Mentalism (philosophy)
As mentalism (Engl. Mentalism ) are from the mid-20th century philosophical approaches in the philosophy of mind and the theory of meaning referred. In the philosophy of mind, but also in parts of Anglo-Saxon psychiatry and psychology , this refers to a basic position that assumes that the consciousness or mental processes are states of a person who take on causal roles and which are not played by other, materialistic roles in this role Properties (such as neurologically describable processes) can be replaced. By explaining behavior through externally inaccessible mental states, this direction is differentiated from behaviorism . In meaning theory, positions are used that choose representations as the meaning of linguistic expressions in the consciousness of the language user and not the named objects themselves. John Locke can be seen as the forerunner of this position.
Obsolete meaning
Henry Sidgwick used the term for his conception that all reality is spiritual and matter is a form of consciousness , such as thinking , wanting and feeling.
Development in linguistics
The term is clearly pronounced in modern linguistics . Leonard Bloomfield, for example, accused Herbert Paul Grice , whose interpretations of mental processes did not explain the language because his approach was scientifically inaccessible and could only be identified through introspection. In Grice's generally mentalistic and influential approach, both convention and code played a secondary role. The late Ludwig Wittgenstein had also opposed the view that the meaning of language could be determined through introspection.
For Noam Chomsky - if linguistics is to be a serious direction - a theory of language has to be mentalistic, since it is concerned with discovering the mental realities that underlie behavior.
Philosophy of mind
With problems of mentalism u. a. Donald Davidson and Jerry Fodor deals. Fodor has shown that mentalism is not tied to a substance dualism as a metaphysical basis, but is also compatible with a functionalism .
Individual evidence
- ^ Mentalism , in: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Vol. 5, pp. 1137–1138
- ^ Mentalism , in: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Vol. 5, p. 1138