42 found
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  1. Consciousness meets Lewisian interpretation theory: A multistage account of intentionality.Adam Pautz - 2021 - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind, Vol. 1. OUP.
    In “Radical Interpretation” (1974), David Lewis asked: by what constraints, and to what extent, do the non-intentional, physical facts about Karl determine the intentional facts about him? There are two popular approaches: the reductive externalist program and the phenomenal intentionality program. I argue against both approaches. Then I sketch an alternative multistage account incorporating ideas from both camps. If we start with Karl's conscious experiences, we can appeal to Lewisian ideas to explain his other intentional states. This account develops the (...)
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  2. Does Phenomenology Ground Mental Content?Adam Pautz - 2013 - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), The Phenomenal Intentionality Research Program. , US: Oxford University Press. pp. 194-234.
    I develop several new arguments against claims about "cognitive phenomenology" and its alleged role in grounding thought content. My arguments concern "absent cognitive qualia cases", "altered cognitive qualia cases", and "disembodied cognitive qualia cases". However, at the end, I sketch a positive theory of the role of phenomenology in grounding content, drawing on David Lewis's work on intentionality. I suggest that within Lewis's theory the subject's total evidence plays the central role in fixing mental content and ruling out deviant interpretations. (...)
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  3. (1 other version)A Simple View of Consciousness.Adam Pautz - 2010 - In Robert C. Koons & George Bealer (eds.), The waning of materialism. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 25--66.
    Phenomenal intentionality is irreducible. Empirical investigation shows it is internally-dependent. So our usual externalist (causal, etc.) theories do not apply here. Internalist views of phenomenal intentionality (e. g. interpretationism) also fail. The resulting primitivist view avoids Papineau's worry that terms for consciousness are highly indeterminate: since conscious properties are extremely natural (despite having unnatural supervenience bases) they are 'reference magnets'.
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  4. The significance argument for the irreducibility of consciousness.Adam Pautz - 2017 - Philosophical Perspectives 31 (1):349-407.
    The Significance Argument (SA) for the irreducibility of consciousness is based on a series of new puzzle-cases that I call multiple candidate cases. In these cases, there is a multiplicity of physical-functional properties or relations that are candidates to be identified with the sensible qualities and our consciousness of them, where those candidates are not significantly different. I will argue that these cases show that reductive materialists cannot accommodate the various ways in which consciousness is significant and must allow massive (...)
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  5. Experiences are Representations: An Empirical Argument (forthcoming Routledge).Adam Pautz - 2016 - In Bence Nanay (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Perception. New York: Routledge.
    In this paper, I do a few things. I develop a (largely) empirical argument against naïve realism (Campbell, Martin, others) and for representationalism. I answer Papineau’s recent paper “Against Representationalism (about Experience)”. And I develop a new puzzle for representationalists.
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  6. Can disjunctivists explain our access to the sensible world?Adam Pautz - 2011 - Philosophical Issues 21 (1):384-433.
    Develops an empirical argument against naive realism-disjunctivism: if naive realists accept "internal dependence", then they cannot explain the evolution of perceptual success. Also presents a puzzle about our knowledge of universals.
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  7. Identity Physicalism vs Ground Physicalism about Consciousness.Adam Pautz - forthcoming - In G. Rabin (ed.), Grounding and Consciousness. Oxford University Press.
    Unlike identity physicalism, ground physicalism does not achieve the physicalist dream. It faces the T-shirt problem for ground physicalism (Pautz 2014; Schaffer this volume; Rubenstein ms). In the case of insentient nature, it may be able to get by with small handful of very general ground laws to explain the emergence of nonfundamental objects and properties – for example, a few “principle of plenitude”. But I argue that for the case consciousness it will require a separate huge raft of special, (...)
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  8. The puzzle of the laws of appearance.Adam Pautz - 2020 - Philosophical Issues 30 (1):257-272.
    In this paper I will present a puzzle about visual appearance. There are certain necessary constraints on how things can visually appear. The puzzle is about how to explain them. I have no satisfying solution. My main thesis is simply that the puzzle is a puzzle. I will develop the puzzle as it arises for representationalism about experience because it is currently the most popular theory of experience and I think it is along the right lines. However, everyone faces a (...)
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  9. What Is the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness?Adam Pautz - 2019 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (1-2):1-2.
    In the first instance, IIT is formulated as a theory of the physical basis of the 'degree' or ‘level’ or ‘amount’ of consciousness in a system. In addition, integrated information theorists have tried to provide a systematic theory of how physical states determine the specific qualitative contents of episodes of consciousness: for instance, an experience as of a red and round thing rather than a green and square thing. I raise a series of questions about the central explanatory target, the (...)
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  10. Consciousness and Coincidence: The Puzzle of Psychophysical Harmony.Adam Pautz - 2020 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 1 (5-6):143-155.
    In “The Meta-Problem of Consciousness”, David Chalmers briefly raises a problem about how the connection between consciousness and our verbal and other behavior appears “lucky”. I raise a counterexample to Chalmers’s formulation of the problem. Then I develop an alternative formulation. Finally, I consider some responses, including illusionism about consciousness.
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  11. Sensory awareness is not a wide physical relation: An empirical argument against externalist intentionalism.Adam Pautz - 2006 - Noûs 40 (2):205-240.
    Phenomenal intentionality is a singular form of intentionality. Science shows it is internally-determined. So standard externalist models for reducing intentionality don't apply to it.
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  12. The real trouble for phenomenal externalists: New empirical evidence (with reply by Klein&Hilbert).Adam Pautz - 2013 - In Richard Brown (ed.), Consciousness Inside and Out: Phenomenology, Neuroscience, and the Nature of Experience. Dordrecht: Springer Studies in Brain and Mind. pp. 237-298.
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  13. How to Achieve the Physicalist Dream Theory of Consciousness: Identity or Grounding? (2020).Adam Pautz - forthcoming - In G. Rabin (ed.), Grounding and Consciousness. Oxford University Press.
    Unlike identity physicalism, ground physicalism does not achieve the physicalist dream. It faces the T-shirt problem for ground physicalism (Pautz 2014; Schaffer this volume; Rubenstein ms). In the case of insentient nature, it may be able to get by with small handful of very general ground laws to explain the emergence of nonfundamental objects and properties – for example, a few “principle of plenitude”. But I argue that for the case consciousness it will require a separate huge raft of special, (...)
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  14. How Does Colour Experience Represent the World?Adam Pautz - 2017 - In Derek Brown & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour. New York: Routledge.
    Many favor representationalism about color experience. To a first approximation, this view holds that experiencing is like believing. In particular, like believing, experiencing is a matter of representing the world to be a certain way. Once you view color experience along these lines, you face a big question: do our color experiences represent the world as it really is? For instance, suppose you see a tomato. Representationalists claim that having an experience with this sensory character is necessarily connected with representing (...)
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  15. Representationalism about Consciousness.Adam Pautz - 2020 - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Discusses recent work on representationalism, including: the case for a representationalist theory of consciousness, which explains consciousness in terms of content; rivals such as neurobiological type-type identity theory (Papineau, McLaughlin) and naive realism (Allen, Campbell, Brewer); John Campbell and David Papineau's recent objections to representationalism; the problem of the "laws of appearance"; externalist vs internalist versions of representationalism; the relation between representationalism and the mind-body problem.
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  16. How Can Brains in Vats Experience a Spatial World? A Puzzle for Internalists.Adam Pautz - 2018 - In Adam Pautz & Daniel Stoljar (eds.), Blockheads! Essays on Ned Block’s Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness. new york: MIT Press.
    In this chapter, Pautz raises a puzzle about spatial experience for phenomenal internalists like Ned Block. If an accidental, lifelong brain-in-the-void (BIV) should have all the same experiences as you, it would have an experience as of items having various shapes, and be able to acquire concepts of those shapes, despite being cut off from real things with the shapes. Internalists cannot explain this by saying that BIV is presented with Peacocke-style visual field regions having various shapes, because these would (...)
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  17. The Real Trouble for Armchair Arguments Against Phenomenal Externalism.Adam Pautz - 2014 - In Mark Sprevak & Jesper Kallestrup (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Mind. London: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 153-181.
    I criticize some armchair arguments against phenomenal externalism due to Block, Hawthorne, Kriegel, Levine, Shoemaker and others. I conclude by discussing an overlooked armchair argument: the argument from phenomenal localism.
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  18. Propositions and Properties.Adam Pautz - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (2):478-486.
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  19. A Dilemma for Russellian Monists About Consciousness.Adam Pautz - 2015
    I develop a new argument against Russellian Monism about consciousness.
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  20. How Is Constitutive Russellian Monism (or Pansychism) Better than Dualism?Adam Pautz - manuscript
    This is a reply to Luke Roelof's comments (2017) on my paper "A Dilemma for Russellian Monists about Consciousness" (2015). On both Russellian monism and dualism, experiences are distinct from neural-functional states and they are correlated with some neural-functional states and not others. The only difference between them concerns the status of the extra-logical principles linking experiences with their neural-functional correlates (e. g. increasing S1 firing rates results in increasing pain): Russellian monists hold that they are a priori and necessary, (...)
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  21. Naive Realism and the Science of Consciousness (2018).Adam Pautz - manuscript
    I begin by describing what I call simple naïve realism. Then I describe relevant empirical results. Next, I develop two new empirical arguments against simple naive realism. Then I briefly look at two new, more complex forms of naïve realism: one due to Keith Allen and the other due to Heather Logue and Ori Beck. I argue that they are not satisfactory retreats for naive realists. The right course is to reject naive realism altogether. My stalking horse is contemporary naive (...)
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  22. The Interdependence of Phenomenology and Intentionality.Adam Pautz - 2008 - The Monist 91 (2):250-272.
    I address the question of whether phenomenology is "prior to" all intentionality. I also sketch a version of David Lewis's interpretationism in which phenomenal intentionality plays the role of source intentionality.
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  23. The Arationality of Perception: Comments on Susanna Siegel.Adam Pautz - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (3):755-763.
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.
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  24. Blockheads! Essays on Ned Block’s Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness.Adam Pautz & Daniel Stoljar (eds.) - 2018 - new york: MIT Press.
    Perhaps more than any other philosopher of mind, Ned Block synthesizes philosophical and scientific approaches to the mind; he is unique in moving back and forth across this divide, doing so with creativity and intensity. Over the course of his career, Block has made groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of intelligence, representation, and consciousness. Blockheads! (the title refers to Block's imaginary counterexample to the Turing test—and to the Block-enthusiast contributors) offers eighteen new essays on Block's work along with substantive and (...)
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  25. Color Eliminativism (2006 Manuscript).Adam Pautz - manuscript
    This paper (from 2006) is now defunct. I argue against "realist primitivism". One of my arguments is a kind of "evolutionary debunking argument". Some of the material of this was incorporated into “Can Disjunctivists Explain Our Access to the Sensible World?” and "How Does Color Experience Represent the World?".
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  26. What is Integrated Information Theory a Theory Of?Adam Pautz - manuscript
    In the first instance, IIT is formulated as a theory of the physical basis of the 'degree' or ‘level’ or ‘amount’ of consciousness in a system. I raise a series of questions about the central explanatory target, the 'degree' or ‘level’ or ‘amount’ of consciousness. I suggest it is not at all clear what scientists and philosophers are talking about when they talk about consciousness as gradable. This point is developed in more detail in my paper "What Is the Integrated (...)
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  27. An Argument Against Papineau’s Qualitative View of Sensory Experience.Adam Pautz - 2023 - Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Mind 3.
    In his excellent book *The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience* (2021), David Papineau argues against standard theories of sensory experience: the sense datum view, representationalism, naïve realism, and so on. The only view left standing is his own “qualitative view”. On Papineau’s physicalist version, all experiences are nothing but neural states, and the only features essentially involved in experience are intrinsic neural properties (29-30, 95-97). In my book *Perception* (2021), I developed an argument from spatial experience against this kind of view (...)
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  28. Naive Realism v Representationalism: An Argument from Science.Adam Pautz - 2007 - In Brian P. McLaughlin & Jonathan Cohen (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind. Wiley-Blackwell.
    This paper elaborates on an argument in my book *Perception*. It has two parts. In the first part, I argue against what I call "basic" naive realism, on the grounds that it fails to accommodate what I call "internal dependence" and it requires an empirically implausible theory of sensible properties. Then I turn Craig French and Ian Phillips’ modified naïve realism as set out in their recent paper "Austerity and Illusion". It accommodates internal dependence. But it may retain the empirically (...)
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  29. The Representational View: Experiencing as Representing (chap. from *Perception*).Adam Pautz - 1996 - In Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Perception. Ridgeview Pub. Co.
    This is a chapter from my introductory book *Perception* covering the representational view of experience. I use the Ramsey-Lewis method to define the theoretical term "experiential representation". I clarify and discuss various questions for representationalists, for instance, "how rich is the content of experience?" and "is the content of visual experience singular or general?" Finally, I address some objections to representationalism - in particular, that it cannot explain perceptual presence (John Campbell), and that it cannot explain the "laws of appearance" (...)
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  30. An argument against Fregean that-clause semantics.Adam Pautz - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 138 (3):335 - 347.
    I develop a problem for the Fregean Reference Shift analysis of that-clause reference. The problem is discussed by Stephen Schiffer in his recent book The Things We Mean (2003). Either the defender of the Fregean Reference Shift analysis must count certain counterintuitive inferences as valid, or else he must reject a plausible Exportation rule. I consider several responses. I find that the best response relies on a Kaplan-inspired analysis of quantified belief reports. But I argue that this response faces some (...)
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  31. *Perception* (2021, preview).Adam Pautz - 1996 - In Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Perception. Ridgeview Pub. Co.
    A preview of my book *Perception*. Discusses the relationship between perception and the physical world and the issue of whether reality is as it appears. Useful examples are included throughout the book to illustrate the puzzles of perception, including hallucinations, illusions, the laws of appearance, blindsight, and neuroscientific explanations of our experience of pain, smell and color. The book covers both traditional philosophical arguments and more recent empirical arguments deriving from research in psychophysics and neuroscience. The addition of chapter summaries, (...)
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  32. The Internal Physical State View of Sensory Experience (chapter from my book *Perception*).Adam Pautz - 1996 - In Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Perception. Ridgeview Pub. Co.
    This is a chapter from my book Perception (Routledge). I explain the physical state view of sensory experience (Papineau, McLaughlin, others). I criticize an argument against it based on the "transparency observation". Then I develop two alternative arguments against it. The first is a Leibniz's Law argument based on the essentially externally directed character of some experiences. The second concerns "brains in vats". Finally I consider a recent response due to David Papineau, which involves rejecting essential external directedness.
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  33. Varieties of Interpretationism about Belief and Desire.Adam Pautz - 2021 - Analysis 21 (3):512-524.
    In his superb book, The Metaphysics of Representation, Williams sketches biconditional reductive definitions of representational states in non-representational terms. The central idea is an extremely innovative variety of interpretationism about belief and desire. Williams is inspired by David Lewis but departs significantly from him. I am sympathetic to interpretationism for some basic beliefs and desires. However, I will raise three worries for Williams’s version (§2–4). It neglects the role of conscious experience, it makes beliefs and desire too dependent on "hidden (...)
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  34. An Argument Against Fodorian Inner Sentence Theories of Belief and Desire.Adam Pautz - manuscript
    One of Jerry Fodor’s many seminal contributions to philosophy of mind was his inner sentence theory of belief and desire. To believe that p is to have a subpersonal inner sentence in one’s “belief-box” that means that p, and to desire that q is to have a subpersonal inner sentence in one’s “desire-box” that means that q. I will distinguish between two accounts of box-inclusion that exhaust the options: liberal and restrictive. I will show that both accounts have the mistaken (...)
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  35. The Epistemic Value of Conscious Acquaintance: A Problem for Reductive Physicalism.Adam Pautz - manuscript
    We take it that conscious acquaintance has great epistemic value. I develop a new problem for reductive physicalism concerning the epistemic value of acquaintance. The problem concerns "multiple candidate cases". (This develops a theme of my paper *The Significance Argument for the Irreducibility of Consciousness", Philosophical Perspectives 2017.).
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  36. What do philosophers disagree about when they disagree about toad-representation?Adam Pautz - manuscript
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  37. Comments on Jane Friedman "Inquiry and Belief" (2015 Ranch Conference).Adam Pautz - manuscript
    Comments on Jane Friedman "Inquiry and Belief" (for 2015 Ranch Conference). Jane Friedman proposes DBI: One ought not to believe an (complete) answer to a question & at the same time inquire into that question – that’d be irrational. I raise some counterexamples. Then I propose an alternative principle which avoids the counterexamples and which has the further advantage of following from more general platitudes about knowledge. The general point is that even if one believes an answer to a question (...)
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  38. Does the Rich Content View of Experience Matter?Adam Pautz - manuscript
    Does it matter whether we perceptually represent tomato-hood?
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  39. Mark Johnston on whether Experience is Predicative.Adam Pautz - manuscript
    Comments on an early version of Johnston's "The Problem with the Content View" (in Berit Brogaard ed. *Does Perception Have Content?*, 2014) delivered at a workshop on perception at NYU in 2010.
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  40. Colour, philosophical perspectives.Adam Pautz - 2009 - In Patrick Wilken, Timothy J. Bayne & Axel Cleeremans (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 144-149.
    An overview of the main positions on colour.
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  41. Metaphysics of Representation, by J. Robert G. Williams. [REVIEW]Adam Pautz - 2021 - Mind 131 (523):1015-1024.
    1. IntroductionIn this superb book, Williams sets a very ambitious goal for himself: to sketch biconditionals that define representational conditions in non-representational terms (p. xvii). Representation is not a spooky, primitive capacity of the mind; it is built from more basic ingredients. At the centre is his radical interpretation theory of belief and desire, inspired by the work of David Lewis. To a first approximation: Basic radical interpretation theory. The correct assignment of beliefs and desires to an agent is the (...)
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  42. Review of Langsam The Wonder of Consciousness. [REVIEW]Adam Pautz - 2014 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 3.
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