P.F. Strawson argued that ‘mature sensible experience (in general) presents itself as … an immediate consciousness of the existence of things outside us’ (1979: 97). He began his defence of this very natural idea by asking how someone might typically give a description of their current visual experience, and offered this example of such a description: ‘I see the red light of the setting sun filtering through the black and thickly clustered branches of the elms; I see the dappled deer (...) grazing in groups on the vivid green grass…’ (1979: 97). In other words, in describing experience, we tend to describe the objects of experience – the things which we experience – and the ways they are when we are experiencing them. Some go further. According to Heidegger. (shrink)

The central and defining characteristic of thoughts is that they have objects. The object of a thought is what the thought concerns, or what it is about. Since there cannot be thoughts which are not about anything, or which do not concern anything, there cannot be thoughts without objects. Mental states or events or processes which have objects in this sense are traditionally called ‘intentional,’ and ‘intentionality’ is for this reason the general term for this defining characteristic of thought. Under (...) the heading of ‘thought’ we can include many different kinds of mental apprehension of an object—including relatively temporary episodes of contemplating or scrutinising, as well as persisting states like beliefs and hopes which are not similarly episodic in character. These are all ways of thinking about an object. But even construing ‘thought’ in this broad way, it is clear that not all mental states and events are thoughts: sensations, emotions and perceptual experiences are not thoughts, but they are also paradigmatically mental. Do these mental states and events have objects too? Or are there mental states and events which have no objects? (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against Michael Gorman’s objection to Tim Crane’s view of intentional objects. Gorman (“Talking about Intentional Objects,” 2006), following Searle (Intentionality, 1983), argues that intentional content can be cashed out solely in terms of conditions of satisfaction. For Gorman, we have reason to prefer his more minimal satisfaction-condition approach to Crane’s be- cause we cannot understand Crane’s notion of an intentional object when applied to non-existent objects. I argue that Gorman’s criticism rests on a misunderstanding of (...) Crane’s position. I also discuss the importance of keeping track of the distinction between the intentional objects of intentional states and the referents of such states. I do agree with Gorman that conditions of satisfaction are needed to cash out propositional intentional content, but we cannot get these conditions of satisfaction right if we do not capture how the subject takes the world to be. And we cannot properly capture how the subject takes the world to be without commitment to intentional objects. I argue that Crane’s notion of an intentional object is one that avoids questionable ontological commitments. So, in the end we have a view of intentional objects with a respectable metaphysics and ontology that can properly capture the intentional content of subjects’ intentional states. (shrink)

This thesis is intended to analyze a mental phenomenon widely neglected in current philosophical discussions: personal memories. The first part presents a general framework to better understand what personal memories are, how we access our personal past and what we access about our personal past. Chapter 1 introduces traditional theories of memory: direct realism and representationalism in their different versions, as well as some objections. I defend here a particular form of representationalism that is based on the distinction between content, (...) intentional object and ontological object. Chapter 2 explores the possible contents of our personal memories, which prove to be heterogeneous, whereas chapter 3 analyses their possible intentional objects, with a special focus on past events. The second part of the thesis explores an aspect of our personal memories that was omitted in the first part: the senses in which our personal past is apprehended as personal. Chapter 4 examines the way in which the “self” intervenes in the construction of our personal memories. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the analysis of what seems to be the most subjective aspect of our memories, that is, the emotions and feelings of our past experiences. In these last two chapters, I analyze the different interactions that can take place between memories and emotions and defend the idea that there can be emotional memories that are reducible neither to a propositional memory nor an occurrent and present emotion. The overall intention of this thesis is twofold. First, I aim to show to the philosophical community that there is still a lot to be said and discussed about memory as a mental phenomenon. And second, I intend to emphasize the importance of bringing into the philosophical discussions about the mind ideas coming from different philosophical traditions as well as ideas and empirical data coming from scientific research. (shrink)

Aspects of Psychologism is a collection of essays unified around a philosophical approach to the mind that is non-reductive and yet compatible (or continuous) with scientific psychology. The essays in the book, published over a period of twenty years, investigate the phenomena of intentionality and consciousness, with a special emphasis on perceptual phenomena. The central theme which unites the essays is an approach to the mind which I call ‘psychologism about the psychological’. Psychologism about the psychological, as I understand it, (...) is a vision of what is important in the study of the mind. It asserts the reality of the psychological and the need to investigate it through a variety of approaches, of which metaphysics, psychology, cognitive science and phenomenology are examples. These disciplines, according to psychologism, are concerned with fundamentally the same subject-matter: the mind. But since I have found it difficult sometimes to get this point across in abstract terms, perhaps it is easier to introduce what I mean by ‘psychologism’ by saying what it is not. (shrink)

This collection brings together a selection of my recently published or forthcoming articles. What unites them is their common concern with one of the central ambitions of philosophy, namely to get clearer about our first-personal perspective onto the world and our minds. Three aspects of that perspective are of particular importance: consciousness, intentionality, and rationality. The collected essays address metaphysical and epistemological questions both concerning the nature of each of these aspects and concerning the various connections among them. More generally, (...) given that intentionality and ratio- nality are both normative phenomena, the main theme of the articles is the relationship between consciousness and normativity and the centrality of this relationship to our first-personal perspective. -/- This focus culminates in the defense of two specific views, experiential rationalism and experiential intentionalism. The first is, very roughly, the view that how our mental episodes are given in consciousness reflects their rational role in our mental lives: it is part of what our mental episodes subjectively are like that we phenomenally experience them as providing and/or responding to certain kinds of reasons. The central claim of the second view, on the other hand, is that the intentionality of our mental episodes is essentially linked to consciousness and involves a token-reflexive element: they intentionally present not only the world, but also themselves as being a certain way. -/- Some of the essays also deal with the contrast between our first- and our third-personal perspectives and the — to some extent related — division of labour between philosophy and the empirical sciences. Both perspectives have their limitations and sometimes conflict with each other, raising the question of what the consequences are for accounts of our first-personal knowledge and its internal or external objects. (shrink)

You can come to know that you believe that p partly by reflecting on whether p and then judging that p. Call this procedure “the transparency method for belief.” How exactly does the transparency method generate known self-attributions of belief? To answer that question, we cannot interpret the transparency method as involving a transition between the contents p and I believe that p. It is hard to see how some such transition could be warranted. Instead, in this context, one mental (...) action is both a judgment that p and a self-attribution of a belief that p. The notion of embedded mental action is introduced here to explain how this can be so and to provide a full epistemic explanation of the transparency method. That explanation makes sense of first-person authority and immediacy in transparent self-knowledge. In generalized form, it gives sufficient conditions on an attitude’s being known transparently. (shrink)

This paper offers a positive account of an important but under-explored class of mental states, non-propositional attitudes such as loving one’s department, liking lattice structures, fearing Freddy Krueger, and hating Sherlock Holmes. In broadest terms, the view reached is a representationalist account guided by two puzzles. The proposal allows one to say in an elegant way what differentiates a propositional attitude from an attitude merely about a proposition. The proposal also allows one to offer a unified account of the non-propositional (...) attitudes that captures both empty and non-empty cases by properly locating the posited representations in the metaphysical structure of the attitudes. (shrink)

Propositionalists hold that, fundamentally, all attitudes are propositional attitudes. A number of philosophers have recently called the propositionalist thesis into question. It has been argued, successfully I believe, that there are attitudes that are of or about things but which do not have a propositional content concerning those things. If correct, our theories of mind will include non-propositional attitudes as well as propositional attitudes. In light of this, Sinhababu’s recent attack on anti-propositionalists is noteworthy. The present paper aims to sharpen (...) his worries and show that they fail for a range of reasons. Besides merely offering a reply, considering his challenges provides an opportunity to add clarity to this emerging area of research and it allows one to strengthen the case against propositionalism more generally. (shrink)

This dissertation proposes the central elements of a Social Enactive Theory of Perception. According to SEP, perception consists in sensory-based practices of interaction with objects, events, and states of affairs that are socially constituted. I oppose the representational view that perception is an indirect contact with the world, consists of the passive receiving and processing of sensory input, is in need of constant assessment of accuracy, and is a matter of individuals alone. I share the basic enactivist insight that perception (...) is a type of activity, but I depart from standard enactivism on the grounds of its individualistic bias and its limited conception of activity. Instead of motor actions, I formulate the concept of perceptual practices as the appropriate framework to understand perception. Perception is woven into socially informed, contextual, sensory-based everyday activities, such as food, dance, and dress, and even seemingly independent, basic perceptual activities and concepts are constituted by such practices. Perceptual individual interactions instantiate social perceptual practices but are not just repetitions of a script. We perceive objects in virtue of perspectives or appearances, not in spite of them, and on this basis I offer SEPâs take on experience, properties, and contents. I conceive perceptual experience as finely grained interactions between subjects and objects, both of which are spatially, temporally, and pragmatically situated. Objects and their sensory properties are perceived dynamically and always in multiple appearances. Perceptual content offers a pragmatic specification of the perceptual objects in the specific ways they appear to subjects. For SEP, perception is normatively structured. SEPâs perceptual normativity is not a worry about a supposed constant threat that our perceptions be nonveridical, but about the placement of perceptual things in a system of possibilities and expectations, cast in terms of degrees of fulfillment of expectations and in a horizon of pragmatic significance, both of which are functions of the socially constituted interactions between a perceiver and a rich theory of appearances. (shrink)

I argue that Ludwig Wittgenstein’s idea of the metaphysical subject sheds new light on subjective qualities of experience. In this article I draw first of all on the interpretations provided by Michael Kremer and James Conant. Subsequently, I conclude that “what is it like” means primarily “what is it like to see myself as the metaphysical subject”.

In this paper, it is argued that the late twentieth century conception of consciousness in analytic philosophy emerged from the idea of consciousness as givenness, via the behaviourist idea of “raw feels”. In the post-behaviourist period in philosophy, this resulted in the division of states of mind into essentially unconscious propositional attitudes plus the phenomenal residue of qualia: intrinsic, ineffable and inefficacious sensory states. It is striking how little in the important questions about consciousness depends on this conception, or on (...) this particular division of mental states. So accepting this division and its associated conceptions of intentionality and consciousness is not an obligatory starting point for the philosophy of mind. A historical investigation of how these ideas came to be seen as inevitable can also help us see how we might reasonably reject them. (shrink)

In this paper I examine whether different suggestions made in the philosophy of perception can help us to explain and understand the phenomenal character of emotional experience. After having introduced the range of possible positions, I consider qualia-theory, reductive pure intentionalism and reductive impure intentionalism. I argue that qualia-theory can easily explain why emotions are phenomenal states at all but that it cannot account for the “inextricable link thesis” which is quite prominent in the philosophy of emotion. Reductive pure and (...) impure intentionalism, in turn, seem to fit better with this thesis but they have difficulties to explain what makes emotions phenomenal states at all. Therefore, I finally discuss whether non-reductive intentionalism might be an option for explaining the phenomenal character of emotional experience. (shrink)

There is a long-standing debate in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of science regarding how best to interpret the relationship between neuroscience and psychology. It has traditionally been argued that either the two domains will evolve and change over time until they converge on a single unified account of human behaviour, or else that they will continue to work in isolation given that they identify properties and states that exist autonomously from one another (due to the multiple-realizability of psychological (...) states). In this paper, I argue that progress in psychology and neuroscience is contingent on the fact that both of these positions are false. Contra the convergence position, I argue that the theories of psychology and the theories of neuroscience are scientifically valuable as representational tools precisely because they cannot be integrated into a single account. However, contra the autonomy position, I propose that the theories of psychology and neuroscience are deeply dependent on one another for further refinement and improvement. In this respect, there is an irreconcilable codependence between psychology and neuroscience that is necessary for both domains to improve and progress. The two domains are forever linked while simultaneously being unable to integrate. (shrink)

According to intentionalism, perceptual experience is a mental state with representational content. When it comes to the epistemology of perception, it is only natural for the intentionalist to hold that the justificatory role of experience is at least in part a function of its content. In this paper, I argue that standard versions of intentionalism trying to hold on to this natural principle face what I call the “defeasibility problem”. This problem arises from the combination of standard intentionalism with further (...) plausible principles governing the epistemology of perception: that experience provides defeasible justification for empirical belief, and that such justification is best construed as probabilification. After exploring some ways in which the standard intentionalist could deal with the defeasibility problem, I argue that the best option is to replace standard intentionalism by what I call “phenomenal intentionalism”. Where standard intentionalism construes experiences as of p as having the content p, phenomenal intentionalism construes experiences as of p as having “phenomenal” or “looks contents”: contents of the form Lp. (shrink)

One powerful argument for dualism is provided by Chalmers: the ‘zombie’ or conceivability argument. This paper aims to establish that if one adopts the ‘Powerful Qualities’ account of properties developed by Martin and Heil, this argument can be resisted at the first premise: the claim that zombies are conceivable is, by the lights of Chalmers’ own account of conceivability, false. The Powerful Qualities account is outlined. Chalmers’ argument, and several distinctions which underlie it, are explained. It is argued that to (...) make sense of the claim that zombies are conceivable, some account of properties must be given. The paper’s central claim is presented and defended from potential responses: given the Powerful Qualities view, zombies are in fact inconceivable. Finally, an error theory is presented, which offers an explanation of why so many have taken the conceivability of zombies to be unproblematic, and the view is briefly contrasted with Russellian monism. (shrink)

Evaluativism about desire, the view that desires just are, or necessarily involve, positive evaluations of their objects, currently enjoys widespread popularity in many philosophical circles. This chapter argues that evaluativism, in both of its doxastic and perceptual versions, overstates and mischaracterises the connection between desires and evaluations. Whereas doxastic evaluativism implausibly rules out cases where someone has a desire, despite evaluating its object negatively, being uncertain about its value, or having no doxastic attitude whatsoever towards its evaluative status at all, (...) perceptual evaluativism cannot even properly apply to the large class of standing desires. It is also argued that evaluativism about desire is not even well-motivated in the first place: the theory is supposed to solve a particular puzzle about the role desires play in the explanation of action, yet, in fact, it does not offer any help whatsoever in dealing with the relevant puzzle. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that a capacity for mindreading conceived along the line of simulation theory provides the cognitive basis for forming we-centric representations of actions and goals. This explains the plural first personal stance displayed by we-intentions in terms of the underlying cognitive processes performed by individual minds, while preserving the idea that they cannot be analyzed in terms of individual intentional states. The implication for social ontology is that this makes sense of the plural subjectivity of joint (...) actions without making group agents require either a corporate body or the unity of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop a fresh understanding of the sense in which emotions are evaluations. We argue that we should not follow mainstream accounts in locating the emotion–value connection at the level of content and that we should instead locate it at the level of attitudes or modes. We begin by explaining the contrast between content and attitude, a contrast in the light of which we review the leading contemporary accounts of the emotions. We next offer reasons to think (...) that these accounts face substantial problems since they locate the link emotions bear to values at the level of content. This provides the incentive to pursue an alternative approach according to which emotions qualify as evaluations because they are specific types of attitudes, an approach we substantiate by appealing to felt bodily stances. We conclude by considering two reasons why this approach may be resisted; they respectively pertain to the alleged impossibility of drawing the attitude–content contrast in the case of the emotions and to the suspicion that so doing raises qualia-related worries. (shrink)

Languages involving modalities and languages involving vagueness have each been thoroughly studied. On the other hand, virtually nothing has been said about the interaction of modality and vagueness. This paper aims to start filling that gap. Section 1 is a discussion of various possible sources of vague modality. Section 2 puts forward a model theory for a quantified language with operators for modality and vagueness. The model theory is followed by a discussion of the resulting logic. In Section 3, the (...) framework will permit us to address a puzzle raised by Elizabeth Barnes and Robert Williams. (shrink)

Most mental disorders affect only a small segment of the population. On the reasonable assumption that minds or brains are prone to occasional malfunction, these disorders do not seem to pose distinctive explanatory problems. Depression, however, because it is so prevalent and costly, poses a conundrum that some try to explain by characterizing it as an adaptation—a trait that exists because it performed fitness-enhancing functions in ancestral populations. Heretofore, proposed evolutionary explanations of depression did not focus on thought processes; instead, (...) they emphasized that it facilitates navigation of adverse social circumstances or promotes immune response to infectious agents. According to a new hypothesis, the “analytical rumination hypothesis” (ARH), however, depression’s crucial adaptive trait is rumination—negative, intrusive thought. ARH holds that, (i) social dilemmas trigger depressed mood; (ii) depressed mood induces changes in body systems that facilitate ruminative analysis aimed at solving dilemmas; and, (iii) depressive rumination is a fitness-enhancing trait that was selected for in evolutionary time. Jointly, (i)~(iii) imply that we should not think of rumination as a disorder; instead, it is a trade-off, an eminently rational one. In the same way that fever solves a problem—coordination of the immune system in response to infection—so too does depressive rumination solve a problem, a social dilemma, albeit at the cost of inducing anhedonia and other maladies. But they argue that the cost is worthwhile, something that should be endured “until the problem is solved.” First, we argue that there are two distinct types of rumination, brooding and pondering; the former is associated with a disposition for depression, not the latter. But only the latter has the problem-solving capabilities that ARH requires. Second, recent brain imaging studies of depression reveal resting state hypoactivity in lateral regions and hyperactivity in paralimbic regions; this asymmetric pattern correlates with heightened levels of brooding, self-focused rumination. In other words, on the personal level, patients are trapped within self, isolated from the external world and suffused with negative affect; on the subpersonal level, this pattern is reflected by an asymmetric pattern of lateral vs. paralimbic resting state activity. Third, we proceed to conjecture that rational responses (e.g., pondering) to social dilemmas are those that strike a balance between internal and external considerations in the process of belief formation. Fourth, because the asymmetric resting state activity blocks those who suffer with depression from accessing and processing potentially positive stimuli from the external world, the capacity for rational, analytic response—hence, problem-solving—is constrained. Fifth, it follows that, although there might be conditions for which suffering should be endured rather than pharmacologically alleviated, depression is not one of those. Indeed, in view of the effects of the asymmetric resting state pattern, it is unlikely that depressive rumination would have been useful even for ancestral populations. (shrink)

Presentists have typically argued that the Block View is incapable of explaining our experience of time. In this paper I argue that the phenomenology of our experience of time is, on the contrary, against presentism. My argument is based on a dilemma: presentists must either assume that the metaphysical present has no temporal extension, or that it is temporally extended. The former horn leads to phenomenological problems. The latter renders presentism metaphysically incoherent, unless one posits a discrete present that, however, (...) suffers from the same difficulties that the instantaneous present is prone to. After introducing the main phenomenological models of our experience of time that are discussed in the literature, I show that none of them favors presentism. I conclude by arguing that if even the phenomenology of time sides against presentism, the latter metaphysical theory has no scientific evidence in its favor and ought to be dropped. (shrink)

Tim Crane's ‘Cosmic Hermeneutics vs. Emergence: The Challenge of the Explanatory Gap’ claims that non‐reductive physicalism must either close the explanatory gap, addressing the challenge famously posed by Levine's argument, or become identical to emergentism. Since no way to close the gap is available, the result is that there can be no interesting philosophical position intermediate between physicalism and emergentism. This chapter argues that if we look at the relation between physicalism and emergentism from the vantage point of reduction, Crane's (...) analysis is rather persuasive. However, if we switch from reduction to causality, its conclusions appear more disputable. In particular, if we shift from ‘novelty and explanation’ to ‘novelty and causality’ as key features of emergent properties, we may introduce a distinction between two kinds of emergentism (moderate and radical) based on their attitude towards the causal inheritance principle. If the causal inheritance principle is accepted (some versions of) moderate emergentism may be considered as non‐trivial forms of non‐reductive physicalism. (shrink)

Both through his own work and that of his students, Franz Clemens Brentano had an often underappreciated influence on the course of 20 th - and 21 st -century philosophy. _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ offers full coverage of Brentano’s philosophy and his influence. It contains 38 brand-new essays from an international team of experts that offer a comprehensive view of Brentano’s central research areas—philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and value theory—as well as of the principal (...) figures shaped by Brentano’s school of thought. A General Introduction serves as an overview of Brentano and the contents of the volume and three separate bibliographies point students and researchers on to further avenues of inquiry. Systematic and detailed, _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ provides readers with a valuable reference to Brentano’s work, and to his lasting importance in the history of philosophy and in contemporary debates. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the indirect realists’ recourse to mental representations does not allow them to account for the possibility of hallucination, nor for the presentational character of visual experience. To account for the presentational character, I suggest a kind of intentionalism that is based on the interdependency between the perceived object and the embodied perceiver. This approach provides a positive account to the effect that genuine perception and hallucination are different kinds of states. Finally, I offer a (...) tentative suggestion as to how a hallucinatory experience may still be mistaken for a genuine perceptual experience. (shrink)

I argue that the idea that mental states possess a primitive intentionality in virtue of which they are able to represent or ‘intend’ putative particulars derives largely from Brentano‘s misinterpretation of Aristotle and the scholastics, and that without this howler the application of intentionality to phenomenal content would never have gained currency.

Intentionality, or the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for things, remains central in the philosophy of mind. But the study of intentionality in the analytic tradition has been dominated by discussions of propositional attitudes such as belief, desire, and visual perception. There are, however, intentional states that aren't obviously propositional attitudes. For example, Indiana Jones fears snakes, Antony loves Cleopatra, and Jane hates the monster under her bed. The present paper explores such mental states (...) in an introductory but opinionated way. (shrink)

According to Crane’s schematicity thesis (ST) about intentional objects, intentionalia have no particular metaphysical nature qua thought-of entities; moreover, the real metaphysical nature of intentionalia is various, insofar as it is settled independently of the fact that intentionalia are targets of one’s thought. As I will point out, ST has the ontological consequence that the intentionalia that really belong to the general inventory of what there is, the overall domain, are those that fall under a good metaphysical kind, i.e., a (...) kind such that its members figure (for independent reasons) in such an inventory. Negatively put, if there are no things of a certain metaphysical kind, thoughts about things of that kind are not really committed to such things. Pace Crane, however, this does not mean that the intentionalia that are really there are only those that exist. For existence, qua first-order property, is no metaphysical kind. Thus, there may really be intentionalia that do not exist, provided that they belong to good metaphysical kinds. (shrink)

Can animals think? In this paper I address the proposal that many animals, including insects such as honeybees, have genuine thoughts. I consider one prominent version of this view that claims that honeybees can represent and process information about their environments in a way that satisfies the main hallmarks of human conceptual thought. I shall argue, however, that this view fails to provide convincing grounds for accepting that animals possess concepts. More precisely, I suggest that two important aspects of conceptual (...) thought, viz., concept individuation and the generality constraint, are not satisfied. (shrink)

In this thesis I seek to advance our understanding of what intuitions are. I argue that intuitions are experiences of a certain kind. In particular, they are experiences with representational content, and with a certain phenomenal character. -/- In Chapter 1 I identify our target and provide some important reliminaries. Intuitions are mental states, but which ones? Giving examples helps: a person has an intuition when it seems to her that torturing the innocent is wrong, or that if something is (...) red it is coloured. We can also provide an initial characterisation of the state by saying that it has representational content, often causes belief, and appears to justify belief. In addition, there is something it is like to have an intuition: intuition has a certain phenomenal character. -/- Some argue that intuition does not explain anything which cannot be explained by other mental states. One version of this view takes intuition to reduce to belief. In Chapter 2 I argue that this entails that agents are rationally criticisable in situations where we know they are not, and that such views are therefore untenable. A parallel argument shows that the corresponding approach to perception fails. This suggests a similarity in nature: both intuition and perception are experiences. -/- Others take intuition to reduce to a disposition to have a belief. In Chapter 3 I consider a line of argument against such views, find it unsuccessful, and present two new arguments. One is likely to be dialectically ineffective. The other suffers no such weakness: it shows that the proposed reduction fails. As before, the argument also applies to perception, and suggests that intuition and perception are both experiences. -/- In the remainder of the thesis I develop an account of intuition as an experience. I distinguish between content-specific and attitude-specific phenomenology, and argue that intuition lacks the former (Chapter 4), but has the latter (Chapter 5). This allows us to say what intuition is: it is is an experience with representational content and with attitude-specific phenomenology of a certain kind. -/- In Chapter 6 I put this account of intuition to use. When a person has a perceptual or intuitional experience, I argue that simply having the experience is what makes the subject justified in believing what the experience represents. Moreover, what explains that intuition and perception can justify belief in this way is precisely their phenomenal character. (shrink)

If we are to develop efficient, reliable and secure means for sharing information across healthcare systems and organizations, then a careful analysis of human actions will be needed. To address this need, the HL7 organization has proposed its Reference Information Model (RIM), which is designed to provide a comprehensive representation of the entire domain of healthcare centered around the phenomenon of human action. Taking the Basic Formal Ontology as our starting point, we examine the RIM from an ontological point of (...) view, describing how it fails to provide a representation of the healthcare domain which would enjoy the sort of clarity, coherence, rigor and completeness that is claimed on its behalf. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore one particular dimension of Brentano’s legacy, namely, his theory of mental analysis. This theory has received much less attention in recent literature than the intentionality thesis or the theory of inner perception. However, I argue that it provides us with substantive resources in order to conceptualize the unity of intentionality and phenomenality. My proposal is to think of the connection between intentionality and phenomenality as a certain combination of part/whole relations rather than as a supervenience (...) or identity relation. To begin, I discuss some reasons for being a (neo-)Brentanian about the mind and briefly introduce the main characteristics of Brentano’s internalist description program. Then, I turn to the current “inseparatist” way of dealing with intentionality and phenomenality, focusing on the demand for unity coming from advocates of phenomenal intentionality. I suggest that the unity of the mind may be put in a new light if we put aside metaphysical–epistemological questions, go back to Brentano’s description program, and endorse his thesis that the mental is something unified in which various parts must be distinguished. In the last section, I draw some lessons from this approach, holding that, for any representational content R, R is (in Brentano’s terms) an abstractive or “distinctional” part of the relevant state and that, for any qualitative aspect Q, Q is an abstractive or “distinctional” part of the relevant representational content R. (shrink)

I criticise a recent variety of argument for the representational theory of experience, which holds that the very idea of perceptual experience entails the representational view. I argue that the representational view is not simply obvious, nor is it contained in the mere idea of the world looking some way. I also clarify and re-present an argument against the representational view due to Charles Travis.

It is customarily assumed that propositional attitudes present two independent components: a propositional component and a psychological component, in the form of an attitude. These two components are caught by means of two different methods: propositions by some model theoretic theory, psychological attitudes by making appeal to their functional or psychological role. Some authors have seek a convergence by individuating propositions by Functional role semantics. In this paper I show that when it comes to emotional attitudes with propositional content, either (...) the independence of proposition and attitude collapses or functional role semantics brings to unstable individuation conditions for propositions. Some consequences of these two outcomes are considered. (shrink)

Most contemporary philosophical discussions of intentionality start and end with a treatment of the propositional attitudes. In fact, many theorists hold that all attitudes are propositional attitudes. Our folk-psychological ascriptions suggest, however, that there are non-propositional attitudes: I like Sally, my brother fears snakes, everyone loves my grandmother, and Rush Limbaugh hates Obama. I argue that things are as they appear: there are non-propositional attitudes. More specifically, I argue that there are attitudes that relate individuals to non-propositional objects and do (...) so not in virtue of relating them to propositions. I reach this conclusion by not only showing that attempted analyses of apparently non-propositional attitudes in terms of the propositional fail, but that some non-propositional attitudes don’t even supervene on propositional attitudes. If this is correct, then the common discussions of intentionality that address only propositional attitudes are incomplete and those who hold that all intentional states are propositional are mistaken. (shrink)

Synesthetes are people who report having perceptual experiences that are very unusual, such as ?seeing? sounds as colors or ?smelling? colors as odors. It is commonly assumed these days that such synesthetic experiences must be instances of misperceptions. Against this widespread assumption, I will highlight that there is reason to think that at least some synesthetic experiences can be viewed as truly veridical perceptions, and not as illusions or hallucinations. On this view, which I will back up by conceptual arguments (...) and empirical data, synesthesia does sometimes enable the individual to truly pick up on worldly features. In failing to take this possibility on board, the participants in this debate have thus unduly restricted the scope of dialectical options. Finally, the reassessment of synesthetic experiences that I defend in this paper will turn out to have important ramifications not just for synesthesia research, but also for perception theories more generally. (shrink)

It is widely held that there is a problem of talking about or otherwise representing things that not exist. But what exactly is this problem? This paper presents a formulation of the problem in terms of the conflict between the fact that there are truths about non-existent things and the fact that truths must be answerable to reality, how things are. Given this, the problem of singular negative existential statements is no longer the central or most difficult aspect of the (...) problem of non-existence, despite what some philosophers say. (shrink)

Many naive realists endorse a negative disjunctivist strategy in order to deal with the challenge presented by the possibility of phenomenologically indistinguishable halucination. In the first part of this paper I argue that this approach is methodologically inconsistent because it undercuts the phenomenological motivation that underlies the the appeal of naive realism. In the second part of the paper I develop an alternative to the negative disjunctivist account along broadly Meinongian lines. In the last section of this paper I consider (...) and evaluate a somewhat similar but rival view of hallucination developed by Mark Johnston. (shrink)

Abstract The subjectivity of conscious experience is a central feature of our mental life that puzzles philosophers of mind. Conscious mental representations are presented to me as mine, others remain unconscious. How can we make sense of the difference between them? Some representationalists (e.g. Tye) attempt to explain it in terms of non-conceptual intentional content, i.e. content for which one need not possess the relevant concept required in order to describe it. Hanna claims that Kant purports to explain the subjectivity (...) of conscious experience in this way. This paper examines this claim in some detail in the context of a more general criticism of this kind of attempt to explain subjectivity and proposes a different reading of Kant that also leads to an alternative account of subjectivity independent from content. (shrink)

According to the old feeling theory of emotion, an emotion is just a feeling: a conscious experience with a characteristic phenomenal character. This theory is widely dismissed in contemporary discussions of emotion as hopelessly naïve. In particular, it is thought to suffer from two fatal drawbacks: its inability to account for the cognitive dimension of emotion (which is thought to go beyond the phenomenal dimension), and its inability to accommodate unconscious emotions (which, of course, lack any phenomenal character). In this (...) paper, I argue that the old feeling theory is in reality only a pair of modifications removed from a highly plausible account of the nature of emotion that retains the essential connection between emotion and feeling. These modifications are, moreover, motivated by recent developments in work on phenomenal consciousness. The first development is the rising recognition of a phenomenal character proper to cognition—so-called cognitive phenomenology. The second is the gathering momentum behind various ‘connection principles’ that specify some connection that a given state must bear to phenomenally conscious states in order to qualify as mental. These developments make it possible to formulate a new feeling theory of emotion, which would overcome the two fatal drawbacks of the old feeling theory. According to the new feeling theory, an emotion is a mental state that bears the right connection to conscious experiences with the right phenomenal character (involving, among other elements, a cognitive phenomenology). (shrink)

This paper presents an ‘over-representational’ account of blurred visual experiences. The basic idea is that blurred experiences provide too much, inconsistent, information about objects’ spatial boundaries, by representing them as simultaneously located at multiple locations. This account attempts to avoid problems with alternative accounts of blurred experience, according to which blur is a property of a visual field, a way of perceiving, a form of mis-representation, and a form of under-representation.

A blindfolded clairvoyant walks into a room and immediately knows how it is arranged. You walk in and immediately see how it is arranged. Though both of you represent the room as being arranged in the same way, you have different experiences. Your experience doesn’t just represent that the room is arranged a certain way; it also visually presents the very items in the room that make that representation true. Call the felt aspect of your experience made salient by this (...) contrast its presentational phenomenology. Many philosophers have observed that perceptual experiences have presentational phenomenology. In this paper I explore its nature, scope, and significance. I argue that in addition to perceptual experiences, presentational phenomenology can be found in intuitive, introspective, imaginative, and recollective experiences. I also argue that presentational phenomenology is epistemologically significant: it plays a central role in explaining why the experiences that have it justify beliefs and give us knowledge. (shrink)

The paper first addresses Husserl's conception of philosophical phenomenology, metaphysics, and the relation between them, in order to explain why, on Husserl's view, there is no metaphysics of consciousness without a phenomenology of consciousness. In doing so, it recalls some of the methodological tenets of Husserl's phenomenology, pointing out that phenomenology is an eidetic or a priori science which has first of all to do with mere ideal possibilities of consciousness and its correlates; metaphysics of consciousness, on the other hand, (...) has to do with its reality or actuality, requiring an eidetic foundation in order to become scientifically valuable. Presuming that, if consciousness is to be the subject-matter of a metaphysics which is not simply speculative or based on prejudice, it is crucial to get the phenomenology of consciousness right, the paper then engages in a detailed descriptive-eidetic analysis of mental acts of re-presenting something and tries to argue that their structures, involving components of non-actual experiencing, pose a serious problem for a materialistic or physicalistic metaphysics of consciousness. The paper ends with a brief comment on Husserl's broader view of metaphysics, having to do with the irrationality of the transcendental fact, i.e. the constitution of the factual world and the factual life of the mind. (shrink)

Creationism with respect to fictional entities, i.e., the position according to which ficta are creations of human practices, has recently become the most popular realist account of fictional entities. For it allows one to hold that there are fictional entities while simultaneously giving such entities a respectable metaphysical status, that of abstract artifacts. In this paper, I will draw what are the ontological and semantical consequences of this position, or at least of all its forms that are genuinely creationist. For (...) some people, these consequences will sound as plagues against the position; for some others, especially realists on ficta, they are welcome results. Although I hold that all forms of genuine creationism have these consequences, I will conclude by explaining why I take moderate creationism, according to which ficta are created by means of a reflexive stance on the make-believe practice grounding them, to be the best of these forms. (shrink)

According to Allen Wood’s “procedural principle” we should believe only that which can be justified by evidence, and nothing more. He argues that holding beliefs which are not justified by evidence diminishes our self-respect and corrupts us, both individually and collectively. Wood’s normative and descriptive views as regards belief are of a piece with the received view which holds that beliefs aim at the truth. This view I refer to as the Truth-Tracking View (TTV). I first present a modest version (...) of TTV, one which is sensitive to standard criticisms and one which is fully consistent with the procedural principle. I then raise some doubts about TTV by considering both anecdotal cases and empirical studies. These studies suggest that certain types of belief are designed to aim away from truth, in limited, carefully calibrated ways. Moreover, it seems to be the case that selectively aiming away from the truth is important for human well-being and performance. Beliefs that are designed to aim away I dub “Tertullian” beliefs (t-beliefs). I then limn the distinguishing characteristics of t-belief and proceed to evaluate the procedural principle in light of the evidence which suggests that t-belief plays an important role in our cognitive economy. Next I argue that t-beliefs might be essential to the maintenance of self-respect and that they do not corrupt in the way that Wood claims. Finally, I argue that the fate of Wood’s procedural principle will be determined by the results of further empirical research— sociological, psychological, and neuroscientific. (shrink)

One of the most enduring elements of Davidson’s legacy is the idea that intentionality is inherently normative. The normativity of intentionality means different things to different people and in different contexts, however. A subsidiary goal of this paper is to get clear on the sense in which Davidson means the thesis that intentionality is inherently normative. The central goal of the paper is to consider whether the thesis is true, in light of recent work on intentionality that insists on an (...) intimate connection between intentionality and phenomenal consciousness. According to several recent authors, there is a kind of intentionality – “phenomenal intentionality” – that is fully constituted by the phenomenal character of conscious experiences. I will argue that although Davidson’s thesis, when correctly understood, is compelling for most intentionality, it is false of phenomenal intentionality. I start, in §1, with an explication of the notion of phenomenal intentionality; in §2, I elucidate Davidson’s thesis and his case for it; in §3, I argue that the case does not extend to phenomenal intentionality; I close, in §4, with some objections and replies. (shrink)