Home
psychology
White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice

White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice

by Ruth Garrett Millikan

$40.00 Paperback
Hardcover

400 pp., 6 x 9 in,

Paperback
9780262631624
Published: March 2, 1995
Publisher: The MIT Press

$40.00

Hardcover
9780262132886
Published: April 29, 1993
Publisher: The MIT Press

$50.00

Amazon POD

Other Retailers:

MIT Press Bookstore
Penguin Random House
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Bookshop.org
Indiebound
Indigo
Books a Million
Amazon.co.uk
Blackwells
Bookshop.org
Foyles
Hive
Waterstones

Request permissions

Description
Author(s)
Praise

This collection of essays serves both as an introduction to Ruth Millikan's Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories and as an extension and application of Millikan's central and controversial themes, especially in the philosophy of psychology.

Ruth Millikan's extended argument for a biological view of the study of cognition in Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories caught the attention of the philosophical community. Universally regarded as an important, even brilliant, work, its complexity and dense presentation made it difficult to plumb. This collection of essays serves both as an introduction to that much discussed volume and as an extension and application of Millikan's central and controversial themes, especially in the philosophy of psychology.

The title essay, referring to the White Queen's practice of exercising her mind by believing impossible things, discusses meaning rationalism and argues that rationality is not in the head, indeed, that there is no legitimate interpretation under which logical possibility and necessity are known a priori. Nor are there any laws of rational psychology. Rationality is not a lawful occurrence but a biological norm that is effected in an integrated head-world system under biologically ideal conditions.

In other essays, Millikan clarifies her views on the nature of mental representation, explores whether human thought is a product of natural selection, examines the nature of behavior as studied by the behavioral sciences, and discusses the issues of individualism in psychology, psychological explanation, indexicality in thought, what knowledge is, and the realism/antirealism debate.

Bradford Books imprint

Ruth Garrett Millikan is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories (MIT Press, 1984) and White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice (MIT Press, 1995) and On Clear and Confused Ideas.

This is how philosophy of psychology should be done! Bold, imaginative, tough, Millikan is a juggernaut rolling and rollicking through the thickets ofcontemporary debate, clearing out new space, letting us see the shape of these problems better than ever before.
Daniel Dennett
Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University

Books

Authors

On the site

White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice

White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice

Related Books