Perception represents colours inexactly. This inexactness results from phenomenally manifest noise, and results in apparent violations of the transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability. Whether these violations are genuine depends on what is meant by 'transitivity of perceptual indiscriminability'.

C. B. Martin's finkish cases raise one of the most serious objections to conditional analyses of dispositions. David Lewis's reformed analysis is widely considered the most promising response to the objection. Despite its sophistication, however, the reformed analysis still provokes questions concerning its ability to handle finkish cases. They focus on the applicability of the analysis to 'baseless' dispositions. After sketching Martin's objection and the reformed analysis, I argue that all dispositions have causal bases which the analysis can unproblematically invoke.

George Molnar’s contention that some dispositional properties are displayed without the aid of any activating conditions poses a challenge to the conditional analysis of dispositions. Since the invocation of activating conditions is regarded as a crucial feature of the analysis, spontaneous dispositions are believed to expose its inadequacy by eluding its scope. The challenge goes to the very heart of the conditional approach to dispositions, allegedly revealing a deep flaw in all its incarnations. Granting that there may be spontaneously manifestable (...) dispositions, I argue that the conditional analysis can successfully accommodate them by elevating the potential causal relation between a disposition and its manifestation. (shrink)

A “fallacy” is something like the sense-datum fallacy, involving a logically invalid argument. A “conflation” is something like Block's conflation of the (alleged) raw feel of an experience with what it is like to have the experience. Trivially, a self is conscious of something only if it accesses it. Substantive issues concern the nature of the conscious self and the nature of access.

What counts as a computation and how it relates to cognitive function are important questions for scientists interested in understanding how the mind thinks. This paper argues that pragmatic aspects of explanation ultimately determine how we answer those questions by examining what is needed to make rigorous the notion of computation used in the (cognitive) sciences. It (1) outlines the connection between the Church-Turing Thesis and computational theories of physical systems, (2) differentiates merely satisfying a computational function from true computation, (...) and finally (3) relates how we determine a true computation to the functional methodology in cognitive science. All of the discussion will be directed toward showing that the only way to connect formal notions of computation to empirical theory will be in virtue of the pragmatic aspects of explanation. (shrink)

What is the connection between having a phenomenal property and knowing that one has that property? A traditional view on the matter takes the connection to be quite intimate. Whenever one has a phenomenal property, one knows that one does. Recently most authors have denied this traditional view. The goal of this paper is to defend the traditional view. In fact, I will defend something much stronger: I will argue that what it is for a property to be phenomenal is (...) for it to be a property one must know oneself to have when on has it. As we will see, this theory has a number of surprising and welcome upshots, suggesting that the traditional view has been unjustly maligned. (shrink)

Should we distinguish between access and phenomenal consciousness? Block says yes and that various pathologies of consciousness support and clarify the distinction. The commentary charge that the distinction is neither supported nor clarified by the clinical data. It recommends an alternative reading of the data and urges Block to clarify the distinction.

If you want to understand McDowell's spatial metaphors when he talks about perceptual knowledge, place him side-by-side with Dretske on perceptual knowledge. Though McDowell shows no evidence of reading Dretske's writings on knowledge from the late 1960s onwards (McDowell mentions "Epistemic Operators" once in passing), McDowell gives the same four arguments as Dretske for the conclusion that knowledge requires "conclusive" reasons that rule of the possibility of mistake. Despite various differences, we think it is best to read McDowell as re-discovering (...) Dretske on perceptual knowledge. Since Dretske is easy to understand, all of McDowell's metaphors become easy to understand. But what about McDowell's disjunctivism? Turns out McDowell is not an ontological disjunctivist, and his epistemological disjunctivism is really just the banal point that some perceptual experiences provide conclusive reasons for perceptual belief and some do not. Perceptual experiences are either conclusive or inconclusive. Dretske would agree. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAmbitious Higher-order theories of consciousness – Higher-order theories that purport to give an account of phenomenal consciousness – face a well-known objection from the possibility of ra...

Recent studies of emotion mindreading reveal that for three emotions, fear, disgust, and anger, deficits in face-based recognition are paired with deficits in the production of the same emotion. What type of mindreading process would explain this pattern of paired deficits? The simulation approach and the theorizing approach are examined to determine their compatibility with the existing evidence. We conclude that the simulation approach offers the best explanation of the data. What computational steps might be used, however, in simulation-style emotion (...) detection? Four alternative models are explored: a generate-and-test model, a reverse simulation model, a variant of the reverse simulation model that employs an “as if” loop, and an unmediated resonance model. (shrink)

The ordinary understanding and ascription of mental states is a multiply complex subject. Widely discussed approaches to the subject, such as functionalism and the theory-theory (TT), have many variations and interpretations. No surprise, then, that there are misunderstandings and disagreements, which place many items on the agenda. Unfortunately, the multiplicity of issues raised by the commentators and the limitations of space make it impossible to give a full reply to everyone. My response is divided into five topics: (1) Which version(s) (...) of functionalism are candidates for an account of folk psychology, and is any such version satisfactory? (2) Where does TT stand in light of the two target articles and commentaries? (3) Does a phenomenological story provide a promising account of mental states, and is there special first-person authority about them? (4) What are suitable methodological assumptions for our subject matter? (5) How well does the simulation theory fare as an account of third-person mentalistic ascription? (shrink)

Emotions, I will argue, involve two kinds of feeling: bodily feeling and feeling towards. Both are intentional, in the sense of being directed towards an object. Bodily feelings are directed towards the condition of one's body, although they can reveal truths about the world beyond the bounds of one's body – that, for example, there is something dangerous nearby. Feelings towards are directed towards the object of the emotion – a thing or a person, a state of affairs, an action (...) or an event; such emotional feelings involve a special way of thinking of the object of the emotion, and I draw an analogy with Frank Jackson's well-known knowledge argument to show this. Finally, I try to show that, even if materialism is true, the phenomenology of emotional feelings, as described from a personal perspective, cannot be captured using only the theoretical concepts available for the impersonal stance of the sciences. (shrink)

Higher Order theories of consciousness have their fair share of sympathisers, but the arguments mustered in their support are—to my mind—unduly persuasive. My aim in this paper is to show that Higher Order theories cannot accommodate the possibility of misrepresentation without either falling into contradiction, or collapsing into a First-Order theory. If this diagnosis is on the right track, then Higher Order theories—at least in the specific versions here considered—fail to give an account of what they set out to explain: (...) what is distinctive of ‘conscious’ phenomena. (shrink)

Zombies are bodies without minds: creatures that are physically identical to actual human beings, but which have no conscious experience. Much of the consciousness literature focuses on considering how threatening philosophical reflection on such creatures is to physicalism. There is not much attention given to the converse possibility, the possibility of minds without bodies, that is, creatures who are conscious but whose nature is exhausted by their being conscious. We can call such a ‘purely conscious’ creature a ghost.

A zombie is a physical duplicates of a human being which lacks consciousness. A ghost is a phenomenal duplicate of a human being whose nature is exhausted by consciousness. Discussion of zombie arguments, that is anti-physicalist arguments which appeal to the conceivability of zombies, is familiar in the philosophy of mind literature, whilst ghostly arguments, that is, anti-physicalist arguments which appeal to the conceivability of ghosts, are somewhat neglected. In this paper I argue that ghostly arguments have a number of (...) dialectical advantages over zombie arguments. I go onto explain how the conceivability of ghosts is inconsistent with two kinds of a priori physicalism: analytic functionalism and the Australian physicalism of Armstrong and Lewis. (shrink)

I offer a new objectivist theory of the contents of color language and color experience, intended especially as an account of what normal intersubjective variation in color perception and classification shows about those contents. First I explain an abstract account of the contents of color and other gradable adjectives; on the account, these contents are certain objective properties constituted in part by contextually intended standards of application, which are in turn values in the dimensions of variation associated with the adjectives. (...) Then I propose an explanation of normal variations in linguistic color classification; these are postulated to be effects of differences in intended standards for the color adjectives appearing in the classifying predicates. Next, I consider a potential objection to this explanation, based on the suggestion that contextual content should be more accessible than the explanation predicts. In reply, I point out that contextual content is occasionally opaque to unsophisticated reflection. Finally, I present a companion account of the contents of color experiences on which these represent an object as lying on certain salient intervals in the chromatic dimensions, and I show how the account accommodates intersubjective variation in color perception. (shrink)

Today, many philosophers think that perceptual experiences are conscious mental states with representational content and phenomenal character. Subscribers to this view often go on to construe experience more precisely as a propositional attitude sui generis ascribing sensible properties to ordinary material objects. I argue that experience is better construed as a kind of belief ascribing 'phenomenal' properties to such objects. A belief theory of this kind deals as well with the traditional arguments against doxastic accounts as the sui generis view. (...) Moreover, in contrast to sui generis views, it can quite easily account for the rational or reason providing role of experience. (shrink)

Realists about color, be they dispositionalists or physicalists, agree on the truth of the following claim: (R) x is red iff x is disposed to look red under standard conditions. The disagreement is only about whether to identify the colors with the relevant dispositions, or with their categorical bases. This is a question about the representational content of color experience: What kind of properties do color experiences ascribe to objects? It has been argued (for instance by Boghossian and Velleman, 1991) (...) that truths like (R) cannot be used in an account of the colors as they would result in ‚circular’, and therefore empty, contents. It has also been argued (for instance by Harman, 1996) that switching to an account of color in terms of a functional account of color sensations would result in a circular, and therefore empty, account. In this paper, I defend a realist account of color in terms of a (non-reductive) functional account of color sensations. Such an account of sensations has been suggested by Pagin (2000), and it can be applied to color sensations without the resulting account of the colors themselves being circular or empty. I argue that the so-called transparency of experience does not provide any argument against such an account. I also argue that on such an account, the issue of physicalism vs. dispositionalism boils down to the question of the modal profile of the color concepts. (shrink)

The primary goal of this paper is to provide substantial motivation for exploring an Acquaintance account of phenomenal consciousness, on which what fundamentally explains phenomenal consciousness is the relation of acquaintance. Its secondary goal is to take a few steps towards such an account. Roughly, my argument proceeds as follows. Motivated by prioritizing naturalization, the debate about the nature of phenomenal consciousness has been almost monopolized by representational theories. Among them, Self-Representationalism is by far the most antecedently promising. However, on (...) thorough inspection, Self-Representationalism turns out not explanatorily or theoretically better than the Acquaintance account. Indeed, the latter seems to be superior in at least some important respects. Therefore, at the very least, there are good reasons to take the Acquaintance account into serious consideration as an alternative to representational theories. The positive contribution of this paper is a sketch of an account of consciousness on which phenomenal consciousness is explained partly in representationalist terms, but where a crucial role is played by the relation of acquaintance. (shrink)

The psychological reality of an inner awareness built into conscious experience has traditionally been a central element of philosophy of consciousness, from Aristotle, to Descartes, Brentano, the phenomenological tradition, and early and contemporary analytic philosophy. Its existence, however, has recently been called into question, especially by defenders of so-called transparency of experience and first-order representationalists about phenomenal consciousness. In this paper, I put forward a defense of inner awareness based on an argument from memory. Roughly, the idea is that since (...) we can only recall something if we were aware of it at the time of its occurrence, and since we can recall our own experiences, we must be aware of our own experiences at the time of their occurrence. The argument is far from new: it goes back to the Buddhist tradition and has been revived more recently in Buddhist Scholarship but also in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, in particular by Uriah Kriegel. However, I believe that, since it is the best extant argument for inner awareness, it deserves more extensive treatment. My goal is to strengthen the memory argument by making some conceptual distinctions as to the exact thesis about inner awareness that the argument is supposed to support, considering different ways the argument may be reconstructed depending on the exact thesis to be supported, and defending the argument from a new objection, raised very recently by Daniel Stoljar. (shrink)

Four difficulties with Dretske's theory of knowledge .

Understanding the 'making-up' relations, to put things neutrally, posited in mechanistic explanations the sciences is finally an explicit topic of debate amongst philosophers of science. In particular, there is now lively debate over the nature of the so-called 'realization' relations between properties posited in such explanations. Despite criticism (Gillett, Analysis 62: 316-323, 2002a), the most common approach continues to be that of applying machinery developed in the philosophy of mind to scientific concepts in what is known as the 'Flat' or (...) 'Subset' model of 'realization' (Kim, Mind in a physical world, 1998; Shapiro, J Philos XCVII: 635-654, 2000; Clapp, J Philos XCVIII: 111-136,2001 ; Wilson, Philos Stud 145: 149-169,2009). My primary goal in this paper is to show in still more detail that the Subset model of realization is inadequate for the descriptive task of describing the 'making-up' relations posited between properties or their instances in mechanistic explanations in the higher sciences. And my secondary goal is to highlight why this critique of the Subset view as a first-order descriptive account also shows there are deep difficulties in using the Subset account to address second-order issues in the philosophy of science as well. (shrink)

How does one know one's own beliefs, intentions, and other attitudes? Many responses to this question are broadly empiricist, in that they take self-knowledge to be epistemically based in empirical justification or warrant. Empiricism about self-knowledge faces an influential objection: that it portrays us as mere observers of a passing cognitive show, and neglects the fact that believing and intending are things we do, for reasons. According to the competing, agentialist conception of self-knowledge, our capacity for self-knowledge derives from our (...) rational agency—our ability to conform our attitudes to our reasons, and to commit ourselves to those attitudes through avowals. This paper has two goals. The first is exegetical: to identify agentialism's defining thesis and precisely formulate the agentialist challenge to empiricism. The second goal is to defend empiricism from the agentialist challenge. I propose a way to understand the role of agency in reasoning and avowals, one that does justice to what is distinctive about these phenomena yet is compatible with empiricism about self-knowledge. (shrink)

It is often said that some kind of peripheral (or inattentional) conscious awareness accompanies our focal (attentional) consciousness. I agree that this is often the case, but clarity is needed on several fronts. In this paper, I lay out four distinct theses on peripheral awareness and show that three of them are true. However, I then argue that a fourth thesis, commonly associated with the so-called "self-representational approach to consciousness," is false. The claim here is that we have outer focal (...) consciousness accompanied often (or even always) by inner peripheral (self-)awareness. My criticisms stem from both methodological and phenomenological considerations. In doing so, I offer a diagnosis as to why the fourth thesis has seemed true to so many and also show how the so-called "transparency of experience," frequently invoked by representationalists, is importantly relevant to my diagnosis. Finally, I respond to several objections and to further attempts to show that thesis four is true. What emerges is that if one wishes to hold that some form of self-awareness accompanies all outer-directed conscious states, one is better off holding that such self-awareness is itself unconscious, as is held for example by standard higher-order theories of consciousness. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to show that consciousness entails self-consciousness by focusing on the relationship between consciousness and memory. More specifically, I addreess the following questions: (1) does consciousness require episodic memory?; and (2) does episodic memory require self-consciousness? With the aid of some Kantian considerations and recent empirical data, it is argued that consciousness does require episodic memory. This is done after defining episodic memory and distinguishing it from other types of memory. An affirmative answer to (2) (...) is also warranted especially in the light of the issues raised in answering (1). I claim that 'consciousness entails self-consciousness' is thereby shown via the route through episodic memory, i.e. via affirmative answers to (1) and (2). My aim is to revive this Kantian thesis and to bring together current psychological research on amnesia with traditional philosophical perspectives on consciousness and memory. (shrink)

Recent debates between representational and relational theories of perceptual experience sometimes fail to clarify in what respect the two views differ. In this essay, I explain that the relational view rejects two related claims endorsed by most representationalists: the claim that perceptual experiences can be erroneous, and the claim that having the same representational content is what explains the indiscriminability of veridical perceptions and phenomenally matching illusions or hallucinations. I then show how the relational view can claim that errors associated (...) with perception should be explained in terms of false judgments, and develop a theory of illusions based on the idea that appearances are properties of objects in the surrounding environment. I provide an account of why appearances are sometimes misleading, and conclude by showing how the availability of this view undermines one of the most common ways of motivating representationalist theories of perception. (shrink)

Studies show that there are widespread intrasubjective and intersubjective color variations among normal perceivers. These variations have serious ramifications in the debate about the nature and ontology of color. It is typical to think of the debate about color as a dispute between objectivists and subjectivists. Objectivists hold that colors are perceiver-independent physical properties of objects while subjectivists hold that they are either projections onto external objects or dispositions objects have to look colored. I argue that individual color variations present (...) difficulties, albeit not the same kind, for both objectivism and subjectivism. Lastly, I propose an alternative account that handles such variations nicely. (shrink)

Tropes, as distinguished from other possible kinds of entities such as universals, states of affairs, events and bare particulars, are best-suited to play the role of causal relata.