In Narrow Content, Hawthorne & Yli-Vakkuri provide an admirably clear and precise framework for understanding the debate between internalist and externalist theories of mental content. They also present a series of arguments against internalism. They identify two views — which they call 'thought-relativism' and 'quasi-internalism' — which seem to avoid their main line of argument. I discuss Hawthorne & Yli-Vakkuri's arguments against these two views, and explore a few different ways in which they might be developed.

Speech and thought about what the law is commonly function in practical ways, to guide or assess behavior. These functions have often been seen as problematic for legal positivism in the tradition of H.L.A. Hart. One recent response is to advance an expressivist analysis of legal statements (Toh), which faces its own, familiar problems. This paper advances a rival, positivist-friendly account of legal statements which we call “quasi-expressivist”, explicitly modeled after Finlay’s metaethical theory of moral statements. This consists in (...) a descriptivist, “rule-relational” semantics combined with a pragmatic account of the expressive and practical functions of legal discourse. We argue that this approach is at least as well-equipped as expressivism to explain the motivational and prescriptive features of “internal” legal statements, as well as a fundamental kind of legal disagreement, while being better positioned to account for various “external” uses of the same language. We develop this theory in a Hartian framework, and in the final part of the paper argue (particularly against Toh’s expressivist interpretation) that Hart’s own views in The Concept of Law are best reconstructed along such quasi-expressivist lines. (shrink)

A common first reaction to expressivist and quasi-realist theories is the thought that, if these theories are right, there's some objectionable sense in which we can't be wrong about morality. This worry turns out to be surprisingly difficult to make stick - an account of moral error as instability under improving changes provides the quasi-realist with the resources to explain many of our concerns about moral error. The story breaks down, though, in the case of fundamental moral error. (...) This is where the initial worry finally sticks - quasi-realism tells me that I can't be fundamentally wrong about morality, though others can. (shrink)

I argue that not all context dependent expressions are alike. Pure (or ordinary) indexicals behave more or less as Kaplan thought. But quasi indexicals behave in some ways like indexicals and in other ways not like indexicals. A quasi indexical sentence φ allows for cases in which one party utters φ and the other its negation, and neither party’s claim has to be false. In this sense, quasi indexicals are like pure indexicals (think: “I am a doctor”/“I (...) am not a doctor” as uttered by different individuals). In such cases involving a pure indexical sentence, it is not appropriate for the two parties to reject each other’s claims by saying, “No.” However, in such cases involving a quasi indexical sentence, it is appropriate for the par- ties to reject each other’s claims. In this sense, quasi indexicals are not like pure indexicals. Drawing on experimental evidence, I argue that gradable adjectives like “rich” are quasi indexicals in this sense. e existence of quasi indexicals raises trouble for many existing theories of context dependence, including standard contextualist and relativist theories. I propose an alternative semantic and pragmatic theory of quasi indexicals, negotiated contextualism, that combines insights from Kaplan 1989 and Lewis 1979. On my theory, rejection is licensed with quasi indexicals (even when neither of the claims involved has to be false) because the two utterances involve conflicting proposals about how to update the conversational score. I also adduce evidence that conflicting truth value assessments of a single quasi indexical utterance exhibit the same behavior. I argue that negotiated contextualism can account for this puzzling property of quasi indexicals as well. (shrink)

William James said that sometimes detailed philosophical argument is irrelevant. Once a current of thought is really under way, trying to oppose it with argument is like planting a stick in a river to try to alter its course: “round your obstacle flows the water and ‘gets there just the same’”. He thought pragmatism was such a river. There is a contemporary river that sometimes calls itself pragmatism, although other titles are probably better. At any rate it is the denial (...) of differences, the celebration of the seamless web of language, the soothing away of distinctions, whether of primary versus secondary, fact versus value, description versus expression, or of any other significant kind. What is left is a smooth, undifferentiated view of language, sometimes a nuanced kind of anthropomorphism or “internal” realism, sometimes the view that no view is possible: minimalism, deflationism, quietism. Wittgenstein is often admired as a high priest of the movement. Planting a stick in this water is probably futile, but having done it before I shall do it again, and—who knows?—enough sticks may make a dam, and the waters of error may subside. (Blackburn, 1998a, 157). (shrink)

If the quasi-realist wants to earn the right to talk like a moral realist, he needs to be able to make sense of moral error. A special form of error—fundamental moral error—is often thought to be u...

The following scenario seems possible: a community uses concepts that play the same role in guiding actions and shaping social life as our normative concepts, and yet refer to something else. As Eklund argues, this apparent possibility poses a problem for any normative realist who aspires to vindicate the thought that reality itself favors our ways of valuing and acting. How can realists make good on this idea, given that anything they might say in support of the privileged status of (...) our normative concepts can be mirrored by the imagined community? E.g., the realist might claim that using our concepts is what we ought to do if we are to describe normative facts correctly, but members of the other community can claim the same about their concepts, using their own concept of ought. A promising approach to this challenge is to try to rule out the possibility of alternative normative concepts, by arguing that any concepts that have the same normative role must share a reference as well. In this paper I argue that normative quasi-naturalism, a view that combines expressivism about normative discourse with a naturalist metaphysics of normativity, supports referential normativity and solves the problem of alternative normative concepts. (shrink)

Imagination has played a major role in theories of numerous aesthetic phenomena: it figures in accounts of the interpretation of art, of our emotional responses to art, and even of what art is, to name but a few topics. But imagination seemingly has a role to play also in aesthetic theorising itself, in particular in aesthetic thought experiments. Thought experiments in general pose an epistemic puzzle: how can a merely imagined scenario yield knowledge? In the paper, I have a look (...) at a special version of this puzzle that some thought experiments in aesthetics occasion. Many thought experiments in aesthetics—e.g. Kendall Walton’s guernica-experiment, or Arthur Danto’s imagined eight-hour long film of the title page of Tolstoy’s War and Peace—involve making judgements regarding the aesthetic properties of merely imagined works of art. But according to a widely accepted principle in aesthetics, one has to be acquainted with a work— seen it, heard it, and so on—in order to be able to judge its aesthetic qualities. But no one has ever seen Danto’s merely imagined film of Tolstoy’s book. So how are we in a position to judge its aesthetic properties? I propose a solution to the puzzle by elaborating on Tamar Gendler’s notion of “quasi-observation,” which she holds to be a common element of thought experimenting. As a coda, I also give a sketch of how aesthetic thought experiments are not only a tool for theorising about art, but often also figure in the production of art. (shrink)

Does the capacity to think require the capacity to sense? A lively debate on this topic runs throughout the history of philosophy and now animates discussions of artificial intelligence. Many have argued that AI systems such as large language models cannot think and understand if they lack sensory grounding. I argue that thought does not require sensory grounding: there can be pure thinkers who can think without any sensory capacities. As a result, the absence of sensory grounding does not entail (...) that large language models cannot think or understand. I also consider to what extent quasi-sensory grounding can at least boost the performance of a language model. (shrink)

Devising an appropriate formal framework for structural realism has long been an issue in the development of this position. Décio Krause has suggested that quasi-set theory might offer such a framework and here I explore that possibility in the context of so-called ‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ forms of Ontic Structural Realism (OSR). However, although the central claims of the former can indeed be captured by quasi-set theory, I argue that these claims cannot bear the metaphysical weight placed upon them (...) and conclude that the search for an appropriate formal framework for OSR remains open.Over the past 35 years or so, structural realism has become one of the dominant positions in the realism-antirealism debate. As is now well-known, it broadly divides into two versions: epistemic structural realism, which, also broadly, states that all that we can know, is structure (Worrall, 1989); and ontic structural realism (OSR), which insists that all that there is, is structure (Ladyman, 1998). One of the questions that is most often asked about this position (asked so often in fact that I’m not going to bother with any citations here!) is the following: What is this structure that we are supposed to be realists about? As I’ve pointed out in what might be seen as a companion piece to this paper, it is remarkable that critics of this view never seem to bother to ask the same question of their own, ‘object-oriented’ stance (French, forthcoming-a, hopefully). It is almost as if they think that the notion of ‘object’ is so metaphysically transparent that no such question needs to be asked of it (reader, it isn’t and it does!). In that other paper I adopted the ‘toolbox’ view of the relationship between science and metaphysics, according to which the latter can be thought of as providing various devices and frameworks with which the theories of the former can be furnished (see French & McKenzie, 2012). (shrink)

For any area of our thought — moral, modal, scientihc, or theological we can ask what explains the way we think. After all, we might never have thought in such terms, or that sort of thought might have been different from the way it is. So there must be some explanation of why it is as it is. Such an explanation would be part of a naturalistic account of the mind.

This paper is a reply to Simon Blackburn's 'Is Objective Moral Justification Possible on a Quasi-realist Foundation?' Inquiry 42, pp. 213-28. Blackburn attempts to show how his version of non-cognitivism - quasi-realist projectivism - can evade the threat of ethical relativism, the thought that all ways of living are as ethically good as each other and every ethical judgment is as ethically true as any other. He further attempts to show that his position is superior in this respect (...) to, amongst other accounts, sensibility theory. According to Blackburn, sensibility theory succumbs easily to the relativistic challenge because it depends on some 'substantive' notion of truth. It is agreed with Blackburn that the threat of relativism is less of a threat to him than at first appears, although I think that it retains some menace, but not agreed that sensibility theorists cannot also counter the threat of relativism. The point is that the threat of ethical relativism depends less on truth than Blackburn supposes. Thus sensibility theorists can counter ethical relativism in much the same way that quasi-realist projectivists can. (shrink)

I. Projcctivism, Subjcctivism, and Error (i) According to Simon Blackburn, somconc who wants t0 avoid a ‘rcalistic’ account of our motal thought faces a choice} Thc choicc is bctwccn his non-rcductionist ‘projcctivism’ and rcductionist ‘subjcctivism’. Thc foymcr is thc vicw that moral judgments cxprcss attitudcs (approval, disapproval, liking or disliking, for example), which wc ‘projcct’ or ‘sprcad’ onto thc world, while thc latter is thc vicw that moral judgments arc bclicfs about attitudes. Blackburn bcratcs philosophers for not sccing thc diffcrcncc, (...) or for not sccing that thc projcctivist option is 0pcn at all. Surcly hc has a point hcrc. The prcjudicc of assuming that philosophy is always conccmcd to proffcr analyses of meaning has meant that thc projcctivist option tcndcd to bc overlooked.; Projcctivism is an cxplanation of what wc arc doing when wc moralizc. It docs not pursue a meaning rcduction; it allows that moral terms havc a distinctive meaning. Blackburn also makes an analogous point in various other areas bcsidcs moral philosophy, such as thc philosophy of causality, probability, and conditionals. (shrink)

Indexicals are inevitably autobiographical, even when we are not talking about ourselves. For example, if you hear me say, "That portrait right there is beautiful," you can surmise not only that I ascribe beauty to an object of my immediate awareness but also something about my spatial relation to it. Again, if I praise you directly within earshot of others by using the words, "You did that very well!," my concern need not be to cause them to think the exact (...) thought I have; they might not be in a position to address you as you and I might not care what they think of your performance. My purpose is to get them to ascribe to me an attitude that I express with a second-person indexical, to convince them that I am an encouraging and supportive person inasmuch as I addressed someone with words of praise. Indexicals are autobiographical not only because they issue from a speaker--all utterances do--but because they reveal something about the speaker's orientation toward and encounter with objects in a way that non-indexical language fails to do. For this reason, care must be taken in reporting indexically-expressed thoughts. Suppose the Chair of my Department informs me, (1)I am upset about the Dean's report. I cannot relate what he said by reiterating his words within indirect discourse, viz., (2)The Chair said that I am upset about the Dean's report. Because 'I' expresses speaker's reference, my assertion of (2) would cause a hearer to misconstrue who is said to be upset.i Alternatively, the sentence, (3)The Chair said that the Chair is upset about the Dean's report. (shrink)

Non-naturalism—roughly the view that normative properties and facts are sui generis—may be combined either with cognitivism or with non-cognitivism. The chapter starts by explaining how the metaphysically necessary connections between the natural and the normative raise an explanatory challenge for realist non-naturalism, and how it is not at all obvious that quasi-realism offers a way of escaping the challenge. Having briefly explored different kinds of accounts of what it is to have thoughts concerning metaphysical necessity, it then proceeds (...) to argue that once we understand the explanatory challenge in the light of a quasi-realist take on normative judgments, this challenge takes the shape of a first-order normative issue, and will be answerable by the quasi-realists’ lights. When it comes to explaining the necessary connections between the normative and the natural, all will be fine, it seems, if non-naturalists just go a little quasi. (shrink)

The debate about how to solve the paradox of fiction has largely been a debate between Kendall Walton and the so-called thought theorists. In recent years, however, Jenefer Robinson has argued, based on her affective appraisal theory of emotion, for a noncognitivist solution to the paradox as an alternative to the thought theorists’ solution and especially to Walton's controversial solution. In this article, I argue that, despite appearances to the contrary, Robinson's affective appraisal theory is compatible with Walton's solution, at (...) the core of which lies the thesis that there are quasi-emotions. Moreover, since Robinson's theory is compatible with Walton's solution, I show how it can be used as a model to empirically test whether quasi-emotions exist. (shrink)

If we consider human thought as the, so far, ultimate, if not supreme, stage in the evolution of life on Earth, we must also try to understand the evolutionary conditions that allowed it to emerge, and that leads us to look again at living organization.Whatever the origins of life (cf. the text of Jacques Reisse, p. 53), it is clear that the oldest living organization, that of a protobacteria, is extremely complex in its functional and complementary association of extremely diverse (...) macro-molecules, and that this complexity includes in particular: a) the organization of exchanges with an environment from which it draws both matter-energy and organization ; b) a permanent process of self-reorganization through the replacing of molecules that have deteriorated and through the production of new ones; c) the organization of the self-reproduction of the creature through division. An organization of this kind includes a quasi-informational dimension (the hereditary message inscribed in the genes and the capacity to extract information from the environment), a quasi-computational dimension (the processing of data, via indices or quasi-signs from the interior and exterior), and a communicational dimension (internal RNA-protein communication and external communication with its congeners). In short, from the beginning, a living being is the product/producer of a self-eco-organization the nature of which is at the same time computational, informational, and communicational. In other words, within every living organization, there is a cognitive dimension, but this cognitive dimension is undifferentiated within it. (shrink)

Expressivism's problem in solving the Frege/Geach problem concerning unasserted contexts is evaluated in the light of Blackburn's own methodological commitment to assessing philosophical theories in terms of costs and benefits, notably quasi-realism's aim of minimising the ontological commitments of a broadly naturalistic worldview. The problem emerges when a competitor theory can explain the same phenomena at lower cost: the minimalist about truth has no problem with unasserted contexts whereas the quasi-realist/expressivist package does. However, this form of projectivism is (...) supposed to be a local and contrastive thesis or the central metaphor of projection makes no sense. So in competition with minimalism, projectivism must - at least for non-contested areas of thought and language - presuppose non-minimal truth. This casts new light on Blackburn's proposal globally to revise the relations between logic and truth so as to model ethical discourse as tracking a notion of commitment to contents that can be either attitudinal or truh evaluable. Why globally revise logic, in order solely to explain the problem of unasserted contexts, when a rival view can do so much better according to the standards set by the quasi-realist? Why do so when a notion of non-minimal truth and a classical explanation of logic are already available to you, given the local and contrastive claims of quasi-realism? (shrink)

'Thought insertion' in schizophrenia involves somehow experiencing one's own thoughts as someone else's. Some philosophers try to make sense of this by distinguishing between ownership and agency: one still experiences oneself as the owner of an inserted thought but attributes it to another agency. In this paper, we propose that thought insertion involves experiencing thought contents as alien, rather than episodes of thinking. To make our case, we compare thought insertion to certain experiences of 'verbal hallucination' and show that (...) they amount to different descriptions of the same phenomenon: a quasi-perceptual experience of thought content. We add that the agency/ownership distinction is unhelpful here. What requires explanation is not why a person experiences a type of intentional state without the usual sense of agency, but why she experiences herself as the agent of one type of intentional state rather than another. We conclude by sketching an account of how this might happen. (shrink)

Contemplating imaginary scenarios that evoke certain sorts of quasi‐sensory intuitions may bring us to new beliefs about contingent features of the natural world. These beliefs may be produced quasi‐observationally; the presence of a mental image may play a crucial cognitive role in the formation of the belief in question. And this albeit fallible quasi‐observational belief‐forming mechanism may, in certain contexts, be sufficiently reliable to count as a source of justification. This sheds light on the central puzzle surrounding (...) scientific thought experiment, which is how contemplation of an imaginary scenario can lead to new knowledge about contingent features of the natural world. (shrink)

Eros Corazza presents a fascinating investigation of the role that indexicals play in our thought. Indexicality is crucial to the understanding of such puzzling issues as the nature of the self, the nature of perception, social interaction, psychological pathologies, and psychological development. Corazza draws on work from philosophy, linguistics, and psychology to illuminate this key aspect of the relation between mind and world. By highlighting how indexical thoughts are irreducible and intrinsically perspectival, Corazza shows how we can depict someone (...) else's indexical thought from a third-person perspective. The phenomenon of quasi-indexicality is introduced here: to represent Jane saying, "I am prosperous", we use what Castañeda termed a quasi-indicator in a report of the form "Jane said that she is prosperous". Corazza argues that quasi-indicators play such an important role in our linguistic, social, and psychological life that they have a cognitive primacy over other mechanisms of reference. Quasi-indexicality also emerges as a key notion when we come to consider our ability to understand other minds. Corazza argues that indexicality and quasi-indexicality are two sides of the same coin, best understood within the framework of direct reference. (shrink)

This interview with the philosopher Bernard Stiegler was conducted in Paris on 28 January 2015, and first appeared in Dutch translation in the journal De uil van Minerva. The conversation begins by discussing the fundamental place occupied by the concept of ‘technics’ in Stiegler’s work, and how the ‘constitutivity’ of technics does and does not relate to Kant and Husserl. Stiegler is then asked about his relationship with Deleuze, and he responds by focusing on the concept of quasi-causality, but (...) also by arguing that there is a certain trajectory in Deleuze’s thought, situating his own philosophy in relation to its various moments. Stiegler is then asked to respond to the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks carried out three weeks prior to the interview. After making a couple of precautionary remarks, Stiegler relates such occurrences to the problem of what he calls ‘spiritual poverty’, to the intensification of ‘negative sublimation’ that can occur when there is a disconnection between the generations, and more generally to the growth of nihilism. All of these phenomena relate to the exploitation of technology by a virulent capitalism that irrationally believes that only the market is rational. After consideration of the complex historical relationship between Islam and modernization, and of both of these to Nietzsche’s ‘death of God’, and after recalling the destructive role played by the West in the rise of fundamentalism and jihadism, Stiegler concludes by reflecting on the fact that, ultimately, ‘intellectuals’ have failed to use technologies in ways that produce alternatives to consumerism. (shrink)

In this article, I conduct a selective reading of Difference and Repetition that intertwines with The Logic of Sense, specifically in relation to the concept of paradox, underscoring how Deleuze's work itself is a performance of the necessity of paradoxical thinking and the insistence on an image of thought which incorporates paradox as its central feature. I argue that para-sense anticipates the centrality of paradox in Logic of Sense, just as the obscure, unilluminated element of Ideas anticipates the significance of (...) non-sense for the proliferation of sense therein. Likewise, the dark precursor as that which enables communication between different kinds bears a resemblance to the idea of the quasi-cause that we find in The Logic of Sense. Paradox, the paradoxical instant and para-sense, as figures which help us to cultivate and maintain the discordant relations of passion to thought, the corporeal and incorporeal, and word and thing, unfix our thinking so that we can allow ourselves to be more thoroughly immersed in the multiplicities and intensities that surround us. This is the possibility of a kind of doubling that is not based on the sterility of representation, but rather the genitality of learning and proliferation of sense. (shrink)

This thesis is a response to the increasingly widespread belief in the potential for technology and modern science to enable finite subjects to overcome the essential limitations constitutive of finitude and, hence, subjectivity. It investigates the truth and extent of such claims, taking as its focus quasi-miraculous technological developments in neuroscience, in particular Brain-Computer Interfacing systems and cognitive imaging technologies. The work poses the question of whether such emergent neurotechnologies signal a profound shift beyond receptivity and finitude by effectively (...) bridging the gap between interiority and exteriority. Organised around a quadripartite division, the thesis pursues this idea firstly with regard to the act of artistic creation; secondly through an exegesis of Kant’s account of the original or infinite creativity of the Supreme Being; thirdly through readings of Freud and Jung and their respective models of the psyche; and finally through an interrogation into the possibility of telepathy and the various ways in which it can be conceived. Each chapter thus takes place as an extended thought experiment, exploring the consequences of a seemingly unprecedented proposition that promises to eradicate the finite gap between internal and external. This is followed to the limits of conceivability before asking in each case whether we may in fact need to rethink the very premises around which each proposition has framed the problem. (shrink)

In this article, I rely both on Derrida's 1974 work Glas, as well as Derrida's 1971–72 lecture course, “La famille de Hegel,” to argue that the concept of the quasi-transcendental is central to Derrida's reading of Hegel and to trace its implications beyond the Hegelian system. I follow Derrida's analysis of the role of Antigone—or, as the lecture course has it, “Antigonanette”—in Hegel's thought to argue that the quasi-transcendental indicates a restriction of empirical difference into the transcendental, which (...) is thereby only ever provisionally transcendental. I then argue that the economy of difference indicated by the quasi-transcendental is neither a general economy, nor is it in each case singular, but rather it ambivalently oscillates between these two. Finally, I treat the temporality of the quasi-transcendental, arguing that the economy of difference indicated by the quasi-transcendental is not prior to the restriction of empirical difference, but is paradoxically produced by it by being retroactively constituted. I take up this analysis for the sake of describing what I contend is the quasi-transcendental structure of constitutive exclusion, a way of understanding the conceptual structure of political bodies, and the political structure of concepts. (shrink)

The late Hector-Neri Castañeda, the Mahlon Powell Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University, and founding editor of Noûs, has deeply influenced current analytic philosophy with diverse contributions, including guise theory, the theory of indicators and quasi-indicators, and the proposition/practition theory. This volume collects 15 papers--for the most part previously unpublished--in ontology, philosophy of language, cognitive science, and related areas by ex-students of Professor Castañeda, most of whom are now well-known researchers or even distinguished scholars. The authors share the conviction (...) that Castañeda's work must continue to be explored and that his philosophical methodology must continue to be applied in an effort to further illuminate all the issues that he so deeply investigated. The topics covered by the contributions include intensional contexts, possible worlds, quasi-indicators, guise theory, property theory, Russell's substitutional theory of propositions, event theory, the adverbial theory of mental attitudes, existentialist ontology, and Plato's, Leibniz's, Kant's, and Peirce's ontologies. An introduction by the editors relates all these themes to Castañeda's philosophical interests and methodology. (shrink)

This paper concerns the familiar topic of whether we can have genuinely emotional responses such as pity and fear to characters and situations we believe to be fictional1. As is well known, Kendall Walton responds in the negative (Walton (1978); (1990): 195-204 and Chapter 7; (1997)). That is, he is an ‘irrealist’ about emotional responses to fiction (the term is Gaut’s (2003): 15), arguing that such responses should be construed as quasiemotions (Walton (1990): 245), of which their possessor imagines that (...) they are genuine emotions. This is not to deny that an experience in response to a fiction may have a phenomenology very like a given emotion, but to insist that, nonetheless, such responses are not real instances of the emotions which they resemble (Walton (1997)). So, in his most famous example, Charles, who experiences fear-like emotion in relation to a film which depicts the approach of evil slime, does not, despite appearances, experience genuine fear towards the slime, but only quasi-fear (Walton (1990): 195-204)2. Walton’s view presupposes the following view about the nature of emotion3. (shrink)

The political thought of Mohandas K. Gandhi has been increasingly used as a paradigmatic example of hybrid political thought that developed out of a cross-cultural dialogue of eastern and western influences. With a novel unpacking of this hybridity, this article focuses on the conceptual influences that Gandhi explicitly stressed in his autobiography and other writings, particularly the works of Leo Tolstoy and the Bhagavad Gītā. This new tracing of influence in the development of Gandhi’s thought alters the substantive thrust of (...) Gandhi’s thought away from more familiar quasi-liberal interpretations and towards a far more substantive bhakti or devotional understanding of politics. The analysis reveals a conception of politics that is not pragmatic in its use of non-violence, but instead points to a devotional focus on cultivating the self (ātman), ultimately dissolving the public/private distinction that many readings of Gandhi’s thought depend upon. (shrink)

What determines the reference of first-person thoughts—thoughts that one would express using the first-person pronoun? I defend a model on which our ways of gaining knowledge of ourselves do, in much the way that our ways of gaining knowledge of objects in the world determine the reference of perceptual demonstrative thoughts. This model—the Demonstrative Model of First-Person Thought—can be motivated by reference to independently plausible general principles about how reference is determined. But it faces a serious objection. (...) There seems to be an explanatory rival to it with a great deal of plausiblility. The rival is The Simple Rule Model, which says that first-person thoughts are governed by the simple rule that any token of one will be about the person whose token it is. I pinpoint a crucial unclarity in The Simple Rule Model, hinging on how we understand the notion of a rule, and argue that no version of the Simple Rule Model is both plausible and a genuine explanatory rival to the Demonstrative Model. I also provide an argument that the Demonstrative Model is extensionally adequate. (shrink)

I argue that the very reasons Carruthers gives for why the account should allow introspective access to perceptual/quasi-perceptual states, can be given for thought, as well. I also argue that we have good subjectively accessible grounds for the intuition in introspective thoughts, notwithstanding Carruthers' argument to the contrary and his attempt to explain the intuition away.

In this paper I direct attention to one feature of Hacking’s recent work on styles of reasoning and argue that this feature is of far greater philosophical significance than Hacking’s limited discussion of this suggests. The feature in question is his use of ‘legendary beginnings’ in setting out a given style, viz. the method of introducing a style of reasoning by recounting a popular and quasi-mythical narrative that ties the crystallisation of that style to a particular person in a (...) particular place and at a particular time. Whilst Hacking both deploys and discusses this method, his comments suggest that this is primarily a stylistic device employed for reasons of expedience. In contrast, it is argued here that recounting the legendary origins of a style of reasoning affords a distinctive way of vindicating that style, a vindication from within the style itself. (shrink)

According to a common view, conscious thoughts necessarily involve quasi-perceptual experiences, or mental images. This is alleged to be the case not only when one entertains conscious thoughts about perceptible things, but also when one thinks about more abstract things. In the case of conscious abstract propositional thoughts, the idea is that they occur in inner speech, which is taken to involve imagery (typically auditory) of words in a natural language. I argue that unsymbolized thinking and (...) total aphantasia cast doubt on this common view. Unsymbolized thinking is the experience of thoughts that does not involve imagery. Total aphantasia is the inability to produce mental images of all sensory modalities. I consider and reject the objection that these individuals are mistaken either because their thoughts do involve images, or because those thoughts are not conscious. Thus, unsymbolized thinking and aphantasia provide evidence that conscious thoughts can occur without imagery. (shrink)

It is commonly believed that our episodic memory teaches us about the reality of personal identity over time. Derek Parfitt’s notion of quasi-memory challenges this belief. According to Parfit, q-memories provide us with knowledge of past experiences in the same way that memory does, without presupposing that the rememberer and the experiencer are the same person. Various aspects of Parfit’s theory have met with criticism from scholars such as D. Wiggins, J. McDowell, M. Schechtman, and others. In this paper, (...) I will focus primarily on the holistic argument that q-memories cannot be squared with the complex nature of mental life. This is a well-known argument and, when understood as criticism of memory-trace copying, is accepted by some q-memory proponents. In this paper, I will try to show why it is impossible to defend quasi-memory, even when wholesale psychological continuity applies, and why post-fission persons are not genuine cases of q-memories. (shrink)

"Few thinkers have stood as squarely at both the center and the periphery of an intellectual movement as has Shao Yung (1011-1077). Ethical model and eccentric, socialite and eremite, Shao Yung is perhaps not only the greatest enigma of early Neo-Confucianism, but also one of its undisputed giants. In this impressive life-and-thought study, Don J. Wyatt painstakingly sifts through all available evidence relating to Shao Yung and his scholarship to provide a portrait that fully exposes the moral center of the (...) man and his work. Drawing on the abundant store of letters and accounts by Shao's contemporaries and his own much-neglected poetry, Wyatt has assembled a study that intimately relates Shao's life to his thought. He challenges the assumptions of previous Western scholarship by persuasively arguing against the acceptance of works traditionally ascribed to Shao - specifically, the Kuan-wu wai-p'ien (Outer Chapters on Observing Things), the Yu-ch'iao wen-ta (Fisherman and Woodcutter Dialogue), and the cryptic quasi-autobiographical essay Wu-ming kung chuan (Biography of the Nameless Lord)." "Shao is presented as an independent thinker whose philosophical lexicon functioned according to a profound interdependence that was unique among the systems of his peers. His metaphysical concepts, which appear impervious to and beyond the scope of human influence - namely, his ching-shih (world ordering), kuan-wu (observing things), and I-Ching - derived hsien-t'ien (before Heaven) methodologies - are essentially the products of a morally reflective life. Wyatt's discoveries, therefore, refute the common assertion of Shao Yung's moral indifference. Moreover, by meticulously integrating the progress of this Neo-Confucian's thought into the course of his life, the author has produced one of the most textured and accessible works on a philosopher of the Sung era."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

This article analyses the articulation of the relationship between ‘patriotism’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’ or commitment to ‘humanity’ in the writings of some major Victorian political thinkers. It is argued that: (a) there was no neat distinction between ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationalism’ in the thought of the time; (b) ‘patriotism’ was seen as a stepping stone to universalistic commitment to ‘humanity’ rather than as opposed to or incompatible with the latter; (c) most thinkers avoided the term ‘cosmopolitanism’, because of some of its associations, (...) and preferred to use love of ‘humanity’ or similar terms to refer to universalistic commitments; (d) all thinkers discussed here believed that some form of ‘patriotism’ was necessary, while all of them complained that the term was being misused by most of their contemporaries and inveighed against some misconceived and morally reprehensible version of ‘patriotism’; and (e) most discussions of patriotism and universalism were conducted in a religious or quasi-religious language. The main focus of this article is on John Stuart Mill (1806-73), Matthew Arnold (1822-88), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), Thomas Hill Green (1836-82), Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900), Frederic Harrison (1831-1923) and, to a lesser extent, Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-72), John Robert Seeley (1834-95) and Charles Henry Pearson (1830-94). (shrink)

In the appendix to Psychosemantics, entitled ‘Why There Still has to be a Language of Thought,’ Jerry Fodor offers several arguments for the language of thought thesis. The LOT, as articulated by Fodor, is a thesis about propositional attitudes. It comprises the following two claims: propositional attitudes are relations to meaning-bearing tokens — for example, to believe that P is to bear a certain relation to a token of a symbol which means that P; and the representational tokens in question (...) are quasi-linguistic — in particular, they have the constituent structure appropriate to a language. (shrink)