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Abstracts of the Papers
C. I. Lewis' action-oriented notion of cognition is consistent with a minimally representational picture of mind. I aim to show why. Toward this end, I explore some of the tensions between Lewis' theory of knowledge and his theory of mind. At face value, the former renders the latter implausible. Among other problems, no agent could act if she were required to entertain the myriad beliefs that Lewis claims figures in the guidance of action. But rather than abandon Lewis' story, I attempt to rehabilitate it. Rehabilitation is possible, I argue, because (i) Lewis isn't claiming that his epistemology describes actual justificatory practices, but rather what an agent could do; (ii) the social character of concepts [and meaning] considerably reduces the need for appealing to internal concepts when explaining why an agent does what she does; and (iii) among his paradigm cases of cognitive behavior are paradigm cases of nonreflective action. Here's the rub: not only do such actions account for most of our behavior [as Lewis himself notes], nonreflective actions, though cognitive, don't require conceptualization.
Is there vagueness in the world? This is the central question that we are concerned with. Focusing on identity statements around which much of the recent debate has centred, we argue that `vague identity' arises in quantum mechanics in one of two ways. First, quantum particles may be described as individuals, with `entangled' states understood in terms of non-supervenient relations. In this case, the vagueness is ontic but exists at the level of these relations which act as a kind of `veil'. Secondly, the particles can be regarded as non-individuals, where this is understood as a lack of self-identity and given formal expression in terms of quasi-set theory. Here we have ontic vagueness at perhaps the most basic metaphysical level. Our conclusion is that there is genuine vagueness `in the world' but how it is understood depends on the metaphysical package adopted.