Experiences of thought-insertion are a first-rank, diagnostically central symptom of schizophrenia. Schizophrenic patients who undergo such delusional mental states report being first-personally aware of an occurrent conscious thought which is not theirs, but which belongs to an external cognitive agent. Patients seem to be right about what they are thinking but mistaken about who is doing the thinking. It is notoriously difficult to make sense of such delusions. One general approach to explaining the etiology of monothematic delusions has come to (...) be known as the endorsement model. This model claims that the patient holds her delusional belief because she simply trusts her bizarre experience and takes it at face value. The content of the bizarre experience thus plays a central role in the etiology of delusions. Despite being widely discussed with respect to delusions like Capgras and Cotard, an endorsement model of thought-insertion has not yet been formulated. This article seeks to fill this void by fleshing out and defending the endorsement approach to delusions of inserted thoughts. It aims to show that such an approach can be defended against objections that have been raised in the literature. In particular, it will be argued that there is nothing wrong with the idea of being first-personally aware of a thought which is presented in consciousness as being someone else's. The upshot is that with respect to delusions of thought-insertion, the endorsement model turns out to be a viable account of why patients come to believe that someone else is inserting thoughts into their minds. (shrink)

Direct realism with respect to perceptual experiences has two facets, an epistemological one and a metaphysical one. From the epistemological point of view it involves the claim that perceptual experiences provide immediate justification. From the metaphysical point of view it involves the claim that in perceptual experience we enter into direct contact with items in the external world. In a more radical formulation, often associated with naive realism, the metaphysical conception of direct realism involves the idea that perceptual experiences depend (...) on the items in the external world they are related to. This paper describes a simple account that makes room for immediate justification provided by perceptual experience. The simple account establishes an explanatory relation between the justificatory role of a perceptual experience and the fact that such an experience provides a reason for a belief. The account is evaluated in the light of some objections. Different ways to react to those objections are discussed. It will appear that in order to preserve the explanatory relation established by the simple account, one has to accept naive realism. By breaking the connection between reason and justification, on the other side, one jeopardizes the possibility for perceptual experience to deliver immediate justification. (shrink)

Ker nimamo avtorskih didaskalij, je celoten svet drame (vključno s psihično in materialno realnostjo) predstavljen izključno z besedami, ki jih govorijo dramski liki. Roman Ingarden imenuje takšen način predstavljanja shematična reprezentacija: na ta način predstavljeni predmeti so namreč samo skicirani, nešteta nedoločena mesta v njihovi predstavitvi vabijo bralca, da jih v procesu konkretizacije alirekonstrukcije zapolni z intelektualnimi in domišljijskimi operacijami in se pri tem opira na svoje znanje in izkušnje. Tako konkretizacijo kot rekonstrukcijo je treba ločevati od literarnega dela samega; (...) ker ju oblikuje bralec s svojo domišljijsko dejavnostjo, predstavljata oviro pri spoznavanju dela samega. Ingardnovo teorijo so kritizirali prav zaradi tega, ker daje bralcu preveč manevrskega prostora pri konstituiranju in tudi pri rekonstrukciji literarne umetnine (Ray, Kos, Holub, Calinescu). Zdi se, da te kritike temeljijo v nekoliko poenostavljenem razumevanju Ingardnove izredno kompleksne analize, v kateri se kaže, da je vloga bralca sicer omejena s tekstom, a vendarle vitalnega pomena za sekundarno eksistenco literarne umetnine. V članku so obravnavani neverbalni dejavniki motivacije v Sofoklovi tragediji; razdeljeni so v tri skupine: značajske poteze, dramska klima in čutne izkušnje. Članek se zaključi z analizo Odisejeve neverbalne motivacije v tragediji Ajant, ki predstavlja poseben primer, saj je tu odločilni dejavnik motivacije Odisejeva izkušnja numinoznega. (shrink)

I argue that any account of perceptual experience should satisfy the following two desiderata. First, it should account for the particularity of perceptual experience, that is, it should account for the mind-independent object of an experience making a difference to individuating the experience. Second, it should explain the possibility that perceptual relations to distinct environments could yield subjectively indistinguishable experiences. Relational views of perceptual experience can easily satisfy the first but not the second desideratum. Representational views can easily satisfy the (...) second but not the first desideratum. I argue that to satisfy both desiderata perceptual experience is best conceived of as fundamentally both relational and representational. I develop a view of perceptual experience that synthesizes the virtues of relationalism and representationalism, by arguing that perceptual content is constituted by potentially gappy de re modes of presentation. (shrink)

Dretske has provided very influential arguments that there is a difference between our sensory awareness of objects and our awareness of facts about these objects—that there is a difference, for example, between seeing x and seeing that x is F. This distinction between simple and epistemic seeing is a staple of the philosophy of perception. Memory is often usefully compared to perception, and in this spirit I argue for the conditional claim that if Dretske’s arguments succeed in motivating the posit (...) of simple seeing, then parallel arguments should equally motivate a posit I call simple remembering. Simple remembering would be a conscious form of memory about an object or event which is prior to and independent of any beliefs the subject may or may not form about the object or event simply remembered. (shrink)

Modest Nonconceptualism: Epistemology, Phenomenology, and Content. By Schmidt Eva.

This paper provides a novel argument against conceptualism, the claim that the content of human experience, including perceptual experience, is entirely conceptual. Conceptualism entails that the content of experience is limited by the concepts that we possess and deploy. I present an argument to show that such a view is exceedingly costly—if the nature of our experience is entirely conceptual, then we cannot account for concept learning: all perceptual concepts must be innate. The version of nativism that results is incompatible (...) with naturalistic accounts of concept learning. This cost can be avoided, and concept learning accounted for if nonconceptual content of experience is admitted. (shrink)

I consider the ‘inferentialist’ thesis that whenever a mental state rationally justifies a belief it is in virtue of inferential relations holding between the contents of the two states. I suggest that no good argument has yet been given for the thesis. I focus in particular on Williamson (2000) and Ginsborg (2011) and show that neither provides us with a reason to deny the plausible idea that experience can provide non-inferential justification for belief. I finish by pointing out some theoretical (...) costs and tensions associated with endorsing inferentialism. (shrink)

We discuss at some length evidence from the cognitive science suggesting that the representations of objects based on spatiotemporal information and featural information retrieved bottomup from a visual scene precede representations of objects that include conceptual information. We argue that a distinction can be drawn between representations with conceptual and nonconceptual content. The distinction is based on perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in conceptually unmediated ways. The representational contents of the states induced by these mechanisms that are available to a (...) type of awareness called phenomenal awareness constitute the phenomenal content of experience. The phenomenal content of perception contains the existence of objects as separate things that persist in time and time, spatiotemporal information, and information regarding relative spatial relations, motion, surface properties, shape, size, orientation, color, and their functional properties. (shrink)

Perceptual systems respond to proximal stimuli by forming mental representations of distal stimuli. A central goal for the philosophy of perception is to characterize the representations delivered by perceptual systems. It may be that all perceptual representations are in some way proprietarily perceptual and differ from the representational format of thought (Dretske 1981; Carey 2009; Burge 2010; Block ms.). Or it may instead be that perception and cognition always trade in the same code (Prinz 2002; Pylyshyn 2003). This paper rejects (...) both approaches in favor of perceptual pluralism, the thesis that perception delivers a multiplicity of representational formats, some proprietary and some shared with cognition. The argument for perceptual pluralism marshals a wide array of empirical evidence in favor of iconic (i.e., image-like, analog) representations in perception as well as discursive (i.e., language-like, digital) perceptual object representations. (shrink)

Short‐term memory in vision is typically thought to divide into at least two memory stores: a short, fragile, high‐capacity store known as iconic memory, and a longer, durable, capacity‐limited store known as visual working memory (VWM). This paper argues that iconic memory stores icons, i.e., image‐like perceptual representations. The iconicity of iconic memory has significant consequences for understanding consciousness, nonconceptual content, and the perception–cognition border. Steven Gross and Jonathan Flombaum have recently challenged the division between iconic memory and VWM by (...) arguing against the idea of capacity limits in favor of a flexible resource‐based model of short‐term memory. I argue that, while VWM capacity is probably governed by flexible resources rather than a sharp limit, the two memory stores should still be distinguished by their representational formats. Iconic memory stores icons, while VWM stores discursive (i.e., language‐like) representations. I conclude by arguing that this format‐based distinction between memory stores entails that prominent views about consciousness and the perception–cognition border will likely have to be revised. (shrink)

According to a classic but nowadays discarded philosophical theory, perceptual experience is a complex of nonconceptual sensory states and full-blown propositional beliefs. This classical dual-component theory of experience is often taken to be obsolete. In particular, there seem to be cases in which perceptual experience and belief conflict: cases of known illusions, wherein subjects have beliefs contrary to the contents of their experiences. Modern dual-component theories reject the belief requirement and instead hold that perceptual experience is a complex of nonconceptual (...) sensory states and some other sort of conceptual state. The most popular modern dual-component theory appeals to sui generis propositional attitudes called ‘perceptual seemings’. This article argues that the classical dual-component theory has the resources to explain known illusions without giving up the claim that the conceptual components of experience are beliefs. The classical dual-component view, though often viewed as outdated and implausible, should be regarded as a serious contender in contemporary debates about the nature of perceptual experience. (shrink)

Something about this argument sounds funny. As we’ll see, though, it takes some care to identify exactly what Moore has done wrong. Iwill assume that Moore knows premise (2) to be true. One could inquire into how he knows it, and whether that knowledge can be defeated; but Iwon’t. I’ll focus instead on what epistemic relations Moore has to premise (1) and to his conclusion (3). It may matter which epistemic relations we choose to consider. Some philosophers will diagnose Moore’s (...) argument using Contextualist machinery. They’ll say. (shrink)

According to the conceptualist view in the philosophy of perception, we possess concepts for all the objects, properties, and relations which feature in our experiences. Richard Heck has recently argued that the phenomenon of illusory experience provides us with conclusive reasons to reject this view. In this paper, I examine Heck’s argument, I explain why I think that Bill Brewer’s conceptualist response to it is ineffective, and I then outline an alternative conceptualist response which I myself endorse. My argument turns (...) on the fact that both Heck, in constructing his objection to conceptualism, and Brewer, in responding to it, miss a crucial distinction between perceptual demonstrative concepts of objects, on the one hand, and perceptual demonstrative concepts of properties, on the other. (shrink)

There are two very different ways of thinking about perception. According to representationalism, perceptual states are representations: they represent the world as being a certain way. They have content, which may or may not be different from the content of beliefs. They represent objects as having properties, sometimes veridically, sometimes not. According to relationalism, perception is a relation between the agent and the perceived object. Perceived objects are literally constituents of our perceptual states and not of the contents thereof. Perceptual (...) states are not representations. My aim is to argue that if we frame this debate as a debate about the individuation of perceptual states, rather than the nature of perception, then we can reconcile these two seemingly conflicting ways of thinking about perception. (shrink)

Self-consciousness can be defined as the ability to think 'I'-thoughts. Recently, it has been suggested that self-consciousness in this sense can (and should) be accounted for in terms of nonconceptual forms of self-representation. Here, I will argue that while theories of nonconceptual self-consciousness do provide us with important insights regarding the essential genetic and epistemic features of self-conscious thought, they can only deliver part of the full story that is required to understand the phenomenon of self-consciousness. I will provide two (...) arguments to this effect, drawing on insights from the philosophy of language and on structural differences between conceptual and nonconceptual forms of representation. Both arguments rest on the intuition that while self-consciousness requires explicit self-representation, nonconceptual content can at best provide implicit self-related information. I will conclude that in order to explain the emergence of self-conscious thought out of more basic forms of representations one has to explain the transition between implicit self-related information and explicit self-representation. (shrink)

We situate the debate on intentionality within the rise of cognitive neuroscience and argue that cognitive neuroscience can explain intentionality. We discuss the explanatory significance of ascribing intentionality to representations. At first, we focus on views that attempt to render such ascriptions naturalistic by construing them in a deflationary or merely pragmatic way. We then contrast these views with staunchly realist views that attempt to naturalize intentionality by developing theories of content for representations in terms of information and biological function. (...) We echo several other philosophers by arguing that these theories over-generalize unless they are constrained by a theory of the functional role of representational vehicles. This leads to a discussion of the functional roles of representations, and how representations might be realized in the brain. We argue that there’s work to be done to identify a distinctively mental kind of representation. We close by sketching a way forward for the project of naturalizing intentionality. This will not be achieved simply by ascribing the content of mental states to generic neural representations, but by identifying specific neural representations that explain the puzzling intentional properties of mental states. (shrink)

Philosophers have traditionally held that propositions mark the domain of rational thought and inference. Many philosophers have held that only conceptually sophisticated creatures like us could have propositional attitudes. But in recent decades, philosophers have adopted increasingly liberal views of propositional attitudes that encompass the mental states of various non-human animals. These views now sit alongside more traditional views within the philosophical mainstream. In this paper I argue that liberalized views of propositional attitudes are so liberal that they encompass states (...) of all sorts of apparently mindless systems like circadian clocks in plants. I begin by arguing that on the most well-developed and widely endorsed theories of underived representation in philosophy, circadian clocks qualify as representations. I then argue that standard reasons for thinking that perceptual states and pictures have propositional content carry over to circadian clocks. Finally, I argue that circadian representations in plants play the kind of functional role that is widely taken to be partly constitutive of belief-like attitudes. So according to mainstream theories of representation, propositions, and attitudes, plants have propositional attitudes. Yet on other more traditional views, this conclusion would seem absurd. So, contrary to appearances, there is no shared, stable understanding of what propositional attitudes are in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Arguments for attributing non-conceptual content to experience have predominantly been motivated by aspects of the visual perception of empirical properties. In this article, I pursue a different strategy, arguing that a specific class of affective-evaluative experiences have non-conceptual content. The examples drawn on are affective-evaluative experiences of first exposure, in which the subject has a felt valenced intentional attitude towards evaluative properties of the object of their experience, but lacks any powers of conceptual discrimination regarding those evaluative properties. I also (...) show that by accepting this thesis we can explain relevant features of evaluative understanding. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a new argument for the perceptual rationality thesis: the claim that perceptual experiences themselves can be rational or irrational. In her book The Rationality of Perception, Susanna Siegel has offered several intertwined arguments for this same thesis, and, as you will see, one of Siegel’s arguments is what inspires my own. However, I will suggest that the new argument is significantly better-supported than Siegel’s original argument.

One of the central debates in contemporary Kant scholarship concerns whether Kant endorses a “conceptualist” account of the nature of sensory experience. Understanding the debate is crucial for getting a full grasp of Kant's theory of mind, cognition, perception, and epistemology. This paper situates the debate in the context of Kant's broader theory of cognition and surveys some of the major arguments for conceptualist and non-conceptualist interpretations of his critical philosophy.

Many think that the perceptual theory known as “conceptualism” cannot honor a common and intuitive constraint on concept acquisition—that we gain the initial power to deploy primitive concepts through experience. Their argument is: if experience involves the deployment of concepts, then one must possess the power to deploy those concepts prior to experience. I argue that the plausibility of this argument rests on a subtle equivocation. It’s true that conceptualism requires a particular kind of power to deploy concepts prior to (...) experience, but not the sort referenced in the intuitive constraint mentioned above. I end by proposing how the conceptualist might satisfy this constraint. I conclude that conceptualism is better situated to account for primitive concept acquisition than typically thought. (shrink)

John Campbell argues that visual attention to objects is the means by which we can refer to objects, and that this is so because conscious visual attention enables us to retrieve information about a location. It is argued here that while Campbell is right to think that we visually attend to objects, he does not give us sufficient ground for thinking that consciousness is involved, and is wrong to assign an intermediary role to location. Campbell’s view on sortals is also (...) queried, as is his espousal of the so-called Referential View of Experience. (shrink)

The goal of the present paper is to defend against a certain line of attack the view that conscious experience of color is no more fine-grained that the repertoire of non- demonstrative concepts that a perceiver is able to bring to bear in perception. The line of attack in question is an alleged empirical argument - the Diachronic Indistinguishability Argument - based on pairs of colors so similar that they can be discriminated when simultaneously presented but not when presented across (...) a memory delay. My aim here is to show that this argument fails. (shrink)

Since Wilfrid Sellars’s “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” the myth of the Given has been central to philosophical discussions of perceptual experience and knowledge. In its most prominent form, the idea of the Given is the idea that perceptual experience can rationally support one’s thoughts but has no conceptual content. Now, intentional action is widely thought to be the structural complement of perceptual experience; via perceptual experience, the world impresses itself on the mind; via intentional action, the mind impresses (...) itself on the world. But if that is true, we should suspect that there is something structurally similar to the idea of the Given in our thinking about intentional action. In this essay, I show in detail that indeed there is. Roughly, it is the idea that intentional actions can be rationally supported by one’s thoughts but have no conceptual content. I contend further that if the Given is a “myth,” so too is this structural analog. I also argue that if John McDowell’s way of avoiding the Given is satisfactory, there is a correlative way of avoiding the structural analog. The intriguing result: intentional action must have conceptual content. In the end, I raise two key questions about whether we should accept this result. (shrink)

Can beliefs that are not consciously formulated serve as part of an agent's evidence for other beliefs? A common view says no, any belief that is psychologically immediate is also epistemically immediate. I argue that some unconscious beliefs can serve as evidence, but other unconscious beliefs cannot. Person-level beliefs can serve as evidence, but subpersonal beliefs cannot. I try to clarify the nature of the personal/subpersonal distinction and to show how my proposal illuminates various epistemological problems and provides a principled (...) framework for solving other problems. (shrink)

This paper criticizes two closely connected rationalist views about human agency. The first of these views, rationalism about agential control, claims that the capacities for agential control in normal adult human beings are rational capacities. The second view, rationalism about action, claims that the capacities for agential control in virtue of which the things we do count as our actions are rational capacities. The arguments of the paper focus on aspects of technical skills that control integral details of skillful action, (...) like the details of a baseball player’s pitching technique. I argue that these aspects of technical skills are largely non-rational capacities, but are nonetheless capacities for agential control, and can help make the things we do count as actions. While rational capacities do have a central role in human agency, their importance should not lead us to neglect the significant constitutive role of non-rational capacities in our agency. (shrink)

: I present an argument for the existence of nonconceptual representational content. The argument is compatible with McDowell's defence of conceptualism against those arguments for nonconceptual content that draw upon claims about the fine‐grainedness of experience. I present a case for nonconceptual content that concentrates on the idea that experience can possess representational content that cannot perform the function of conceptual content, namely figure in the subject's reasons for belief and action. This sort of argument for nonconceptual content is best (...) achieved with examples from auditory perception, especially our perception of music. (shrink)

I present an argument for the existence of nonconceptual representational content. The argument is compatible with McDowell's defence of conceptualism against those arguments for nonconceptual content that draw upon claims about the fine‐grainedness of experience. I present a case for nonconceptual content that concentrates on the idea that experience can possess representational content that cannot perform the function of conceptual content, namely figure in the subject's reasons for belief and action. This sort of argument for nonconceptual content is best achieved (...) with examples from auditory perception, especially our perception of music. (shrink)

In this paper I show how the way experience presents things to us can be treated without attributing a representational content to experience. The basic claim that experience can present us with more things than the range of things available to us in thought is neutral with respect to the choice between a content account of experience and a naïve content-free account. I show how Meyer's theory of expectations in accounting for our experience of music supports the naïve account. Expectations (...) provide an account of the conditions that enable things to be salient in experience as targets for attention. Expectations do not provide a content to experience. (shrink)

In this paper I take up the question of whether Wilfrid Sellars has a notion of non-conceptual perceptual content. The question is controversial, being one of the fault lines along which so-called left and right Sellarsians diverge. In the paper I try to make clear what it is in Sellars' thought that leads interpreters to such disparate conclusions. My account depends on highlighting the importance of Sellars' little discussed thesis that perception involves a systematic form of mis-categorization, one where perceivers (...) mistake their sensory states to be properties of physical objects. I argue that the counterpart color and shape attributes of these states, which become ‘point of viewish’ when organized by the productive imagination, provides perceptual experience with its non-conceptual representational content. I then argue that this content is not a form of the mythical Given because one can only have a non-conceptual point of view on an object when an object is introduced into one's perceptual experience through the conceptual mis-taking of one's sensory states. So, while Sellars has a notion of non-conceptual representational content, it can only be salient in the context of a perceptual act that is conceptual overall. (shrink)

According to John McDowell and Bill Brewer, our experiences have the type of content which can be the content of judgements - content which is the result of the actualization of specific conceptual abilities. They defend this view by arguing that our experiences must have such content in order for us to be able to think about our environment. In this paper I show that they do not provide a conclusive argument for this view. Focusing on Brewer’s version of the (...) argument, I show that it rests on a questionable assumption - namely, that if a subject can recognize the normative bearing of a mental content upon what she should think and do, then this content must be the result of the actualization of conceptual capacities (and in this sense conceptual). I argue that considerations regarding the roles played by experience and concepts in our mental lives may require us to reject this assumption. (shrink)

John McDowell (in Mind and World) and Bill Brewer (in Perception and Reason) argue that the content of our perceptual experience is conceptual in the following sense. It is of the type of content that could be the content of a judgement – that is, a content which results from the actualization of two (or more) conceptual abilities. Specifically, they suggest that the conceptual abilities actualized in experience are demonstrative abilities, and thus the resulting content is of the type we (...) may express by means of sentences of the form ‘this is thus’. In this paper I argue that we cannot construe experiential contents in this way. I first outline a construal of the ability to think about a thing being thus which is based on Brewer's discussion of conceptual experiential contents, and which I take to be the best construal available to the conceptualist. I then show that on this construal the demonstrative abilities that account for our experience of properties require intentional focused attention to the relevant properties. The conceptualist is thus committed to holding that we experience only the properties we are intentionally attending to, and I argue that this is implausible. The interest in examining Brewer's conceptualist construal of experiential content and pointing out its shortcoming is not limited merely to an interest in whether there is a workable conceptualist account of experiential content. I suggest that certain aspects of Brewer's construal capture important (and often neglected) aspects of our perceptual experience, and that understanding why the account fails can contribute to our understanding of both experiential content and demonstrative thought. (shrink)

Increasingly prominent in the recent literature on the philosophy of perception, Intentionalism holds that sensory experience is inherently intentional, where to be intentional is to be about, or directed on, something. This article explores Intentionalism's prospects as a viable ontological and epistemological alternative to the traditional trinity of theories of sensory experience: the Sense-Datum Theory, the Adverbial Theory, and the Theory of Appearing.

In this essay, I specify types of representational content that can be attributed to Kant’s account of representation. The more specific aim is to examine which of these types of content can be regarded as possible without the application of concepts. In order to answer the question, I proceed as follows. First, I show how intuition (in Kant’s sense) can be seen as providing indexical content independently of empirical concepts. Second, I show in what sense the generation of spatial content (...) can be regarded as non-categorial. A key distinction is that a perceptual examination of an object can be understood as thoroughly sensible and particular, whereas a conceptual determination always grasps the object via its generalisable features. Third, I propose that the faculties of sensibility and understanding are not only separable in principle, but that their contributions remain in a certain sense separate in actual cognition as well. This is to say that a conceptual determination of an object does not entail that the object ceases to be non-conceptually available to the perceiver, which further suggests the autonomy of sensibility and its perceptual content. Finally, I raise difficulties in attributing non-conceptual representational content to Kant’s judgment-centered stance on representation and experience, only to emphasise how these difficulties easily lead to a misappreciation of Kant’s fundamental distinction between sensibility and understanding and their unique cognitive contributions. (shrink)

Recently representationalists have cited a phenomenon known as the transparency of experience in arguments against the qualia theory. Representationalists take transparency to support their theory and to work against the qualia theory. In this paper I argue that representationalist assessment of the philosophical importance of transparency is incorrect. The true beneficiary of transparency is another theory, naïve realism. Transparency militates against qualia and the representationalist theory of experience. I describe the transparency phenomenon, and I use my description to argue for (...) naïve realism and against representationalism and the qualia theory. I also examine the relationship between phenomenological study and phenomenal character, and discuss the results in connection with the argument from hallucination. (shrink)

For some years now, an increasing number of philosophers have been holding that what is given in perception are the physical objects of our surroundings. This is the view called, among others names, “the Relational View”. Basically, this view consists in the claim that experience is not representational, it is not a matter of the subject's taking things in the world to be this or that way; rather, it is just a matter of being presented with things, of being in (...) a certain kind of relation with them, which makes them available to us, nevertheless, to be represented in judgement or belief. The question arises, however, whether this does not imply a new fall into the Myth of the Given. In this article, I argue for an affirmative response to that question. (shrink)

Much of the contemporary debate in the philosophy of mind is concerned with the clash between certain strongly held intuitions and what science tells us about the mind and its relation to the world. What science tells us about the mind points strongly towards some version or other of physicalism. The intuitions, in one way or another, suggest that there is something seriously incomplete about any purely physical story about the mind.

Davidson claims that nothing can count as a reason for a belief except another belief. This claim is challenged by McDowell, who holds that perceptual experiences can count as reasons for beliefs. I argue that McDowell fails to take account of a distinction between two different senses in which something can count as a reason for belief. While a non-doxastic experience can count as a reason for belief in one of the two senses, this is not the sense which is (...) presupposed in Davidson's claim. While I focus on McDowell's view, the argument generalizes to other views which take experiences as reasons for belief. (shrink)

In this paper we (i) identify the notion of ‘essentially non-conceptual content’ by critically analyzing the recent and contemporary debate about non-conceptual content, (ii) work out the basics of broadly Kantian theory of essentially non-conceptual content in relation to a corresponding theory of conceptual content, and then (iii) demonstrate one effective application of the Kantian theory of essentially non-conceptual content by using this theory to provide a ‘minimalist’ solution to the problem of perceptual self-knowledge which is raised by Strong Externalism.

Abstract: Philosophers interested in Kant's relevance to contemporary debates over the nature of mental content—notably Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais—have argued that Kant ought to be credited with being the original proponent of the existence of ‘nonconceptual content’. However, I think the ‘nonconceptualist’ interpretations that Hanna and Allais give do not show that Kant allowed for nonconceptual content as they construe it. I argue, on the basis of an analysis of certain sections of the A and B editions of the (...) Transcendental Deduction, for a ‘conceptualist’ reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. My contention is that since Kant's notion of empirical intuition makes essential reference to the categories, it must be true for him that no empirical intuition can be given in sensibility independently of the understanding and its categories. (shrink)

This paper addresses a number of closely related questions concerning Kant's model of intentionality, and his conceptions of unity and of magnitude [Gröβe]. These questions are important because they shed light on three issues which are central to the Critical system, and which connect directly to the recent analytic literature on perception: the issues are conceptualism, the status of the imagination, and perceptual atomism. In Section 1, I provide a sketch of the exegetical and philosophical problems raised by Kant's views (...) on these issues. I then develop, in Section 2, a detailed analysis of Kant's theory of perception as elaborated in both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment; I show how this analysis provides a preliminary framework for resolving the difficulties raised in Section 1. In Section 3, I extend my analysis of Kant's position by considering a specific test case: the Axioms of Intuition. I contend that one way to make sense of Kant's argument is by juxtaposing it with Russell's response to Bradley's regress; I focus in particular on the concept of ‘unity’. Finally, I offer, in Section 4, a philosophical assessment of the position attributed to Kant in Sections 2 and 3. I argue that, while Kant's account has significant strengths, a number of key areas remain underdeveloped; I suggest that the phenomenological tradition may be read as attempting to fill precisely those gaps. (shrink)

In Sein und Zeit Heidegger makes several claims about the nature of ‘assertion’ [Aussage]. These claims are of particular philosophical interest: they illustrate, for example, important points of contact and divergence between Heidegger's work and philosophical movements including Kantianism, the early Analytic tradition and contemporary pragmatism. This article provides a new assessment of one of these claims: that assertion is connected to a ‘present-at-hand’ ontology. I also indicate how my analysis sets the stage for a new reading of Heidegger's further (...) claim that assertion is an explanatorily derivative phenomenon. I begin with a loose overview of Heidegger's position and then develop a sharper formulation of the key premises. I go on to argue that existing treatments of the supposed link between assertion and the ‘present-at-hand’ are unsatisfactory, and advance a new, ‘methodological’, interpretation of that link. Finally, I sketch the implications of my interpretation for the further claim that assertion is explanatorily derivative. (shrink)

Today, many philosophers think that perceptual experiences are conscious mental states with representational content and phenomenal character. Subscribers to this view often go on to construe experience more precisely as a propositional attitude sui generis ascribing sensible properties to ordinary material objects. I argue that experience is better construed as a kind of belief ascribing 'phenomenal' properties to such objects. A belief theory of this kind deals as well with the traditional arguments against doxastic accounts as the sui generis view. (...) Moreover, in contrast to sui generis views, it can quite easily account for the rational or reason providing role of experience. (shrink)