Abstract:

Tim van Gelder, following Brandom, Collins and others, uses the so-called wide content of capacities which support social, norm governed activities, such as language, to argue for their anti-natural, abstract, but socially instituted nature and thence for the failure of the entire traditional mind-body discussion as ill-posed. We argue that his former conclusion is wrong, that such properties are naturalisable, complicated organisational properties of the complexly organised, non-linearly interactive systems that human beings are. This analysis also provides principled support, but on other grounds, for van Gelder's latter conclusion. We outline a new naturalist approach to the organisational capacities of such systems that is intended to ground their biological, cognitive and social characters.

Document Type: Original article

DOI: 10.1111/1468-0017.00067

Affiliations: 1: Department of Philosophy, University of Newcastle, Newcastle NSW 2308, Australia