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One of the prevailing tendencies in the Anglo-American philosophy of mind holds that any elucidation of mental concepts requires attention to the public conventions and social contexts of their proper use. Conceptual analysts have sought to show how the sense of such concepts must be connected to the ways in which they can be acquired by a speaker of a public language and used routinely in communicative situations. In displaying the logical grammar of our mental concepts (the occasions and modalities of their employment), analysts typically furnish examples of mundane social situations from which such concepts obtain their various senses and (which is the same thing) within which they have a part to play. When considered in abstraction from specific circumstances and forms of conduct, the so-called "psychological phenomena" of understanding, intending, thinking, believing, hoping, expecting and others can so easily be pictured in theoretic reflection as purely inner states or processes.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-09379-3_3

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