| Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind Contributor(s): Baker, Lynne Rudder (Author) |
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ISBN: 0521420539 ISBN-13: 9780521420532 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $80.75 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: January 1995 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Philosophy | Movements - Humanism - Philosophy | Logic |
| Dewey: 128.2 |
| LCCN: 94016693 |
| Series: Developmental and Cell Biology |
| Physical Information: 0.9" H x 5.5" W x 8.6" (0.9 lbs) 262 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Explaining Attitudes offers a timely and important challenge to the dominant conception of belief found in the work of such philosophers as Dretske and Fodor. According to this dominant view, beliefs, if they exist at all, are constituted by states of the brain. Rudder Baker rejects this view and replaces it with a quite different approach: practical realism. Seen from the perspective of practical realism, any argument that tries to interpret beliefs as either brain states or immaterial souls is a false dichotomy. Practical realism takes beliefs to be states of whole persons, rather like states of health. What a person believes is determined by what a person would do, say, and think in various circumstances. Thus beliefs and other attitudes are interwoven into an integrated, commonsensical conception of reality. |
Contributor Bio(s): Baker, Lynne Rudder: - Lynne Rudder Baker is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of Explaining Attitudes (Cambridge University Press, 1995), Persons and Bodies (Cambridge University Press, 2000), The Metaphysics of Everyday Life (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and Saving Belief (1987). |