For the information theorist, the lawful generalizations that subsume instantiations of properties in the environment and instantiations of properties of perceptual representations determine the latter's content. Perceptual representations are also commonly thought to be isomorphic to what they represent, which presents the information theorist with a puzzle. What role could isomorphism play in perceptual representation when lawful generalizations determine content? I show that in order for the information that they carry to be available to cognition, perceptual representations must be isomorphic (...) with respect to the constituent structure of the properties that they represent. Isomorphism therefore plays an important role in the information theorist's account of perceptual representation, even though it plays no role in determining content. (shrink)

Franz Brentano is well known for highlighting the importance of intentionality, but he said curiously little about the nature of intentionality. According to Mark Textor, there is a deep reason for this: Brentano took intentionality to be a conceptual primitive the nature of which is revealed only in direct grasp. Although there is certainly textual support for this interpretation, it appears in tension with Brentano’s repeated attempts to analyze intentionality in terms of ‘notional constituents’ – aspects of intentionality which cannot (...) come apart in reality but which can be conceptually distinguished. After bringing out this tension, I explore some options for resolving it, ultimately offering my own favored interpretation. (shrink)

The purpose of the present paper is to develop and defend an account of narrow content that would neutralize the commonplace charge that narrow content.

Michael Tye has recently argued that the phenomenal character of conscious experiences is "one and the same as" (1) Poised (2) Abstract (3) Non-conceptual (4) Intentional Content (PANIC). Tye argues extensively that PANIC Theory accounts for differences in phenomenal character in representational terms. But another task of a theory of phenomenal consciousness is to account for the difference between those mental states that have phenomenal character at all and those that do not. By going through each of the four qualifiers (...) of PANIC, we argue that PANIC Theory fails to account for this difference in genuinely representational terms. We suggest, furthermore, that the reasons it fails are likely to be endemic to all representational theories of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

. When I have a conscious experience of the sky, there is a bluish way it is like for me to have that experience. We may distinguish two aspects of this "bluish way it is like for me": the bluish aspect and the for-me aspect. Let us call the bluish aspect of the experience its qualitative character and the for-me aspect its subjective character . What is this elusive for-me-ness, or subjective character , of conscious experience? In this paper, I (...) examine six different attempts to account for subjective character in terms of the functional and representational properties of conscious experiences. After arguing against the first five, I defend the sixth. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Les discussions philosophiques actuelles sur le problème de la conscience [consciousness] se concentrent sur la question des qualia, ou qualités sensorielles. Mais les auteurs traditionnels au sujet de la conscience—tels que Kant et William James—s'intéressaient davantage à un autre aspect de l'expérience consciente, à savoir le fait que lorsqu'on est conscient [conscious], on est en même temps, et de façon permanente, conscient de soi-même [aware of oneself] comme sujet de l'expérience. Cet article explore trois modèles représentationnels du phénomène de (...) la conscience permanente de soi [permanent self-awareness]. Chacun d'eux se révèle inadéquat pour une raison ou pour une autre. Ce que la discussion fait ainsi ressortir, c'est le genre d'exigences auxquels devrait satisfaire une bonne théorie de la conscience permanente de soi. (shrink)

There is substantial disagreement among philosophers of embodied cognitive science about the meaning of embodiment. In what follows, I describe three different views that can be found in the current literature. I show how this debate centers around the question of whether the science of embodied cognition can retain the computer theory of mind. One view, which I will label body functionalism, takes the body to play the functional role of linking external resources for problem solving with internal biological machinery. (...) Embodiment is thus understood in terms of the role the body plays in supporting the computational circuits that realize cognition. Body enactivism argues by contrast that no computational account of cognition can account for the role of commonsense knowledge in our everyday practical engagement with the world. I will attempt a reconciliation of these seemingly opposed views. (shrink)

It is a widely accepted thesis in the cognitive sciences and in naturalistic philosophy of mind that the contents of at least some mental representations are innate. A question that has popped up in discussions concerning innate mental representations is this. Are externalist theories of mental content applicable to the content of innate representations? Views on the matter vary and sometimes conflict. To date, there has been no comprehensive assessment of the relationship between content externalism and content innateness. The aim (...) of this paper is to provide such an assessment. I focus on the notions of innateness that are employed in innateness hypotheses within the cognitive sciences and adjacent fields of philosophy, and on causal externalist theories of content. I distinguish between three accounts of what being innate might amount to in innateness hypotheses within the cognitive sciences, and between three types of causal externalism. I explain what the possibility of innate externalistically individuated representations depends upon given all nine combinations. I explain why causal externalism can be true of innate mental representations, given but one of these combinations. (shrink)

A core commitment of meta-ethical expressivism is that ordinary descriptive judgements are representational states, while normative judgements are non-representational directive states. Traditionally, this commitment has been understood as a psychological thesis about the nature of normative judgements, as the view that normative judgements consist in certain sorts of conative propositional attitudes. This paper’s aim is to challenge this reading and to show that changing our view on how this commitment is to be understood opens up space for attractive forms of (...) expressivism. The paper argues this by example: by presenting one of the possible expressivist views that can be developed on this reading and by arguing that this view has distinctive advantages over forms of expressivism that endorse the traditional interpretation of expressivism. (shrink)

The assumption that psychological states and processes are computational in character pervades much of cognitive science, what many call the computational theory of mind. In addition to occupying a central place in cognitive science, the computational theory of mind has also had a second life supporting “individualism”, the view that psychological states should be taxonomized so as to supervene only on the intrinsic, physical properties of individuals. One response to individualism has been to raise the prospect of “wide computational systems”, (...) in which some computational units are instantiated outside the individual. “Wide computationalism” attempts to sever the link between individualism and computational psychology by enlarging the concept of computation. However, in spite of its potential interest to cognitive science, wide computationalism has received little attention in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. This paper aims to revisit the prospect of wide computationalism. It is argued that by appropriating a mechanistic conception of computation wide computationalism can overcome several issues that plague initial formulations. The aim is to show that cognitive science has overlooked an important and viable option in computational psychology. The paper marshals empirical support and responds to possible objections. (shrink)

A common presupposition in epistemology is that the processes contributing to the generation of knowledge do not extend beyond the knower's skin. This paper challenges this presupposition. I adduce a novel kind case that causes trouble for a number of even the most promising accounts of knowledge in current literature (virtue epistemological and modal accounts), at least so long as the presupposition is in place. I then look at a couple of recent accounts of knowledge that drop the presupposition and (...) expressly allow the relevant processes to extended beyond the knower's skin. While these accounts can handle the problem case, they encounter difficulties elsewhere: extension occurs too easily and so the accounts predict knowledge where they ought not. Finally, I offer a novel way of extending epistemology and argue that it can steer clear of the problems on both sides. (shrink)

Are attributions of content and function determinate, or is there no fact of the matter to be fixed? Daniel Dennett has argued in favor of indeterminacy and concludes that, in practice, content and function cannot be fixed. The discovery of an electrical modality in vertebrates offers one concrete instance where attributions of function and content are supported by a strong scientific consensus. A century ago, electroreception was unimagined, whereas today it is widely believed that many species of bony fish, amphibians, (...) sharks, skates, and rays possess this non-human sensory modality. A look at the history of science related to this discovery reveals a highly interdisciplinary endeavor, encompassing ethology, behavioral analysis, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. While each area provides important evidence, none is sufficient on its own to fix content and function. Instead, I argue that an interdisciplinary, neuroethological approach is required to carry out such determinations. Further, a detailed consideration of biological research suggests that while content and function claims are empirically underdetermined and uncertain, there is insufficient reason to believe in an additional problem of indeterminism. In particular, Dennett's indeterminism arises from a research methodology -- logical adaptationism -- that generates evidence from only one of the areas of neuroethology. However, logical adaptationism does not reflect adaptationism as it is practiced in contemporary biology. I conclude that Dennett is faced with a dilemma: On the one hand, he can hold to logical adaptationism and the indeterminism that results from it, while giving up the relevance of his arguments to biological practice. On the other, he can embrace a more accurate version of adaptationism -- one which plays a role in a larger neuroethological framework -- but from which no strong indeterminacy claims follow. (shrink)

Intentionality of cognitive states is not reducible to information if the latter is construed in terms of analytical and nomic constraints. Intentionality and the individuation of cognitive states presupposes cultural constraints that let socially constructed information flow. Fred dretske's information-Theoretical account of intentionality is criticised for ignoring the cultural constraints of human cognition.

A Mark of the Mental, by NeanderKaren. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017. Pp. xv + 327.

Philosophers have often argued that ascriptions of content are appropriate only to the personal level states of folk psychology. Against this, this paper defends the view that the familiar propositional attitudes and states defined over them are part of a larger set of cognitive proceses that do not make constitutive reference to concept possession. It does this by showing that states with nonconceptual content exist both in perceptual experience and in subpersonal information-processing systems. What makes these states content-involving is their (...) satisfaction of certain basic conditions deriving from a general account of representation-driven behaviour that is neutral on the question of concept possession. It is also argued that creatures can be in states with nonconceptual content even though they possess no conceptual abilities at all. (shrink)

Our perceptual systems are not stagnant but can learn from experience. Why is this so? That is, what is the function of perceptual learning? I consider two answers to this question: The Offloading View, which says that the function of perceptual learning is to offload tasks from cognition onto perception, thereby freeing up cognitive resources (Connolly, 2019) and the Perceptual View, which says that the function of perceptual learning is to improve the functioning of perception. I argue that the Perceptual (...) View better explains data from infants and animals, and better accounts for learned tasks that only perception could perform. (shrink)

More than ever, it is in vogue to argue that no norms either play a role in or directly follow from the theory of mental content. In this paper, I present an intuitive theory of intentionality (including a theory of mental content) on which norms are constitutive of the intentional properties of attitude and content in order to show that this trend is misguided. Although this theory of intentionality—the teleological theory of intentional representation—does involve a commitment to representational norms, these (...) norms are not problematic in the way critics have suggested they would be. In particular, these norms do not guide thinking by motivating intentional agents to (intentionally) accord with them; as a result, no obvious vicious regress threatens the theory. In the final section of this paper, I argue that accepting this teleological theory of intentionality need not commit one to thinking that intentionality is the product of natural selection. (shrink)

This article proposes that a general theory of assessment of historical testimony should do justice to the long tradition of adjudication in accordance with maxims of reliability and competence. I argue that an explanatory genealogical theory (along lines first adumbrated by Charles Seignobos) satisfies this condition, and that it has further notable virtues: respect for the strengths of rival theories, regard for the links between adjudication of testimony and other basic procedures of historical inquiry, and the promise of profitable lines (...) of investigation. (shrink)

Various causal details of the genetic process of translation have been singled out to account for its privileged status as a ‘code'. We explicate the biological uses of coding talk by characterizing a class of special causal processes in which topological properties are the causally relevant ones. This class contains both the process of translation and communication theoretic coding processes as special cases. We propose a formalism in terms of graphs for expressing our theory of biological codes and discuss its (...) utility in understanding biological systems. *Received May 2007; revised May 2008. †To contact the authors, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Baker Hall 135, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213; e-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]. (shrink)

Contemporary memory sciences describe processes that are dynamic and constructive. This has led some philosophers to weaken the relationship between memory and epistemology; though remembering can give rise to epistemic success, it is not itself an epistemic success state. I argue that non-epistemic theories will not do; they provide neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for remembering that p. I also argue that the shortcomings of the causal theory are epistemic in nature. Consequently, a theory of remembering must account for both (...) its fundamentally epistemic nature and for its constructive and dynamic processes. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Our ascriptions of content to past utterances assign to them a level of conceptual continuity and determinacy that extends beyond what could be grounded in the usage up to their time of utterance. If one accepts such ascriptions, one can argue either that future use must be added to the grounding base, or that such cases show that meaning is not, ultimately, grounded in use. The following will defend the first option as the more promising of the two, though (...) this ultimately requires understanding the relation between use and meaning as ‘normative’ in two important ways. The first way is that the function from use to meaning must be of a sort that allows us to maintain a robust distinction between actual and correct use. The second sort of normativity is unique to theories that extend the grounding base into the future. In particular, if meaning is partially a function of future use, we can see our commitment to the ‘determinacy’ of meaning as a practical commitment that structures our linguistic practices rather than a theoretical commitment that merely describes them. (shrink)

The lore is that standard information theory provides an analysis of information quantity, but not of information content. I argue this lore is incorrect, and there is an adequate informational semantics latent in standard theory. The roots of this notion of content can be traced to the secret parallel development of an information theory equivalent to Shannon’s by Turing at Bletchley Park, and it has been suggested independently in recent work by Skyrms and Bullinaria and Levy. This paper explicitly articulates (...) the semantics latent in information theory and defends it as an adequate theory of information content, or natural meaning. I argue that this theory suggests a new perspective on the classic misrepresentation worry for correlation-based semantics. (shrink)

This paper will articulate and defend a novel theory of epistemic justification; I characterize my view as the thesis that justification is potential knowledge . My project is an instance of the ‘knowledge-first’ programme, championed especially by Timothy Williamson. So I begin with a brief recapitulation of that programme.

Jaakko Hintikka proposed treating objectual perception sentences, such as “Alice sees Bob,” as de re propositional perception sentences. Esa Saarinen extended Hintikka’s idea to eventive perception sentences, such as “Alice sees Bob smile.” These approaches, elegant as they may be, are not philosophically neutral, for they presuppose, controversially, that the content of all perceptual experiences is propositional in nature. The aim of this paper is to propose a formal treatment of objectual and eventive perception sentences that builds on Hintikka’s modal (...) approach to propositional attitude ascriptions while avoiding controversial assumptions on the nature of perceptual experiences. Despite being simple and theoretically frugal, our approach is powerful enough to express a variety of interesting philosophical views about propositional, objectual, and eventive perception sentences, thus enabling the study of their inferential relationships. (shrink)

The contents of representations in non-human animals, human core cognition, and perception cannot precisely be characterized by sentences of a natural language. However, this fact does not stop us from giving imprecise characterizations of these contents through natural language. In this paper, I develop an account of the precision of content characterizations by appealing to possible-world semantics combined with set and measurement theory.

It is received wisdom in philosophy and the cognitive sciences that individuals can be in emotional states but groups cannot. But why should we accept this view? In this paper, I argue that there is substantial philosophical and empirical support for the existence of collective emotions. Thus, while there is good reason to be skeptical about many ascriptions of collective emotion, I argue that some groups exhibit the computational complexity and informational integration required for being in genuinely emotional states.

The paper is an investigation into the prospects of an epistemology of non-conceptual knowledge. According to the orthodox view, knowledge requires concepts and belief. I present several arguments to the effect that there is non-conceptual, non-doxastic knowledge, the obvious candidate for such knowledge being non-conceptual perception. Non-conceptual perception seems to be allowed for by cognitive scientists and it exhibits the central role features of knowledge—it plays the knowledge role: it respects an anti-luck condition, it is an achievement, it enables one (...) to act for a reason, and it provides justification. Furthermore, it makes a straightforward and elegant explanation of perceptual knowledge possible: doxastic perceptual knowledge builds on non-conceptual perception as non-conceptual knowledge. Three objections that might naturally arise will be discussed and answered. Thus, the prospects of an epistemology without belief seem to be much better than the orthodoxy wants to have it. We can extend knowledge into the non-conceptual realm. (shrink)

A long-running dispute concerns which adaptation-related explananda natural selection can be said to explain. At issue are explananda of the form: why a given individual organism has a given adaptation rather than that same individual having another trait. It is broadly agreed that one must be ready to back up a “no” answer with an appropriate theory of trans-world identity for individuals. I argue, against the conventional wisdom, that the same is true for a “yes” answer. My conclusion recasts the (...) landscape and opens the door to a potential resolution. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that there is no unproblematic way of delineating perceptual beliefs from non-perceptual beliefs. The concept of perceptual belief is one of the central concepts not only of philosophy of perception but also of epistemology in a broad foundationalist tradition. Philosophers of perception talk about perceptual belief as the interface between perception and cognition and foundationalist epistemologists understand perceptual justification as a relation between perceptual states and perceptual beliefs. We consider three ways of (...) cashing out the difference between perceptual and non-perceptual beliefs (semantic, justificatory, and etiological) and argue that none of them works. Finally, we explore the possibility of understanding perceptual justification without relying on the concept of perceptual beliefs. (shrink)

It is common in attempts to extend the theory of evolution to culture to generalize from the causal basis of biological evolution, so that evolutionary theory becomes the theory of copying processes. Generalizing from the formal dynamics of evolution allows greater leeway in what kinds of things cultural entities can be, if they are to evolve. By understanding the phenomenon of cultural transmission in terms of coordinated phenotypic variability, we can have a theory of cultural evolution which allows us to (...) avoid the various difficulties with the elaboration of informational entities such as the cultural replicator, or meme. Such an account is a boon to the project of evolutionary epistemology since it confirms the presumption in favor of the general adaptiveness of culture, illuminating rather than obscuring the inherent intimacy of our relationship to (e.g.) our ideas. (shrink)

This paper introduces the Cummins Functions Approach to neural representations, which aims to capture the notion of representation that is relevant to contemporary neuroscientific practice. CFA shares the common view that “to be a representation of X” amounts to “having the function of tracking X,” but maintains that the relevant notion of function is defined by Robert Cummins’s account. Thus, CFA offers a notion of neural representation that is dependent on explanatory context. I argue that CFA can account for the (...) normativity of neural representations, and defend its dependence on explanations. (shrink)

This paper argues that most of the alleged straight solutions to the sceptical paradox which Kripke ascribed to Wittgenstein can be regarded as the first horn of a dilemma whose second horn is the paradox itself. The dilemma is proved to be a by‐product of a foundationalist assumption on the notion of justification, as applied to linguistic behaviour. It is maintained that the assumption is unnecessary and that the dilemma is therefore spurious. To this end, an alternative conception of the (...) justification of linguistic behaviour is outlined, a conception that vindicates some of the insights behind Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical solution of the paradox. This alternative conception is defended against two objections (both familiar from McDowell's works): (1) that it would imply that for the linguistic community there is no authority, no standard to meet and, therefore, no possibility of error and (2) that it would lead to a kind of idealism. (shrink)

Perceptual constancy has played a significant role in philosophy of perception. It figures in debates about direct realism, color ontology, and the minimal conditions for perceptual representation. Despite this, there is no general consensus about what constancyis. I argue that an adequate account of constancy must distinguish it from three distinct phenomena:meresensory stability through proximal change, perceptualcategorizationof a distal dimension, and stability throughirrelevantproximal change. Standard characterizations of constancy fall short in one or more of these respects. I develop an account (...) of constancy that overcomes these problems. The account has two parts: an analysis of constancy mechanisms, and an analysis of the conditions under which a constancy capacity is exercised. I then employ this account to evaluate whether constancy is a necessary condition for perceptual representation, as some have conjectured. I argue that explanatory practice in perceptual psychology fails to support this view. Rather, it fits better with the weaker principle that representation requires specific tracking of a distal dimension. (shrink)

We often ascribe possibility to the scenes that are displayed by mental or nonmental sensory images. The paper presents a novel argument for thinking that we are prima facie justified in ascribing metaphysical possibility to what is displayed by suitable visual images, and it argues that many of our imagery‐based ascriptions of metaphysical possibility are therefore prima facie justified. Some potential objections to the arguments are discussed, and some potential extensions of them, to cover nonvisual forms of imagery and nonmetaphysical (...) forms of possibility, are endorsed. (shrink)

Epistemic feelings like tip-of-the-tongue experiences, feelings of knowing, and feelings of confidence tell us when a memory can be recalled and when a judgment was correct. Thus, they appear to be a form of metacognition, but a curious one: they tell us about content we cannot access, and the information is supplied by a feeling. Evaluativism is the claim that epistemic feelings are components of a distinct, primitive metacognitive mechanism that operates on its own set of inputs. These inputs are (...) heuristics that correlate with the presence of mental content that can’t be accessed directly. I will argue that evaluativism is unmotivated, unsupported, and ill-conceived. I will critique the philosophical and empirical arguments for evaluativism and conclude that there is no reason to posit a distinct mechanism to explain epistemic feelings. I will conclude, however, that epistemic feelings may constitute a nonconceptual form of metacognition, which if true is a significant claim. (shrink)

Many have held that when a person visually attends to an object, her visual system deploys a representation that designates the object. Call the referential link between such representations and the objects they designate attentive visual reference. In this article I offer an account of attentive visual reference. I argue that the object representations deployed in visual attention—which I call attentive visual object representations —refer directly, and are akin to indexicals. Then I turn to the issue of how the reference (...) of an AVOR is determined relative to a context. After raising problems for existing accounts, I propose a mechanism of reference determination that is both causal and descriptive: For an AVOR to refer to a particular object, the object must appropriately cause the deployment of the AVOR, and the AVOR must be associated with descriptive information about some of the object's geometrical and mereological properties. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new way of understanding the space of possibilities in the field of mental content. The resulting map assigns separate locations to theories of content that have generally been lumped together on the more traditional map. Conversely, it clusters together some theories of content that have typically been regarded as occupying opposite poles. I make my points concrete by developing a taxonomy of theories of mental content, but the main points of the paper concern not (...) merely how to classify, but how to understand, the theories. Also, though the paper takes theories of mental content as a case study, much of the discussion is applicable to theories of other phenomena. To a first approximation, the difference between the traditional and the proposed taxonomies turns on whether we classify theories of content by, on the one hand, their implications for a non-redundant supervenience base for content facts (i.e., for facts about what contents thoughts have) or, on the other, by their constitutive accounts of content. By a "constitutive account," I mean the kind of elucidation of the nature of a phenomenon that theorists have tried to give for, for example, knowledge, justice, personal identity, consciousness, convention, heat, and limit. The tendency to taxonomize by supervenience base is encouraged, I suggest, by a failure to keep clearly in view a distinction between constitutive and modal determination. Many philosophers would accept that a constitutive account cannot be captured in purely modal terms. Giving a constitutive account is not the same as specifying modally necessary and sufficient conditions. Nevertheless, philosophers often try to cash constitutive claims in modal terms. A case in point is that theories of content tend to be conceptualized in terms of the theories' implications for a supervenience base for content facts. My thesis goes beyond the by-now somewhat familiar proposition that not all modal determinants of a phenomenon are constitutive determinants. One who has taken that point on board might nevertheless conceive of a philosophical account as an attempt to specify constitutive determinants of the target phenomenon that make up a non-redundant supervenience base for the phenomenon. Shoehorning a philosophical account into this form leaves out elements that are modally redundant, but may be explanatorily or ontologically significant. For example, when a constitutive account has multiple levels, the different levels will typically be modally redundant. Formulating the account as a specification of a supervenience base of constitutive determinants will therefore flatten the account into a single level. Many of my arguments can be illustrated by considering the place of normativity in the theory of content. The new taxonomy gives a distinct niche to normative theories of content - theories that explain a thought's having a certain content at least in part in terms of the obtaining of normative facts. By contrast, on a traditional map, normative theories are invisible as such because normative facts supervene on non-normative ones. (shrink)

Here are three (rough) theories of testimonial knowledge. (1) Speaker's knowledge: a hearer acquires the knowledge that P though testimony because of the speaker's knowledge that P--testimony "transfers" knowledge. This is the popular view, defended by Elizabeth Fricker and Paul Faulkner, among others. (2) Speaker's assertion: a hearer acquires the knowledge that P through testimony because the speaker's assertion that P is reliable that P in the right way (safe or sensitive). That's Jennifer Lackey's view. (3) Speaker's comprehension state: a (...) hearer acquired the knowledge that P through comprehending as of a speaker's assertion that P where the comprehension state is reliable in the right way (safe). That's my view. Lackey would reject such a view for it allows cases of testimonial knowledge that P from a speaker who did not assert that P. But Faulkner might reject Lackey's view on the grounds that it allows cases of testimonial knowledge that P from a speaker who did not know that P. Lackey replies that her account is better unified. But for the same reason, my account is even better unified. This paper runs through a series of cases and shows that my account--the Unified Account--is superior to the others. (shrink)

The intuitive distinction between natural and unnatural properties (e.g., green vs. grue) informs our theorizing not only in fundamental physics, but also in non-fundamental domains. This paper develops a reductive account of this broad notion of naturalness that covers non-fundamental properties: for a property to be natural, I propose, is for it to figure in a law of nature. After motivating the account, I defend it from a potential circularity charge. I argue that a suitably broad notion of lawhood can (...) be defined independently of naturalness, if we help ourselves to the notion of a fundamental physical property. I end by showing how the notions of naturalness and lawhood that my account delivers help illuminate a number of other important philosophical notions, like causation, reference/meaning, and rational induction. (shrink)

Some argue that emotions represent so-called core relational themes. A core relational theme describes a relation between a particular event and an organism’s well-being. For instance, the core relational theme of anger is ‘a demeaning offense against me and mine’. I argue that a core relational theme is a summary or generalization of a more complex mental content. Defenders of the Simple Core Relational Theme View reject the idea that emotional content is complex. Instead, they argue that the content of (...) emotion simply consists of a core relational theme. I argue that this view commits the linguistic fallacy: it confuses a theory of emotion categorization with a theory of emotional content. (shrink)

Some emotional representations seem to be unreliable. For instance, we are often afraid when there is no danger present. If emotions such as fear are so unreliable, what function do they have in our representational system? This is a problem for representationalist theories of emotion. I will argue that seemingly unreliable emotional representations are reliable after all. While many mental states strike an optimal balance between minimizing inaccurate representations and maximizing accurate representations, some emotional representations only aim at maximizing accuracy. (...) They detect important phenomena such as danger based on little evidence, which will lead to a lot of false alarms. When it matters, however, these emotional representations will detect danger and other important phenomena. Often, one is better scared (and wrong) than sorry. (shrink)

Drawing on models of communication due to Lewis and Skyrms, I contrast sender-receiver systems as they appear within and between organisms, and as they function in the bridging of space and time. Within the organism, memory can be seen as the sending of messages over time, communication between stages as opposed to spatial parts. Psychological memory and genetic memory are compared with respect to their relations to a sender-receiver model. Some puzzles about “genetic information” can be resolved by seeing the (...) genome as a cell-level memory with no sender. (shrink)

Introspective knowledge by acquaintance is knowledge we have by being directly aware of our phenomenally conscious states. In this paper, I argue that introspective knowledge by acquaintance is a sui generis kind of knowledge: it is irreducible to any sort of propositional knowledge and is wholly constituted by a relationship of introspective acquaintance. My main argument is that this is the best explanation of some epistemic facts about phenomenal consciousness and introspection. In particular, it best explains the epistemic asymmetry between (...) a subject who has never had a certain phenomenal state and one who has. I also consider two theoretical objections to my claim: an objection from disunity and an objection from mysteriousness. I show that these objections can be answered and that introspective knowledge by acquaintance being sui generis remains a live option on the table. (shrink)