What is it Like to be a Phenomenologist?

In a recent paper, 'On the Persistence of Phenomenology' (in T. Metzinger (ed.), Conscious Experience , Paderborn, 1995), Diana Raffman presents a new argument for qualia, an argument that provides new focus for the qualia debate. We think Raffman's work relocates the debate to a better neighbourhood, a neighbourhood in which what tempts us to think that there must be qualia or phenomenal information is highlighted. Raffman, we argue, locates the core thought shared by many of the friends of qualia, namely, that our conceptual resources are inadequate for capturing the richness of experience. Experience is ineffably determinate. Moreover, Raffman's argument in support of this thought seems especially embarrassing to scientific-minded materialists, since the argument relies largely on well established empirical facts. We show, however, that Raffman's argument fails. So, if we are correct that her argument highlights what is tempting about qualia, then we have also shown that it is not tempting.     

What is it Like to be a Group Agent?

The existence of group agents is relatively widely accepted. Examples are corporations, courts, NGOs, and even entire states. But should we also accept that there is such a thing as group consciousness? I give an overview of some of the key issues in this debate and sketch a tentative argument for the view that group agents lack phenomenal consciousness (pace Schwitzgebel 2015 ). In developing my argument, I draw on integrated information theory, a much‐discussed theory of consciousness. I conclude by pointing out an implication of my argument for the normative status of group agents.     

What is it Like to Have an Unconscious Mental State?

Philosophical Studies - HOST is the theory that to be conscious of a mental state is totarget it with a higher-order state (a `HOS'), either an innerperception or a higher-order thought. Some...     

What is it Like to be Someone Else? Simulation and Empathy

This paper explores two models of empathy. One model places theory centre stage; the other emphasises our capacity to re-enact fragments of another's mental life. I argue that considerations of parsimony strongly support the latter, simulative approach. My results have consequences for the current debate between the theory-theory and simulation theory. That debate is standardly conceived as a debate about mental state attribution rather than about empathy. However, on the simulation model, empathy and mental state attribution involve a common mechanism. Thus the strength of the simulative approach to empathy lends considerable credence to the simulation account of mental state attribution. Considerations of empathy are thus surprisingly important in the philosophy of mind..     

What is it Like to be a Butterfly? A Philosophical Interpretation of Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream

This paper attempts to recast Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream within the larger normative context of the ‘Inner Chapters’ and early Daoism in terms of its moral significance, particularly in the way that it prescribes how a Daoist should live through the ‘significant symbol’ of the butterfly. This normative reading of the passage will be contrasted with two recent interpretations of the passage—one by Robert Allinson and the other by Harold Roth—that tend to focus more on the epistemological and mystical concerns of the text. As will be argued, the undue emphasis on the epistemological and mystical significance of the passage not only comes to grief when considered in light of philosophical and textual concerns but also obscures the moral dimensions of the passage that are more congruent with the ‘Inner Chapters’ as a whole.     

What is Philosophical about Kant’s Anthropology?

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View is fundamentally about the sphere of civilization, and, with this, a particular kind of philosophical self-understanding. By civilization, Kant means to indicate the process by which human beings transform their inner natures based on pragmatic or prudential considerations born of our living together. Civilization is what we do to ourselves in order to get along with others with whom we share the earth. In the Anthropology, what we come to understand about ourselves is the possibility of transforming our inner natures based on our will.     

What is nonconceptualism in Kant’s philosophy?

The aim of this paper is to critically review several interpretations of Kantian sensible intuition. The first interpretation is the recent construal of Kantian sensible intuition as a mental analogue of a direct referential term. The second is the old, widespread assumption that Kantian intuitions do not refer to mind-independent entities, such as bodies and their physical properties, unless they are brought under categories. The third is the assumption that, by referring to mind-independent entities, sensible intuitions represent objectively in the sense that they represent in a relative, perspective-independent manner. The fourth is the construal of Kantian sensible intuitions as non-conceptual content. In this paper, I support the alternative view that Kantian sensible representation is to be seen as iconic de re presentation of objects without representational content.     

Perceptions of wisdom: What is it and who has it?

One hundred fifty-five men and 233 women, aged 20 to 79 years, were asked to name both the most wise and the most interpersonally wise persons they knew personally and to give the age and sex of each. Participants were also asked for the areas in which their nominees were particularly wise. Overall, men and women responded similarly. The subjects tended to nominate individuals who were older than they were; the difference between their own age and their nominees' age decreased with increasing age. Subjects nominated males more often than females as wise and this tendency increased with the subjects' age. With the exception of older women, participants nominated females more often than males as interpersonally wise. When asked to report the areas in which their wise nominees were particularly wise, subjects tended to mention specific skill areas (e.g., business or science) for male nominees and interpersonal skill areas for female nominees.Please note that Nancy W. Denney is deceased.     

What is Original in Merleau-Ponty’s View of the Phenomenological Reduction?

Despite the recent increase of interest in the work of Merleau-Ponty there is still a persistent tendency to overlook the uniqueness of the philosophical position he advances in Phenomenology of Perception. In this article I present a reading of Merleau-Ponty’s account of the phenomenological reduction that explains how it is original. I do this by contrasting his presentation of the reduction with that of the early Husserl, highlighting how his emphasis on the phenomenology of the ‘perceived world’ leads him to reject Husserl’s conception of phenomenology as a ‘philosophical science,’ and the Kantian language in which the this account is framed. I go on to critically discuss the interpretations of the reduction advanced by Stephen Priest and Joel Smith as examples of readings that fail to fully grasp Merleau-Ponty’s account of the ‘natural attitude’ as resting on the inherent objectivizing structure that is built into perception itself. The way that these authors misinterpret Merleau-Ponty helps to make maximally clear the profound philosophical significance that he places on the phenomenology of the ‘perceived world’.     

What is it to be aware of your awareness of red? A review essay of Michelle Montague’s The Given

In this review essay of Michelle Montague’s The Given we focus on the central thesis in the book: the awareness of awareness thesis. On that thesis, a state of awareness constitutively involves an awareness of itself. In Section 2, we discuss what the awareness of awareness thesis amounts to, how it contrasts with the transparency of experience, and how it might be motivated. In Section 3, we discuss one of Montague’s two theoretical arguments for the awareness of awareness thesis. A view that accepts the awareness of awareness thesis, Montague argues, is to be preferred over competing views because it outperforms them in accounting for the property attributions one makes in perceptual experience. We suggest that it is not clear that this argument for the awareness of awareness thesis is successful. Finally, in Section 4 we consider the relation between Montague’s view of color experience and what she calls Strawson’s datum, arguing that Montague may not be able to explain this datum as straightforwardly as she supposes. This, we suggest, threatens Montague’s second theoretical argument for the awareness of awareness thesis.     

Experience‐What is it?

The author takes a renewed look at the constitutive aspects of experience, looking at it as process rather than contents. Recently more psychoanalytic voices are discernible that argue for the complexity and multi-leveled nature of inner experience. Yet the predominant and preeminent psychoanalytic voice has traditionally emphasized the linearity and single-factored nature of experience and all that is based on it: development, object relations, psychopathology, and treatment. The author offers an understanding of experience as stemming from the operation of two contiguous, ongoing modalities of processing internal and external input, and reflecting two polarities of the subject-object experience: of separateness and instrumentality, and of oneness and ongoing being. Such a conceptual reframing of experience harbors multiple implications for understanding subjectivity and inter-subjectivity, inter-relatedness as well as single-person psychology, and the all-important role of an experiential 'goodness-of-fit' in the analytic situation and elsewhere.     

What is it to Depsychologize Psychology?

In this essay, I distinguish two ways of depsychologizing psychology: ‘anti‐psychologism’ and ‘non‐psychologism’. Both positions are responses to the Fregean sharp distinction between the logical and the psychological. But where anti‐psychologism, which I find in John McDowell, attempts to overcome the sharp distinction by arguing that psychological states and their expressions are apt to be articulated into judgments, Stanley Cavell's non‐psychologism, a powerful and neglected alternative, wants to overcome the sharp distinction by abandoning judgment as the paradigm expression of thought and communication.     

What is it to be healthy?

According to Christopher Boorse's Bio-Statistical Theory (BST), 'health' is statistically normal function in a reference class, and 'health' and 'disease' are empirical, objective and value-free concepts. I demonstrate that the success of the BST depends on its choice of reference classes; different reference classes result in different accounts of health. I argue that nothing in nature empirically or objectively dictates the use of reference classes Boorse proposes. Reference classes in the BST, and the concept of health, are therefore not value-free. Nor is there a reason to favour the BST over accounts of health that use different reference classes.     

What is it to lose hope?

This paper addresses the phenomenology of hopelessness. I distinguish two broad kinds of predicament that are easily confused: ‘loss of hopes’ and ‘loss of hope’. I argue that not all hope can be characterised as an intentional state of the form ‘I hope that p’. It is possible to lose all hopes of that kind and yet retain another kind of hope. The hope that remains is not an intentional state or a non-intentional bodily feeling. Rather, it is a ‘pre-intentional’ orientation or ‘existential feeling’, by which I mean something in the context of which certain kinds of intentional state, including intentional hope, are intelligible. I go on to discuss severe depression, lack of aspiration, demoralisation and loss of trust in the world, in order to distinguish some qualitatively different forms that loss of hope can take.     

Grounding Perceptual Dogmatism: What are Perceptual Seemings?

Perceptual Dogmatism (PD) holds that if it perceptually seems to S that p, then S has immediate prima facie justification for the belief that p. Various philosophers have made the notion of a perceptual seeming more precise by distinguishing perceptual seemings from both sensations and beliefs to accommodate a) the epistemic difference between perceptual judgments of novices and experts, and, b) the problem of the speckled hen. Using somewhat different terminology, perceptual seemings are supposed to be high‐level percepts instead of low‐level sensations. I argue that although it is right that perceptual seemings should not be identified with sensations, they should also not be identified with percepts. There is no strong reason to assume that sensations and percepts exist as separate conscious states, and it appears therefore best to identify perceptual seemings simply with perceptual experiences interpreted as entities incorporating aspects from both sensations and percepts. However, even with this plausible identification in hand, the speckled hen will remain problematic for PD.     

What is chaos and how is it relevant for philosophy of mind?

This paper argues, in agreement with Neuringer, Beggs and others, that if we wish to scientifically characterise human choice, we have to work with a probabilistic or chaos-derived model. This has a number of implications for philosophy of mind. Firstly, it is in theory possible to describe human behaviour with some form of law-like equation; it is just a matter of figuring out what equation best captures the states of our central nervous system. Secondly, it means that our choices are not random but are chaotic: deterministic, but just hard to predict due to internal complexity. According to the current research, our actions are most likely caused by ‘precipitated avalanches’ of neural activity, which are difficult to predict due to chaos.