It is often said that ‘what it is like’-knowledge cannot be acquired by consulting testimony or reading books [Lewis 1998; Paul 2014; 2015a]. However, people also routinely consult books like What It Is Like to Go to War [Marlantes 2014], and countless ‘what it is like’ articles and youtube videos, in the apparent hope of gaining knowledge about what it is like to have experiences they have not had themselves. This article (...) examines this puzzle and tries to solve it by appealing to recent work on knowing-wh ascriptions. In closing I indicate the wider significance of these ideas by showing how they can help us to evaluate prominent arguments by Paul [2014; 2015a] concerning transformative experiences. (shrink)

Physicalism in philosophy of mind is the doctrine that mental states and processes, if they are something, are physical states and processes. Notoriously, Frank Jackson has attacked physicalism with the knowledge argument. This paper does not consider whether the knowledge argument is successful. Instead, the author argues that the ability reply to the knowledge argument fails. The central assumption of this objection is that Mary, by having colour experiences, acquires a set of abilities rather than new beliefs as required by (...) the knowledge argument. Against the ability reply, it is maintained that Mary on her release acquires new beliefs about objects looking the same colour. As a preliminary, it is shown, against an important criticism of the knowledge argument, that we can make sense of what Mary knows about colour experience when in the black-and-white laboratory. (shrink)

Does God knows what it is like to be me? Scripture and religious tradition seem quite clear that God knows everything about us, even the deepest secrets of our hearts. There is nothing hidden from him. And this is an answer backed up by a more philosophical theology; for among the traditional list of divine attributes is omniscience: knowing everything that there is to know. The idea, moreover, seems essential to the ordinary religious consciousness, for how can (...) God really help us, or fairly judge us, unless he knows exactly what things are like for us? (shrink)

Does God knows what it is like to be me? Scripture and religious tradition seem quite clear that God knows everything about us, even the deepest secrets of our hearts. There is nothing hidden from him. And this is an answer backed up by a more philosophical theology; for among the traditional list of divine attributes is omniscience: knowing everything that there is to know. The idea, moreover, seems essential to the ordinary religious consciousness, for how can (...) God really help us, or fairly judge us, unless he knows exactly what things are like for us? (shrink)

Understanding and empathy on the part of those in privileged positions are often cited as powerful tools in the fight against oppression. Too often, however, those in positions of power assume they know what it is like to be less well off when, in actuality, they do not. This kind of assumption represents a thinking vice we dub synecdoche epistemic arrogance. In instances of synecdoche epistemic arrogance, a person who has privilege wrongly assumes, based on limited experiences, that (...) she can know what it is like to experience a particular form of oppression. We argue two main points. First, synecdoche epistemic arrogance can lead to a variety of moral harms. Second, synecdoche epistemic arrogance is often tied to other troubling epistemic patterns, which we discuss in the context of disability and race simulations. Overall, the essay helps demonstrate how synecdoche epistemic arrogance can contribute to injustice. (shrink)

The topic of divine omniscience is well-trodden ground, with philosophers and theologians having asked virtually every question there is to ask about it. The questions regarding God's omniscience to be addressed here are as follows. First, is omniscience best understood as maximal propositional knowledge along with maximal experiential knowledge? I argue that it is. Second, is it possible for God to be essentially omniscient? I argue that it is not.

Walking through the supermarket, I see the avocados. I know they are avocados. Similarly, if you see a pumpkin on my office desk, you can know it’s a pumpkin from its looks. The phenomenology in such cases is that of “just seeing” that such and such. This phenomenology might suggest that the knowledge gained is immediate. This paper argues, to the contrary, that in these target cases, the knowledge is mediate, depending as it does on one’s knowledge of what (...) the relevant kind of thing looks like. To make the case requires examining the nature of knowing what Fs look like. Is such knowledge to be understood as knowledge of a fact, or rather as a kind of ability? From the conclusion that the knowledge in the target cases is not immediate, the paper concludes that perception does not afford us immediate knowledge concerning objects’ kinds. (shrink)

In ‘Knowing What Things Look Like,’ I argued against the immediacy of visual objectual knowledge, i.e. visual knowledge that a thing is F, for an object category F, such as avocado, tree, desk, etc. Joseph Shieber proposes a challenging dilemma in reply. Either knowing what Fs look like requires having concepts such as looks or it doesn’t. Either way my argument fails. If knowing what Fs look like doesn’t require having such (...) concepts, then he claims we can give an immediacy-friendly anti-intellectualist account of knowing what Fs look like, one that I neglected. If it does require having such concepts, then knowledge of what Fs look like plays no important role in ordinary cases of knowing things to be F by their looks. I argue for several claims. First, Shieber's anti-intellectualist proposal fails for independent reasons. Second, I give reasons for thinking that knowing what Fs look like doesn't require having a general concept of looks, which lessens worries about nonhuman animals having such knowledge. Finally, I consider the possibility, important to Shieber's argument, that nonhuman animals are simply incapable of knowing what Fs look like. I argue the implications for human knowledge are far from clear. (shrink)

Intentionality is a mark of the mental, as Brentano (1874) noted. Any representation or conception of anything has the feature of intentionality, which informally put, is the feature of being about something that may or may not exist. Visual artworks are about something, whether something literal or abstract. The artwork is a mentalized physical object. Aesthetic experience of the artwork illustrates the nature of intentionality as we focus attention on the phenomenology of the sensory exemplar. This focus of attention on (...) the exemplar in aesthetic experience simultaneously exhibits what the intentional object is like and what our conception of it is like. The exemplar is Janus-faced, looking in one direction outward toward the objects conceived and in the other direction inward toward our conceiving of them. It shows us what intentionality is like and how we know it. (shrink)

Many people believe that the mind is an epistemic refuge of sorts. The idea is that when it comes to certain core mental states, one’s being in such a state automatically puts one in a position to know that one is in that state. This idea has come under attack in recent years. One particularly influential attack comes from Timothy Williamson (2000), who argues that there is no central core of states or conditions—mental or otherwise—to which we are guaranteed epistemic (...) access. In Williamson’s words, we are cognitively homeless. In this paper I will argue that Williamson’s argument for the conclusion that we are cognitively homeless fails. Then I will show that there is a class of phenomenal states that constitutes a substantial cognitive refuge. When all is said and done, I will have both defended and shed light on our cognitive home. (shrink)

This article discusses a kind of knowledge classifiable as knowledge-wh but which seems to defy analysis in terms of the standard reductive theory of knowledge-wh ascriptions, according to which they are true if and only if one knows that p, where this proposition is an acceptable answer to the wh-question ‘embedded’ in the ascription. Specifically, it is argued that certain cases of knowing what an experience is like resist such treatment. I argue that in some of these (...) cases, one can know that p, where an acceptable answer to the question ‘What’s the experience like?’ is that p, but where one does not know what the experience is like. This could point to the distinctiveness of this sort of knowledge. (shrink)

David Lewis—famously—never tasted vegemite. Did he have any knowledge of what it's like to taste vegemite? Most say 'no'; I say 'yes'. I argue that knowledge of what it’s like varies along a spectrum from more exact to more approximate, and that phenomenal concepts vary along a spectrum in how precisely they characterize what it’s like to undergo their target experiences. This degreed picture contrasts with the standard all-or-nothing picture, where phenomenal concepts and phenomenal (...) knowledge lack any such degreed structure. I motivate the degreed picture by appeal to (1) limits in epistemic abilities such as recognition, imagination, and inference, and (2) the semantics of ‘knows what it’s like’ expressions. I argue that approximate phenomenal knowledge cannot be explained merely via determinable or vague phenomenal concepts. I develop a framework for systematizing approximate knowledge of phenomenal character. And I explain how my view challenges some standard assumptions about the acquisition conditions, requirements for mastery, and referential mechanisms of phenomenal concepts. (shrink)

Discusses aspects of objective knowledge such as the evolution of beliefs, the inadequacies of learning, and the value of philosophy.

‘What it is like’ talk (‘WIL-talk’) — the use of phrases such as ‘what it is like’ — is ubiquitous in discussions of phenomenal consciousness. It is used to define, make claims about, and to offer arguments concerning consciousness. But what this talk means is unclear, as is how it means what it does: how, by putting these words in this order, we communicate something about consciousness. Without a good account of WIL-talk, we cannot (...) be sure this talk sheds light, rather than casts shadows, on our investigations of consciousness. The popular technical account of WIL-talk (see e.g. Lewis, 1995, and Kim, 1998) holds that WIL-talk involves technical terms — terms which look like everyday words but have a distinct meaning — introduced by philosophers. I argue that this account is incorrect by showing that the alleged technical terms were not introduced by philosophers, and that these terms do not have a technical meaning. (shrink)

The paper proposes a way of bridging the gapbetween physical processes in the brain and the ''''felt''''aspect of sensory experience. The approach is based onthe idea that experience is not generated by brainprocesses themselves, but rather is constituted by theway these brain processes enable a particular form of''''give-and-take'''' between the perceiver and theenvironment. From this starting-point we are able tocharacterize the phenomenological differences betweenthe different sensory modalities in a more principledway than has been done in the past. We are also (...) ableto approach the issues of visual awareness andconsciousness in a satisfactory way. Finally weconsider a number of testable empirical consequences,one of which is the striking prediction of thephenomenon of ''''change blindness''''. (shrink)

ABSTRACT‘What it is like’ is a popular philosophical locution to talk about conscious experiences, but how it manages to refer to conscious experiences is still under investigation. What’s remarkable about ‘what it is like’ is that its literal meaning doesn’t concern consciousness; nevertheless this phrase is popular in discourses about consciousness. Understanding ‘what it is like’ thus requires investigation into the contextual factors that guide the interpretation of ‘what it is like’, (...) which have not been sufficiently explored. This paper aims at understanding the context of ‘what it is like’, based on a revised property account of its semantics. After criticising Stoljar’s account in terms of ‘stereotypical contexts’, I consider several contextual factors that can be discerned in Stoljar’s interpretation of Nagel’s definition of consciousness. Then, I consider and criticise Mehta’s proposal that the meaning of ‘what it is like’ is fixed by mentioning the hard problems of consciousness. Eventually, I propose that the meaning of ‘what it is like’ is fixed by Phenomenal Thinking Context, in which the audience is made to think in the way in which one typically thinks about experiences. I also argue that Phenomenal Thinking Context explains the popularity of ‘what it is like’. (shrink)

Individuals differ considerably in their emotion experience. Some experience emotions in a highly differentiated manner, clearly distinguishing among a variety of negative and positive discrete emotions. Others experience emotions in a relatively undifferentiated manner, treating a range of like-valence terms as interchangeable. Drawing on self-regulation theory, we hypothesised that individuals with highly differentiated emotion experience should be better able to regulate emotions than individuals with poorly differentiated emotion experience. In particular, we hypothesised that emotion differentiation and emotion regulation would (...) be positively related in the context of intense negative emotions, where the press for emotion regulation is generally greatest. To test this hypothesis, participants' negative and positive emotion differentiation was assessed using a 14-day diary protocol. Participants' regulation of negative and positive emotions was assessed using laboratory measures. As predicted, negative emotion differentiation was positively related to the frequency of negative emotion regulation, particularly at higher levels of emotional intensity. (shrink)

Tacit knowing as a concept and legitimate topic of scholarship came up in philosophical research in the second half of the 20th century in the form of some influential works by Michael Polanyi (although similar concepts had been discussed before). Systematic epistemological studies on the topic are still scarce, however. In this article, I support the thesis that tacit knowing pervades all our common major divisions of knowledge and that it therefore must not be neglected in epistemological research. (...) By this approach I am simultaneously giving a systematic back-up for Polanyi's claim that the tacit component is found in all knowledge. (shrink)

Resumen La pretensión de que la violencia es un fenómeno apto para el abordaje objetivo es altamente cuestionable. En este artículo se indicarán algunos aspectos que subyacen en los enfoques más clásicos sobre tal tópico y se destacará el potencial violentogénico que encapsulan. El núcleo de las ideas expuestas apunta a plantear que la epistemología objetivista induce a una violencia simbólica enquistada en el principio del tercero excluido. En consecuencia, los esfuerzos por convertir a la violencia en un tema de (...) investigación objetiva terminan transformándose en una flagrante retroalimentación de la misma violencia que se proponen observar. Ahora bien, en contraste con esa anquilosada postura objetivista, se explorará un enfoque epistemológico de corte socio-construccionista que complejiza el abordaje de la violencia al enmarcarla dentro de una "investigación de segundo orden".The claim that violence is a phenomenon suitable for the objective approach is highly questionable. In this article, some aspects underlying the more classical approaches about such topic will be indicated, and their intrinsic violent potential will be emphasized. The core of the ideas that aims to raise the objectivist epistemology leads to a symbolic violence entrenched in the principle of the excluded middle. Consequently, efforts to make violence a topic of objective research end up becoming a flagrant feedback of the same violence they intend to observe. However, in contrast to the ossified objectivist position, a socio-constructionist epistemological approach will be explored. It focuses on violence as a complex reality, by framing it within a "Second-Order Research". (shrink)

Thought, including conscious perception, is representation. But perceptual representation is uniquely direct, permitting immediate acquaintance with the world and ensuring perception's distinctive phenomenal character. The perceptive mind is extended. It recruits the very objects perceived to constitute self-referential representations determinative of what it is like to perceive.

Essentialists understand modal properties in terms of the essences of things. Given this view, it is natural to think that our knowledge of modality ultimately derives from our knowledge of the essences of things. Is that view plausible? Do we genuinely have knowledge of the essences of things, in a form substantial enough to ground our modal knowledge? The more we pack into the notion of essence to allow it to underpin modal properties, the harder it is to claim genuine (...) knowledge. I will argue that realists about essence of a certain kind can have the best of both worlds. They can co-opt a conventionalist explanation of our knowledge of essence, but against the background of a fully realist notion of essence. (shrink)

The most plausible type of panpsychism explains high-level consciousness as a compound of basic conscious properties instantiated by basic bottom-level physical objects. Arguments for panpsychism stand little chance in the absence of an account that makes sense of basic bottom-level experience; and explains how basic bottom-level experiences yield high-level experiences. This paper tackles the first task. It develops a method for investigating basic bottom-level experience: it identifies constraints, motivated by scientific and philosophical considerations, that force a unique account. Then it (...) applies this method, using quarks as stand-ins for basic but conscious physical objects. It concludes that quark-consciousness is maximally simple ; multiple ; and internal. (shrink)

Joint actions typically involve a sense of togetherness that has a distinctive phenomenological component. While it has been hypothesized that group size, hierarchical structure, division of labour, and expertise impact agents’ phenomenology during joint actions, the studies conducted so far have mostly involved dyads performing simple actions. We explore in this study the complex case of collectively improvised musical performances, focusing particularly on the way group size and interactional patterns modulate the phenomenology of joint action. We recorded two expert improvisation (...) ensembles of contrasting sizes and collected data about their musical behaviour, as well as reports about five aspects of their phenomenology and about their musical intentions. Our overall data enabled us to assess how those five phenomenological dimensions related to one another during jointly improvised performances. They also show how such phenomenology varied with the way improvisers dynamically related to one another throughout the performance. Finally, we observe that group size strongly altered the phenomenology of improvisers who otherwise shared many characteristics. Our study thus sheds light on the interactional and structural parameters that shape and modulate our felt experience when acting together, and thereby highlights the importance of pluralism for studying the phenomenology of joint action. (shrink)

The human body is ?transmogrified? (caricatured) under physicalistic descriptions of it. These imply that it is a contingent fact that rational beings such as human persons have the sort of bodies they do have. (Or, that, say, baboons are not rational creatures.) The human body is ?transfigured? under a description that makes it necessary to the performance of rational functions, including speaking a language. Any view of the matter that excludes this notion, either by reduction to the physicalist treatment or (...) simple denial, is inadequate. (shrink)

From an Indirect Realist point of view, the Knowledge Argument in the philosophy of perception has been misdirected by its very title. If it can be argued that sense-fields are at their basis no more than evidence, indeed, a part of existence as brute as what is usually termed the 'external', then, if 'knowing' is not essential to sensing, that argument has to be radically reconstructed. Resistance to there being an non-epistemic or 'raw feel' basis for sensing is (...) very fashionable at the moment (e.g. in Davidson, McDowell, Harman), but the present article aims at breaking through it. Scientific facts are adduced to show that sensing can exist without perceiving. It is argued that the part played by motivation in the gathering of knowledge in a feedback system, enhanced by intersubjective linguistic correction in the human case, allows for a ready evolutionary adaptation. One can advance from this to a fresh view of knowledge and rationality which see them at base as part of a folk-psychological method of allowing for continuing disambiguation of what are identified within that method as 'entities' and 'properties'. (shrink)

I argue that the knowledge argument is best understood as an argument for the existence of non-physical properties of material objects, or colours. I suggest that the knowledge argument is standardly presented as an argument for the existence of qualia because it is implicitly assumed that physics “tell us” that what it is like to perceive colour is determined, not by properties of material objects, but by properties of perceiving subjects; hence any gaps in Mary’s knowledge must be (...) gaps in her knowledge about perceiving subjects. If nothing else, this physicalist assumption is odd given that the knowledge argument is supposed to be an argument against physicalism. Using the knowledge argument as an argument for the existence of non-physical colours is consistent with the transparency of perceptual experience. Moreover, rejecting the physicalist assumption behind the orthodox interpretation of the knowledge argument undermines the motivation for thinking of non-physical colours as epiphenomenal. (shrink)

Projection does not reliably serve cognition; it all too often contributes to failures of knowledge. Our projecting not only imaginatively misrepresents the world by attributing a feature of ourself to it. In doing so it can misrepresent us as lacking that feature. It is an act of the imagination which re-locates unwanted attributes into a motivated misrepresentation which distorts our grasp of reality and of ourselves. The imaginative act itself is not consciously intended so that we take the resulting picture (...) at face value, despite the distortion. Without a strong reason to question this misperception the projection remains undetected and the misrepresentation affects our relations to others. Projection serving motivated self-deception thus evades correction. Realistic self-knowledge becomes possible through psychoanalysis when the patient's projections are received by the analyst as communications impinging on her capacity for sympathy. I show how the psychology of sympathy we find in Hume and Smith provides a philosophical frame of reference for understanding this interaction between sympathy and projection. I bring sympathy together with contemporary Kleinian psychoanalytic theory to explain how psychoanalytic interpretation engages with this interaction to reduce the effects of projection and enable a self-knowledge grounded in the subject's own experience of herself. (shrink)

Concilier l’explication scientifique de la vision avec la description phénoménologique est l’une des tâches que se donne la philosophie du sens commun. Dans cet article, nous étudions la façon dont la description de ce que cela fait de percevoir autorise Reid à induire des lois rendant raison de la vision en tant qu’elle porte sur des choses réelles. Bien que Reid soutienne que l’esprit perçoit des choses existant indépendamment de nous, sa théorie a pu être la cible d’objections faisant craindre (...) que l’expérience y soit réduite à la sphère subjective ou mentale. Pour réévaluer ce point à propos de sa théorie de la vision, nous examinons les moyens qui lui permettent d’induire des lois en restant au plus près d’une phénoménologie de la vision. Nous analysons ainsi les comparaisons contrefactuelles entre les aveugles et les voyants, et les redéfinitions du signe et de la suggestion. L’interprétation que nous en tirons explique comment Reid concilie science et phénoménologie à propos de la vision des couleurs comme à propos de la vision des figures. (shrink)

It is common for philosophers to hold that experience can be characterized in a basic way as being something it is like for someone to undergo. In the paper it is argued that when this slogan is examined it is in some respects trivial and in others mistaken. It is concluded that the slogan should be abandoned.

It is common parlance among philosophers who inquire into the nature of consciousness to speak of there being something it is like for the subject of a mental state to be in it. The popularity of the ‘what-it-is-like’ phrase stems, in part, from the assumption that it enables us to distinguish, in an intuitive and illuminating way, between conscious and unconscious mental states: conscious mental states, unlike unconscious mental states, are such that there is something it is (...) like for their subjects to be in them. The ‘what-it-is-like’ phrase, however, has not gone unopposed; some very clever philosophers have vigorously disputed it. Peter Hacker, for example, has argued that the phrase should be abandoned because it is ungrammatical, and Paul Snowdon has argued that it should be abandoned because the propositions expressed by its usage are either trivial or false. This paper mounts a case for the claim that neither of these conclusions is warranted. Against Hacker, it is argued that the arguments he produces for the ungrammaticality of the phrase are unpersuasive, and against Snowdon it is argued that he fails to consider a plausible and independently motivated interpretation of the phrase, and that, on this interpretation, the propositions expressed by its usage are non-trivially true. (shrink)

What makes a life meaningful and how do we know when our lives have meaning? This paper provides an answer to these questions drawing on the experience of grief. Grief, I argue, is a unique kind of personally and epistemically transformative experience. The experience of grief provides a subject with new insight into what-it-is-like to experience a transformative loss. But not only does one learn what-it-is-like to be personally transformed by loss in the way that (...) one is, in the dynamic process of grieving one often gains retrospective access to facts about the meaningfulness and value that even the most seemingly mundane aspects of their day-to-day lives have had all along. These are facts that can go underappreciated and even unrecognized until the source of that meaning is lost. I propose an explanation for why these facts aren’t more easily known through a simple process like introspection or reflection, and instead require an experience as disorienting as loss. I end by discussing what the epistemic account suggests about a theory of life’s meaningfulness. (shrink)

It is common to characterise phenomenal consciousness as _what it is like_ to be in a mental state. This paper argues that the ‘what-it’s-like’-phrase in this context has a technical meaning, i.e. a meaning for which the association to the relevant expression is peculiar to a theoretical community. The relevant theoretical community is philosophy and some parts of cognitive science, so on this view, only philosophers and cognitive scientists use the ‘what-it’s-like’-phrase in the way that is (...) characteristic in the literature on phenomenal consciousness. This claim has important consequences. Firstly, I argue that the phrase says nothing informative about phenomenal consciousness. Secondly, I argue that the fact that non-philosophers use the phrase is not compelling evidence that they believe in phenomenal consciousness. These claims have further consequences for debates about phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)