Review of: R. Steven Turner, In the Eye's Mind: Vision and the Helmholtz-Hering Controversy. xiv + 338 pp., frontis., illus., figs., tables, bibl., index. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Incompatibilists believe free will is impossible if determinism is true, and they often claim that this view is supported by ordinary intuitions. We challenge the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive to most laypersons and discuss the significance of this challenge to the free will debate. After explaining why incompatibilists should want their view to accord with pretheoretical intuitions, we suggest that determining whether incompatibilism is in fact intuitive calls for empirical testing. We then present the results of our studies, which (...) put significant pressure on the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive. Finally, we consider and respond to several potential objections to our approach. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the growing literature in social epistemology of diagnosing the epistemically problematic features of fake news. I identify two novel problems: the problem of relevant alternatives; and the problem of the degradation of the epistemic environment. The former arises among individual epistemic transactions. By making salient, and thereby relevant, alternatives to knowledge claims, fake news stories threaten knowledge. The problem of the degradation of the epistemic environment arises at the level of entire epistemic communities. I introduce the (...) notion of an epistemic environment, roughly the totality of resources and circumstances relevant to assessing the epistemically interesting statuses, such as knowledge. Fake news degrades our epistemic environment by undermining confidence in epistemic institutions and altering epistemic habits, thereby making the environment less conducive to achieving positive epistemic statuses. This is problematic even if the decrease in confidence and the altering of habits are rational. I end by considering solutions to these problems, stressing the importance of reproaching each other for proliferating fake news. I argue that we should reproach even faultless purveyors of fake news. This is because fake news typically arises in abnormal epistemic contexts, where there is widespread ignorance of, and noncompliance with, correct epistemic norms. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one logic. Logical normativism is the view that logic is normative. These positions have often been assumed to go hand-in-hand, but we show that one can be a logical pluralist without being a logical normativist. We begin by arguing directly against logical normativism. Then we reformulate one popular version of pluralism—due to Beall and Restall—to avoid a normativist commitment. We give three non-normativist pluralist views, the most promising of which depends (...) not on logic’s normativity but on epistemic goals. (shrink)

An influential way of distinguishing inferential from non-inferential processes appeals to representational states: an agent infers a conclusion from some premises only if she represents those premises as supporting that conclusion. By contrast, when some premises merely cause an agent to believe the conclusion, there is no relevant representational state. While promising, the appeal to representational states invites a regress problem, first famously articulated by Lewis Carroll. This paper develops a novel account of inference that invokes representational states without succumbing (...) to regress. The key move is to reject the tempting idea that the relevant representational states are causally prior to inferences. I argue, instead, that an inference constitutes the relevant representational state. To infer is thus—in the very drawing of the conclusion—to represent the premises as supporting the conclusion, and thereby to commit to that support relation. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one correct logic. A key objection to logical pluralism is that it collapses into monism. The core of the Collapse Objection is that only the pluralist’s strongest logic does any genuine normative work; since a logic must do genuine normative work, this means that the pluralist is really a monist, who is committed to her strongest logic being the one true logic. This paper considers a neglected question in the collapse (...) debate: what is it for a logic to do genuine normative work? As well as having wider upshot for the connection between logic and normativity, grappling with this question provides a new response to the Collapse Objection on behalf of the pluralist. I suggest that we should allow logics to generate pro tanto reasons in a way that bears not just on combinations of attitudes but on how an agent’s attitudes are based on one another. This motivates adopting normative principles that allow the pluralist’s weaker logics to earn their normative keep. Rather than being ad hoc, these principles capture a sense in which good reasoning goes beyond the consistency of an agent’s attitudes. Good reasoning is also concerned with how an agent’s attitudes are based on one another. (shrink)

Charles Perrow used the term normal accidents to characterize a type of catastrophic failure that resulted when complex, tightly coupled production systems encountered a certain kind of anomalous event. These were events in which systems failures interacted with one another in a way that could not be anticipated, and could not be easily understood and corrected. Systems of the production of expert knowledge are increasingly becoming tightly coupled. Unlike classical science, which operated with a long time horizon, many current forms (...) of expert knowledge are directed at immediate solutions to complex problems. These are prone to breakdowns like the kind discussed by Perrow. The example of the Homestake mine experiment shows that even in modern physics complex systems can produce knowledge failures that last for decades. The concept of knowledge risk is introduced, and used to characterize the risk of failure in such systems of knowledge production. (shrink)

In reference to the philosophical theology of medieval Islamic theologian Ibn Taymiyya, this paper outlines a parallel between Taymiyyan thought and Alvin Plantinga’s thesis of ‘Reformed Epistemology’. In critiquing a previous attempt to build an account of ‘Islamic externalism’, the Taymiyyan model offers an account that can be seen as wholly ‘Plantingan’.

Logical consequence is typically construed as a metalinguistic relation between sentences. Deflationism is an account of logic that challenges this orthodoxy. In Williamson’s recent presentation of deflationism, logic’s primary concern is with universal generalizations over absolutely everything. As well as an interesting account of logic in its own right, deflationism has also been recruited to decide between competing logics in resolving semantic paradoxes. This paper defends deflationism from its most important challenge to date, due to Ole Hjortland. It then presents (...) two new problems for the view. Hjortland’s objection is that deflationism cannot discriminate between distinct logics. I show that his example of classical logic and supervaluationism depends on equivocating about whether the language includes a “definitely” operator. Moreover, I prove a result that blocks this line of objection no matter the choice of logics. I end by criticizing deflationism on two fronts. First, it cannot do the work it has been recruited to perform. That is, it cannot help adjudicate between competing logics. This is because a theory of logic cannot be as easily separated from a theory of truth as its proponents claim. Second, deflationism currently has no adequate answer to the following challenge: what does a sentence’s universal generalization have to do with its logical truth? I argue that the most promising, stipulative response on behalf of the deflationist amounts to an unwarranted change of subject. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on AI-based cognitive and perceptual enhancements. AI-based brain enhancements are already under development, and they may become commonplace over the next 30–50 years. We raise doubts concerning whether radical AI-based enhancements transhumanists advocate will accomplish the transhumanists goals of longevity, human flourishing, and intelligence enhancement. We urge that even if the technologies are medically safe and are not used as tools by surveillance capitalism or an authoritarian dictatorship, these enhancements may still fail to do their job for (...) philosophical reasons. In what follows, we explore one such concern, a problem that involves the nature of the self. We illustrate that the so called transhumanist efforts to “merge oneself with AI” could lead to perverse realizations of AI technology, such as the demise of the person who sought enhancement. And, in a positive vein, we offer ways to avoid this, at least within the context of one theory of the nature of personhood. (shrink)

This chapter aims to draw on the critical threads of those vibrant theological conversations within the formative years of Islamic thought in considering the different theological models of the Divine within the broader Islamic tradition under the purview of classical theism as it is understood today in the contemporary philosophy of religion. In doing so, it makes reference to the major strands within the theological (‘ilm al- kalām & atharī scripturalism) and philosophical (falsafa) schools of the Islamic tradition. It aims (...) to consider how these different trends, schools, and thinkers construct a model of God in light of the classical and neo-classical theistic model of God. (shrink)

This paper provides an opinionated guide to discussions of acting and believing on the basis of reasons. I aim to bring closer together largely separate literatures in practical rea- son and in epistemology. I focus on three questions. First, is basing causing? Causal theories of basing remain popular despite the notorious Problem of Deviant Causal Chains. Causal theorists in both the epistemic and practical domains have begun to appeal to dispositions to try and solve the problem. Second, how unified are (...) acting and believing on the basis of reasons? I consider an important challenge to their unity due to Setiya. I sketch a response, which posits unity of causal structure across acting and believing on the basis of reasons. Third, how does acting or believing on the basis of a good reason relate to acting or believing on the basis of a reason simpliciter? I generalize a recent argument of Lord and Sylvan's to include acting as well as believing. The conclusion is that, for both believing and acting, ϕing on the basis of a good reason does not amount to ϕing on the basis of a reason that just so happens to be good. (shrink)

. This article seeks to outline how a Muslim believer can deflect a defeater for Islamic belief put forward by Erik Baldwin and Tyler McNabb. In doing so, it aims to reject the suggestion that an Islamic religious epistemology is somehow antithetical to a model of Reformed epistemology which is not fully compatible with Plantingian. Taken together with previous work on Islam and RE, the article not only aims to provide reason to think that Baldwin and McNabb’s proposed epistemic defeater (...) for Islamic belief isn’t problematic, it also seeks to show how the concerns raised by Baldwin and McNabb over a Plantingian model of RE in Islamic milieu, are no longer tenable. (shrink)

This article is an exercise in the virtue epistemology of the internet, an area of applied virtue epistemology that investigates how online environments impact the development of intellectual virtues, and how intellectual virtues manifest within online environments. I examine online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles (Nguyen 2020, Episteme 17(2), 141–61), exploring the conceptual relationship between these online environments and the virtue of open-mindedness (Battaly 2018b, Episteme 15(3), 261–82). The article answers two key individual-level, virtue epistemic questions: (Q1) How does immersion (...) in online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles affect the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, and (Q2) Is it always intellectually virtuous to exhibit open-mindedness in the context of online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles? In response to Q1, I contend that both online echo chambers and online epistemic bubbles threaten to undermine the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, albeit via different mechanisms and to different degrees. In response to Q2, I affirm that both a deficiency and an excess of open-mindedness can be virtuous in these online environments, depending on the epistemic orientation of the digital user. (shrink)

With his 1998 book, In Nature’s Interests? Gary Varner proved to be one of our most original and trenchant of environmental ethicists. Here, in the first of a promised two volume set, he makes his mark on another field, animal ethics, leaving an even deeper imprint. Thoroughly grounded in the relevant philosophical and scientific literatures, Varner is as precise in analysis as he is wide-ranging in scope. His writing is clear and rigorous, and he explains philosophical nuances with extraordinary (...) economy of expression. Never one to add an unnecessary clause to a sentence, Varner nonetheless constructs a formidable edifice while always dealing fairly with the authors he criticizes. His explication of the properties and moral status of what he calls near-persons is a crucial addition to the discussion of personhood initiated by Parfit in Reasons and Persons and subsequently applied to animals by McMahan in The Ethics of Killing. The comparison to McMahan is intentional for, to my mind, Varner vies with him as the most important animal ethicist since Singer and Regan. (shrink)

I respond to Ned Block’s claim that it is ridiculous to suppose that consciousness is a cultural construction based on language and learned in childhood. Block is wrong to dismiss social constructivist theories of consciousness on account of it being ludicrous that conscious experience is anything but a biological feature of our animal heritage, characterized by sensory experience, evolved over millions of years. By defending social constructivism in terms of both Julian Jaynes’ behaviorism and J.J. Gibson’s ecological psychology, I draw (...) a distinction between the experience or what-it-is-like of nonhuman animals engaging with the environment and the secret theater of speechless monologue that is familiar to a linguistically competent human adult. This distinction grounds the argument that consciousness proper should be seen as learned rather than innate and shared with nonhuman animals. Upon establishing this claim, I defend the Jaynesian definition of consciousness as a social–linguistic construct learned in childhood, structured in terms of lexical metaphors and narrative practice. Finally, I employ the Jaynesian distinction between cognition and consciousness to bridge the explanatory gap and deflate the supposed hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

I argue for the moral relevance of a category of individuals I characterize as far-persons. Following Gary Varner, I distinguish near-persons, animals with a " robust autonoetic consciousness " but lacking an adult human's " biographical sense of self, " from the merely sentient, those animals living "entirely in the present." I note the possibility of a third class. Far-persons lack a biographical sense of self, possess a weak autonoetic consciousness, and are able to travel mentally through time a (...) distance that exceeds the capacities of the merely sentient. Far-persons are conscious of and exercise control over short-term cognitive states, states limited by their temporal duration. The animals in question, human and nonhuman, consciously choose among various strategies available to them to achieve their ends, making them subjects of what I call "lyrical experience:" brief and potentially intense pleasures and pains. But their ends expire minute-by-minute, not stretching beyond, I say metaphorically, the present hour. I conclude by discussing the moral status of far-persons. (shrink)

In this article, I set forth a theory of propaganda explaining what it is, how it relates to marketing, and the nature and types of ideology. I discuss the criteria by which we can judge the rationality or deceitfulness of propaganda. I defend the view that while propaganda can be perfectly rational, it rarely is, and I explain why that is the case. I finish by explaining why the question of the rationality or deceitfulness of propaganda is different from the (...) question of the morality of propaganda. I give two quick examples of how an ethicist might argue that deceptive propaganda might be ethical to use, and perfectly rational propaganda might be immoral to use. I conclude with the notion that the question of the ethics of marketing and propaganda is complex, and should be handled in a separate paper. (shrink)

This paper serves to introduce the papers from the symposium by the same title, by describing the sort of work done in philosophy of psychology conceived as a branch of the philosophy of science, distinguishing it from other discussions of psychology in philosophy, and criticizing the claims to set limits on scientific psychology in the largely psychologically uninformed literatures concerning "folk psychology' and "wide" and "narrow" content. Philosophy of psychology as philosophy of science takes seriously and analyzes the explanatory structures, (...) conceptual problems, and evidentiary practices of extant scientific psychology. (shrink)

In preparation for examining the place of introspective evidence in scientific psychology, the chapter begins by clarifying what introspection has been supposed to show, and why some concluded that it couldn't deliver. This requires a brief excursus into the various uses to which introspection was supposed to have been put by philosophers and psychologists in the modern period, together with a summary of objections. It then reconstructs some actual uses of introspection (or related techniques, differently monikered) in the early days (...) of experimental psychology. It distinguishes broader and narrower conceptions of introspection and argues that recent critics have tended to misdescribe how introspection was supposed to work. Drawing upon the broader conception of introspection, it argues that introspective reports are ineliminable in perceptual psychology. It concludes with some examples of such ineliminable uses of introspective reports in both earlier and recent perceptual psychology. (shrink)

Psychology considered as a natural science began as Aristotelian "physics" or "natural philosophy" of the soul, conceived as an animating power that included vital, sensory, and rational functions. C. Wolff restricted the term " psychology " to sensory, cognitive, and volitional functions and placed the science under metaphysics, coordinate with cosmology. Near the middle of the eighteenth century, Krueger, Godart, and Bonnet proposed approaching the mind with the techniques of the new natural science. At nearly the same time, Scottish thinkers (...) placed psychology within moral philosophy, but distinguished its "physical" laws from properly moral laws. British and French visual theorists developed mathematically precise theories of size and distance perception; they created instruments to test these theories and to measure visual phenomena such as the duration of visual impressions. By the end of the century there was a flourishing discipline of empirical psychology in Germany, with a professorship, textbooks, and journals. The practitioners of empirical psychology at this time typically were dualists who included mental phenomena within nature. Accordingly, psychology as a natural scientific disciplines was not invented in the 18th and 19th centuries, but *remade* from the extant empirical psychology. (shrink)

A properly programmed artificially intelligent agent may eventually have one duty, the duty to satisfice expected welfare. We explain this claim and defend it against objections.

Not long ago, interreligious conversations were regulated by the ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty. We are suspicious of these noble sounding ideals today. In a world of liberation theology, feminist criticism, and the hermeneutics of suspicion, can there be any new, “postmodern,” rules to govern our religious dialogues? Not able to consult any general theory, or “metanarrative,” in order to provide the answer, I simply tell the story of the only postmodern Catholic I have ever known. On the basis (...) of that experience, I argue that something like the old rules will have to accompany us into the new age. (shrink)

In the voluminous literature on the subject of bovine growth hormone (bGH) we have yet to find an attempt to frame the issue in specifically moral terms or to address systematically its ethical implications. I argue that there are two moral objections to the technology: its treatment of animals, and its dislocating effects on farmers. There are agricultural biotechnologies that deserve funding and support. bGH is not one of them.

On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) over what would quickly become known as SARS-CoV- 2 or COVID- 19. This emergency status was officially ended in the United States in May 2023 amidst much dissent and debate. Although emergency conditions resulting from COVID- 19 will likely wax and wane over the coming years, there is good reason to think that the incidence of severe global pandemics will increase over the next (...) century, as will declarations of emergency. The declaration of an emergency calls for urgent action, but it just as urgently demands careful reflection. Official “emergency” status licenses unparalleled executive intervention, completely reorganizing the lives of those who live under its decree. Such official recognition, however, is heavily dependent on the social context in and from which the emergency arises. Highlighting which circumstances rise to the level of an official emergency clarifies our reigning assumptions about what threshold of active harm—and in relation to which groups of people—demands immediate intervention. (shrink)

The chapter begins with an initial survey of ups and downs of contextualist history of philosophy during the twentieth century in Britain and America, which finds that historically serious history of philosophy has been on the rise. It then considers ways in which the study of past philosophy has been used and is used in philosophy, and makes a case for the philosophical value and necessity of a contextually oriented approach. It examines some uses of past texts and of history (...) that reveal limits to noncontextual history, including Strawson's Kant, Rorty's grand diagnosis of the Western tradition, and Friedman on Kant's philosophy of mathematics. It then considers ways in which the history of philosophy may become philosophically deeper by becoming more historical, and instances in which history of philosophy of various stripes has or may deliver a philosophical payoff. Along the way, it urges historians of philosophy to attend not only to individual philosophers and their problems and projects, but also to the larger shape of the history of philosophy and its narrative themes. (shrink)

It seems intuitively obvious that metameric matching of color samples entails a loss of information, for spectrophotometrically diverse materials appear the same. This intuition implicitly relies on a conception of the function of color vision and on a related conception of how color samples should be individuated. It assumes that the function of color vision is to distinguish among spectral energy distributions, and that color samples should be individuated by their physical properties. I challenge these assumptions by articulating a different (...) conception of the function of color vision, according to which color vision serves to partition object surfaces into discrimination classes. (shrink)

Very plausibly, nothing can be a genuine computing system unless it meets an input-sensitivity requirement. Otherwise all sorts of objects, such as rocks or pails of water, can count as performing computations, even such as might suffice for mentality—thus threatening computationalism about the mind with panpsychism. Maudlin in J Philos 86:407–432, ( 1989 ) and Bishop ( 2002a , b ) have argued, however, that such a requirement creates difficulties for computationalism about conscious experience, putting it in conflict with the (...) very intuitive thesis that conscious experience supervenes on physical activity. Klein in Synthese 165:141–153, ( 2008 ) proposes a way for computationalists about experience to avoid panpsychism while still respecting the supervenience of experience on activity. I argue that his attempt to save computational theories of experience from Maudlin’s and Bishop’s critique fails. (shrink)

According to the reading offered here, Descartes' use of the meditative mode of writing was not a mere rhetorical device to win an audience accustomed to the spiritual retreat. His choice of the literary form of the spiritual exercise was consonant with, if not determined by, his theory of the mind and of the basis of human knowledge. Since Descartes' conception of knowledge implied the priority of the intellect over the senses, and indeed the priority of an intellect operating independently (...) of the senses, and since, in Descartes' view, the untutored individual was likely to be nearly wholly immersed in the senses, a procedure was needed for freeing the intellect from sensory domination so that the truth might be seen. Hence, the cognitive exercises of the Meditations, modeled not on the sense- and imagination-based exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, but on the Augustinian procedure of turning away from the senses and imagination to perceive the unpicturable with the fleshless eye of the mind. In accordance with this reading, the function of Descartes' skeptical arguments is not to introduce skepticism so that it can be defeated but to aid the meditator in withdrawing the mind from the senses in order to attend to truths of the pure intellect. These truths then offer the basis for a new natural philosophy, including a new theory of the senses. (shrink)

This thesis contends that the possession of a sense of humour would contribute considerably to the quality of human life. It is an exploration and discussion of some of the difficulties involved in justifying the development of humour in terms of a philosophy of education. In light of developments in the digital age with consequent changes in science, technology and society, the educated person of the future will have to be less concerned with the accumulated knowledge of the past than (...) with the development and interplay of social and natural environments. Such a person will need to have, more than ever, a sense of what is truly real and what is truly valuable in human life. If the primary purpose of education is the preparation of students for their future lives, educators are now faced with some challenging problems. Apart from the high social value of laughter, there is a recognized relationship between humour and intelligence. Knowing that the two are related proves to be a key factor in understanding the learning process and assuring that the development of a sense of humour in education is worthy of consideration. (shrink)

This article seeks the origin, in the theories of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Descartes, and Berkeley, of two-stage theories of spatial perception, which hold that visual perception involves both an immediate representation of the proximal stimulus in a two-dimensional ‘‘sensory core’’ and also a subsequent perception of the three dimensional world. The works of Ibn al-Haytham, Descartes, and Berkeley already frame the major theoretical options that guided visual theory into the twentieth century. The field of visual perception was the first area (...) of what we now call psychology to apply mathematics, through geometrical models as used by Euclid, Ptolemy, Ibn al-Haytham, and Descartes (among others). The article shows that Kepler’s discovery of the retinal image, which revolutionized visual anatomy and entailed fundamental changes in visual physiology, did not alter the basic structure of theories of spatial vision. These changes in visual physiology are advanced especially in Descartes' Dioptrics and his L'Homme. Berkeley develops a radically empirist theory vision, according to which visual perception of depth is learned through associative processes that rely on the sense of touch. But Descartes and Berkeley share the assertion that there is a two-dimensional sensory core that is in principle available to consciousness. They also share the observation that we don't usually perceived this core, but find depth and distance to be phenomenally immediate, a point they struggle to accommodate theoretically. If our interpretation is correct, it was not a change in the theory of the psychology of vision that engendered the idea of a sensory core, but rather the introduction of the theory into a new metaphysical context. (shrink)

The theory of knowledge in early twentieth-century Anglo American philosophy was oriented toward phenomenally described cognition. There was a healthy respect for the mind-body problem, which meant that phenomena in both the mental and physical domains were taken seriously. Bertrand Russell's developing position on sense-data and momentary particulars drew upon, and ultimately became like, the neutral monism of Ernst Mach and William James. Due to a more recent behaviorist and physicalist inspired "fear of the mental", this development has been down-played (...) in historical work on early analytic philosophy. Such neglect assumes that the "linguistic turn" is a proper and permanent effect of twentieth-century philosophy, an assumption that distorts early analytic historiography, and begs a substantive philosophical question about thought and cognition. (shrink)

While the claim that certain functional states are sufficient for conscious experience has received substantial critical attention, the claim that functional states are necessary is rarely addressed. Yet the latter claim is perhaps now more common than the former. I aim to revive and revise a neglected argument against the necessity claim, by Michael Antony. The argument involves manipulating a conscious subject's brain so as to cancel a disposition which is supposedly crucial to the realization of an experience that the (...) subject is having at the time. The key step in the argument is to show that, contrary to what the functional necessity claim implies, the experience can survive such a manipulation. I defend that key step in a new way, by arguing that since the manipulation cannot influence the subject's thoughts, emotions, or behavior, there is no reason to suppose that it alters his conscious experience. (shrink)

This chapter poses questions about the existence and character of the Scientific Revolution by deriving its initial categories of analysis and its initial understanding of the intellectual scene from the writings of the seventeenth century, and by following the evolution of these initial categories in succeeding centuries. This project fits the theme of cross cultural transmission and appropriation -- a theme of the present volume -- if one takes the notion of a culture broadly, so that, say, seventeenth and eighteenth (...) or nineteenth century European intellectual cultures are deemed sufficiently distinct that one can speak of the "transmission" of texts and ideas from the one to the other as cross cultural. I maintain that a process of transforming and assimilating seventeenth century achievements manifests itself in two distinct cultures of interpretation, one developed by historians of philosophy, the other by scientists and historians of science. The first, following actor's categories, interprets the revolution in the seventeenth century as a philosophical displacement, partly fomented by a radical change in astronomical theory; the second, retrospectively applying the post nineteenth century sense of the term "science" to seventeenth century events, finds a "scientific" revolution, or the birth of modern science. The chapter proposes interpreting the Scientific Revolution as a revolution in natural philosophy and metaphysics. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Plantinga’s (1993, 2000, 2011) Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN). While there has been much discussion about Plantinga’s use of probabilities in the argument, I contend that insufficient attention has been paid to the question of how we are to interpret those probabilities. In this paper, I argue that views Plantinga defends elsewhere limit the range of interpretations available to him here. The upshot is that the EAAN is more limited in its applicability than Plantinga alleges.

The first two sections of the paper characterize the nineteenth century respect for the phenomenal by considering Helmholtz’s position and James’ and Russell’s move to neutral monism. The third section displays a moment’s sympathy with those who recoiled from the latter view -- but only a moment’s. The recoil overshot what was a reasonable response, and denied the reality of the phenomenal, largely in the name of the physical or the material. The final two sections of the paper develop a (...) third way, which retains a healthy respect for the mental and for the mind–body relation, does not attempt to equate objects with congeries of sensations, and does not attempt to deny the reality of the phenomenal. In fact, I will claim that on some conceptions (and not merely idealist-phenomenalist conceptions), the phenomenal is a fact of nature, and hence a part of the natural world. Some aspects of this third way are familiar in the various representational and critical realisms of the twentieth-century. But the realization -- or, more neutrally, the conception -- that the natural might include the phenomenal is less familiar. Yet this position has its predecessors too, not only among the physicists and psychologists of the nineteenth century, but among major physicists (as opposed to physicalist philosophers) and psychologists of the twentieth. [A re-edited version of this paper appears in Gary Hatfield, Perception and Cognition: Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology, Clarendon Press, 2009.]. (shrink)

During the seventeenth century the major cognitive faculties--sense, imagination, memory, and understanding or intellect--became the central focus of argument in metaphysics and epistemology to an extent not seen before. The theory of the intellect, long an important auxiliary to metaphysics, became the focus of metaphysical dispute, especially over the scope and powers of the intellect and the existence of a `pure' intellect. Rationalist metaphysicians such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Malebranche claimed that intellectual knowledge, gained independently of the senses, provides the (...) framework for constructing a new theory of nature. Other writers, including Hobbes and the early Gassendi, denied the existence of a distinct intellectual faculty, and so challenged the metaphysicians' abilities directly to perceive the essences of substances. The theory of the senses, which had long been a part of philosophical discussion, took on a new urgency, for adherents of the new corpuscularian philosophy needed to replace the dominant Aristotelian theory of real sensory qualities and sensible species. The revival of skepticism and a renewed interest in method also brought the faculties into prominence, for skeptical challenges typically were directed toward the faculties of sense and understanding, and the theory of method was conceived as providing instructions for the proper use of one's cognitive equipment. The theory of the faculties, then, is an important key to theories of knowledge in the seventeenth century. Indeed, rather than speaking of seventeenth century epistemology, it would be less anachronistic and more informative to speak of theories of cognition. The familiar (and over-stated) point that epistemology became fundamental to metaphysics during that century can then be restated as the point that the theory of faculties became central in metaphysical dispute. (shrink)

This chapter considers philosophical problems concerning non-human (and sometimes human) animals, including their metaphysical, physical, and moral status, their origin, what makes them alive, their functional organization, and the basis of their sensitive and cognitive capacities. I proceed by assuming what most of Descartes’s followers and interpreters have held: that Descartes proposed that animals lack sentience, feeling, and genuinely cognitive representations of things. (Some scholars interpret Descartes differently, denying that he excluded sentience, feeling, and representation from animals, and I consider (...) the evidence for these interpretations as well.) Given that Descartes denied any sort of soul to animals, his other philosophical commitments entailed that he must explain the vital and sensitive powers of non-human animals through purely material causes. Indeed, he welcomed this task, for he was engaged in the larger project of providing purely mechanistic explanations for all natural phenomena of the material world. Animal bodies form functional unities that are adapted to environmental circumstances. In his new physics, Descartes sought to discover or hypothesize material mechanisms that would explain the physiological and behavioral capacities of animals, including how they maintain themselves by seeking food and drink, reproduce themselves, and modify their behavior to fit current circumstances. Metaphysically, his new perspective raised the problem of accounting for the functional unity of the animal body considered as a purely material construction, devoid of an active, organizing power such as the sensitive soul. Descartes’s project becomes even more challenging if we ask whence come such mechanisms that are capable of performing the functions of living things. Officially, Descartes endorsed the accepted theological orthodoxy, that God designed and created the bodily mechanisms of humans and animals. However, in his natural philosophy he set himself the task of explaining the origin of animals as part of the natural development of the universe out of an original chaotic soup of material particles. Within this naturalistic perspective, he must explain how, through purely material processes, the functionally organized bodies of living things (plants and animals) could be produced from non-living matter. Without a designing creator, how do animal bodies arise that are capable of digesting food, growing, reproducing, and performing the behaviors needed to preserve life and health? (shrink)

There is a strong philosophical intuition that direct study of the brain can and will constrain the development of psychological theory. When this intuition is tested against case studies on the neurophysiology and psychology of perception and memory, it turns out that psychology has led the way toward knowledge of neurophysiology. An abstract argument is developed to show that psychology can and must lead the way in neuroscientific study of mental function. The opposing intuition is based on mainly weak arguments (...) about the fundamentality or objectivity of physics or physiology in relation to psychology. -/- Philosophy of Science, Vol. 67, Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers (Sep., 2000). (shrink)

Augmented reality (AR) technologies function to ‘augment’ normal perception by superimposing virtual objects onto an agent’s visual field. The philosophy of augmented reality is a small but growing subfield within the philosophy of technology. Existing work in this subfield includes research on the phenomenology of augmented experiences, the metaphysics of virtual objects, and different ethical issues associated with AR systems, including (but not limited to) issues of privacy, property rights, ownership, trust, and informed consent. This paper addresses some epistemological issues (...) posed by AR systems. I focus on a near-future version of AR technology called the Real-World Web, which promises to radically transform the nature of our relationship to digital information by mixing the virtual with the physical. I argue that the Real-World Web (RWW) threatens to exacerbate three existing epistemic problems in the digital age: the problem of digital distraction, the problem of digital deception, and the problem of digital divergence. The RWW is poised to present new versions of these problems in the form of what I call the augmented attention economy, augmented skepticism, and the problem of other augmented minds. The paper draws on a range of empirical research on AR and offers a phenomenological analysis of virtual objects as perceptual affordances to help ground and guide the speculative nature of the discussion. It also considers a few policy-based and designed-based proposals to mitigate the epistemic threats posed by AR technology. (shrink)

The question of whether perception can be penetrated by cognition is in the limelight again. The reason this question keeps coming up is that there is so much at stake: Is it possible to have theory-neutral observation? Is it possible to study perception without recourse to expectations, context, and beliefs? What are the boundaries between perception, memory, and inference (and do they even exist)? Are findings from neuroscience that paint a picture of perception as an inherently bidirectional and interactive process (...) relevant for understanding the relationship between cognition and perception? We have assembled a group of philosophers and psychologists who have been considering the thesis of cognitive (im)penetrability in light of these questions (Abdel Rahman & Sommer, 2008; Goldstone, Landy, & Brunel, 2011; Lupyan, Thompson-Schill, & Swingley, 2010; Macpherson, 2012; Stokes, 2011). Rather than rehashing previous arguments which appear, in retrospect, to have been somewhat ill-posed (Pylyshyn, 1999), this symposium will present a thesis of cognitive (im)penetrability that is at once philosophically satisfying, empirically testable, and relevant to the questions that cognitive scientists find most interesting. (shrink)

During the period 1870-1914 the existing discipline of psychology was transformed. British thinkers including Spencer, Lewes, and Romanes allied psychology with biology and viewed mind as a function of the organism for adapting to the environment. British and German thinkers called attention to social and cultural factors in the development of individual human minds. In Germany and the United States a tradition of psychology as a laboratory science soon developed, which was called a 'new psychology' by contrast with the old, (...) metaphysical psychology. Methodological discussion intensified. New syntheses were framed. Chairs were established and Departments founded. Although the trend toward institutional autonomy was less rapid in Britain and France, significant work was done by the likes of Galton and Binet. Even in Germany and America the purposeful transformation of the old psychology into a new, experimental science was by no means complete in 1914. And while the increase in experimentation changed the body of psychological writing, there was considerable continuity in theoretical content and non-experimental methodology between the old and new psychologies. This chapter follows the emergence of the new psychology out of the old in the national traditions of Britain, Germany, and the United States, with some reference to French, Belgian, Austrian, and Italian thinkers. While the division into national traditions is useful, the psychological literature of the second half of the nineteenth century was generally a European literature, with numerous references across national and linguistic boundaries, and it became a North Atlantic literature as psychology developed in the United States and Canada. The order of treatment, Britain, Germany, and the US, follows the center of gravity of psychological activity. The final section considers some methodological and philosophical issues from these literatures. (shrink)

Should people include beef in their diet? This chapter argues that the answer is “no” by reviewing what is known and not known about the presence in cattle of three psychological traits: pain, desire, and self-consciousness. On the basis of behavioral and neuroanatomical evidence, the chapter argues that cattle are sentient beings who have things they want to do in the proximal future, but they are not self-conscious. The piece rebuts three important objections: that cattle have injury information but not (...) pain; that cattle have goal-directed behavior but not desire; and that the absence of evidence for bovine self-consciousness should not be taken as evidence that cattle lack self-consciousness. In sum, what is known about cattle cognition shifts the moral burden of proof on to the beef eaters. (shrink)

Experimenters claim some nonhuman mammals have metacognition. If correct, the results indicate some animal minds are more complex than ordinarily presumed. However, some philosophers argue for a deflationary reading of metacognition experiments, suggesting that the results can be explained in first-order terms. We agree with the deflationary interpretation of the data but we argue that the metacognition research forces the need to recognize a heretofore underappreciated feature in the theory of animal minds, which we call Unity. The disparate mental states (...) of an animal must be unified if deflationary accounts of metacognition are to hold and untoward implications avoided. Furthermore, once Unity is acknowledged, the deflationary interpretation of the experiments reveals an elevated moral standing for the nonhumans in question. (shrink)