In Defense of a Different Doppelganger

Bibliographic Data

ID10696063
AuthorsJoseph Owens (0000-0002-2483-6502, Twin Cities Orthopedics, corresponding author)
Year1987
Volume96
Issue4
Pages521
Publication date1987-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Philosophical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8108 • E-ISSN: 1558-1470
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2185390
OpenAlexW1997070810
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited5

Today's most fashionable brand of psychological theorizing, cognitive psychology, is in deep trouble in that it appears to be constrained by incompatible requirements. Such is the charge leveled by Stephen Stich. Cognitive theory, he claims, is apparently committed (i) to making essential explanatory appeal to contentindividuated states, states akin to belief, desire, and the like, and (ii) to the methodological principle that organisms can differ in psychological explanatory states only if they differ in some internal (nonrelational) physical fashion-the principle of psychophysical supervenience.1 This twin requirement is problematic in that a number of thought experiments clearly suggest that commonsense psychological states do not satisfy the supervenience requirement, and suggest that the psychological states of physical doppelgangers may differ in content. Stich's claim, however, has not gone unchallenged; there have been numerous attempts to undermine the force of the thought experiments, to demonstrate the compatibility of the two requirements.2 In this paper I examine what is currently the most popular

Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology

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