Works by Georges Rey
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- Concepts and stereotypes.Georges Rey -1983 -Cognition 15 (1-3):237-62.
- When Other Things Aren’t Equal: Saving Ceteris Paribus Laws from Vacuity.Paul Pietroski &Georges Rey -1995 -British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (1):81-110.A common view is that ceteris paribus clauses render lawlike statements vacuous, unless such clauses can be explicitly reformulated as antecedents of ?real? laws that face no counterinstances. But such reformulations are rare; and they are not, we argue, to be expected in general. So we defend an alternative sufficient condition for the non-vacuity of ceteris paribus laws: roughly, any counterinstance of the law must be independently explicable, in a sense we make explicit. Ceteris paribus laws will carry a plethora (...) of explanatory commitments; and claims that such commitments are satisfied will be as (dis) confirmable as other empirical claims. (shrink)
- Concepts and conceptions: A reply to Smith, Medin and Rips.Georges Rey -1985 -Cognition 19 (3):297-303.
- Contemporary Philosophy of Mind: A Contentiously Classical Approach.Georges Rey -1997 - Cambridge, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.This volume is an introduction to contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind. In particular, the author focuses on the controversial "eliminativist" and "instrumentalist" attacks - from philosophers such as of Quine, Dennett, and the Churchlands - on our ordinary concept of mind. In so doing, Rey offers an explication and defense of "mental realism", and shows how Fodor's representational theory of mind affords a compelling account of much of our ordinary mental talk of beliefs, hopes, and desires.
- Sensational sentences switched.Georges Rey -1992 -Philosophical Studies 68 (3):289 - 319.
- Representation of Language: Philosophical Issues in a Chomskyan Linguistics.Georges Rey -2020 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.Georges Rey presents a much-needed philosophical defense of Noam Chomsky's famous view of human language, as an internal, innate computational system. But he also offers a critical examination of problematic developments of this view, to do with innateness, ontology, intentionality, and other issues of interdisciplinary interest.No categories
- Contemporary Philosophy of Mind: A Contentiously Classical Approach.Georges Rey -1998 -Mind 107 (425):246-250.No categories
- What’s Really Going On in Searle’s “Chinese room‘.Georges Rey -1986 -Philosophical Studies 50 (September):169-85.
- A Naturalistic A Priori.Georges Rey -1998 -Philosophical Studies 92 (1/2):25 - 43.
- (1 other version)A narrow representationalist account of qualitative experience.Georges Rey -1998 -Philosophical Perspectives 12:435-58.
- The Problem of Consciousness: Essays Towards a Resolution.Georges Rey &Colin McGinn -1993 -Philosophical Review 102 (2):274.
- 12. Toward a Computational Account of Akrasia and Self-Deception.Georges Rey -1988 - In Amelie Oksenberg Rorty & Brian P. McLaughlin,Perspectives on Self-Deception. University of California Press. pp. 264-296.
- Toward a projectivist account of conscious experience.Georges Rey -1995 - In Thomas Metzinger,Conscious Experience. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh. pp. 123--42.
- A question about consciousness.Georges Rey -1987 - In Herbert R. Otto,Perspectives On Mind. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
- Innate a nd Learned: Carey, Mad Dog Nativism, and the Poverty of Stimuli and Analogies.Georges Rey -2014 -Mind and Language 29 (2):109-132.In her recent (2009) book, The Origins of Concepts, Susan Carey argues that what she calls ‘Quinean Bootstrapping’ and processes of analogy in children show that the expressive power of a mind can be increased in ways that refute Jerry Fodor's (1975, 2008) ‘Mad Dog’ view that all concepts are innate. I argue that it is doubtful any evidence about the manifestation of concepts in children will bear upon the logico-semantic issues of expressive power. Analogy and bootstrapping may be ways (...) to bring about the former, but only by presupposing the very expressive powers Carey is claiming they explain. Analogies must be understood, and bootstrapping involves confirmation of hypotheses already expressible; otherwise they can't select among an infinitude of hypotheses compatible with the finite data the child has encountered, a fact rendered vivid by Goodman's ‘grue’ paradox and Chomsky's poverty of stimulus argument. The problems have special application to minds, since there is no reason to expect a child's concepts to be ‘projectible’ or to correspond to mind-independent natural kinds. I conclude with an ecumenical view that concepts are reasonably regarded as both innate and often learned, and that what is learned can in fact increase what really concerns Carey, the functioning psychological expressive power of the child, even if it leaves untouched what concerns Fodor, the semantic expressive power. Less ecumenically: maybe Fodor (2008) miscast the debate, and the real issue that bothers people concerns not nativism, but an issue on which Carey and Fodor surprisingly agree, his conceptual Atomism, or the view that all mono-morphemic concepts are primitive and unanalyzable. The issue deserves further discussion independently of Mad-doggery. (shrink)
- The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction.Georges Rey -2012 - In Ed Zalta,Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Innateness.Steven Gross &Georges Rey -2012 - In Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels & Stephen P. Stich,The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science. Oxford University Press.A survey of innateness in cognitive science, focusing on (1) what innateness might be, and (2) whether concepts might be innate.
- Sensational sentences.Georges Rey -1993 - In Martin Davies & Glyn W. Humphreys,Consciousness: Philosophical and Psychological Essays. Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell.
- Functionalism and the Emotions Explaining Emotions.Georges Rey -1980 - In Amélie Rorty,Explaining Emotions. University of California Press.
- Chomsky, Intentionality, and a CRTT.Georges Rey -2003 - In Louise M. Antony & Norbert Hornstein,Chomsky and His Critics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 105–139.This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Chomsky's Commitment to CRTT Prospects and Problems of CRTT Technical Notions? Does Chomsky Need Intentionality? Chomsky's Dilemma.
- Conventions, Intuitions and Linguistic Inexistents: A Reply to Devitt.Georges Rey -2006 -Croatian Journal of Philosophy 6 (3):549-569.Elsewhere I have argued that standard theories of linguistic competence are committed to taking seriously talk of “representations of” standard linguistic entities (“SLEs”), such as NPs, VPs, morphemes, phonemes, syntactic and phonetic features. However, it is very doubtful there are tokens of these “things” in space and time. Moreover, even if were, their existence would be completely inessential to the needs of either communication or serious linguistic theory. Their existence is an illusion: an extremely stable perceptual state we regularly enter (...) as a result of being stimulated by the wave forms we regularly produce when we execute our intentions to utter such tokens (a view I call “Folieism”). In his Ignorance of Language, Michael Devitt objects to this view, arguing that, “On Rey’s view, communication seems to rest on miraculous guesses.” I argue here that my view is not prey to his objections, and actually affords a scientifically more plausible view than his “empiricist” alternative. Specifically, I reply to his objections that my view couldn’t explain the conventionality of language and success of communication (§2.1), that I am faced with intractable difficulties surrounding the identity of intentional inexistents (§2.2), and that, contrary to my view, SLEs can be relationally defined (§2.3). Not only can Folieism survive Devitt’s objections, but (§3) it also provides a more satisfactory account of the role of linguistic intuitions than the “empirical” account on which he insists. (shrink)
- Holism: A Consumer Update.Georges Rey (ed.) -1993 - Amsterdam: Rodopi.
- The intentional inexistence of language — but not cars.Georges Rey -2006 - In Robert Stainton,Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 237-55.
- Intentional content and a chomskian linguistics.Georges Rey -2003 - In Alex Barber,Epistemology of language. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 140--186.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Georges Rey -2003No categories
- Functionalism and the Emotions.Georges Rey -1980 - In Amélie Rorty,Explaining Emotions. University of California Press. pp. 21.
- (1 other version)The unavailability of what we mean: A reply to Quine, Fodor and Lepore.Georges Rey -1986 - In Abraham Zvie Bar-On,Grazer Philosophische Studien. Distributed in the U.S.A. By Humanities Press. pp. 61-101.Fodor and LePore's attack on conceptual role semantics relies on Quine's attack on the traditional analytic/synthetic and a priori/a posteriori distinctions, which in turn consists of four arguments: an attack on truth by convention; an appeal to revisability; a claim of confirmation holism; and a charge of explanatory vacuity. Once the different merits of these arguments are sorted out, their proper target can be seen to be not the Traditional Distinctions, but an implicit assumption about their superficial availability that we (...) have abundant reason to reject. Once we reject it, we can see how issues of the absorbtion of conventions, the revisability of belief, and confirmation holism are compatible with the Traditional Distinctions, and that Quine's discussion only serves to camouflage the question of whether some confirmation relations are constitutive of meaning and knowable a priori. (shrink)
- Resisting normativism in psychology.Georges Rey -2007 - In Brian P. McLaughlin & Jonathan Cohen,Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind. Wiley-Blackwell.“Intentional content,” as I understand it, is whatever serves as the object of “propositional” attitude verbs, such as “think,” “judge,” “represent,” “prefer” (whether or not these objects are “propositions”). These verbs are standardly used to pick out the intentional states invoked to explain the states and behavior of people and many animals. I shall take the “normativity of the intentional,” or “Normativism,” to be the claim that any adequate theory of intentional states involves considerations of value not essentially involved in (...) the natural sciences. Thus, according to Normativism, whether or not someone thinks that fish sleep, or even can represent fish at all, depends upon making a judgment about the person’s goodness or rationality, of a sort that would not be involved in merely determining whether or not fish in fact sleep. (shrink)
- In Defense of Folieism.Georges Rey -2008 -Croatian Journal of Philosophy 8 (2):177-202.According to the “Folieism” I have been recently defending, communication is a kind of folie à deux in which speakers and hearers enjoy a stable and innocuous illusion of producing and hearing standard linguistic entities (“SLE”s) that are seldom if ever actually produced. In the present paper, after summarizing the main points of the view, I defend it against efforts of Barber, Devitt and Miščević to rescue SLEs in terms of social, response-dependent proposals. I argue that their underlying error is (...) a failure to appreciate the important shift of the explanatory locus in modern linguistics, from external objects to internal conceptions. I go on to show how (i) pace Devitt, this shift is entirely compatible with there being conventional aspects to language, and also serves to distinguish the ease of natural language from the waggle dance of the bees; and (ii) pace Barber and Smith, it is compatible with an appearance / reality distinction, and with reliance on testimony in epistemology. I conclude with further arguments about why, pace Collins and Matthews, intentionality is a crucial feature of linguistic explanation, even if it is ultimately spelt out largely in terms of computational role. (shrink)
- Transcending transcendentalism.Michael Devitt &Georges Rey -1991 -Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 72 (June):87-100.
- The innocuousness of folieism and the need of intentionality where transduction fails: Replies to Adger and to Stainton & Viger.Georges Rey -2022 -Mind and Language 37 (2):274-282.I reply to Stainton and Viger by pointing out that my “folieist” claim—that standard linguistic entities (“SLEs”) such as words and phonemes are illusions—would not have the calamitous consequences for linguistics that they fear. Talk of “a language” need only be understood as talk of an I‐language precisely as Chomskyans have proposed; and I reply to Adger by pointing out that, since SLEs are not generally describable as real, local physical phenomena, perception of them cannot be explained as any sort (...) of “transduction.” An intentionalist understanding of “representation of” is needed where mere transduction fails. (shrink)No categories
- A not "merely empirical" argument for the language of thought.Georges Rey -1995 -Philosophical Perspectives 9:201-22.
- Survival.Georges Rey -1976 - In Amélie Rorty,The Identities of Persons. University of California Press.
- Physicalism and psychology: A plea for a substantive philosophy of mind.Georges Rey -2001 - In Carl Gillett & Barry Loewer,Physicalism and its Discontents. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Concepts versus conceptions (again).Georges Rey -2010 -Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3):221-222.Machery neglects the crucial role of concepts in psychological explanation, as well as the efforts of numerous of the last 40 years to provide an account of that role. He rightly calls attention to the wide variation in people's epistemic relations to concepts but fails to appreciate how externalist and kindred proposals offer the needed stability in concepts themselves that underlies that variation.
- Dennett’s Unrealistic Psychology.Georges Rey -1994 -Philosophical Topics 22 (1/2):259-89.
- Files and Singular Thoughts Without Objects or Acquaintance: The Prospects of Recanati’s “Actualism”.Carsten Hansen &Georges Rey -2016 -Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (2):421-436.We argue that Recanati burdens his otherwise salutary “Mental File” account of singular thought with an “Actualist” assumption that he has inherited from the discussion of singular thought since at least Evans, according to which singular thoughts can only be about actual objects: apparent singular thoughts involving “empty” terms lack truth-valuable content. This assumption flies in the face of manifestly singular thoughts involving not only fictional and mistakenly postulated entities, such as Zeus and the planet Vulcan, but also “perceptual inexistents,” (...) e.g., Kanizsa figures, rainbows, words and phonemes, as well as hosts of at best metaphysically problematic “objects,” such as properties, numbers, ceremonies, contracts, symphonies, “the sky,” “the rain.” Indeed, reflection on what seems to be the boundless diversity of “things” about which we seem to be able to have singular thoughts strongly suggests that there may be no general metaphysics of objects, much less “acquaintance” and “epistemically rewarding” relations that would distinguish singular from non-singular thought. We recommend that Recanati and other mental file theorists confine the theory to a metaphysically neutral account of singular thought as specific kind of internally “focused” computational state, and not seek any general account of the relation of thought to reality. (shrink)
- (Even Higher-Order) Intentionality Without Consciousness.Georges Rey -2008 -Revue Internationale de Philosophie 1 (1):51-78.
- l4 The possibility of a naturalistic Cartesianism regarding intuitions and introspection.Georges Rey -2013 - In Matthew C. Haug,Philosophical Methodology: The Armchair or the Laboratory? New York: Routledge. pp. 243.
- XV*—Semantic Externalism and Conceptual Competence.Georges Rey -1992 -Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 92 (1):315-334.Georges Rey; XV*—Semantic Externalism and Conceptual Competence, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 92, Issue 1, 1 June 1992, Pages 315–334, https.
- Externalism and inexistence in early content.Georges Rey -2012 - In Richard Schantz,Prospects for Meaning. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 503-530.
- Searle's misunderstandings of functionalism and strong AI.Georges Rey -2002 - In John Mark Bishop & John Preston,Views Into the Chinese Room: New Essays on Searle and Artificial Intelligence. London: Oxford University Press. pp. 201--225.
- What implicit conceptions are unlikely to do.Georges Rey -1998 -Philosophical Issues 9:93-104.
- An explanatory budget for connectionism and eliminativism.Georges Rey -1991 - In Terence E. Horgan & John L. Tienson,Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind. Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 219--240.
- Constituent causation and the reality of mind.Georges Rey -1990 -Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):620-621.
- Sensations in a language of thought.Georges Rey -1991 -Philosophical Issues 1:73-112.
- What are mental images?Georges Rey -1981 - In Ned Block,Readings In Philosophy Of Psychology, V. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- Philosophy of Linguistics.Georges Rey,Alex Barber,John Collins,Michael Devitt &Dunja Jutronic -2008 -Croatian Journal of Philosophy 8 (23).
- Remembering Jerry Fodor and his work.Georges Rey -2018 -Mind and Language 33 (4):321-341.This is a reminiscence and short biographical sketch of the late philosopher and cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor. It includes a summary of his main proposals about the mind: his “Language of Thought” hypothesis; his rejection of analyticity and conceptual role semantics; his “mad dog nativism”; his proposal of mental modules and—by contrast—his skepticism about a computational theory of central cognition; his anti‐reductionist, but still physicalist, views about psychology; and, lastly, his attacks on selectionism. I conclude with some discussion of his (...) idiosyncratic style and of his aesthetic and other interests. An appendix provides some memorable quotes. (shrink)No categories
- We Are Not All ‘Self‐Blind’: A Defense of a Modest Introspectionism.Georges Rey -2013 -Mind and Language 28 (3):259-285.Shoemaker (1996) presenteda prioriarguments against the possibility of ‘self‐blindness’, or the inability of someone, otherwise intelligent and possessed of mental concepts, to introspect any of her concurrent attitude states. Ironically enough, this seems to be a position that Gopnik (1993) and Carruthers (2006, 2008, 2009a,b) have proposed as not only possible, but as the actual human condition generally! According to this ‘Objectivist’ view, supposed introspection of one's attitudes is not ‘direct’, but an ‘inference’ of precisely the sort we make about (...) the attitudes of others, an inference that has the advantage in our own case ofonlyour own sensory data and memories, our behavior, and of the context we are in; i.e. we are all substantially self‐ blind. After sorting out a number of methodological and verbal issues, I argue, first, that thea prioriarguments against Objectivism don't succeed, and that Gopnik and Carruthers are right to regard the issue as an empirical one. On the other hand, I think they seriously underestimate the difficulty of establishing Objectivism. It is unlikely there is an inferential procedure from the data of pure sensation, behavior and context to the relevant self‐attributions that would be as spectacularly reliable as people manifestly seem to be. Moreover, there is a simpler model: the mind very likely consists of a panoply of sub‐routines some of whose outputs are ‘tagged’ for their having been so processed, rather in the way that software ‘documents’ are on standard computers. Introspection plausibly consists in a person's simply attending to distinctive constellations of these tags, even though they may lack phenomenal feels. This draws attention to an important independent fact: that much of phenomenology (or ‘what it's like’ to be in a certain state) may be constituted by facts that are not phenomenal. (shrink)
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David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Area Editors:
David Bourget
Gwen Bradford
Berit Brogaard
Margaret Cameron
David Chalmers
James Chase
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Esa Diaz-Leon
Barry Hallen
Hans Halvorson
Jonathan Ichikawa
Monte Johnson
Michelle Kosch
Øystein Linnebo
Paul Livingston
Brandon Look
Manolo Martínez
Matthew McGrath
Michiru Nagatsu
Susana Nuccetelli
Giuseppe Primiero
Jack Alan Reynolds
Darrell P. Rowbottom
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