Book review of Tsilipakos, Leonidas: Clarity and Confusion in Social Theory: Taking Concepts Seriously. Farnham : Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2015.

A satisfactory solution to the problem of consciousness would take the form of a simple yet fully general model that specifies the precise conditions under which any given state of consciousness occurs. Science has uncovered numerous correlations between consciousness and neural activity, but it has not yet come anywhere close to this. We are still looking for the Newtonian laws of consciousness. -/- One of the main difficulties with consciousness is that we lack a language in which to formulate illuminating (...) generalizations about it. Philosophers and scientists talk about "what it’s like", sensations, feelings, and perceptual states such as seeing and hearing. This language does not allow a precise articulation of the internal structures of conscious states and their inter-relations. It is inadequate to capture relations of the kind we are looking for between conscious states and physical states. -/- In this thesis I refine and defend a theory of consciousness which promises to solve this regimentation problem: the representational theory of consciousness. I argue that the representational theory can solve the regimentation problem and smooth out other important obstacles to a fruitful study of consciousness. I also make a case for the theory independently of its payoffs, and I discuss the leading opposing theories at some length. (shrink)

My aim in this research is to study the philosophical problems of intentionality and perception by critically analyzing the relevant ideas from John Searle’s works, and also to attempt to give solutions to some of these problems. I try to elucidate Searle's theory of intentionality and his way of assimilating the problems of perception into this theory, and investigate the plausibility of his corresponding ideas in the context of ongoing debates.

SOMMAIRE 1. Deux questions préalables à toute théorie de l?intentionnalité Où est le contenu intentionnel ? L?intentionnalité est-elle nécessairement conceptuelle ? 2. Premiers arguments pour et contre la conceptualisation du noème 3. Quelque part entre le conceptualisme et le Mythe du donné 4. Trois contre-arguments de Searle 5. Réponse aux contre-arguments de Searle 6. Perspectives Contenu perceptuel et signification Significations propres et schèmes perceptuels Les schèmes perceptuels sont intrinsèques Problèmes généraux.

This work is an investigation into philosophical method and rational argument in moral philosophy. It makes an original contribution to human understanding, by taking some of the tools and techniques that Gordon Baker identifies in the later work of Wittgenstein, and using them as a way of fending for oneself in an area of philosophy that neither Baker, nor Wittgenstein, wrote on. More specifically, a discussion of some different aspects of the contemporary literature on Dancy’s moral particularism is used as (...) a vehicle for illustrating how Baker’s therapeutic conception of philosophy offers alternative possibilities for how we can do philosophy, and what counts as rational argument in moral philosophy. I maintain that, by considering some indicative ways in which Baker’s therapeutic approach to philosophy can dissolve, rather than solve, the kinds of perplexities found in the existing literature on Dancy’s moral particularism, we can liberate ourselves from the traditional/theoretical view of how we ought to do philosophy, and an understanding of rational argument in moral philosophy, to which we need not be committed. (shrink)

Recentemente, una nuova proposta sulla natura delle allucinazioni ha scosso il consolidato dibattito in filosofia della percezione tra teorie disgiuntiviste e teorie del genere comune. Secondo alcuni autori (Nanay 2015, 2016; Allen 2015; Pagondiotis 2013), dovremmo considerare le allucinazioni come appartenenti allo stesso genere mentale delle immagini mentali. In questo articolo valuto la solidità di questa proposta e argomento in favore della tesi che essa, per come è stata delineata finora, non è accettabile. In ogni caso, suggerisco che le allucinazioni (...) potrebbero essere eventi che appartengono a diversi generi mentali. In particolare, potrebbero esistere allucinazioni derivanti dal sistema delle esperienze percettive e allucinazioni derivanti dal sistema delle immagini mentali. (shrink)

To study conscious experience we must, to some extent, trust introspective reports; yet introspective reports often do not merit our trust. A century ago, E.B. Titchener advocated extensive introspective training as a means of resolving this difficulty. He describes many of his training techniques in his four-volume laboratory manual of 1901- 1905. This paper explores Titchener's laboratory manual with an eye to general questions about the prospects of introspective training for contemporary consciousness studies, with a focus on the following examples: (...) introspective knowledge of the combination tones that arise when a musical interval is played; the 'flight of colours' in the afterimage of a field of bright, broad- spectrum light; and the possibility of non-obvious visual illusions. Introspective training appears to have some merit, but also to involve significant hazards. (shrink)

On the assumption that we may learn from our elders and betters, this paper approaches some fundamental questions in perceptual epistemology through a dispute between McDowell and Wright about external world scepticism.

Naïve realism, often overlooked among philosophical theories of perception, has in recent years attracted a surge of interest. Broadly speaking, the central commitment of naïve realism is that mind-independent objects are essential to the fundamental analysis of perceptual experience. Since the claims of naïve realism concern the essential metaphysical structure of conscious perception, its truth or falsity is of central importance to a wide range of topics, including the explanation of semantic reference and representational content, the nature of phenomenal consciousness, (...) and the basis of perceptual justification and knowledge. One of the greatest difficulties surrounding discussions of naïve realism, however, has been lack of clarity concerning exactly what affirming or denying it entails. In particular, it is sometimes unclear how naïve realism is related to the claim that perceptual experience is in some sense direct or unmediated, and also to what extent the view is compatible with another widely discussed thesis in the philosophy of perception, the claim that perceptual experiences are states with representational content. In this essay, I discuss how recent work on these issues helps to clarify both the central commitments of naïve realism, as well as its relation to representationalist theories of perception. Along the way, I will attempt to shed light on the different ways in which each approach tries to address the various theoretical challenges facing a philosophical theory of perception, and also to assess the prospects for views that attempts to combine features of each approach. (shrink)

Ci imbattiamo in un confine ogni volta che pensiamo a un’entità demarcata rispetto a ciò che la circonda. C’è un confine (una superficie) che delimita l’interno di una sfera dal suo esterno; c’è un confine (una frontiera) che separa il Maryland dalla Pennsylvania. Talvolta la collocazione esatta di un confine non è chiara o è in qualche modo controversa (come quando si cerchi di tracciare i limiti del monte Everest, o il confine del nostro corpo). Talaltra il confine non corrisponde (...) a una discontinuità fisica o a una differenziazione qualitativa (come nel caso dei confini del Wyoming, o della demarcazione tra la metà superiore e la metà inferiore di una sfera omogenea). Ma, che sia netto o confuso, naturale o artificiale, sembra esservi per ogni oggetto un confine che lo separa dal resto del mondo. Anche gli eventi hanno confini, quantomeno confini temporali. Le nostre vite sono delimitate dalle nostre nascite e morti; una partita di calcio comincia alle quindici in punto e termina col fischio finale dell’arbitro alle sedici e quarantacinque. E a volte si dice che anche le entità astratte, come i concetti o gli insiemi, hanno dei propri confini. Se tutto questo parlare di confini abbia davvero un senso, e se rifletta la struttura del mondo o solo l’attività organizzatrice del nostro intelletto, è però oggetto di profonda controversia filosofica. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson’s Knowledge and its Limits has been highly influential since the beginning of this century. It can be read as a systematic response to scepticism. One of the most important notions in this response is the notion of «evidence,» which will be the focus of the present paper. I attempt to show primarily two things. First, the notion of evidence invoked by Williamson does not address the sceptical worry: he stipulates an objective notion of evidence, but this begs the (...) question against his opponent. Second, his related thesis «Evidence equals Knowledge» does not sit well with his own content externalism: he promises to relate epistemology to philosophy of mind, but he fails to live up to this commitment in his crucial chapter on scepticism. Other minor problems concerning evidence will also be discussed in due course. (shrink)

This chapter probes the connections between the metaphysics of meaning and the investigation of human communication. It first argues that contemporary philosophy of mind has inherited most of its metaphysical questions from Brentano's puzzling definition of intentionality. Then it examines how intentionality came to occupy the forefront of pragmatics in three steps. By investigating speech acts, Austin and ordinary language philosophers pioneered the study of intentional actions performed by uttering sentences of natural languages. Based on his novel concept of speaker's (...) meaning and his inferential view of human communication as a cooperative and rational activity, Grice developed a three-tiered model of the meaning of utterances: the linguistic meaning of the uttered sentence; the explicit truth-conditional content of the utterance; the implicit content conveyed by the utterance. Finally, the new emerging truth-conditional trend in pragmatics urges that not only the implicit content conveyed by an utterance but its explicit content as well depends on the speaker's communicative intention. (shrink)