In this article I dispute the claim, made by several contemporary scholars, that Spinoza was a naturalist. ‘Naturalism’ here refers to two distinct but related positions in contemporary philosophy. The first, ontological naturalism, is the view that everything that exists possesses a certain character permitting it to be defined as natural and prohibiting it from being defined as supernatural. I argue that the only definition of ontological naturalism that could be legitimately applied to Spinoza's philosophy is so unrestrictive as to (...) tell us nothing about the content of his ideas. The second, methodological naturalism, is the view that the natural sciences are the best means of finding out substantial truths about the concrete world. I present some historical research showing that Spinoza's way of positioning himself with respect to other philosophers in the Dutch Republic casts very serious doubt on the claim that he was a methodological naturalist. This adds further weight to arguments that have already been made against the naturalist reading of Spinoza. (shrink)

The implicit-explicit distinction is applied to knowledge representations. Knowledge is taken to be an attitude towards a proposition which is true. The proposition itself predicates a property to some entity. A number of ways in which knowledge can be implicit or explicit emerge. If a higher aspect is known explicitly then each lower one must also be known explicitly. This partial hierarchy reduces the number of ways in which knowledge can be explicit. In the most important type of implicit knowledge, (...) representations merely reflect the property of objects or events without predicating them of any particular entity The dearest cases of explicit knowledge of a fact are representations of one's own attitude of knowing that fact. These distinctions are discussed in their relationship to similar distinctions such as procedural-declarative, conscious unconscious, verbalizable-nonverbalizable, direct-indirect tests, and automatic voluntary control. This is followed by an outline of how these distinctions can be used to integrate and relate the often divergent uses of the implicit-explicit distinction in different research areas. We illustrate this for visual perception, memory, cognitive development, and artificial grammar learning. (shrink)

It is a simple truth about the English language that we can see or hear or feel what others are thinking or feeling. But it is tempting to think that there is a deeper sense in which we cannot really see or hear or feel these things at all. Rather, what is involved must be a matter of inference or interpretation, for instance. In these remarks, I argue against a variety of ways in which that thought, the thought that we (...) cannot really see or hear or feel what others are thinking or feeling, might be developed. (shrink)

There is overwhelming agreement amongst naturalists that a naturalistic ontology should not allow for the possibility of supernatural entities. I argue, against this prevailing consensus, that naturalists have no proper basis to oppose the existence of supernatural entities. Naturalism is characterized, following Leiter and Rea, as a position which involves a primary commitment to scientific methodology and it is argued that any naturalistic ontological commitments must be compatible with this primary commitment. It is further argued that properly applied scientific method (...) has warranted the acceptance of the existence of supernatural entities in the past and that it is plausible to think that it will do so again in the future. So naturalists should allow for the possibility of supernatural entities. (shrink)

In a series of classic papers, Donald Davidson put forward an ingenious argument to challenge the ascription of minds to nonlinguistic animals. Davidson's conclusions have been mercilessly demolished in the literature by cognitive ethologists, but none of them have directly addressed Davidson's argument. First, this paper is an attempt to elucidate and evaluate Davidson's central argument for denying minds to nonlinguistic animals. Davidson's central argument puts forth a challenge to those of us who want to attribute minds to nonlinguistic animals. (...) Second, this paper uses counterexamples offered in the cognitive ethology literature to meet Davidson's challenge directly. (shrink)

Badcock, and Nesse and Lloyd, have argued that there are important points of agreement between Freud's theory of the mind and a theory of mind suggested by adaptive reasoning. Buller, on the other hand, draws attention to the need to avoid confusing an adaptive rationale with an unconscious motivation. The present paper attempts to indicate what role adaptive reasoning might have to play in justifying psychoanalytic claims. First, it is argued that psychoanalytic claims cannot be justified by the clinical experience (...) of psychoanalysts alone. It is urged that, to avoid interpretative proliferation, it is necessary to base interpretation on some theory which is external to psychoanalysis. Next, Buller's reservations about using adaptive reasoning to justify claims about a personal unconscious, are summarized. Then an argument for the existence of a personal unconscious, is offered, based on experimental evidence from Gur and Sackeim. Then it is argued that adaptive reasoning, though it cannot itself provide evidence for the existence of any psychological mechanism, can valuably guide the search for such evidence. It is argued that such an approach has borne fruit, both in biology generally and specifically in psychology. Finally, it is argued that psychoanalysis is important enough to justify such a research project. (shrink)

Scientists disagree about which capacities a functional analysis of consciousness should target. To address this disagreement, I propose that a good functional analysis should target the etiological functions of consciousness. The trouble is that most hypotheses about the etiological origins of consciousness presuppose particular functional analyses. In recent years, however, a small number of scientists have begun to offer evolutionary hypotheses that are relatively theory neutral. I argue that their hypotheses can serve an independent standard for evaluating among theories of (...) consciousness. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question whether introspection plus externalism about mental content warrant an a priori refutation of external-world skepticism and ontological solipsism. The suggestion is that if thought content is partly determined by affairs in the environment and if we can have non-empirical knowledge of our current thought contents, we can, just by reflection, know about the world around us -- we can know that our environment is populated with content-determining entities. After examining this type of transcendental argument and (...) discussing various objections found in the literature, I argue that the notion of privileged self-knowledge underlying this argument presupposes that we can learn, via introspection, that our so-called thoughts are propositional attitudes rather than contentless states. If, however, externalism is correct and thought content consists in the systematic dependency of internal states on relational properties, we cannot know non-empirically whether or not we have propositional attitudes. Self-knowledge (apropositional attitude) is consistent with us lacking the ability to rule out, via introspection, the possibility that we don't have any propositional attitudes. Self-knowledge provides us with knowledge of what is in our minds, but not that we have minds. Hence, the combination of externalism with the doctrine of privileged self-knowledge does not allow for an a priori refutation of skepticism and is therefore unproblematic. (shrink)

Functionalists define a given mental state as a state that is apt to be the cause of specific effects and the effect of specific causes. Two tokens of the same belief, however, often cause and are caused by very different events: what makes them beliefs of the same type? Several answers, including the one relying on the identity of actual plus counterfactual causal relations, are considered and rejected. Functionalists did not notice that they have to specify how a state which (...) is to be identified as mental is to be individuated, but, given their theory, this cannot be done. (shrink)

In recent years, a new dispute has risen to prominence: the dispute between realists and anti-realists about causal powers. Albeit sometimes overlooked, the meta-ontological features of this “question of realism for powers” are quite peculiar. For friends and foes of causal powers have characterized their contrasting views in a variety of different ways; as existence claims, as semantic or truth-making claims, as fundamentality claims, as claims about the nature of certain properties. Not only does this multiplicity of interpretations make it (...) unclear what the genuine bone of contention is, if there is one; some of them appear to be mutually exclusive. Some light can be shed on this apparent yet widespread confusion by distinguishing three degrees of ontological involvement in dispositional truths; viz., three ways, of increasing robustness, to read ontological commitments from dispositional truths. Relatedly, by exploring the literature, and focusing on some selected examples of power realism and anti-realism, we can observe that power realists vastly disagree over the intrinsic nature ad make-up of dispositional properties. Such examples furthermore invite the thought that the question of realism for powers is best understood not as the debate around the existence of properties with a distinctive identity, but rather as a debate about metaphysical hierarchy. Finally, some anti-realists positions are indistinguishable from realist ones, using merely intensional resources: power realism is best appreciated by going hyperintensional. (shrink)

Turning the techniques we use to understand other people onto ourselves can provide an insight into the types of self-knowledge that may be possible for us. Adopting Pluralistic Folk Psychology, according to which we understand others not primarily by thinking about invisible beliefs and desires that cause behavior, but instead by modeling others as people - with rich characters, relationships, past histories, cultural embeddedness, personality traits, and so forth. A preliminary investigation shows that we understand ourselves at least in terms (...) of our phenomenal states, informational states, perceptual states, traits, desires, and beliefs. I then appeal to empirical research to examine the accuracy of our sense of self-understanding in these ways, and argue that these are often non-veridical. Moreover, in our folk practices, we do not take our statements of self-understanding as infallible, but we allow others to help us see ourselves. While there is room for some improvement in our acurarcy, I conclude.. (shrink)

Notre recherche consiste à retrouver, sous la partie visible des sciences cognitives, la partie invisible toujours active qui les fonde c'est-à-dire les nœuds liant à propos du cerveau-corps-esprit la médecine, la psychologie, la philosophie et la psychiatrie. Une certaine histoire philosophique de la psychologie voudrait imposer la thèse d'une indépendance de l'esprit par rapport au corps comme de la psychologie par rapport à la physiologie, la biologie, la neurologie ou encore la génétique. Pourtant l’étude des troubles neurologiques, des neuropathies du (...) développement des cerveaux de l’enfant prématuré, des psychopathologies des affects et des lésions, dont le XIXe siècle avait constitué ces modèles, se poursuivent aujourd’hui pour maintenir l’interrogation sur la relation esprit-cerveau-corps. (shrink)

I begin by giving reasons to accept the block-universe view, the strongly supported by physics view that we live in a four-dimensional world. According to it, the past and the future are as real as the present. As a result, it seems that the future is determined in the sense that what will be the case will necessarily be the case. In the dissertation, I examine whether we have to accept this consequence. I show that we do not have to (...) bite the bullet: the future might be both real and contingent. I first start to consider modal realism (possible futures are real) as a possible solution. However, I propose then another account, actualist (positing the reality of only one possible world: the space-time we live in). This solution relies on a conventionalist theory about metaphysical modality (Sidelle, 1989). It states that modal modality is purely conventional. In combination with a realist interpretation of natural modality (causal and/or nomological), this framework allows me to propose that the future is conventionally closed and naturally contingent. In this view, the necessity of the future holds in virtue of linguistic conventions and then is conventionally necessary. But this is a distinct phenomenon from the natural contingency of the future: the future is naturally contingent because there are mind-independent probabilistic relations holding between the present and the future. This solution has strong consequences: most importantly, an anti-realist view about ordinary objects and physical particles. I end up by presenting and arguing in favour of the general image of the world that comes out from these views. (shrink)

Vetter (2015) develops a localised theory of modality, based on potentialities of actual objects. Two factors play a key role in its appeal: its commitment to Hardcore Actualism, and to Naturalism. Vetter’s commitment to Naturalism is in part manifested in her adoption of Aristotelian universals. In this paper, we argue that a puzzle concerning the identity of unmanifested potentialities cannot be solved with an Aristotelian conception of properties. After introducing the puzzle, we examine Vetter’s attempt at amending the Aristotelian conception (...) in a way that avoids the puzzle, and conclude that this amended version is no longer to be considered naturalistic. Potentiality theory cannot be both actualist and naturalist. We then argue that, if naturalism is to be abandoned by the actualist, there are good reasons to adopt a Platonist conception of universals, for they offer a number of theoretical advantages and allow us to avoid some of the problems facing Vetter’s theory. (shrink)

I defend a theory of mental representation that satisfies naturalistic constraints. Briefly, we begin by distinguishing (i) what makes something a representation from (ii) given that a thing is a representation, what determines what it represents. Representations are states of biological organisms, so we should expect a unified theoretical framework for explaining both what it is to be a representation as well as what it is to be a heart or a kidney. I follow Millikan in explaining (i) in terms (...) of teleofunction, explicated in terms of natural selection. -/- To explain (ii), we begin by recognizing that representational states do not have content, that is, they are neither true nor false except insofar as they both “point to” or “refer” to something, as well as “say” something regarding whatever it is they are about. To distinguish veridical from false representations, there must be a way for these separate aspects to come apart; hence, we explain (ii) by providing independent theories of what I call f-reference and f-predication (the ‘f’ simply connotes ‘fundamental’, to distinguish these things from their natural language counterparts). -/- Causal theories of representation typically founder on error, or on what Fodor has called the disjunction problem. Resemblance or isomorphism theories typically founder on what I’ve called the non-uniqueness problem, which is that isomorphisms and resemblance are practically unconstrained and so representational content cannot be uniquely determined. These traditional problems provide the motivation for my theory, the structural preservation theory, as follows. F-reference, like reference, is a specific, asymmetric relation, as is causation. F-predication, like predication, is a non-specific relation, as predicates typically apply to many things, just as many relational systems can be isomorphic to any given relational system. Putting these observations together, a promising strategy is to explain f-reference via causal history and f-predication via something like isomorphism between relational systems. -/- This dissertation should be conceptualized as having three parts. After motivating and characterizing the problem in chapter 1, the first part is the negative project, where I review and critique Dretske’s, Fodor’s, and Millikan’s theories in chapters 2-4. Second, I construct my theory about the nature of representation in chapter 5 and defend it from objections in chapter 6. In chapters 7-8, which constitute the third and final part, I address the question of how representation is implemented in biological systems. In chapter 7 I argue that single-cell intracortical recordings taken from awake Macaque monkeys performing a cognitive task provide empirical evidence for structural preservation theory, and in chapter 8 I use the empirical results to illustrate, clarify, and refine the theory. (shrink)

This paper explores early Australasian philosophy in some detail. Two approaches have dominated Western philosophy in Australia: idealism and materialism. Idealism was prevalent between the 1880s and the 1930s, but dissipated thereafter. Idealism in Australia often reflected Kantian themes, but it also reflected the revival of interest in Hegel through the work of ‘absolute idealists’ such as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and Henry Jones. A number of the early New Zealand philosophers were also educated in the idealist tradition (...) and were influential in their communities, but produced relatively little. In Australia, materialism gained prominence through the work of John Anderson, who arrived in Australia in 1927, and continues to be influential. John Anderson had been a student of Henry Jones, who might therefore be said to have influenced both main strands of Australian philosophical thought. (shrink)

"Consciousness" is a multiply ambiguous word, and if our goal is to explain perceptual consciousness we had better be clear about which of the many senses of the word we are endorsing when we sign on to the project. I describe some of the relatively standard distinctions made in the philosophical literature about different meanings of the word "conscious". Then I consider some of the arguments of David Chalmers and of Ned Block that states of "phenomenal consciousness" pose special and (...) intractable problems for the scientific understanding of perception. I argue that many of these problems are introduced by obscurities in the term itself, and propose a distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic senses of the term "phenomenal consciousness". That distinction helps explain why phenomenal consciousness seems so mysterious to so many people. States of "phenomenal consciousness" are not states of one, elemental kind; they are a ragtag lot, of differing levels of complexity, corralled under one heading by a regrettable ambiguity in our terminology. (shrink)

This PhD thesis concerns introspective approaches to the study of the mind. Across three standalone papers, I examine the significance of introspective data and advise on appropriate kinds of training for the production of such data. An overview document first introduces major themes, methods and arguments of the thesis. Paper 1 then begins the argumentative work, interrogating the constraining function of introspection in cognitive science. Here, I evaluate “enactivist” claims about the significance of introspection, clarifying central enactivist suggestions to draw (...) out the broader importance of introspection in science and philosophy. Paper 2 then examines the proposed employment of Buddhist meditation practices in the production of rigorous introspective data. I defend such proposals against concerns that meditators yield ungeneralizable data, given the transformative character of these attention-training techniques. I argue that some meditation-trained transformations are actually epistemically-beneficial, undermining popular associations between transformation and “distortion”. Paper 3 then reviews difficulties involved in integrating meditative training into research. I emphasise the importance of specific contextual supports to meditation as critical ingredients of introspective proficiency, showing how difficulties replicating these threaten to limit the scope of meditation’s scientific benefits. I layout methodological responses to this that can maximise meditation’s positive impact going forwards. (shrink)

The paper discusses possible roles of consciousness in a semiotic activity of a cognitive agent. The discussion, we claim, is based on two related approaches to consciousness: on Chalmers’ theory of phenomenal and psychological consciousness and on Damasio’s neural theory, which draws a distinction between core and extended consciousness. Two stages of cognitive-semiotic processing are discussed: the moment of perception of a sign as a meaningful entity and the metasemiotic processes understood as the human capacity to reflect on signs and (...) their usage, analyse and control processes of recognition, interpretation of signs and to detect and correct errors in semiotic activity. In the case of the first stage, it is argued that signs as meaningful entities have a distincly experiential character. The feeling of meaningfulness is a result of phenomenal consciousness, in particular a result of the so-called valuation features of phenomenal experience. I claim that this aspect of cognitive-semiotic activity is possible owing to a special neural mechanism called a semiotic marker. It is argued that semiotic systems have to be able to use signs as signs, i.e. they should display some metacognitive capacities, in particular an ability to analyse semiosis at a metalevel. It is argued that such metasemiosis is dependent on psychological consciousness and is realized at the neural level in the form of extended consciousness. The paper is based on a particular understanding of cognitive semiotics as a discipline involving analyses of cognitive processes as semiotic processes, i.e. processes requiring usage of signs. (shrink)

The first part of this thesis articulates and defends the Subjectivist View of the Mental. According to this view, my mental states are essentially different from the mental states of everyone else, but the fact that they are is a subjective fact, rather than an objective one. Chapter 1 explains what it takes for a fact to be subjective, what kind of difference holds between my mental states and everyone else's mental states and what kind of intuitions lead me to (...) believe that there is such a difference. Chapter 2 defends the Subjectivist View of the Mental from objections and discusses some of its most significant implications. In the second part of the thesis, I explore the advantages that the Subjectivist View of the Mental offers when it comes to accounting for three basic features of our knowledge of the mental. Chapter 3 deals with the asymmetry between self-knowledge and knowledge of other minds. It is argued that, if the Subjectivist View of the Mental is true, we can explain why this asymmetry holds without assuming that self-knowledge and knowledge of other minds are involved with substantially different ways of knowing. Chapter 4 focuses on the immunity to error through misidentification of mental self-ascriptions. I show that, while there has been a temptation to explain this phenomenon by following Lichtenberg and Wittgenstein in taking the content of mental self-ascriptions to be general rather than particular, this proposal cannot be made to work unless something like the Subjectivist View of the Mental is true. Chapter 5 is concerned with experiential knowledge. I argue that, if experiential truths are taken to be objective truths, it is not easy to see why experiential knowledge should have the peculiar 'first-hand' character it has. The problem disappears if experiential truths are regarded as subjective rather than objective. (shrink)

The idea that science explains or ought to explain every phenomenon finds Cartesian dualism of mind and body to be an unsatisfactory thesis. Consequently we have a variety of materialist theories regarding mind and consciousness. In recent times, we come across many philosophers who are committed to the scientific world picture, trying to locate mind within a world that is essentially physical.The central problems these philosophers have to tackle consist of consciousness and mental causation. In what follows we discuss how (...) Husserlian phenomenology responds to this debate. (shrink)

This paper argues that the many and various conceptions of consciousness propounded by cognitive scientists and philosophers can all be understood as constituted with reference to four fundamental sorts of criterion: epistemic (concerned with kinds of consciousness), semantic (dealing with orders of consciousness), physiological (reflecting states of consciousness), and pragmatic (seeking to capture types of consciousness). The resulting four-fold taxonomy, intended to be exhaustive, suggests that all of the distinct varieties of consciousness currently encountered in cognitive neuroscience, the philosophy of (...) mind, clinical psychology, and other related fields ultimately refer to a unified natural process, analysed under four general aspects. The proposed taxonomy will, it is hoped, possess sufficient clarity to serve as a sound theoretical framework for further scientific studies, and to count as a significant step in the direction of a properly formulated unified concept of consciousness. (shrink)

We seem to enjoy a special kind of access to our beliefs. We seem able to know about them via a distinctively first-personal method, and such knowledge seems epistemically superior to any knowledge that others might attain of our beliefs. This paper defends a novel account of this access. The account is extrospective in that it explains this access in terms of our ability to think about the (non-mental) world. Moreover, it does not require the contentious claim that judging that (...) p suffices for coming to believe that p. This is a significant strength of the account. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that existing ‘self-representational’ theories of phenomenal consciousness do not adequately address the problem of higher-order misrepresentation. Drawing a page from the phenomenal concepts literature, a novel self-representational account is introduced that does. This is the quotational theory of phenomenal consciousness, according to which the higher-order component of a conscious state is constituted by the quotational component of a quotational phenomenal concept. According to the quotational theory of consciousness, phenomenal concepts help to account for the (...) very nature of phenomenally conscious states. Thus, the paper integrates two largely distinct explanatory projects in the field of consciousness studies: (i) the project of explaining how we think about our phenomenally conscious states, and (ii) the project of explaining what phenomenally conscious states are in the first place. (shrink)

Ground Representationism is the position that for each phenomenal feature there is a representational feature that accounts for it. Against this thesis, Ned Block (The Puzzle of Phenomenal Precision, 2015) has provided an intricate argument that rests on the notion of “phenomenal precision”: the phenomenal precision of a percept may change at a different rate from its representational counterpart. If so, there is then no representational feature that accounts for a specific change of this phenomenal feature. Therefore, Ground Representationism cannot (...) be generally true. -/- Although the notion of phenomenal precision is intuitive, it is admittedly in need of clarification. Here I reconstruct Block’s argument by suggesting a way of estimating phenomenal precision that is based on the assumption that parts of perceptual wholes can share phenomenal features independently of their place in the whole. Understood like this, the overall argument shows what it is supposed to show. -/- A more thorough look at the notion of phenomenal precision suggests tension with Block’s other work: in order to be non-trivial, we have to accept that some of our phenomenality is not concrete, but only generic. Such “solely generic phenomenology”, however, is a position mainly held by opponents to Block’s Access- vs. Phenomenal Consciousness-distinction. Interpreting phenomenal imprecision as constituted by introspective imprecision does not suffice as a way out. It seems that phenomenal precision is either trivial, self-contradictory, or incompatible with Block’s position elsewhere. So some additional elucidation on this crucial notion is needed. (shrink)

This thesis is an examination and critique of naturalistic representational theories of phenomenal character. Phenomenal character refers to the distinctive quality that perceptual and sensational experiences seem to have; it is identified with 'what it is like' to undergo experiences. The central claims of representationalism are that phenomenal character is identical with the content of experience and that all representational states, bearing appropriate relations to the cognitive system, are conscious experiences. These claims are taken to explain both how conscious experiential (...) states arise and their nature. After examining the desiderata for naturalistic explanations, I argue that theories which ascribe nonconceptual content to experiences are the most plausible versions of representationalism. Further, causal covariation and teleological theories yield distinctive and interesting representationalist positions, hence, they become the focus of this study. To assess representationalism, I investigate whether all differences in phenomenal character can be correlated with differences in content. I claim that a useful distinction can be drawn between implicit and explicit content, which allows one to best describe the phenomena of perfect and relative pitch. I then argue that ambiguous figures show that two experiences can have the same content but different phenomenal character. I explicate the Inverted Earth hypothesis and claim that to identify content and phenomenal character, representationalists either have to condone the possibility of philosophical zombies, or hold that people lack authoritative first-person knowledge of their current experiences. Both these positions are unpalatable. Finally, I argue that representationalists cannot ascribe contents to experiences of novel colours to account for their phenomenal character. I also question, in light of dissociation phenomena, whether there is one distinctive relationship that all experiences bear to the cognitive system. I conclude that phenomenal character cannot be identical with the type of content under investigation, and that naturalistic representationalist theories cannot fully explain conscious experience. (shrink)

Imagine, if you will, that the entire community of investigators interested in the problems of perception all lived together in the same town. Some continual shuffling of neighbors would be inevitable, and there might be occasional episodes of mass relocation and energetic bulldozing, but after a while the residents would probably settle down and find themselves living in districts defined roughly by disciplinary boundaries. The experimental psychologists would occupy the newer part of town, laced with superhighways, workshops and factories, machines (...) and measuring instruments, computers and overhead display units. But the town also has an Old City, marked by the complete absence of highways and factories, where the streets are lined with ancient hovels. There are, to be sure, some colossal palaces and museums in this part of town, breathtaking monuments to the grandeur of past centuries, but the current residents lack the inclination to construct such buildings, and many of the old palaces have been boarded up and condemned as unfit for human habitation. The somewhat scraggly and irascible inhabitants of this district have few viable economic enterprises, and no free markets, but rather organize themselves in units resembling nothing so much as medieval guilds. Congratulations. You have stumbled into the neighborhood where the philosophers live. (shrink)

ABSTRCT: In this commentary, I criticize Metzinger's interdisciplinary approach to fixing the explanandum of a theory of consciousness and I offer a commonsense alternative in its place. I then re-evaluate Metzinger's multi-faceted working concept of consciousness, and argue for a shift away from the notion of "global availability" and towards the notio ns of "perspectivalness" and "transparency." This serves to highlight the role of Metzinger's "phenomenal model of the intentionality relation" (PMIR) in explaining consciousness, and it helps to locate Metzinger's (...) theory in relation to other naturalistic theories of. (shrink)