2 publications of Place that refer to Place (1996l). Folk psychology from the standpoint of conceptual analysis.
Place, U. T. (1995e). Conceptual analysis and the concept of reinforcement in classical/respondent conditioning and instrumental/operant learning [Presentation given at the Annual Conference of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour Group, University College, London, 11th April 1995].
[Abstract]Conceptual analysis is the empirical investigation of the social conventions which govern the construction of intelligible sentences in natural language. Although it has application to other aspects of language, the focus is on features that are universal across languages and on ordinary rather than technical language. In relation to the scientific study of the behaviour of living organisms, it gives us insight both into the respects in which common sense psychology serves functions which have no place in the scientific enterprise and into the way behaviour is in fact regulated, based on thousands of years of experience of how it looks from without as well from within.
The way in which the distinction between classical/respondent conditioning and instrumental/operant learning is marked in the sentences of common sense psychology is discussed as a means of reconciling the different technical languages of behaviour analysis and associative learning theory.
[References] [Talks] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1995e Conceptual Analysis and the Concept of Reinforcement.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996h). Mental causation is no different from any other kind. The British Psychological Society, History and Philosophy of Psychology Newsletter, 23, 15-20.
[Abstract]Mental causation, as the term is used here, is the relation between an individual's beliefs, desires and intentions on the one hand and the behaviour they motivate on the other. Until it was challenged by Donald Davidson (1963/1980), the accepted view amongst philosophers was that mental causation in this sense is not a causal relation ("reasons are not causes"). Now most subscribe to Davidson's view that it is a causal relation, but an anomalous one. I argue that it is a standard causal relationship which differs in no way from other non-mental cases of causation.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1996h Mental Causation is No Different from Any Other Kind.pdf this is a shortened version of the unpublished: 1996h Full version of Mental Causation is No Different from Any Other Kind.pdf