There has been growing excitement in recent years about “dual-character” concepts. Philosophers have argued that such concepts can help us make progress on a range of philosophical issues, from aesthetics to law to metaphysics. Dual-character concepts are thought to have a distinctive internal structure, which relates a set of descriptive features to an abstract value, and which allows people to use either the descriptive features or the abstract value for determining the extension of the concept. Here, we skeptically investigate the central argument in favor of their existence. Across three new empirical studies, we systematically demonstrate that the linguistic patterns that dual-character concepts were originally posited to explain are likely better explained by much more general features of language use.
{"title":"Are there really any dual-character concepts?","authors":"Jonathan Phillips, David Plunkett","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12194","url":null,"abstract":"There has been growing excitement in recent years about “dual-character” concepts. Philosophers have argued that such concepts can help us make progress on a range of philosophical issues, from aesthetics to law to metaphysics. Dual-character concepts are thought to have a distinctive internal structure, which relates a set of descriptive features to an abstract value, and which allows people to use either the descriptive features or the abstract value for determining the extension of the concept. Here, we skeptically investigate the central argument in favor of their existence. Across three new empirical studies, we systematically demonstrate that the linguistic patterns that dual-character concepts were originally posited to explain are likely better explained by much more general features of language use.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138513177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, I argue that if tacit knowledge of grammar is analyzable in functional-computational terms, then it cannot ground linguistic meaning, structure, or sound. If to know or cognize a grammar is to be in a certain computational state playing a certain functional role, there can be no unique grammar cognized. Satisfying the functional conditions for cognizing a grammar G entails satisfying those for cognizing many grammars disagreeing with G about expressions' semantic, phonetic, and syntactic values. This threatens the Chomskyan view that expressions have such values for speakers because they cognize grammars assigning them those values. For if this is true, semantics, syntax, and phonology must be indeterminate, thanks to the indeterminacy of grammar-cognizing (qua functional-computational state). So, the fact that a speaker cognizes a grammar cannot explain the determinate character of their language.
{"title":"Functionalism and tacit knowledge of grammar","authors":"David Balcarras","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12179","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I argue that if tacit knowledge of grammar is analyzable in functional-computational terms, then it cannot ground linguistic meaning, structure, or sound. If to know or cognize a grammar is to be in a certain computational state playing a certain functional role, there can be no unique grammar cognized. Satisfying the functional conditions for cognizing a grammar G entails satisfying those for cognizing many grammars disagreeing with G about expressions' semantic, phonetic, and syntactic values. This threatens the Chomskyan view that expressions have such values for speakers because they cognize grammars assigning them those values. For if this is true, semantics, syntax, and phonology must be indeterminate, thanks to the indeterminacy of grammar-cognizing (qua functional-computational state). So, the fact that a speaker cognizes a grammar cannot explain the determinate character of their language.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138513176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Some conditional involving factive emotives present a prima facie challenge to the thesis that conditionals obey modus ponens. Drawing on recent work by Timothy Williamson, I offer an error‐theoretic diagnosis of the phenomenon, one that appeals to a heuristic that we use in suppositional reasoning.
{"title":"Conditional emotions","authors":"Christina Hope Dietz","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12184","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Some conditional involving factive emotives present a prima facie challenge to the thesis that conditionals obey modus ponens. Drawing on recent work by Timothy Williamson, I offer an error‐theoretic diagnosis of the phenomenon, one that appeals to a heuristic that we use in suppositional reasoning.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136347910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Our pains can be more or less intense, our mental imagery can be more or less vivid, our perceptual experiences can be more or less striking. These degrees of intensity of conscious experiences are all manifestations of a phenomenal property I call mental strength . In this article, I argue that mental strength is a domain‐general phenomenal magnitude; in other words, it is a phenomenal quantity shared by all conscious experiences that explains their degree of felt intensity. Mental strength has been largely overlooked in favor of mental states’ type, representational contents, domain‐specific phenomenology, or processes such as attention. Considering mental strength in our reflections about the mind illuminates debates about the relation of representational contents and phenomenal character, and it also helps address questions about the structure and functions of consciousness. Mental strength provides a unifying construct to model what is shared in the phenomenology of different types of conscious experiences.
{"title":"Mental strength: A theory of experience intensity","authors":"Jorge Morales","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12189","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Our pains can be more or less intense, our mental imagery can be more or less vivid, our perceptual experiences can be more or less striking. These degrees of intensity of conscious experiences are all manifestations of a phenomenal property I call mental strength . In this article, I argue that mental strength is a domain‐general phenomenal magnitude; in other words, it is a phenomenal quantity shared by all conscious experiences that explains their degree of felt intensity. Mental strength has been largely overlooked in favor of mental states’ type, representational contents, domain‐specific phenomenology, or processes such as attention. Considering mental strength in our reflections about the mind illuminates debates about the relation of representational contents and phenomenal character, and it also helps address questions about the structure and functions of consciousness. Mental strength provides a unifying construct to model what is shared in the phenomenology of different types of conscious experiences.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135541927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper proposes to reorient the philosophical debate about peer disagreement. The problem of peer disagreement is normally seen as a problem about the extent to which disagreement provides one with evidence against one's own conclusions. It is thus regarded as a problem for individual inquiry. But things look different in more collaborative contexts. Ethical norms relevant to those contexts make a difference to the epistemology. In particular, we argue that a norm of mutual answerability applies to us when we engage in shared inquiry with others, and precludes us from treating one another's conflicting judgments as evidence relevant to the dispute. From this it follows that standard philosophical accounts of peer disagreement—e.g., the Equal Weight View and the Total Evidence View—presuppose that the disagreeing parties are in a sense alienated from one another. It's doubtful that such forms of alienated disagreement should be treated as the central case.
{"title":"Disagreement and alienation","authors":"Berislav Marušić, Stephen J. White","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12197","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper proposes to reorient the philosophical debate about peer disagreement. The problem of peer disagreement is normally seen as a problem about the extent to which disagreement provides one with evidence against one's own conclusions. It is thus regarded as a problem for individual inquiry. But things look different in more collaborative contexts. Ethical norms relevant to those contexts make a difference to the epistemology. In particular, we argue that a norm of mutual answerability applies to us when we engage in shared inquiry with others, and precludes us from treating one another's conflicting judgments as evidence relevant to the dispute. From this it follows that standard philosophical accounts of peer disagreement—e.g., the Equal Weight View and the Total Evidence View—presuppose that the disagreeing parties are in a sense alienated from one another. It's doubtful that such forms of alienated disagreement should be treated as the central case.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136102397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract I argue that analogue mental representations possess a canonical decomposition into privileged constituents from which they compose. I motivate this suggestion, and rebut arguments to the contrary, through reflection on the approximate number system , whose representations are widely expected to have an analogue format. I then argue that arguments for the compositionality and constituent structure of these analogue representations generalize to other analogue mental representations posited in the human mind, such as those in early vision and visual imagery.
{"title":"Compositionality and constituent structure in the analogue mind","authors":"Sam Clarke","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12182","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract I argue that analogue mental representations possess a canonical decomposition into privileged constituents from which they compose. I motivate this suggestion, and rebut arguments to the contrary, through reflection on the approximate number system , whose representations are widely expected to have an analogue format. I then argue that arguments for the compositionality and constituent structure of these analogue representations generalize to other analogue mental representations posited in the human mind, such as those in early vision and visual imagery.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136262614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In his unpublished 1979 Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind, Saul Kripke offers a knowledge argument against materialism focusing on deaf people who lack knowledge of auditory experience. Kripke's argument is a precursor of Frank Jackson's better‐known knowledge argument against materialism (1982). The paper sets out Kripke's argument, brings out its interest and philosophical importance, and explores some similarities and differences between Kripke's knowledge argument and Jackson's.
{"title":"Kripke's knowledge argument against materialism","authors":"Adriana Renero","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12195","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12195","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In his unpublished 1979 Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind, Saul Kripke offers a knowledge argument against materialism focusing on deaf people who lack knowledge of auditory experience. Kripke's argument is a precursor of Frank Jackson's better‐known knowledge argument against materialism (1982). The paper sets out Kripke's argument, brings out its interest and philosophical importance, and explores some similarities and differences between Kripke's knowledge argument and Jackson's.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134908317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Neural decoding studies seem to show that the “private” experiences of others are more accessible than philosophers have traditionally believed. While these studies have many limitations, they do demonstrate that by capturing patterns in brain activity, we can discover a great deal about what a subject is experiencing. We present a thought experiment about a super‐decoder — the Atlantis machine — and argue that given plausible assumptions, an Atlantis machine could one day be built. On the basis of this argument, we then argue for the rejection of robust notions of consciousness, which have generated numerous puzzles, including puzzles about the possibility of philosophical zombies. In light of the Atlantis machine, it can be seen that robust notions of consciousness do not earn their explanatory or descriptive keep. More modest concepts of consciousness are sufficient to account for all phenomena — in both senses of the term. This kind of antirobustness about consciousness is a deflationary approach to conscious experience that differs in important ways from illusionist approaches.
{"title":"Neural Decoding, the Atlantis Machine, and Zombies","authors":"Rosa Cao, Jared Warren","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12181","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Neural decoding studies seem to show that the “private” experiences of others are more accessible than philosophers have traditionally believed. While these studies have many limitations, they do demonstrate that by capturing patterns in brain activity, we can discover a great deal about what a subject is experiencing. We present a thought experiment about a super‐decoder — the Atlantis machine — and argue that given plausible assumptions, an Atlantis machine could one day be built. On the basis of this argument, we then argue for the rejection of robust notions of consciousness, which have generated numerous puzzles, including puzzles about the possibility of philosophical zombies. In light of the Atlantis machine, it can be seen that robust notions of consciousness do not earn their explanatory or descriptive keep. More modest concepts of consciousness are sufficient to account for all phenomena — in both senses of the term. This kind of antirobustness about consciousness is a deflationary approach to conscious experience that differs in important ways from illusionist approaches.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135217421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Standard responses to the knowledge argument grant that Mary could know all of the physical facts even while trapped inside her black‐and‐white room. What they deny is that upon leaving her black‐and‐white room and experiencing red for the first time, Mary learns a genuinely new fact. This paper develops an alternate response in a grounding physicalist framework, on which Mary does not know all of the physical facts while trapped inside the room. The main thesis is that Mary does not know certain phenomenal facts while trapped inside the room, whereby these facts classify as physical due to being wholly and fully metaphysically grounded in the underlying fundamental facts which are themselves entirely physical.
{"title":"Grounding physicalism and the knowledge argument","authors":"Alex Moran","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12190","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Standard responses to the knowledge argument grant that Mary could know all of the physical facts even while trapped inside her black‐and‐white room. What they deny is that upon leaving her black‐and‐white room and experiencing red for the first time, Mary learns a genuinely new fact. This paper develops an alternate response in a grounding physicalist framework, on which Mary does not know all of the physical facts while trapped inside the room. The main thesis is that Mary does not know certain phenomenal facts while trapped inside the room, whereby these facts classify as physical due to being wholly and fully metaphysically grounded in the underlying fundamental facts which are themselves entirely physical.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135366171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
1. What does it mean to hold a belief? Some of our ways of speaking in English suggest that to hold a belief is to have something in your mind: beliefs are things we acquire, defend, recover, and so on (Abelson, 1986). That is, believing is a matter of being in a state of having a thing. In this paper, I will argue for an alternative: believing is something we do. This is not a new suggestion. For instance, Matthew Boyle (2011) defends a theory of belief as an activity, which he traces back to Aristotle. This paper, however, makes two new contributions: first, I argue for an analogy between belief and planning that fleshes out what it would mean to understand belief as an activity, and second, I aim to show how the resulting view can help sense of a variety of theories in cognitive psychology that suggest cognitive information storage is dynamic and reconstructive. Imagine you are eating breakfast while planning your route to work. In virtue of what do you count as planning? The most obvious answer is that you are conducting a certain kind of mental activity, a kind of search for the best (or perhaps merely an acceptable) way to get to work. Further, as I'll argue, this mental activity can't be reduced to holding in one's mind a series of plans – it's possible to be planning without having a plan yet, as when you just start thinking, and plans can also be brought to mind without planning taking place, as in when you implement a plan that was formed earlier on. The belief-as-planning account draws on these features. Our theory of belief should really be a theory of believing, a mental activity that is not reducible to a set of beliefs. By placing this activity at the center of the account, we can now see beliefs, the sets of things, as an abstraction over the activity of believing. This allows for an alternative to pure representationalism or pure dispositionalism: believing is representational, whereas beliefs are a function of this activity in real and counterfactual circumstances. Occupying this middle ground preserves something important about representationalism, namely the idea that belief happens in the mind and can be real even if it has no impact on action. At the same time, the planning account sides with the dispositionalist in allowing a looser relationship between thought and the total set of believed propositions. The structure is as follows. In §2, I bring out two features of non-occurrent beliefs, and in §3, argue that these cause problems for representationalist accounts of belief. These problems indicate a desideratum for accounts of belief: to be psychologically grounded but not dependent on representational form. §4 proposes a simplified model of planning, which forms the basis for an analogy between belief and planning in §5. In the final section, I discuss some upshots and challenges for the proposal. 2. On the intuitive view suggested by English idioms, believing means being in a state of having a thing. Contemporary analyti
{"title":"A planning theory of belief","authors":"Sara Aronowitz","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12178","url":null,"abstract":"1. What does it mean to hold a belief? Some of our ways of speaking in English suggest that to hold a belief is to have something in your mind: beliefs are things we acquire, defend, recover, and so on (Abelson, 1986). That is, believing is a matter of being in a state of having a thing. In this paper, I will argue for an alternative: believing is something we do. This is not a new suggestion. For instance, Matthew Boyle (2011) defends a theory of belief as an activity, which he traces back to Aristotle. This paper, however, makes two new contributions: first, I argue for an analogy between belief and planning that fleshes out what it would mean to understand belief as an activity, and second, I aim to show how the resulting view can help sense of a variety of theories in cognitive psychology that suggest cognitive information storage is dynamic and reconstructive. Imagine you are eating breakfast while planning your route to work. In virtue of what do you count as planning? The most obvious answer is that you are conducting a certain kind of mental activity, a kind of search for the best (or perhaps merely an acceptable) way to get to work. Further, as I'll argue, this mental activity can't be reduced to holding in one's mind a series of plans – it's possible to be planning without having a plan yet, as when you just start thinking, and plans can also be brought to mind without planning taking place, as in when you implement a plan that was formed earlier on. The belief-as-planning account draws on these features. Our theory of belief should really be a theory of believing, a mental activity that is not reducible to a set of beliefs. By placing this activity at the center of the account, we can now see beliefs, the sets of things, as an abstraction over the activity of believing. This allows for an alternative to pure representationalism or pure dispositionalism: believing is representational, whereas beliefs are a function of this activity in real and counterfactual circumstances. Occupying this middle ground preserves something important about representationalism, namely the idea that belief happens in the mind and can be real even if it has no impact on action. At the same time, the planning account sides with the dispositionalist in allowing a looser relationship between thought and the total set of believed propositions. The structure is as follows. In §2, I bring out two features of non-occurrent beliefs, and in §3, argue that these cause problems for representationalist accounts of belief. These problems indicate a desideratum for accounts of belief: to be psychologically grounded but not dependent on representational form. §4 proposes a simplified model of planning, which forms the basis for an analogy between belief and planning in §5. In the final section, I discuss some upshots and challenges for the proposal. 2. On the intuitive view suggested by English idioms, believing means being in a state of having a thing. Contemporary analyti","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135413300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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