Meaning, Mind, and Action: Philosophical Essays

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Julia Tanneys Meaning, Mind, and Action challenges widely held presuppositions within philosophy in its classical analytic, naturalist, and cognitivist forms. Beginning with canonical views in the philosophy of language and logic, the arguments are then applied to discussions of knowledge, action, causation, the nature of the mental, consciousness, and thinking.
Responding to a tradition that harks back to Plato and was resurrected by Mill, Frege, Russell, Moore, and the early Wittgenstein, Meaning, Mind, and Action challenges todays orthodoxy on its own terms, beginning with canonical views in the philosophy of language and philosophical logic. The arguments of these early chapters are then applied to the theory of knowledge, action, and causation, followed by those on the nature of the mental, consciousness, and thinking. The final section, on the logic of the mental, widens the arguments to include the subject of animal minds, the postulation of mental representations in cultural anthropology, the authors intention in literary theory, and the philosophical problem of irrationality in psychiatry.

Reviews

Julia Tanney has brought together fourteen of her essays, mostly written in the last decade. They display her usual lucidity and thoughtfulness, as well as her characteristic and admirable determination to swim against the current of the times. Her essays are both provocative and convincing, as well as enjoyable to read. Peter Hacker, St John's College Oxford, UK.

Tanney uses Wittgenstein, Ryle and Austins tools to counter strong currents in contemporary analytic philosophy and in a way that should engage those not already in the Wittgenstein camp. Her work takes us where Wittgenstein could have traveled if he were inclined to be more systematic. Penetrating and impressive. Professor James C. Klagge, Department of Philosophy, Virginia Tech, USA.

Julia Tanney brilliantly demonstrates the continued relevance of ordinary language philosophy. Drawing on the fundamental insight that words must be understood in the many contexts of their use, she challenges orthodoxy in, and sheds new light on, such diverse areas as epistemology, the philosophy of action, and the philosophy of mind. This book deserves a wide audience. Michael Kremer, Mary R. Morton Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago, USA.

Author Bio

Formerly Reader in Philosophy of Mind at the University of Kent, Julia Tanney, has been an independent researcher since 2015. Her first volume of essays, Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge was published in 2013. Tanneys work involves critical analyses of the metaphysical ideas and arguments that shape contemporary philosophy of mind, language, action-theory, knowledge, and meta-ethics. She is described as having an insiders grasp of theory with a depth and comprehensiveness to her arguments that make her criticism impossible to ignore. She is a leading expert on the philosophy of Gilbert Ryle and the later Wittgenstein.