The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature, by P. M. S. Hacker.

Abstract

This book is a rich, intriguing philosophical investigation of the human cognitive and cogitative powers. It aims to ‘map the landscape of cognitive and cogitative concepts, and thereby to illuminate the nature of our cognitive and cogitative powers’ (p. xi). It is the second volume in a planned trilogy on human nature. The first volume — Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007) — investigates the most general categories in terms of which we think about ourselves (substance, causation, powers, agency, teleology, rationality, mind, self and body, and person). And the third, anticipated, volume will investigate our moral powers. The Intellectual Powers starts with a prolegomena (Chs. 1–3) whose aim is to eradicate widespread confusions and misconceptions with regard to what is distinctive of the (human) mind. In Human Nature Hacker argued that the distinctive capacities of the human mind — which include the capacity for self-conscious reflection, the capacity to reason, and the capacity to act on the basis of reason — are the product of our mastery of language. In this sense, mastery of language is, according to Hacker, the mark of the mind. Here in the prolegomena Hacker, first, rejects the popular views that consciousness is the mark of the mental and that intentionality is the mark of the mental by exposing the confusions and misconceptions which, according to him, give rise to these views. Secondly, he attempts to dispel confusions that surround ‘the ideas of language and linguistic skills, of speaking and understanding language and of meaning something by words and utterances’ (p. 3).