Publications
Thinking
about the World:
An Essay in De Re Thoughts and the Externalist-Internalist
Debate
By Manidipa Sen
This
monograph explores the nature of De Re Thoughts, and its impact
on the debates centering on the externalist versus internalist
accounts of the mind as discussed in analytic philosophy.
Taking into account the fact that questions of language and
questions of mind are intrinsically related to one another,
the monograph, in the first place, tries to develop a notion
of de re thoughts from the different accounts of reference.
Through a close study of the writings of Russell, Frege, Evans,
Burge, Putnam, McDowell, Recanati etc. on the notion of singular
reference, a case is made for accepting de re thoughts as
thoughts tied constitutively with their objects and as essentially
individuated in terms of their objects. The picture of mind
that evolves in and through this study of de re thoughts is
that the mind is essentially intentional, embodied, interactive,
and world-involving. So, an attempt is made to displace the
internalist understanding of the mind in favour of an externalist
notion of it - where the mind can be seen in continuation
with the world and as having no context-free essence.
2008, 108 pp.,
Rs.140,
ISBN: 81-7986-070-1
