There is an intimate relationship between our experiences and our knowledge of what it is like to have those experiences. For having an experience of Φ-ing is clearly an important way of coming to know what it is Φ, and some philosophers have even suggested that it is the only way of coming to possess such knowledge. But despite this intimate connection, we often possess WIL-knowledge after any generating experience has ended. How is this possible? One popular (...) suggestion, roughly following David Lewis, is that one retains knowledge of what it is like to Φ in virtue of retaining abilities to imagine, remember, and recognise experiences of Φ-ing. In this chapter, my aim is to clarify and update this retention hypothesis, by showing how it is independent from Lewis’ ability hypothesis (according to which WIL-knowledge is identified with these abilities), and by identifying and resolving certain ambiguities involved in interpreting Lewis’ three ability conditions, especially the ability to imagine condition. I also explore issues concerning the relative priority of these three conditions, and I argue that there is a good sense in which the ability to imagine condition is the most important of these conditions with respect to how we conceptualise and ascribe WIL-knowledge. (shrink)

It is often said that ‘what it is like’-knowledge cannot be acquired by consulting testimony or reading books [Lewis 1998; Paul 2014; 2015a]. However, people also routinely consult books like What It Is Like to Go to War [Marlantes 2014], and countless ‘what it is like’ articles and youtube videos, in the apparent hope of gaining knowledge about what it is like to have experiences they have not had themselves. This article (...) examines this puzzle and tries to solve it by appealing to recent work on knowing-wh ascriptions. In closing I indicate the wider significance of these ideas by showing how they can help us to evaluate prominent arguments by Paul [2014; 2015a] concerning transformative experiences. (shrink)

The topic of divine omniscience is well-trodden ground, with philosophers and theologians having asked virtually every question there is to ask about it. The questions regarding God's omniscience to be addressed here are as follows. First, is omniscience best understood as maximal propositional knowledge along with maximal experiential knowledge? I argue that it is. Second, is it possible for God to be essentially omniscient? I argue that it is not.

Walking through the supermarket, I see the avocados. I know they are avocados. Similarly, if you see a pumpkin on my office desk, you can know it’s a pumpkin from its looks. The phenomenology in such cases is that of “just seeing” that such and such. This phenomenology might suggest that the knowledge gained is immediate. This paper argues, to the contrary, that in these target cases, the knowledge is mediate, depending as it does on one’s knowledge of what (...) the relevant kind of thing looks like. To make the case requires examining the nature of knowing what Fs look like. Is such knowledge to be understood as knowledge of a fact, or rather as a kind of ability? From the conclusion that the knowledge in the target cases is not immediate, the paper concludes that perception does not afford us immediate knowledge concerning objects’ kinds. (shrink)

In ‘Knowing What Things Look Like,’ I argued against the immediacy of visual objectual knowledge, i.e. visual knowledge that a thing is F, for an object category F, such as avocado, tree, desk, etc. Joseph Shieber proposes a challenging dilemma in reply. Either knowing what Fs look like requires having concepts such as looks or it doesn’t. Either way my argument fails. If knowing what Fs look like doesn’t require having such (...) concepts, then he claims we can give an immediacy-friendly anti-intellectualist account of knowing what Fs look like, one that I neglected. If it does require having such concepts, then knowledge of what Fs look like plays no important role in ordinary cases of knowing things to be F by their looks. I argue for several claims. First, Shieber's anti-intellectualist proposal fails for independent reasons. Second, I give reasons for thinking that knowing what Fs look like doesn't require having a general concept of looks, which lessens worries about nonhuman animals having such knowledge. Finally, I consider the possibility, important to Shieber's argument, that nonhuman animals are simply incapable of knowing what Fs look like. I argue the implications for human knowledge are far from clear. (shrink)

Many people believe that the mind is an epistemic refuge of sorts. The idea is that when it comes to certain core mental states, one’s being in such a state automatically puts one in a position to know that one is in that state. This idea has come under attack in recent years. One particularly influential attack comes from Timothy Williamson (2000), who argues that there is no central core of states or conditions—mental or otherwise—to which we are guaranteed epistemic (...) access. In Williamson’s words, we are cognitively homeless. In this paper I will argue that Williamson’s argument for the conclusion that we are cognitively homeless fails. Then I will show that there is a class of phenomenal states that constitutes a substantial cognitive refuge. When all is said and done, I will have both defended and shed light on our cognitive home. (shrink)

This article discusses a kind of knowledge classifiable as knowledge-wh but which seems to defy analysis in terms of the standard reductive theory of knowledge-wh ascriptions, according to which they are true if and only if one knows that p, where this proposition is an acceptable answer to the wh-question ‘embedded’ in the ascription. Specifically, it is argued that certain cases of knowing what an experience is like resist such treatment. I argue that in some of these (...) cases, one can know that p, where an acceptable answer to the question ‘What’s the experience like?’ is that p, but where one does not know what the experience is like. This could point to the distinctiveness of this sort of knowledge. (shrink)

It is a reasonable worry that God would not truly love us and want our salvation if He fixed a definite point after which He will no longer offer us the graces to repent of our sins. I propose that Thomas Aquinas succeeds in showing us that God would not be cruel or arbitrary in setting up a world where embodied agents end up after death in a state where they will inevitably fail to repent of their sins. Aquinas proposes (...) that being disembodied is to be in a state where a person cannot be mistaken about what they want, given that they know themselves perfectly. If the disembodied state were like this, it would not be surprising that being in that state makes repentance impossible, since a soul would become fully integrated around whatever one desired, without any conflicting desires that could prompt repentance. Thus, humans would persist in whatever desires they had at the moment of death and disembodiment. I conclude by arguing that, while this scenario stands in need of fuller theodicy, Aquinas’ scenario is helpful in defending a view that God is not cruel or arbitrary for creating a world in which post-mortem repentance is impossible. (shrink)

This paper argues that knowledge of what it’s like varies along a spectrum from more exact to more approximate, and that phenomenal concepts vary along a spectrum in how precisely they characterize what it’s like to undergo their target experiences. This degreed picture contrasts with the standard all-or-nothing picture, where phenomenal concepts and phenomenal knowledge lack any such degreed structure. I motivate the degreed picture by appeal to (1) limits in epistemic abilities such as recognition, imagination, (...) and inference, and (2) the semantics of ‘knows what it’s like’ expressions. I argue that approximate phenomenal knowledge cannot be explained merely via determinable or vague phenomenal concepts. I develop a framework for systematizing approximate knowledge of phenomenal character. And I explain how my view challenges some standard assumptions about the acquisition conditions, requirements for mastery, and referential mechanisms of phenomenal concepts. (shrink)

‘What it is like’ talk (‘WIL-talk’) — the use of phrases such as ‘what it is like’ — is ubiquitous in discussions of phenomenal consciousness. It is used to define, make claims about, and to offer arguments concerning consciousness. But what this talk means is unclear, as is how it means what it does: how, by putting these words in this order, we communicate something about consciousness. Without a good account of WIL-talk, we cannot (...) be sure this talk sheds light, rather than casts shadows, on our investigations of consciousness. The popular technical account of WIL-talk (see e.g. Lewis, 1995, and Kim, 1998) holds that WIL-talk involves technical terms — terms which look like everyday words but have a distinct meaning — introduced by philosophers. I argue that this account is incorrect by showing that the alleged technical terms were not introduced by philosophers, and that these terms do not have a technical meaning. (shrink)

Paul (2014, 2015a) argues that one cannot rationally decide whether to have a transformative experience by trying to form judgments, in advance, about (i) what it would feel like to have that experience, and (ii) the subjective value of having such an experience. The problem is if you haven’t had the experience then you cannot know what it is like, and you need to know what it is like to assess its value. However, in (...) earlier work I argued that ‘what it is like’-knowledge comes in degrees, and I briefly suggested that, consequently, some instances of Paul’s argument schema might commit a fallacy of equivocation. The aim of this paper is to further explore and strengthen this objection by, first, offering a new argument—the modelling argument—in support of it, and then by evaluating a range of replies that might be given to this objection on Paul’s behalf. I conclude that each reply either fails or, at best, only partially succeeds in defending some but not all instances of Paul’s argument schema. In closing, I consider how we might revise Paul’s concepts of transformative experiences and choices in response to this conclusion. (shrink)

No matter how many words/gestures one uses to describe his/her qualia, I won't be able to know what it was like for him/her to experience his/her qualia. I know what it was like for me to experience my qualia, simply because I can remember what it was like for me to experience my qualia. -/- So, to me, there is no evidence that anyone else can experience his/her qualia. -/- So, one can't prove to (...) others that he/she can experience his/her qualia. One can’t (use any words/gestures to) prove to others that he/she can experience his/her qualia. -/- "What is it like to be a bat?" When I imagine what it is like to be a bat, I'm actually imagining that I am the bat. Or in other words, I’m imagining that the bat is me. -/- When I imagine that a bat is me, I’m actually imagining that a homunculus is sitting inside the bat’s body. What does this mean? What is that homunculus? That homunculus is a “clone” of me! That homunculus is another “me”! -/- So, when I imagine that a bat is me, I’m actually imagining that I am sitting inside the bat’s body. -/- So, the question “What is it like to be a bat?” is actually equivalent to the question “What is it like to be me?” or the question “If I sit inside a bat’s body (and control/feel the bat’s body) as the bat itself, what is it like to be me (under that situation)?”. -/- The question “What is it like to be me?” is actually equivalent to the question “If I sit inside a human’s body (and control/feel the human’s body) as the human himself, what is it like to be me (under that situation)?” or the question “If I sit inside my body (and control/feel my body) as myself, what is it like to be me (under that situation)?”. -/- Regarding its usage, the term “qualia” is equivalent to “(subjective) feeling” and “(subjective) experience”. -/- The term “qualia” draws our attention to the ontological question “What is the nature of (subjective) feeling/experience?”. The term “qualia” urges us to think about the ontological question “What is the nature of (subjective) feeling/experience?” endlessly. (shrink)

Much has been written on whether practical knowledge (knowledge-how) reduces to propositional knowledge (knowledge-that). Less attention has been paid to what we call deliberative knowledge (knowledge-to), i.e., knowledge ascriptions embedding other infinitival questions, like _where to meet_, _when to leave_, and _what to bring_. We offer an analysis of knowledge-to and argue on its basis that, regardless of whether knowledge-how reduces to knowledge-that, no such reduction of knowledge-to is forthcoming. Knowledge-to, unlike knowledge-that and knowledge-how, requires the agent to (...) have formed certain conditional intentions. We discuss the philosophical implications for knowledge-how, deliberative questions, and virtue. (shrink)

In his celebrated 1974 essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” Thomas Nagel stages a human-bat encounter to illustrate and support his claim that “subjective experience” is irreducible to “objective fact”: because Nagel cannot experience the world as a bat does, he will never know what it is like to be one. In Nagel’s account, heterogeneity is figured negatively—as a failure or lack of resemblance—and functions to constrain his knowledge of bats. Today, as white-nose (...) syndrome threatens bat populations across North America, might figuring heterogeneity positively, as a condition of creativity, open up new modes of receptivity and responsiveness to species extinctions? This essay turns to philosophies of becoming and to recent research in the biological sciences to explore this possibility. I suggest that attending to the heterogeneity of experience alerts us to more public dimensions of our being and may thereby work against the tendency to understand and experience ourselves as self-contained and closed off from one another and the world we share in common. This may in turn enhance our sense of entanglement with the events, bodies, and forces on the “outside” of experience, including bats and the white-nose syndrome with which they are afflicted today. Such an affirmation of heterogeneity as a condition of creativity holds the greatest promise for multispecies ethics today, I propose, when it is joined to an affirmation of incompatibilities within and between things as a real force of suffering and destruction in a heterogeneous world. (shrink)

My response to Rashed's critique of my account as theorizing instead of showing what it is like.

I argue that when it comes to understanding other people, humans have a problem that involves a combination of poor imagination and excessive trust in this imagination. Often, the problem has to do with what I call "runaway simulation" - clinging to the assumption that another person resembles you despite glaring counter-evidence. I then argue that the same type of problem appears intra-personally, as we fail miserably to imagine potential and future selves. Finally, I argue that this fact goes (...) a long way to explain the phenomenology of many transformative experiences, an explanation that does not require a special kind of knowledge to exist along the lines of "knowing what it's like". (shrink)

Ambitious higher-order theories of consciousness aim to account for conscious states when these are understood in terms of what-it-is-like-ness. This paper considers two arguments concerning this aim, and concludes that ambitious theories fail. The misrepresentation argument against HO theories aims to show that the possibility of radical misrepresentation—there being a HO state about a state the subject is not in—leads to a contradiction. In contrast, the awareness argument aims to bolster HO theories by showing that subjects are aware (...) of all their conscious states. Both arguments hinge on how we understand two related notions which are ubiquitous in discussions of consciousness: those of what-it-is-like-ness and there being something it is like for a subject to be in a mental state. This paper examines how HO theorists must understand the two crucial notions if they are to reject the misrepresentation argument but assert the awareness argument. It shows that HO theorists can and do adopt an understanding—the HO reading—which seems to give them what they want. But adopting the HO reading changes the two arguments. On this reading, the awareness argument tells us nothing about those states there is something it is like to be in, and so offers no support to ambitious HO theories. And to respond to the misrepresentation understood according to the HO reading is to simply ignore the argument presented, and so to give no response at all. As things stand, we should deny that HO theories can account for what-it-is-like-ness. (shrink)

In this paper, I present two puzzles arising from J.M. Coetzee’s novel Elizabeth Costello, a fiction which is closely connected to analytic philosophy.

It is common to characterise phenomenal consciousness as _what it is like_ to be in a mental state. This paper argues that the ‘what-it’s-like’-phrase in this context has a technical meaning, i.e. a meaning for which the association to the relevant expression is peculiar to a theoretical community. The relevant theoretical community is philosophy and some parts of cognitive science, so on this view, only philosophers and cognitive scientists use the ‘what-it’s-like’-phrase in the way that is (...) characteristic in the literature on phenomenal consciousness. This claim has important consequences. Firstly, I argue that the phrase says nothing informative about phenomenal consciousness. Secondly, I argue that the fact that non-philosophers use the phrase is not compelling evidence that they believe in phenomenal consciousness. These claims have further consequences for debates about phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Henry More argues that materialism cannot account for cases where a single subject or perceiver has multiple perceptions simultaneously. Since we clearly do have multiple perceptions at the same time--for example, when we see, hear, and smell simultaneously--More concludes that we are not wholly material. In response to More's argument, Margaret Cavendish adopts a two-fold strategy. First, she argues that there is no general obstacle to mental unification in her version of materialism. Second, Cavendish appeals to the mind or rational (...) matter--terms she often uses interchangeably—to explain the integration of sensory input from multiple senses. When the mind integrates perceptions across modalities, the different parts of rational matter share their knowledge so that they all come to perceive alike. When rational parts successfully communicate their knowledge, each part knows what all the others know. They pool their knowledge; they perceive alike. Thus, when someone hears, sees, and tastes, each part of her mind hears, sees, and tastes alike, in parallel and in unison. The Cavendishian mind, in short, approximates simplicity by achieving uniformity or homogeneity of perceptions across its parts. (shrink)

In her black and white room, Mary doesn’t know what it is like to see red. Only after undergoing an experience as of something red and hence acquainting herself with red can Mary learn what it is like. But learning what it is like to see red requires more than simply becoming acquainted with it. To be acquainted with something is to know it, but such knowledge, as we argue, is object-knowledge rather than propositional-knowledge. (...) To know what it is like one must know an appropriate propositional answer to the question ‘what is it like?’. Despite this mismatch between object-knowledge and knowing an answer, we believe that acquaintance is crucial to Mary’s epistemic progress. When Mary leaves her black and white room, her new knowledge tempts one to think that she must come to know a candidate answer (a coarse-grained fact) that she didn’t know in her room. Since Mary already knows all the physical facts in her room, any additional facts she might learn appear to threaten physicalism. In reply, many physicalists have been attracted to the phenomenal concept strategy according to which Mary can come to have new knowledge and hence know a new answer to the question ‘what is it like to see red?’ by entertaining a coarse-grained fact under a concept she didn’t possess in her room – Mary learns a new fine-grained fact. We believe both of these accounts of Mary’s epistemic progress are mistaken. As we argue, Mary could know every fact (coarse-grained and fine-grained) that might serve as an answer to the question ‘what is it like to see red?’ and still not know what it is like. The physical world leaves no leftover coarse-grained facts for Mary to learn and because concepts are sharable, easy to possess, and easy to introduce, there are possible situations in which Mary, while in her black and white room, has every concept that might make a fine-grained difference. In short, even when Mary is granted a great deal of factual knowledge and vast conceptual resources, she may still not know an appropriate answer to the question ‘what is it like to see red?’. But in any such situation, Mary lacks acquaintance with red and on this basis we argue that in order to know what it is like, in order for Mary to know an appropriate answer, Mary’s propositional knowledge must be appropriately related to her acquaintance with red. (shrink)

This is a commentary on Laurence Maloney’s chapter in Mausfeld R., and Heyer, D. (Eds.): Colour Perception: Mind and the Physical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. I discuss two related proposals as to the nature of object color formulated by Maloney. On the first proposal colors are photoreceptor excitations; on the second, they are fundamental, universal reflectance characteristics of terrestrial surfaces. I argue that the second proposal is suitable for purposes of color objectivism, whereas the first one is not. (...) However, if we look at Maloney’s – and Brian Wandell’s – models of color vision and color constancy more thoroughly, not even the second version supports absolutist versions of color objectivism, according to which observer-independent reflectance properties determine, or are identical to, the phenomenal character of color experience. (shrink)

I defend Frank Jackson's knowledge argument against physicalism in the philosophy of mind from a criticism that has been advanced by Laurence Nemirow and David Lewis. According to their criticism, what Mary lacked when she was in her black and white room was a set of abilities; she did not know how to recognize or imagine certain types of experience from a first-person perspective. Her subsequent discovery of what it is like to experience redness amounts to no (...) more than her acquisition of these abilities. The physicalist can admit this, since it does not commit one to the view that there are any facts of which Mary was ignorant . I argue against this view, on the grounds that the knowledge of what an experience is like cannot be equated with the possession of any set of abilities. (shrink)

Laboratory science is our only source of knowledge about the world as it is apart from our perceptions of the world. Empiricist philosophy, relying on evidence consisting in human perceptions, can only give us knowledge of phenomena making up the world-perceived, which recent neuroscience tells us is wholly and entirely constructed by our neuron-based human perceptual apparatus. In this light, empiricist philosophy should explicitly and fundamentally be reconceived as a method of thinking critically about phenomena, i.e. as a stripped down, (...) fallibilist, non-foundationalist version of “phenomenology”. I also describe implications of these proposals for thinking critically about and conceptualizing phenomena like the Cartesian “I”-that-thinks, consciousness, mind, personal identity, free will, and causal relationships between the brain and the conscious “I.”. (shrink)

The Growing Block Theory of time asserts that temporal reality encompasses all present and past things. The world grows as things come to be present. When something becomes past it does not cease to be, it simply moves away from the growing edge of reality. Thus past things are just like present ones, except not present. But if past things are just as real as present ones, and qualitatively just like them, how can I tell if what (...) is happening is present and not past? It seems everything would look the same to me whether I was past or present. And so I don’t know that I am present. To avoid this intolerable result, I argue on behalf of the Growing Block Theorist that the present does not look the same as the past. Experiences exemplify the property of presentness when they are present, and I can be directly acquainted with that fact. My direct acquaintance enables me to be justified in believing my experiences are present and to know the same. I develop this view and conclude by responding to objections. (shrink)

According to the Ability Hypothesis, knowing what it is like to have experience E is just having the ability to imagine or recognize or remember having experience E. I examine various versions of the Ability Hypothesis and point out that they all face serious objections. Then I propose a new version that is not vulnerable to these objections: knowing what it is like to experience E is having the ability to discriminate imagining or having (...) experience E from imagining or having any other experience. I argue that if we replace the ability to imagine or recognize with the ability to discriminate, the Ability Hypothesis can be salvaged. (shrink)

According to the resemblance account of 'what it's like' and similar constructions, a sentence such as 'there is something it’s like to have a toothache' means 'there is something having a toothache resembles'. This account has proved controversial in the literature; some writers endorse it, many reject it. We show that this conflict is illusory. Drawing on the semantics of intensional transitive verbs, we show that there are two versions of the resemblance account, depending on whether 'resembles' (...) is construed notionally or relationally. While well-known criticisms of the resemblance account undermine its relational version, they do not touch its notional version. On the contrary, the notional version is equivalent to various accounts usually interpreted as rivals to resemblance. We end by noting that this resolution of the controversy (a) explains why 'like', which is a comparative, appears in a construction that concerns the properties of events, and (b) removes any pressure to suppose that 'like' is ambiguous between a comparative and a non-comparative sense. (shrink)

David Lewis has argued that “having an experience is the best way or perhaps the only way, of coming to know what that experience is like”; when an experience is of a sufficiently new sort, mere science lessons are not enough. Developing this Lewisian line, L.A. Paul has suggested that some experiences are epistemically transformative. Until an individual has such an experience it remains epistemically inaccessible to her. No amount of stories and theories and testimony from others can (...) teach her what it is like to have it, nor is she able to achieve this knowledge by way of imaginative projection. It’s this last claim that is the focus of this paper. In particular, I explore the case for the claim that some experiences are in principle imaginatively inaccessible to someone who has not undergone the experience itself or one relevantly similar. As I will suggest, this case is not as strong as is often thought. Close attention to the mechanisms of imagination, and in particular, to cases of skilled imaginers, suggests how techniques of imaginative scaffolding can sometimes be used to give us epistemic access to experiences we have not had, even ones that are radically different from any that we have had before. As a result, considerably fewer experiences remain imaginatively out of reach than proponents of transformative experience would have us believe. Experience may well be the best teacher, but this paper aims to show that imagination comes in a close second. (shrink)

Since nothing about God is passive, and the perception of pain is inherently passive, then it seems that God does not know what it is like to experience pain. Nor would he be able to cause us to experience pain, for his experience would then be a sensation (which would require God to have senses, which he does not). My suggestion is that Berkeley avoids this situation by describing how God knows about pain “among other things” (i.e. as (...) something whose identity is intelligible in terms of the integrated network of things). This avoids having to assume that God has ideas (including pain) apart from his willing that there be perceivers who have specific ideas that are in harmony or not in harmony with one another. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a new solution to Mary’s puzzle in Jackson’s famous knowledge argument. We are told that imprisoned Mary knows all facts or truths about color and color vision. On her release, she learns something new according to B-type of materialism and according to property dualism. I argue that this cognitive improvement can only be accounted for in terms of what Schellenberg has recently called “capacitism,” namely the claim that that experience is constitutively a matter (...) of discriminating and singling out particulars by employing perceptual capacities. Of course, I am not claiming that knowing the phenomenal character is simply the possession of abilities, let alone that the phenomenal character is a sort of know-how. That is why my claim is not affiliated with Lewis and Nemirow's ability hypothesis position. I take for granted here a sort of property-representationalism, according to which the phenomenal character of experience supervenes on the cluster of properties that the respective experiences represent. On her release, Mary acquires those perceptual abilities on the basis of which she learns to discriminate all shades of color. And after applying her old physical concept RED to the shade of red, she comes to know what it is like to experience red (propositional knowledge). (shrink)

Many philosophers have held that we cannot say what it is like to be a bat as they present a fundamentally alien form of life. Another view held by some philosophers, bat scientists, and even many laypersons is that echolocation is, somehow, at least in part, a kind of visual experience. Either way, bat echolocation is taken to be something very mysterious and exotic. I utilize empirical and intuitive considerations to support an alternative view making a much more (...) mundane contention about bat phenomenology: echolocatory experience probably just has an auditory character. These points also call for further reflection on our intuitions about animal consciousness and standard arguments for the explanatory gap. (shrink)

You can demonstrate a subjective quality like redness is different from red light. If you add a device that converts a red signal into a green one, between the retina and the optic nerve, the strawberry will seem green. It’s not about light hitting the retina, it’s about how the signal is processed. In this case, the greenness must be a quality of our conscious knowledge of the strawberry, not of the red light landing on the retina. If you (...) use sufficient, well defined terminology, you can objectively communicate the nature of subjective qualities. For example, even though you know what it is like to see something that is red you cannot know that what happens inside my brain is the same as yours. It may be that “My redness is like your greenness, both of which we call red.” The properties of the red light are the same, but the experience the light produces could be different. What we lack is a universal dictionary to define what “redness” is, and how it differs from “red”. This is because physicists can’t yet answer: “Which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain, including possible descriptions of yet unknown processes, is a description of redness?” Consciousness isn’t a ‘hard problem’ it is a color problem. Because if you understand color, that model of computation can extend to the rest of consciousness. (shrink)

When interacting with other people, we assume that they have their reasons for what they do and believe, and experience recognizable feelings and emotions. When people act from weakness of will or are otherwise irrational, what they do can still be comprehensible to us, since we know what it is like to fall for temptation and act against one’s better judgment. Still, when someone’s experiences, feelings and way of thinking is vastly different from our own, understanding (...) them becomes increasingly difficult. Delusions and psychosis are often seen as marking the end of intelligibility. In this paper, I argue first for the importance of seeing other people as intelligible as long as this is at all possible. Second, I argue, based on both previous literature and my own lived experience, that more psychotic phenomena than previously thought can be rendered at least somewhat intelligible. Besides bizarre experiences like illusions, hallucinations and intense feelings of significance, I also explain what it is like to lose one’s bedrock, and how this loss impacts which beliefs one has reason to reject. Finally, I give an inside account of some disturbances of reason, and show that there are important similarities between certain psychotic reasoning problems and common non-pathological phenomena. (shrink)

What It’s Like to Chill Out With Whom the Rest of the World Considers As The Most Ruthless Men: Ratko Mladic, Goran Hadzic and Radovan Karadzic (+) Confessions of a Female War Crimes Investigator By Jill Louise Starr NJ USA -/- Read My Entire Book Here (True Story) http://sites.google.com/site/thelawprojectscenternycoffices/what-it-s-like-to-chill-out-with-whom-the-rest-of-the-world-considers-as-the-most-ruthless-men-ratko-mladic-goran- hadzic-and-radovan-karadzic-confessions-of-a-female-war-crimes-investigator -/- Retrospectively, it was all so simple, natural and matter of fact being on a boat restaurant in Belgrade, sitting with, laughing, drinking a two hundred bottle of (...) wine and chatting about war and peace while Ratko Mladic held my hand. Mladic, a man considered the world’s most ruthless war criminal since Adolf Hitler, still at large and currently having a five million dollar bounty on his head for genocide by the international community. Yet there I was with my two best friends at the time, a former Serbian diplomat, his wife, and Ratko Mladic just chilling. There was no security, nothing you’d ordinarily expect in such circumstances. Referring to himself merely as, Sharko; this is the story of it all came about. Diplomatic / International Relations Consultant & War Crimes Investigator - War - Peace - Preventive Diplomatic Strategies - International Law - Charitable Causes - International Business - International Political Economy - Human Rights - Politics - War Crimes Investigations - Anti-Terrorism - Law Projects Center Funded Projects (YCICC) Internationally LPCYU Home Website -/- Irrefutable Proof ICTY Is Corrupt Court/Irrefutable Proof the Hague Court Cannot Legitimately Prosecute Karadzic Case By Jill Starr I want to stress, in this particular meeting , there was no observer status at the ICC Preparatory Meetings at the United Nations in New York City in 2001. What I did, made a historical precedent. I was asked by, Darko Trifunovic 1st Secretary of the Bosnian MIssion, to take his place, in a CLOSED DOOR UNITED NATIONS MEETING. This means, ONLY HEADS OF AMBASSADORIAL MISSIONS WERE ALLOWED IN THE MEETING. There was no "Observer Status for say NGO's such as Amnesty International." I represented a Country as an American Citizen that day; the Repuklika Srpska. This never occurred before to my knowledge ever. It was an error. My former professor, Arnold Stark, walked me in, A former State Dept. man chosen to be the former Ambassador from the USA to Bonn/Germany (and he declined years back because of his wife at the time). He knew it was illegal. It said on these paper I picked up in the meeting, Anyone, Richard Holbrooke, sat across from me, discussing this meeting outside the meeting itself thereafter , "would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of int'l law." I heard the Ambassadors of the world ALL DISCUS TRADING MONEY FOR ICC AND ICTY COURT VERDICT AS WELL AS FUTURE JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS -/- http://sites.google.com/site/thelawprojectscenternycoffices/home/irrefutable-proof-icty-is-corrupt-c ourt-irrefutable-proof-the-hague-court-cannot-legitimately-prosecute-karadzic-case -/- http://picasaweb.google.com/lpcyusa/IrrefutableProofICTYIsCorruptCourtIrrefutabl# (The Documentary Secret United Nations ICC Meeting Papers Scanned Images) OR http://community.jigsaw.com/t5/media/gallerypage/user-id/903610# -/- Rea dMore Here _> Read the entire story here My testimonial video on Youtube _> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKe-5LORsGs -/- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKe-5LORsGs (My YouTube VIDEO) -/- This legal technicality indicates the Hague must dismiss charges against Dr Karadzic and others awaiting trials in the Hague jail; like it or not. -/- Unfortunately for the Signatures Of the Rome Statute United Nations member states instituting the ICC & ICTY housed at the Hague, insofar as the, Radovan Karadzic, as with the other Hague cases awaiting trial there, I personally witnessed these United Nations member states having a substantial conversations, and, openly speaking about trading judicial appointments and verdicts for financial funding when I attended the 2001 ICC Preparatory Meetings at the UN in Manhattan making the iCTY and ICC morally incapable trying Radovan Karazdic and others. -/- I witnessed with my own eyes and ears when attending the 2001 Preparatory Meetings to establish an newly emergent International Criminal Court, the exact caliber of criminal corruption running so very deeply at the Hague, that it was a perfectly viable topic of legitimate conversation in those meetings I attended to debate trading verdicts AND judicial appointments, for monetary funding. -/- Jilly wrote:*The rep from Spain became distraught and when her country’s proposal was not taken to well by the chair of the meeting , then Spain argued in a particularly loud and noticably strongly vocal manner, “Spain (my country) strongly believes if we contribute most financial support to the Hague’s highest court, that ought to give us and other countries feeding it financially MORE direct power over its decisions.” -/- ((((((((((((((((((((((((( ((((((((((((((((((((((((( Instead of censoring the country representative from Spain for even bringing up this unjust, illegal and unfair judicial idea of bribery for international judicial verdicts and judicial appointments, all country representatives present in the meeting that day all treated the Spain proposition as a ”totally legitimate topic” discussed and debated it between each other for some time. I was quite shocked! The idea was “let’s discuss it.” "It’s a great topic to discuss." -/- Some countries agreed with Spain’s propositions while others did not. The point here is, bribery for judicial verdicts and judicial appointments was treated as a totally legitimate topic instead of an illegitimate topic which it is in the meeting that I attended in 2001 that day to establish the ground work for a newly emergent international criminal court.)))))))))))))))))))))))))))) -/- In particular., since “Spain” was so overtly unafraid in bringing up this topic of trading financial funding the ICC for influence over its future judicial appointments and verdicts in front of every other UN member state present that day at the UN, “Spain” must have already known by previous experience the topic of bribery was “socially acceptable” for conversation that day. They must have previously spoke about bribing the ICTY and ICC before in meetings; this is my take an international sociological honor student. -/- SPAIN’s diplomatic gesture of international justice insofar as, Serbia, in all of this is, disgusting morally!SPAIN HAS TAUGHT THE WORLD THE TRUE DEFINITION OF AN “INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT.” -/- I represented the state interests’ of the Former Yugoslavia, in Diplomat Darko Trifunovic’s absence in those meetings and I am proud to undertake this effort on Serbia’s behalf. http://picasaweb.google.com/lpcyusa (My Political Satire Blog) Diplomatic / International Relations Consultant & War Crimes Investigator - War - Peace - Preventive Diplomatic Strategies - International Law - Charitable Causes - International Business - International Political Economy - Human Rights - Politics - War Crimes Investigations - Anti-Terrorism - Law Projects Center Funded Projects (YCICC) Internationally http://sites.google.com/site/jillstarrsite -/- -/- . 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In an effort to construct a plausible theory of experience-based welfare, Wayne Sumner imposes two requirements on the relevant kind of experience: the information requirement and the autonomy requirement. I argue that both requirements are problematic.First, I argue (very briefly) that a well-know case like ‘the deceived businessman’ need not support the information requirement as Sumner believes. Second, I introduce a case designed to cast further doubt on the information requirement. Third, I attend to a shortcoming in Sumner’s theory (...) of welfare, namely that it is unclear which of later and informed assessments are to be treated as authoritative when it comes to the evaluation of a person’s welfare. Finally, I suggest that, in combination with ‘welfarism’ (to which Sumner subscribes, and which has it that welfare is all that matters from a moral viewpoint), the information requirement entail morally troublesome conclusions: e.g. the conclusion that, from a moral point of view, we should, other things being equal, only to be concerned with the alternative that makes one person slightly better off in respect of welfare instead of also being morally concerned with the alternative that makes one person very happy. (shrink)

Could a person ever transcend what it is like to be in the world as a human being? Could we ever know what it is like to be other creatures? Questions about the overcoming of a human perspective are not uncommon in the history of philosophy. In the last century, those very interrogatives were notably raised by American philosopher Thomas Nagel in the context of philosophy of mind. In his 1974 essay What is it (...) class='Hi'>Like to Be a Bat?, Nagel offered reflections on human subjectivity and its constraints. Nagel’s insights were elaborated before the social diffusion of computers and could not anticipate the cultural impact of technological artefacts capable of materializing interactive simulated worlds as well as disclosing virtual alternatives to the “self.” In this sense, this article proposes an understanding of computers as epistemological and ontological instruments. The embracing of a phenomenological standpoint entails that philosophical issues are engaged and understood from a fundamentally practical perspective. In terms of philosophical praxis, or “applied philosophy,” I explored the relationship between human phenomenologies and digital mediation through the design and the development of experimental video games. For instance, I have conceptualized the first-person action-adventure video game Haerfest (Technically Finished 2009) as a digital re-formulation of the questions posed in Nagel’s famous essay. Experiencing a bat’s perceptual equipment in Haerfest practically corroborates Nagel’s conclusions: there is no way for humans to map, reproduce, or even experience the consciousness of an actual bat. Although unverifiable in its correspondence to that of bats, Haerfest still grants access to experiences and perceptions that, albeit still inescapably within the boundaries of human kinds of phenomenologies, were inaccessible to humans prior to the advent of computers. Phenomenological alterations and virtual experiences disclosed by interactive digital media cannot take place without a shift in human kinds of ontologies, a shift which this study recognizes as the fundamental ground for the development of a new humanism (I deem it necessary to specify that I am not utilizing the term “humanism” in its common connotation, that is to say the one that emerged from the encounter between the Roman civilization and the late Hellenistic culture. According to this conventional acceptation, humanism indicates the realization of the human essence through “scholarship and training in good conduct” (Heidegger 1998, p. 244). However, Heidegger observed that this understanding of humanism does not truly cater to the original essence of human beings, but rather “is determined with regard to an already established interpretation of nature, history, world, and […] beings as a whole.” (Heidegger 1998, p. 245) The German thinker found this way of embracing humanism reductive: a by-product of Western metaphysics. As Heidegger himself specified in his 1949 essay Letter on Humanism, his opposition to the traditional acceptation of the term humanism does not advocate for the “inhuman” or a return to the “barbaric” but stems instead from the belief that the humanism can only be properly understood and restored in culture as more original way of meditating and caring for humanity and understanding its relationship with Being.). Additionally, this study explicitly proposes and exemplifies the use of interactive digital technology as a medium for testing, developing and disseminating philosophical notions, problems and hypotheses in ways which are alternative to the traditional textual one. Presented as virtual experiences, philosophical concepts can be accessed without the filter of subjective imagination. In a persistent, interactive, simulated environment, I claim that the crafting and the mediation of thought takes a novel, projective (In Martin Heidegger’s 1927 Being and Time, the term “projectivity” indicates the way a Being opens to the world in terms of its possibilities of being (Heidegger 1962, pp. 184–185, BT 145). Inspired by Heidegger’s and Vilem Flusser’s work in the field of philosophy of technology as well as Helmuth Plessner’s anthropological position presented in his 1928 book Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch. Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie, this study understands the concept of projectivity as the innate openness of human beings to construct themselves and their world by means of technical artefacts. In this sense, this study proposes a fundamental understanding of technology as the materialization of mankind’s tendency to overcome its physical, perceptual and communicative limitations.) dimension which I propose to call “augmented ontology.”. (shrink)

In this article I distinguish the notion of there being something it is like to be a certain kind of creature from that of there being something it is like to have a certain kind of experience. Work on consciousness has typically dealt with the latter while employing the language of the former. I propose several ways of analyzing what it is like to be a certain kind of creature and find problems with them all. The (...) upshot is that even if there is something it is like to have certain kinds of experience, it does not follow that there is anything it is like to be a certain kind of creature. Skepticism about the existence of something that it is like to be an F is recommended. (shrink)

In two very influential papers from 2008, Tamar Gendler introduced the concept of “alief” to describe the mental state one is in when acting in ways contrary to their consciously professed beliefs. For example, if asked to eat what they know is fudge, but shaped into the form of dog feces, they will hesitate, and behave in a manner that would be consistent with the belief that the fudge is really poop. They alieve that it is disgusting, while they (...) believe it is not. This paper investigates laughter from self-proclaimed egalitarian, tolerant folk, in response to oppressive jokes that might fit the alief-model. If I merely alieve the content of a joke at which I laugh, will that constitute morally exculpating reasons for such laughter? And what else might it imply? This paper will provide insights at the intersections of humor studies, ethics, epistemology, phenomenology, and the philosophy of mind, all while being moderately and appropriately amusing. (shrink)

We know that Homo sapiens will not exist forever. Given this, how should our species end? What are the reasons, if any, to delay our extinction? In this paper, I show that the pre-eminent reasons which favour prolonging the existence of the species are partial: they will arise from the particular attachments and projects of the final few generations. While there may also be impartial reasons to prolong the species, these reasons are liable, with time, to reverse their valence: (...) we can be reasonably confident that they will ultimately recommend hastening the demise of the species. Consequently, it is likely that our descendants will eventually face a difficult -- possibly tragic -- conflict, between partial duties that recommend living on, and an impartial duty to extinguish the species. (shrink)

Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Wadsworth 2015, 6th edition, eds Michael Rea and Louis Pojman. What is propositional faith? At a first approximation, we might answer that it is the psychological attitude picked out by standard uses of the English locution “S has faith that p,” where p takes declarative sentences as instances, as in “He has faith that they’ll win”. Although correct, this answer is not nearly as informative as we might like. Many people say (...) that there is a more informative answer. They say that, at the very least, propositional faith requires propositional belief. More precisely, they say that faith that p requires belief that p or that it must be partly constituted by belief that p. This view is common enough; call it the Common View. I have two main aims in this paper: (i) to exhibit the falsity of the Common View and the paucity of reasons for it, and (ii) to sketch a more accurate and comprehensive account of what propositional faith is. (shrink)

Since the revival of artificial intelligence (AI) research, many countries in the world have proposed their visions of an AI-powered world: Germany with the concept of “Industry 4.0,”1 Japan with the concept of “Society 5.0,”2 China with the “New Generation Artificial Intelligence Plan (AIDP).”3 In all of the grand visions, all governments emphasize the “human-centric element” in their plans. This essay focuses on the concept of trust in Confucian societies and places this very human element in the context of an (...) increasingly AI-powered world. (shrink)

Twin-earth thought experiments, standardly construed, support the externalist doctrine that the content of propositional attitudes involving natural-kind terms supervenes upon properties external to those who entertain them. But this doctrine in conjunction with a common view of self-knowledge might have the intolerable consequence that substantial propositions concerning the environment could be knowable a priori. Since both doctrines, externalism and privileged self-knowledge, appear independently plausible, there is then a paradox facing the attempt to hold them concurrently. I shall argue, however, that (...) externalist claims about the dependence of content on environmental factors presuppose certain theses about the semantics of natural-kind terms that, if sound, would make those claims eligible for empirical justification instead. In fact, that is the only interpretation of their epistemic status that could square with the standard conclusion from twin-earth cases. Furthermore, it can be shown to solve the paradox of externalism and self-knowledge in a more doxastically conservative way--accommodating precisely each of the well-accepted intuitions about knowledge, closure and the individuation of content given up by available competitors. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is exposition on the themes of method and mysticism in the work of Simone Weil. Nearly a decade before the onset of her first mystical experience, Weil developed a method to be rigorously applied in daily philosophical reflection. She outlines this method in her dissertation on Descartes (1929-1930). I examine the question of how Weil applied method to philosophical reflection on her mystical experiences (onset 1938-1939). I analyze Weil’s mystical experiences as a type of transformative (...) experience in L. A. Paul’s strict sense of the term. On Paul’s view, an experience is transformative if it is both epistemically and personally transformative. An experience is epistemically transformative if the only way to know what it is like to have it is to have it yourself. An experience is personally transformative if it changes your point of view, including your core preferences (Paul, 2014). I present a thought experiment and textual evidence to motivate the claim that Weil’s mystical experiences meet Paul’s conditions for transformative experience. I then propose two epistemological facts that can be revealed by philosophical reflection on mystical experience. First, it is possible to read meaning erroneously in the appearances of things. Second, it is possible to come to hold to the certainty of a conviction for reasons that elude the intellect. My findings suggest that Weil’s late views on philosophy accommodate these two epistemological constraints, thereby demonstrating a possible connection between Weil’s mystical experiences and her mature views on the nature, scope, and proper method of philosophy. However, my preliminary findings also suggest that Weil’s early work on method may have anticipated these epistemological obstacles prior to the onset of her first mystical experience. Thus, further exposition of Weil’s method is needed to support or elucidate the claim (Rozelle-Stone and Davis, 2021) that Weil’s epistemology underwent significant changes because of her mystical experiences. (shrink)

In this article, I explore a Wittgensteinian approach to blasphemy. While philosophy of religion tends to have very little to say about blasphemy, we can note two key, typically unchallenged, assumptions about it. First, there is the Assertion from Anywhere Assumption: whether one can successfully blaspheme is entirely independent of one’s religious views, commitments, or way of life. Second, there is the Act of Communication Assumption: blasphemy is essentially an act of assertion. I contend that a Wittgensteinian approach rejects both (...) assumptions and, thus, reorients our conception of blasphemy. Take two characteristically Wittgensteinian claims. First, religious statements/beliefs have a different ‘grammar’ than empirical propositions. Second (and relatedly), holding religious beliefs necessarily connects with how one lives. Wittgensteinian blasphemy rejects the Assertion from Anywhere Assumption: to blaspheme, one must be in or have been in the religious framework one blasphemes. Being entirely outside of that context divests one’s blasphemy from its proper content. Second, Wittgensteinian blasphemy rejects the Act of Communication Assumption: if religious belief is centrally a form of life, then blasphemy must be lived out as well. Wittgensteinian blasphemy is less about the utterances one makes and more about how one’s life intersects (or fails to intersect) with religiosity. (shrink)

What I should like to explore here is the experience of landscape both through the arts and as an art, an art of environmental appreciation. A clearer understanding of landscape, environment, and art, as well as what it is to "know" in the context of environmental experience, suggests how the arts can contribute to an intimate, engaged experience of landscape, and how this process itself can be construed as an art in which the perceiver is a quasi-artist. (...) I should like to do this through a re-weaving of words and ideas to propose a new fabric for understanding the relation of art, landscape, and perceiver. The threads I want to combine are four: art, environment, landscape, and knowing in the sense of appreciation. I hope to show how the loose-knit texture they form can be spread over a particular landscape in such a way that the landscape will fill the fabric and the fabric integrate the landscape. I realize that I may have over-worked my metaphor, so I shall leave it now, but I hope that it can serve as a guiding image for the relation and application of the ideas I shall be working with. (shrink)

It seems like experience plays a positive—even essential—role in generating some knowledge. The problem is, it’s not clear what that role is. To see this, suppose that when your visual system takes in information about the world around you it skips the experience step and just automatically and immediately generates beliefs in you about your surroundings. A lot of philosophers think that, in such a case, you would (or at least could) still know, via perception, about the world (...) around you. But then that raises the question: What epistemic role was the experience playing? How did it contribute to your knowledge of your surroundings? Philosophers have given many different answers to these questions. But, for various reasons, none of them has really stuck. In this paper I offer and defend a different answer to these questions—a solution to the problem—which avoids the pitfalls of other answers. I argue that experience is, all by itself, a kind of knowledge—it’s what Bertrand Russell (1912) calls “knowledge of things”. So I argue that experience helps generate knowledge simply by being knowledge. (shrink)

I develop and defend "metaethical experientialism," the thesis that phenomenal facts explain certain kinds of value facts. I argue, for example, that anyone who knows what it’s like to feel extreme pain is in a position to know that that kind of experience is bad. I argue that metaethical experientialism yields genuine counterexamples to the principle that no ethical conclusion can be derived from purely descriptive premises. I also discuss the prospects for a pluralistic metaethics, whereby different metaethical (...) theories hold for different classes of ethical facts. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the phenomenon of faultless disagreement for predicates of taste may be fruitfully explained by appealing to the vagueness of predicates of taste and the epistemicist reading of vagueness as defended by Timothy Williamson (1994). I begin by arguing that this position is better suited to explain both the “faultless” and “disagreement” intuition. The first is explained here by appealing to the necessary ignorance of the predicate’s boundaries and a plausible account of constitutive norms of (...) taste assertions, while the second by insisting on classical, absolutist semantics for judgments containing predicates of taste. Furthermore, I analyze the arguments against the reading of taste predicates as vague based on the alleged epistemic privilege concerning one’s taste and on the lack of definite cases. Responding to these objections, I develop a plausible account of constitutive norms of taste assertions, comment on the assumed epistemic privilege concerning taste ascriptions and provide a more detailed account of sources of the vagueness of predicates of personal taste, which I dub “super-vagueness.”. (shrink)

You can demonstrate a subjective quality like redness is different from red light. If you add a device that converts a red signal into a green one, between the retina and the optic nerve, the strawberry will seem green. It’s not about light hitting the retina, it’s about how the signal is processed. In this case, the greenness must be a quality of our conscious knowledge of the strawberry, not of the red light landing on the retina. If you (...) use sufficient, well defined terminology, you can objectively communicate the nature of subjective qualities. For example, even though you know what it is like to see something that is red you cannot know that what happens inside my brain is the same as yours. It may be that “My redness is like your greenness, both of which we call red.” The properties of the red light are the same, but the experience the light produces could be different. What we lack is a universal dictionary to define what “redness” is, and how it differs from “red”. This is because physicists can’t yet answer: “Which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain, including possible descriptions of yet unknown processes, is a description of redness?” Consciousness isn’t a ‘hard problem’ it is a color problem. Because if you understand color, that model of computation can extend to the rest of consciousness. (shrink)