This paper addresses a problem about epistemic warrant. The problem is posed by philosophical arguments for externalism about the contents of thoughts, and similarly by philosophical arguments for architecturalism about thinking, when these arguments are put together with a thesis of first person authority. In each case, first personal knowledge about our thoughts plus the kind of knowledge that is provided by a philosophical argument seem, together, to open an unacceptably ‘non-empirical’ route to knowledge of empirical facts. Furthermore, this unwelcome (...) prospect of transferring a ‘non-empirical’ warrant from premises about our own mental states and about philosophical theory to a conclusion about external environment or internal architecture seems to depend upon little more than the possibility of knowledge by inference. (The use of the scare-quoted term ‘non-empirical’ is explained a couple of paragraphs further on.). (shrink)

The McKinsey Problem concerns a puzzling implication of the doctrines of Content Externalism and Privileged Access. I provide a categorization of possible solutions to the problem. Then I discuss Crispin Wright’s work on the problem. I argue that Wright has misconceived the status of his own proferred solution to the problem.

Liberals about perceptual contents claim that perceptual experiences can represent kinds and specific, familiar individuals as such; they also claim that the representation of an individual or kind as such by a perceptual experience will be reflected in the phenomenal character of that experience. Conservatives always deny the latter and sometimes also the former claim. I argue that neither liberals nor conservatives have adequately appreciated how the content internalism/externalism debate bears on their views. I show that perceptual content internalism entails (...) conservativism when conjoined with one other, extremely plausible premise. Hence, liberals are committed to perceptual contents externalism, yet they have failed to fully address the consequences that this has for their view. Moreover, the argument is easily adapted to perceptual experiences of Twin Earthable properties, like colour and shape. I use this last result to show why existing conservative arguments that appeal to Twin Earth plausibly overgeneralize. (shrink)

In the present paper, the notion that brains in vats with perceptual experiences of the same type as ours could perceptually represent other entities than shapes is challenged. Whereas it is often held that perceptual experiences with the same phenomenal character as ours could represent computational properties, I argue that this is not the case for shapes. My argument is in brief that the phenomenal character of a normal visual experience exemplifies shapes – phenomenal shapes – which functions as the (...) vehicle for our perceptual representation of shapes. Due to the unique mereological structure of shapes, phenomenal shapes are unable to reliably track any property but shapes. In so far as reliable tracking is a necessary condition for perceptual representation, phenomenal shapes can consequently and contrary to received wisdom only represent shapes. (shrink)

To what extent is the external world the way that it appears to us in perceptual experience? This perennial question in philosophy is no doubt ambiguous in many ways. For example, it might be taken as equivalent to the question of whether or not the external world is the way that it appears to be? This is a question about the epistemology of perception: Are our perceptual experiences by and large veridical representations of the external world? Alternatively, the question might (...) be taken as asking whether or not the external world is like its ways of appearing to us, where the expression “ways of appearing” is intended to pick out aspects of our perceptual experiences themselves. This is a metaphysical version of the question of the relationship between appearance and reality: What is the relationship between the phenomenal features that characterize perceptual experience, on the one hand, and the mind-independent features of the external objects of perception, on the other? There are some philosophers who might resist distinguishing between these two questions. For them, “ways of appearing” in the phenomenal sense just are the ways that things appear to be (let’s call the latter the “intentional sense” of “ways of appearing”).1 That is, the phenomenal character of an experience is nothing over and above its representational content. Phenomenal properties are represented properties—the properties that an experience attributes to the external objects of perception. The question of whether or not phenomenal properties can be identified with the represented properties of an experience mirrors traditional questions in the philosophy of perception. If they can be identified with each other, then in veridical perception we might be said to “directly grasp” features of the external world through perception. The properties that are present to the mind are the very same properties that belong to the external objects of perception. Such a view affords.... (shrink)

Phenomenal intentionality is a singular form of intentionality. Science shows it is internally-determined. So standard externalist models for reducing intentionality don't apply to it.

A traditional view of perception and action makestwo assumptions: that the causal flow betweenperception and action is primarily linear or one-way,and that they are merely instrumentally related toeach other, so that each is a means to the other.Either or both of these assumptions can be rejected. Behaviorism rejects the instrumental but not theone-way aspect of the traditional view, thus leavingitself open to charges of verificationism. Ecologicalviews reject the one-way aspect but not theinstrumental aspect of the traditional view, so thatperception and (...) action are seen as instrumentallyinterdependent. It is argued here that a betteralternative is to reject both assumptions, resultingin a two-level interdependence view in whichperception and action co-depend on dynamicallycircular subpersonal relations and as a result may bemore than merely instrumentally interdependent. Thisis illustrated by reference to motor theories ofperception and control theories of action. (shrink)

According to Minkoswki, Einstein's special theory of relativity reveals that ‘space by itself, and time by itself are doomed to fade away into mere shadows’. But perceptual experience represents objects as instantiating shapes like squareness — properties of ‘space by itself’. Thus, STR seems to threaten the veridicality of shape experience. In response to this worry, some have argued that we should analyze the contents of our spatial experiences on the model of traditional secondary qualities. On this picture—defended in recent (...) work by Chalmers —an experience of squareness just represents whatever property usually causes such experiences. This view salvages the veridicality of shape experience, but leaves the nature of the properties we perceive outside our ken. I argue that such a move is unwarranted: STR is compatible with the idea that shape experience acquaints us with the spatial character of our world. In defending this claim, I propose a view on which shape experience presents familiar Euclidean spatial properties veridically, while implicitly representing those properties as instantiated in a particular manner — namely, relative to our own frame of reference. (shrink)

The term “consciousness” is very often, though not always, interchangeable with the term “awareness,” which is more colloquial to many ears. We say things like “are you aware that ...” often. Sometimes we say “have you noticed that ... ?” to express similar thoughts, and this indicates a close connection between consciousness (awareness) and attention (noticing), which we will come back to later in this chapter. Ned Block, one of the key figures in this area, provides a useful characterization of (...) what he calls “phenomenal consciousness.” For him, phenomenal consciousness is experience. Experience covers perceptions, e.g., when we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste, we typically have experiences, such as seeing colors and smelling odors. It also covers bodily awareness, e.g., we typically have experiences of our own bodily temperature and positions of limbs. Consciousness is primarily about this experiential aspect of our mental lives. (shrink)