Mark Alfano claims that the heuristics and biases literature supports inferential cognitive situationism, i.e., the view that most of our inferential beliefs are arrived at and retained by means of unreliable heuristics rather than intellectual virtues. If true, this would present virtue reliabilists with an unpleasant choice: they can either accept inferential skepticism, or modify or abandon reliabilism. Alfano thinks that the latter course of action is most plausible, and several reliabilists seem to agree. I argue that this is not (...) the case. If situationism is true, then inferential non-skepticism is no more plausible than reliabilism. But inferential cognitive situationism is false. The heuristic-based inferences that facilitate successful perception and communication have proven remarkably accurate, and even the psychological research on inductive reasoning does not support Alfano’s situationism. More generally, negative assessments of human reasoning tend to ignore the fact that the research on cognitive biases focuses primarily on the performance of individuals in isolation. Several studies suggest that we reason much more effectively when in critical dialogue with others, which highlights the fact that our epistemic performance depends not only on the inner workings of our cognitive processes, but on the environments in which they operate. (shrink)

The on-going debate over the ‘admissible contents of perceptual experience’ concerns the range of properties that human beings are directly acquainted with in perceptual experience. Regarding vision, it is relatively uncontroversial that the following properties can figure in the contents of visual experience: colour, shape, illumination, spatial relations, motion, and texture. The controversy begins when we ask whether any properties besides these figure in visual experience. We argue that ‘ensemble properties’ should be added to the list of visually admissible properties. (...) Ensemble properties are features that belong to a set of perceptible objects as a whole as opposed to the individuals that constitute that set. They include such features as the mean size of an array of shapes or the average emotional expression of an array of faces. Recent work in vision science has yielded compelling evidence that the visual system routinely encodes such properties. We argue that epistemological considerations provide strong reasons to think that these properties figure in visual experience. Judgements about ensemble properties are immediately warranted by our perceptual experience, and the only plausible way that a perceptual experience could confer this warrant is if it confers awareness of ensemble properties. (shrink)

My paper is going to illustrate how a universal normative ground can be individuated behind Richard Rorty’s political philosophy, chiefly as he develops it in his well-known Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. I shall show how a foundational moral assumption is constantly backing his active defence of liberalism, which defines “cruelty” as “the worst thing we do” and claims that “no well-grounded theoretical answer” can be given in reply to the interrogative “why not be cruel?” After delineating very briefly Rorty’s two (...) crucial concepts of “ethnocentrism” and “antirepresentationalism”, a clear understanding of which is necessary to appreciate Rorty’s position, I shall focus my attention on Rorty’s conception of cruelty. Structuring within a consistent frame the many hints that he furnishes with regard to this issue, I shall determine its most frequent and characteristic features, the study of which shall resolve into the individuation of the concept working as the universal normative ground for his liberalism, namely an underlying pain-aversion principle, which regularly supports Rorty’s claims against cruelty – and ergo his claims in favour of liberalism. Such a discovery is tantamount to the realisation that a contradiction undermines Rorty’s negation of the possibility to find a “well-grounded theoretical answer” to the question “why not be cruel?” Specifically, either a metaphysical aversion to pain is presupposed by Rorty, as Christine Korsgaar’s study on the sources of normativity can help us to see, or a similar point is actually inherent to Rorty’s arguing and acting pro liberalism, as he has been doing for more than twenty years. In the former case, the contradiction would be formal; in the latter case, the contradiction would be performative. (shrink)

The paper argues that metaphysical thought, or thought in whose context our general framework of sense is under scrutiny, involves, legitimates, and requires a variety of informal analogues of the ‘true contradictions’ supported in some paraconsistent formal logics. These are what we can call informal ‘legitimate logical inadequacies’. These paradoxical logical structures also occur in deeply pluralist contexts, where more than one, conflicting general framework for sense is relevant. The paper argues further that these legitimate logical inadequacies are real or (...) inherent in sense itself rather than conventional, shows how they can feature in argumentative practice in these metaphysical and pluralist contexts, and discusses some of their implications for metaphysical truth and for philosophical inquiry and disagreement. (shrink)

The assessment of patients' decision-making capacity (DMC) has become an important area of clinical practice, and since it provides the gateway for a consideration of non-consensual treatment, has major ethical implications. Tests of DMC such as under the Mental Capacity Act (2005) for England and Wales aim at supporting autonomy and reducing unwarranted paternalism by being ‘procedural’, focusing on how the person arrived at a treatment decision. In practice, it is difficult, especially in problematic or borderline cases, to avoid a (...) consideration of beliefs and values; that is, of the substantive content of ideas rather than simple ‘cognitive’ or procedural abilities. However, little attention has been paid to how beliefs and values might be assessed in the clinical context and what kind of ‘objectivity’ is possible. We argue that key aspects of Donald Davidson's ideas of ‘Radical Interpretation’ and the ‘Principle of Charity’ provide useful guidance as to how clinicians might approach the question of whether an apparent disturbance in a person's thinking about beliefs or values undermines their DMC. A case example is provided, and a number of implications for clinical practice are discussed. (shrink)

Realists typically suppose that nonepistemic truth is an independent condition on propositional knowledge. Few philosophers, however, have seriously questioned the meta-epistemic consequences of combining alethic and epistemic variants of realism. In this paper I aim to show that the truth condition in the customary definition of knowledge presents an important problem for the realist at higher epistemic levels. According to my argument, traditional epistemic-logical analyses of metaknowledge fail because of their extensionalism and certain presuppositions they have about the satisfaction of (...) the truth condition. I further suggest that we need a different approach to metaknowledge if (1) we want to retain alethic realism, and (2) we want our epistemological accounts to adequately explicate the meta-epistemic states of actual, evidence-bound cognitive agents. (shrink)

En este breve comentario discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación de la epistemología de Davidson que sugiere Willian Duica en su reciente libro. Luego de una presentación somera del libro me centro en tres asuntos centrales de la interpretación de Duica. En primer lugar, argumento que su lectura de la crítica de Davidson al dualismo esquema/contenido es muy restrictiva y deja abierta la posibilidad de un realismo directo empirista. En segundo lugar, argumento que en su lectura el propio Duica se (...) compromete inadvertidamente con un empirismo de este tipo y, de este modo, su interpretación entra en tensión con el coherentismo de Davidson. Finalmente, discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación que hace Duica de la tesis davidsoniana de la triangulación. (shrink)

This paper is divided into two main sections. In the first, I attempt to show that the characterization of Frege as a redundancy theorist is not accurate. Using one of Wolfgang Carl's recent works as a foil, I argue that Frege countenances a realm of abstract objects including truth, and that Frege's Platonist commitments inform his epistemology and embolden his antipsychologistic project. In the second section, contrasting Frege's Platonism with pragmatism, I show that even though Frege's metaphysical position concerning truth (...) has been criticized as reproachable, I argue that it may be useful for people to think like Platonists while conducting their scientific and philosophical inquiries. (shrink)

El objeto de este artículo es analizar el problema de la justificación del conocimiento básico y ofrecer una solución basada en un tipo de justificación deflacionaria no-evidencialista a partir de la noción de habilitación de T. Burge y la de _garantía racional_ de C. Wright. El problema, en el caso del conocimiento básico lógico, es que justificar las reglas lógicas inferencialmente supone utilizar principios lógicos, con lo cual se genera un círculo vicioso. Examinamos la viabilidad del enfoque no-inferencialista de Wright (...) y sostendremos que una garantía racional es una respuesta viable para el problema de la justificación del conocimiento lógico básico. (shrink)

This paper articulates and argues for the plausibility of the Presentation View of Perceptual Knowledge, an under-discussed epistemology of perception. On this view, a central epistemological role of perception is that of making subjects aware of their surroundings. By doing so, perception affords subjects with reasons for world-directed judgments. Moreover, the very perceived concrete entities are identified as those reasons. The former claim means that the position is a reasons-based epistemology; the latter means that it endorses a radically anti-psychologist conception (...) of reasons. First, I articulate and motivate the Presentation View. Then, I defend the view from three incarnations of a major objection levelled within the ranks of reasons-based epistemologies: McDowell’s version of the accusation that a view like this falls prey to the Myth of the Given. I argue that all three incarnations fail to show the Presentation View to be inadequate. The first version holds that a general characterization of the Myth clearly shows that it is an incoherent idea. The second version holds that endorsing the Myth makes it impossible to construe non-conceptual items as items that can stand in rational relations to judgements and beliefs. The third version holds that endorsing the Myth leads to a conception where perceptual experiences merely cause, but do not warrant, our perceptual beliefs and judgements. I explain in detail how the Presentation View has the elements to respond to each of these objections. (shrink)

According to the bootstrapping problem, any view that allows for basic knowledge (knowledge obtained from a reliable source prior to one’s knowing that that source is reliable) is forced to accept that one can utilize a track-record argument to acquire justification for believing that one’s belief source is reliable; yet, we tend to think that acquiring justification in this way is too easy. In this paper I argue, first, that those who respond to the bootstrapping problem by denying basic knowledge (...) succumb to over-intellectualizing epistemology, and secondly, reliabilist views avoid over-intellectualization only at the expense of sanctioning bootstrapping as a benign procedure. Both of these outcomes are difficult to bear. To ward off each of these unsavory outcomes, I propose an alternative solution that draws on a distinction between two separate epistemic concepts: entitlement and justification. (shrink)

Since Tolman’s paper in 1948, psychologists and neuroscientists have argued that cartographic representations play an important role in cognition. These empirical findings align with some theoretical works developed by philosophers who promote a pluralist view of representational vehicles, stating that cognitive processes involve representations with different formats. However, the inferential relations between maps and representations with different formats have not been sufficiently explored. Thus, this paper is focused on the inferential relations between cartographic and linguistic representations. To that effect, we (...) appeal to heterogeneous inference with ordinary maps and sentences. In doing so, we aim to build a model to bridge the gap between cartographic and linguistic thought. (shrink)

According to MODERATISM, perceptual justification requires that one independently takes for granted propositional hinges like <There is an external world>, <I am not a brain in a vat (BIV)>, and so on. This view faces the truth problem: to offer an account of truth for hinges that is not threatened by skepticism. Annalisa Coliva has tried to solve the truth problem by combining the claim that external world propositions have a substantive truth property like correspondence with the claim that hinges (...) have a deflationary truth property. I argue that the resulting view cannot offer a coherent characterization of ‘skeptical switch scenarios’ while providing an effective anti-skeptical strategy. In a more positive vein, I defend an approach that combines a correspondence conception of truth with epistemological disjunctivism. (shrink)

In the early 20th century, scepticism was common among philosophers about the very meaningfulness of the notion of truth – and of the related notions of denotation, definition etc. (i.e., what Tarski called semantical concepts). Awareness was growing of the various logical paradoxes and anomalies arising from these concepts. In addition, more philosophical reasons were being given for this aversion.1 The atmosphere changed dramatically with Alfred Tarski’s path-breaking contribution. What Tarski did was to show that, assuming that the syntax of (...) the object language is specified exactly enough, and that the metatheory has a certain amount of set theoretic power,2 one can explicitly define truth in the object language. And what can be explicitly defined can be eliminated. It follows that the defined concept cannot give rise to any inconsistencies (that is, paradoxes). This gave new respectability to the concept of truth and related notions. Nevertheless, philosophers’ judgements on the nature and philosophical relevance of Tarski’s work have varied. It is my aim here to review and evaluate some threads in this debate. (shrink)

Tomamos como certo que os nossos sentidos nos colocam em contato com o ambiente ao nosso redor. Enquanto caminhamos em uma rua, vemos obstáculos que temos de contornar ou remover. Mesmo de costas, podemos ouvir a bicicleta que se aproxima e dar passagem. Em suma, por meio de experiências perceptivas (visuais, auditivas, olfativas etc.), ficamos conscientes de objetos ou eventos que estejam ocorrendo ao nosso redor. Além disso, com base no que percebemos, podemos formar e manter crenças acerca do ambiente (...) e, assim, adquirir conhecimento perceptivo acerca do mundo. A importância desse conhecimento acerca do que está ao nosso alcance perceptivo é inestimável para a nossa sobrevivência e a condução de nossos projetos cotidianos. Contudo, podemos querer saber (1) se de fato temos acesso ao mundo físico circundante por meio das nossas experiências perceptivas, e (2) se e como essas experiências justificam as nossas crenças acerca do que percebemos. Esses problemas são centrais para a epistemologia da percepção, embora não sejam os únicos. Nessa entrada, abordaremos esses dois problemas. (shrink)

Dem Alltagsverständnis zufolge bringt uns die Wahrnehmung in einen Kontakt mit der Wirklichkeit. Die Stabilisierung der Wahrnehmungsgewissheit ist tief im subjektiven Bildungsprozess verankert, hat sich alltagspraktisch bewährt und in der Sprache sedimentiert. Andererseits hat sich durch Erfahrungen kultureller Diversität und sozialer Differenz auch die Auffassung verbreitet, dass die Welt nur gleichsam durch die Brille spezifischer Herkünfte und Zugehörigkeiten wahrgenommen wird. Die Spannung zwischen realistischen und konstruktivistischen Interpretationen des menschlichen Weltbezugs bildet die Ausgangssituation, mit der sich die Beiträge zu dem geplanten (...) Sammelband In Kontakt mit der Wirklichkeit. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zur Situiertheit der Wahrnehmung auseinandersetzen. Ziel ist es, die Wahrnehmungsgewissheit des direkten Realismus zu verteidigen, ohne die berechtigten Einwände außer Acht zu lassen. Nicht nur der Begriff der Wahrnehmung wird dabei einer grundlegenden Prüfung unterzogen, sondern auch der Begriff der Wirklichkeit und mit ihm ein angemessenes Verständnis davon, als leiblich verkörperte Individuen in einer gemeinsam geteilten Welt zu sein. (shrink)

Das Leben hat sich auf unserem Planeten zu einer unermesslichen Fülle von Formen ausdifferenziert, die in komplexen Weisen interagieren. Durch die Zerstörung unserer natürlichen Umwelt bedrohen wir das Wunder der globalen Biodiversität in seinem Fortbestand. Dabei verdrängen wir, dass auch die Menschheit weiter von der Produktivität jener Ökosysteme abhängig bleibt, zu denen sich das Leben evolutionär organisiert hat. Doch wie lässt sich überzeugend für den Erhalt von Biodiversität argumentieren? Sind Arten und Ökosysteme nur als Voraussetzungen gelingenden menschlichen Lebens schützenswert? Oder (...) haben sie darüber hinaus einen von uns unabhängigen Eigenwert? Andreas Hetzel gibt philosophisch fundierte Antworten auf diese Fragen und diskutiert konkrete Möglichkeiten des Biodiversitätsschutzes. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A Third-Person-Based or Third-Personal Judgment-Dependent account of mental content implies that, as an a priori matter, facts about a subject’s mental content are precisely captured by the judgments of a second-person or an interpreter. Alex Byrne, Bill Child, and others have discussed attributing such a view to Donald Davidson. This account significantly departs from a First-Person-Based or First-Personal Judgment-Dependent account, such as Crispin Wright’s, according to which, as an a priori matter, facts about intentional content are constituted by the (...) judgments of the subject herself, formed under certain optimal or cognitively ideal conditions. I will argue for two claims: (1) Attributing a Third-Personal Judgment-Dependent account to Davidson is unjustified; Davidson’s view is much closer to a non-reductionist First-Personal Judgment-Dependent account. (2) Third-Personal accounts rest on a misconstrual of the role of an interpreter in the First-Personal accounts; the notion of an interpreter still plays an essential role in the latter ones. (shrink)

In this chapter, we critically examine the most important extant ways of understanding and motivating the idea that reasons for belief are normative. First, we examine the proposal that the distinction between explanatory and so-called normative reasons that is commonly drawn in moral philosophy can be rather straightforwardly applied to reasons for belief, and that reasons for belief are essentially normative precisely when they are normative reasons. In the course of this investigation, we explore the very nature of the reasons-for-belief (...) relation, as well as the ontology of such reasons. Second, we examine the idea that the normativity derives from the internal connection between reasons for belief and epistemic justification, distinguishing between two distinct normativist accounts of justification, a weaker and a stronger one. We argue that neither line of argument is compelling. Pending further arguments, we conclude that normativism about reasons for belief is not supported. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to examine the relation between Nietzsche’s perspectivism and his doctrine of the will to power and to show that perspectivism is almost a direct and natural consequence of the doctrine of the will to power. Without exploring the doctrine, it is not possible to understand what Nietzsche’s perspectivism is and what he trying to do by proposing it as an alternative to traditional epistemology. To this aim, firstly, Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power (...) is explained in detail. Next, in order to provide a deeper understanding of the doctrine, its relation with Darwinism and the claims which say that it is a metaphysical principle are analyzed. Afterwards, Nietzsche’s construction of the world as becoming out of will to power is investigated. Nietzsche’s conception of interpretation as power struggle and its role in perspectivism explained. Then, how Nietzsche’s construction of the world as becoming and his concept of interpretation as power struggle emerge as perspectivism is explained. After that, in order to present the differences between Nietzsche’s perspectivism and traditional understanding of epistemology, Nietzsche’s critiques of some of the fundamental assumptions of traditional epistemology, i.e., causality, logic, and subject-object and apparent-real world distinctions, are investigated. Finally, Nietzsche’s understanding of truth based on his perspectivism is inquired. Its relation with correspondence, pragmatic and coherence theories of truth is explored to show that Nietzsche’s understanding of truth could not be comprehended through these theories. Consequently, it isclaimed that the tendency to attribute a truth theory to Nietzsche’s perspectivism, which is prevalent in the current Nietzsche studies, stems from commentator’s, consciously or unconsciously, ignoring of the relation between his perspectivism and his doctrine of the will to power. (shrink)

I take as my starting point recent concerns from within educational psychology about the need to treat the conceptual and philosophical underpinnings of empirical research in the field more seriously, specifically in the context of work on the self, mind and agency. Developing this theme, I find such conceptual support in the writings of P. F. Strawson and Donald Davidson, two giants of analytic philosophy in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Drawing particularly on Davidson’s later work, in which (...) he seeks to integrate key claims about subjectivity, objectivity, belief, truth and knowledge, within what he refers to as a triangular framework of two speakers and a common world, I find support for pedagogic and classroom organizational structures based on collaborative thinking and dialogue. While Davidson did not write about education, I argue that his framework has much to offer, most particularly in view of the priority it affords language and dialogue as the necessary and sufficient conditions for reason, belief and thought—in short, for being a person in the world. (shrink)

The essays in this volume concern the points of intersection between analytic philosophy and the philosophy of the exact sciences. More precisely, it concern connections between knowledge in mathematics and the exact sciences, on the one hand, and the conceptual foundations of knowledge in general. Its guiding idea is that, in contemporary philosophy of science, there are profound problems of theoretical interpretation-- problems that transcend both the methodological concerns of general philosophy of science, and the technical concerns of philosophers of (...) particular sciences. A fruitful approach to these problems combines the study of scientific detail with the kind of conceptual analysis that is characteristic of the modern analytic tradition. Such an approach is shared by these contributors: some primarily known as analytic philosophers, some as philosophers of science, but all deeply aware that the problems of analysis and interpretation link these fields together. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the relationship between consciousness and knowledge, and in particular on the role perceptual consciousness might play in justifying beliefs about the external world. We outline a version of phenomenal dogmatism according to which perceptual experiences immediately, prima facie justify certain select parts of their content, and do so in virtue of their having a distinctive phenomenology with respect to those contents. Along the way we take up various issues in connection with this core theme, including the (...) possibility of immediate justification, the dispute between representational and relational views of perception, the epistemic significance of cognitive penetration, the question of whether perceptual experiences are composed of more basic sensations and seemings, and questions about the existence and epistemic significance of high-level content. In a concluding section we briefly consider how some of the topics pursued here might generalize beyond perception. (shrink)

Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences.

This chapter reviews the major contributions of Donald Davidson to philosophy in the 20th century.

The given is the state of a mind in its primary engagement with the world. A satisfactory epistemology—one, it turns out, that is foundationalist and includes a naïve realist view of perception—requires a certain account of the given. Moreover, knowledge based on the given requires both a particular view of the world itself and a heterodox account of judgment. These admittedly controversial claims are supported by basic ontological considerations. I begin, then, with two contradictory views of the world per se (...) and the structure one experiences. I draw out the consequences of these two views for what intentionality is. The two views yield incompatible accounts of the given. The definitive spontaneity of the one account, and passivity of the other, can be understood in terms of the structure (or lack thereof) in the given. In defense of the claim that a structured given is not an apt epistemic basis, I examine an attempt to found an epistemology on such an account in light of the so-called myth of the given. I maintain that the given, if it is to provide some justification for taking the world to be a particular way, must be unstructured. To support this, I first discuss a significant problem with traditional foundationalism. I then argue that a satisfactory (foundationalist) epistemology requires the rejection of the orthodox propositional view of judgment in favor of a non-propositional, reistic view. (shrink)

What is the epistemological value of perceptual experience? In his recently influential paper, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist”1, James Pryor develops a seemingly plausible answer to this question. Pryor’s answer comprises the following three theses: (F) “Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible – there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs.” (517) (PK) “This justification that you get merely by having an experience as of p can sometimes (...) suffice to give you knowledge that p is the case.” (520) (D) “When it perceptually seems to you as if p is the case, you have a kind of justification for believing p that does not presuppose or rest on your justification for anything else, which could be cited in argument (even an ampliative argument) for p. To have this justification for believing p, you need only have an experience that represents p as being the case. No further awareness or reflection or background beliefs are required.” (519) Let’s use the phrase “fallibilist dogmatism” to refer to the conjunction of (F), (PK), and (D).2 Pryor does not argue for either (F) or (PK) in his paper; he simply shares the widespread and plausible assumption that (F) and (PK) are both true. But the conjunction of (F) and (PK) implies that we can have knowledge on the basis of defeasible justification. And this view leads to paradox. Consider the following individually plausible but jointly incompatible statements. (shrink)

According to foundationalism, some beliefs are justified but do not depend for their justification on any other beliefs. According to access internalism, a subject is justified in believing some proposition only if that subject is aware of or has access to some reason to think that the proposition is true or probable. In this paper I discusses a fundamental challenge to internalist foundationalism often referred to as the Sellarsian dilemma. I consider three attempts to respond to the dilemma – phenomenal (...) conservatism, BonJour’s classical foundationalism, and Fumerton’s classical foundationalism. I argue that, of these three, only the last seems to avoid getting impaled on one or the other horn of the dilemma. I end by responding to some concerns with Fumerton’s account. (shrink)

Much of the intuitive appeal of evidentialism results from conflating two importantly different conceptions of evidence. This is most clear in the case of perceptual justification, where experience is able to provide evidence in one sense of the term, although not in the sense that the evidentialist requires. I argue this, in part, by relying on a reading of the Sellarsian dilemma that differs from the version standardly encountered in contemporary epistemology, one that is aimed initially at the epistemology of (...) introspection but which generalizes to theories of perceptual justification as well. (shrink)

Many people have recently argued that we need to distinguish between experiences and seemings and that this has consequences for views about how perception provides evidence. In this article I spell out my take on these issues by doing three things. First, I distinguish between mere sensations like seeing pitch black all around you and perceptual experiences like seeing a red apple. Both have sensory phenomenology in presenting us with sensory qualities like colors, being analog in Dretske's sense, and being (...) fine-grained. However, only the latter have furthermore a perceptual phenomenology characterized by objectification and related dualities of perspectivality/completion and variation/constancy. Second, I elaborate on the reasons for thinking that both mere sensations and perceptual experiences need to be distinguished from accompanying seemings that passively assign things into conceptual categories and thereby tell you something about them. For example, when you look at a red apple and have the relevant recognitional abilities it will also normally seem to you that this is an apple. Finally, I argue that the best version of the popular dogmatist view about evidence is one which claims that it's neither experiences nor seemings by themselves, but rather the right sorts of composites of experiences and seemings that provide evidence. (shrink)

In previous work, I have suggested a doxastic account of perceptual experience according to which experiences form a kind of belief: Beliefs with what I have called “phenomenal” or “looks-content”. I have argued that this account can not only accommodate the intuitive reason providing role of experience, but also its justificatory role. I have also argued that, in general, construing experience and perceptual beliefs, i.e. the beliefs most directly based on experience, as having different contents best accounts for the defeasibility (...) of experiential reasons. In this paper, I shall have a closer look at the evidential or inferential relation between looks-propositions and the contents of perceptual beliefs and argue for a form of what I shall call “Pollockianism” about experiential reasons: such reasons are good unless defeated. Questions to be investigated include: Does the resulting picture of perceptual justification contain an externalist element? Is it compatible with Bayesianism? And how does it do with respect to problems that have been raised for other forms of Pollockianism such as dogmatism or phenomenal conservatism? (shrink)

In this paper I try to defend McDowell’s empiricism from a certain objection made by Davidson, Stroud and Glüer. The objection states that experiences cannot be reasons because they are—as McDowell conceives them—inert. I argue that, even though there is something correct in the objection, that is not sufficient for rejecting the epistemological character that McDowell attributes to experiences. My strategy consists basically in showing that experiences involve a constitutive attitude of acceptance of their contents.

Nearly everyone agrees that perception gives us justification and knowledge, and a great number of epistemologists endorse a particular two-part view about how this happens. The view is that perceptual beliefs get their justification from perceptual experiences, and that they do so by being based on them. Despite the ubiquity of these two views, I think that neither has very much going for it; on the contrary, there’s good reason not to believe either one of them.

In Davidson's philosophy, one finds a wide variety of rich, provocative, and influential arguments concerning the nature of the mind—that mental states emerge only in the context of interpretation, that belief is "in its nature" veridical, that mental events are physical events, and so on. Most, if not all, of Davidson's conclusions about the mind have their source in discussions about the project of "radical interpretation." They rely upon arguments concerning the conditions on the successful interpretation of a speaker by (...) an interpreter who knows nothing initially about the speaker's language or mental states. But what is the relevance of this activity of radical interpretation? Why should the conditions on succeeding at it illuminate anything about the nature of the mind in general? In this paper, I explore these issues. In particular, I will argue that Davidson's confidence in the relevance of radical interpretation for understanding the mind ultimately depends upon a prior and quite substantive view of the mind. Moreover, it is a view of the mind for which Davidson provides little support. Indeed, the little support Davidson does provide appears to depend itself on the very relevance of radical interpretation. (shrink)

McTaggart famously argued that time is unreal. Today, almost no one agrees with his conclusion.1 But his argument remains thelocus classicusfor both the A–theory and the B-theory of time. I want to show how McTaggart's argument provided the impetus for both of these opposing views of the nature of time. I will also present and defend what I take to be the correct view of the nature of time.

Contributors: Steven Barbone, Laurent Bove, Edwin Curley, Valérie Debuiche, Michael Della Rocca, Simon B. Duffy, Daniel Garber, Pascale Gillot, Céline Hervet, Jonathan Israel, Chantal Jaquet, Mogens Lærke, Jacqueline Lagrée, Martin Lin, Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Pierre-François Moreau, Steven Nadler, Knox Peden, Alison Peterman, Charles Ramond, Michael A. Rosenthal, Pascal Sévérac, Hasana Sharp, Jack Stetter, Ariel Suhamy, Lorenzo Vinciguerra.

Experiences and beliefs are different sorts of mental states, and are often taken to belong to very different domains. Experiences are paradigmatically phenomenal, characterized by what it is like to have them. Beliefs are paradigmatically intentional, characterized by their propositional content. But there are a number of crucial points where these domains intersect. One central locus of intersection arises from the existence of phenomenal beliefs: beliefs that are about experiences.

This brief article intended for undergraduates argues for Experiential Foundationalism, the view that there are basic beliefs and they can be justified by experience.

In this paper, I argue that theories of perception that appeal to Helmholtz’s idea of unconscious inference (“Helmholtzian” theories) should be taken literally, i.e. that the inferences appealed to in such theories are inferences in the full sense of the term, as employed elsewhere in philosophy and in ordinary discourse. -/- In the course of the argument, I consider constraints on inference based on the idea that inference is a deliberate acton, and on the idea that inferences depend on the (...) syntactic structure of representations. I argue that inference is a personal-level but sometimes unconscious process that cannot in general be distinguished from association on the basis of the structures of the representations over which it’s defined. I also critique arguments against representationalist interpretations of Helmholtzian theories, and argue against the view that perceptual inference is encapsulated in a module. (shrink)

Ich möchte den Neurowissenschaftlern, die glauben, mit empirischen Mitteln etwas über menschliche Freiheit herausfinden zu können, eine philosophische Herausforderung entgegensetzen. Meine These lautet: Die Frage nach der menschlichen Freiheit ist ein metaphysisches Problem, das sich empirischer Naturforschung entzieht. Um das zu begründen, werde ich ein extremes Gedankenexperiment durchführen. Ich werde zuerst hypothetisch die Situation eines Subjektes beschreiben, dessen Naturwissenschaft berechtigterweise einen durchgängigen kausalen Determinismus im Gehirn postuliert und dessen Libet-Experimente für all seine Handlungen fatal ausgehen (nicht nur für unbedeutende Handbewegungen). (...) Dann werde ich zeigen, dass die deterministische Neurowissenschaft in dieser gedachten Situation gar nichts für oder gegen die Entscheidungsfreiheit des Subjekts austrägt, weil sich die Entscheidungen des hypothetischen Subjekts nicht dort abspielen, wo seine Naturwissenschaft hinzielt. – Wenn es mir gelingt, so eine Situation zu konstruieren, stellt sich die Frage, ob wir nicht in einer ähnlichen Situation stecken könnten. Meiner Ansicht nach lässt sich diese Frage zwar aufwerfen, aber nicht beantworten. Sie gehört ins Reich der metaphysischen Spekulation, genau wie die Frage, ob unser geistiges Leben nach dem biologischen Tod im Jenseits weitergehen könnte. Ziel der Überlegungen ist es, verwirrende Redeweisen wie die von meta-physischer oder transzendentaler Freiheit durch konkrete Modelle verständlicher zu machen. Die Position, die hierbei herauskommen wird, hat einige Gemeinsamkeiten mit Kants Position zur Freiheit. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the conceptualist claim that we cannot speak of perceptual content unless we assume it is objective content. The conceptualist argues that only conceptual content can meet the requirement of being objective, so that the view that perceptual experience has nonconceptual content is not tenable. I start out by presenting the argument from objectivity as it can be found in McDowell. I then present the following objections: First, perceptual objectivity cannot be due to the perceiver’s conception (...) of objectivity; and second, even nonconceptual capacities of the individual cannot and need not be appealed to in order to account for objective perceptual content. (shrink)