A central question, if not the central question, of philosophy of perception is whether sensory states have a nature similar to thoughts about the world, whether they are essentially representational. According to the content view, at least some of our sensory states are, at their core, representations with contents that are either accurate or inaccurate. Tyler Burge’s Origins of Objectivity is the most sustained and sophisticated defense of the content view to date. His defense of the view is problematic in (...) several ways. The most significant problem is that his approach does not sit well with mainstream perceptual psychology. (shrink)

This volume is essential to anyone doing work on the philosophy of mind. Burge’s contribution to this field of philosophy is of the utmost importance and must be carefully considered if we are to make progress with respect to the nature of mental states and events. The essays included in this volume have established Burge as a leading philosopher of mind in general, and a defender of anti-individualism in particular. The order of the essays in defense of anti-individualism is not (...) historical; instead, it reflects the evolution of Burge's view. -/- . (shrink)

Tyler Burge is an American philosopher whose body of work spans several areas of theoretical philosophy in the analytic tradition. While Burge has made important contributions to the philosophy of language and logic, he is most renowned for his work in philosophy of mind and epistemology. In particular, he is known for articulating and developing a view he labels ‘anti-individualism.’ In his later work, Burge connects his views with state-of-the-art scientific theory. Despite this emphasis on empirical considerations, Burge stands in (...) an important relationship to the rationalist tradition in philosophy. This entry surveys Burge’s work and seeks to situate it in the larger philosophical landscape. (shrink)

In Origins of Objectivity, Burge presents three arguments against what he calls ‘deflationism’: the project of explaining the representational function in terms of the notion of biological function. I evaluate these arguments and argue that they are not convincing.

Tyler Burge is famous for defending primitivist naturalism about mental representations, according to which mental representations are primitive natural states. Primitivist naturalism contrasts with semantic reductionism, according to which mental representations are reducible to more fundamental natural states. Burge developed the most compelling and influential attack on semantic reductionism from a primitivist naturalist point of view. My goal in this paper is to defend semantic reduc- tionism from Burge’s attack. I assess and refute his objection to the motivations for semantic (...) reductionism and his objection to the semantic reductionist theory that he takes to be the most promising one, namely, teleosemantics. I argue that in spite of the ingenuity of Burge’s objections, they fail to show that there is no motivation for taking representational states as reducible to more fundamental natural states or that the core thesis of teleosemantics is flawed. (shrink)

According to the Disjunction Problem, teleological theories of perceptual content are unable to explain why it is that a subject represents an F when an F causes the perception and not the disjunction F v G, given that the subject has mistaken G’s for F’s in the past. Without an adequate explanation these theories are stuck without an account of how non-veridical representation is possible, which would be an unsettling result. In this paper I defend Burge’s teleological theory of perception (...) against the Disjunction Problem, arguing that a perceptual state’s representing what I call an error-prohibiting disjunctive property is incompatible with the truth of perceptual anti-individualism. And because perceptual anti-individualism is at the heart of Burge’s theory, I conclude that Burgeans need not be concerned with the Disjunction Problem. (shrink)

One recently proposed solution to the Liar paradox is the contextual theory of truth. Tyler Burge (1979) argues that truth is an indexical notion and that the extension of the truth predicate shifts during Liar reasoning. A Liar sentence might be true in one context and false in another. To many, contextualism seems to capture our pre-theoretic intuitions about the semantic paradoxes; this is especially due to its reliance on the so-called Revenge phenomenon. I, however, show that Super-Liar sentences (where (...) a Super-Liar sentence is a sentence which says of itself that it is not true in any context) generate a significant problem for Burge’s contextual theory of truth. (shrink)

Recently, Charles Goldhaber (2019) has argued that Tyler Burge’s (2005, 2010, 2011) arguments against disjunctivism in the philosophy of perception fail when juxtaposed with the literature in perceptual psychology. In addition, Goldhaber traces Burge’s motives for dismissing disjunctivism: his underlying theoretical assumptions vis-à-vis human rationality virtually force him to maintain that there is a genuine inconsistency between disjunctivism and perceptual psychology. While Goldhaber aims to defend epistemological disjunctivism à la John McDowell, my concern will be the other target of Burge’s (...) attack, namely John Campbell’s (2002a, 2002b, 2011a) relationism. I will reexamine the Burge/Campbell debate concerning the role of perceptual psychology in theorizing about the nature of perception and the status of perceptual beliefs so that I can support Goldhaber’s stance that Burge’s plan to put the kibosh on disjunctivism backfires in the end. Finally, by using the challenge of cognitive penetrability, I show how Burge’s argumentation strategy can be turned against him. (shrink)

According to the Acceptance Principle, a person is entitled to accept a proposition that is presented as true (asserted) and that is intelligible to him or her, unless there are stronger reasons not to. Burge assumes this Principle and then argues that it has an apriori justification, basis or rationale. This paper expounds Burge's teleological reliability framework and the details of his a priori justification for the Principle. It then raises three significant doubts.

When “Sinning Against Frege” was published in 1979 I thought it should have given a real turn in the discussion on Frege’s ideas. Actually the impact was less then I imagined, and the problem was that – at the end of the story – Tyler Burge’s interpretation should have posed a shadow on the direct reference theories and the Millean criticism of descriptivist theories of proper names, based on the criticism of the identification of Frege’s notion of sense with linguistic (...) meaning or connotation1. In fact Burge (1979) claims that the identification of Frege’s notion of sense with the notion of linguistic meaning is a «basic misunderstanding» of Frege’s work2. This claim implies that Fregean senses are not like Mill’s connotations; therefore many direct-reference criticisms against Frege, which are grounded on Mill’s claims that proper names have no connotation, lose their efficacy. Burge, in giving specifications3, apparently accepts at least the idea that sense is an aspect of meaning, in particular «the aspect of meaning relevant to fixing the truth value of sentences». This feature is the “harmless” part of the assimilation of sense and linguistic meaning; but this assimilation becomes dangerous when context dependence is concerned. Revisiting Burge (1979), after more than two decades of debate on indexicals, may help to better understand the originality and the limitation of his claims. (shrink)

Nos anos 1970s, Hilary Putnam defendeu a tese que designadores de espécies naturais, como “água”, “tigre” e “ouro”, são termos indexicais que mudam de significado a cada contexto. No entanto, Tyler Burge rejeitou essa tese, e Putnam veio a adotar a posição de Burge. A rejeição de Burge está apoiada na distinção entre crenças de dicto e crenças de re. Nesse artigo veremos os pontos de contato entre as posições de Putnam e Burge, a posição de Putnam nos anos 1970s, (...) os principais argumentos de Burge contra a tese da indexicalidade dos designadores de espécies naturais e a diferença entre crenças de dicto e crenças de re. (shrink)

In this paper I apply a well known tension between cognitive and semantic aspects in Frege’s notion of sense to his treatment of indexicals. I first discusses Burge’s attack against the identification of sense and meaning, and Kripke’s answer supporting such identification. After showing different problems for both interpreters, the author claims that the tension in Frege’s conception of sense (semantic and cognitive) accounts for some shortcomings of both views, and that considering the tension helps in understanding apparently contradictory Fregean (...) claims about sameness of sense of sentences with indexicals. I conclude that the Fregean notion of sense, also in its cognitive aspect, cannot be reduced to linguistic meaning, and that the Fregean tension between two notions of sense may also explain the discussion Frege gives on the indexical “I”, proposing to develop a picture of indexicals as hidden complex demonstratives, as originally suggested by Burge. (shrink)

Song Dynasty, revival of Confucianism,Women oppression.

Tyler Burge famously argues in his 1993 paper "Content Preservation" that it is not only a priori true that we enjoy a prima facie warrant to take what others assert as true, but also that there our warrant to believe what we are told in certain special cases is a priori. So just as our warrant for believing certain mathematical truths might be a priori, so too there are cases of belief through testimony that are a priori. Then in a (...) 2013 Postscript to "Content Preservation" he took it all back. All of Burge's ideas and arguments for and against are interesting and important, and deepen our understanding of testimony, comprehension, warrant, and the a priori. But his ideas and arguments are hard to understand. This paper explains all of ideas and arguments, both for and against, in a clear and comprehensive way. Along the way, Anna-Sara Malmgren's interpretation and criticism of Burge's position is also expounded and criticized. (shrink)

Tyler Burge first introduced his distinction between epistemic entitlement and epistemic justification in ‘Content Preservation’ in 1993. He has since deployed the distinction in over twenty papers, changing his formulation around 2009. His distinction and its basis, however, is not well understood in the literature. This chapter distinguishes two uses of ‘entitlement’ in Burge, and then focuses on his distinction between justification and entitlement, two forms of warrant, where warrants consists in the exercise of a reliable belief-forming competence. Since he (...) draws the distinction in terms of reasons, this chapter brings his account of reasons altogether in one place. The chapter introduces a decision-procedure for classifying warrants as justifications or entitlements. The distinction between justification and entitlement is not the same as the inferential vs. non-inferential distinction. The chapter distinguishes inference from processing, thinking, reasoning, and critically reasoning. Burge’s new formulation of the distinction was driven by the recognition of non-accessible modular reasons. Three kinds of access are distinguished. (shrink)

In 'Perceptual Entitlement' (PPR 2003), Tyler Burge argues that on his teleological reliabilist account of perceptual warrant, warrant will persist in non-normal conditions, even radical skeptical scenarios like demon worlds. This paper explains why Burge's explanation falls short. But if we distinguish two grades of warrant, we can explain, in proper functionalist, teleological reliabilist terms, why warrant should persist in demon worlds. A normally functioning belief-forming process confers warrant in all worlds, provided it is reliable in normal conditions when functioning (...) normally. The first grade requires normal functioning. The second grade also requires being situated in normal conditions. (shrink)

We review the "Entitlement" projects of Tyler Burge and Crispin Wright in light of recent work from and surrounding both philosophers. Our review dispels three misunderstandings. First, Burge and Wright are not involved in a common “entitlement” project. Second, though for both Wright and Burge entitlement is the new notion, “entitlement” is not some altogether third topic not clearly connected to the nature of knowledge or the encounter with skepticism. Third, entitlement vs. justification does not align with the externalism vs. (...) internalism distinction. (shrink)

The paper is an examination of Tyler Burge’s notion of epistemic entitlement. It begins with consideration of a recent attempt to understand entitlement, including the ways in which it differs from the more traditional notion of justification. The paper argues that each of Casullo’s central contentions rests upon confusion. More generally, the paper shows that Casullo’s interpretation tries to force Burge’s work into a framework that is not suited for it; and that the interpretation also suffers from not being even (...) minimally informed about the actual character of Burge’s epistemological views. The paper’s second half explains the distinction between entitlement and justification, including ways in which Burge’s understanding of the relevant notions has changed over time. (shrink)

The Burge-Putnam thought experiments have generated the thesis that beliefs are not fixed by the constitution of the body. However, many philosophers have thought that if this is true then there must be another content-like property. Even if the contents of our attitudes such as the one in ‘believes that aluminum is a light metal’, do not supervene on our physical makeups, nevertheless people who are physical duplicates must be the same when it comes to evaluating their rationality and explaining (...) their actions. I argue that the considerations motivating this view are best handled with just the ordinary ‘that’-clause contents. (shrink)

Agentialist accounts of self-knowledge seek to do justice to the connection between our identities as rational agents and our capacity to know our own minds. There are two strategies that agentialists have employed in developing their position: substantive and non-substantive. My aim is to explicate and defend one particular example of the non-substantive strategy, namely, that proposed by Tyler Burge. In particular, my concern is to defend Burge's claim that critical reasoning requires a relation of normative directness between reviewing and (...) reviewed perspectives. My defence will involve supplementing Burge's view with a substantive agentialist account of self-knowledge. (shrink)

In this essay, we draw on John Haugeland’s work in order to argue that Burge is wrong to think that exercises of perceptual constancy mechanisms suffice for perceptual representation. Although Haugeland did not live to read or respond to Burge’s Origins of Objectivity, we think that his work contains resources that can be developed into a critique of the very foundation of Burge’s approach. Specifically, we identify two related problems for Burge. First, if (what Burge calls) mere sensory responses are (...) not representational, then neither are exercises of constancy mechanisms, since the differences between them do not suffice to imply that one is representational and the other is not. Second, taken by themselves, exercises of constancy mechanisms are only derivatively representational, so merely understanding how they work is not sufficient for understanding what is required for something, in itself, to be representational (and thereby provide a full solution to the problem of perceptual representation). (shrink)

Is temporal representation constitutively necessary for perception? Tyler Burge (2010) argues that it is, in part because perception requires a form of memory sufficiently sophisticated as to require temporal representation. I critically discuss Burge’s argument, maintaining that it does not succeed. I conclude by reflecting on the consequences for the origins of temporal representation.

The celebrated "Twin Earth" arguments of Hilary Putnam (1975) and Tyler Burge (1979) aim to establish that some intentional states logically depend on facts external to the subjects of those states. Ascriptions of states of these kinds to a thinker entail that the thinker's environment is a certain way. It is not possible that the thinker could be in those very intentional states unless the environment is that way...

Disjunctivist views in the theory of perception hold that genuine perceptions differ in some relevant kind from misperceptions, such as illusions and hallucinations. In recent papers, Tyler Burge has argued that such views conflict with the basic tenets of perceptual psychology. According to him, perceptual psychology is committed to the view that genuine perceptions and misperceptions produced by the same proximal stimuli must be or involve perceptual states of the same kind. This, he argues, conflicts with disjunctivism. In this paper, (...) I defend epistemological disjunctivism from Burge’s inconsistency charge. To this end, I survey the perceptual psychological literature, and reveal that the perceptual kinds they tend to employ differ from and imply nothing about the kinds at issue for the epistemological disjunctivist. I then argue that Burge’s concerns with epistemological disjunctivism are best interpreted as motivated not by his commitment to empirical science, but instead by his views in epistemology and about human rationality. (shrink)

Jesse Prinz (2004) argues that emotional feelings (“state emotions”) can by themselves perceptually represent significant organism-environment relations. I object to this view mainly on the grounds that (1) it does not rule out the at least equally plausible view that emotional feelings are non-representational sensory registrations rather than perceptions, as Tyler Burge (2010) draws the distinction, and (2) perception of a relation requires perception of at least one of the relation’s relata, but an emotional feeling by itself perceives neither the (...) subject’s environment, nor in many cases the relevant subject itself. I then explore two ways in which emotional feelings as non-perceptual sensory registrations might still contribute to significant relation representation when associated with representations of the subject and/or its environment. After briefly discussing some difficulties presented by a multimodal, sensory-perceptual view of such representation, I argue in favor of a “cognitive recognition theory” that holds that significant relation instances are represented during emotion occurrences via applications of emotion-type concepts to "incoming" emotional feelings and their associated mental states. (shrink)

Conocemos la propia mente mejor que la mente de otras personas. Explicaciones racionalistas dicen que este fenómeno se debe a nuestra racionalidad: Somos capaces de ajustar nuestras creencias e intenciones racionalmente en vista de su coherencia o de nueva evidencia y tal ajuste requiere que conozcamos nuestras creencias e intenciones con la autoridad de la primera persona. Examino pasajes de McGinn, Shoemaker y Burge, criticando el argumento en tres puntos: (1) Es posible pensar racionalmente sin autoconocimiento. (2) Los requerimientos racionalistas (...) parecen ser incoherentes. (3) Los racionalistas no explican cómo es posible que tengamos un autoconocimiento autoritativo. Como alternativa a las teorías racionalistas, ofrezco una explicación de la autoridad de la primera persona inspirada en una observación de Evans. (shrink)

According to orthodox representationalism, perceptual states have constitutive veridicality or accuracy conditions. In defense of this view, several philosophers—most notably Tyler Burge—employ a realist strategy that turns on the purported explanatory ineliminability of representational posits in perceptual science. I argue that Burge’s version of the realist strategy fails as a defense of orthodox representationalism. However, it may vindicate a different kind of representationalism.

This paper evaluates the prospects of harnessing “anti-individualism” about the contents of perceptual states to give an account of the epistemology of perception, making special reference to Tyler Burge’s ( 2003 ) paper, “Perceptual Entitlement”. I start by clarifying what kind of warrant is provided by perceptual experience, and I go on to survey different ways one might explain the warrant provided by perceptual experience in terms of anti-individualist views about the individuation of perceptual states. I close by motivating accounts (...) which instead give a more prominent role to consciousness. (shrink)

The paper presents a new theory of perceptual demonstrative thought, the property-dependent theory. It argues that the theory is superior to both the object-dependent theory (Evans, McDowell) and the object-independent theory (Burge).

The paper discusses whether the color terms should be given an externalist semantics. In the literature on the semantics of color terms externalism is standardly taken for granted, and Twin Earth style arguments play a central role. This is notable given that few people would claim that semantic externalism applies across the board, to all types of terms. Why, then, should the color terms belong with this group of terms? I argue that the standard externalist strategies, introduced by Tyler Burge (...) and Hilary Putnam, do not apply to these terms: The color terms do not function like natural kind terms, and the idea of semantic reliance on others does not apply to them. I conclude that the externalist arguments fail and that a version of internalism, more properly called ‘individualism’,applies to the color terms. (shrink)

[The Metaphysics of Anti-Individualism] A detailed exploration of the implications of psychological externalism -- in particular Tyler Burge's variety, or what he calls "anti-individualism" -- for the mind-body problem. Based on his anti-individualism, Burge famously rejected materialism, but the ramifications of this argument were not properly examined. I show how he rejects the identity, supervenience, and realization forms of materialism, but that he leaves out the possibility of constitution. In fact, this is not the only option that he admits -- (...) others include eliminativism; a non-metaphysical view which I dub "explanatory pluralism;" and a certain version of dualism. I explore these options and find each of them lacking. However, I eventually consider a possibility that, given anti-individualism, our intentional discourse is ultimately incoherent (I take a clue here from Kripke's "A Puzzle about Belief"). Hence, there might be no satisfactory metaphysic of the mind. (shrink)

Tyler Burge (2010) provided a scathing critique of all programs for naturalizing concepts of representation, especially teleological naturalizing programs. He tended to demonstrate that “representational content” is a concept that cannot be reduced to more fundamental biological or physical ideas. According to him, since the 1970s, the concept of representational content has been firmly established in cognitive psychology as a mature science and utilized inadequate explanations. Since Dretske’s program is Burge’s primary objective, this paper concentrates on Dretske’s perspective. Following Burge’s (...) criticisms, I concur that Dretske’s naturalizing program trivializes the complex concept of representational content in cognitive science by applying it to bacteria, protozoa, etc. There is a superior explanation, namely Burge’s alternative idea of “registering information.” I do not believe, however, that this spells the end of naturalization programs. There is no reason to deny that at least some biological functions entail representational capacities with perceptual constancy, if not all. Cases of genuine perception, representing the accurate distal causes of proximal stimuli under various conditions, contribute to fitness. It is not by accident that representational content plays a role in cases of genuine perception. Consequently, I will argue that accuracy and biological fitness cannot be separated. (shrink)

Tyler Burge's (1979) famous thought experiment concerning 'arthritis' is commonly assumed to show that all ascriptions of content to beliefs and other attitudes are dependent for their truth upon facts about the agent's social and linguistic environment. It is also commonly claimed that Burge's argument shows that Putnam's (1975) result regarding natural kind terms applies to all general terms whatever, and hence shows that all such terms have wide meanings.1 But I wish to show here, first, that neither Burge's initial (...) thought experiment nor a second type of example that Burge describes supports either of these conclusions. Second, I will identify the proper conclusion to draw from Burge's discussion and show that this conclusion does not really pose a serious problem for individualism about the mental. And finally, I will argue that Burge's discussion does not in fact provide a conclusive reason for believing its proper conclusion. (shrink)

Perceptual systems respond to proximal stimuli by forming mental representations of distal stimuli. A central goal for the philosophy of perception is to characterize the representations delivered by perceptual systems. It may be that all perceptual representations are in some way proprietarily perceptual and differ from the representational format of thought (Dretske 1981; Carey 2009; Burge 2010; Block ms.). Or it may instead be that perception and cognition always trade in the same code (Prinz 2002; Pylyshyn 2003). This paper rejects (...) both approaches in favor of perceptual pluralism, the thesis that perception delivers a multiplicity of representational formats, some proprietary and some shared with cognition. The argument for perceptual pluralism marshals a wide array of empirical evidence in favor of iconic (i.e., image-like, analog) representations in perception as well as discursive (i.e., language-like, digital) perceptual object representations. (shrink)

When a circular coin is rotated in depth, is there any sense in which it comes to resemble an ellipse? While this question is at the center of a rich and divided philosophical tradition (with some scholars answering affirmatively and some negatively), Morales et al. (2020, 2021) took an empirical approach, reporting 10 experiments whose results favor such perspectival similarity. Recently, Burge and Burge (2022) offered a vigorous critique of this work, objecting to its approach and conclusions on both philosophical (...) and empirical grounds. Here, we answer these objections on both fronts. We show that Burge and Burge’s critique rests on misunderstandings of Morales et al.’s claims; of the relation between the data and conclusions; and of the philosophical context in which the work appears. Specifically, Burge and Burge attribute to us a much stronger (and stranger) view than we hold, involving the introduction of “a new entity” located “in some intermediate position(s) between the distal shape and the retinal image.” We do not hold this view. Indeed, once properly understood, most of Burge and Burge’s objections favor Morales et al.’s claims rather than oppose them. Finally, we discuss several questions that remain unanswered, and reflect on a productive path forward on these issues of foundational scientific and philosophical interest. (shrink)

Recently, there’s been a lot of interest in a research program that tries to understand propositional representation in terms of the subject’s performance of sub-propositional mental acts like reference and predication (e. g. Burge 2010, Hanks 2015, Soames 2010, 2015). For example, on one version of the view, for a subject to predicate the property of being a composer of Arvo just is what it is to perform the to the basic propositional act of judging that Arvo is a composer (...) (e. g. Hanks 2015). In this paper I first present my own version of this view and contrast it with alternatives. I then argue that we must clearly separate the thin predication-resultant notion of judging (S(emantic)-judgment) from a much richer notion used in epistemology (E(pistemic)-judgment). The former is just the act of thinking a forceful thought. The latter is the act of making up one’s mind about how things are, a way of concluding theoretical or doxastic deliberation. I argue that these two acts differ in three ways: levels of propositional attitude, objective vs. subjective norms, and the possibility of sub-personal occurrence. (shrink)

The etiology of a perceptual belief can seemingly affect its epistemic status. There are cases in which perceptual beliefs seem to be unjustified because the perceptual experiences on which they are based are caused, in part, by wishful thinking, or irrational prior beliefs. It has been argued that this is problematic for many internalist views in the epistemology of perception, especially those which postulate immediate perceptual justification. Such views are unable to account for the impact of an experience’s etiology on (...) its justificational status, McGrath, Siegel, and Vahid ). Our understanding of what we have been told can also be affected by, for example, wishful thinking or irrational background beliefs. I argue that testimonial beliefs based on such states of understanding can thus be rendered unjustified. This is problematic not only for internalist immediate justification views of testimony, but also for some externalist views, such as the form of proper functionalism endorsed by Burge, and Graham. The testimonial version of the argument from etiology, unlike the perceptual variant, does not rest on the controversial hypothesis that perception is cognitively penetrable. Furthermore, there is a stronger case for the claim that testimonial justification can be undermined by etiological effects since, I argue, testimonial beliefs can be based on the background mental states which affect our understanding of what is said, and our states of understanding are rationally assessable. (shrink)

Book synopsis: New work on a hot topic by an outstanding team of authors At the intersection of several central areas of philosophy It is the linguistic job of singular terms to pick out the objects that we think or talk about. But what about singular terms that seem to fail to designate anything, because the objects they refer to don't exist? We can employ these terms in meaningful thought and talk, which suggests that they are succeeding in fulfilling their (...) representational task. A team of leading experts presents new essays on the much-debated problem of empty reference and thought. In the 1960s and 1970s Keith Donnellan, David Kaplan, Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam initiated a revolution in the then standard conception of reference—a concept at the core of philosophical inquiry. The repercussions of the revolution, particularly felt in metaphysics and epistemology, were soon refined by other influential writers such as Tyler Burge, Gareth Evans, and John Perry. They argued that some linguistic and mental representations have contents individuated by what they are about—by ordinary referents of expressions such as proper names, indexicals, definite descriptions and common nouns, i.e. by planets, people or natural kinds. The view was at odds with a central philosophical presumption at that time: that cognitive and linguistic access to objective reality is indirect and accidental, mediated by general descriptive characterizations, the only constitutive semantic feature of the expressions; hence its ontological and epistemological repercussions. A turning-point in the debate about how linguistic and mental representation reach external contents concerned the nature of empty mental and linguistic representations, framed by means of the very same expressions crucially invoked in the Donnellan-Kaplan-Kripke-Putnam arguments. The papers in this volume address different aspects of reference and thought about the non-existent. (shrink)

The idea that experts (especially scientific experts) play a privileged role in determining the meanings of our words and the contents of our concepts has become commonplace since the work of Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge, and others in the 1970s. But if experts have the power to determine what our words mean, they can do so responsibly or irresponsibly, from good motivations or bad, justly or unjustly, with good or bad effects. This paper distinguishes three families of metasemantic views based (...) on their attitudes towards bad behaviour by meaning-fixing experts, and draws a series of distinctions relevant for the normative evaluation of meaning-determining actions. (shrink)

The representations of deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are formed from generalizing similarities and abstracting from differences in the manner of the empiricist theory of abstraction (Buckner, Synthese 195:5339–5372, 2018). The empiricist theory of abstraction is well understood to entail infinite regress and circularity in content constitution (Husserl, Logical Investigations. Routledge, 2001). This paper argues these entailments hold a fortiori for deep CNNs. Two theses result: deep CNNs require supplementation by Quine’s “apparatus of identity and quantification” in order to (1) (...) achieve concepts, and (2) represent objects, as opposed to “half-entities” corresponding to similarity amalgams (Quine, Quintessence, Cambridge, 2004, p. 107). Similarity amalgams are also called “approximate meaning[s]” (Marcus & Davis, Rebooting AI, Pantheon, 2019, p. 132). Although Husserl inferred the “complete abandonment of the empiricist theory of abstraction” (a fortiori deep CNNs) due to the infinite regress and circularity arguments examined in this paper, I argue that the statistical learning of deep CNNs may be incorporated into a Fodorian hybrid account that supports Quine’s “sortal predicates, negation, plurals, identity, pronouns, and quantifiers” which are representationally necessary to overcome the regress/circularity in content constitution and achieve objective (as opposed to similarity-subjective) representation (Burge, Origins of Objectivity. Oxford, 2010, p. 238). I base myself initially on Yoshimi’s (New Frontiers in Psychology, 2011) attempt to explain Husserlian phenomenology with neural networks but depart from him due to the arguments and consequently propose a two-system view which converges with Weiskopf’s proposal (“Observational Concepts.” The Conceptual Mind. MIT, 2015. 223–248). (shrink)

Although the view that sees proper names as referential singular terms is widely considered orthodoxy, there is a growing popularity to the view that proper names are predicates. This is partly because the orthodoxy faces two anomalies that Predicativism can solve: on the one hand, proper names can have multiple bearers. But multiple bearerhood is a problem to the idea that proper names have just one individual as referent. On the other hand, as Burge noted, proper names can have predicative (...) uses. But the view that proper names are singular terms arguably does not have the resources to deal with Burge’s cases. In this paper I argue that the Predicate View of proper names is mistaken. I first argue against the syntactic evidence used to support the view and against the predicativist’s methodology of inferring a semantic account for proper names based on incomplete syntactic data. I also show that Predicativism can neither explain the behaviour of proper names in full generality, nor claim the fundamentality of predicative names. In developing my own view, however, I accept the insight that proper names in some sense express generality. Hence I propose that proper names—albeit fundamentally singular referential terms—express generality in two senses. First, by being used as predicates, since then they are true of many individuals; and second, by being referentially related to many individuals. I respond to the problem of multiple bearerhood by proposing that proper names are polyreferential, and also explain the behaviour of proper names in light of the wider phenomenon I called category change, and show how Polyreferentialism can account for all uses of proper names. (shrink)

Davidson and Burge have claimed that the conditions under which self-knowledge is possessed are such that externalism poses no obstacle to their being met by ordinary speakers and thinkers. On their accounts. no such person could fail to possess self-knowledge. But we do from time to time attribute to each other such failures; so we should prefer to their accounts an account that preserves first person authority while allowing us to make sense of what appear to be true attributions of (...) such failures.While the core idea behind Davidson’s and Burge’s accounts appears inadequate to this task, I argue that it can be deployed in such a way as to deliver the desired result. What makes this possible is that two attitude-types can differ as follows: the self-knowledge required for an utterance to be a Φing that p is different from the self-knowledge required for it to be a Ψing that p. (shrink)

Can young children such as 3-year-olds represent the world objectively? Some prominent developmental psychologists—such as Perner and Tomasello—assume so. I argue that this view is susceptible to a prima facie powerful objection: To represent objectively, one must be able to represent not only features of the entities represented but also features of objectification itself, which 3-year-olds cannot do yet. Drawing on Burge's work on perceptual constancy, I provide a response to this objection and motivate a distinction between three different kinds (...) of objectivity. This distinction helps advance current research on both objectivity and teleological action explanations in young children. (shrink)

This is a conjecture about the conditions and operating structures that are required for the phenomenality of certain mental states. Specifically, full-blown phenomenality is assumed, as contrasted with constrained examples of phenomenal experience such as sensations of color and pain. Propositional attitudes and content, while not phenomenal per se, are standardly concurrent and may condition phenomenal states (e.g., when tied to false beliefs). It is conjectured that full phenomenality natively arises in coherent processes of situated sensory synthesis and representation (with (...) conceptual content) that are looped, mereologically whole and multi-dimensional. And that phenomenal states are typically phase-states within a parameterized conjoint structure of world and experiencer processes that are causally modulated across Markov blankets (which are conditionally independent and may be nested: cf. M. Kirchoff, et. al., 2017, 2018; and T. Burge, 2010, re: anti-individualism). Though they may, it is not accepted that phenomenally conscious states must be targets of higher-order representations (cf. A. Byrne, 2004). (shrink)

The distinction between concept and conception has been widely debated in political philosophy, whereas in the philosophy of psychology is frequently used, but rarely focused on. This paper aims at filling in this lacuna. I claim that far from being explanatorily idle, the distinction makes it possible to provide an adequate description of phenomena such as genuine disagreement, and concept contestation, which would otherwise remain implausibly puzzling. I illustrate and assess three accounts of the concept-conception distinction. Finally I propose a (...) social externalist account, which relies on deference to experts, and builds on Tyler Burge’s ideas of many decades ago. The debate on concepts and conceptions thus shows a connection with the increasing research work on experts and expertise in psychology and social epistemology. (shrink)