstein, Language, and Music

The Practical Turn

Particularism

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