In response to Petitmengin and Bitbol's recent account of first-person methodologies in the study of consciousness, I provide a revised model of our introspective knowledge of our own conscious experience. This model, which I call the existential constitution model of phenomenal knowledge, avoids the problems that Petitmengin and Bitbol identify with standard observational models of introspection while also avoiding an underlying metaphorical misconception in their own proximity model, which misconstrues first-person knowledge of consciousness in terms of a dichotomous epistemic relationship. (...) The end result is a clearer understanding of the unique nature and epistemic properties of our knowledge of consciousness, as well as the epistemic status of subsequent first-person reports on conscious experience. (shrink)

Graham Priest has argued that Yablo’s paradox involves a kind of ‘hidden’ circularity, since it involves a predicate whose satisfaction conditions can only be given in terms of that very predicate. Even if we accept Priest’s claim that Yablo’s paradox is self-referential in this sense—that the satisfaction conditions for the sentences making up the paradox involve a circular predicate—it turns out that there are paradoxical variations of Yablo’s paradox that are not circular in this sense, since they involve satisfaction conditions (...) that are not recursively specifiable, and hence not recognizable in the sense required for Priest’s argument. In this paper I provide a general recipe for constructing infinitely many such noncircular Yabloesque paradoxes, and conclude by drawing some more general lessons regarding our ability to identify conditions that are necessary and sufficient for paradoxically more generally. (shrink)

Graham Priest has argued that Yablo’s paradox involves a kind of ‘hidden’ circularity, since it involves a predicate whose satisfaction conditions can only be given in terms of that very predicate. Even if we accept Priest’s claim that Yablo’s paradox is self-referential in this sense—that the satisfaction conditions for the sentences making up the paradox involve a circular predicate—it turns out that there are paradoxical variations of Yablo’s paradox that are not circular in this sense, since they involve satisfaction conditions (...) that are not recursively specifiable, and hence not recognizable in the sense required for Priest’s argument. In this paper I provide a general recipe for constructing infinitely many such noncircular Yabloesque paradoxes, and conclude by drawing some more general lessons regarding our ability to identify conditions that are necessary and sufficient for paradoxically more generally. (shrink)

We seem to have private privileged access to our own minds through introspection, but what exactly does this involve? Do we somehow literally perceive our own minds, as the common idea of a 'mind's eye' suggests, or are there other processes at work in our ability to know our own minds? Rethinking Introspection offers a new pluralist framework for understanding the nature, scope, and limits of introspection. The book argues that, contrary to common misconceptions, introspection does not consist of a (...) single mechanism but rather a diverse range of mental states and cognitive processes with a broad spectrum of epistemic properties. Building upon this revised conception of introspection, the book illustrates and analyzes the variety of ways in which we introspectively grasp the contents of our own minds, from the immediate phenomenal knowledge generated by conscious experience to the self-deceptive possibilities enabled by certain kinds of inner speech. (shrink)

Reclaiming the Wilderness: Contemporary Dynamics of the Yiguandao by Sébastien Billioud offers a fieldwork-based inquiry into the nature and transmission processes of a growing transnational religious movement as it attempts to "reclaim the wilderness" of mainland China. This group emerged as a prominent millenarian redemptive society in the first half of the 20th century in mainland China, before it was driven away to Taiwan as an illegal secret society by the anti-religion campaign of the Communist regime. The foundation of the (...) book is Billioud's own participant observation within one particular hub of the religion in Hong Kong, but also includes some fieldwork in Taiwan, Macao, China, and Paris, along with... (shrink)