Most theories of concepts take concepts to be structured bodies of information used in categorization and inference. This paper argues for a version of atomism, on which concepts are unstructured symbols. However, traditional Fodorian atomism is falsified by polysemy and fails to provide an account of how concepts figure in cognition. This paper argues that concepts are generative pointers, that is, unstructured symbols that point to memory locations where cognitively useful bodies of information are stored and can be deployed to (...) resolve polysemy. The notion of generative pointers allows for unresolved ambiguity in thought and provides a basis for conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Several philosophers have recently appealed to predication in developing their theories of cognitive representation and propositions. One central point of difference between them is whether they take predication to be forceful or neutral and whether they take the most basic cognitive representational act to be judging or entertaining. Both views are supported by powerful reasons and both face problems. Many think that predication must be forceful if it is to explain representation. However, the standard ways of implementing the idea give (...) rise to the Frege-Geach problem. Others think that predication must be neutral, if we’re to avoid the Frege-Geach problem. However, it looks like nothing neutral can explain representation. In this paper I present a third view, one which respects the powerful reasons while avoiding the problems. On this view predication is forceful and can thus explain representation, but the idea is implemented in a novel way, avoiding the Frege-Geach problem. The key is to make sense of the notion of grasping a proposition as an objectual act where the object is a proposition. (shrink)

The central pillar of Austin’s theory of speech acts is the three-way distinction between locutionary acts like saying, illocutionary acts like asserting, and perlocutionary acts like persuading (Austin 1962: VIII-IX). While the latter distinction has been widely accepted, the former distinction has been frequently rejected due to Searle’s objections, who argued that since Austin’s locutionary acts are supposed to be forceful in the sense contrasting with neutral expression of a content and all force is by Austin’s own definition illocutionary, the (...) notion of a locutionary act collapses into that of an illocutionary act (Searle 1968). In this paper, I provide an interpretation of Austin’s distinction between locutionary and illocutionary acts and defend it against Searle’s objections. I argue that Searle’s main objection relies on mistakenly running together two notions of ‘force’: the Fregean notion of representational force as presentation-as-true and the Austinian notion of illocutionary force as the social-communicative significance of the speech act. Once we distinguish these we can see that although Searle is correct that Austin’s locutionary acts are forceful in the former sense, he’s mistaken in thinking that such force is illocutionary. Given this, his objection that locutionary acts collapse into illocutionary acts misses its mark. (shrink)

In arguing against a supposed ambiguity, philosophers often rely on the zeugma test. In an application of the zeugma test, a supposedly ambiguous expression is placed in a sentence in which several of its supposed meanings are forced together. If the resulting sentence sounds zeugmatic, that is taken as evidence for ambiguity; if it does not sound zeugmatic, that is taken as evidence against ambiguity. The aim of this article is to show that arguments based on the second direction of (...) the test are misguided: ambiguous expressions, and in particular philosophically contested ones, do not reliably lead to zeugmaticity, so an absence of zeugmaticity provides no meaningful evidence for an absence of ambiguity. (shrink)

In her black and white room, Mary doesn’t know what it is like to see red. Only after undergoing an experience as of something red and hence acquainting herself with red can Mary learn what it is like. But learning what it is like to see red requires more than simply becoming acquainted with it. To be acquainted with something is to know it, but such knowledge, as we argue, is object-knowledge rather than propositional-knowledge. To know what it is like (...) one must know an appropriate propositional answer to the question ‘what is it like?’. Despite this mismatch between object-knowledge and knowing an answer, we believe that acquaintance is crucial to Mary’s epistemic progress. When Mary leaves her black and white room, her new knowledge tempts one to think that she must come to know a candidate answer (a coarse-grained fact) that she didn’t know in her room. Since Mary already knows all the physical facts in her room, any additional facts she might learn appear to threaten physicalism. In reply, many physicalists have been attracted to the phenomenal concept strategy according to which Mary can come to have new knowledge and hence know a new answer to the question ‘what is it like to see red?’ by entertaining a coarse-grained fact under a concept she didn’t possess in her room – Mary learns a new fine-grained fact. We believe both of these accounts of Mary’s epistemic progress are mistaken. As we argue, Mary could know every fact (coarse-grained and fine-grained) that might serve as an answer to the question ‘what is it like to see red?’ and still not know what it is like. The physical world leaves no leftover coarse-grained facts for Mary to learn and because concepts are sharable, easy to possess, and easy to introduce, there are possible situations in which Mary, while in her black and white room, has every concept that might make a fine-grained difference. In short, even when Mary is granted a great deal of factual knowledge and vast conceptual resources, she may still not know an appropriate answer to the question ‘what is it like to see red?’. But in any such situation, Mary lacks acquaintance with red and on this basis we argue that in order to know what it is like, in order for Mary to know an appropriate answer, Mary’s propositional knowledge must be appropriately related to her acquaintance with red. (shrink)

This paper aims to shed new light on certain philosophical theories of perceptual experience by examining the semantics of perceptual ascriptions such as “Jones sees an apple.” I start with the assumption, recently defended elsewhere, that perceptual ascriptions lend themselves to intensional readings. In the first part of the paper, I defend three theses regarding such readings: I) intensional readings of perceptual ascriptions ascribe phenomenal properties, II) perceptual verbs are not ambiguous between intensional and extensional readings, and III) intensional perceptual (...) ascriptions have a relational form. The second part of the paper describes the implications of I-III for theories of perceptual experience. I argue that I-III support and reconcile the three main views of perceptual experience, relationalism, disjunctivism, and representationalism. However, I-III leave open at least one important point of contention: particularism, the view that we experience external objects. I conclude by exploring the implications of accepting or denying particularism given I-III. (shrink)

Over the course of the past ten-plus years, Peter Hanks and Scott Soames have developed detailed versions of Act-Based views of propositions which operate with the notions of reference to objects, indicating properties, predication, and judgment (or entertaining). In this paper I discuss certain foundational aspects of the Act-Based approach having to do with the relations between these notions. In particular, I argue for the following three points. First, that the approach needs both an atomistically understood thin notion of reference, (...) a bare act of thinking of o, as well as a more involved notion, something like making o a target of predication. Second, that the acts of thinking of o and indication of the property of being F are in no sense parts of the acts of predication of being F of o and judgment that o is F. Rather, the former are simply necessary preconditions for the performance of the latter. The acts of predication or judgment are emphatically not structured sequences of separate acts but unities in and of themselves. Finally, that we should understand the Act-Based theorists’ claim that to predicate is to judge as the claim that judgment can be reductively analyzed in terms of predication. Furthermore, while predication is metaphysically a multiple relation between a predicator, a target, and the property predicated, judgment is a monadic property, just one that has propositional content. (shrink)

According to what is perhaps the dominant picture of reference, what a referential term refers to in a context is determined by what the speaker intends for her audience to identify as the referent. I argue that this sort of broadly Gricean view entails, counterintuitively, that it is impossible to knowingly use referential terms in ways that one expects or intends to be misunderstood. Then I sketch an alternative which can better account for such opaque uses of language, or what (...) I call “sneaky reference.” I close by reflecting on the ramifications of these arguments for the theory of meaning more broadly. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a novel account of desire reports, i.e. sentences of the form 'S wants p'. Our theory is partly motivated by Phillips-Brown's (2021) observation that subjects can desire things even if those things aren't best by the subject's lights. That is, being best isn't necessary for being desired. We compare our proposal to existing theories, and show that it provides a neat account of the central phenomenon.

Those arguing for the existence of non-propositional content appeal to emotions for support, although there has been little engagement in those debates with developments in contemporary theory of emotion, specifically in connection with the kind of mental states that emotional experiences are. Relatedly, within emotion theory, one finds claims that emotional experiences per se have non-propositional content without detailed argument. This paper argues that the content of emotional experience is propositional in a weak sense, associated with aspectual experience and correctness (...) conditions. Furthermore, it provides an interpretation of purely-objectual emotional experiences which satisfies this weak view of propositional content. (shrink)

To understand what non-propositional content is and whether there are any such contents, we first need to know what propositional content is. That issue will be the focus of the first section of this essay. In the second section, with an understanding of propositional content in hand, we will consider representations that fail to have propositional content. In contrast to recent literature, it will be argued that metaphysical considerations concerning what's represented, rather than linguistic considerations, are a more promising way (...) of establishing non-propositional contents. To keep the discussion containable, focus will be on representational mental states, though many of the considerations can be extended to other forms of representation. (shrink)

Recently, there’s been a lot of interest in a research program that tries to understand propositional representation in terms of the subject’s performance of sub-propositional mental acts like reference and predication (e. g. Burge 2010, Hanks 2015, Soames 2010, 2015). For example, on one version of the view, for a subject to predicate the property of being a composer of Arvo just is what it is to perform the to the basic propositional act of judging that Arvo is a composer (...) (e. g. Hanks 2015). In this paper I first present my own version of this view and contrast it with alternatives. I then argue that we must clearly separate the thin predication-resultant notion of judging (S(emantic)-judgment) from a much richer notion used in epistemology (E(pistemic)-judgment). The former is just the act of thinking a forceful thought. The latter is the act of making up one’s mind about how things are, a way of concluding theoretical or doxastic deliberation. I argue that these two acts differ in three ways: levels of propositional attitude, objective vs. subjective norms, and the possibility of sub-personal occurrence. (shrink)

Attitudinal propositionalism is the view that all mental attitude content is truth-evaluable. While attitudinal propositionalism is still silently assumed in large parts of analytic philosophy, recent work on objectual attitudes (i.e. attitudes like ‘fearing Moriarty’ and ‘imagining a unicorn’ that are reported through intensional transitive verbs with a direct object) has put attitudinal propositionalism under explanatory pressure. This paper defends propositionalism for a special subclass of objectual attitudes, viz. experiential attitudes. The latter are attitudes like seeing, remembering, and imagining whose (...) grammatical objects intuitively denote (events or) scenes. I provide a propositional analysis of experiential attitudes that preserves the merits of propositionalism. This analysis uses the possibility of representing the target-scenes of experiential attitudes by the intersection of all propositions that are true in these scenes. I show that this analysis makes available the usual (Russellian) account of intensionality and the common (Boolean) logic for entailments. (shrink)

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

The aim of this paper is to show that, unlike proponents of Humean accounts of intentional action, Ockham can also answer the fundamental question of why we desire anything at all. For Ockham, desire cannot be the starting point of the explanation, since desire presupposes yet another kind of appetitive act that is objectual, or non-propositional, in its nature. Ockham calls this love (amor). It should become clear that Ockham's approach, even in his day, is not common. It is, however, (...) worthy of detailed examination because it furthers a deeper and more complete understanding of intentional action by shedding light on this more fundamental question. In his terminology, love is the most basic kind of unconditional willing, not least because it is purely objectual: we appreciate persons as ends, not as means. The explanation of intentional action has to start somewhere. And, for Ockham, it starts with love for persons. (shrink)

Typical emotions share important features with paradigmatic intentional states, and therefore might admit of distinctions made in theory of intentionality. One such distinction is between attitude and content, where we can specify the content of an intentional state separately from its attitude, and therefore the same content can be taken up by different intentional attitudes. According to some philosophers, emotions do not admit of this distinction, although there has been no sustained argument for this claim. In this article, I argue (...) that the way values figure in emotional experience qualifies the content of emotional experience such that the attitude-content distinction cannot be applied. (shrink)

As the label suggests, according to _propositionalism_, each intentional mental state, attitude or event is or involves a relation to a proposition. In this paper, I will discuss a case that seems prima facie not to be accountable for by propositionalism. After having presented the case, I will show why it is different from others that have been discussed in the literature as able to show that propositionalism cannot be correct. I will then consider what the propositionalist can say to (...) fix the problem and I will show that no strategy that is genuinely propositionalist seems promising. I will not conclude that propositionalism is doomed. But I will show that if propositionalism can account for our case at all, it can only do so by losing its main appeal, i.e. its elegance and simplicity. But then propositionalism seems to have lost its advantage with respect to its obvious alternative, i.e. a pluralist account according to which mental states, attitudes and events are not all homogeneously relations to propositions, but rather our mental life should be accounted for in terms of a plurality of kinds of relata. (shrink)

This paper introduces and argues for contrastivism about intentions. According to contrastivism, intention is not a binary relation between an agent and an action. Rather, it is a ternary relation between an agent, an action, and an alternative. Contrastivism is introduced via a discussion of cases of known but (apparently) unintended side effects. Such cases are puzzling. They put pressure on us to reject a number of highly compelling theses about intention, intentional action, and practical reason. And they give rise (...) to a puzzle about rather than constructions such as ‘I intend to φ rather than ψ’: In side effect cases it can seem wrong to claim that the subject intends to φ, yet acceptable to claim that they intend to φ rather than ψ. This cries out for explanation. Contrastivism provides a unified response to all of these problems. (shrink)

Are submergence and submergent properties metaphysically possible? This is a substantive question that has been either utterly neglected or quickly answered in the negative. This neglect is not only significant in itself; the possibility of submergence plays a crucial role in hotly debated topics in metaphysics, for example, the debate over Monism and Pluralism. This paper is intended to prompt a discussion about metaphysical submergence. In particular I will provide examples of submergent properties, argue that these are metaphysically possible and (...) finally propose a pluralist argument from submergence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Act-based theories of content hold that propositions are identical to acts of predication that we perform in thought and talk. To undergo an occurrent thought with a particular content is just to perform the act of predication that individuates that content. But identifying the content of a thought with the performance of an act of predication makes it difficult to explain the intentionality of bouletic mental activity, like wanting and desiring. In this paper, I argue that this difficulty is (...) insurmountable: the contents of occurrent desires cannot be determined by acts of predication. (shrink)

The paper presents an account of the concept of existence that is based on Brentano’s work. In contrast to Frege and Russell, Brentano took ‘exists’ to express a that subsumes objects and explained it with recourse to the non-propositional attitude of acknowledgment. I argue that the core of Brentano’s view can be developed to a defensible alternative to the Frege-Russell view of existence.

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)

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

Traditionally, ‘that’-clauses occurring in attitude attributions are taken to denote the objects of the attitudes. Prior raised a famous problem: even if Frege fears that the Begriffsschrift leads to a paradox, it is unlikely that he fears a proposition, a sentence or what have you as the alleged object denoted by the ‘that’-clause. The usual way out is to say that ‘that’-clauses do not contribute the objects of the attitudes but their contents. I will show that, if we accept this (...) answer, either we’d better stop working on attitude attributions or we’d better work harder on them. (shrink)

In these comments on David Hunter’s insightful new book On Believing, I consider Hunter’s account of believing that p as being in a position to act in light of the fact (or apparent fact) that p. After investigating how this kind of view is supposed to work, I raise a challenge for it: the account is unlikely to generalize to other attitudes like hoping and fearing that p. I then argue that this really is an objection to the account of (...) believing, since all the attitudes have so many fundamental features in common that there should be a common core to the accounts of all the different attitudes. Since hoping and fearing that p in no way even commit the speaker to the belief that p, they can’t allow the agent to act in light of the (apparent) fact that p. Thus, I conclude, believing isn’t a matter of being in such a position, and neither is the having of any other type of attitude. (shrink)

In a recent article, Giulia Felappi has leveled a challenge for those who believe that propositional attitudes involve relations between subjects and propositions: they must say more about what it is for a given proposition to figure as the content of one’s attitude. This note argues that Felappi’s challenge has already been met by proponents of act-theoretic conceptions of propositions.

Levinas is usually discussed as a philosopher wrestling with the nature of our experience of others, ethical obligation, and the divine. Unlike other phenomenologists, such as Husserl and Heidegger, he is not often mentioned in discussions about issues in philosophy of mind. His work in that area, especially on perception, is underappreciated. He gives an account of the nature of perceptual experience that is remarkable both in how it departs from that of others in the phenomenological tradition and for how (...) it fits in among presently available views about the nature of perceptual experience, namely, as a form of naïve realism. (shrink)

As far as I can see, there are two basic ways of cashing out the claim that intentionality is ultimately phenomenal: an indirect one, according to which the intentional content of an experiential intentional mental state is determined by the phenomenal character that state already possesses, so that intentionality is so determined only indirectly; a direct one, which centers on the very property of intentionality itself and can further be construed in two manners: either that very property is determined by (...) the above phenomenal character, or it is a sui generis phenomenal property, thereby giving its own contribution to the overall phenomenal character of that state. Yet neither way sounds ultimately satisfying. For the indirect way may work only under the assumption that intentionality is monadic. Since the direct way explicitly endorses this assumption, the indirect way must give pride of place to it. Yet the direct way seems to be unsuccessful, in any of its forms. Thus, the phenomenal intentionality research program ought to give way to another research program concerning intentionality. (shrink)

RésuméRécemment, Indrek Reiland a proposé une nouvelle version de la théorie des propositions comme type d'actes (ATT) dans laquelle la prédication demeure un acte d'engagement. Cependant, le problème Frege-Geach peut être abordé sans recourir à la manœuvre d'annulation de Peter Hanks. Dans cet article, je soutiens que si nous considérons la prédication comme un acte d'engagement, nous devrons alors nous attaquer à un autre problème : celui des actes représentationnels qui n'ont pas de dimension d'engagement. Je soutiens que Reiland a (...) encore besoin d'une notion d'annulation pour traiter ce dernier problème. De ce fait, il ne peut éviter le défaut majeur qu'il attribue à la version de Hanks. (shrink)

As far as I can see, there are two basic ways of cashing out the claim that intentionality is ultimately phenomenal: (i) an indirect one, according to which the intentional content of an experiential intentional mental state is determined by the phenomenal character that state already possesses, so that intentionality is so determined only indirectly; (ii) a direct one, which centers on the very property of intentionality itself and can further be construed in two manners: either that very property is (...) determined by the above phenomenal character, or it is a sui generis phenomenal property, thereby giving its own contribution to the overall phenomenal character of that state. Yet neither way sounds ultimately satisfying. For the indirect way may work only under the assumption that intentionality is monadic. Since the direct way explicitly endorses this assumption, the indirect way must give pride of place to it. Yet the direct way seems to be unsuccessful, in any of its forms. Thus, the phenomenal intentionality research program ought to give way to another research program concerning intentionality. (shrink)

This work investigates intuitions' nature, demonstrating how philosophers can best use them in epistemology. First, the author considers several paradigmatic thought experiments in epistemology that depict the appeal to intuition. He then argues that the nature of thought experiment-generated intuitions is not best explained by an a priori Platonism. Second, the book instead develops and argues for a thin conception of epistemic intuitions. The account maintains that intuition is neither a priori nor a posteriori but multi-dimensional. It is an intentional (...) but non-propositional mental state that is also non-conceptual and non-phenomenal in nature. Moreover, this state is individuated by its progenitor, namely, the relevant thought experiment. Third, the author provides an argument for the evidential status of intuitions based on the correct account of the nature of epistemic intuition. The suggestion is the fitting-ness approach: intuition alone has no epistemic status. Rather, intuition has evidentiary value as long as it fits well with other pieces into a whole, namely, the pertinent thought experiment. Finally, the book addresses the key challenges raised by supporters of anti-centrality, according to which philosophers do not regard intuition as central evidence in philosophy. To that end, the author responds to them, showing that they fail to affect the account of intuition developed in this book. This text appeals to students and researchers working in epistemology. (shrink)