Gray, like other recent authors, seeks a scientific approach to consciousness, but fails to provide a biologically convincing description, partly because he implicitly bases his model on a computationalist foundation that embeds the contents of thought in irreducible symbolic representations. When patterns of neural activity instantiating conscious thought are shorn of homuncular observers, it appears most likely that these patterns and the circuitry that compares them with memories and plans should be found distributed over large regions of neocortex.

Barresi & Moore do not consider information about intentional relations available within emotional engagement with others and do not see that others are perceived in the second as well as the third person. Recognising second person information forces recognition of similarities and connections not otherwise available. A developmental framework built on the assumption of the complete separateness of self and other is inevitably flawed.

In our philosophical tradition and our wider culture, we tend to think of persons as agents. This agential conception is flattering, but in this paper I will argue that it conceals a more complex truth about what persons are. In 1. I set the issues in context. In 2. I critically explore four features commonly presented as fundamental to personhood in versions of the agential conception: action, capability, choice and independence. In 3. I argue that each of these agential features (...) presupposes a non-agential feature: agency presupposes patiency, capability presupposes incapability, choice presupposes necessity and independence presupposes dependency. In 4. I argue that such non-agential features, as well as being implicit within the agential conception, are as apt to be constitutive of personhood as agential features, and in 5. I conclude. (shrink)

Wittgenstein once remarked: ?nobody can truthfully say of himself that he is filth. Because if I do say it, though it can be true in a sense, this is not a truth by which I myself can be penetrated: otherwise I should either have to go mad or change myself.? This has an immediate corollary, previously unnoted: that it may be true that someone is simply filth?a rotten person through and through?and also true that they don?t believe that they are (...) filth (or, in a certain sense, that they do), but that it is absurd or means nothing to say ?I?m filth.? Even considering the possibility seriously already prevents it from being true of one that one is (simply) filth. You just can't say ?I'm filth? and mean it. In the act of saying it, it is already untrue. Nor can you even say and mean it: ?it may be true that I?m filth,? and it still be true that you are filth. This paper considers cases of delusional belief and of depressive self-loathing in which people may find themselves believing things along the lines of ?I?m filth.? (shrink)

Several of the contributions to the Lynch et al. Special issue make the claim that conversation-analytic research into epistemics is ‘routinely crafted at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail, and what that detail may show us’. Here, we seek to address the inappositeness of this critique by tracing precisely how it is that recognizable actions emerge from distinct practices of interaction. We begin by reviewing some of the foundational tenets of conversation-analytic theory and method – including the relationship (...) between position and composition, and the making of collections – as these appear to be primary sources of confusion for many of the contributors to the Lynch et al. Special Issue. We then target some of the specific arguments presented in the Special Issue, including the alleged ‘over-hearer’s’ writing of metrics, the provision of so-called ‘alternative’ analyses and the supposed ‘crafting’ of generalizations in epistemics research. In addition, in light of Lynch’s more general assertion that conversation analysis has recently been experiencing a ‘rapprochement’ with what he disparagingly refers to as the ‘juggernaut’ of linguistics, we discuss the specific expertise that linguists have to offer in analyzing particular sorts of interactional detail. The article as a whole thus illustrates that, rather than being produced ‘at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail’, conversation-analytic findings – including its work in epistemics – are unambiguously anchored in such detail. We conclude by offering our comments as to the link between CA and linguistics more generally, arguing that this relationship has long proven to be – and indeed continues to be – a mutually beneficial one. (shrink)

Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 48-60.

In reflecting on events of considerable significance, it is commonplace to remark that ‘it hasn’t sunk in yet’ or ‘it’s still sinking in’. Such talk is sometimes associated with things seeming unreal, surreal, unfathomable, or somehow impossible. In this paper, I develop an account of what these experiences consist of. First of all, I suggest that they involve explicitly acknowledging the reality of one’s situation, while at the same time experiencing it as inconsistent with the organization of one’s life. I (...) go on to show how this tension is experienced dynamically, through disturbances of unfolding patterns of anticipation. I suggest that these patterns contribute to our grasp of what is and is not the case, thus accommodating the manner in which things can seem ‘unbelievable’ or ‘unreal’. (shrink)

According to the orthodox account of meaning and translation in the literature, meaning is a property of expressions of a language, and translation is a matching of synonymous expressions across languages. This linguistic account of translation gives rise to well-known skeptical conclusions about translation, objectivity, meaning and truth, but it does not conform to our best translational practices. In contrast, I argue for a textual account of meaning based on the concept of a TEXT-TYPE that does conform to our best (...) translational practices. With their semantic function in view, text-types are Archimedean points for their respective disciplines. The text-type of philosophy is no exception. Culture-transcendent conceptual analysis can proceed on firm footing without having to deny the reality of radical cultural and linguistic difference by treating components of text-types as the concepts to be analyzed. Analyses of central philosophical concepts are provided as a means of adjudicating philosophical controversy. (shrink)

This article aims to defend the need to recognize the independent role of those cognitive abilities on whose behalf linguistic meaning is introduced from the proper institution of language. I call this capacity “private pattern recognition” (PPR) and argue that it plays an essential part not just in the instauration of linguistic meaning but also in other relevant cognitive phenomena such as artistic creation and understanding. Moreover, it is precisely the failure to separate both aspects that gives rise to important (...) perplexities associated with the underdetermination of meaning. The first part of the article makes a case for this thesis and addresses its compatibility with Wittgenstein's private language argument. It then focuses on the example of art to illustrate the differing roles of private pattern recognition and shared linguistic meaning. The second part of the article focuses on the paradox of resemblance (RP). It (i) considers the difficulties of Williamson's response, (ii) illustrates how they instead support the current thesis, (iii) attempts to delineate how the role of meaning should be understood, and (iv) briefly revisits the rule‐following paradox (RFP). (shrink)

Definitions of sustainability—and criticisms of the definitions—abound. I argue that there are problems with the definitional approach itself and not just with any specific definition. Wittgenstein. Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1958) argued that definitions are not sufficient to determine meaning or to legislate correct usage of words. For both singular terms and general concepts, meaning is meaning-as-use, proceeding via examples that instruct within an already existing normative structure. Once we are clear on the ways in which use presupposes a (...) normative structure, I believe we will understand better the meaning of sustainability and its normative basis. On this view, sustainability will be vague and contested but not meaningless. And we will not have to be worried about the plethora of definitions. (shrink)

In a series of studies children show increasing mastery of irregular plural forms (such as mice) simply by producing erroneous over‐regularized versions of them (such as mouses). We explain this phenomenon in terms of successive approximation in imitation: Children over‐regularize early in acquisition because the representations of frequent, regular plural forms develop more quickly, such that at the earliest stages of production they interfere with children's attempts to imitatively reproduce irregular forms they have heard in the input. As the strength (...) of the representations that determine children's productions settle asymptotically, the early advantage for the frequent regular forms is negated, and children's attempts to imitate the irregular forms they have observed become more likely to succeed (a process that produces the classic U‐shape in children's acquisition of plural inflection). These data show that children can acquire correct linguistic behavior without feedback in a situation where, as a result of philosophical and linguistic analyses, it has often been argued that it is logically impossible for them to do so. (shrink)

Scientists employ a variety of procedures to eliminate degrees of freedom from computationally and/or analytically intractable equations. In the process, they often construct new models and discover new concepts, laws and functional relations. I argue these procedures embody a central notion of reduction, namely, the containment of one structure within another. However, their inclusion in the philosophical concept of reduction necessitates a reevaluation of many standard assumptions about the ontological, epistemological and functional features of a reduction. On the basis of (...) the reevaluation, I advocate a continuum of reduction which proceeds from the eliminative to the constructive. The metaphysical aspects of theory use in constructive reductions are sketched. (shrink)

The idea that there are features of or in our conscious experience that are, in some important sense, private has both a long history in philosophy and a large measure of intuitive attraction. Once this idea is in place, it will be very natural to assume that one can think and judge about one’s own private features. And it is then only a small step to the idea that we might communicate such thoughts and judgements about our respective private features (...) with each other. (shrink)

What happens after we die? This might be taken as an eschatological question, seeking some explanation or reassurance around the destiny of an immortal soul or some such vital element of our very being. But there is another sense that has at least as much importance. What should we do with dead bodies?Export citation.

In trying to enhance, improve or perfect ourselves through technological intervention, we can risk the very idea of a practical identity and self-possession. In thinking of the enhancement, improvement or perfection of the body through technological interventions, we ought to acknowledge limits in our outlook at least as seriously as we enjoy the considerable advances offered by technology in general. In postulating the chance of enhancement, improvement and perfection it is important to think about the distinction between what we can (...) and what we ought to do. In terms of scientific advance, this is not necessarily reflected clearly – it is often the case that scientific advance per se is taken to be ‘‘progress.’’ Progress in scientific research isn’t an easy notion in itself. Human progress, in being highly open to nuance and value, draws upon evaluation across a range of validity spheres. In tying a too-uncomplicated notion of scientific progress to the issue of human progress, there is a risk that we evaluate too narrowly our chances and our options. (shrink)

If sensations were behaviorally conceived, as they should be, as complex functional patterns of interaction between overt behavior and the environment, there would be no point in searching for them as instantaneous psychic elements within the brain or as internal products of the brain.

Self-control, so important in the theory and practice of psychology, has usually been understood introspectively. This target article adopts a behavioral view of the self (as an abstract class of behavioral actions) and of self-control (as an abstract behavioral pattern dominating a particular act) according to which the development of self-control is a molar/molecular conflict in the development of behavioral patterns. This subsumes the more typical view of self-control as a now/later conflict in which an act of self-control is a (...) choice of a larger but later reinforcer over a smaller but sooner reinforcer. If at some future time the smaller-sooner reinforcer will be more valuable than the larger-later reinforcer, self-control may be achieved through a commitment to the largerlater reinforcer prior to that point. According to some, there is a progressive internalization of commitment in the development of self-control. This presents theoretical and empirical problems. In two experiments temporal patterning of choices increased self-control. (shrink)

Complex cases of self-control involve processes such as guilt-avoidance, inhibition, self-punishment, conscious thought, free will, and imagination. Such processes, conceived as internal mediating mechanisms, serve the function in psychological theory of avoiding teleological causation. Acceptance of the scientific legitimacy of teleological behaviorism would obviate the need for internal mediation, redefine the above processes in terms of temporally extended patterns of overt behavior, and clarify their relation to selfcontrol.

Why would philosophers interested in the points or functions of our conceptual practices bother with genealogical explanations if they can focus directly on paradigmatic examples of the practices we now have?? To answer this question, I compare the method of pragmatic genealogy advocated by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker—a method whose singular combination of fictionalising and historicising has met with suspicion—with the simpler method of paradigm-based explanation. Fricker herself has recently moved towards paradigm-based explanation, arguing that it is (...) a more perspicuous way of reaping the same explanatory pay-off as pragmatic genealogy while dispensing with its fictionalising and historicising. My aim is to determine when and why the reverse movement from paradigm-based explanation to pragmatic genealogy remains warranted. I argue that the fictionalising and historicising of pragmatic genealogy is well motivated, and I outline three ways in which the method earns its keep: by successfully handling historically inflected practices which paradigm-based explanation cannot handle; by revealing and arguing for connections to generic needs we might otherwise miss; and by providing comprehensive views of practices that place and relate the respects in which they serve both generic and local needs. (shrink)

A longstanding debate in the philosophy of action opposes causalists to anti-causalists. Causalists claim the authority of Davidson, who offered powerful arguments to the effect that intentional explanations must be causal explanations. Anti-causalists claim the authority of Wittgenstein, who offered equally powerful arguments to the effect that reasons cannot be causes. My aim in this paper is to achieve a rapprochement between Davidsonian causalists and Wittgensteinian anti-causalists by showing how both sides can agree that reasons are not causes, but that (...) intentional explanations are causal explanations. To this end, I first defuse Davidson’s Challenge, an argument purporting to show that intentional explanations are best made sense of as being explanatory because reasons are causes. I argue that Wittgenstein furnishes anti-causalists with the means to resist this conclusion. I then argue that this leaves the Master Argument for the claim that intentional explanations are causal explanations, but that by distinguishing between a narrow and a wide conception of causal explanation, we can resolve the stalemate between Wittgensteinian anti-causalists impressed by the thought that reasons cannot be causes and Davidsonian causalists impressed by the thought that intentional explanations must be causal explanations. (shrink)

The determination thesis is the idea that art-ontological facts are determined by the folk ontological conception of artworks embedded in our artistic practices. From this thesis, descriptivism in the metaontology of art has been often characterized as the view that the task of art-ontology is to describe that folk conception. Amie Thomasson and Andrew Kania provide two paradigmatic accounts within this path. In this paper, I argue that this descriptivist approach is ungrounded because the determination thesis suffers from presupposition failure. (...) It presupposes that, whenever there is a practice of producing and appreciating artworks, there is also a folk ontological conception about those artworks. This presupposition, an implicit premise in Thomasson's and Kania's accounts, will be revealed as false, paying attention to the way artistic practices have evolved. I will conclude that descriptivism should abandon this approach and embrace metaontological realism if it aims to be a plausible view. (shrink)

Neurons repeatedly exposed to similar perceptual experiences fire together and wire together to form ‘meaning kernels’ of concepts. Pulvermueller argues that abstract concepts may be devoid of meaning kernels, because the perceptual experiences that construct abstract concepts are subject to great variation and share few common features. Abstract concept are therefore grounded in the brain through features that belong to ‘meaning halos’, rather than to ‘meaning kernels’.

The *Tractatus* contains an argument that there are simple, necessarily existent objects, which, being simple, are suited to be the referents of the names occuring in the final analysis of propositions. The argument is perplexing in its own right, but also for its invocation of the notion of "substance". I argue that if one locates Wittgenstein's conception of substance in the Kantian tradition to which his talk of "substance" alludes, what emerges is an argument that is very nearly--but not quite--cogent.

We are very happy that someone has finally tried to make sense of rationalization. But we are worried about the representational structure assumed by Cushman, particularly the “boxology” belief-desire model depicting the rational planner, and it seems to us he fails to accommodate many of the interpersonal aspects of representational exchange.

Plato's reflections on Forms have generally been overlooked, in contemporary Philosophy of Language, as a serious resource for illuminating the notion of word meaning. In part, this is due to the influence of Wittgenstein's critical reflections on looking for ‘something in common’ as explanatory for use of a general term. I argue that, far from being undermined, appeal to Forms can both help explain, and provide corrective critical insight into, Wittgenstein's observations. Plato's reflections provide insight into word meaning that is (...) relevant for contemporary research. Relevant considerations include an explanation as to why an item is F; looking to ‘what something is’; the compresence of opposites; whether participation in a Form involves approximation to the Form. (shrink)

The present intractability of and near intractability of make self-control a difficult topic.

_ Source: _Page Count 19 It is argued in this paper that physicalism is best understood as a research programme, rather than a thesis or an attitude, as some philosophers argue. Given that research programmes connect past, present and future philosophical or scientific activities, physicalists need not decide between current and future physical theories, as it has been required by Hempel’s Dilemma. The author contrasts this proposal with other solutions to Hempel’s Dilemma proposed by currentists, futurists, and those philosophers who (...) claim that physicalism should best be understood as an attitude, arguing that understanding physicalism as a research programme avoids problems that are present in the alternative views, and that it matches well with the standard classifications in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Barresi & Moore's “intentional schema” will not do the work of “theory of mind.” Their model will account neither for fundamental facts of social competence, such as the social attributions of the 10-month-old infant, nor the possibility that, though having a theory of mind, the chimpanzee's theory is “weaker” than the human's.

This article presents material from my ethnographic study in Śringēri, south India, the site of a powerful 1200‐year‐old Advaitic monastery that has been historically an interpreter of ancient Hindu moral treatises. A vibrant diverse local culture that provides plural sources of moral authority makes Śringēri a rich site for studying moral discourse. Through a study of two conversational narratives, this essay illustrates how the moral self is not an ossified product of written texts and codes, but is dynamic, gendered, and (...) emergent, endowed with historical and political agency and an aesthetic capacity that mediates many normative sources to articulate “appropriate” conduct. In so doing, the essay shows the value of including oral narrative in ethical inquiry, especially in narrative ethics, which, for most part, has focused on written sources. (shrink)

There are grounds for taking Plato's agenda of searching for definitions to be ironic, and he points toward good arguments for being wary of trust in definitions.

Barresi & Moore assume an equivalence between ontogenetic and evolutionaiy transformations of social understanding. The mechanisms of evolution allow for novel structures to arise, both through terminal addition and through the onset of novel pathways at time points that precede the end points of ancestral pathways. Terminal addition may not be the appropriate model for the evolution of human object-directed imitation, intermodal equivalence, or joint attention.

In this lecture, I want to convey some ideas about linguistic communication which will probably be found not only unfamiliar, but also difficult to grasp at a first encounter. Perhaps I am being too ambitious in so short a compass. At any rate, my only hope of success is to work within closely defined limits, to concentrate more upon expounding these suggestions than upon detailed justification of them, and to say as little as possible about the shortcomings of alternative proposals (...) which are current. The references which I cite have also been rather narrowly selected. As to the limits of this discussion, it will be confined to linguistic communication, as effected by the use of sentences. This is not to deny that there are non-linguistic forms of communication, both between men and between other animals, nor that there are other units of linguistic communication than the sentence; I have taken only what seems most typical of human communication, in order to make the task manageable. (shrink)

In this lecture, I want to convey some ideas about linguistic communication which will probably be found not only unfamiliar, but also difficult to grasp at a first encounter. Perhaps I am being too ambitious in so short a compass. At any rate, my only hope of success is to work within closely defined limits, to concentrate more upon expounding these suggestions than upon detailed justification of them, and to say as little as possible about the shortcomings of alternative proposals (...) which are current. The references which I cite have also been rather narrowly selected. As to the limits of this discussion, it will be confined to linguistic communication, as effected by the use of sentences. This is not to deny that there are non-linguistic forms of communication, both between men and between other animals, nor that there are other units of linguistic communication than the sentence; I have taken only what seems most typical of human communication, in order to make the task manageable. (shrink)