Sensuous imaginative content presents a problem for unitary accounts of phenomenal character (or content) such as relationism, representationalism or qualia theory. Four features of imaginative content are at the heat of the issue: its perspectival nature, the similarity with corresponding perceptual experiences, the multiple use thesis, and its non-presentational character. I reject appeals to the dependency thesis to account for these features and explain how a representationalist approach can be developed to accommodate them. I defend the multiple use thesis against (...) Kathleen Stock’s objections but separate the putative non-presentational character of imaginative content into two elements. Loss of presentation is accounted for by the reduced representations involved in imagination and lack of potential response-dependent representational properties. Absence of commitment to reality is accounted for by representational properties characterised in terms of the absence of a certain kind of aetiology. (shrink)

Abstract In Causing Actions, Pietroski defends a distinctive view of the relationship between mind and body which he calls Personal Dualism. Central to his defence is the Argument from Differential Vagueness. It moves from the claim that mental events have different vagueness of spatiotemporal boundaries from neural events to the claim that mental events are not identical to neural events. In response, I argue that this presupposes an ontological account of vagueness that there is no reason to believe in this (...) context. I further argue that Pietroski's reasons for rejecting the possibility that mental events are vaguely constituted from neural events are inadequate. I go on to show how Pietroski's Personal Dualism is ill-equipped to deal with the problem of mental causation because of its apparently necessary appeal to ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

Dependence is the most general notion under which a host of familiar metaphysical relations between entities – causation, supervenience, grounding, realisation etc. – fall. In the first section of this chapter, I offer offer some preliminary clarifications to outline the territory in a little more detail. Some years back this would have primarily involved differentiating kinds of dependence in terms of the strength of the modal operators used, and the other details of an analysis deploying them. Now, there has been (...) a proliferation of non-purely modal accounts of dependence. The second section identifies the various reasons that have been offered for this proliferation. The third section discusses a notion of ontological dependence and grounding, each of which draws on an appeal to the essence of the depending, or depended upon, entities. In spite of their popularity, we will see that such notions are of little assistance in capturing a central case of interest to us: the proper understanding of emergence. In the light of this, the fourth section defends a purely modal treatment of some of the problem cases outlined in the first section and also discussed a non-modal notion of construction. I close with a hypothesis that the combination of three features: a non-dependence account of fundamentality, various notions of construction and purely modal properties remove the motivation for appeal to an independent account of grounding in this, and perhaps any, area. (shrink)

Monothematic delusions involve a single theme, and often occur in the absence of a more general delusional belief system. They are cognitively atypical insofar as they are said to be held in the absence of evidence, are resistant to correction, and have bizarre contents. Empiricism about delusions has it that anomalous experience is causally implicated in their formation, whilst rationalism has it that delusions result from top down malfunctions from which anomalous experiences can follow. Within empiricism, two approaches to the (...) nature of the abnormality/abnormalities involved have been touted by philosophers and psychologists. One-factor approaches have it that monothematic delusions are a normal response to anomalous experiences whilst two-factor approaches seek to identify a clinically abnormal pattern of reasoning in addition to anomalous experience to explain the resultant delusion. In this paper we defend a one-factor approach. We begin by making clear what we mean by atypical, abnormal, and factor. We then identify the phenomenon of interest and overview one and two-factor empiricism about its formation. We critically evaluate the cases for various second factors, and find them all wanting. In light of this we turn to our one-factor account, identifying two ways in which ‘normal response’ may be understood, and how this bears on the discussion of one-factor theories up until this point. We then conjecture that what is at stake is a certain view about the epistemic responsibility of subjects with delusions, and the role of experience, in the context of familiar psychodynamic features. After responding to two objections, we conclude that the onus is on two-factor theorists to show that the one-factor account is inadequate. Until then, the one-factor account ought to be understood as the default position for explaining monothematic delusion formation and retention. We don’t rule out the possibility that, for particular subjects with delusions there may be a second factor at work causally implicated in their delusory beliefs but, until the case for the inadequacy of the single factor is made, the second factor is redundant and fails to pick out the minimum necessary for a monothematic delusion to be present. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have argued in favour of the Dependency Thesis: if a subject sensorily imagines an F then he or she sensorily imagines from the inside perceptually experiencing an F in the imaginary world. They claim that it explains certain important features of imaginative experience, in brief: the fact that it is perspectival, the fact that it does not involve presentation of sensory qualities and the fact that mental images can serve a number of different imaginings. I argue (...) that the Dependency Thesis is false and that, in any event, it does not have the explanatory credentials claimed for it. Some of the features of imaginative experience are incorrectly specified, namely the absence of presentation of sensory qualities. With a more precise idea of what we need to explain, I argue that the explanation should proceed by noting that imagination and perception have phenomenally similar contents and that this is to be explained in terms of the similar kinds of representations in play. I trace the consequences of my discussion for disjunctivist theories of perception, Berkeleian Idealism and the characterisation of knowing what an experience is like. (shrink)

Chenwei Nie ([22]) argues against a Maherian one-factor approach to explaining delusion. We argue that his objections fail. They are largely based on a mistaken understanding of the approach (as committed to the claim that anomalous experience is sufficient for delusion). Where they are not so based, they instead rest on misinterpretation of recent defences of the position, and an underestimation of the resources available to the one-factor theory.

Paul Noordhof; Discussion: Micro-Based Properties and the Supervenience Argument: A Response to Kim, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 99, Issue 1.

When I feel a pain in my leg, how should we understand the.

The book provides an analysis of a key notion in our lives, causation: what its nature is; how we should characterise it in language, how it relates to laws of nature, how causes differ from their effects and why they tend to occur earlier than their effects.

The Uncontrollability Thesis is that it is metaphysically impossible consciously to believe that p at will. I review the standard ways in which this might be explained. They focus on the aim or purpose of belief being truth. I argue that these don't work. They either explain the aim in a way which makes it implausible that the Uncontrollability Thesis is true, or they fail to justify their claim that beliefs should be understood as aimed at the truth. I further (...) argue that the explanations don't cut deep enough. Making the aim of truth internal to a state does not explain why we can't produce at will states without this feature but sharing these states' motivational role. I put forward a different explanation. I argue that consciousness makes manifest the attraction of the norm of truth. If we are consciously attending to the question of whether p, we cannot help but make a judgement in line with what the evidence gives us grounds for believing true. (shrink)

Paul Noordhof; Discussion: Micro-Based Properties and the Supervenience Argument: A Response to Kim, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 99, Issue 1.

I argue that our experience of expressive properties (such as the joyfulness or sadness of a piece of music) essentially involves the sensuous imagination (through simulation) of an emotion-guided process which would result in the production of the properties which constitute the realisation of the expressive properties experienced. I compare this proposal with arousal theories, Wollheim’s Freudian account, and other more closely related theories appealing to imagination such as Kendall Walton’s. I explain why the proposal is most naturally developed in (...) terms of simulation and briefly comment upon the impact of work on cross-cultural perception of facial expression, modularity and autism for the proposal. (shrink)

Counter factual theories of Causation have had problems with cases of probabilistic causation and preemption. I put forward a counterfactual theory that seems to deal with these problematic cases and also has the virtue of providing an account of the alleged asymmetry between hasteners and delayers: the former usually being counted as causes, the latter not. I go on to consider a new type of problem case that has not received so much attention in the literature, those I dub catalysts (...) and anti-catalysts, and show how my account needs to be adjusted to deliver the right verdicts in these cases. The net result is a particular conception of a cause that I try to spell out in the closing section of the paper. In that section, I also briefly discuss causal asymmetry and the purpose behind providing a counterfactual theory of causation. (shrink)

One understanding of naturalism about perception allows that results in the sciences bearing on the senses may have an impact upon philosophical theorising on perception. Its opponents reject or, at least, are much more wary about this possibility. I consider two cases: the implications of prediction error theories for naïve realism and the latest empirical research on cross modal illusions, and taste, for the traditional division of the senses into five. Although in neither case are the implications straightforward, I argue (...) that there is a tension in the first case, relating to naïve realism, given the structure of the debate against representationalism, what naïve realists say about hallucination, and assertion of the significant differences between perception and cognition. In the second, the conflict is avoided by recognising distinctive features of how senses are integrated and realised, and a new personal level of explanation. (shrink)

The paper defends Functionalism against the charge that it would make mental properties inefficacious. It outlines two ways of formulating the doctrine that mental properties are Functional properties and shows that both allow mental properties to be efficacious. The first (Lewis) approach takes functional properties to be the occupants of causal roles. Block [1990] has argued that mental properties should not be characterized in this way because it would make them properties of the ?implementing science?, e. g. neuroscience. I show (...) why this is not a problem. The second way of formulating the doctrine takes functional properties to be causal role properties. I claim that mental properties so understood would only be inefficacious if a law-centred rather than a property-centred approach is adopted to the introduction of efficacy into the world. I develop a property-centred account that explains how mental properties can be efficacacious without introducing systematic overdetermination. At the close, I provide a better characterization of the difference between these two approaches and offer an explanation as to why my way of resolving the problems has been missed. (shrink)

I argue that the extant theories of self-deception face a counterexample which shows the essential role of instability in the face of attentive consciousness in characterising self-deception. I argue further that this poses a challenge to the interpretist approach to the mental. I consider two revisions of the interpretist approach which might be thought to deal with this challenge and outline why they are unsuccessful. The discussion reveals a more general difficulty for Interpretism. Principles of reasoning—in particular, the requirement of (...) total evidence—are given a weight in attentive consciousness which does not correspond to our reflective judgement of their weight. Successful interpretation does not involve ascribing beliefs and desires by reference to what a subject ought to believe and desire, contrary to what Interpretists suggest. (shrink)

Philosophers have long been fascinated by the connection between cause and effect: are 'causes' things we can experience, or are they concepts provided by our minds? The study of causation goes back to Aristotle, but resurged with David Hume and Immanuel Kant, and is now one of the most important topics in metaphysics. Most of the recent work done in this area has attempted to place causation in a deterministic, scientific, worldview. But what about the unpredictable and chancey world we (...) actually live in: can one theory of causation cover all instances of cause and effect? _Cause and Chance: Causation in an Indeterministic World _is a collection of specially written papers by world-class metaphysicians. Its focus is the problem facing the 'reductionist' approach to causation: the attempt to cover all types of causation, deterministic and indeterministic, with one basic theory. Contributors: Stephen Barker, Helen Beebee, Phil Dowe, Dorothy Edgington, Doug Ehring, Chris Hitchcock, Igal Kwart, Paul Noordhof, Murali Ramachandran and Michael Tooley. (shrink)

We argue that the most plausible characterisation of the norm of truth—it is permissible to believe that p if and only if p is true—is unable to explain Transparency in doxastic deliberation, a task for which it is claimed to be equipped. In addition, the failure of the norm to do this work undermines the most plausible account of how the norm guides belief formation at all. Those attracted to normativism about belief for its perceived explanatory credentials had better look (...) elsewhere. (shrink)

Michael Tye and I are both Representationalists. Nevertheless, we have managed to disagree about the semantic character of ‘in’ in ‘There is a pain in my fingertip’ (see Noordhof (2001); Tye (2002); Noordhof (2002)). The first section of my commentary will focus on this disagreement. I will then turn to the location of pain. Here, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, there seems to be much more agreement between Tye and me. I restrict myself to three points. First, I argue that (...) Tye has not succeeded in providing a decisive consideration against a related theory which takes pains as representationally unmediated objects of pain experiences. Second, I defend Tye against an objection from Murat Aydede. Third, following on from this, I question whether Tye’s characterisation of the content of pain experience is correct. The fact that there is so much to discuss is a testament to richness, interest and exemplary clarity of Tye’s work. (shrink)

One dimension of the controversy over whether evaluative properties are presented in perceptual content has general roots in the debate over whether perceptual content, in general, is rich or austere. I argue that we need to recognise a level of rich non-sensory perceptual content, drawing on experiences of chicken sexing and speech perception, to capture what our experience is like and our epistemic entitlements. In both cases (and many others), we are not conscious of the precise perceptual cues that are (...) the basis for discriminations and, thus, the characterisation of the phenomenal content of such experiences must go beyond sensory properties. Nevertheless, this point is arguably insufficient to establish the perception of evaluative properties. Their representation requires the subject to respond in certain ways. I discuss how this should go for the case of pain and then, in outline, for moral properties. (shrink)

Non-reductive Physicalism together with environment-dependence of content has been thought to be incompatible with the claim that beliefs are efficacious partly in virtue of their possession of content, that is, in virtue of their intentional properties. I argue that this is not so. First, I provide a general account of property causation. Then, I explain how, even given the truth of Non-reductive Physicalism and the environment-dependence of content, intentional properties will be efficacious according to this account. I go on to (...) relate my discussion to that concerning whether Anomalous Monism is committed to epiphenomenalism. I close by considering how my proposal suggests we should conceive of different levels of causation in a layered world. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that Steglich-Petersen’s response to Owens’ Exclusivity Objection does not work. Our first point is that the examples Steglich-Petersen uses to demonstrate his argument do not work because they employ an undefended conception of the truth aim not shared by his target (and officially eschewed by Steglich-Petersen himself). Secondly we will make the point that deliberating over whether to form a belief about p is not part of the belief forming process. When an agent enters into (...) this process of deliberation, he has not, contra Steglich-Petersen, already adopted the truth aim with regard to p. In closing, we further suggest that proponents of the truth aim hypothesis need to focus on aim-guidance, not mere aim attribution, for their approach to have explanatory utility so underlining the significance of Owens’ argument. (shrink)

In assessing counterfactuals, should we consider circumstances which match the actual circumstances in all probablistically independent fact or all causally independent fact? Jonathan Schaffer argues the latter and claims that the former approach, advanced by me, cannot deal with the case of Morgenbesser’s coin. More generally, he argues that, where there is a difference between the two, his account yields our intuitive verdicts about the truth of counterfactuals where mine does not (Schaffer 2004: 307, n. 16). In this brief note, (...) I explain how my approach deals with the case of Morgenbesser’s coin and argue that the situation is, in fact, the reverse. To keep things brief, I rely upon Schaffer’s paper for general explanation of the context of our debate. (shrink)

made with any ambitions for ontological reduction (e.g. denying that there are pains but only states of having pain). So I'm afraid that Tye's objections deriving from attributing to me such a view and pointing out that Representationalism is needed to capture, amongst other things, the fact that we experience pains in phantom limbs are all beside the point. Instead, the question is entirely a matter of whether the inferences mentioned in my original paper and Tye's reply fail because, although (...) the 'in'. (shrink)

In his response, Michael Tye writes as if I reject Representationalism about pain. But in my original paper (Noordhof 2001) I hoped to make clear that I did not. For instance, I remarked that I had sympathy with the position (95) and, on the subsequent page, outlined what I thought the Represen- tationalist should say. My proposal was that when we experience a pain in the finger, the experience is veridical only if the cause of this experience is a (...) disordered state of the finger. My appeal to the notion of a state was not made with any ambitions for ontological reduction (e.g. denying that there are pains but only states of having pain). So I’m afraid that Tye’s objections deriving from attributing to me such a view and pointing out that Repre- sentationalism is needed to capture, amongst other things, the fact that we experience pains in phantom limbs are all beside the point. (shrink)

there is a substantial range of C1, C2, … of different not-too- distant alterations of C and a range E1, E2, of alterations of E, at least some of which differ, such that if C1 had occurred, E1 would have occurred, if C2 had occurred, E2 would have occurred and so on (Lewis 2000).

David Owens objected to the truth-aim account of belief on the grounds that the putative aim of belief does not meet a necessary condition on aims, namely, that aims can be weighed against other aims. If the putative aim of belief cannot be weighed, then belief does not have an aim after all. Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen responded to this objection by appeal to other deliberative contexts in which the aim could be weighed, and we argued that this response to Owens failed (...) for two reasons. Steglich-Petersen has since responded to our defence of Owens’s objection. Here we reply to Steglich-Petersen and conclude, once again, that Owens’s challenge to the truth-aim approach remains to be answered. (shrink)

One diagnosis of what is wrong with the Knowledge Argument rests on the Ability Hypothesis. This couples an ability analysis of knowing what an experience is like together with a denial that phenomenal propositions exist. I argue against both components. I consider three arguments against the existence of phenomenal propositions and find them wanting. Nevertheless I deny that knowing phenomenal propositions is part of knowing what an experience is like. I provide a hybrid account of knowing what an experience is (...) like which is the coherent expression of a single idea: knowing what an experience is like is knowing what it would be like to have the phenomenal content of the experience as the content of an experience one is currently having. I explain how my conclusions indicate that the focus of discussion should be on the alleged explanatory gap between phenomenal facts and physical facts and not on the Knowledge Argument. The latter is a poor expression of the difficulty Physicalists face. (shrink)

Externalists about mental content are supposed to face the following dilemma. Either they must give up the claim that we have privileged access to our own mental states or they must allow that we have privileged access to the world. The dilemma is posed in its most precise form through the McKinsey-Brown argument (McKinsey 1991; Brown 1995). Over the years since it was ?rst published in 1991, our understanding of the precise character of the premisses which constitute the argument has (...) been re?ned. It is based on three claims (where A partially serves to characterise the content of some belief state for which Externalism is true and E is some proposition about the external world). (shrink)

Moral requirements apply to rational agents as such. But it is a conceptual truth that if agents are morally required to act in a certain way then we expect them to act in that way. Being rational, as such, must therefore suffice to ground our expectation that rational agents will do what they are morally required to do. But how could this be so? It could only be so if we think of the moral requirements that apply to agents as (...) themselves categorical requirements of rationality or reason. For the only thing we can legitimately expect of rational agents as such is that they do what they are rationally required to do (Smith 1994: 85). (shrink)

Scott Sturgeon has claimed to undermine the principal argument for Physicalism, in his words, the view that 'actuality is exhausted by physical reality' (Sturgeon 1998, p. 410). In noting that actuality is exhausted by physical reality, the Physicalist is not claiming that all that there is in actuality are those things identified by physics. Rather the thought is that actuality is made up of all the things identified by physics and anything which is a compound of these things. So there (...) are tables as well as their microphysical constituents. The argument that Sturgeon has in his sights is the Overdetermination Argument. In what follows, I shall argue that Sturgeon's criticism of the Overdetermination argument fails. I shall also argue that physicalism can accommodate his claim that causal statements concerning the mental and physical respectively may require diverse patterns of counterfactual activity for their truth. (shrink)

In order to keep matters brief, I shall assume knowledge of my Mind paper and Sungho Choi’s paper printed before this brief response (Noordhof 1999; Choi 2002). Sungho Choi claims that the example I gave to motivate my formulation of the ‘actual events’ clause fails to motivate it and that the formulation, in fact, contains a redundant element, namely my appeal to supersets. I think he is right that my example doesn’t work. However, I think he is wrong that (...) the actual events clause contains a redundant element. The second case he discusses provides the motivation we need. (shrink)

Murali Ramachandran has kindly provided me with four (alleged) counterexamples to the theory of causation which I recently put forward in Mind (Ramachandran 2000; Noordhof 1999). Space is limited for a response. Since this note will be published Ramachandran's paper, I will not set out the cases he gives. I refer the reader to the appropriate descriptions. I will also presume knowledge of the framework of my paper and just give page references in case this is helpful. I will (...) try to couch the discussion with as little reference to the technical apparatus of my paper as possible. Maybe the ideas will stand out more clearly that way. (shrink)

I argue that Fred Dretske's account of the causal relevance of content only works if another account works better, that put forward by Gabriel Segal and Elliot Sober. Dretske needs to appeal to it to deal with two problems he faces: one arising because he accepts that the mere association between indicators and indicated is causally relevant to the recruitment of indicators in causing behaviour, the other from the need to explain how a present token of a certain type of (...) content is causally relevant. For this and other reasons their approach has clear advantages over Dretske's. (shrink)