Philosophy of Mind, General Works

Human mind and human body have been separated from each other as belonging to familiar different categories. But what if we are supposed to admit a category of bodily posture? This is a paper to advance a thesis that mental content in bodily posture is a basis to integrate mind and body. First, what is the basis to claim that there is such a thing as a bodily posture? We humans all communicate each other not only through an ordinary language (...) but also through human postures. Often human postures are much more efficient ways of expressing of ourselves and of understanding each other. Affirmation of this is more natural than its denial. -/- Second, human postures have a mental content. Nodding expresses an agreement to what is suggested where turning indicates disapproval or ignorance. Nodding and turning are physical acts. And so far as they are acts they carry mental contents. But it is important that we do correctly understand the mental contents in such acts. Often mental acts have been taken to be subjective or solipsistic. But contemporary discussions on mental content indicate that mental content carries a wide context rather than a narrow one. If so, this would help us to see how body and mind integrate themselves in the human conception of ourselves. (shrink)

What does it truly mean to “understand”? The Chinese Room Argument claims that AI, no matter how advanced, can never possess genuine understanding—it merely manipulates symbols without grasping meaning. But if human cognition itself is built upon layers of memorization, pattern recognition, and computational complexity, then is understanding anything more than an emergent property of structured information processing? This paper argues that Searle’s framework— which many counterarguments engage in— is flawed and rooted in anthropocentric bias.

Perception is a continuous experience that exists at every instant, across a set of simultaneous events in the brain. Special relativity physics states that there can be nothing physical, that connect simultaneous events. As such perception cannot be a physical but non- physical or dualistic. This argument is analysed further and a new concept called Concept A is introduce. With the aid of concept A, free will is explained.

The mind-body problem is analyzed in a physicalist perspective. By combining the concepts of emergence and algorithmic information theory in a thought experiment employing a basic nonlinear process, it is argued that epistemically strongly emergent properties may develop in a physical system. A comparison with the significantly more complex neural network of the brain shows that also consciousness is epistemically emergent in a strong sense. Thus reductionist understanding of consciousness appears not possible; the mind-body problem does not have a reductionist (...) solution. The ontologically emergent character of consciousness is then identified from a combinatorial analysis relating to system limits set by quantum mechanics, implying that consciousness is fundamentally irreducible to low-level phenomena. In the perspective of a modified definition of free will, the character of the physical interactions of the brain's neural system is subsequently studied. As an ontologically open system, it is asserted that its future states are undeterminable in principle. We argue that this leads to freedom of the will. (shrink)

We propose an approach of treating information as an intermediate (or medium). The intermediate can be thought of as an information particle. That particle has three main properties.

Frustration has been growing with mainstay epistemological methods of logical deduction and experimental falsification for assessing theories of consciousness. This paper explores one among several alternatives being proposed: the listed requirements epistemology. A literature search identifies five papers that explicitly list requirements for assessing consciousness theories. These five lists are analysed as a promising starting point, but as yet insufficiently comprehensive to do the method justice. The longest list has 11 items, but 19 unique items are identified across the five (...) lists and a taxonomic analysis by category further surfaces at least 30 potential candidates. Four limitations of the method are discussed, arguing that it is best treated as one practical tool as part of a broader strategy for rigorously assessing consciousness theories and identifying avenues for future research. The conclusion describes a workplan for a sufficiently complete working taxonomy to support the field’s collective endeavours. (shrink)

The stream of human consciousness appears to be interruptible, in that we can experience a sensation of ‘returning to ourselves after an absence of content’ (e.g. sleep, anaesthesia, full-absorption meditation). Prima facie, such evidence poses a challenge to simple applications of theories of consciousness based on electromagnetic or neural activity in the brain, because some of this activity persists during periods of interruption. This paper elaborates one of several possible responses to the challenge. We build on a previous theory in (...) which EM field topology delineates complex macrophenomenal experience. We first apply an analytic lens to identify different ways in which field topologies might generate sensations of ‘absence of content’. We then test the feasibility of a particular phenomenological approach for assessing those field topologies, powered by the unusual lucidity about cessation pathways induced via certain meditation practices and psychedelic dosages. We build computational simulations of these cessation pathways and test them on eight interviewees with various levels of experience in cessation states. We conclude that this approach can generate usable insight, but requires further formalisation to fulfil its potential. The findings tentatively support our claims but the theory remains speculative at this stage. We set out empirical tests with 11 specific predictions, both for further phenomenological research and for brain manipulation research. Although they align neatly, our ontological and cessation theories can also be separated. The paper describes how our theories can be consistent with other perspectives on consciousness, such as variants of predictive processing or global network theory. (shrink)

In this paper I present objections to the Fading Qualia and Dancing Qualia thought experiments, which David Chalmers uses to argue that functional organization fully determines conscious experience.

I present the new realist philosophy by Jocelyn Benoist, in particular, his solution to the problem of the explanatory gap in the philosophy of mind.

Moralising accounts of depression include the idea that depression is a sin or the result of sin, and/or that it is the result of demonic possession which has occurred because of moral or spiritual failure. Increasingly some Christian communities, understandably concerned about the debilitating effects these views have on people with depression, have adopted secular folk psychiatry’s ‘medicalising’ campaign, emphasising that depression is an illness for which, like (so-called) physical illnesses, experients should not be held responsible. This paper argues that (...) both moralising and medicalising models of depression are intellectually and practically (pastorally and therapeutically) problematic, gesturing towards more promising emphases. (shrink)

«Экзистенциальные пределы разума» — это исследование природы человеческих страхов и ограничений. Книга предлагает новый взгляд на пессимизм и экзистенциализм, опираясь на идеи Петера Цапффе, Ирвина Ялома и прогнозирующего кодирования, одного из байесовских подходов к разуму. Через призму философии, когнитивных наук и нейробиологии раскрываются механизмы адаптации к конечности и бессмысленности. Эта книга открывает пути к осмыслению жизни и помогает глубже понять границы разума.

"Self-knowledge" refers to the knowledge a person has about their current mental states. Philosophically, this type of knowledge is intriguing because it appears to be acquired not only through a distinctive process, differing from other forms of empirical knowledge acquisition, but also in a particularly reliable manner. Thus, when I articulate my self-knowledge, I seem to speak with a unique first-person authority. My listeners appear to attribute greater weight to what I say about my own mental states than to what (...) others say about them. As is often the case in philosophical debates, nearly every aspect of this topic is contentious: not only what constitutes the best explanation for the distinctive features of self-knowledge but also whether self-knowledge actually possesses these features at all. This article provides an overview of the most important points of contention. (shrink)

Review of The Computational Theory of Mind by Matteo Colombo and Gualtiero Piccinini. Cambridge, 2023, iv + 75 pp, $64.99 HB.

Augustine maintains that the mind at least consists of memory, intellect, and will (De Trinitate 10.9.13 & 10.11.17). While it is easy to understand the intellect and will as essential to the mind’s activities, memory proves more difficult to understand. It is not immediately clear, for example, whether a human mind could operate without memory, whether people without memory have minds, and what distinguishes memory from the intellect. To understand the role of memory and its respective activities, this article addresses (...) Augustine’s philosophy of mind and places it in the context of human teleology. By philosophy of mind, I mean an account of what is necessary for the constitution of a mind and to execute a mental act. I argue that, for Augustine, memory is necessary to have a human mind, to execute any mental act, and thus to know God. (shrink)

This paper provides a short historical-philosophical commentary on the first Ukrainian translation of the seventh chapter, «Nature, Life and Body-Mind», from John Dewey’s Experience and Nature, first published in1925, and which has since been regarded as Dewey’s philosophical magnum opus. This commentary includes a short history of the book, a description of its structure, as well as a brief consideration of its significance from both historical and contemporary perspectives. -/- The paper briefly discusses the book’s main methodology, denotative method, which (...) treats experience from a functional perspective the essence of which can be thought of as the practice-theory-practice pattern. For Dewey, implementing this method into philosophy should make the latter more practical and effective. -/- Experience and Nature is a clear expression of Dewey’s overall metaphysics and philosophy of mind and the book’s seventh chapter is central when it comes to Dewey’s solution to the mind-body problem. Thus, the paper briefly discusses Dewey’s emergent theory of mind, which is Dewey’s metaphysical solution to the mind-body problem, and which aims at restoring the continuity between nature and experience. -/- Since this translation is in a sense experimental, this or that terminological approach should not be understood as the ultimate truth. Thus, any constructive criticism, correctives and suggestions are welcomed. The pragmatic approach to philosophy and philosophizing is essentially fallibilist, and philosophical translation is in no way exception to that. -/- This translation is a part of Dewey’s Experience and Nature Centennial celebration organized by Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. -/- . (shrink)

This is the first Ukrainian translation of the seventh chapter, “Nature, Life and Body-Mind,” from John Dewey’s 1925 philosophical magnum opus Experience and Nature.

In contemporary philosophy of mind and psychiatry, schizophrenic thought insertion is often used as a validating or invalidating counterexample in various theories about how we experience ourselves. Recent work has taken cases of thought insertion to provide an invalidating counterexample to the Humean denial of self-experience, arguing that deficiencies of agency in thought insertion suggest that we normally experience ourselves as the agent of our thoughts. In this paper, I argue that appealing to a breakdown in the sense of agency (...) to explain thought insertion is problematic, and that rather than following the prevailing binary approach which holds that certain features of consciousness go missing while others remain wholly intact, a better explanation involves construing thought insertion as a disturbing or disrupting of the subjectivity (for-me-ness) of experience. The result is that experiencing ourselves as the subject of our thoughts is where future research should be directed, given the robust persistence of this form of self-experience across psychopathological and non-psychopathological cases alike. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars’ denunciation of the Myth of the Given was meant to clarify, against empiricism, that perceptual episodes alone are insufficient to ground and justify perceptual knowledge. Sellars showed that in order to accomplish such epistemic tasks, more resources and capacities, such as those involved in using concepts, are needed. Perceptual knowledge belongs to the space of reasons and not to an independent realm of experience. Dan Hutto and Eric Myin have recently presented the Hard Problem of Content as an (...) ensemble of reasons against naturalistic accounts of content. In a nutshell, it states that covariance relations—even though they are naturalistically acceptable explanatory resources—do not constitute content. The authors exploit this move in order to promote their preferred radical enactivist and anti-representationalist option, according to which, basic minds—the lower stratum of cognition—do not involve content. Although it is controversial to argue that the Hard Problem of Content effectively dismisses naturalistic theories of representation, a central aspect of it—the idea that information as covariance does not suffice to explain content—finds support among the defenders of classical cognitive representationalism, such as Marcin Miłkowski. This support—together with the acknowledgment this remark about covariance is a point already made by Sellars in his criticism of the Myth of the Given—has a number of interesting implications. Not only is it of interest for the debates about representationalism in cognitive science, where it can be understood as an anticipatory move, but it also offers some clues and insights for reconsidering some issues along Sellarsian lines—a conflation between two concepts of representation that is often assumed in cognitive science, a distinction between two types of relevant normativities, and a reconsideration of the naturalism involved in such explanations. (shrink)

With what modes of mentality can we build a visceral, subjective sense of being in some specific mass-political society? Theorists and political cultivators standardly call upon the imagination – the kind prompted by symbols and rituals, for example. Could perception ever play such a role? I argue that it can, but that perceptions of mass-political publics come with costs of cruelty and illusion that neither democratic theorists nor participants should be willing to pay. The clearest examples of such perceptions are (...) found in fascist political culture. My discussion aims to illuminate what it is about publics, perception, and democracy that makes this so. -/- . (shrink)

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

Bayesian confirmation theory is our best formal framework for describing inductive reasoning. The problem of old evidence is a particularly difficult one for confirmation theory, because it suggests that this framework fails to account for central and important cases of inductive reasoning and scientific inference. I show that we can appeal to the fragmentation of doxastic states to solve this problem for confirmation theory. This fragmentation solution is independently well-motivated because of the success of fragmentation in solving other problems. I (...) also argue that the fragmentation solution is preferable to other solutions to the problem of old evidence. These other solutions are already committed to something like fragmentation, but suffer from difficulties due to their additional commitments. If these arguments are successful, Bayesian confirmation theory is saved from the problem of old evidence, and the argument for fragmentation is bolstered by its ability to solve yet another problem. (shrink)

This book is the first volume featuring the work of American women philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century. It provides selected papers authored by Mary Whiton Calkins, Grace Andrus de Laguna, Grace Neal Dolson, Marjorie Glicksman Grene, Marjorie Silliman Harris, Thelma Zemo Lavine, Marie Collins Swabey, Ellen Bliss Talbot, Dorothy Walsh and Margaret Floy Washburn. The book also provides the historical and philosophical background to their work. The papers focus on the nature of philosophy, knowledge, the philosophy (...) of science, the mind-matter nexus, the nature of time, and the question of freedom and the individual. The material is suitable for scholars, researchers and advanced philosophy students interested in (history of) philosophy; theories of knowledge; philosophy of science; mind, and reality. (shrink)

The problem of variability concerns the fact that empirical data does not support the existence of a coordinated set of biological markers, either in the body or the brain, which correspond to our folk emotion categories; categories like anger, happiness, sadness, disgust and fear. Barrett (2006a, b, 2013, 2016, 2017a, b) employs this fact to argue (i) against the faculty psychology approach to emotion, e.g. emotions are the products of emotion-specific mechanisms, or “modules”, and (ii) for the view that emotions (...) are constructed from domain-general “core systems” with the aid of our folk concepts. The conjunction of (i) and (ii), she argues, heralds a paradigm shift in our understanding of emotion: emotions aren’t triggered but made. In this paper, I argue such a shift is premature for a faculty psychology framework can accommodate the neurobiological variability of emotion. This can be done by treating emotions as developmental modules: non-innate systems which behave like modules, but form as a product of ontogenetic development. (shrink)

This essay delves into the essentialities of object-giving sources within the formulation of epistemic objectivity. It explores the relationship between objectivity and intentional states, particularly in the context of immediate and transcendent experiences. A key focus of this paradigm is the examination of inferences and how they are held in X’s intentional processes. These claims about inferences contribute to the perception of objectivity by highlighting the epistemological transitions of things that occur in the constitutive ideation. Additionally, the activity within X’s (...) episteme leads to significant articulations that reflect a structural realism of experiences. The essay also introduces a convention of the experiential-intentional process so that the causality manipulations could be avoided by the precents of sources of ideation. In this instance, the central niche is occupied by transcendental reflections of intentionality, which are fundamentally founded on experiences and objectivity, and they possess a distinct rhetorical quality. They manifest as acts, propositional forms, and constituents, all of which contribute to the understanding and justification of objectivity. To establish such a framework that upholds objectivity, certain prerequisites must be met. Firstly, the framework must possess justificational resources that prevent causality manipulations. Secondly, pre-reflective sources should not inter-define causality in epistemic circumstances, although this does not exclude the emergence of causal relations, and thus this approach offers a correlational explanation. Lastly, transcendental reflections should remain compatible with the experiential-intentional process, allowing for the accommodation of subjectivity in the justification of objectivity. (shrink)

Consciousness is targeted by both philosophers and neuroscientists; but different methodological premises and even different conceptions about what conscious experience is and how the challenges and potential problems associated with consciousness research should be formulated underlie the different approaches. Namely, whereas empirical data and the constant refinement of experimental procedures to expand and modify this body of empirical data and resulting empirical theories are crucial to neuroscience, the significance of empirical knowledge to philosophy is less clear: Although empirical data certainly (...) can influence philosophical concepts, the latter are nonetheless prerequisites of empirical research itself and thus may themselves not be empirically testable. The present paper elaborates from a multidisciplinary, neuroscientist-philosopher’s perspective the relation of philosophical concepts and empirical research on consciousness, drawing on two exemplary controversies from the philosophy of mind – on the ontological status of experiential properties and on free will. Consequences from both the scientific and the philosophical standpoint are discussed. (shrink)

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

Scholars have wrestled with "consciousness", a major scholar calling it the "hard problem". Some thirty-plus years after the Towards a Science of Consciousness, we do not seem to be any closer to an answer to "What is consciousness?". Seemingly irresolvable metaphysical problems are addressed by bootstrapping, provisional assumptions, not unlike those used by logicians and mathematicians. I bootstrap with the same ontology and epistemology applicable to everything we apprehend. Here, I argue for a version of the unity of opposites, a (...) form of neutral monism. Something exists because of what it is not; nothing can exist by itself, singularities (analogous to monads), expressing the model. Applying this most fundamental law to the consciousness problem, the physical (movement) comes into being simultaneously as the mental (stasis), each displayed by a field that is variegated (ranging from creative to entropic processes). Such is in keeping with how the singularity emerged as our universe, the same form that may account for sub-Planck-scale phenomena. Overall, like the most fundamental law, deep structures are imminent in our universe, both as objects and processes. (shrink)

The “puzzle” of emotional plasticity concerns making sense of two conflicting bodies of evidence: evidence that emotions often appear modular in key respects, and evidence that our emotions also often appear to transcend this modularity. In this paper, I argue a developmentalist approach to emotion, which builds on Karmiloff-Smith’s (1986, 1992, 1994, 2015) work on cognitive development, can help us dissolve this puzzle.

The contemporary view of the relationship between conscious and unconscious intentionality consists in two claims: unconscious propositional attitudes represent the world the same way conscious ones do, and both sets of attitudes represent by having determinate propositional content. Crane has challenged both claims, proposing instead that unconscious propositional attitudes differ from conscious ones in being less determinate in nature. This paper aims to evaluate Crane's proposal. In particular, I make explicit and critique certain assumptions Crane makes in support of his (...) asymmetry, and argue for a conditional claim: if Crane is right that unconscious intentional states are indeterminate, this suggests that conscious intentional states are indeterminate in a similar fashion as well. (shrink)

Conscious recollection, of the kind characterised by sensory mental imagery, is often thought to involve ‘episodically’ recalling experienced events in one’s personal past. One might wonder whether this overlooks distinctive ways in which we sometimes recall ordinary, persisting objects. Of course, one can recall an object by remembering an event in which one encountered it. But are there acts of recall which are distinctively objectual in that they are not about objects in this mediated way (i.e., by way of being (...) about events in which they featured)? This question has broad implications, not least for understanding the nature and role of imagery in remembering, the requirements of memory-based singular thought about objects, and the sense in which remembering involves ‘mental time travel’ through which one ‘relives’ past events. In this paper, I argue that we sometimes do recall objects from our past without remembering events in which they featured. The positive view of such cases I go on to propose draws on a wide body of empirical work in its support and accommodates a more nuanced picture of the role of imagery in remembering. In a slogan: remembering might essentially involve a kind of ‘re-experiencing’, but it need not involve ‘reliving’. (shrink)

Qual è il rapporto tra la mente cosciente e la natura? A tale questione fondamentale si può rispondere in modi molto diversi, a seconda di come si concepiscono sia la mente che la natura. Questo lavoro offre una risposta originale, integrando la fenomenologia husserliana e la concezione enattiva all’interno di una prospettiva unitaria chiamata fenomenologia enattiva. Nel percorso qui sviluppato, il lettore troverà un’analisi ricca e aggiornata di alcune tra le questioni più dibattute nella filosofia della mente e nelle scienze (...) cognitive contemporanee: il “problema difficile” della coscienza e il suo rapporto con l’intenzionalità, lo statuto epistemologico e ontologico delle qualità sensibili, la filosofia del colore, il dibattito sulla cognizione incorporata (embodiment) e l’approccio fenomenologico allo studio del mentale. L’autore sviluppa infine una proposta generale che si articola in una metafisica monistico-neutrale, processuale e relazionale della natura e della coscienza. (shrink)

Compared to other forms of memory, episodic memory is commonly viewed as special for being distinctively metarepresentational and, relatedly, uniquely human. There is an inherent ambiguity in these conceptions, however, because “episodic memory” has two closely connected yet subtly distinct uses, one designating the recollective experience and the other designating the underlying neurocognitive system. Since experience and system sit at different levels of theorizing, their disentanglement is not only necessary but also fruitful for generating novel theoretical hypotheses. To show this, (...) I first argue that accepting the phenomenally conscious contents of episodic remembering as metarepresentational does not necessitate a metarepresentational conception of the episodic memory system. In its stead, I sketch an alternative account on which the metarepresentational character of episodic remembering is generated through the interaction of first-order outputs of the episodic memory system with other neurocognitive components of the brain. Complemented with a first-order account of the memory system, the system-experience distinction further supplies a novel understanding of the human uniqueness of episodic recollection, one that is compatible with there being an evolutionarily conserved episodic memory system. Overall, by distinguishing the two equivocal senses of “episodic memory” in our theorizing, we unearth an opportunity to understand how the distinctive phenomenology of our episodic recollection is related to and implemented in the cognitive architecture. (shrink)

In this chapter I will present, in a general way, Millikan's biosemantic theory of the phenomenon of intentionality. For this purpose, the text will take the following path. First, I will present the problem of intentionality and an overview of the dominant theories of intentional content during the twentieth century and part of the twenty-first century. Then, I will present a general version of Millikan's biosemantic theory, appearing in 1984, which will allow us to see what the relevance and originality (...) of his proposal consists in. Finally, in keeping with one of the central purposes of Las filósofas que nos formaron, I will share a brief interview that Millikan very kindly agreed to give for this publication, in which she tells us some non-theoretical aspects of her history as a philosopher. (shrink)

The recent book 'Putnam' by Massimo Dell’Utri concerns the philosophical and argumentative journey of Hilary Putnam, that led him to explore the implications of Quine’s views about analyticity and the many ways in which realism can be understood in epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, its main entailments for the philosophy of mind, and more recently about issues concerning ethics, meta-ethics, and value-theory. The present critical review briefly recollects the reading presented in the book, and then highlights some of (...) the implications of this reconstruction, especially those concerning a key passage in the evolution of Putnam’s thought: Putnam’s abandonment of internal realism and the endorsement of natural realism. (shrink)

Panpsychism has many sides in common with Jung and Pauli's thinking, and analytical psychology is also a form of panpsychism. In this article we want to lay the foundations for a psychophysics that has an adequate onto-epistemology for the complex phenomenology of the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness. This onto-epistemology is a monism in which an informational-spiritual atemporal dimension, completely entangled in itself and teleologically anthropic, precedes and “informs” instantaneously and constantly matter-energy, space-time and consciousness.

Conservation of a circle explains (the human) mind.

Barbara Montero considers whether or not we are able to remember what pain feels like. In order to properly answer this question, she introduces a new type of memory called 'qualitative memory', which seems common to exteroceptive sensations. Having concluded that there is arguably no qualitative memory for pain and other bodily sensations, Montero considers possible philosophical implications for areas including rational choice-making and empathy. In addressing the relationship between pain and memory, the paper raises an issue that has not (...) received much attention and indicates various interesting fields of research for which the apparent inability to remember pain might prove relevant. My comment primarily focuses on the core concepts of pain and qualitative memory which are foundational for the paper. I argue that a deeper engagement with some key aspects of these concepts is necessary. A more fine-grained discussion could have made Montero's argument more convincing. (shrink)

ABSTRACT LeDoux's pioneering work on the neurobiology of fear has played a crucial role in informing debates in the philosophy of emotion. For example, it plays a key part in Griffiths’ argument for why emotions don’t form a natural kind. Likewise, it is employed by Faucher and Tappolet to defend pro-emotion views, which claim that emotions aid reasoning. LeDoux, however, now argues that his work has been misread. He argues that using emotion terms, like ‘fear’, to describe neurocognitive data adds (...) a ‘surplus meaning’: it attributes phenomenal properties to survival circuits which they don’t possess. This paper aims to explore LeDoux's new proposal, and examine the potentially devastating consequences that ensue for the aforementioned views. I end by addressing the worry that these lessons are conditional on LeDoux's own higher-order theory of emotional consciousness being true. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to critically evaluate the debate between John McDowell and Michael Friedman on the nature of understanding and relativism. McDowell in his magnum opus Mind and World, has argued in favour of the view that the way we are open to reality is constituted by concepts. According to him, our openness to reality is placed in the space of reasons which is nothing but space of concepts. Friedman in his critical and detail review of McDowell’s (...) book has taken McDowell’s project in his book in particular and in his philosophy in general as the project of not constructing philosophical theories but of exorcising the philosophical traditions. It is indeed so as McDowell himself has acknowledged because he closely follows Wittgensteinian quietism in his approach to various philosophical problems. While explaining how our knowledge and perception of the world among other things are placed in the space of reasons, towards the end of his book, McDowell relates space of reasons to language and tradition. Space of reasons, in his opinion, can be understood, in terms of initiating ourselves into language and inheriting the tradition. He thus says, “…the sort of language into which human beings are first initiated, serves as a repository of tradition, a store of historically accumulated wisdom about what is reason for what.” And this is Gadamer in significant sense. (shrink)

The diverse and breathtaking intelligence of the human animal is often embodied in skills. People, throughout their lifetimes, acquire and refine a vast number of skills. And there seems to be no upper limit to the creativity and beauty expressed by them. Think, for instance, of Olympic gymnastics: the amount of strength, flexibility, and control required to perform even a simple beam routine amazes, startles, and delights. In addition to the sheer beauty of skill, performances at the pinnacle of expertise (...) often display a kind of brilliance or genius. We observe an intelligence that saturates the body. The unity of physicality and intellect, mind and body, meshed and melded. Apart from sports, people develop a host of other skills, including musical and artistic skills, linguistic and social skills, scientific and medical skills, military and political skills, engineering skills, computer skills, business skills, etc. What's more, skill acquisition and refinement occurs throughout the human lifespan. In the Introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Skill and Expertise, we introduce and contextualize the various chapters that compose the Handbook. Before providing substantive overviews of each chapter, we also discuss the topic of skill in general and its importance for various areas of philosophy. Chapters are organized into six sections: 1. Skill in the history of philosophy (East & West), 2. Skill in Epistemology, 3. Skill, Intelligence, and Agency, 4. Skill in Perception, Imagination, and Emotion, 5. Skill, Language, and Social Cognition, and 6. Skill and Expertise in Normative Philosophy. (shrink)

In the article I discuss functionalist interpretations of Husserlian phenomenology. The first one was coined in the discussion between Hubert Dreyfus and Ronald McIntyre. They argue that Husserl’s phenomenology shares similarities with computational functionalism, and the key similarity is between the concept of noema and the concept of mental representation. I show the weaknesses of that reading and argue that there is another available functionalist reading of Husserlian phenomenology. I propose to shift perspective and approach the relation between phenomenology and (...) functionalism from a methodological perspective, specifically taking into account the functionalist explanatory strategy called functional analysis. I discuss the notion of function in Husserl’s works and Husserl’s idea of functional phenomenology. The key argument I develop is that in functional phenomenology we can find an explanatory strategy which is analogous to the strategy of functional decomposition used in functional analysis. I conclude that the proposed functionalist reading of phenomenology opens a new approach to the integration of phenomenology with cognitive sciences. (shrink)

In using brain stimulation technology to suppress an individual’s fear response to a traumatic memory, we are effectively altering that individual’s identity. In this article, I argue that until we learn more, such technology should be available only to patients with objectively debilitating fear responses who give their informed consent. First, I provide an overview of how the technology works. Second, I analyze the artificial, natural, and clinical changes in memory, and explores the ethical concerns associated with altering an individual’s (...) identity. I conclude by asserting that the benefits of brain stimulation technology outweigh the concerns if the proper administrative procedure is followed. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that there is a causal condition on perception, and that this condition is a conceptual truth about perception. A highly influential argument for this claim is based on intuitive responses to Gricean-style thought experiments. Do the folk share the intuitions of philosophers? Roberts et al. (2016) presented participants with two kinds of cases: Blocker cases (similar to Grice’s case involving a mirror and a pillar) and Non-Blocker cases (similar to Grice’s case involving a clock and brain stimulation). (...) They found that a substantial minority agreed that seeing occurs in the Non-Blocker cases, and that in the Blocker cases significantly less agreed that seeing occurs. They thus hypothesized that folk intuitions better align with a no blocker condition than with a causal condition. This paper continues this line of enquiry with two new experiments. The paper investigates the generality and robustness of Roberts et al.’s findings by expanding the sense modalities tested from only vision to audition and olfaction as well. The paper also uses Gricean-style thought experiments as a case study for investigating the “reflection defense” against the negative project in experimental philosophy. Our results replicate and extend Roberts et al.’s study and support their hypothesis that folk intuitions better align with a no blocker condition. They also provide an empirical reason to doubt the reflection defense. (shrink)

Robert Brandom has developed an account of conceptual content as instituted by social practices. Such practices are understood as being implicitly normative. Brandom proposed the idea of implicit norms in order to meet some requirements imposed by Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following: escaping the regress of rules on the one hand, and avoiding mere regular behavior on the other. Anandi Hattiangadi has criticized this account as failing to meet such requirements. In what follows, I try to show how the correct understanding (...) of sanctions and the expressivist reading of the issue can meet these challenges. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel account of the contents of memory. By drawing on insights from the philosophy of perception, I propose a hybrid account of the contents of memory designed to preserve important aspects of representationalist and relationalist views. The hybrid view I propose also contributes to two ongoing debates in philosophy of memory. First, I argue that, in opposition to eternalist views, the hybrid view offers a less metaphysically-charged solution to the co-temporality problem. Second, I show how the (...) hybrid view conceives of the relationship between episodic memory and other forms of episodic thinking. I conclude by considering some disanalogies between perception and memory and by replying to objections. I argue that, despite there being important differences between memory and perception, those differences do not harm my project. (shrink)

[लोग बार बार कहते हैं कि दर्शन वास्तव में प्रगति नहीं करता है, कि हम अभी भी एक ही दार्शनिक समस्याओं के साथ कब्जा कर रहे हैं के रूप में यूनानियों थे. लेकिन जो लोग यह कहते हैं, वे समझ नहीं पा रहे हैं कि ऐसा क्यों होना चाहिए। ऐसा इसलिए है क्योंकि हमारी भाषा वही रही है और हमें एक ही सवाल पूछने में seducing रहता है. जब तक कोई क्रिया होती रहती है, तब तक ऐसा प्रतीत होता है (...) जैसे कि वह उसी तरह कार्य करता है जैसे कि वह खाने और पीने के लिए उसी तरह कार्य करता है, जब तक कि हमारे पास अभी भी विशेषण [अद्वितीय] है, [गलत] , [गलत] , जब तक हम समय की नदी की बात करना जारी रखते हैं, तब तक हम समय की एक नदी की बात करते रहते हैं , अंतरिक्ष के विस्तार, आदि, लोगों को एक ही puzzling कठिनाइयों पर ठोकर रखने के लिए और खुद को कुछ है जो कोई स्पष्टीकरण को साफ करने में सक्षम लगता है घूर पाते हैं. और क्या अधिक है, यह उत्कृष्ट के लिए एक लालसा को संपीड़ित करता है, क्योंकि, जहाँ तक लोग सोचते हैं कि वे 'मानव समझ की सीमाओं को देख सकते हैं], वे निश्चित रूपसे था टी वे इन से परे देख सकते हैं पर विश्वास करतेहैं. यह बोली लुडविग Wittgenstein से है जो दर्शन को कुछ 70 साल पहले फिर से परिभाषित किया है (लेकिन ज्यादातर लोगों को अभी तक यह पता लगाना है). Dennett, हालांकि वह कुछ 40 साल के लिए एक दार्शनिक किया गया है, उनमें से एक है. यह भी उत्सुक है कि दोनों वह और उनके प्रधानमंत्री विरोधी, जॉन Searle, प्रसिद्ध Wittgensteinians के तहत अध्ययन किया (जॉन ऑस्टिन के साथ Searle, गिल्बर्ट Ryle के साथ Dennett) लेकिन Searle अधिक या कम बात है और Dennett नहीं किया था, (हालांकि यह बातें खींच रहा है Searle या Ryle Wittgensteinians फोन करने के लिए). Dennett एक कठिन determinist है (हालांकि वह पिछले दरवाजे में वास्तविकता चुपके की कोशिश करता है), और शायद यह Ryle, जिसकी प्रसिद्ध पुस्तक के कारण है - मन की अवधारणा (1949) के लिए reprinted जारी है. उस किताब ने भूत को भगाने का बहुत अच्छा कामकिया, लेकिन उसने मशीन छोड़ दी। Dennett गलतियों Wittgenstein बनाने आनंद मिलता है, Ryle (और कई अन्य लोगों के बाद से) विस्तार से उजागर किया है. शब्द चेतना, पसंद, स्वतंत्रता, इरादा, कण, सोच, निर्धारित करता है, लहर, कारण, हुआ, घटना (और इतने पर अंतहीन) का हमारा उपयोग शायद ही कभी भ्रम का एक स्रोत हैं, लेकिन जैसे ही हम सामान्य जीवन छोड़ और दर्शन में प्रवेश (और किसी भी चर्चा उस वातावरण से अलगहो गई जिसमें भाषा विकसित हुई थी ,अर्थात्, जिस संदर्भ में शब्दों का अर्थ था) अराजकता राज करतीहै। सबसे अधिक कीतरह, Dennett एक सुसंगत ढांचे का अभाव है - जो Searle तर्कसंगतता की तार्किक संरचना कहा जाता है. मैं इस पर काफी विस्तार किया है जब से मैं इस समीक्षा लिखा था और मेरे हाल के लेख विस्तार से क्या दर्शन के लिए Dennett दृष्टिकोण के साथ गलत है दिखानेके लिए , जो एकस्टेरॉयड पर वैज्ञानिकता कह सकते हैं. मुझे Wittgenstein से एक और उद्धरण के साथ समाप्त करते हैं - महत्वाकांक्षा सोचा की मौत है. आधुनिक दो systems दृश्यसे मानव व्यवहार के लिए एक व्यापक अप करने के लिए तारीख रूपरेखा इच्छुक लोगों को मेरी पुस्तक 'दर्शन, मनोविज्ञान, मिनडी और लुडविगमें भाषा की तार्किक संरचना से परामर्श कर सकते हैं Wittgenstein और जॉन Searle '2 एड (2019). मेरे लेखन के अधिक में रुचि रखने वालों को देख सकते हैं 'बात कर रहेबंदर- दर्शन, मनोविज्ञान, विज्ञान, धर्म और राजनीति पर एक बर्बाद ग्रह --लेख और समीक्षा 2006-2019 3 एड (2019) और आत्मघाती यूटोपियान भ्रम 21st मेंसदी 4वें एड (2019). (shrink)

唯物論、還元主義、行動論、機能主義、動的システム理論、計算論は一般的な見解であるが、ヴィトゲンシュタインは支離滅裂であると示した。行動の研究は人間の生活のすべてを包含するが、行動は主に自動で無意識であ り、主に言語で表現される意識的な部分(ウィトゲンシュタインは心と同一視する)でさえも、知覚的ではないので、サールが合理性の論理構造(LSR)と呼ぶ枠組みを持つことは重要であり、私は高次思考の記述心理学 (DPHOT)と呼ぶ。ヴィトゲンシュタインとサールが働いた枠組みを要約した後、現代の推論研究によって拡張されたように、私は現代の行動科学を含む行動のほとんどの議論に浸透するカーサーの見解の不十分さを示 します,。私は、彼の本は2冊の本のアマルガムであり、1つは認知心理学の要約であり、もう1つは新しい専門用語を追加して心の標準的な哲学的混乱の要約であることを維持しています。私は、後者は支離滅裂または人 生の漫画の見解とみなされるべきであり、彼の言葉でヴィトゲンシュタインを取ることは、私たちは言語/身体の問題として心/体の問題を考慮することによって成功した自己療法を実践できることを示唆しています。 現代の2つのシス・エムスの見解から人間の行動のための包括的な最新の枠組みを望む人は、私の著書「ルートヴィヒ・ヴィトゲンシュタインとジョン・サールの第2回(2019)における哲学、心理学、ミンと言語の論 理的構造」を参照することができます。私の著作の多くにご興味がある人は、運命の惑星における「話す猿--哲学、心理学、科学、宗教、政治―記事とレビュー2006-2019 第3回(2019)」と21世紀4日(2019年)の自殺ユートピア妄想st Century 4th ed (2019)などを見ることができます。 .

भौतिकवाद, रिडक्शनिज्म, व्यवहारवाद, कार्यवाद, गतिशील प्रणाली सिद्धांत और अभिकलनवाद लोकप्रिय विचार हैं, लेकिन उन्हें विटगेनस्टीन द्वारा असंबद्ध होने के लिए दिखाया गया था। व्यवहार के अध्ययन मानव जीवन के सभी शामिल हैं, लेकिन व्यवहार काफी हद तक स्वत: और बेहोश और यहां तक कि सचेत हिस्सा है, ज्यादातर भाषा में व्यक्त (जो Wittgenstein मन के साथ समानता), perspicous नहीं है, तो यह महत्वपूर्ण है एक रूपरेखा जो Searle Rationality के तार्किक संरचना (LSR) कहते हैं और मैं उच्च आदेश सोचा (DPHOT) (...) के वर्णनात्मक मनोविज्ञान कहते हैं. रूपरेखा का सारांश के बाद Wittgenstein और Searle द्वारा बाहर काम किया, के रूप में आधुनिक तर्क अनुसंधान द्वारा बढ़ाया, मैं Carruther विचार है, जो व्यवहार के सबसे विचारों व्याप्त में अक्षमता दिखाने के समकालीन व्यवहार सहित विज्ञान. मेरा मानना है कि उनकी किताब दो पुस्तकों का एक मिश्रण है, एक संज्ञानात्मक मनोविज्ञान का सारांश और अन्य कुछ नए शब्दजाल के साथ मन पर मानक दार्शनिक भ्रम का सारांश जोड़ा. मेरा सुझाव है कि बाद के असंबद्ध या जीवन के एक कार्टून दृश्य के रूप में माना जाना चाहिए और है कि अपने शब्द पर Wittgenstein ले, हम मन के बारे में सफल आत्म चिकित्सा अभ्यास कर सकते हैं / आधुनिक दो systems दृश्यसे मानव व्यवहार के लिए एक व्यापक अप करने के लिए तारीख रूपरेखा इच्छुक लोगों को मेरी पुस्तक 'दर्शन, मनोविज्ञान, मिनडी और लुडविगमें भाषा की तार्किक संरचना से परामर्श कर सकते हैं Wittgenstein और जॉन Searle '2 एड (2019). मेरे लेखन के अधिक में रुचि रखने वालों को देख सकते हैं 'बात कर रहेबंदर- दर्शन, मनोविज्ञान, विज्ञान, धर्म और राजनीति पर एक बर्बाद ग्रह --लेख और समीक्षा 2006-2019 3 एड (2019) और आत्मघाती यूटोपियान भ्रम 21st मेंसदी 4वें एड (2019) . (shrink)

私は哲学者(心理学者)ルートヴィヒ・ヴィトゲンシュタインの有名なコメントから始めますが、ピンカーはほとんどの人と共有しています(進化した先天心理学のデフォルト設定のために)心の機能に関,する特定の偏見 、そしてウィトゲンシュタインは言語、思想、現実の働きに対するユニークで深遠な洞察を提供しています(彼は多かれ少なかれ同じ範囲と見なされています)。reはre、彼が言語の最も華麗で元のアナリストだったこ とを考えると最も残念であるこの巻のヴィトゲンシュタインへの言及だけです。 最後の章では、プラトンの洞窟の有名な比喩を使用して、彼は美しく心(言語、思考、意図的心理学)の概要と本を要約します - 盲目の利己主義の産物は、私たちの遺伝子のコピーを運ぶ近親者のための自動利他主義によってわずかにモデレートされます(包括的なフィットネス)-自動的に動作しますが、それにもかかわらず、私たちがその広大な能 力を利用して世界を生きるために私たちに大きな能力を採用できることを願って、アップビートノートで終わらせようとします。 ピンカーは確かに認識していますが、私たちの心理学についてはるかに多くが含まれているよりも取り残されているという事実についてはほとんど言いません。取り残されたり、最小限の注意を払われたりする人間性への窓 の中には、数学と幾何学、音楽と音、画像、出来事、因果関係、オントロジー(物事のクラスまたは私たちが知っていること), )、認識論(私たちが知っている方法)、性質(信じる、 思考、判断、意図など)と行動の意図的な心理学の残りの部分、神経伝達物質およびエンテオゲン、精神的な状態(例えば、サトリと啓蒙、脳刺激と記録、脳損傷および行動の赤字と障害、ゲームとスポーツ、決定理論(ゲ ーム理論と行動経済学を含む)、動物行動(非常に言語が、共有遺伝学の10億年)。これらの各分野の意図的心理学について、多くの本が書かれています。この本のデータは説明であり、なぜ私たちの脳がこのようにそれ を行うのか、どのように行われるのかを示す説明ではありません。文章をさまざまな方法で使用する方法(つまり、すべての意味を知っている)をどのように知っていますか?これは、ヴィトゲンシュタインが最も活発なレ ベルである、より基本的なレベルで動作する進化心理学です。そして、言葉がthe 使われる文脈=ヴィトゲンシュタインが開拓したアリーナに注目が集まっています。 それにもかかわらず、これは古典的な作品であり、これらの注意を払って、まだ読む価値があります。 現代の2つのシス・エムスの見解から人間の行動のための包括的な最新の枠組みを望む人は、私の著書「ルートヴィヒ・ヴィトゲンシュタインとジョン・サールの第2回(2019)における哲学、心理学、ミンと言語の論 理的構造」を参照することができます。私の著作の多くにご興味がある人は、運命の惑星における「話す猿--哲学、心理学、科学、宗教、政治―記事とレビュー2006-2019 第3回(2019)」と21世紀4日(2019年)の自殺ユートピア妄想st Century 4th ed (2019)などを見ることができます。 .