Abstract:

              In the contemporary philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, there has been a debate as to whether meaning is in the mind or outside the mind. This debate has offered many views of which the two mostimportant views have been those of Jerry Fodor and John Searle. Both represent two different philosophical traditions. Fodor belongs to the rationalist and Cartesian tradition that has a rationalist view of mind which keeps the mind in the autonomous space of computational and representational thought, while Searle belongs to the empiricist tradition of biological naturalism opposed to Cartesianism and classical rationalism.

Fodor’s computational representational theory of mind (CRTM) along with his hypothesis of the Language of Thought has made our view of mind robust within what he calls an ontology of Intentional Realism facilitating the autonomous functioning of the mind in a logical and computational fashion. The mental representations hold the key to the computational nature of the mental processes acting on the mentalrepresentations. In this predominantly syntax-driven notion of the mind, semantics appears to save the broad contents of the mental representations within the frame of reference of an intentional psychology.

Meanings are grounded in an informational semantics to make the broad contents glued to the world.Searle makes an opposite move to debunk the rationalist picture of the mind which has led to the rise of the cognitive view of the mind in Fodor and others. He comes down heavily on the overtly Cartesian picture of the mind by bringing in the neurobiological view of mind rooted in the empiricist tradition. He come out with a new picture of the mind with consciousness and subjectivity arising from the neurological structureof the brain. Consciousness appears as a new phenomenon which the Fodor-Turing picture of mind had missed. Therewith a new domain of meaning and intentionality in opened up.

His analysis of these two contrasting models of mind and meaning has shown that there is more to mind and meaning than is revealed in these models. His hunch is that meaning has become a prisoner of the picture of mind that these two models have put forward. Meaning as a normative feature of mind and language has been subjected to the natural and causal determinants which are non-normative and non-semantical in themselves.Mind itself has been dis-enchanted to the extent of losing its normative role in shaping consciousness and making room for new domains of meaning in ethics, science, culture and spirituality. What he would like to suggest is a way of re-enchanting mind in the quest for new dimensions of meaning and normativity.

           Professor Ramesh Chandra Pradhan was formerly Professor of the Department of Philosophy, University of Hyderabad. He was at the University of Hyderabad since 1987 and retired from there in 2015. He also served Utkal University and Karnatak University before joining the University of Hyderabad. He was the Member Secretary of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research during 2000- 2003.Professor Pradhan had studied at the Banaras Hindu University for his Masters in Philosophy and for his Ph.D. in Philosophy. He was a Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellow at the University of Oxford, U.K. during 1990-1991. His main areas of interest are Wittgenstein, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind and Metaphysics.Professor Pradhan has authored books such as Language and Experience: An Interpretation of the Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Truth, Meaning and Understanding: Essays in Philosophical Semantics, Philosophy of Meaning and Representation, Recent Developments In Analytic Philosophy, The Great Mirror: An Essay on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, Language, Reality and Transcendence: An Essay on the Main Strands of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy, Metaphysics, Metaphysics vs. Metaphysics.Professor Pradhan has also edited books like Philosophy of Wittgenstein: Indian Response, Philosophy of Suresh Chandra, Philosophy, Culture and Value, Language and Mind: A Western Perspective, LinguisticRepresentations: The Road Ahead. Besides, he has contributed papers to anthologies and journals in philosophy.