Our knowledge of each others’ mental features is sometimes epistemically basic or non-inferential. The alternative to this claim is Inferentialism, the view that such knowledge is always epistemically inferential. Here, I argue that Inferentialism is not plausible. My argument takes the form of an inference to the best explanation. Given the nature of the task involved in recognizing what mental features others have on particular occasions, and our capacity to perform that task, we should not expect always to find good (...) inferential explanations of our knowledge. This conclusion is an epistemological one. The motivation for it is independent of metaphysical concerns about functionalism or about the best way to model the cognitive architecture which produces our knowledge of others’ minds. Given this it is compatible both with the truth of functionalism and theory–theory construed as a cognitive model. (shrink)

It is common to find depictions of behaviorist approaches to the mind as approaches according to which mental events are “dispositions for behavior.” Moreover, it is sometimes said that for these approaches the dispositions are for publicly observable behaviors, or even “purely physical movements,” thereby excluding from being constitutive of mental events any internal bodily happening, besides any movement not taken as “purely physical.” In this paper I aim to pinpoint problems in such widespread depictions of behaviorism about the mind, (...) by arguing that they turn out to be too restrictive or too broad, as the case may be. In addition, I put forward an alternative, more balanced characterization, which wards off such problems. Based upon this alternative characterization, I attempt to classify some of the embodied mind theories as behavioral, non-behavioral, or borderline cases between behavioral and non-behavioral perspectives. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that bodily pain, as a phenomenal property, is an essentially and substantial dispositional property. To this end, I maintain that this property is individuated by its phenomenal roles, which can be internal -individuating the property per se- and external -determining further phenomenal or physical properties or states. I then argue that this individuation allows phenomenal roles to be organized in a necessarily asymmetrical net, thereby overcoming the circularity objection to dispositionalism. Finally, I provide reasons to (...) argue that these roles satisfy modal fixity, as posited by Bird, and are not fundamental properties, contra Chalmers’ panpsychism. Thus, bodily pain can be considered a substantial dispositional property entrenched in non-fundamental laws of nature. (shrink)

This paper argues that, while there is a difference between personal and sub-personal explanation, claims of autonomy should be treated with scepticism. It distinguishes between horizontal and vertical explanatory relations that might hold between facts at the personal and facts at the sub-personal level. Noting that many philosophers are prepared to accept vertical explanatory relations between the two levels, I argue for the stronger claim that, in the case of at least three central personal level phenomena, the demands of explanatory (...) adequacy require postulating horizontal explanatory relations. (shrink)