This paper addresses the question of what the attitude of hope consists in. We argue that shortcomings in recent theories of hope have methodological roots in that they proceed with little regard for the rich body of literature on the emotions. Taking insights from work in the philosophy of emotions, we argue that hope involves a kind of normative perception. We then develop a strategy for determining the content of this perception, arguing that hope is a perception of practical reasons. (...) Our proposal stands in contrast with familiar views on which hope is fundamentally about the good. We conclude by considering the increasingly popular idea that some hopes are non-intentional and thus, by implication, non-perceptual. We reply by arguing that our perceptual theory plausibly generalizes to these instances of hope. (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)

A widespread assumption in current philosophy of mind is that a conscious state’s phenomenal properties vary with its representational contents. In this paper, I present (rather dogmatically) an alternative picture that recognizes two kinds of phenomenal properties that do not vary concomitantly with content. First, it admits phenomenal properties that vary rather with attitude: what it is like for me to see rain is phenomenally different from what it is like for me to remember (indistinguishable) rain, which is different again (...) from what it is like for me to visualize (indistinguishable) rain – where these differences cannot be traced back to variations in content. Secondly, there is a kind of phenomenal property that varies neither with content nor with attitude but is altogether invariant across all conscious states: a substantive phenomenal commonality among what it is like for me to see, remember, and visualize rain, cats, or dogs. This substantive commonality, I will suggest, is the for-me-ness component of what it is like for me to have any of these experiences. I will close by discussing the interrelations among these three concentric layers of phenomenality: content-based, attitude-based, and for-me-ness. (shrink)

Call the idea that states of perceptual awareness have intentional content, and in virtue of that aim at or represent ways the world might be, the ‘Content View.’ I argue that though Kant is widely interpreted as endorsing the Content View there are significant problems for any such interpretation. I further argue that given the problems associated with attributing the Content View to Kant, interpreters should instead consider him as endorsing a form of acquaintance theory. Though perceptual acquaintance is controversial (...) in itself and in attribution to Kant, it promises to make sense of central claims within his critical philosophy. (shrink)

This article offers an account of moods as distinctive kinds of personal level affective-evaluative states, which are both intentional and rationally intelligible in specific ways. The account contrasts with those who claim moods are non-intentional, and so also arational. Section 1 provides a conception of intentionality and distinguishes moods, as occurrent experiential states, from other states in the affective domain. Section 2 argues moods target the subject’s total environment presented in a specific evaluative light through felt valenced attitudes (the Mood-Intentionality (...) thesis). Section 3 argues some moods are experienced as rationally intelligible responses, and so epistemically appropriate, to the way ‘the world’ presents itself (the Mood-Intelligibility thesis). Finally, section 4 discusses the epistemology of moods. (shrink)

I argue that perceptual consciousness is constituted by a mental activity. The mental activity in question is the activity of employing perceptual capacities, such as discriminatory, selective capacities. This is a radical view, but I hope to make it plausible. In arguing for this mental activist view, I reject orthodox views on which perceptual consciousness is analyzed in terms of peculiar entities, such as, phenomenal properties, external mind-independent properties, propositions, sense-data, qualia, or intentional objects.

This text addresses a problem that is not sufficiently dealt with in most of the recent literature on emotion and feeling. The problem is a general underestimation of the extent to which affective intentionality is essentially bodily. Affective intentionality is the sui generis type of world-directedness that most affective states – most clearly the emotions – display. Many theorists of emotion overlook the extent to which intentional feelings are essentially bodily feelings. The important but quite often overlooked fact is that (...) the bodily feelings in question are not the regularly treated, non-intentional bodily sensations (known from Jamesian accounts of emotion), but rather crucial carriers of world-directed intentionality. Consequently, most theories of human emotions and feelings recently advocated are deficient in terms of phenomenological adequacy. This text tries to make up for this deficit and develops a catalogue of five central features of intentional bodily feelings. In addition, Jesse Prinz’s embodied appraisal theory is criticized as an exemplary case of the misconstrual of the bodily nature of affective experience in naturalistic philosophy of mind. (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)

According to representationalism, the phenomenal character of a mental state reduces to its intentional content. Although representationalism seems plausible with respect to ordinary perceptual states, it seems considerably less plausible for states like moods. Here the problem for representationalism arises largely because moods seem to lack intentional content altogether. In this paper, I explore several possible options for identifying the intentional content of moods and suggest that none of them is wholly satisfactory. Importantly, however, I go on to argue that (...) the plausibility of representationalism should not be seen to rest on the question of whether moods have intentional content but rather on the question of whether the intentional content of moods, were there any, would be sufficient to determine their phenomenal character. As I argue, even if we concede to the representationalist that moods have intentional content, their phenomenal character outstrips their intentional content; thus, the representationalist reduction cannot succeed. Ultimately, then, I conclude that moods do indeed pose a serious objection to the representationalist theory. (shrink)

I develop a view of the common factor between subjectively indistinguishable perceptions and hallucinations that avoids analyzing experiences as involving awareness relations to abstract entities, sense-data, or any other peculiar entities. The main thesis is that hallucinating subjects employ concepts (or analogous nonconceptual structures), namely the very same concepts that in a subjectively indistinguishable perception are employed as a consequence of being related to external, mind-independent objects or property-instances. These concepts and nonconceptual structures are identified with modes of presentation types. (...) Since a hallucinating subject is not related to any such objects or property-instances, the concepts she employs remain empty. I argue that the phenomenology of hallucinations and perceptions can be identified with employing concepts and analogous nonconceptual structures. By doing so, I defend an ontologically minimalist view of the phenomenology of experience that (1) vindicates Aristotelianism about types and (2) amounts to a naturalized view of the phenomenology of experience. (shrink)

Can humans and artificial intelligences share concepts and communicate? Making AI Intelligible shows that philosophical work on the metaphysics of meaning can help answer these questions. Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever use the externalist tradition in philosophy to create models of how AIs and humans can understand each other. In doing so, they illustrate ways in which that philosophical tradition can be improved. The questions addressed in the book are not only theoretically interesting, but the answers have pressing practical implications. (...) Many important decisions about human life are now influenced by AI. In giving that power to AI, we presuppose that AIs can track features of the world that we care about (for example, creditworthiness, recidivism, cancer, and combatants). If AIs can share our concepts, that will go some way towards justifying this reliance on AI. This ground-breaking study offers insight into how to take some first steps towards achieving Interpretable AI. (shrink)

Neurotechnologies broadly understood are tools that have the capability to read, record and modify our mental activity by acting on its brain correlates. The emergence of increasingly powerful and sophisticated techniques has given rise to the proposal to introduce new rights specifically directed to protect mental privacy, freedom of thought, and mental integrity. These rights, also proposed as basic human rights, are conceived in direct relation to tools that threaten mental privacy, freedom of thought, mental integrity, and personal identity. In (...) this paper, our goal is to give a philosophical foundation to a specific right that we will call right to mental integrity. It encapsulates both the classical concepts of privacy and non-interference in our mind/brain. Such a philosophical foundation refers to certain features of the mind that hitherto could not be reached directly from the outside: intentionality, first-person perspective, personal autonomy in moral choices and in the construction of one's narrative, and relational identity. A variety of neurotechnologies or other tools, including artificial intelligence, alone or in combination can, by their very availability, threaten our mental integrity. Therefore, it is necessary to posit a specific right and provide it with a theoretical foundation and justification. It will be up to a subsequent treatment to define the moral and legal boundaries of such a right and its application. (shrink)

Intentionality is the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs. The puzzles of intentionality lie at the interface between the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. The word itself, which is of medieval Scholastic origin, was rehabilitated by the philosopher Franz Brentano towards the end of the nineteenth century. ‘Intentionality’ is a philosopher's word. It derives from the Latin word intentio, which in turn derives from the verb (...) intendere, which means being directed towards some goal or thing. The entry falls into eleven sections. (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)

The paper explicates and defends a direct realist view of episodic memory as pastperception, on the model of the more prominent direct realism about perception. First, a number of extant allegedly direct realist accounts are critically assessed, then the slogan that memory is past-perception is explained, defended against objections, and compared to extant rival views. Consequently, it is argued that direct realism about memory is a coherent and defensible view, and an attractive alternative to both the mainstream causal theories and (...) the post-causal and constructivist views. (shrink)

eSports practice designates a unique set of activities tethered to competitive, virtual environments, or worlds. This correlation between eSports practitioner and virtual world, we argue, is inadequately accounted for solely in terms of something physical or intellectual. Instead, we favor a perspective on eSports practice to be analyzed as a perceptual and embodied phenomenon. In this article, we present the phenomenological approach and focus on the embodied sensations of eSports practitioners as they cope with and perceive within their virtual worlds. (...) By approaching eSports phenomenologically, we uncover ways in which its unique forms of virtual involvement overlap with as well as differentiate themselves from traditional structures of embodiment. (shrink)

According to intentionalism, the phenomenal character of experience is one and the same as the intentional content of experience. This view has a problem with moods (anxiety, depression, elation, irritation, gloominess, grumpiness, etc.). Mood experiences certainly have phenomenal character, but do not exhibit directedness, i.e., do not appear intentional. Standardly, intentionalists have re-described moods’ undirectedness in terms of directedness towards everything or the whole world (e.g., Crane, 1998; Seager, 1999). This move offers the intentionalist a way out, but is quite (...) unsatisfying. More recently, Angela Mendelovici (2013a, b) has suggested something that looks more interesting and promising: instead of re-describing moods’ phenomenology, she accepts its undirectedness at face value and tries to explain it in intentionalist terms. In this paper, I focus on and criticize Mendelovici’s proposal. As I will show, despite its prima facie virtues, the view is poorly motivated. For, contrary to what Mendelovici argues, introspection does not support her proposal—arguably, it provides some evidence against it. So, the problem that intentionalism has with moods is not solved, but is still there. (shrink)

Many philosophers have understood the representational dimension of affective states along the model of sense-perceptual experiences, even claiming the relevant affective experiences are perceptual experiences. This paper argues affective experiences involve a kind of personal level affective representation disanalogous from the representational character of perceptual experiences. The positive thesis is that affective representation is a non-transparent, non-sensory form of evaluative representation, whereby a felt valenced attitude represents the object of the experience as minimally good or bad, and one experiences that (...) evaluative standing as having the power to causally motivate the relevant attitude. I show this view can make sense of distinctive features of affective experiences, such as their valence and connection to value in a way which moves beyond current evaluativist views of affect. (shrink)

The view that moods are dispositions has recently fallen into disrepute. In this paper we want to revitalise it by providing a new argument for it and by disarming an important objection against it. A shared assumption of our competitors (intentionalists about moods) is that moods are “diffuse”. First, we will provide reasons for thinking that existing intentionalist views do not in fact capture this distinctive feature of moods that distinguishes them from emotions. Second, we offer a dispositionalist alternative that (...) we think does better. Finally, we disarm the objection that is responsible for dispositionalism’s bad press. (shrink)

I argue that emotional feelings are not just bodily feelings, but also feelings directed towards things in the world beyond the bounds of the body, and that these feelings (feelings towards) are bound up with the way we take in the world in emotional experience.

In this paper we offer a new argument for the existence of God. We contend that the laws of logic are metaphysically dependent on the existence of God, understood as a necessarily existent, personal, spiritual being; thus anyone who grants that there are laws of logic should also accept that there is a God. We argue that if our most natural intuitions about them are correct, and if they are to play the role in our intellectual activities that we take (...) them to play, then the laws of logic are best construed as necessarily existent thoughts -- more specifically, as divine thoughts about divine thoughts. We conclude by highlighting some implications for both theistic arguments and antitheistic arguments. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is possible for suffering to occur in the absence of phenomenal consciousness – in the absence of a certain sort of experiential subjectivity, that is. (Phenomenal consciousness is the property that some mental states possess, when it is like something to undergo them, or when they have subjective feels, or possess qualia.) So even if theories of phenomenal consciousness that would withhold such consciousness from most species of non-human animal are correct, this neednt mean that (...) those animals dont suffer, and arent appropriate objects of sympathy and concern. (shrink)

I discuss here the nature of nonconscious mental states and the ways in which they may differ from their conscious counterparts. I first survey reasons to think that mental states can and often do occur without being conscious. Then, insofar as the nature of nonconscious mentality depends on how we understand the nature of consciousness, I review some of the major theories of consciousness and explore what restrictions they may place on the kinds of states that can occur nonconsciously. I (...) close with a discussion of what makes a state mental, if consciousness is not the mark of the mental. (shrink)

The mental realm seems different to the physical realm; the mental is thought to be dependent on, yet distinct from the physical. But how, exactly, are the two realms supposed to be different, and what, exactly, creates the seemingly insurmountable juxtaposition between the mental and the physical? This review identifies and discusses five marks of the mental, features that set characteristically mental phenomena apart from the characteristically physical phenomena. These five marks (intentionality, consciousness, free will, teleology, and normativity) are not (...) presented as a set of features that define mentality. Rather, each of them is something we seem to associate with phenomena we consider mental, and each of them seems to be in tension with the physical view of reality in its own particular way. It is thus suggested how there is no single mind-body problem, but a set of distinct but interconnected problems. Each of these separate problems is analyzed, and their differences, similarities and connections are identified. This provides a useful basis for future theoretical work on psychology and philosophy of mind, that until now has too often suffered from unclarities, inadequacies, and conflations. (shrink)

This paper introduces a new approach to the study of Paleolithic minds. It is developed on the basis of the phenomenological concept of intentionality: the mind's central characteristic of being about or directed at something. In phenomenology, the world is considered not qua fact, but qua appearance, as a correlate of the mind's intentional activity. Both world-appearance and the mind's directedness are further considered from a first-person viewpoint, and in a scaffolding fashion, with more complex acts disclosing new types of (...) objects or aspects of them. This paper develops a framework for applying intentional analysis to minds of the past. This way, the subjective “world-having” of past subjects can be systematically reconstructed in a manner consistent with the empirical data available. This discloses a new field of inquiry that thus far has not been clearly grasped, even though the questions belonging to it are everywhere recognized as being of the greatest importance to the discipline. The intentional analysis of the scaffolding of acts and what they disclose can help to clarify essential concepts in cognitive archaeological debates, and to better understand the evolution of the hominin mind. (shrink)

The so-called transparency of experience (TE) is the intuition that, in introspecting one’s own experience, one is only aware of certain properties (like colors, shapes, etc.) as features of (apparently) mind-independent objects. TE is quite popular among philosophers of mind and has traditionally been used to motivate Representationalism, i.e., the view that phenomenal character is in some strong way dependent on intentionality. However, more recently, others have appealed to TE to go the opposite way and support the phenomenal intentionality view (...) (PIV), according to which intentionality is in some strong way dependent on phenomenal character. If this line of argument succeeds, then not only TE does not speak in favor of Representationalism, but it actually speaks against it, contrary to the philosophical common-sense of the last two decades. Moreover, the representationalist project of naturalizing phenomenal character turns out to be seriously undermined on the same intuitive grounds that were supposed to make it plausible. In this paper, I reconstruct and discuss the line of argument from TE to PIV and argue that our introspective intuitions (TE) do not push us in the direction of PIV. On the contrary, the line of argument from TE to PIV is (at best) simply too weak to force us to conclude that intentionality depends on phenomenal character in the sense required for PIV to be true. (shrink)

It is a familiar feature of our affective psychology that our moods ‘crystalize’ into emotions, and that our emotions ‘diffuse’ into moods. Providing a detailed philosophical account of these affective shifts, as I will call them, is the central aim of this paper. Drawing on contemporary philosophy of emotion and mood, alongside distinctive ideas from the phenomenologically-inspired writer Robert Musil, a broadly ‘intentional’ and ‘evaluativist’ account will be defended. I argue that we do best to understand important features of these (...) affective shifts – which I document across this paper – in terms of intentional and evaluative aspects of the respective states of moods and emotion. At same the time, the account is pitched at the phenomenological level, as dealing with affective shifts primarily in terms of moods and emotions as experiential states, with respect to which it feels-like-something to be undergoing the relevant affective experience. The paper also applies the intentional-evaluative model of affective shifts to anxiety in more detail, developing the idea that certain patterns of affective shift, particularly those that allow for a kind of ‘emotional release’, can contribute to a subject’s well-being. (shrink)

This paper discusses Husserl’s theory of intentionality and compares it to contemporary debates about intentionalism. I first show to what extent such a comparison could be meaningful. I then outline the structure of intentionality as found in Ideas I. My main claims are that – in contrast with intentionalism – intentionality for Husserl covers just a region of conscious contents; that it is essentially a relation between act-processes and presented content; and that the side of act-processes contains non-representational contents. In (...) the third part, I show that Husserl also offers resources against intentionalism’s exclusive concern with propositional content. (shrink)

The very idea of unconscious emotion has been thought puzzling. But in recent debate about emotions, comparatively little attention has been given explicitly to the question. I survey a number of recent attempts by philosophers to resolve the puzzle and provide some preliminary remarks about their viability. I identify and discuss three families of responses: unconscious emotions involve conscious feelings, unconscious emotions involve no feelings at all, and unconscious emotions involve unconscious feelings. The discussion is exploratory rather than decisive for (...) three reasons. First, the aim is to provide a framework for the debate, and identify a number of key issues for further research. Second, a number of the positions depend for their plausibility upon theoretical commitments that can be made clear, but cannot be evaluated in detail, in a survey article. Third, I believe no fully satisfactory, comprehensive solution has yet been developed. (shrink)

What kind of affective phenomenon is religious zeal and how does it relate to other affective phenomena, such as moral anger, hatred, and love? In this paper, I argue that religious zeal can be both, and be presented and interpreted as both, a love-like passion and an anger-like emotion. As a passion, religious zeal consists of the loving devotion to a transcendent religious object or idea such as God. It is a relatively enduring attachment that is constitutive of who the (...) zealot is, and it expresses itself in a distinctive set of mental and behavioral dispositions. Most importantly, it motivates uncompromising actions and involves intense, hot, and deep emotions. As an anger-like emotion, religious zeal is an occurrent affective state of mind that is intentionally directed towards a specific object, characteristically a person or group of persons. It condemns the violation of a religious norm that is taken to be of absolute validity and general applicability. It motivates an action aiming at vengeance and retaliation, and it involves intense and hot feelings of hostility towards its object. I argue that rather than reducing the complex phenomenon of religious zeal to one of these two manifestations, we should reflect upon the question of how the two distinct conceptualizations relate to each other. (shrink)

I argue first that attention is a (maybe the) paradigmatic case of an object-directed, non-propositional intentional mental episode. In addition attention cannot be reduced to any other (propositional or non-propositional) mental episodes. Yet, second, attention is not a non-propositional mental attitude. It might appear puzzling how one could hold both of these claims. I show how to combine them, and how that combination shows how propositionality and non-propositionality can co-exist in a mental life. The crucial move is one away from (...) an atomistic, building block picture to a more holistic, structural picture. (shrink)

This paper discusses the nonconceptual theory of mystical ineffability which claims that mystical experiences can’t be expressed linguistically because they can’t be conceptualized. I discuss and refute two objections against it: (a) that unconceptualized experiences are impossible, and (b) that the theory is ad hoc because it provides no reason for why mystical experiences should be unconceptualizable. I argue against (a) that distinguishing different meanings of ‘object of experience’ leaves open the possibility of non-empty but objectless nonconceptual experiences. I show (...) that (b) is a valid objection but can be countered by a new theory of mystical non-conceptuality: mystical experiences are not conceptual because the specific mode of mystical consciousness prevents conceptualization. The dissolution of the subjectivity of consciousness during mystical experiences undermines the very foundation of the possibility of conceptual thought and thus renders them ineffable. (shrink)

Paper responding to critique of Maurin (2002) presented by Herbert Hochberg in his “Relations, Properties and Particulars” (2004).

We are each aware of our own experiences as they occur, but in this inner awareness our experiences do not seem to be presented to us as objects in the way that they typically are when we reflect on them. A number of philosophers, principally in the phenomenological tradition, have characterised this in terms of inner awareness being a non-objectifying mode of awareness. This claim has faced persistent objections that the notion of non-objectifying awareness is obscure or merely negatively characterised. (...) In this paper I shall outline a positive conception of a non-objectifying mode of awareness, feature-encountering awareness. I shall apply this conception to our awareness of our experiences, characterising it as an awareness of instantiations of phenomenal properties in a temporal dimension. Inner awareness thus characterised clearly differs from standard modes of objectifying awareness. (shrink)

James Anderson and Greg Welty have resurrected an argument for God’s existence, which we will call the argument from logic. We present three lines of response against the argument, involving the notion of necessity involved, the notion of intentionality involved, and then we pose a dilemma for divine conceptualism. We conclude that the argument faces substantial problems.

In this paper, we describe causal powers realism as a conjunction of four claims: causal powers are not reducible to counterfactuals; they are empirically-discoverable; they manifest effects in conjunction with partners; and their manifestations empower further manifestations. We describe four challenges to extended mind theory and for each show how an ontology of causal powers realism either avoids or dissolves the problem. We close by suggesting that causal powers realism isn’t a competitor with extended mind theory but rather a new (...) way to understand what it means for minds to be extended. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to lay the groundwork for extending the idea of transparent introspection to wishes. First, I elucidate the notion of transparent introspection and highlight its advantages over rival accounts of self-knowledge. Then I pose several problems that seem to obstruct the extension of transparent introspection to wishes. In order to overcome these problems, I call into question the standard propositional attitude analysis of non-doxastic attitudes. My considerations lead to a non-orthodox account of attitudes in general (...) and wishes in particular in light of which the problems presented in Sect. 2 disappear. (shrink)

Sometimes we speak of behaviours and actions as reactions, just as we speak of physical conditions and mental states as reactions. But what do we mean when we say that emotions are reactions? I answer this question by developing an account of emotions as psychological reactions to presentations or representations of states of affairs. I show that this account may provide a novel conceptual framework for explaining aspects of the intentionality, phenomenology and behavioural manifestation of emotions. I conclude by showing (...) that this account is compatible with the view that emotions can be assessed on grounds of justification and correctness. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of non-personal immortality. Non-personal theories of immortality claim that even though there is no personal or individual survival of death, it is still possible to continue to exist in a non-personal state. The most important challenge for non-personal conceptions of immortality is solving the apparent contradiction between on the one hand accepting that individual existence ends with death and on the other hand maintaining that death nevertheless is not equal to total annihilation. I present two (...) theories of non-personal immortality found in Schopenhauer and William James and derive a set of systematic core theses from them. Finally, I discuss whether the notion of non-personal immortality is consistent, and whether a non-personal afterlife could be desirable. (shrink)

In this chapter, I revisit the issue of the explanatory gap that is supposed to open when considering identity statements between physical and mental phenomena. I show that the question asked in the original formulation of the explanatory gap was this: ʻwhy this phenomenal character, rather than any other, is attached to this physiological process?ʼ I argue that this question can be answered, because there is a natural fit between the phenomenal character of experiences and their functional roles. For example, (...) pains feel inherently unpleasant, and that explains why they cause avoidance behaviour, and the felt location and intensity of pain indicates the location and extent of damage to the body. I discuss some other possible gaps in our understanding the relationship between the mental and the physical, and conclude that the fit between functional role and phenomenal character goes a long way, though probably not the whole way, to closing the explanatory gap. (shrink)

The central aim of this article is to argue that Nietzsche takes his own taste, and those in the relevant sense similar to it, to enjoy a kind of epistemic privilege over their rivals. Section 2 will examine the textual evidence for an anti-realist reading of Nietzsche on taste. Section 3 will then provide an account of taste as an ‘affective evaluative sensibility’, asking whether taste so understood supports an anti-realist reading. I will argue that it does not and that (...) we should resist construing the affects, which constitute taste for Nietzsche, as no more than Humean subjective preferences. Section 4 will then consider passages in which Nietzsche makes a connection between taste and epistemic considerations, suggesting that he appears to situate the epistemic privilege of his taste in a more fundamental method of evaluative disclosure, namely pre-reflective affective responses. Finally, Section 5 will argue that we can make sense of how such affective responses could provide us with evaluative knowledge by narrowing the scope of the objects of Nietzsche’s taste to other affective-evaluative states, such that the affective responses are meta-affective evaluations. On the basis of this idea, I construct a theory of meta-affective responses providing their subjects with access to the intrinsic phenomenal value of other affective-evaluative states, and then go on to show how Nietzsche can be read as applying this theory in a number of passages. (shrink)

The philosophical debate around the nature of moods has mostly focused on their apparent undirectedness: unlike mental states such as perceptual experiences, thoughts, and emotions, moods do not seem to be directed at any specific object, and indeed they do not seem to be directed at anything at all. In this paper, I want to draw attention to a different feature of moods, one that is as important and in need of explanation as their apparent undirectedness, but which has been (...) overlooked by most participants in the debate: the fact that moods involve a particularly marked salience of the subjective aspect of experience. I argue that any adequate theory of moods should account for this fact. I call this the “subjective salience desideratum.” In the bulk of the paper, I articulate and motivate the desideratum, show that extant theories of moods do not satisfy it, and offer a preliminary overview of possible (yet unexplored) theories that have the subjective salience desideratum at their core. (shrink)

Moods, orthodoxy holds, exist outside the space of reasons. A depressed subject may change their thoughts and behaviors as a result of their depression. But, according to this view, their mood gives them no genuine reason to do so. Instead, moods are mere causal influences on cognition. The issue is that moods, with their diffuse phenomenology, appear to lack intentionality (Directionlessness). But intentionality appears to be a necessary condition on rationality (The Content Constraint). Together, these principles conflict with the idea (...) that moods are rational states of mind (Mood Rationality). The inconsistency of these three principles is the Puzzle of Mood Rationality. Now to many, this puzzle is hardly vexing: we should reject Mood Rationality. But, I argue, Mood Rationality is true despite its unpopularity. Thus, we need another way of resolving the puzzle. To do so, I distinguish intentionality as a first‐personal, phenomenological notion from representation as a third‐personal, cognitive scientific notion. I then argue that moods satisfy a revised version of the Content Constraint and sketch an account of moods as representational but non‐intentional mental states, drawing on the Valuationist paradigm in affective neuroscience. I end by showing how this account enables us to explain moods’ rationality. (shrink)

In contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, Franz Brentano is known mostly for his thesis that intentionality is ‘the mark of the mental.’ Among Brentano scholars, there are also lively debates on his theory of consciousness and his theory of judgment. Brentano’s theory of will and emotion is less widely discussed, even within the circles of Brentano scholarship. In this paper, I want to show that this is a missed opportunity, certainly for Brentano scholars but also for contemporary philosophy of mind. (...) Brentano’s accounts of the will and of emotion are, I will argue, both insightful, creative, and surprising, on the one hand, and strikingly plausible, upon reflection, on the other. (shrink)