The most salient aspect of memory is its role in preserving previously acquired information so as to make it available for further activities. Anna realizes that something is amiss in a book on Roman history because she learned and remembers that Caesar was murdered. Max turned up at the party and distinctively remembers where he was seated, so he easily gets his hands on his lost cell phone. The fact that information is not gained anew distinguishes memory from perception. The (...) fact that information is preserved distinguishes memory from imagination. But how do acquisition and retrieval of information contribute to the phenomenology of memory?The exclusive aim of this chapter is to sketch a map of the phenomenology of memory. It is structured as follows. In section 1, I introduce the contrast between content (what is remembered) and psychological attitude (remembering). This distinction will be helpful in disentangling issues in the phenomenology of memory. Section 2 is devoted to the contribution of memory content to phenomenology, section 3 to the contribution of the attitude of remembering. (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)

A belief is stored if it is in no way before the subject’s mind. The problem of stored beliefs is that of satisfactorily explaining how the stored beliefs which seem justified are indeed justified. In this paper I challenge the two main internalist attempts to solve this problem. Internalism about epistemic justification, at a minimum, states that one’s mental life alone determines what one is justified in believing. First I dispute the attempt from epistemic conservatism, which states that believing justifies (...) retaining belief. Then I defend the attempt from dispositionalism, which assigns a justifying role to dispositions, from some key objections. But by drawing on cognitive psychological research I show that, for internalism, the problem of stored beliefs remains. (shrink)

The philosophical case for extended cognition is often made with reference to ‘extended-memory cases’ ; though, unfortunately, proponents of the hypothesis of extended cognition as well as their adversaries have failed to appreciate the kinds of epistemological problems extended-memory cases pose for mainstream thinking in the epistemology of memory. It is time to give these problems a closer look. Our plan is as follows: in §1, we argue that an epistemological theory remains compatible with HEC only if its epistemic assessments (...) do not violate what we call ‘the epistemic parity principle’. In §2, we show how the constraint of respecting the epistemic parity principle stands in what appears to be a prima facie intractable tension with mainstream thinking about cases of propositional memory. We then outline and evaluate in §3 several lines of response. (shrink)

Philosophy and Memory Traces defends two theories of autobiographical memory. One is a bewildering historical view of memories as dynamic patterns in fleeting animal spirits, nervous fluids which rummaged through the pores of brain and body. The other is new connectionism, in which memories are 'stored' only superpositionally, and reconstructed rather than reproduced. Both models, argues John Sutton, depart from static archival metaphors by employing distributed representation, which brings interference and confusion between memory traces. Both raise urgent issues about control (...) of the personal past, and about relations between self and body. Sutton demonstrates the role of bizarre body fluids in moral physiology, as philosophers from Descartes and Locke to Coleridge struggled to control their own innards and impose cognitive discipline on 'the phantasmal chaos of association'. Going on to defend connectionism against Fodor and critics of passive mental representations, he shows how problems of the self are implicated in cognitive science. (shrink)

Although the economic thought of Marshall and Pigou was united by ethical positions broadly considered utilitarian, differences in their intellectual milieu led to degrees of difference between their respective philosophical visions. This change in milieu includes the influence of the little understood period of transition from the early idealist period in Great Britain, which provided the context to Marshall’s intellectual formation, and the late British Idealist period, which provided the context to Pigou’s intellectual formation. During this latter period, the pervading (...) Hegelianism and influences of naturalism arising from the ideas of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer were challenged by Hermann Lotze, a key transitional thinker influencing the Neo-Kantian movement, who recognised significant limits of naturalism, on the one hand, and the metaphysical tenor of absolute idealism, on the other, and attempted to provide a balance between the two. The goal of this paper is to make the provisional case for the argument that Pigou’s views on ethics were not only directly influenced by utilitarian thinkers like Mill and Sidgwick, but they were also indirectly influenced by Hermann Lotze, via the influence of the Neo- Kantian movement on late British idealism. To that end, Pigou’s essays in The Trouble with Theism (1908), including his sympathetic consideration of the ethics of Friedrich Nietzsche, reflect the influence of Lotze indirectly through the impact at Cambridge of: James Ward’s critique of associationist psychology, and consideration of the limits of naturalism including the critique of evolutionary ethics; Bertrand Russell’s rejection of neo-Hegelianism and, together with Alfred North Whitehead, the development of Logicism; and G.E. Moore’s critique of utilitarian ethics on the basis of the naturalistic fallacy and the development of his own intuitionist system of ethics. (shrink)

Article on the problem of phenomenal consciousness and the limits of reductive physicalism.

In this paper, I explore two contrasting conceptions of the social character of language. The first takes language to be grounded in social convention. The second, famously developed by Donald Davidson, takes language to be grounded in a social relation called triangulation. I aim both to clarify and to evaluate these two conceptions of language. First, I propose that Davidson’s triangulation-based story can be understood as the result of relaxing core features of conventionalism pertaining to both common-interest and diachronic stability—specifically, (...) Davidson does not require uses of language to be self-perpetuating, in the way required by conventionalism, in order to be bona fide components of linguistic systems. Second, I argue that Davidson’s objections to conventionalism from language innovation and language variation fail, and that certain kinds of negative data in language use require an appeal to diachronic social relations. However, I also argue that recent work on communication in the a.. (shrink)

According to a traditional view, there is no categorical difference between the phenomenology of perception and the phenomenology of imagination; the only difference is in degree (of intensity, resolution, etc.) and/or in accompanying beliefs. There is no categorical difference between what it is like to perceive a dog and what it is like to imagine a dog; the former is simply more vivid and/or is accompanied by the belief that a dog is really there. A sustained argument against this traditional (...) view is prosecuted by Sartre, who develops an alternative according to which there is a categorical difference between the two phenomenologies. This paper draws on Sartre’s work in this area to develop a similar account of perception and imagination as categorically different. (shrink)

Continuists maintain that, aside from their distinct temporal orientations, episodic memory and future-oriented mental time travel (FMTT) are qualitatively continuous. Discontinuists deny this, arguing that, in addition to their distinct temporal orientations, there are qualitative metaphysical or epistemological differences between episodic memory and FMTT. This chapter defends continuism by responding both to arguments for metaphysical discontinuism, based on alleged discontinuities between episodic memory and FMTT at the causal, intentional, and phenomenological levels, and to arguments for epistemological discontinuism, based on alleged (...) discontinuities with respect to the epistemic openness of the past and future, the directness or indirectness of our knowledge of past and future, and immunity to error through misidentification. The chapter concludes by sketching a positive argument for continuism. (shrink)

I examine some of the key scientific pre-commitments of modern psychology, and argue that their adoption has the unintended consequence of rendering a purely psychological analysis of mind indistinguishable from a purely biological treatment. And, since these pre-commitments sanction an “authority of the biological”, explanation of phenomena traditionally considered the purview of psychological analysis is fully subsumed under the biological. I next evaluate the epistemic warrant of these pre-commitments and suggest there are good reasons to question their applicability to psychological (...) science. I conclude that experiential aspects of reality give us reason to remain open to the need for psychological explanation in the treatment of mind. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind and epistemologists are increasingly making room in their theories for epistemic emotions (E-emotions) and, drawing on metacognition research in psychology, epistemic – or noetic or metacognitive – feelings (E-feelings). Since philoso- phers have only recently begun to draw on empirical research on E-feelings, in particular, we begin by providing a general characterization of E-feelings (section 1) and reviewing some highlights of relevant research (section 2). We then turn to philosophical work on E-feelings and E-emotions, situating the contributions (...) to the focus section (two articles devoted to E-feelings and two devoted to E-emotions) with respect to both the existing literature and each other (section 3). We conclude by brie y describing some promising avenues for further philosophical research on E-feelings and E-emotions (section 4). (shrink)

The sciences occasionally generate discoveries that undermine their own assumptions. Two such discoveries are characterized here: the discovery of apophenia by cognitive psychology and the discovery that physical systems cannot be locally bounded within quantum theory. It is shown that such discoveries have a common structure and that this common structure is an instance of Priest’s well-known Inclosure Schema. This demonstrates that science itself is dialetheic: it generates limit paradoxes. How science proceeds despite this fact is briefly discussed, as is (...) the connection between our results and the realism-antirealism debate. We conclude by suggesting a position of epistemic modesty. (shrink)

From the perspective of many philosophers of mind in these early years of the 21st Century, the debate between dualism and physicalism has seemed to have stalled, if not to have come to a complete standstill. There seems to be no way to settle the basic clash of intuitions that underlies it. Recently however, a growing number of proponents of Russellian monism have suggested that their view promises to show us a new way forward. Insofar as Russellian monism might allow (...) us to break out of the current gridlock, it's no wonder that it's become "hot stuff." To my mind, however, the excitement about Russellian monism is misplaced. Though some version of Russellian monism might well be true, I do not believe that it enables us to break free of the dualism/physicalism divide. As I will argue, once we properly understand what's required to flesh out an adequate monistic story, we will see that we are in an important way right back where we started. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the importance of treating mental experience on its own terms. In defense of “experiential realism” I offer a critique of modern psychology’s all-too-frequent attempts to effect an objectification and quantification of personal subjectivity. The question is “What can we learn about experiential reality from indices that, in the service of scientific objectification, transform the qualitative properties of experience into quantitative indices?” I conclude that such treatment is neither necessary for realizing, nor sufficient for capturing, (...) subjectively given states (such as perception, pain, imagery, fear, thought, memory) – that is, for understanding many of the principle objects of psychological inquiry. A “science of mind” that approaches its subject matter from a third-person perspective should, I contend, be treated with a healthy amount of informed skepticism. (shrink)

Although episodic memory is a widely studied form of memory both in philosophy and psychology, it still raises many burning questions regarding its definition and even its acceptance. Over the last two decades, cross-disciplinary discussions between these two fields have increased as they tackle shared concerns, such as the phenomenology of recollection, and therefore allow for fruitful interaction. This editorial introduction aims to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date presentation of the main existing conceptions and issues on the topic. After delineating (...) Tulving’s chief theoretical import and multifaceted legacy, it goes on to chart the different attempts to capture the episodicity feature of memory according to three categories: a first approach aims to show the cognitive abilities required for a subject to episodically remember; the second defines episodicity as a stage-specific feature; the last explains episodicity in terms of the epistemological properties of episodic memory. This state of the art thereby sets the stage for the contributions of the present volume, which will be introduced in conclusion. (shrink)

I describe and discuss one particular dimension of disagreement in the philosophical literature on episodic memory. One way of putting the disagreement is in terms of the question as to whether or not there is a difference in kind between remembering seeing x and remembering what x looks like. I argue against accounts of episodic memory that either deny that there is a clear difference between these two forms of remembering, or downplay the difference by in effect suggesting that the (...) former contains an additional ingredient not present in the latter, but otherwise treating them as the same thing. I also show that a recent ‘minimalist’ approach to episodic memory (Clayton & Russell in Neuropsychologia 47 (11): 2,330–2,340, 2009; Russell & Hanna in Mind & Language 27 (1): 29–54, 2012) fails to give a satisfactory explanatory account of the difference between the two types of remembering. I finish by sketching an alternative approach to episodic memory, which turns on the idea that episodic recollection recruits a specific form of causal reasoning that provides for a concrete sense in which remembered events are remembered as belonging to the past. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss philosophical and psychological treatments of the question "how do we decide that an occurrent mental state is a memory and not, say a thought or imagination?" This issue has proven notoriously difficult to resolve, with most proposed indices, criteria and heuristics failing to achieve consensus. Part of the difficulty, I argue, is that the indices and analytic solutions thus far offered seldom have been situated within a well-specified theory of memory function. As I hope to (...) show, when such an approach is adopted, not only does a new, functionally-grounded answer emerge; we also gain insight into the adaptive significance of the process proposed to underwrite our belief in the memorial status of a mental state (i.e.,autonoetic awareness). (shrink)

What is the contrary of pleasure? “Pain” is one common answer. This paper argues that pleasure instead has two natural contraries: unpleasure and hedonic indifference. This view is defended by drawing attention to two often-neglected concepts: the formal relation of polar opposition and the psychological state of hedonic indifference. The existence of mixed feelings, it is argued, does not threaten the contrariety of pleasure and unpleasure.

The dominant position in current debates on the mind-body problem is some version of physicalism, according to which the mind is reducible to the brain and mental phenomena are ultimately explainable in physical terms. But there seems to be an explanatory gap between physicalistic descriptions of neuronal processes and the subjectivity of conscious experience. Some dualists conclude that, therefore, consciousness must be ontologically distinct from any physical properties or entities. This article introduces and argues for a different perspective on these (...) issues, namely, an epistemological dualism - a nonreductive position which is neither a version of physicalism nor an ontological dualism. It is argued that Kant holds this epistemological dualism implicitly as a consequence of his critical epistemology. On the one hand, he stresses the explanatory gap between the mental and the physical. On the basis of his theory of subjectivity set out in the Transcendental Deduction, Kant provides an explanation for why the gap cannot be closed empirically, as the physicalist promises. On the other hand, in his criticism of Descartes’ dualism in the Paralogismschapter, Kant argues that an ontological conclusion on the basis of this epistemological gap is unjustified even though physicalism is explanatory inadequate to account for consciousness. Thus, this epistemological dualism can be seen as an original third way between physicalist reductionism and ontological dualism. (shrink)

Misremembering is a systematic and ordinary occurrence in our daily lives. Since it is commonly assumed that the function of memory is to remember the past, misremembering is typically thought to happen because our memory system malfunctions. In this paper I argue that not all cases of misremembering are due to failures in our memory system. In particular, I argue that many ordinary cases of misremembering should not be seen as instances of memory’s malfunction, but rather as the normal result (...) of a larger cognitive system that performs a different function, and for which remembering is just one operation. Building upon extant psychological and neuroscientific evidence, I offer a picture of memory as an integral part of a larger system that supports not only thinking of what was the case and what potentially could be the case, but also what could have been the case. More precisely, I claim that remembering is a particular operation of a cognitive system that permits the flexible recombination of different components of encoded traces into representations of possible past events that might or might not have occurred, in the service of constructing mental simulations of possible future events. So that imagination and memory are but one thing, which for diverse considerations hath diverse names.Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 1.2. (shrink)

Al final del Libro II del An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke manifiesta que «hay una relación tan íntima entre las ideas y las palabras […] que es imposible hablar clara y distintamente de nuestro conocimiento, que consiste completamente en proposiciones, sin considerar, primero, la naturaleza, uso y significación del lenguaje». De varias y diversas maneras Locke insiste en la tesis que ‘las palabras significan ideas’. En este ensayo me propongo: 1º resumir la teoría general del lenguaje de Locke; 2º (...) revisar algunas objeciones regulares a esta teoría, y 3º intentar una explicación de lo que Locke quiere decir cuando enuncia que ‘las palabras significan ideas’. Con respecto a este punto mostraré, apoyando la interpretación de E. J. Ashworth, que en su tesis semántica Locke usa el vocablo ‘significar’ (‘signifying’) no del modo como es usado por los teóricos contemporáneos del siglo XX, sino en el sentido que algunos escolásticos usaron el término ‘significare’. At the very end of Book II of ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’, Locke finds out «that there is so close a connexion between Ideas and Words […] that it is impossible to speak clearly and distinctly of our Knowledge, which all consists in Propositions, without considering first the Nature, Use, and Signification of Language». In various and diverse ways Locke defends the thesis that ‘Words signify Ideas’. My aim in this paper is first, to sum up Locke’s general theory of Language; secondly, to revisit some regular objections concerning this theory, and thirdly, to intend an explanation of what Locke means when he points out that ‘Words signify ideas’. In regard to this point, I shall hold up E. J. Ashworth’s interpretation to show that Locke semantic thesis involves the use of the verb ‘to signify’ (‘signifying’) not in the manner that it is used by contemporary theorists of the twentieth century, but in the sense that some scholastics used the term ‘significare’. (shrink)

Homeopathic medications are used by millions, and hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on these remedies in the USA alone. In the UK, the NHS covers homeopathic treatments. Nonetheless, homeopathy is held in considerable disrepute by much of the medical and scientific community.Many proponents of homeopathy are well aware of these criticisms but remain unimpressed. The differences of opinion run deep, and the debate seems deadlocked. We aim to shed some light on this situation. We briefly recap some of (...) the major arguments on each side, but we try to go further by making explicit an underlying philosophical presupposition. In particular, we will claim that there is an important principle, which has ancient roots going back at least to Occam, some version of which constrains all empirical reasoning.We call this constraint the simplicity principle.We argue that this is not something specific to a scientific paradigm, but that, all of us, including proponents of homeopathy, are themselves deeply committed to the simplicity principle. However, once the simplicity principle is made explicit and applied to homeopathy, allegiance to homeopathy is clearly seen as irrational. The point is not merely the lack of clinical trials supporting homeopathy; rather, belief in the efficacy of homeopathy leaves a mountain of unexplained mysteries, and thereby flies in the face of the simplicity rule that guides the homeopaths’ own reasoning and arguments. If nothing else, we hope that defenders of homeopathy will gain a greater understanding of why critics are so deeply reluctant to accept the efficacy of homeopathic interventions – and that this reluctance is not mere stubbornness or artificial allegiance to western medicine. Finally, we also hope thereby to illustrate the usefulness of philosophy in unearthing presuppositions in seemingly deadlocked debates. (shrink)

The writings of Joseph Henry Woodger (1894–1981) are often taken to exemplify everything that was wrongheaded, misguided, and just plain wrong with early twentieth-century philosophy of biology. Over the years, commentators have said of Woodger: (a) that he was a fervent logical empiricist who tried to impose the explanatory gold standards of physics onto biology, (b) that his philosophical work was completely disconnected from biological science, (c) that he possessed no scientific or philosophical credentials, and (d) that his work was (...) disparaged – if not altogether ignored – by the biologists and philosophers of his era. In this paper, we provide the first systematic examination of Woodger’s oeuvre, and use it to demonstrate that the four preceding claims are false. We argue that Woodger’s ideas have exerted an important influence on biology and philosophy, and submit that the current consensus on his legacy stems from a highly selective reading of his works. By rehabilitating Woodger, we hope to show that there is no good reason to continue to disregard the numerous contributions to the philosophy of biology produced in the decades prior to the professionalization of the discipline. (shrink)

The problem of biological memory led Russell to propose the existence of mnemic causation, a mechanism by which past experience influences current thought directly, that is, without the need for a material intermediary in the form of a neural "memory trace." Russell appears to have been inspired by German biologist Richard Semon's concept of mnemic homophony, which conveys memory to consciousness on the basis of similarity between current and past circumstances. Semon, however, in no way denied a role for stable (...) neural structures or "engrams" in the memory process. In contrast to Russell, contemporary biologist Rupert Sheldrake provides a viable theory of memory by remaining true to Semon's original idea and expanding it beyond personal memory to the collective memory of species, encompassing not only mental but developmental memory. (shrink)

How do agents with limited cognitive capacities flourish in informationally impoverished or unexpected circumstances? Aristotle argued that human flourishing emerged from knowing about the world and our place within it. If he is right, then the virtuous processes that produce knowledge, best explain flourishing. Influenced by Aristotle, virtue epistemology defends an analysis of knowledge where beliefs are evaluated for their truth and the intellectual virtue or competences relied on in their creation. However, human flourishing may emerge from how degrees of (...) ignorance are managed in an uncertain world. Perhaps decision-making in the shadow of knowledge best explains human wellbeing—a Bayesian approach? In this dissertation I argue that a hybrid of virtue and Bayesian epistemologies explains human flourishing—what I term homeostatic epistemology. Homeostatic epistemology supposes that an agent has a rational credence p when p is the product of reliable processes aligned with the norms of probability theory; whereas an agent knows that p when a rational credence p is the product of reliable processes such that: 1) p meets some relevant threshold for belief, 2) p coheres with a satisficing set of relevant beliefs and, 3) the relevant set of beliefs is coordinated appropriately to meet the integrated aims of the agent. Homeostatic epistemology recognizes that justificatory relationships between beliefs are constantly changing to combat uncertainties and to take advantage of predictable circumstances. Contrary to holism, justification is built up and broken down across limited sets like the anabolic and catabolic processes that maintain homeostasis in the cells, organs and systems of the body. It is the coordination of choristic sets of reliably produced beliefs that create the greatest flourishing given the limitations inherent in the situated agent. (shrink)

Common wisdom, philosophical analysis and psychological research share the view that memory is subjectively positioned toward the past: Specifically, memory enables one to become re-acquainted with the objects and events of his or her past. In this paper I call this assumption into question. As I hope to show, memory has been designed by natural selection not to relive the past, but rather to anticipate and plan for future contingencies -- a decidedly future-oriented mode of subjective temporality. This is not (...) to say memory makes no reference to the past. But, I argue, past-oriented subjectivity is a by-product of a system designed by natural selection to help us face and respond to the "now and the next". I discuss the implications of the proposed temporal realignment for research agendas as well as the potential limitations of measures designed to explore memory by focusing on its retentive capabilities. (shrink)

The ontology of language is concerned with the relations between uses of language, both overt and covert, and other entities, whether in the world or in the mind of the thinking subject. We attempt a first survey of the sorts of relations which might come into question for such an ontology, including: relations between referring uses of expressions and their objects, relations between the use of a (true) sentence and that in the world which makes it true, relations between mental (...) acts on the one hand and underlying mental states (attitudes, beliefs), on the other, relations between my acts and states, associated uses of language and overt actions on my part and on the part of those other subjects with whom I communicate. (shrink)

The cultural transmission of theological concepts remains an underexplored topic in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). In this paper, I examine whether approaches from CSR, especially the study of content biases in the transmission of beliefs, can help explain the cultural success of some theological concepts. This approach reveals that there is more continuity between theological beliefs and ordinary religious beliefs than CSR authors have hitherto recognized: the cultural transmission of theological concepts is influenced by content biases that also (...) underlie the reception of ordinary religious concepts. (shrink)

Reception of the Bohm-Hiley interpretation of quantum mechanics has a curiously Janus faced quality. On the one hand, it is frequently derided as a conservative throwback to outdated classical patterns of thought. On the other hand, it is equally often taken to task for encouraging a wild quantum mysticism, often regarded as anti-scientific. I will argue that there are reasons for this reception, but that a proper appreciation of the dual scientific and philosophical aspects of the view reveals a powerful (...) and extremely interesting metaphysical view of the world. This view is akin to that of Russellian Monism, in which the empirical world studied by science is restricted to relational features that stand in need of some background intrinsic properties to ground their reality. This allows for a theory that can embrace a world which exhibits a reasonable and plausible sort of emergence (especially of domains that fall under classical concepts) while also making room for distinctive and scientifically intransigent properties such as consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper, I present counterexamples to the evidence thesis, the thesis that S knows that p at t only if S believes that p on the basis of evidence at t. The outline of my paper is as follows. In section 1, I explain the evidence thesis and make clear what a successful counterexample to the evidence thesis will look like. In section 2, I show that instances of non-occurrent knowledge are counterexamples to the evidence thesis. At the end (...) of section 2, I consider the primary thesis of my paper — that the evidence thesis is false — to be successfully defended. In section 3, I consider three variations of the evidence thesis. The first variation restricts the evidence thesis to occurrent knowledge; the second requires for knowledge that one’s belief could be based on evidence; and the third requires for knowledge that the belief was based on evidence at a suitable prior time. The secondary thesis of this paper is that these variations are also subject to serious objections. (shrink)

What entitles you to rely on information received from others? What entitles you to rely on information retrieved from your own memory? Intuitively, you are entitled simply to trust yourself, while you should monitor others for signs of untrustworthiness. This article makes a case for inverting the intuitive view, arguing that metacognitive monitoring of oneself is fundamental to the reliability of memory, while monitoring of others does not play a significant role in ensuring the reliability of testimony.

It is widely held that there is a problem of talking about or otherwise representing things that not exist. But what exactly is this problem? This paper presents a formulation of the problem in terms of the conflict between the fact that there are truths about non-existent things and the fact that truths must be answerable to reality, how things are. Given this, the problem of singular negative existential statements is no longer the central or most difficult aspect of the (...) problem of non-existence, despite what some philosophers say. (shrink)

O presente manual tem como intenção constituir um guia para uma disciplina introdutória de filosofia da linguagem. Foi elaborado a partir da leccionação da disciplina de Filosofia da Linguagem I na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto desde 2001. A disciplina de Filosofia da Linguagem I ocupa um semestre lectivo e proporciona aos estudantes o primeiro contacto sistemático com a área da filosofia da linguagem. Pretende-se que este manual ofereça aos estudantes os instrumentos necessários não apenas para acompanhar uma (...) iniciação ao campo da filosofia da linguagem mas também para o estudo e a investigação autónomos posteriores. Para isso é percorrido um trajecto que conduz das intuições pré-teóricas acerca de linguagem, de que todos dispomos, até um conhecimento disciplinar específico, histórico e temático, da filosofia da linguagem. Em termos práticos, são considerados como precedentes da disciplina de Filosofia da Linguagem I – mesmo se, pelo existem actualmente precedências em sentido estrito – as disciplinas de Lógica I e II e de Filosofia do Conhecimento I e II. Os programas dessas disciplinas nos últimos anos estiveram presentes por trás da elaboração do manual. (shrink)

Deferential Monadic Panpsychism is a view that accepts that physical science is capable of discovering the basic structure of reality. However, it denies that reality is fully and exhaustively de- scribed purely in terms of physical science. Consciousness is missing from the physical description and cannot be reduced to it. DMP explores the idea that the physically fundamental features of the world possess some intrinsic mental aspect. It thereby faces a se- vere problem of understanding how more complex mental states (...) emerge from the mental features of the fundamental features. Here I explore the idea that a new form of aggregative emergence, which I call 'combinatorial infusion', could shed light on this problem and bolster the prospects for this form of panpsychism. (shrink)

In this essay, I attempt to outline a feminist philosophical approach to the current debate concerning (allegedly) false memories of childhood sexual abuse. Bringing the voices of feminist philosophers to bear on this issue highlights the implicit and sometimes questionable epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical-political commitments of some therapists and scientists involved in these debates. It also illuminates some current debates in and about feminist philosophy.

Hume is rightly credited with giving a brilliant, and perhaps the best, account of justice as convention. Hume's importance as a forerunner of modern economics has also long been recognized. However, most of Hume's readers have not fully appreciated how closely Hume's analysis of convention foreshadows a particular branch of economic theory, namely, game theory. Starting with the work of Barry, Runciman and Sen and Lewis, there has been a flowering of literature on the informal game-theoretic insights to be found (...) in classics of political philosophy such as Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Rousseau. A number of authors in this tradition, including Lewis, Gauthier, Mackie, and Postema, have identified passages in Hume which they interpret as giving informal examples of specific games. Yet, unlike his predecessors, Hobbes and Locke, Hume does much more than present examples which have a game-theoretic structure. In his account of convention, Hume gives general conditions which characterize the resolution of social interaction problems, and in the examples he uses to illustrate this account, Hume outlines several different methods by which agents can arrive at such a resolution. Hume's general account of convention and his explanations of the origins of particular conventions together constitute a theory of strategic interaction, which is precisely what game theory aspires to be. (shrink)

Remembering a cat sleeping (specifically, recollecting the way the cat looked), perceiving (specifically, seeing) a cat sleeping, and imagining (specifically, visualizing) a cat sleeping are of course importantly different. Nonetheless, from the first-person perspective they are palpably alike. The paper addresses two questions: Q1. What are these similarities (and differences)? Q2. How does one tell that one is recalling (and so not perceiving or imagining)?

Certain commentators on Russell's “no class” theory, in which apparent reference to classes or sets is eliminated using higher-order quantification, including W. V. Quine and (recently) Scott Soames, have doubted its success, noting the obscurity of Russell’s understanding of so-called “propositional functions”. These critics allege that realist readings of propositional functions fail to avoid commitment to classes or sets (or something equally problematic), and that nominalist readings fail to meet the demands placed on classes by mathematics. I show that Russell (...) did thoroughly explore these issues, and had good reasons for rejecting accounts of propositional functions as extra-linguistic entities. I argue in favor of a reading taking propositional functions to be nothing over and above open formulas which addresses many such worries, and in particular, does not interpret Russell as reducing classes to language. (shrink)

Neutral monism is a position in metaphysics defended by Mach, James, and Russell in the early twentieth century. It holds that minds and physical objects are essentially two different orderings of the same underlying neutral elements of nature. This paper sets out some of the central concepts, theses and the historical background of ideas that inform this doctrine of elements. The discussion begins with the classic neutral monism of Mach, James, and Russell in the first part of the paper, then (...) considers recent neo-Russellian versions in the second half. The chances for a revival of neutral monism are probably slight; its key ideas and starting points lie far from those in contemporary philosophy of mind. A better route might be through the philosophy of science and a deeper understanding of causation. (shrink)

According to memory foundationalism, seeming to remember that P is prima facie justification for believing that P. There is a common objection to this theory: If I previously believed that P carelessly (i.e. without justification) and later seem to remember that P, then (according to memory foundationalism) I have somehow acquired justification for a previously unjustified belief. In this paper, I explore this objection. I begin by distinguishing between two versions of it: One where I seem to remember that P (...) while also seeming to remember being careless in my original believing that P and the other where I seem to remember that P while not seeming to remember my past carelessness. I argue that the former case is the real challenge for memory foundationalism. After establishing the case of unforgotten carelessness as objection to memory foundationalism, I recast memory foundationalism in way that allows it to escape this objection. (shrink)

The paper describes the evolution of russell's theory of judgment between 1910 and 1913, With especial reference to his recently published "theory of knowledge" (1913). Russell abandoned the book and with it the theory of judgment as a result of wittgenstein's criticisms. These criticisms are examined in detail and found to constitute a refutation of russell's theory. Underlying differences between wittgenstein's and russell's views on logic are broached more sketchily.

The purpose of this essay is to clarify the notion of mnemonic content. Memories have content. However, it is not clear whether memories are about past events in the world, past states of our own minds, or some combination of those two elements. I suggest that any proposal about mnemonic content should help us understand why events are presented to us in memory as being in the past. I discuss three proposals about mnemonic content and, eventually, I put forward a (...) positive view. According to this view, when a subject seems to remember a certain event, that event is presented to her as making true a perceptual experience that caused the very memory experience that she is having. (shrink)

No philosopher has worked harder than Dan Dennett to set the possibility of machine mentality on firm philosophical footing. Dennett’s defense of this possibility has both a positive and a negative thrust. On the positive side, he has developed an account of mental activity that is tailor-made for the attribution of intentional states to purely mechanical contrivances, while on the negative side, he pillories as mystery mongering and skyhook grasping any attempts to erect barriers to the conception of machine mentality (...) by excavating gulfs to keep us “bona fide” thinkers apart from the rest of creation. While I think he’s “won” the rhetorical tilts with his philosophical adversaries, I worry that Dennett’s negative side sometimes gets the better of him, and that this obscures advances that can be made on the positive side of his program. In this paper, I show that Dennett is much too dismissive of original intentionality in particular, and that this notion can be put to good theoretical use after all. Though deployed to distinguish different grades of mentality, it can (and should) be incorporated into a philosophical account of the mind that is recognizably Dennettian in spirit. (shrink)

Social phenomena—quite like mental states in the philosophy of mind—are often regarded as potential troublemakers from the start, particularly if they are approached with certain explanatory commitments, such as naturalism or social individualism, already in place. In this paper, we argue that such explanatory constraints should be at least initially bracketed if we are to arrive at an adequate non-biased description of social phenomena. Legitimate explanatory projects, or so we maintain, such as those of making the social world fit within (...) the natural world with the help of, e.g., collective intentionality, social individualism, and the like, should neither exclude nor influence the prior description of social phenomena. Just as we need a description of the mental that is not biased, for example, by (anti)physicalist constraints, we need a description of the social that is not biased, for example, by (anti)individualist or (anti)naturalist commitments. Descriptive social ontology, as we shall conceive of it, is not incompatible with the adoption of explanatory frameworks in social ontology; rather, the descriptive task, according to our conception, ought to be recognized as prior to the explanatory project in the order of inquiry. If social phenomena are, for example, to be reduced to nonsocial (e.g., psychological or physical) phenomena, we need first to understand clearly what the social candidates for the reduction in question are. While such descriptive or naive approaches have been influential in general metaphysics (see Fine 2017), they have so far not been prominent in analytic social ontology (though things are different outside of analytic philosophy, see esp. Reinach (1913). In what follows, we shall outline the contours of a descriptive approach by arguing, first, that description and explanation need to be distinguished as two distinct ways of engaging with social phenomena. Secondly, we defend the claim that the descriptive project ought to be regarded as prior to the explanatory project in the order of inquiry. We begin, in Section 2, by considering two different ways of engaging with mental phenomena: a descriptive approach taken by descriptive psychology and an explanatory approach utilized in analytic philosophy of mind. We take these two ways of approaching the study of the mind to be analogous to the distinction we want to draw in social ontology between a descriptive and an explanatory approach to the study of social phenomena. We consider next, in Section 3, how our approach compares to neighboring perspectives that are familiar to us from general metaphysics and philosophy more broadly, such as Aristotle’s emphasis on “saving the appearances”, Strawson’s distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics, as well as Fine’s contrast between na¨ive and foundational metaphysics. In Section 4, we apply the proposed descriptive/explanatory distinction to the domain of social ontology and argue that descriptive social ontology ought to take precedence in the order of inquiry over explanatory social ontology. Finally, in Section 5, we consider and respond to several objections to which our account might seem to be susceptible. (shrink)

Recent philosophy has seen a resurgence of the realist view of sensible qualities such as colour. The view holds that experienced qualities are properties of the objects in the physical environment, not mentally instantiated properties like qualia or merely intentional, illusory ones. Some suggest that this move rids us of the explanatory gap between physical properties and the qualitative features of consciousness. Others say it just relocates the problem of qualities to physical objects in the environment, given that such qualities (...) cannot be derived from the non-qualitative properties of objects, and it does not resolve the problem of consciousness either. I argue that such an outcome is welcome: if the physical world is full of explanatory gaps, then the mind–body explanatory gap is not so special. Moreover, the explanatory gaps regarding qualities of objects are less puzzling than the brain-qualia gap. In order to counter the usual worries concerning realism about objective qualities, I introduce ‘imperfect realism’ as an alternative to colour pluralism and complex reductionism, which accommodates realism in the face of widespread perceptual error. I conclude with a discussion of how this ‘multiple-gaps view’ sits better with a naturalistic framework compared to the Galilean-Cartesian account of qualities. (shrink)