Many philosophers have understood the representational dimension of affective states along the model of perceptual experiences. This paper argues affective experiences involve a kind of personal level affective representation disanalogous from the representational character of perceptual experiences. The positive thesis is that affective representation is a non-transparent, non-sensory form of evaluative representation, whereby a felt valenced attitude represents the object of the experience as minimally good or bad, and one experiences that evaluative standing as having the power to causally motivate (...) the relevant attitude. I show how this view can make sense of distinctive features of affective experiences, such as their valence and connection to value in a way which moves beyond current evaluativist views of affect. (shrink)

The central thesis of this article is that the notion of second nature that John McDowell has reanimated has something of ethical and educational importance, thereby possibly extending the borders of the philosophy of education. The argument to this conclusion is the subject of serious consideration and criticism. The aim of this article is therefore to clarify the educational implications of the conception of second nature by responding to the three likely objections: (1) the charge of idealism, (2) the charge (...) of anthropocentrism, and (3) the charge of triviality. Through critical discussions of these criticisms, it is made explicit that second nature, from the outset, illuminates every sphere of the lives of human beings. A lively appreciation of this leads to the conclusion that the issue of how we develop our world of meaning with the conception of second nature should come under the scope of serious philosophical discourse on education. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for three main claims. First, that there are two broad sorts of error theory about a particular region of thought and talk, eliminativist error theories and non-eliminativist error theories. Second, that an error theory about rule following can only be an eliminativist view of rule following, and therefore an eliminativist view of meaning and content on a par with Paul Churchland’s prima facie implausible eliminativism about the propositional attitudes. Third, that despite some superficial appearances to (...) the contrary, non-eliminativist error theory does not provide a plausible vehicle for understanding the ‘sceptical solution’ to the sceptical paradox about rule - following developed in Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. (shrink)

It has recently been claimed that there is a “new hard problem” for physicalism. The new hard problem, according to Goff, is based on “semantic phenomenology”, the view that conscious perceptual experience represents linguistic expressions as having determinate meanings. Goff argues that Kripke’s rule-following argument demonstrates that it is particularly difficult for a physicalist to account for semantic phenomenology. In this paper, we argue that Goff’s discussion of semantic phenomenology fails to uncover a “new” hard problem for physicalism and there (...) is a hard problem—which Goff misses—facing philosophers who accept the reality of semantic phenomenology, but that this is as much a problem for non-reductionists about meaning as it is for physicalists. All we have been given is a familiar hard problem about rule-following, not a new hard problem about consciousness. (shrink)

Should a philosophical account of perceptual knowledge accord a justificatory role to sensory experiences? This discussion raises problems for an affirmative answer and sets out an alternative account on which justified belief is conceived as well-founded belief and well-foundedness is taken to depend on knowledge. A key part of the discussion draws on a conception of perceptual-recognitional abilities to account for how perception gives rise both to perceptual knowledge and to well-founded belief.

I offer an argument for what mental action may be like in nonhuman animals. Action planning is a type of mental action that involves a type of intention. Some intentions are the causal mental antecedents of proximal mental actions, and some intentions are the causal mental antecedents of distal mental actions. The distinction between these two types of “plan-states” is often spelled out in terms of mental content. The prominent view is that while proximal mental actions are caused by mental (...) states with nonconceptual content, distal mental actions are caused by mental states with conceptual content. I argue that, when we are investigating animal cognition, we need a nonconceptual account for the content of intentions involved in mental actions such as action planning: non-immediate intentions. This in order to defend the claim that creatures that lack conceptual capacities are capable of entertaining plan-states, and thus of exercising mental agency in the form of action planning. (shrink)

The identity conception of truth holds that a thinkable is true just in case it is a fact. As such, it sets itself against correspondence theories of truth, while respecting the substantive role played by truth in respect of enquiry. In this article, I motivate and develop that view, and, in so doing, promote a particular conception of sense. This allows me to defend the view from two substantial criticisms. First, that the identity conception of truth is incoherent in respect (...) of its treatment of objects in the realm of reference, and, second, that it is committed to a view of the world in which ordinary objects have no place. (shrink)

Against the background of recent developments in neuroscience, the paper shows how, for Hegel, the theoretical, practical and evaluative functions of the mind are grounded in something like a natural normativity, based on the interaction of the body's inner world with the outer world. These forms of organic homeostasis are the basis for further kinds and levels of norms, and deviations from these norms, which result in mental pathologies, provide insights into the complexity of spirit.

The contemporary discussion of non-conceptual content inaugurated by Gareth Evans and John McDowell has generated a range of differing views as to Kant's position on the issues raised. I argue that for Kant perception is prior to thought and that it is as being prior that perception connects us to reality in outer intuition. I then argue that for Kant thought relates to perception by being the rule for perceptual procedures. This accounts for thought's extending in scope beyond what we (...) actually perceive to all that is manifest in space and time. As against Merleau-Ponty this Kantian understanding of thought beyond perception does not distort the nature of reality which remains essentially that which can be engaged. (shrink)

One emerging issue in contemporary epistemology concerns the relation between animal knowledge, which can be had by agents unable to take a view on the epistemic status of their attitudes, and reflective knowledge, which is only available to agents capable of taking such a view. Philosophers who are open to animal knowledge often presume that while many of the beliefs of human adults are formed unreflectively and thus constitute mere animal knowledge, some of them—those which become subject of explicit scrutiny (...) or are the result of a deliberative effort—may attain the status of reflective knowledge. According to Sanford Goldberg and Jonathan Matheson (2020), however, it is impossible for reflective subjects to have mere animal knowledge. If correct, their view would have a number of repercussions, perhaps most notably the vindication of a dualism about knowledge, which would frustrate attempts to provide a unified account of knowledge-attributions to human adults, very young children, and non-human animals. I discuss Goldberg and Matheson’s proposal, outline some of the ways in which it is insightful, and argue that it is ultimately unsuccessful because it neglects the inherent temporal dimension of knowledge acquisition. While the article is pitched as a reply to Goldberg and Matheson, its primary aim is to highlight significant connections between the debates on the relation between animal and reflective knowledge, propositional and doxastic justification, and the theory of epistemic defeat. (shrink)

While growing empirical evidence suggests a continuity between human and non-human psychology, many philosophers still think that only humans can act and form beliefs rationally. In this paper, we challenge this claim. We first clarify the notion of rationality. We then focus on the rationality of beliefs and argue that, in the relevant sense, humans are not the only rational animals. We do so by first distinguishing between unreflective and reflective responsiveness to epistemic reasons in belief formation and revision. We (...) argue that unreflective responsiveness is clearly within the reach of many animals. We then defend that a key demonstration of reflective responsiveness would be the ability to respond to undermining defeaters. We end by presenting some empirical evidence that suggests that some animal species are capable of processing these defeaters, which would entail that even by the strictest standards, humans are not the only rational animals. (shrink)

In an intriguing but neglected passage in the Transcendental Deduction, Kant appears to link the synthetic activity of the understanding in experience with the phenomenon of attention (B156-7n). In this paper, we take up this hint, and draw upon Kant's remarks about attention in the Anthropology to shed light on the vexed question of what, exactly, the understanding's role in experience is for Kant. We argue that reading Kant's claims about synthesis in this light allows us to combine two aspects (...) of Kant's views that many commentators have thought are in tension with one another: on the one hand, Kant's apparent commitment to naïve realism about perception and, on the other, his apparent commitment to the necessity of synthetic activity by the understanding for any kind of cognitive contact with external objects. (shrink)

This paper critically discusses Charles Taylor’s ethical views in his little known paper “Ethics and Ontology” : 305–320, 2003) by confronting it with the moral phenomenology of Maurice Mandelbaum, as laid out in his The Phenomenology of Moral Experience. The aim of the paper is to explore the significance of Taylor’s views for the dispute between naturalists, non-naturalists, and quietists in contemporary metaethics. It is divided in six sections. In the first section, I examine Taylor’s critique of naturalism. I continue (...) to discuss his moral phenomenology in more detail in the second and third sections, arguing that Taylor’s move from phenomenology to ontology is problematic. In the fourth section, I evaluate Taylor’s strategy by comparing it with Mandelbaum’s understanding of moral phenomenology, while also extending this comparison to the issue of how to locate the source of moral experience in the fifth section. Based on these discussions, I finally conclude in the sixth section that Taylor’s hermeneutical position, although ontologically incomplete and underdemonstrated, draws attention to a question to which current moral theory does not adequately respond. (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.

This paper argues for an inflationary and capacity-relative understanding of human enhancement technology. In doing so it echoes the approach followed by Buchanan. Particular emphasis is placed on the point that capacities themselves are relative to demands placed on the organism by its environment. In the case of human beings, this environment is to a very large extent institutionally structured. On the basis of the inflationary and capacity-relative concept of enhancement, I argue that the subject of enhancement must be understood (...) in terms of a bundle of capacities that is both extended and ecological. This consequence of the inflationary enhancement concept has some surprising upshots, namely that the subject itself must be considered as a technological enhancement and not a ‘platform’ or subjectum upon which the enhancement enterprise builds. This conclusion clashes, I argue, with some of the presuppositions of liberal philosophy, which starts by assuming a reflective subje.. (shrink)

In this article I seek to show the importance of spirituality for a neo-Aristotelian account of ‘the good life’. First, I lay out my account of spirituality. Second, I discuss why the issue of the place of spirituality in the good life has often either been ignored or explicitly excluded from consideration by neo-Aristotelians. I suggest that a lot turns on how one understands the ‘ethical naturalism’ to which neo-Aristotelians are committed. Finally, I argue that through a deeper exploration of (...) the evaluative standpoint from within our human form of life as ‘meaning-seeking animals’ we can come to better appreciate the importance of spirituality for human beings throughout recorded history up to the present and why we can be described as homo religiosus. (shrink)

McNaughton and Rawling's anti-reductionist intentions are to be welcomed, but are not well served by their continuing adherence to a neo-Humean notion of the 'descriptive'. Their too-willing acceptance of this notion is reflected in a denial of appropriate dialectical weight to considerations about the way 'pattern' disappears from the domain of value when we try to characterize the constituent features of the latter in non-evaluative terms. The need for a satisfactory account of the immanence of value in nature is real (...) enough, but such an account can be given without recourse to the problematic idea of a class of subvenient 'descriptive' properties. Likewise, McNaughton and Rawling's recognition of 'normative facts' is to be endorsed, but such facts are a more widespread and everyday phenomenon than they would have us think. (shrink)

I identify two mutually exclusive notions of formalism in Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement: a thin concept of aesthetic formalism and a thick concept of aesthetic formalism. Arguably there is textual support for both concepts in Kant’s third critique. I offer interpretations of three key elements in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement which support a thick formalism. The three key elements are: Harmony of the Faculties, Aesthetic Ideas and Sensus Communis. I interpret these concepts in relation to the conditions for (...) theoretical Reason, the conditions for moral motivation and the conditions for intersubjectivity, respectively. I conclude that there is no support for a thin concept of aesthetic formalism when the key elements of Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement are understood in the context of his broader critical aims. (shrink)

The work of Hubert Dreyfus interweaves productively ideas from, among others, Heidegger and Wittgenstein. A central element in Dreyfus' hugely influential interpretation of the former is the proposal that, if we are to—in some sense—'make sense' of intentionality, then we must recognize what Dreyfus calls the 'background'. Though Dreyfus has, over the years, put the notion of the 'background' to a variety of philosophical uses,1 considerations familiar from the literature inspired by Wittgenstein's reflections on rule-following have played an important role (...) in motivating the case for believing that we need to recognize the 'background' and thus also in identifying precisely what it is about the intentional that supposedly needs to be 'made sense of'. Dreyfus argues that what he calls 'representationalism' will land us with an unstoppable 'regress of rules'. In this paper, I first argue that there are actually two different arguments that Dreyfus invokes; I then go on to evaluate quite how, in the light of the problems that those arguments reveal, our position might be thought to be improved by our recognizing the 'background'. Given that various philosophical positions designed to deal with these problems have emerged within the Wittgensteinian literature, an obvious question to ask is whether the position that Dreyfus would have us adopt is essentially one of those positions. If it isn't, then how does it differ? There is surely a variety of ways in which such a comparison might be carried out and what I offer is only one. I argue that if, through a recognition of the 'background', we are thought to have acquired solutions to those problems, then it's not at all clear that the supposed solutions that emerge work. So I explore instead the possibility that that recognition forms part of an attempt to 'dissolve' those problems. In order to bring some clarity to that possibility I consider a number of different ways in which Dreyfus' proposals might be interpreted by drawing on ideas set out by John McDowell (and I suggest that his view of one of the 'regress' arguments is anticipated by Heidegger himself). I then identify and assess some of the consequences of adopting such McDowellian readings. My sense is that Dreyfus is on the side of the angels, so to speak. But if what is right in his proposals is to become clear, and if he is to be spared some obvious objections that those proposals may elicit, we need to be clear about just what kind of contribution those proposals are meant to make. In pursuing that clarity, I am attempting to follow through on the comparison of Wittgensteinian and Heideggerian ideas that Dreyfus and his supporters have initiated: what has yet to be clarified is how and why recognizing the 'background' will allow us to 'cope better' with the puzzles in the rule-following literature that they have cited in making a case for the need to recognize the 'background'. Ultimately, I will argue that assessing this matter may require a yet broader comparison of Wittgensteinian and Heideggerian themes, one which raises questions about what we take 'doing ontology' and 'doing phenomenology' to be. (shrink)

This is a survey of recent debates concerning the normativity of belief. We explain what the thesis that belief is normative involves, consider arguments for and against that thesis, and explore its bearing on debates in metaethics.

This paper looks at statements I am in a position to make ‘straight off’: observational judgements, perceptual and memory statements, statements about my posture, my intentions, and so on. These kinds of statement pose a problem: what is the nature of my entitlement to them? I focus on observational judgements and on two contrasting approaches to them. The first, which I reject, provides an account of my warrant for them; the second, which I defend, disconnects my entitlement from possession of (...) a justification. I consider what light the second approach sheds on the other kinds of statements I am in a position to make straight off. (shrink)

In Burge 2005, Tyler Burge reads disjunctivism as the denial that there are explanatorily relevant states in common between veridical perceptions and corresponding illusions. He rejects the position as plainly inconsistent with what is known about perception. I describe a disjunctive approach to perceptual experience that is immune to Burge's attack. The main positive moral concerns how to think about fallibility.

In McDowell, I responded to Burge's attack on disjunctivism. In Burge Burge rejects my response. He stands by his main claim that disjunctivism is incompatible with the science of perception, and in a supplementary spirit he argues against the detail of my attempt to defend disjunctivism. Here I explain how disjunctivism is compatible with the science, and I respond to some of Burge's supplementary arguments.

To the memory of Alan WhiteThe idea of mental representation occupies a rather prominent place in much contemporary discussion, both in philosophy and cognitive science, and not as a particularly controversial idea either. My reflections here, however, are intended to douse much of that discussion with some cold water. I should emphasize at the outset that I have no problems at all with the very idea of mental representation. What I find quite unsatisfactory is the philosophical or doctrinal underpinning of (...) much current theorising about it. Anyway, I shall suggest that talk of mental representation needs at least to be supplemented with, if not actually replaced by, a distinct notion of mental presentation, which cannot be reduced to it. But I start with the notion of an impression. (shrink)

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)

“The problem of color realism” as defined in the first section of the target article, is crucial to the argument laid out by Byrne & Hilbert. They claim that the problem of color realism “does not concern, at least in the first instance, color language or color concepts” (sect. 1.1). I argue that this claim is misconceived and that a different characterisation of the problem, and some of their preliminary assumptions makes their positive proposal less appealing.

Byrne & Hilbert conceive of color perception as the representation of a physical property “out there.” In our view, their approach does not only have various internal problems, but is also apt to becloud both the intricate and still poorly understood role that “ color ” plays within perceptual architecture, and the complex coupling to the “external world” of the perceptual system as an entirety. We propose an alternative perspective, which avoids B&H's misleading dichotomy between a purely subjective and a (...) realist conception of “ color.”. (shrink)

Within cognitive and developmental psychology, it is commonly argued that perception is the basis for object concepts. According to this view, sensory experiences would translate into concepts thanks to the recognition, correlation and integration of physical attributes. Once attributes are integrated into general patterns, subjects would become able to parse objects into categories. In this article, we critically review the three epistemological perspectives according to which it can be claimed that object concepts depend on perception:state non-conceptualism, content non-conceptualism, andcontent conceptualism. (...) We show that the three perspectives have problems that make perception inadequate as a conceptual basis. We suggest that the inquiry about the origin and development of object concepts can benefit from a pragmatic perspective that considers objects’cultural functionsas a conceptual foundation. We address this possibility from the theoretical framework of thepragmatics of the object, considering the importance of objects’functional permanence. (shrink)

Within cognitive and developmental psychology, it is commonly argued that perception is the basis for object concepts. According to this view, sensory experiences would translate into concepts thanks to the recognition, correlation and integration of physical attributes. Once attributes are integrated into general patterns, subjects would become able to parse objects into categories. In this article, we critically review the three epistemological perspectives according to which it can be claimed that object concepts depend on perception: state non-conceptualism, content non-conceptualism, and (...) content conceptualism. We show that the three perspectives have problems that make perception inadequate as a conceptual basis. We suggest that the inquiry about the origin and development of object concepts can benefit from a pragmatic perspective that considers objects’ cultural functions as a conceptual foundation. We address this possibility from the theoretical framework of the pragmatics of the object, considering the importance of objects’ functional permanence. (shrink)

Byrne & Hilbert are right that it might be an objective fact that a particular tomato is unique red, but wrong that it cannot simultaneously be yellowish-red (not only objectively, but from somebody else's point of view). Sensory categorization varies among organisms, slightly among conspecifics, and sharply across taxa. There is no question of truth or falsity concerning choice of categories, only of utility and disutility. The appropriate framework for color categories is Nominalism and Pluralistic Realism.

It can be tempting to read Iris Murdoch as subscribing to the same position as standard contemporary moral realists. Her language is often similar to theirs and they share some key commitments, most importantly the rejection of the fact-value dichotomy. However, it is a mistake to assume that her realism amounts to the same thing theirs does. In this paper I offer a sketch of her alternative conception of realism, which centres on the idea that truth and reality are fundamentally (...) ethical concepts. For Murdoch, I suggest, realism is a matter of doing justice to the objects one is confronted with—something that cannot be understood except in ethical terms. (shrink)

Many take the possibility of hallucinations to imply that a relationalist account, according to which perceptual experiences are constituted by direct relations to ordinary mind-independent objects, is false. The common reaction among relationalists is to adopt a disjunctivist view that denies that hallucinations have the same nature as perceptual experiences. This paper proposes a non-disjunctivist response to the argument from hallucination by arguing that the alleged empirical and a priori evidence in support of the possibility of hallucinations is inconclusive. A (...) corollary upshot of the article is that whether hallucinations are possible or not is still an open empirical question. (shrink)

A common objection to sense-datum theories of perception is that they cannot give an adequate account of the fact that introspection indicates that our sensory experiences are directed on, or are about, the mind-independent entities in the world around us, that our sense experience is transparent to the world. In this paper I point out that the main force of this claim is to point out an explanatory challenge to sense-datum theories.

My aim in this paper is to assess the viability of a perceptual epistemology based on what Anil Gupta calls the “hypothetical given”. On this account, experience alone yields no unconditional entitlement to perceptual beliefs. Experience functions instead to establish relations of rational support between what Gupta calls “views” and perceptual beliefs. I argue that the hypothetical given is a genuine alternative to the prevailing theories of perceptual justification but that the account faces a dilemma: on a natural assumption about (...) the epistemic significance of support relations, any perceptual epistemology based on the hypothetical given results in either rationalism or skepticism. I conclude by examining the prospects for avoiding the dilemma. One option is to combine the hypothetical given with a form of holism. Another is to combine the view with a form of hinge epistemology. But neither offers a simple fix. (shrink)

We undertake to bring a phenomenological perspective to bear on a challenge of contemporary law and clinical practice. In a wide variety of contexts, legal and medical professionals are called upon to assess the competence or capacity of an individual to exercise her own judgement in making a decision for herself. We focus on decisions regarding consent to or refusal of medical treatment and contrast a widely recognised clinical instrument, the MacCAT-T, with a more phenomenologically informed approach. While the MacCAT-T (...) focuses attention on individual cognitive performance criteria, an approach oriented by second-person phenomenology brings into view the complex role of time, others and identity in constituting the capacity for individual autonomous judgement. Our phenomenological analysis has consequences both for the practice of capacity assessments and for further research in this arena. Good practice in capacity assessment must attend to decision communities, distributed capacity, and temporal competence, while research on mental capacity will miss the phenomenon if it trains its focus ‘between the ears.’ We illustrate our approach by considering two recent cases of contested capacity: one involving cognitive disability in a dysfunctional decision community, the second presenting the possibility of competent decision-making under conditions of paranoid schizophrenia. (shrink)

Our interest in understanding belief stems partly from our being creatures who think. However, the term ‘belief’ is used to refer to many states: from the fully conscious rational state that partly constitutes knowledge to the fanciful states of alarm clocks. Which of the many ‘belief’ states must a theory of belief be answerable to? This is the scope question. I begin my answer with a reply to a recent argument that belief is invariably weak, i.e., that the evidential standards (...) that are required for belief are low. Although one state we refer to using the term ‘belief’ fits this profile, other ‘belief’ states do not. Crucially, when ‘belief’ is heard in a weak sense, it attributes a state that only a rational creature can be in. I will use this observation as a starting point for an argument that the study of (our) belief should not be constrained by the requirement that the illuminated state be held in common with any non-rational being. This lends support to the Transformative Theory of Rationality, according to which rationality does not merely add powers or complexity to the animal mind, but transforms it into a different kind of mind altogether. (shrink)

The article remarks that, despite what many relativists claim, realism still is an arguable and defendable position. Realism is for sure quite an unpopular stance today, but the standard arguments against it are by no means conclusive. If one asks what difference is made to our knowledge claims if we accept the existence of an extra-conceptual world, the answer is the following: such recognition is likely to undermine the largely diffused anthropocentric stance which identifies reality with our knowledge of it.

After presenting evidence about categorization behavior, this paper argues for the following theses: 1) that there is a border between perception and cognition; 2) that the border is to be characterized by perception being modular (and cognition not being so); 3) that perception outputs conceptualized representations, so views that posit that the output of perception is solely non-conceptual are false; and 4) that perceptual content consists of basic-level categories and not richer contents.

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)

Byrne & Hilbert propose that color can be identified with explicit properties of physical surfaces. I argue that this claim must be qualified to take into account constraints needed to make recovery of surface color information possible. When these constraints are satisfied, then a biological visual system can establish a correspondence between perceived surface color and specific surface properties.

Some psychological states—paradigmatically, beliefs and intentions—are rationally evaluable: they can be rational or irrational, justified or unjustified. Other states—e.g. sensations and gastrointestinal states—aren't: they're a‐rational. On a familiar but hard‐to‐make‐precise line of thought, at least part of what explains this difference is that we're somehow responsible for (having/being in) states of the former sort, in a way we're not for the others. But this responsibility can't be modeled on the responsibility we have for our (free, intentional) actions. So how should (...) it be understood? In this paper I address that question. The overall shape of my answer is in line with tradition: I take the responsibility to be grounded in certain capacities for reflection and control. Answers in this family have recently been subjected to an interesting challenge. But the version I defend meets that challenge. (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)

It is widely believed that people are sometimes directly aware of their own psychological states and consequently better placed than others to know what the contents of those states are. This (‘commonsense’) view has been challenged by Alison Gopnik. She claims that experimental evidence from the behaviour of 3– and 4–year–old children both supports the theory theory and shows that the belief in direct and privileged knowledge of one’s own intentional states is an illusion. I argue (1) that the experimental (...) evidence is not inconsistent with the commonsense view and that Gopnik’s central thesis assumes a particularly crude perceptual account of self–knowledge to which that view is not committed, and (2) that the commonsense view is neutral as between the theory theory and other theories of mind. (shrink)

What is knowledge of one's own current, consciously entertained intentional states a form of inner awareness? If so, what form? In this paper I explore the prospects for a quasi-observational account of a certain class of cases where subjects appear to have self-knowledge, namely, the so-called cogito-like cases. In section one I provide a rationale for the claim that we need an epistemology of self-knowledge, and specifically, an epistemology of the cogito-like cases. In section two I argue that contentful properties (...) in such cases have two features in common with observational properties of objects. In section three, I develop a quasi-observational account of self-knowledge for the cogito-like cases by considering various accounts of the nature of observational properties (specifically, secondary qualities) and by applying them to these cases. I conclude by addressing some important objections to the account. (shrink)