The Lumsden Lecture is an annual event held in memory of Michael Lumsden, who graduated in Philosophy at Nottingham in 1993 and died shortly after.
Each year the department invites a distinguished visiting speaker to address staff and students on an important and interesting topic in philosophy. This year we are delighted to welcome Professor Tim Crane from the University of Cambridge, who will be speaking about causation. The lecture takes place at 5.15pm in Humanities A3 on Thursday 11 May.
The lecture is also the occasion on which the Department presents the Lumsden Prize and the Jim Lees Prizes to winning students. The Lumsden Prize is awarded to the student who, in the previous academic year, is judged to have written the best philosophy essay. The Jim Lees Prize is awarded to the second year single honours philosophy students who, in the previous academic year, achieved the best overall marks.
Mental Representation: Causation or ‘Magic’?
Tim Crane (University of Cambridge)
Abstract: In his book Reason, Truth and History, Hilary Putnam argued that the only alternative to treating reference and intentionality as causal relations is to hold a ‘magical’ theory of reference (where this is supposed to be a bad thing). He argues this by employing a famous thought experiment about an ant accidentally making a pattern in the sand which looks like a picture of Winston Churchill. Putnam argues that nothing intrinsic to this pattern makes it a picture, and nor do any of its relational properties (eg, resemblance to Churchill). He then claims that “what goes for physical pictures also goes for mental images, and for mental representations in general” — we need to appeal to causal relations in order to explain reference or intentionality; anything else is an appeal to ‘magic'. In this talk I dispute Putnam’s argument, and argue that his conclusion will only follow if physicalism is true. But if physicalism is true, you do not need the argument about the ant to establish that there is no such thing as irreducible intentionality. I sketch an alternative way of thinking about intentionality which questions the rhetorical appeal to ‘magic’ made by Putnam and his followers.