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Fregean Equivocation and Ramsification on Sparse Theories: Response to McCullagh
Author(s) -
Bealer George
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0017.00147
Subject(s) - equivocation , argument (complex analysis) , epistemology , counterexample , psychology , philosophy of science , philosophy , cognitive science , cognitive psychology , mathematics , discrete mathematics , chemistry , biochemistry
The paper, which begins with a brief summary of my anti‐functionalist ‘Argument from Self‐consciousness’, has two main goals. First, to show that this argument is not guilty of a Fregean equivocation regarding embedded mental predicates, as has been suggested by Mark McCullagh and others. Second, to show the argument cannot be avoided by weakening the psychological theory upon which reductive functional definitions are based. Specifically, it does no good to excise psychological principles involving embedded mental predicates. Why? Because reductive functional definitions based on the resulting sparse theories are exposed to an interesting new family of counterexamples.