Epistemology of Mind, Misc

In this short paper I critically analyze Marc Leman’s embodied approach to musical meaning and representation, suggesting that its explanatory value is not sufficient in order to be a good alternative for theories encompassing the concept of representation.

This is a careful explication of and commentary on Wilfrid Sellars's classic essay "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" [EPM]. It is appropriate for upper-level undergraduates and beyond. The full text of EPM is included in the volume.

It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves as an heuristic for, how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology, but everything else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it, includes both conscious deliberative linguistic System 2 and unconscious automated prelinguistic (...) System 1 actions or reflexes. -/- I provide a critical survey of some of the major findings of two of the most eminent students of behavior of modern times, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, on the logical structure of intentionality (mind, language, behavior), taking as my starting point Wittgenstein’s fundamental discovery –that all truly ‘philosophical’ problems are the same—confusions about how to use language in a particular context, and so all solutions are the same—looking at how language can be used in the context at issue so that its truth conditions (Conditions of Satisfaction or COS) are clear. The basic problem is that one can say anything but one cannot mean (state clear COS for) any arbitrary utterance and meaning is only possible in a very specific context. I analyze various writings by and about them from the modern perspective of the two systems of thought (popularized as ‘thinking fast, thinking slow’), employing a new table of intentionality and new dual systems nomenclature. I show that this is a powerful heuristic for describing behavior. -/- Thus, all behavior is intimately connected if one takes the correct viewpoint. The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same problem as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, (or that that they differ only in degree from drug and sex addicts in being motivated by stimulation of their frontal cortices by the delivery of dopamine (and over 100 other chemicals) via the ventral tegmentum and the nucleus accumbens), but it’s clearly true. While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people’s time, they are wasting the earth and their descendant’s future. (shrink)

This book explores how we can measure consciousness. It clarifies what consciousness is, how it can be generated from a physical system, and how it can be measured. It also shows how conscious states can be expressed mathematically and how precise predictions can be made using data from neurophysiological studies.

It is not likely that we will ever convincingly know how and why we came to be on this planet; of course, this has never prevented inquisitive minds from pushing the frontiers of understanding and discovery further. Our origin is the subject of scientific theories and continuous inquiries with no end in sight, as the shells of related complexities are getting much harder to crack. Paraphrasing philosopher and historian Will Durant, a very few people are getting to know more and (...) more about less and less. This knowledge and the scientific language used to express it are now becoming more and more incomprehensible to most humans; therefore, despite the sincere efforts of communication media’s countless “talking heads,” we may be inevitably driven by default to a new religion of worshiping the church of science, along with its scientist “priests,” and to a life filled with the unequivocal dangers that could befall us from such devotions. Humanity and the planet are faced with dangers that have and can be issued from the absence or deficiency of proper public knowledge and guiding ethical principles for handling many of the new scientific and engineering discoveries and innovations, such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and plant, animal, and human gene editing, etc. To avoid inadvertent adverse impacts, which could seriously endanger our normal ways of life and even existence, knowledge has to be humanized and massively disseminated. Even at the expense of some mistakes, the benefits certainly outweigh the loss. -/- This book is a small effort along this path. -/- . (shrink)

In her exciting and thought-provoking book, The Rationality of Perception, Susanna Siegel tackles some bedrock issues concerning the nature and epistemology of perception: its rationality and relation to inference. Examining those issues from the perspective of everyday perception, where our vanity, fears, wishful thinking, general outlook, etc. can influence what we believe ourselves to see, Siegel offers a constructive defence of the claim that ‘both perceptual experiences and the processes by which they arise can be rational or irrational’ and goes (...) on to analyze these processes in terms of inference. (shrink)

The Bohr Einstein debate on the meaning of quantum physics involved Einstein inventing a series of thought experiments to challenge the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics. Einstein disliked many aspects of the Copenhagen Interpretation especially its idea of an observer dependent universe. Bohr was able to answer all Einstein’s objections to the Copenhagen Interpretation and so is usually considered as winning the debate. However the debate has continued into the present time as many scientists have been unable to accept the (...) idea of an observer dependent universe and many alternatives to the Copenhagen Interpretation have been proposed. However none of the alternatives has won general acceptance because all have problems that make them implausible or impossible. (shrink)

Can I be wrong about my own beliefs? More precisely: Can I falsely believe that I believe that p? I argue that the answer is negative. This runs against what many philosophers and psychologists have traditionally thought and still think. I use a rather new kind of argument, – one that is based on considerations about Moore's paradox. It shows that if one believes that one believes that p then one believes that p – even though one can believe that (...) p without believing that one believes that p. (shrink)

I evaluate Kusch's arguments that everyday and scientific psychological beliefs are made true by the institutional facts about the people to whom they are applied. I conclude that institutional facts are among the truth-makers of such beliefs, and that this is a very significant point to have made, but that they are unlikely to be the sole such truth-makers.

This article builds on ideas presented in Klein (2015a) concerning the importance of a more nuanced, conceptually rigorous approach to the scientific understanding and use of the construct “memory”. I first summarize my model, taking care to situate discussion within the terminological practices of contemporary philosophy of mind. I then elucidate the implications of the model for a particular operation of mind – the manner in which content presented to consciousness realizes its particular phenomenological character (i.e., mode of presentation). Finally, (...) I discuss how the model offers a reconceptualization of the technical language used by psychologists and neuroscientists to formulate and test ideas about memory. (shrink)

Action is not always guided by conscious deliberation; in many circumstances, we act intuitively rather than reflectively. Tamar Gendler (2014) contends that because intuitively guided action can lead us away from our reflective commitments, it limits the power of knowledge to guide action. While I agree that intuition can diverge from reflection, I argue that this divergence does not constitute a restriction on the power of knowledge. After explaining my view of the contrast between intuitive and reflective thinking, this paper (...) argues against the conclusions Gendler draws from empirical work on implicit bias. (shrink)

Paul E. Meehl and B. F. Skinner, two of the foremost psychological theorists of the 20th century, overlapped at the University of Minnesota in the early 1940s when Skinner was a faculty member and Meehl was a graduate student. Though Skinner was well aware of, and influenced by, early 20th century physiology, he eschewed reductionism, developing his analysis of behavior without reference to concepts at another level of analysis. Meehl's theoretical approach transcended levels of analysis, drawing upon data and concepts (...) from genetics, neuroscience, and psychology. In this paper the functional components of Meehl's (1990) "Toward an Integrated Theory of Schizotaxia, Schizotypy, and Schizophrenia" paper are re-formulated substituting autism as the condition of interest. Skinner's and Meehl's theoretical frameworks are integrated with recent findings in genetics and neuroscience in an attempt to better understand the reasons why Intensive Early Behavior Therapy (IEBT) provided to children with Autism Spectrum Disorders produces enduring improvements in social, language, and cognitive functioning. (shrink)

Probably the leading exponent of W’s ideas on the language games of inner and outer (the ‘Two Selves’ operation of our personality or intentionality or EP etc. ) the prolific Daniel Hutto’s (DH) approach is called ‘Radical Enactivism’ and is well explained in numerous recent books and papers. It is a development of or version of the Embodied Mind ideas now current and, cleansed of its jargon, it is a straightforward extension of W’s 2nd and 3rd period writings (though Hutto (...) seems only intermittently aware of this). -/- The basic idea of the Embodied Mind or Enactivism is that much of behavior is automated and does not involve representations (basically S2 dispositions-see Hutto’s lovely dissection of the ‘representation rats nest’ in his online papers ). To me this is just another way of stating the fact that System 1 precedes the operation of System 2 which is a standard feature of contemporary psychology, which I have explained above and in further detail in my reviews of Wittgenstein (who was the first to see this and explored it in great detail) and Searle (who called it The Phenomenological Illusion in his superb essay of this name in his book Philosophy in a New Century which I have also reviewed). Since these are basic incontrovertible facts of animal behavior and I have already discussed them I won’t dwell on it here. -/- This book is a sustained argument against other similar ways of describing behavior which he calls CEC and CIC in favor of REC (Radical Embodied Cognition), which he characterizes as “the strongest reading of the embodiment thesis—one that uncompromisingly maintains that basic cognition is literally constituted by, and to be understood in terms of concrete patterns of environmental situated organismic activity, nothing more or less” (p11). This is clear as a bell if you understand the two systems view explained above but likely opaque if you don’t. Much clearer is Fodor’s characterization which he quotes as “abilities are prior to theories”, that “competence is prior to content” and that “knowing how is the paradigm cognitive state and it is prior to knowing that” (p10). That is, the unconscious automatisms of S1 are evolutionarily and behaviorally prior to the slow conscious dispositions of S2. -/- This is classic Hutto high level philosophical dialog, which is quite elegant, but somewhat too dense and a tad pretentious for the rest of us. I have not before encountered his coauthor Myin so can’t say how much of this text is really due to him. It is clear from this and the rest of Hutto’s work that (like everyone else) he has not quite kept up with the latest work in psychology nor really grasped the full power of W or S, even though he is one of the top Wittgensteinians alive and as bright as anyone in the field. His discussions of the language games of “information” and “representation” in his other papers and books (and much else including his deconstructions of Dennett and Fodor) should be required reading for anyone interested in behavior. So, I have the greatest respect for him, but one hopes that he will mellow with time and write descriptions of behavior (i.e., all we can really do as philosophers according to W) in more mundane prose such as this lovely summation on p15. “Hence, REC is nothing less than a fundamental rethinking of the very foundations of standard approaches to cognitive science and philosophy of mind.” Yes and what a pity that this great Wittgensteinian (and everyone else) does not realize that W laid it all out with great (and unmatched) clarity in his third period works over 60 years ago. -/- I have much less sympathy for the extended and scaffolded minds of Chap 7. I don’t see how one can lay the burden of explaining how the mind works at Searle’s door, nor how the convoluted prose about “decoupled contentful activities” etc helps at all. Why not just say that automated unconscious prelinguistic S1 feeds deliberate, conscious linguistic S2, which is axiomatically extended by public language into the myriad wonders of S3 culture? Beginning and end of story. -/- Their last chapter is about “regaining consciousness,” but I would say that if one has understood Wittgenstein and Searle, one has never lost it. And, though this is an excellent book by two of the brightest and the best, I suggest mulling over my thoughts in this and other reviews and reading Johnston and the latest from Searle, along of course with as much of 3rd period W as feasible, is an even better filter for folly. In sum an excellent book with various faults which I try to correct. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019). (shrink)

Before remarking on “The New Science of the Mind”, I first offer some comments on philosophy and its relationship to contemporary psychological research as exemplified in the works of Searle (S),Wittgenstein (W), Hacker (H) et al. It will help to see my reviews of PNC (Philosophy in a New Century), TLP, PI, OC, Making the Social World (MSW) and other books by and about these geniuses, who provide a clear description of higher order behavior, not found in psychology nor philosophy, (...) that I will refer to as the WS framework. -/- As with so many philosophy books, we might stop with the title. As the quotes and comments above and in my other reviews and the books they cover indicate, there are compelling reasons for regarding the problems we face in describing the psychology of higher order thought as conceptual and not scientific. This ought to be crystal clear to all, but science envy and almost complete oblivion to WSH etc. is a la mode! But as H notes above, the issues discussed here are all about language games and have nothing to do with science. In fact, as usual, if one translates into plain English there is very little of interest here, and certainly nothing not said before and better by WS etc. countless times since the 30’s (see e.g., The Blue and Brown Books from 1933-35). It is not surprising that he makes no significant references to any of the above books or persons (the only reference to S is an article from 1958!), though in my view they are at the top of the list of the major figures in descriptive psychology. -/- On p119 he tells us that the key to all this is to figure out how “…a personal level cognitive process can belong to a representational subject. This is the task of the second half of the book.” But W did this 80 years ago and since we have the beautifully clear explanations of WSH, H&M; etc., there is no point to torturing oneself with the rather aimless and opaque prose that veers off at the end into Sartre, Heidegger, Husserl, and Frege, with a dash of postmodernist word salad for good measure. A valiant effort on an interesting topic, but ultimately exhausting and fruitless. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019). (shrink)

Classical ways of viewing the relation of consciousness to the brain and physical world make it difficult to see how consciousness can be a subject of scientific study. In contrast to physical events, it seems to be private, subjective, and viewable only from a subject's first-person perspective. But much of psychology does investigate human experience, which suggests that classical ways of viewing these relations must be wrong. An alternative, Reflexive model is outlined along with it's consequences for methodology. Within this (...) model the external phenomenal world is viewed as part-of consciousness, rather than apart-from it. Observed events are only "public" in the sense of "private experience shared." Scientific observations are only "objective" in the sense of "intersubjective." Observed phenomena are only "repeatable" in the sense that they are sufficiently similar to be taken for "tokens" of the same event "type." This closes the gap between physical and psychological phenomena. Indeed, events out-there in the world can often be regarded as either physical or psychological depending on the network of relationships under consideration. (shrink)

Imagination, like other higher cognition, is often thought to arise after the evolution of language. Stephen Asma argues instead that imagination is much older and forms a kind of early cognition --harvesting sensory, motor and affective impressions, and generating novel generate-and-test information.

Many morally important facts about the way we affect one another, in particular the psychological damage we can inflict, are hard to imagine .

Persuasion is a special aspect of our social and linguistic practices – one where an interlocutor, or an audience, is induced, to perform a certain action or to endorse a certain belief, and these episodes are not due to the force of the better reason. When we come near persuasion, it seems that, in general, we are somehow giving up factual discourse and the principles of logic, since persuading must be understood as almost different from convincing rationally. Sometimes, for example, (...) we can find persuasion a political speech that relies on our feelings, emotions and values, but we can also find a persuasive person a dodger, busy in his own questionable activities that are intentionally performed in order to mislead and manipulate other people. However, I do not want to try to define a general notion of persuasion from the beginning. I would rather start with a conception that already has a place, even if controversial, in the philosophical debate. In particular, the version that I have always found particularly provocative is that provided by Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. This peculiar version of the idea of persuasion, which is often associated with the possibility of overcoming deep disagreements, is quite famous in the literature and often understood as indicating certain intrinsic limits of our reason-giving practices. The following are Wittgenstein’s famous remarks on persuasion: -/- 608. Is it wrong for me to be guided in my actions by the propositions of physics? Am I to say I have no good ground for doing so? Isn’t precisely this what we call a ‘good ground’? -/- 609. Suppose we met people who did not regard that as a telling reason. Now, how do we imagine this? Instead of the physicist, they consult an oracle. (And for that we consider them primitive.) Is it wrong for them to consult an oracle and be guided by it? If we call this “wrong” aren’t we using our language-game as a base from which to combat theirs? -/- 611. Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and heretic. -/- 612. I said I would ‘combat’ the other man, – but wouldn’t I give him reasons? Certainly; but how far do they go? At the end of reasons comes persuasion. (Think what happens when missionaries convert natives.) -/- This paper is not devoted, as far as possible, to focus on interpretative matters about Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. Rather, it aims to investigate whether there are problems and incompatibilities between this particular conception of persuasion and our contemporary understanding of our reason-giving practices and of our belief-revision procedures. The first part of this study will be concerned about assessing this conception of persuasion and trying to shed new light on it (and on its consequences); most of the work here is done by looking at some truisms and normative features of our practices regarding the rational updating of our beliefs. It also addresses the question: Is the resistance to reasons of Wittgenstein’s persuasion capable to avoid the strict dynamics of belief revision? The second section of this study concerns the possibility of limiting the scope of this conception of persuasion, thanks to some of our contemporary ways of understanding rational discursive practices (I will focus especially on Robert Brandom’s game of “giving and asking for reasons”). If our rational practices require at least a certain degree of epistemic responsibility, then how is it possible that one invokes the end of reasons (that would explicitly mean giving up this responsibility)? A third section is the attempt, on this basis, to try to revise our contrasting conception(s) of persuasion (with an eye open on the near doxastic territory). Are there other conceptions of persuasion which are more compatible with our rational practices and do not entail any version of the “end of reasons” that are so compatible with our individual and social epistemic responsibility? (shrink)

In this paper I argue that while Noë’s actionist approach offers an excellent elaboration of classical approaches to conceptual understanding, it risks underestimating the role of social interactions and relations. Noë’s approach entails a form of body-based individualism according to which understanding is something the mind does all by itself. I propose that we adopt a stronger perspective on the role of sociality and consider the human mind in terms of socially enacted autonomy. On this view, the mind depends constitutively (...) on engaging with and relating to others. As a consequence, conceptual understanding must be seen as a co-achievement. It is a fragile endeavour precisely because it depends not only on the individual but also on the continuous contribution of other subjects. (shrink)

Frege’s ‘differential dubitability’ test is a test for differences in cognitive value: if one can rationally believe that p while simultaneously doubting that q, then the contents p and q amount to different ‘cognitive values’. If subject S is rational, does her simultaneous adoption of different attitudes towards p and q require that the difference between p and q(as cognitive values) be transparent to her? It is natural to think so. But I argue that, if attitude anti-individualism is true, then (...) rational differential dubitability does not presuppose that differences in cognitive value be transparent. The significance of this argument lies in what it tells us, both about the notion of cognitive value (and its relation to the differential dubitability test), but also about the prospects for a Burge-type position which aims to combine attitude anti-individualism with a (perhaps qualified) reliance on the differential dubitability test. (shrink)

This paper proceeds in two parts. In the first part, I set out Fodor’s concerns about abduction in his recent books, The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way and In Critical Condition. In the second part, I attempt to meet these concerns by suggesting how - within the framework of the Massive Modularity Hypothesis - abduction functions, specifically in the context of means-end reasoning to connect Input Modules and Output Modules. My suggestion will be that natural selection is the Mother of (...) Abductive Inference and that it is evidenced in all sorts of sub-doxastic Means-End Reasoning contexts and for a variety of species. I will eventually discuss two representative cases to illustrate this suggestion: namely, dead reckoning and spatial reorientation. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to suggest an alternative view to the conventional distinction between ontology and epistemology, thereby reconstituting the relationship between the cognitive self and the real world. More specifically, we will criticize the distinction by shedding light on a peculiar character of the body, which can provide a critical perspective against Cartesian dualism. Furthermore, we will give a sketchy description of the philosophy of touch, and propose the notion of skin-self, or self-manifesting self, as a (...) radical alternative to the modern conception of self. (shrink)

I undermine the argument that ‘high’ epistemic standards are false because children and other cognitively unsophisticated subjects possess justification while lacking certain logical and epistemic concepts. I argue, instead, that the standards we often use to attribute logical and epistemic concepts to ordinary, cognitively sophisticated adults can easily be seen to cover many unsophisticated subjects; therefore, the alleged lack of certain concepts is no basis for rejecting ‘high’ epistemic standards. Whether or not such standards are correct has to be argued (...) on other grounds. (shrink)

It can seem natural to say that, when in pain, we undergo experiences which present to us certain experience-dependent particulars, namely pains. As part of his wider approach to mind and world, John McDowell has elaborated an interesting but neglected version of this account of pain. Here I set out McDowell’s account at length, and place it in context. I argue that his subjectivist conception of the objects of pain experience is incompatible with his requirement that such experience be presentational, (...) rationalizing, and classificatory. (shrink)

I investigate the role that facilitating cooperative action plays in shaping folk psychology. Publisher's blurb: _The Importance of Being Understood _is an innovative and thought-provoking exploration of the links between the way we think about each other's mental states and the fundamentally cooperative nature of everyday life. Adam Morton begins with a consideration of ' folk psychology ', the tendency to attribute emotions, desires, beliefs and thoughts to human minds. He takes the view that it is precisely this tendency that (...) enables us to understand, predict and explain the actions of others, which in turn helps us to decide on our own course of action. This relection suggests, claims Morton, that certain types of cooperative activity are dependent on everyday psychological understanding conversely, that we act in such a way as to make our actions easily intelligible to others so that we can benefit from being understood. This idea of 'beneficial circularities' is at the core of Morton's investigation of the interdependencies between folk psychology and social behaviour: we understand each other because we have learned to make ourselves intelligible. Using examples of cooperative activities such as car driving and playing tennis, Adam Morton analyses the concepts of belief and simulation, the idea of explanation by motive, and the causal force of psychological explanation. In addition to argument and analysis, Morton also includes more speculative explorations of topics such as moral progress and presents a new point of view on how and why cultures differ. _The Importance of Being Understood _forges new links between ethics and the philosophy of mind and will be of interest to anyone in either field, as well as developmental psychologists. (shrink)

Attempts to reproduce animateness using appliances generates a paradox that provides a new view to life and death, that differs from both religious and atheistic visions.

The paper outlines an analysis of two types of information - ordinary and subjective, consideration is given to the difference between the concepts of intelligence and perceiving mind. It also provides description of some logical functional features of consciousness. A technical approach is proposed to technical obtaining of subjective information by changing the signal’s time degree of freedom to the spatial one in order to obtain the "observer" function in the system and information signals appearing in relation to it, that (...) serve as subjective sensations. The solution to this problem may give a new approach to designing a strong artificial intelligence and shed light on the difficult problem of the mind. (shrink)

It has been observed that, unlike other kinds of singular judgments, mental self-ascriptions are immune to error through misidentification: they may go wrong, but not as a result of mistaking someone else’s mental states for one’s own. Although recent years have witnessed increasing interest in this phenomenon, three basic questions about it remain without a satisfactory answer: what is exactly an error through misidentification? What does immunity to such errors consist in? And what does it take to explain the fact (...) that mental self-ascriptions exhibit this sort of immunity? The aim of this paper is to bring these questions into focus, propose some tentative answers and use them to show that one prominent attempt to explain the immunity to error through misidentification of mental self-ascriptions is unsuccessful. (shrink)

Direct Perception is the view that we can see others' mental states, i.e. that we perceive others' mental states with the same immediacy and directness that we perceive ordinary objects in the world. I evaluate Direct Perception by considering whether we can see intentions, a particularly promising candidate for Direct Perception. I argue that the view equivocates on the notion of intention. Disambiguating the Direct Perception claim reveals a troubling dilemma for the view: either it is banal or highly implausible.

Rockmore’s paper offers a nice discussion on how classical German idealism provides a plausible account of the Parmenidean insight that thought and being are identical and suggests that idealist epistemic constructivism is arguably the most promising approach to cognition. In this short commentary, I will explore the implications of adopting other interpretations of Parmenidean identity thesis, which arguably lead to different conclusions than the ones drawn by Rockmore. En route to disavow the distinction between ontology and epistemology, I argue that (...) one may adopt an approach on cognition which would be immunized to worries that prompt Rockmore’s elaboration and also embrace (at least) some of its benefits. (shrink)

Olfaction represents odors, if it represents anything at all. Does olfaction also represent ordinary objects like cheese, fish and coffee-beans? Many think so. This paper argues that it does not. Instead, we should affirm an austere account of the intentional objects of olfaction: olfactory experience is about odors, not objects. Visuocentric thinking about olfaction has tempted some philosophers to say otherwise.

This paper defends Michel Foucault’s notion of archaeology of knowledge against the influential and putatively devastating criticism by Dreyfus and Rabinow that Foucault’s archaeological project is based on an incoherent conception of the rules of the discursive practices it purports to study. I argue first that Foucault’s considered view of these rules as simultaneously implicit and historically efficacious corresponds to a general requirement for the normative structure of a discursive practice. Then I argue that Foucault is entitled to that view (...) despite the charges to the contrary by Dreyfus and Rabinow. I also explain in detail how the argument by Dreyfus and Rabinow arises from a misunderstanding of Foucault’s archaeological project as transcendental inquiry, while archaeology of knowledge is, in fact, a diagnostic project. The result is a novel understanding of the notion of archaeology of knowledge that enables a reassessment of Foucault’s philosophical work in connection with current debates regarding the relationship between reflection and practice in the structure of thought. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to show that McGinn’s argument from analogy for the possibility of human cognitive closure survives the critique raised on separate occasions by Dennett and Kriegel. I will distinguish between linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive closure and argue that the analogy argument from animal non-linguistic cognitive closure goes untouched by the objection Dennett and Kriegel raises.

The recent debate on cognitive phenomenology has largely focused on phenomenal aspects connected to the content of thoughts. By contrasts, aspects pertaining to their attitude have often been neglected, despite the fact that they are distinctive of the mental kind of thought concerned and, moreover, also present in experiences and thus less contentious than purely cognitive aspects. My main goal is to identify two central and closely related aspects of attitude that are phenomenologically salient and shared by thoughts with experiences, (...) namely the rational role that they play in our mental lives and their determination by factors external to them, such as external objects or reasons. In particular, I aim to defend Phenomenal Rationalism about judgemental thoughts and perceptual experiences: the view that their phenomenal character reflects their rational role, that is, their capacity to provide and/or respond to reasons. I conclude with some remarks about how this view may be extended to other kinds of th... (shrink)

Questo libro indaga la natura dell’autocoscienza, ossia la capacità tutta umana di essere consapevoli della propria sfera mentale. E si colloca nell’alveo della riflessione strettamente filosofica, privilegiando sia un approccio filosofico-linguistico e mentalista sia una ricostruzione del pensiero di alcuni tra i protagonisti della modernità e del dibattito contemporaneo. In particolare, vengono affrontate le caratteristiche specifiche della capacità dell’uomo di rappresentare linguisticamente e mentalmente il proprio io, esaminando gli aspetti problematici dell’argomento: se si parte dal cosiddetto modello riflessivo e si (...) considera l’autocoscienza come una scissione del soggetto che prende a oggetto del suo pensiero se stesso, emergono svariate questioni e difficoltà epistemiche e metafisiche, evidenziate in modo sorprendentemente simile da diverse tradizioni filosofiche: da Descartes a Husserl, da Kant a Wittgenstein, passando tra gli altri per Strawson, Henrich, Castañeda, Shoemaker, Evans e Frank. In questo quadro viene difesa la cosiddetta tesi dell’ubiquità, che afferma una sorta di pervasività della dimensione soggettiva in ogni esperienza cosciente. (shrink)

In recent years non-conceptual content theorists have taken Kant as a reference point on account of his notion of intuition (§§ 1-2). The present work aims at exploring several complementary issues intertwined with the notion of non-conceptual content: of these, the first concerns the role of the intuition as an indexical representation (§ 3), whereas the second applies to the presence of a few epistemic features articulated according to the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description (§ 4). (...) This work intends to dismiss the possibility that intuition may have an autonomous function of de re knowledge in support of an interpretative reading which can be labelled as weak conceptualism. To this end, the exploration will be conducted from a strictly transcendental perspective – i.e., by referring to the so called theory of the “concept of a transcendental object”. (shrink)

Arendt is a philosopher despite herself, and this paper uses the resources of her <<The Life of the Mind>> to develop her comparison of thinking as a 'departure' from the world with the fore-doomed attempt by Orpheus to bring from underground into the light of day. The paper investigates how thinking, though we 'lose' it in the speech and writing that makes it public, still can have the delicate power that Arendt attributes to it.

I discuss ways in which innate human psychology facilitates the quasi-game-theoretical reasoning required for group life.

Der Aufsatz umreißt eine alternative Herangehensweise an das Leib-Seele-Problem, indem er aufzeigt, wie sich im Übergang von einem vorwissenschaftlich-lebensweltlichen zu einem wissenschaftlichen Standpunkt überhaupt ein Leib-Seele-Problem stellen kann und wie sich dabei die überkommenen Schwierigkeiten aus zwei Typen von Fehlschlüssen (‚naturalistische Fehlschlüsse‘) ergeben.

The book aims at the logical and conceptual analysis of philosophical problems in logic, analysis of mind and knowledge. In presents several internal connections between logical, practical and ethical reasoning and getting individual and collective knowledge. The author connects conceptual analysis, some modal logical arguments and some Wittgensteinian motives in the analysis of vagueness, process logic, skepticism, practical reasoning and getting knowledge.

The Carssirer's conceptions of aprioricity, especially of synthetic a priori principles in exact sciences, is analysed. I consider his 'Marburg's' period, first of all his paper on Kant and modern mathematics. Cassirer defends the thesis on invariance principles as the modern variant of synthetic principles a priori. I analyze his arguments on the existence of apriori principles of science and compare his concept of aprioricity with holistic accounts of theories, 'semantic view of theories' and structural realism.

How does one know one's own beliefs, intentions, and other attitudes? Many responses to this question are broadly empiricist, in that they take self-knowledge to be epistemically based in empirical justification or warrant. Empiricism about self-knowledge faces an influential objection: that it portrays us as mere observers of a passing cognitive show, and neglects the fact that believing and intending are things we do, for reasons. According to the competing, agentialist conception of self-knowledge, our capacity for self-knowledge derives from our (...) rational agency—our ability to conform our attitudes to our reasons, and to commit ourselves to those attitudes through avowals. This paper has two goals. The first is exegetical: to identify agentialism's defining thesis and precisely formulate the agentialist challenge to empiricism. The second goal is to defend empiricism from the agentialist challenge. I propose a way to understand the role of agency in reasoning and avowals, one that does justice to what is distinctive about these phenomena yet is compatible with empiricism about self-knowledge. (shrink)

In my talk I would like to discuss a topic concerning the idea of the mental experience as an experiment in the transcendental philosophy. One can see a big difference between two branches of knowledge: humanitarian sciences and „exact“ sciences. The main difference consists in the fact that the experimental dates of the exact sciences can be verified by other researchers, but the mental dates in the mind of one humanitarian researcher cannot be repeated in the mind of another. It (...) allows for the skeptics to say that the humanitarian sciences cannot be a real science. The modern German philosopher Lambert Wiesing asserts that in the field of transcendental philosophy we have something like an experience in the usual sciences. It is called the „eidetic variation“ (eidetische Variation). Three principles of the method are of great value. They are: self-reflection, phantasy, and self-clarification. In my report I am going to, firstly, clarify the principles of „eidetic variation“ in Husserl’s phenomenology, and secondly relate this to the methods found in German transcendental Idealism. I see three interpretations of the term „eidetic variation“: as a synonym of the transcendental reduction, as achieving an eidos of the thing and the transcendental ego itself, and as something that can be held in a phantasy. The same method is used in German idealism (by Fichte for example). The main outcome of my talk should be, that if we accept an „eidetic variation“ as a transcendental method, we can explain, or at least have the chance, how to build the abstract category and understand such abstract items like beauty and general philosophical notions. (shrink)

A common view in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology is that there is an ideally correct way of categorizing the structures and operations of the mind, and that the goal of neuroscience and psychology is to find this correct categorizational scheme. Categories which cannot find a place within this correct framework ought to be eliminated from scientific practice. In this paper, I argue that this general idea runs counter to productive scientific practices. Such a view ignores the (...) plurality of aims and goals that neuroscientists and psychologists have in studying mental phenomena, and the necessity of employing distinct classificatory frameworks to achieve them. (shrink)

In this paper, my main goal is to discuss two incompatible answers proposed to what I shall call, the objectivity seeking question (OSQ). The first answer is what I shall call the primacy thesis, according to which the third-person perspective is superior to that of the first-person perspective. Ultimately I will reject this answer. The second answer is what I shall call the skepticism thesis, according to which the distinction between the first-person perspective and the third-person perspective can be maintained (...) without reducing to/explaining away the former in terms of the latter. This is the answer I will defend albeit with some qualification. In this case, I will advance my discussion by appealing to the metaphysics of conscious experience/phenomenal consciousness. Third and finally, I will consider some empirically motivated objections against the skepticism thesis. In this case, my focus will be on modern neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and positron emission tomography (PET) and see whether or not they pose a serious threat against the skepticism thesis. My overall conclusion will be that science and subjectivity, which is rooted in the first-person perspective, can coexist in the sense of complementing each other. (shrink)

This is an excellent collection of essays on introspection and consciousness. There are fifteen essays in total (all new except for Sydney Shoemaker’s essay). There is also an introduction where the editors explain the impetus for the collection and provide a helpful overview. The essays contain a wealth of new and challenging material sure to excite specialists and shape future research. Below we extract a skeptical argument from Fred Dretske’s essay and relate the remaining essays to that argument. Due to (...) space limitations we focus in detail on just a few of the essays. We regret that we cannot give them all the attention they merit. (shrink)

A common way of testing the inner sense theory of introspection exploits the possibility of damage to inner sense. Such damage is expected to lead to first-personal deficits/impairments of one kind or another. I raise various problems for this way of testing the theory. The main difficulty, I argue, stems from the existence of the method subserving confabulation.

There is a long-standing debate in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of science regarding how best to interpret the relationship between neuroscience and psychology. It has traditionally been argued that either the two domains will evolve and change over time until they converge on a single unified account of human behaviour, or else that they will continue to work in isolation given that they identify properties and states that exist autonomously from one another (due to the multiple-realizability of psychological (...) states). In this paper, I argue that progress in psychology and neuroscience is contingent on the fact that both of these positions are false. Contra the convergence position, I argue that the theories of psychology and the theories of neuroscience are scientifically valuable as representational tools precisely because they cannot be integrated into a single account. However, contra the autonomy position, I propose that the theories of psychology and neuroscience are deeply dependent on one another for further refinement and improvement. In this respect, there is an irreconcilable codependence between psychology and neuroscience that is necessary for both domains to improve and progress. The two domains are forever linked while simultaneously being unable to integrate. (shrink)