This article aims to connect issues in the epistemology of modality with issues in the philosophy of music, exploring how modalizing takes place in the context of musical performance. On the basis of studies of jazz improvisation and of classical music, it is shown that considerations about what is sonically, musically, and agentively possible play an important role for performers in the Western tonal tradition. We give a more systematic sketch of how a modal epistemology for musical performance could be constructed. We argue that it is necessary to adopt a pluralist approach toward the modal epistemology of music.
{"title":"Modalizing in musical performance","authors":"Giulia Lorenzi, Felipe Morales Carbonell","doi":"10.1111/mila.12515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12515","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims to connect issues in the epistemology of modality with issues in the philosophy of music, exploring how modalizing takes place in the context of musical performance. On the basis of studies of jazz improvisation and of classical music, it is shown that considerations about what is sonically, musically, and agentively possible play an important role for performers in the Western tonal tradition. We give a more systematic sketch of how a modal epistemology for musical performance could be constructed. We argue that it is necessary to adopt a pluralist approach toward the modal epistemology of music.","PeriodicalId":110770,"journal":{"name":"Mind & Language","volume":"53 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141382009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Perception not only registers property instances, but also connects with and attributes properties to individual entities—so‐called sensory individuals, or SIs. But what are SIs? The most‐discussed answers are: (i) SIs are ordinary material objects—cohesive, temporally persistent objects extended and bounded in space, and (ii) SIs are locations or regions in spacetime. I will argue for the object view of SIs on the grounds that its rival, the locational view, faces obstacles concerning the relationship between SIs and spacetime: it makes a mystery of perception's representation of SIs as occupying locations in and moving in ordinary spacetime.
感知不仅记录属性实例,还与单个实体--即所谓的感官个体(或 SIs)--相联系,并将属性归属于这些实体。但什么是 SI?讨论最多的答案是(i) SI 是普通的物质客体--在空间中延伸和限定的具有内聚力和时间持久性的客体;(ii) SI 是时空中的位置或区域。我将支持关于SIs的物体观点,理由是它的对手--位置观点--在SIs与时空的关系上面临障碍:它把感知对SIs在普通时空中占据位置并在普通时空中运动的表征弄得很神秘。
{"title":"On locational sensory individuals and spacetime","authors":"Jonathan Cohen","doi":"10.1111/mila.12513","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12513","url":null,"abstract":"Perception not only registers property instances, but also connects with and attributes properties to individual entities—so‐called sensory individuals, or SIs. But what are SIs? The most‐discussed answers are: (i) SIs are ordinary material objects—cohesive, temporally persistent objects extended and bounded in space, and (ii) SIs are locations or regions in spacetime. I will argue for the object view of SIs on the grounds that its rival, the locational view, faces obstacles concerning the relationship between SIs and spacetime: it makes a mystery of perception's representation of SIs as occupying locations in and moving in ordinary spacetime.","PeriodicalId":110770,"journal":{"name":"Mind & Language","volume":"18 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141106858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I argue that beliefs about the identity or distinctness of objects are necessary to explain some normal inferential transitions between thoughts in humans. Worries about vicious regress are not powerful enough to dismantle such an argument. As an upshot, the idea that thinkers “trade on” identity without any corresponding belief remains somewhat mysterious.
{"title":"Inference and identity","authors":"Elmar Unnsteinsson","doi":"10.1111/mila.12511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12511","url":null,"abstract":"I argue that beliefs about the identity or distinctness of objects are necessary to explain some normal inferential transitions between thoughts in humans. Worries about vicious regress are not powerful enough to dismantle such an argument. As an upshot, the idea that thinkers “trade on” identity without any corresponding belief remains somewhat mysterious.","PeriodicalId":110770,"journal":{"name":"Mind & Language","volume":"11 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141106751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
De Cruz and Levy, in their commentaries on Religion as make‐believe, present distinct questions that can be addressed by clarifying one core idea. De Cruz asks whether one can rationally assess the mental state of religious credence that I theorize. Levy asks why we should not explain the data on religious “belief” merely by positing factual beliefs with religious contents, which happen to be rationally acquired through testimony. To both, I say that having religious credences is p‐irrational: a purposeful departure from rational thought and behavior, where the purpose in question is maintaining a group identity.
德克鲁兹和列维在对《作为虚构的宗教》(Religion as make-believe)的评论中提出了不同的问题,这些问题可以通过澄清一个核心观点来解决。德克鲁兹问人们能否理性地评估我理论中的宗教信仰心理状态。莱维则问,为什么我们不能仅仅通过假设具有宗教内容的事实信仰来解释宗教 "信仰 "的数据,而这些事实信仰恰好是通过证词理性地获得的。对于这两个问题,我的回答是,宗教信仰是一种 p-irrational 行为:一种有目的的偏离理性的思想和行为,其目的在于维护一种群体认同。
{"title":"Group identity and the willful subversion of rationality: A reply to De Cruz and Levy","authors":"Neil Van Leeuwen","doi":"10.1111/mila.12512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12512","url":null,"abstract":"De Cruz and Levy, in their commentaries on Religion as make‐believe, present distinct questions that can be addressed by clarifying one core idea. De Cruz asks whether one can rationally assess the mental state of religious credence that I theorize. Levy asks why we should not explain the data on religious “belief” merely by positing factual beliefs with religious contents, which happen to be rationally acquired through testimony. To both, I say that having religious credences is p‐irrational: a purposeful departure from rational thought and behavior, where the purpose in question is maintaining a group identity.","PeriodicalId":110770,"journal":{"name":"Mind & Language","volume":"8 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140966735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This is a commentary on Neil Van Leeuwen's Religion as make‐believe focusing on the normative aspects of this book. According to Van Leeuwen, religious credences are not factual beliefs, and they are held to different standards of rationality than factual beliefs. Hence, religious believers are able to track and represent those states of affairs that govern their practical lives while also holding views that deviate significantly from it, such as divine omnipotence. Here, I examine whether this reasonable compartmentalization in religious believers holds.
这是对尼尔-范-利乌文(Neil Van Leeuwen)的《作为虚构的宗教》(Religion as make-believe)一书的评论,重点是该书的规范性方面。范-李欧梵认为,宗教信仰不是事实信仰,它们所遵循的理性标准与事实信仰不同。因此,宗教信仰者能够追踪和代表那些支配他们实际生活的事态,同时也持有与之严重偏离的观点,比如神的全能。在此,我将探讨宗教信徒的这种合理划分是否成立。
{"title":"Reasonable compartmentalization?","authors":"Helen De Cruz","doi":"10.1111/mila.12507","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12507","url":null,"abstract":"This is a commentary on Neil Van Leeuwen's Religion as make‐believe focusing on the normative aspects of this book. According to Van Leeuwen, religious credences are not factual beliefs, and they are held to different standards of rationality than factual beliefs. Hence, religious believers are able to track and represent those states of affairs that govern their practical lives while also holding views that deviate significantly from it, such as divine omnipotence. Here, I examine whether this reasonable compartmentalization in religious believers holds.","PeriodicalId":110770,"journal":{"name":"Mind & Language","volume":"118 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140967633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Neil Van Leeuwen argues that many religious people do not act and infer as we would expect believers to act and infer, and on this basis argues that they are not genuine believers. They take some other, nondoxastic, attitude to the claims they profess to believe. In this short commentary, I argue that in many (but far from all) such cases, the content, and not the attitude, explains the departures from the inferential and behavioral stereotype we associate with belief.
尼尔-范-利乌文(Neil Van Leeuwen)认为,许多宗教人士的行为和推论并不像我们所期望的信徒那样,并据此认为他们不是真正的信徒。他们对自己声称相信的主张采取了另一种非对立的态度。在这篇简短的评论中,我认为在许多(但远非所有)这样的案例中,是内容而非态度解释了为什么偏离了我们与信仰相关联的推论和行为定型。
{"title":"There is more to belief than Van Leeuwen believes","authors":"Neil Levy","doi":"10.1111/mila.12501","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12501","url":null,"abstract":"Neil Van Leeuwen argues that many religious people do not act and infer as we would expect believers to act and infer, and on this basis argues that they are not genuine believers. They take some other, nondoxastic, attitude to the claims they profess to believe. In this short commentary, I argue that in many (but far from all) such cases, the content, and not the attitude, explains the departures from the inferential and behavioral stereotype we associate with belief.","PeriodicalId":110770,"journal":{"name":"Mind & Language","volume":"27 21","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140966542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Teleosemantics has an indeterminacy problem. In an earlier publication, I argued that teleosemanticists may afford to be realists about indeterminacy, pointing to the phenomenon of vagueness as a case of really‐existing semantic indeterminacy. Here, I continue that project by proposing two criteria of adequacy that a semantically indeterminate theory should meet: a criterion of theoretical adequacy and a criterion of extensional adequacy. I present reasons to think that indeterminate versions of teleosemantics can meet these criteria. I end by discussing vagueness, concluding that it most likely is not the same kind of phenomenon as the semantic indeterminacy afflicting teleosemantics.
{"title":"Living with semantic indeterminacy: The teleosemanticist's guide","authors":"Karl Gustav Bergman","doi":"10.1111/mila.12514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12514","url":null,"abstract":"Teleosemantics has an indeterminacy problem. In an earlier publication, I argued that teleosemanticists may afford to be realists about indeterminacy, pointing to the phenomenon of vagueness as a case of really‐existing semantic indeterminacy. Here, I continue that project by proposing two criteria of adequacy that a semantically indeterminate theory should meet: a criterion of theoretical adequacy and a criterion of extensional adequacy. I present reasons to think that indeterminate versions of teleosemantics can meet these criteria. I end by discussing vagueness, concluding that it most likely is not the same kind of phenomenon as the semantic indeterminacy afflicting teleosemantics.","PeriodicalId":110770,"journal":{"name":"Mind & Language","volume":"75 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140973699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christopher Hill's Perceptual experience is a must‐read for philosophers of mind and cognitive science. Here I consider Hill's representationalist account of spatial perception. I distinguish two theses defended in the book. The first is that perceptual experience does not represent the enduring, intrinsic properties of objects, such as intrinsic shape or size. The second is that perceptual experience does represent certain viewpoint‐dependent properties of objects—namely, Thouless properties. I argue that Hill's arguments do not establish the first thesis, and then I raise questions about the Thouless‐property view and its role in Hill's defense of representationalism.
{"title":"Hill on perceptual relativity and perceptual error","authors":"E. J. Green","doi":"10.1111/mila.12493","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12493","url":null,"abstract":"Christopher Hill's Perceptual experience is a must‐read for philosophers of mind and cognitive science. Here I consider Hill's representationalist account of spatial perception. I distinguish two theses defended in the book. The first is that perceptual experience does not represent the enduring, intrinsic properties of objects, such as intrinsic shape or size. The second is that perceptual experience does represent certain viewpoint‐dependent properties of objects—namely, Thouless properties. I argue that Hill's arguments do not establish the first thesis, and then I raise questions about the Thouless‐property view and its role in Hill's defense of representationalism.","PeriodicalId":110770,"journal":{"name":"Mind & Language","volume":"27 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139608922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I argue for three claims. (1) The phenomenology of visual experience is exhausted by awareness of appearance properties (i.e., certain constantly changing characteristics of external objects that are relational and viewpoint‐dependent). (2) Cognition differs from perception in that it has a purely discursive or linguistic dimension, whereas perception is pervasively analog and iconic; but this does not determine a border between the two domains, for cognition also has a massive iconic dimension. And (3) certain raging debates in teleosemantics can be resolved by acknowledging that perceptual representations in more primitive organisms tend to have dual contents (e.g., both small, moving black object, and food).
{"title":"Replies to E. J. Green, Zoe Jenkin, and Jack Lyons","authors":"Christopher S. Hill","doi":"10.1111/mila.12488","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12488","url":null,"abstract":"I argue for three claims. (1) The phenomenology of visual experience is exhausted by awareness of appearance properties (i.e., certain constantly changing characteristics of external objects that are relational and viewpoint‐dependent). (2) Cognition differs from perception in that it has a purely discursive or linguistic dimension, whereas perception is pervasively analog and iconic; but this does not determine a border between the two domains, for cognition also has a massive iconic dimension. And (3) certain raging debates in teleosemantics can be resolved by acknowledging that perceptual representations in more primitive organisms tend to have dual contents (e.g., both small, moving black object, and food).","PeriodicalId":110770,"journal":{"name":"Mind & Language","volume":"18 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139609505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christopher Hill's book Perceptual experience argues for a representational theory of mind that is grounded in empirical psychology. I focus here on three aspects of Hill's picture: The objects of visual awareness, the perception/cognition border, and the epistemic role of perceptual experience. I introduce challenges to Hill's account and consider ways these challenges may be overcome.
{"title":"Perception's objects, border, and epistemic role: Comments on Christopher Hill's Perceptual experience","authors":"Zoe Jenkin","doi":"10.1111/mila.12478","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12478","url":null,"abstract":"Christopher Hill's book Perceptual experience argues for a representational theory of mind that is grounded in empirical psychology. I focus here on three aspects of Hill's picture: The objects of visual awareness, the perception/cognition border, and the epistemic role of perceptual experience. I introduce challenges to Hill's account and consider ways these challenges may be overcome.","PeriodicalId":110770,"journal":{"name":"Mind & Language","volume":"20 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139608141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}