DIALECTICA最新文献

Liberal representationalism is the view that even some internal states of very simple organisms like plants or bacteria count as genuine representations. This view has been heavily criticized by many authors, including myself. In a recent paper, Marc Artiga attempts to defend liberal representationalism against these criticisms. One of his main targets is an argument of explanatory exclusion that he ascribes to Burge, Ramsey, Rescorla, Sterelny and me (among others). In this paper, I reply to Artiga by distinguishing the exclusion argument that he focuses on from what is, in my view, the real explanatory challenge for liberal representationalism, and I argue that none of the considerations put forward by Artiga in defense of the liberal view provide an adequate answer to this challenge.

There is an ongoing debate among metaphysicians of dispositions about whether intrinsic interferers are possible for dispositions. What is interesting about this debate is that, whilst it is widely noted that dispositional interferers can work on a ‘reverse’ cycle, the possibility of reverse-cycle intrinsic interferers has been put on the sidelines with all the attention being paid to the possibility of their ‘normal’ cousins. Presumably this is due to the perception that a discussion of reverse-cycle interferers will be a trivial repetition of a discussion of normal ones. But I will argue that this perception is wrong. Whilst I acknowledge that there is a significant symmetry between the possibility of normal interferers and that of reverse-cycle ones, it is not a trivial task to give an account of intrinsic interferers in a way that accommodates this symmetry. In fact, when we examine the justifications the participants in this debate have offered for their positions, it will emerge that they are all under pressure to reject the possibility of reverse-cycle intrinsic interferers. What is intriguing about this result is that what advocates of the possibility of normal intrinsic interferers have said in support of that possibility, rather unexpectedly, puts pressure on them to reject the possibility of reverse-cycle intrinsic interferers. Combined with the symmetry between the possibility of normal interferers and that of reverse-cycle ones, this will pose a serious challenge to them.

By “Brentanian inner consciousness” I mean the conception of inner consciousness developed by Franz Brentano. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, to present Brentano's account of inner consciousness; second, to discuss this account in light of the mereology outlined by Brentano himself; and third, to decide whether this account incurs an infinite regress. In this regard, I distinguish two kinds of infinite regress: external infinite regress and internal infinite regress. I contend that the most plausible reading of Brentano's account is the so-called fusion thesis, and I argue that internal infinite regress turns out to be inherent to Brentanian inner consciousness.

The cognitive phenomenology thesis has it that conscious cognitive states essentially exhibit a phenomenal character. Defenders of ‘conservatism’ about cognitive phenomenology think that the phenomenology of thought is reducible to sensory phenomenology. In contrast, proponents of ‘liberalism’ hold that there is a proprietary, sui generis cognitive phenomenology. Horgan develops a morph-sequence argument to argue for liberalism. The argument is based on the conceivability of a cognitive phenomenology zombie, i.e. a man who does not understand Chinese but shares the behavior and sensory phenomenology with his twin who does understand Chinese. I argue that the conceivability of a cognitive phenomenology-zombie fails to settle the debate between conservatives and liberals. The roots of the ineffectiveness of the argument lie in the diverse readings of sensory phenomenology which flesh out the relation between sensory phenomenology and concepts differently but explain the conceivability of the scenario equally well. The lesson to learn is that to adjudicate the debate about cognitive phenomenology, we first have to clarify the notion of sensory phenomenology.

This is a discussion of self-knowledge in Hugh of St. Victor. It will yield the following three systematic results. First, it will be shown that there is a clear sense in which human self-knowledge is knowledge of one's own rationality, and therefore knowledge of the proper object of one's rational capacities (dunameis meta logou). Second, a distinction will be drawn between perfect and imperfect self-knowledge. Third, it will turn out that under conditions of perfect self-knowledge, all our rational capacities would work like our capacity for perceptual knowledge.

Recently, many philosophers have been interested in using locative relations to clarify and pursue debates in the metaphysics of material objects. Most begin with the relation of exact location. But what if we begin instead with the relation known as weak location – the relation an object x bears to any region not completely bereft of x? I explore some of the consequences of pursuing this route for issues including coincidence, extended simples, and endurance, with an eye to evaluating the prospects for taking weak location as our fundamental locative relation.