Mental explanations of behaviour are physical explanations of a special kind. Mental events are physical events. Mental explanations of physical behaviour are not mysterious, they designate events with physical causal powers. Mentalistic terms differ from physicalistic ones in the way they specify events: the former cite extrinsic properties, the latter intrinsic properties. The nature of explanation in general is discussed, and a naturalistic view of intentionality is proposed. The author shows why epistemological considerations rule out the (...) elimination of "mentalistic talk" from explanations of behaviour. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim once refrained from excluding distinct mental causes of effects that depend upon the sufficient physical cause of the effect. At that time, Kim also refrained from excluding distinct mental explanations of effects that depend upon complete physical explanations of the effect. More recently, he has excluded distinct mental causes of effects that depend upon the sufficient cause of the effect, since the physical cause is individually sufficient for the effect. But there has been, to this (...) point, no parallel shift in the explanatory realm, such that distinct mental explanations of effects that depend upon complete physical explanations of the effect are excluded since the physical explanation is objectively complete. In this paper I consider, defend, and apply this update to the principle of explanatory exclusion—an update, which, in the final analysis, demonstrates a significant advantage that non-reductive physicalism has over reductive physicalism. (shrink)

This essay is devoted to the study of useful ways of thinking about the nature of interpretation, with particular attention being given to the so called normative character of mental explanation. My aim of illuminating the nature of interpretation will be accomplished by examining several views, some of which are common to both Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett, concerning its unique characteristics as a method of prediction and explanation. Moreover, some of the views held by Davidson and (...) Dennett will be adopted, elaborated, and defended. The conclusions of these philosophers do not, however, form an acceptable whole. Thus I will attempt to moderate some of their views. In particular, I will attempt to show up the deficits of Davidson's view of the mental by defending the possibility some sort of psycho-physical reduction. Despite such philosophical pretensions, major parts of this essay will be devoted to sketching the foundations of a method for the interpretation of intentional behaviour which I take to embody the key features of our ordinary practice of interpretation. In particular, I will attempt to sketch the bases for a method of interpretation which is sensitive to the methodological considerations associated with the seemingly unique normative character of mental explanation. To this end, I will also investigate the question of how certain formal measures of coherence can be made to yield models for understanding the actual and possible bases of interpretation. (shrink)

This paper discusses the representation and explanation of relationships between phenomena that are important in psychiatric contexts. After a general discussion of complexity in the philosophy of science, I distinguish zooming-out approaches from zooming-in approaches. Zooming-out has to do with seeing complex mental illnesses as abstract models for the purposes of both explanation and reduction. Zooming-in involves breaking complex mental illnesses into simple components and trying to explain those components independently in terms of specific causes. Connections (...) between existing practice and zooming-out are drawn, and zooming-in is criticised. (shrink)

In empirically informed research on action explanation, philosophers and developmental psychologists have recently proposed a teleological account of the way in which we make sense of people’s intentional behavior. It holds that we typically don’t explain an agent’s action by appealing to her mental states but by referring to the objective, publically accessible facts of the world that count in favor of performing the action so as to achieve a certain goal. Advocates of the teleological account claim that (...) this strategy is our main way of understanding people’s actions. I argue that common motivations mentioned to support the teleological account are insufficient to sustain its generalization from children to adults. Moreover, social psychological studies, combined with theoretical considerations, suggest that we do not explain actions mainly by invoking publically accessible, reason-giving facts alone but by ascribing mental states to the agent. (shrink)

I have argued that Gettier cases are misleading because, even though they appear to be cases of knowledge failure, they are in fact cases of semantic failure. Atkins has responded to my original paper and I have replied to his response. He has then responded again to insist that he has the so-called “Gettier intuition.” But he now admits that intuitions are only defeasible, not conclusive, evidence for and/or against philosophical theories. I address the implications of Atkins’ admission in this (...) paper and I again show that his attempts to revise Gettier’s original cases such that they do not involve semantic failures are unsuccessful. (shrink)

In order to defend mental explanations dualists may appeal to dispositions (powers). By accepting a powers theory of causation, a dualist can more plausibly defend mental explanations that are given independently of physical explanations. Accepting a power-based theory still comes with a price. Absences and double preventers are not causes in a powers theory, and solutions based on them can only defend their explanatory relevance in mental explanations. There is still a chance that such mental explanations (...) can be causal explanations, though they do not refer to real causes. (shrink)

This chapter argues that mental fictionalism can only be a successful account of our ordinary folk-psychological practices if it can in some way preserve its original function, namely its explanatory aspect. A too strong commitment to the explanatory role moves fictionalism unacceptably close to the realist or eliminativist interpretation of folk psychology. To avoid this, fictionalists must degrade or dispense with this explanatory role. This motivation behind the fictionalist movement seems to be rather similar to that of Sellars when (...) he came up with the Myth of Jones, his proto-theory of mental concepts. He was faced with the problem of preserving the explanatory status of mental concepts without turning them into proper theoretical entities. By introducing the Sellarsian proto-theory of concepts related to the mental and outlining its main points, this chapter aims to provide a critique of the two versions of mental fictionalism that are arguably the strongest: Adam Toon’s prop-oriented pretence theory and Tamás Demeter’s expressive storyism. (shrink)

There is uneasy tension between our ordinary talk about beliefs and desires and the ontological facts supported by neuroscience. Arguments for eliminative materialism are persuasive, yet error theory about folk psychological discourse seems unacceptable. One solution is to accept mental fictionalism: the view that we are (or should be) fictionalists about mentality. My aim in this paper is to explore mental fictionalism as a viable theoretical option, and to show that it has advantages over other fictionalist views in (...) the literature, as well as advantages over other theories of mind. However, mental fictionalism faces objections that do not plague other fictionalist accounts, nor other theories of the mind. These objections may provide some explanation as to why mental fictionalism has not (until recently) gained much traction in the literature. I end with some suggestions on how the mental fictionalist can address these objections, hopefully paving the way for further development of mental fictionalism as a live philosophical position in philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This is my second entry in Mental Fictionalism: Philosophical Explorations. It examines three meta-ontological deflationary approaches - frameworks, verbal disputes, and metalinguistic negotiation - and applies them to ontological debates in philosophy of mind. An intriguing consequence of this application is that it reveals a deep, systematic problem for mental deflationism – specifically, a problem of cognitive collapse. This is surprising. Cognitive collapse problems are usually reserved for serious ontological views such as eliminative materialism and mental fictionalism, (...) not deflationism. This paper investigates why deflationism about the mental is particularly problematic and provides an explanation as to why mental fictionalism is in principle better equipped to address collapsing problems than deflationism is. (shrink)

A compelling idea holds that reality has a layered structure. We often disagree about what inhabits the bottom layer, but we agree that higher up we find chemical, biological, geological, psychological, sociological, economic, /etc./, entities: molecules, human beings, diamonds, mental states, cities, interest rates, and so on. How is this intuitive talk of a layered structure of entities to be understood? Traditionally, philosophers have proposed to understand layered structure in terms of either reduction or supervenience. But these traditional views (...) face well-known problems. A plausible alternative is that layered structure is to be explicated by appeal to explanations of a certain sort, termed / grounding explanations/. Grounding explanations tell us what obtains in virtue of what. Unfortunately, the use of grounding explanations to articulate the layered conception faces a problem, which I call /the collapse/. The collapse turns on the question of how to ground the facts stated by the explanations themselves. In this paper I make a suggestion about how to ground explanations that avoids the collapse. Briefly, the suggestion is that the fact stated by a grounding explanation is grounded in its /explanans/. (shrink)

People often answer why-questions with what we call experiential explanations: narratives or stories with temporal structure and concrete details. In contrast, on most theories of the epistemic function of explanation, explanations should be abstractive: structured by general relationships and lacking extraneous details. We suggest that abstractive and experiential explanations differ not only in level of abstraction, but also in structure, and that each form of explanation contributes to the epistemic goals of individual learners and of science. In particular, (...) experiential explanations support mental simulation and survive transitions across background theories; as a result, they support learning and help us translate between competing frameworks. Experiential explanations play an irreducible role in human cognition – and perhaps in science. (shrink)

This paper is about a puzzle which lies at the heart of contemporary physicalist theories of mind. On the one hand, the original motivation for physicalism was the need to explain the place of mental causation in the physical world. On the other hand, physicalists have recently come to see the explanation of mental causation as one of their major problems. But how can this be? How can it be that physicalist theories still have a problem explaining (...) something which their physicalism was intended to explain in the first place? If physicalism is meant to be an explanation of mental causation, then why should it still face the problem of mental causation? (shrink)

This paper presents and argues for an account of objectual understanding that aims to do justice to the full range of cases of scientific understanding, including cases in which one does not have an explanation of the understood phenomenon. According to the proposed account, one understands a phenomenon just in case one grasps a sufficiently accurate and comprehensive model of the ways in which it or its features are situated within a network of dependence relations; one’s degree of understanding (...) is proportional to the comprehensiveness and accuracy of such a model. I compare this account with accounts of scientific understanding that explicate understanding in terms of having an explanation of the understood phenomenon. I discuss three distinct types of cases in which scientific understanding does not amount to possessing an explanation of any kind, and argue that the proposed model-based account can accommodate these cases while still retaining a strong link between understanding and explanation. (shrink)

Two very different forms of externalism about mental states appear prima facie unrelated: Williamson’s (1995, 2000) claim that knowledge is a mental state, and Clark & Chalmers’ (1998) extended mind hypothesis. I demonstrate, however, that the two approaches justify their radically externalist by appealing to the same argument from explanatory generality. I argue that if one accepts either Williamson’s claims or Clark & Chalmers’ claims on considerations of explanatory generality then, ceteris paribus, one should accept the other. This (...) conclusion has implications for philosophy of mind, epistemology, and cognitive science. (shrink)

You can come to know that you believe that p partly by reflecting on whether p and then judging that p. Call this procedure “the transparency method for belief.” How exactly does the transparency method generate known self-attributions of belief? To answer that question, we cannot interpret the transparency method as involving a transition between the contents p and I believe that p. It is hard to see how some such transition could be warranted. Instead, in this context, one (...) class='Hi'>mental action is both a judgment that p and a self-attribution of a belief that p. The notion of embedded mental action is introduced here to explain how this can be so and to provide a full epistemic explanation of the transparency method. That explanation makes sense of first-person authority and immediacy in transparent self-knowledge. In generalized form, it gives sufficient conditions on an attitude’s being known transparently. (shrink)

During the three decades since Albania overthrew the communist dictatorial system and began its democratic changes, the existence of a line of thought in Albanian society has been noted, which tends to explain the behaviour of Albanian politicians during the transition period based on the assumption of a “communist mentality” carried by them. This line of thought has often been dominant and has been reflected in the Albanian media and public space as a form of “main” explanation to show (...) many of the failures that Albanian democracy has faced during these 30 years, the authoritarian behaviour of political elites, the “state capture” by political parties, the crisis of state institutions, etc. Applying the concept of “communist mentality” in the Albanian media and public space and explaining through it (almost) any kind of negative phenomenon, problem, or behaviour that contradicts the idea of democracy or prevents it from developing, is very problematic, therefore it has served as an impetus in undertaking this study. In this paper, a critical approach will be offered to this discourse that has often dominated the Albanian media and public space, questioning whether is this “communist mentality” the determining factor for the behaviour of Albanian politicians and the failures of Albanian democracy or there are other factors that may explain these phenomena. (shrink)

A popular solution to the causal exclusion problem in the non-reductive physicalist camp is the trope identity solution. But this solution is haunted by the “quausation problem” which charges that the trope only confers causal powers qua physical, not qua mental. Although proponents of the trope solution have responded to the problem by denying the existence of properties of tropes, I do not find their reply satisfactory. Rather, I believe they have missed the core presupposition behind the quausation problem. (...) I will argue that the presupposition is the generalist notion of causation. Then, for the trope theorists to solve the quausation problem, they need to abandon the generalist notion and adopt the singularist notion of causation. However, making that move will lead them to a new quausation problem, rendering irreducible mental types causally irrelevant and mental causal explanations reducible. Either adopting a generalist notion or a singularist notion of causation, a quausation problem awaits the trope solution. Given this dilemma, my conclusion is that the trope identity solution cannot solve the exclusion problem in a non-reductive way. Moreover, the dilemma can be generalized, showing that token physicalism is a shaky position. (shrink)

It's often hypothesized that the structure of mental representation is map-like rather than language-like. The possibility arises as a counterexample to the argument from the best explanation of productivity and systematicity to the language of thought hypothesis—the hypothesis that mental structure is compositional and recursive. In this paper, I argue that the analogy with maps does not undermine the argument, because maps and language have the same kind of compositional and recursive structure.

Psychological construction represents an important new approach to psychological phenomena, one that has the promise to help us reconceptualize the mind both as a behavioral and as a biological system. It has so far been developed in the greatest detail for emotion, but it has important implications for how researchers approach other mental phenomena such as reasoning, memory, and language use. Its key contention is that phenomena that are characterized in (folk) psychological vocabulary are not themselves basic features of (...) the mind, but are constructed from more basic psychological operations. The framework of mechanistic explanation, currently under development in philosophy of science, can provide a useful perspective on the psychological construction approach. A central insight of the mechanistic account of explanation is that biological and psychological phenomena result from mechanisms in which component parts and operations do not individually exhibit the phenomena of interest but function together in an orchestrated and sometimes in a complex dynamical manner to generate it. While at times acknowledging the compatibility of the mechanist approach with constructionist approach (Lindquist, Wager, Kober, Bliss-Moreau, & Barrett, 2012), proponents of the constructionist approach have at other times pitched their approach as anti-mechanist. For example, Barrett (2009) claims that the psychological constructionist approach rejects machines as the primary metaphor for understanding the mind, instead favoring a recipe metaphor; constructionism also purportedly rejects the “mechanistic” picture of causation, which it portrays as linear or sequential in nature (see also Barrett, Wilson-Mendenhall, & Barsalou, in press). While some mechanistic accounts do fit this description, we will see that the mechanisms generating phenomena can be complex and dynamic, producing phenomena far less stereotypic and more adaptive than people often associate with machines. Our goal, however, is not just to render constructionism and mechanism compatible. Philosophers of science have been examining the nature of mechanistic explanation in biology with the goal of gaining new insights into the operation of science. We will identify some of the places where the mechanistic account can shed new light on the constructionist project. (shrink)

In her landmark book, Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories (Millikan1984),1 Ruth Garrett Millikan utilizes the idea of a biological function to solve philosophical problems associated with the phenomena of language, thought, and meaning. Language and thought are activities of biological organisms, according to Millikan, and we should treat them as such when trying to answer related philosophical questions. Of special interest is Millikan’s treatment of intentionality. Here Millikan employs the notion of a biological function to explain what it is (...) for one thing in nature, a bee dance (43), for example, to be about another, in this case, the location of a nectar source. My concern in this paper is to understand whether Millikan’s account of intentionality adequately explains how humans achieve reference, in language or thought, to individuals and groups in their environment. In bringing her theory of intentional content to bear on human activities, Millikan focuses largely on natural language. Thus, in what follows, I begin by laying out the biology-based principles that underlie Millikan’s theory of content, then proceed with an explanation of how the theory is to apply to natural language. As it appears, Millikan’s account of how content is determined for natural language terms and sentences rests on the determinacy of intentional content at the psychological level. This leads me to take a careful look at what Millikan says about the content of mental representations, in hopes of finding a sufficient basis there for the application of Millikan’s theory of content to natural language. Ultimately, I conclude that Millikan’s theory faces a problem of vacuity. If we approach the theory as a theory of intentional content, intended to explain the nature of reference, the theory is lacking in an extremely important respect: Millikan explains how it could be one of the biological functions of a mental or natural language term to refer, without telling us precisely what in the natural order constitutes the reference relation.. (shrink)

Traditionally, philosophers have appealed to the phenomenological similarity between visual experience and visual imagery to support the hypothesis that there is significant overlap between the perceptual and imaginative domains. The current evidence, however, is inconclusive: while evidence from transcranial brain stimulation seems to support this conclusion, neurophysiological evidence from brain lesion studies (e.g., from patients with brain lesions resulting in a loss of mental imagery but not a corresponding loss of perception and vice versa) indicates that there are functional (...) and anatomical dissociations between mental imagery and perception. Assuming that the mental imagery and perception do not overlap, at least, to the extent traditionally assumed, then the question arises as to what exactly mental imagery is and whether it parallels perception by proceeding via several functionally distinct mechanisms. In this review, we argue that even though there may not be a shared mechanism underlying vision for perception and conscious imagery, there is an overlap between the mechanisms underlying vision for action and unconscious visual imagery. On the basis of these findings, we propose a modification of Kosslyn’s model of imagery that accommodates unconscious imagination and explore possible explanations of the quasi-pictorial phenomenology of conscious visual imagery in light of the fact that its underlying neural substrates and mechanisms typically are distinct from those of visual experience. (shrink)

Many philosophers and psychologists have attempted to elucidate the nature of mental representation by appealing to notions like isomorphism or abstract structural resemblance. The ‘structural representations’ that these theorists champion are said to count as representations by virtue of functioning as internal models of distal systems. In his 2007 book, Representation Reconsidered, William Ramsey endorses the structural conception of mental representation, but uses it to develop a novel argument against representationalism, the widespread view that cognition essentially involves the (...) manipulation of mental representations. Ramsey argues that although theories within the ‘classical’ tradition of cognitive science once posited structural representations, these theories are being superseded by newer theories, within the tradition of connectionism and cognitive neuroscience, which rarely if ever appeal to structural representations. Instead, these theories seem to be explaining cognition by invoking so-called ‘receptor representations’, which, Ramsey claims, aren’t genuine representations at all—despite being called representations, these mechanisms function more as triggers or causal relays than as genuine stand-ins for distal systems. I argue that when the notions of structural and receptor representation are properly explicated, there turns out to be no distinction between them. There only appears to be a distinction between receptor and structural representations because the latter are tacitly conflated with the ‘mental models’ ostensibly involved in offline cognitive processes such as episodic memory and mental imagery. While structural representations might count as genuine representations, they aren’t distinctively mental representations, for they can be found in all sorts of non-intentional systems such as plants. Thus to explain the kinds of offline cognitive capacities that have motivated talk of mental models, we must develop richer conceptions of mental representation than those provided by the notions of structural and receptor representation. (shrink)

Episodic memory has a distinctive phenomenology. One way to capture what is distinctive about it is by using the notion of mental time travel: When we remember some fact episodically, we mentally travel to the moment at which we experienced it in the past. This way of distinguishing episodic memory from semantic memory calls for an explanation of what the experience of mental time travel is. In this paper, I suggest that a certain view about the content (...) of memories can shed some light on the experience of mental time travel. This is the view that, when a subject remembers some fact episodically, their memory represents itself as coming from a perception of that fact. I propose that the experience of mental time travel in memory is the experience of representing one of the elements in this complex content, namely, the past perceptual experience of the remembered fact. In defence of this proposal, I offer two considerations. Firstly, the proposal is consistent with the idea that memories enjoy a temporal phenomenology (specifically, a feeling of pastness). Secondly, the proposal is consistent with the possibility that some of our other cognitive capacities might yield an experience of mental time travel which can be oriented towards the future. I argue that the received conception of mental time travel is in tension with those two ideas. (shrink)

In this volume, leading philosophers of psychiatry examine psychiatric classification systems, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, asking whether current systems are sufficient for effective diagnosis, treatment, and research. Doing so, they take up the question of whether mental disorders are natural kinds, grounded in something in the outside world. Psychiatric categories based on natural kinds should group phenomena in such a way that they are subject to the same type of causal explanations and respond (...) similarly to the same type of causal interventions. When these categories do not evince such groupings, there is reason to revise existing classifications. The contributors all question current psychiatric classifications systems and the assumptions on which they are based. They differ, however, as to why and to what extent the categories are inadequate and how to address the problem. Topics discussed include taxometric methods for identifying natural kinds, the error and bias inherent in DSM categories, and the complexities involved in classifying such specific mental disorders as "oppositional defiance disorder" and pathological gambling. -/- Contributors George Graham, Nick Haslam, Allan Horwitz, Harold Kincaid, Dominic Murphy, Jeffrey Poland, Nancy Nyquist Potter, Don Ross, Dan Stein, Jacqueline Sullivan, Serife Tekin, Peter Zachar. (shrink)

Jaspers’s binary distinction between understanding and explanation has given way first to a proliferation of explanatory levels and now, in John Campbell’s recent work, to a conception of explanation with no distinct levels of explanation and no inbuilt rationality requirement. I argue that there is still a role for understanding in psychiatry and that is to demystify the assumption that the states it concerns are mental. This role can be fulfilled by placing rationality at the heart (...) of understanding without a commitment to the attempt to use rationality to shed light on interpretation and mindedness as though from outside those notions. Delusions still present a significant challenge to philosophical attempts at understanding, but this merely reflects the genuine clinical difficulties such states present. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to draw the attention of those conducting research on imagery to the different kinds of visual information deployed by expert drawers compared to non-expert drawers. To demonstrate this difference I draw upon the cognitive science literature on vision and imagery to distinguish between three different ways that visual phenomena can be represented in memory: structural descriptions, denotative descriptions, and configural descriptions. Research suggests that perception and imagery deploy the same mental processes and that (...) the drawing of one's imagery would require the simultaneous deployment of these very processes. I reason that drawing a picture of one's imagery is not possible. I hypothesize that when required to draw a picture from memory, both expert and non-expert drawers access their denotative description of the object rather than their imagery. I then suggest how my hypothesis could be tested and if accurate, how this finding would impact upon the design and interpretation of experiments on imagery when drawing is involved. I also suggest why the constraints that perception places upon the simultaneous deployment of imagery appear not to cause the same constraints in autistic savant drawers and visual agnosia patients. (shrink)

Philosophical and scientific investigations of the proprietary aspects of self—mineness or mental ownership—often presuppose that searching for unique constituents is a productive strategy. But there seem not to be any unique constituents. Here, it is argued that the “self-specificity” paradigm, which emphasizes subjective perspective, fails. Previously, it was argued that mode of access also fails to explain mineness. Fortunately, these failures, when leavened by other findings (those that exhibit varieties and vagaries of mineness), intimate an approach better suited to (...) searching for an explanation. Having an alternative in hand, one that shows promise of achieving explanatory adequacy, provides an additional reason to suspend the search for unique constituents. In short, a negative and a positive thesis are developed: we should cease looking for unique constituents and should seek to explain mineness in accord with the model developed here. This model rejects attempts to explain the phenomenon in terms of either a narrative or a minimal sense of self; it seeks to explain at a “molecular” level, one that appeals to multiple, interacting dimensions. The molecular-level model allows for the possibility that subjective perspective is distinct from a stark perspective (one that does not imply mineness). It proposes that the confounding of tacit expectations plays an important role in explaining mental ownership and its complement, disownership. But the confounding of tacit expectations is not sufficient. Because we are able to be aware of the existence of mental states that do not belong to self, we require a mechanism for determining degree of self-relatedness. One such mechanism is proposed here, and it is shown how this mechanism can be integrated into a general model of mental ownership. In the spirit of suggesting how this model might be able to help resolve outstanding problems, the question as to whether inserted thoughts belong to the patient who reports them is also considered. (shrink)

The orthodox view of social cognition maintains that mentalizing is an important and pervasive element of our ordinary social interactions. The orthodoxy has come under scrutiny from various sources recently. Critics from the phenomenological tradition argue that phenomenological reflection on our social interactions tells against the orthodox view. Proponents of pluralistic folk psychology argue that our ordinary social interactions extend far beyond mentalizing. Both sorts of critics argue that emphasis in social cognition research ought to be on other elements of (...) our social practices. In this paper, I consider social explanations specifically and argue that social explanations are implicated in many of the social practices highlighted by critics of the orthodox view. (shrink)

Each of the various philosophical positions on the mind-body problem has grown out of the perceived shortcomings of one or more of its predecessors. One fertile source of aggravation to many of the -isms has been the problem of qualia: the ostensibly irreducible, qualitative character of many of our mental states. An argument is presented here that solves the qualia problem within the context of a otherwise functionalist theory of mind. The proposed solution is unusual in that it both (...) resolves the mystery of qualia and allows it to stand: there is in this an implied reconciliation between functionalism and epiphenomenalism. Along the way, two other issues are discussed: the putative distinction between functionalism and the identity thesis, and the role of such terms as 'reduction', 'explanation' and 'meaning' in the science of psychology. (shrink)

The author argues in this paper that consciousness may never be defined or explained with entities and properties, neither with brains and neurons, nor with particles, waves, and fields. Instead, a system is proposed in this paper, with matter, energy and lives as its components, and with all its components defined as changes. The definitions or explanations of consciousness based on the systematic relationships among these components are: • Ontologically, consciousness is universal, since it may only be the systematic distinction (...) between matter and energy. • Epistemologically, consciousness is unique, since it may only be the energy qualified systematically by the matter. • Semantically, consciousness is neither the cause nor the effect of mental activities, since it may only be languages. To deny its ontology means to be a dualist. To deny its epistemology means to be a Platonist. And to deny its semantics means to be an animist or panpsychist. None of them may contribute anything to neuroscience or artificial intelligence. Compared with matter and energy, life is the more difficult part of this definition and explanation, also an indispensable part since life is the only cause or effect of matter and energy. If without life, matter and energy by themselves cannot be the explanation of agency or intentional action, nor the explanation of learning and knowledge. Moreover, a system only with matter and energy as its components is fundamentally against birth, death, development, and evolution. Neither of them may explain why everything including us and our cosmos must be created but nothing may remain forever. And the only reason why there is consciousness is that it may be the birth or death of lives. Such defined or explained consciousness might be useful for us to find a more unified framework for neuroscience, the philosophy of mind, and the studies of artificial intelligence. At least, it helps us to avoid making more useless efforts. (shrink)

Representations are not only used in our folk-psychological explanations of behaviour, but are also fruitfully postulated, for example, in cognitive science. The mainstream view in cognitive science maintains that our mind is a representational system. This popular view requires an understanding of the nature of the entities they are postulating. Teleosemantic theories face this challenge, unpacking the normativity in the relation of representation by appealing to the teleological function of the representing state. It has been argued that, if intentionality is (...) to be explained in teleological terms, then the function of a state cannot depend on its phylogenetical history, given the metaphysical possibility of a duplicate of an intentional being that lacks an evolutionary history. In this paper, I present a method to produce, according to our current knowledge in genetic engineering, human-like individuals who are not the product of natural selection in the required sense. This variation will be used to shed light on the main replies that have been offered in the literature to the Swampman thought experiment. I argue that these replies are not satisfactory: representations should better not depend on natural selection. I conclude that a non-etiological notion of function is to be preferred for characterizing the relation of representation. (shrink)

Habits form a crucial part of the everyday conceptual scheme used to explain normal human activity. However, they have been neglected in debates concerning folk-psychology which have concentrated on propositional attitudes such as beliefs. But propositional attitudes are just one of the many mental states. In this paper, I seek to expand the debate by considering mental states other than propositional attitudes. I conclude that the case for the autonomy and plausibility of the folk-psychological explanation is strengthened (...) when one considers an example from the non-propositional-attitude mental states: habits. My main target is the radical eliminativist program. As regards habits, eliminativists could argue in two distinct but related ways. They can either abandon the concept "habit" altogether or retain the folk-psychological term "habit" by reducing it to the causal chain of the observed behavior pattern, as is sometimes done in social theory. I contend that both of these strategies are defective. The correct way to talk about habits is in terms of manifestations and activating conditions, not in terms of causal chains. Hence, if eliminativists take up either of the two arguments given above, they will not succeed. Correspondingly, by the added generality gained through the consideration of habits, the case for folk-psychology is strengthened. (shrink)

Recently, mental strength education requires to change in a way that establishes a military value system suitable for a liberal democracy while facing the need to strengthen mental strength in response to unpredictable security situations. The key to fulfilling these twofold objectives lies in the fact that there is a positive correlation between the enhancement of a soldier’s democratic awareness and intangible force. Therefore, it is of great importance to emphasize the concept of ‘citizen in uniform’ as one (...) of the central military values. However, this concept has one problem before its use in military mental strength in which the orders of the military status and the orders of the civic seem heterogeneous and even conflicting. This study aims to dissolve the internal tension of this concept through a new philosophical interpretation of citizens in uniform, freedom, people and state, thereby providing the foundation for establishing for establishing new military values and enhancement of mental force. To this end, it examines the explanation of the current curriculum regarding these concepts first and diagnoses its several problems (II). The current curriculum presents a brief explanation of the compatibility of civil rights and military obligations but does not resolve the conflict between the two. A new understanding of them is possible by introducing Hegelian insights in Philosophy of Rights (III). From Hegel's point of view, freedom is not the mere absence of coercion but a capacity for self-determination. Freedom is difficult to realize wholly at the level of an isolated individual, and it calls for an ethical community to give it a specific form. A state that is the best entity in humanity is the supreme unit that defines individual freedom and identity. Then it naturally derives that national defense is one of the supreme missions directly related to the freedom and identity of its people. A re-description of the contents of the curriculum based on these insights can conceptually resolve the aforementioned problem and even strengthen its arguments (IV). The state and the people are in a more essential correlation than previously depicted, and liberal democratic values such as freedom, human rights and welfare are proved as constitutive of a state itself. The superiority of liberal democracy, which the current textbook attempts to prove, also becomes transparent. Finally, military duties do not conceptually conflict with civil freedom but are considered as a form of it. (shrink)

I argue against group agent realism, or the view that groups have irreducible mental states. If group agents have irreducible mental states, as realists assume, then the best group agent realist explanation of corporate agents features only basic mental states with at most one motivational function each. But the best group agent realist explanation of corporate agents does not feature only basic mental states with at most one motivational function each. So corporate agents lack (...) irreducible mental states. How so? I defend the conditional with an argument from disagreement. On cognitivist approaches to desire, desires function to both motivate and represent the world. Yet such desires are subject to a significant amount of disagreement. Reflection on the folk-psychological properties of desire and belief suggest that this disagreement is better explained by a non-cognitivist approach to desire where they do not have both functions. I then defend the claim that realists are committed to at least some cognitivist motivational states. Using the example of fire brigades, I argue that the best realist explanation of group agents involves mental states with both representational and motivational functions. By modus tollens, corporations then lack irreducible mental states, period. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to the existing literature on normative cognition by providing a lineage explanation of human social norm psychology. This approach builds upon theories of goal-directed behavioral control in the reinforcement learning and control literature, arguing that this form of control defines an important class of intentional normative mental states that are instrumental in nature. I defend the view that great ape capacities for instrumental reasoning and our capacity (or family of capacities) for shared intentionality (...) coadapted to each other and argue that the evolution of this capacity has allowed the representation of social norms and the emergence of our capacity for normative guidance. (shrink)

Basic actions are those intentional actions performed not by doing any other kind of thing intentionally. Complex actions involve doing one kind of thing intentionally by doing another kind of thing intentionally. There are both basic and complex mental actions. Some complex mental actions have a striking feature that has not been previously discussed: they have several distinct contents at once. This chapter introduces and explains this feature, here called “content plurality.” This chapter also argues for the philosophical (...) significance of this feature. The existence of content plurality offers a new explanation of transparent self-knowledge and suggests a new theory of inference. It also opens up a new conception of the relation between decisions to act and judgments about what ought to be done. (shrink)

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a mental health condition in which the experience of a traumatic event causes a series of psychiatric and behavioral symptoms such as hypervigilance, insomnia, irritability, aggression, constricted affect, and self-destructive behavior. This paper investigates two case studies to argue that the experience of PTSD is not restricted to humans alone; we have good epistemic reason to hold that some animals can experience genuine PTSD, given our current and best clinical understanding of the disorder in humans. (...) I will use this evidence to argue for two claims. First, because the causal structure of PTSD plausibly requires reference to a traumatic conscious experience in order to explain subsequent behaviors, the fact that animals can have PTSD provides new evidence for animal consciousness. Second, the discovery of PTSD in animals puts pressure on accounts which hold that animal behavior can be fully explained without reference to subjective experience. (shrink)

Encouraging people to consider multiple alternatives appears to be a useful debiasing technique for reducing many biases (explanation, hindsight, and overconfidence), if the generation of alternatives is experienced as easy. The present research tests whether these alternative generation procedures induce a mental simulation mind-set (cf. Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000), such that debiasing in one domain transfers to debias judgments in unrelated domains. The results indeed demonstrated that easy alternative generation tasks not only debiased judgments in the same domain (...) but also generalized to debias judgments in unrelated domains, provided that participants were low in the need for structure. The alternative generation tasks (even when they were easy to perform) showed no evidence of activating a mental simulation mind-set in individuals high in need for structure, as these individuals displayed no transfer effects. Implications of the results for understanding the role of the need for structure, ease of generation, and mental simulation mind-set activation for debiasing are discussed. (shrink)

Externalist theories hold that a comprehensive understanding of mental disorder cannot be achieved unless we attend to factors that lie outside of the head: neural explanations alone will not fully capture the complex dependencies that exist between an individual’s psychiatric condition and her social, cultural, and material environment. Here, we firstly offer a taxonomy of ways in which the externalist viewpoint can be understood, and unpack its commitments concerning the nature and physical realization of mental disorder. Secondly, we (...) apply a strongly externalist approach to the case of Autistic Spectrum Disorder, and argue that this condition can be illuminated by appeal to the hypothesis of extended cognition. We conclude by briefly considering the significance this strongly externalist approach may have for psychiatric practice and pedagogy. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Gray, Knickman, and Wegner present three experiments which they take to show that people judge patients in a persistent vegetative state to have less mental capacity than the dead. They explain this result by claiming that people have implicit dualist or afterlife beliefs. This essay critically evaluates their experimental findings and their proposed explanation. We argue first that the experiments do not support the conclusion that people intuitively think PVS patients have less mentality than (...) the dead. And second, we provide an alternative explanation of our ascriptions of mentality to the dead and PVS patients, one which turns on Epicurean considerations about the nature of death. (shrink)

In his so-called argument from consciousness (AC), J. P. Moreland argues that the phenomenon of consciousness furnishes us with evidence for the existence of God. In defending AC, however, Moreland makes claims that generate an undesirable tension. This tension can be posed as a dilemma based on the contingency of the correlation between mental and physical states. The correlation of mental and physical states is either contingent or necessary. If the correlation is contingent then epiphenomenalism is true. If (...) the correlation is necessary then a theistic explanation for the correlation is forfeit. Both are unwelcome results for AC. (shrink)

How do the young learn names for feelings? After criticizing Wittgensteinian explanations, I formulate and defend an explanation very different from Wittgensteinians embrace.

I discuss the respective roles of traits and reasons in the explanation of action. I begin by noting that traits and reasons explanations are systematically connected: traits explanations require motivation by reasons. Actions due to psychiatric conditions such as mental disorders cannot be explained by an appeal to traits. Because traits require motivation by reasons, it is often possible to explain one and the same action by an appeal to either the agent's traits or to her reasons. I (...) then ask whether it follows from here that traits and reasons explanations of action are equivalent – though perhaps offered from different points of view – or whether they differ in interesting ways. I argue that the differences are interesting and important – traits and reasons explanations answer different “why” questions regarding action: a reasons explanation tells us what reasons motivated the agent acting; a traits explanation, by contrast, indicates something about an agent’s reasons but tells us something else in addition: it tells us why the agent acted on those as opposed to other available reasons. (shrink)

We introduce two notions–the shadows and the shallows of explanation–in opening up explanation to broader, interdisciplinary investigation. The shadows of explanation refer to past philosophical efforts to provide either a conceptual analysis of explanation or in some other way to pinpoint the essence of explanation. The shallows of explanation refer to the phenomenon of having surprisingly limited everyday, individual cognitive abilities when it comes to explanation. Explanations are ubiquitous, but they typically are not (...) accompanied by the depth that we might, prima facie, expect. We explain the existence of the shadows and shallows of explanation in terms of there being a theoretical abyss between explanation and richer, theoretical structures that are often attributed to people. We offer an account of the shallows, in particular, both in terms of shorn-down, internal, mental machinery, and in terms of an enriched, public symbolic environment, relative to the currently dominant ways of thinking about cognition and the world. (shrink)

This paper examines a recent, influential argument for individualism in psychology defended by Jerry Fodor and others, what I call the argument from causal powers. I argue that this argument equivocates on the crucial notion of "causal powers", and that this equivocation constitutes a deep problem for arguments of this type. Relational and individualistic taxonomies are incompatible, and it does not seem in general to be possible to factor the former into the latter. The distinction between powers and properties plays (...) a central role in my argument. (shrink)

Davidson has attempted to offer his own solution to the problem of self-knowledge, but there has been no consensus between his commentators on what this solution is. Many have claimed that Davidson’s account stems from his remarks on disquotational specifications of self-ascriptions of meaning and mental content, the account which I will call the “Disquotational Explanation”. It has also been claimed that Davidson’s account rather rests on his version of content externalism, which I will call the “Externalist (...) class='Hi'>Explanation”. I will argue that not only are these explanations of self-knowledge implausible, but Davidson himself has already rejected them. Thus, neither can be attributed to Davidson as his suggested account of self-knowledge. I will then introduce and support what I take to be Davidson’s official and independent account of self-knowledge, that is, his “Transcendental Explanation”. I will defend this view against certain potential objections and finally against the objections made by William Child. (shrink)

Realists about mental disorder have been hasty about dismissing social explanations of how mental disorder is constituted. However, many social ontologies are realist ontologies. In order to create a meaningful distinction between realism and social metaphysics about mental disorder, I propose that realism about mental disorder is best understood as Individual Trait Realism (ITR) about them. For ITR, mental disorders exist in virtue of traits. I defend the view that ITR is compatible with social metaphysics, (...) arguing that, in asking whether constituents in the social sphere figure the metaphysics of psychopathology, we are asking questions on three different strata of explanation: the strata of demarcation, instantiation, and individual traits. Distinguishing between these strata allows for nuanced realism that need not reject the social constitution of mental disorder. (shrink)

Empirical evidence, it has often been argued, undermines our commonsense assumptions concerning the efficacy of conscious intentions. One of the most influential advocates of this challenge has been Daniel Wegner, who has presented an impressive amount of evidence in support of a model of "apparent mental causation". According to Wegner, this model provides the best explanation of numerous curious and pathological cases of behavior. Further, it seems that Benjamin Libet's classic experiment on the initiation of action and the (...) empirical evidence concerning the confabulation of reason explanations provide further support for this view. In response, I will propose an alternative model of "real mental causation" that can accommodate the empirical evidence just as well as Wegner's. Further, we will see that there is plenty of evidence in support of the assumption that intentions are causally efficacious. This will provide us with ample reason to endorse the model of real mental causation. (shrink)

The neural vehicles of mental representation play an explanatory role in cognitive psychology that their realizers do not. In this paper, I argue that the individuation of realizers as vehicles of representation restricts the sorts of explanations in which they can participate. I illustrate this with reference to Rupert’s (2011) claim that representational vehicles can play an explanatory role in psychology in virtue of their quantity or proportion. I propose that such quantity-based explanatory claims can apply only to realizers (...) and not to vehicles, in virtue of the particular causal role that vehicles play in psychological explanations. (shrink)