World Revisited:Connections And Interactions Between Space Of Concepts And Space Of Nature

The world,which used to pair up with the mind,has been given up by many philosophers because of the criticisms of Quine,Davidson,and Sellars had made on empiricism.It has gradually lost its justificatory power in epistemology and eventually splits up into space of concepts and space of nature.However,the reconstruction works never cease.It is still possible to reconstruct and revisit the world by the pragmatic,semantic,interpretative,naturalistic,and existential routes.It will also be revealed at the same time not only the world is under investigation,but two spaces of the world are inseparable,consistent,and interactive.This research consists of four parts.The first part aims at sketching the theoretical backgrounds for the rest debates.The rationalist investigations,which are made along the side of conceptual space,are to be stretched in the second part.The following part will go on to probe into the natural origins of the space of concepts,trying to argue for the inseparability,consistency and interactions between the two spaces.The fourth part focuses on the beneficial thoughts of classical pragmatists,principally James's,Dewey's and neuropragmatists' relevant ideas.Via tracing the clues of the existential turn hidden in James's philosophy,the existential implications as well as the inseparability of the two spaces come to the fore.Dewey's genetic theory of language and the essential ideas of neuropragmtism,instead,are the added discussions to the third part on one hand,on the other,it also shows us how to give voice to the mute existential world by practice and the interactivity between two spaces.More specifically,Part I explores the reasons why the world has become well-lost Motifs of this research will be depicted meanwhile.Quine's criticisms of two dogmas of empiricism,Davidson's critiques on the third dogma,and Sellars's refutation of the myth of the given mostly contribute to making the world unanswerable to knowledge any longer.The world is only causally related to knowledge.However,even those who have made fierce attacks on empiricism,such as Quine,Davidson,and Sellars,still try to keep the world in view.By talking about the thoughts of left and right wings of Sellars's followers,we find out the world turns out to be divided into two faces,namely space of concepts and space of nature,the fact of which makes revisiting the world a tougher work.In Part II,the semantic aspect of the world is exposed by the effort of interpreting Davidson's anomalous monism as a version of the interpretative semantic causal theory.The pragmatic aspect of the world is achieved by investigating on Davidson's triangulation.Lastly,in discussing Brandom's philosophical works that purport to combine inferential semantics and material pragmatics,we find a plausible method of making the pragmatic and semantic aspects of the world coherent and consistent.The third part mainly tries to prove the consistency and inseparability of two spaces by dint of analyzing Dretske's theory of consciousness and Millikan's biosemantics.There are two investigating directions in the research of consciousness,the up-research is a normative research of consciousness while the down-research is naturalistic.The two directions,correspondingly,points to two spaces.Dretske's theory of consciousness is a version of down-research,and higher-order thought(HOT)theory of consciousness,with which Dretske is unpleasant,is a version of up-research.To ensure the consistency of the two spaces,we need to have all these theories of consciousness at hand Millikan takes the proper function that accumulates in the long history of biological development as the medium of the man-made devices and natural devices of language.By virtue of proper function and its normal explanation,Millikan has made language and representation be naturalized,causing two spaces both consistent and inseparable.In the last part the existential world,which is meaning-breeding and creative,is to be revealed by investigating on the hidden existential turn in William James's philosophy.Two spaces are inseparable.Analyses of Dewey's philosophy of language,by contrasty shows us how we have learned language by interactive practices that cope with the natural world.Introductions to Neuropragmatism helps us to understand activities coping with the nature can be taken as the overlap of the nature that is external to the brain,patterns of neurons within the brain and concepts(or culture),these of which all take activities as origins.Hence they inevitably entangle and interact with each other.All the talks will prove the answerability of the world,and the inseparability,consistency,interactivity of two spaces.Space of concepts without space of nature is empty,space of nature without space of concepts is blindFinally,rationalism and naturalism are reconciled in a pragmatist view of practice.The enriched practice consists of creature's activities that cope with the environment and agents'inferential activities that use concepts.Routes of investigations that involved in this research can be made coherent and consistent from the practical perspective.