The aim in this paper is to focus on one of the proposals about successful perception that has led its adherents to advance some kind of disjunctive account of experience. The proposal is that we should understand the conscious sensory experience involved in successful perception in relational terms. I first try to clarify what the commitments of the view are, and where disagreements with competing views may lie. I then suggest that there are considerations relating to the conscious character of (...) our perception of events that speak in its favour. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the phenomenology of mental agency by addressing the question of the ontological category of the conscious mental acts an agent is aware of when engaged in such directed mental activities as conscious calculation and deliberation. An argument is offered for the claim that the mental acts in question must involve phenomenally conscious mental events that have temporal extension. The problem the chapter goes on to address is how to reconcile this line of thought with Geach's arguments (...) for the claim that mental acts like judging lack temporal extension. (shrink)

Matthew Soteriou provides an original philosophical account of sensory and cognitive aspects of consciousness. He explores distinctions of temporal character in our mental lives--especially in relation to the exercise of agency--and illuminates the more general issue of the place and role of mental action in the metaphysics of mind.

It is commonly held that the experiences involved in cases of perception, illusion and hallucination all have the same nature. Disjunctivists deny this. They maintain that the kind of experience you have when you perceive the world isn’t one you could be having if you were hallucinating. A number of important debates in the philosophy of mind and epistemology turn on the question of whether this disjunctivist view is tenable. This is the first book-length introduction to this contested issue. (...) class='Hi'>Matthew Soteriou explains the accounts of perception that disjunctivists seek to defend, such as naïve realism, and the accounts to which they are opposed, such as sense-datum theories and representationalist theories. He goes on to introduce and assess key questions that arise in these debates: Is disjunctivism consistent with what has been established by the science of perception? Does introspective reflection support naïve realism? Can disjunctivism be motivated by appeal to the role that perception plays in enabling us to think demonstratively about mind-independent objects and qualities in our environment? Does disjunctivism offer the best account of perceptual knowledge? What can disjunctivists say about the nature of hallucination and illusion? Including chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary, this book is an ideal starting point for anyone studying disjunctivism for the first time, as well as for more advanced students and researchers. (shrink)

The twelve specially written essays in this volume investigate the neglected topic of mental action, and show its importance for the metaphysics, epistemology, and phenomenology of mind. The essays investigate what mental actions are, how we are aware of them, and what is the relationship between mental and physical action.

Perceptual experiences are often divided into the following three broad categories: veridical perceptions, illusions, and hallucinations. For example, when one has a visual experience as of a red object, it may be that one is really seeing an object and its red colour (veridical perception), that one is seeing a green object (illusion), or that one is not seeing an object at all (hallucination). Many maintain that the same account should be given of the nature of the conscious experience that (...) occurs in each of these three cases. Those who hold a disjunctive theory of perception deny this. Disjunctivists typically reject the claim that the same kind of experience is common to all three cases because they hold views about the nature of veridical perception that are inconsistent with it. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the causal requirements on perceptual success in putative cases of the perception of absence – in particular, in cases of hearing silence and seeing darkness. It is argued that the key to providing the right account of the respect in which we can perceive silence and darkness lies in providing the right account of the respect in which we can have conscious perceptual contact with intervals of time and regions of space within which objects can potentially be (...) perceived. In this account, a significant explanatory role is assigned to comparatively invariant structural features of our conscious experience of regions of space and intervals of time. The chapter discusses how the explanatory role assigned to these structural features affects our view of the causal requirements on perceptual success. (shrink)

Sosa : 7–18, 2005) argues that we should reject the orthodox conception of dreaming—the view that dream states and waking states are “intrinsically alike, though different in their causes and effects”. The alternative he proposes is that “to dream is to imagine”. According to this imagination model of dreaming, our dreamt conscious beliefs, experiences, affirmations, decisions and intentions are not “real” insofar as they are all merely imagined beliefs, experiences, affirmations, decisions and intentions. This paper assesses the epistemic implications of (...) Sosa’s imagination model of dreaming. Section 1 outlines and assesses the reasons Sosa gives for thinking that his imagination model of dreaming introduces a new dimension to debates about dream scepticism. Sosa argues that his imagination model of dreaming invites a more radical version of dream scepticism, and also makes available a novel and more powerful response to dream scepticism. Objections are raised to both of those claims. This leads to a challenge to Sosa’s imagination model of dreaming. This is the concern that Sosa’s imagination model of dreaming lacks the resources to accommodate the intuition that there is something illusory or misleading about one’s situation when one is dreaming, and as a result his account of dreams fails to accommodate the common intuition that there is a sceptical problem about dreaming but not about dreamless sleep. Section 2 of the paper elaborates a version of the imagination model of dreaming that can overcome that challenge. This version of the imagination model of dreaming goes beyond what Sosa explicitly commits to when he outlines his view of dreams, however, it exploits ideas that are integral to a key theme in Sosa’s recent writings on virtue reliabilism—namely his proposal that epistemic agency should be accorded a central place in that approach to knowledge, and his related proposal that agency is exercised in conscious judgement. An implication of this version of the imagination model of dreaming is that an elucidation of a connection between the wakeful condition and our capacity to exercise agency over our mental lives should be central to an account of the nature, and epistemic significance of, wakeful consciousness. The final section of the paper considers whether this version of the imagination model of dreaming has anything novel to contribute to debates about dream scepticism. (shrink)

In what respects is episodic recollection active, and subject to the will, like perceptual imagination, and in what respects is it passive, like perception, and how do these matters relate to its epistemological role? I present an account of the ontology of episodic recollection that provides answers to these questions. According the account I recommend, an act of episodic recollection is not subject to epistemic evaluation—it is neither justified nor unjustified—but it can provide one with a distinctive source of warrant (...) for judgements about the past when it is accompanied by knowledge that one is recollecting, as well as knowledge of what one is recollecting. While the account concedes that when one recollects one's attitude to what is recollected cannot be one of observation, it nevertheless accommodates the notion that episodic recollection involves a form of mental time-travel—a case of re-visiting, or re-acquaintance with, some past episode. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper I try to explain why the disjunctive theory of perception can seem so counterintuitive by focusing on two of the standard arguments against the view-the argument from subjective indiscriminability and the causal argument. I suggest that by focusing on these arguments, and in particular the intuitions that lie behind them, we gain a clearer view of what the disjunctive theory is committed to and why. In light of this understanding, I then present an (...) argument for the disjunctive theory based on the claim that the content of experience is particular and not general. (shrink)

This paper addresses the following questions: what account should be given of the state of wakeful consciousness, and what explanatory roles should be assigned to that state? Those questions are taken up after some discussion of the related but distinct question of what it is to be awake. On the view proposed here, in seeking to provide an account of the state of wakeful consciousness one should be aiming to provide an account of a point of view that is associated (...) with the distinctive form of awareness to which one surfaces when one wakes up. Our specification of that point of view should appeal to the awake subject’s temporal point of view, and the epistemic orientation and agential perspective it embodies. The explanatory roles that can be assigned to the state of wakeful consciousness are the explanatory roles that can be assigned to that point of view. (shrink)

Matthew Soteriou considers the kind of agency, and thus responsibility, that is involved in deciding to act, rather than in acting itself. One of his aims is to trace out connections between the notion that we occupy a tensed temporal perspective from which we regard the future as open, and the notion that we occupy a deliberative standpoint from which we act under the idea of freedom. A further aim is to suggest that identifying connections between the psychology (...) of self-determination and our temporal psychology should be central to an account of the sort of mental agency we exercise in deciding to act, and hence central to an account of what makes us responsible for our decisions. After having considered ways in which aspects of the psychology of our temporal perspective may contribute to explaining our capacity to exercise agency in deciding to act, Soteriou considers how our capacity to make decisions can contribute to explaining some of the distinctive features of the temporal perspective on the future that we occupy. In particular, he considers and responds to the suggestion that when it comes to our perspective on our future, there is a potential tension between the standpoint of theoretical reason and the standpoint of practical reason. (shrink)

Howard Robinson's Perception is now rightly regarded as essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the sense-datum theory of perception and its motivations. It should also be regarded as essential reading for those with a more general philosophical interest in perception and sensory consciousness. As well as discussing the history of the sense-datum theory, and the nature of sense-data and their relation to the physical world, Robinson offers critiques of physicalist theories of perception, intentional/representational theories, adverbial theories, and naive realist/disjunctivist (...) theories. Along the way he also discusses Wittgenstein's private language argument and the nature of secondary qualities. Over the course of the book we are presented with a sustained, and forthright, defence of a sense-datum theory in its traditional form. The arguments are clear, briskly delivered, and challenging. Here I highlight two key elements in Robinson's case for a sense-datum theory, which I think pose an especially serious challenge for his opponents. These are his articulation and defence of the ‘phenomenal principle’ and his ‘revised’ causal argument for sense-data. (shrink)

A review of Matthew Soteriou's 'The Mind's Construction: The Ontology of Mind and Mental Action'.

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Abstract I provide an account of the nature of seemings that explains why they are necessary for justification. The account grows out of a picture of cognition that explains what is required for epistemic agency. According to this account, epistemic agency requires (1) possessing the epistemic aims of forming true beliefs and avoiding errors, and (2) having some means of forming beliefs in order to satisfy those aims. I then argue that seeming are motives for belief characterized by their role (...) of providing us with doxastic instructions guided by our epistemic aims. Understanding the nature of seemings allows us to underwrite recent epistemological work by Michael Huemer, and shows why he was right to claim that seemings are the source of all justification. I then look at some objections both to my arguments regarding the connection between seemings and justification, and to Huemer’s related “Principle of Phenomenal Conservatism”. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-21 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9830-2 Authors Matthew Skene, Syracuse University, 8330 E. Quincy Ave., I-307, Denver, CO 80237, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

Citizenship, with its presumptive rights, privileges and obligations, has been a fundamental challenge confronting the state since the classical Greek era and the transformation and reorganization of the centralized medieval Holy Roman Empire after the Thirty Years War. With the changing patterns of state formation from the large and unwieldy empires organized into absolutist states to the more nationalistic/linguistic formations a recurring issue has been the constitutional or legal guarantees of the rights of the citizen as well as his/her obligations (...) to the state. This paper engaged in a nuanced study of Plato’s Crito as it relates the contradictions of citizenship as social membership and as participation in the modern state. The primary objective was to adapt Socrates’ experience to discuss the citizenship challenge in the modern state and driven by the research question on the implications of the emergence of new challenges to the contradictions of citizenship. Social contract theory by Thomas Hobbes served as the theoretical framework. Data collection was mainly from secondary sources such as academic journals, books, newspapers and internet sources, and data analysis based on the content and textual analysis of extant and relevant literature on the subject matter. Conclusively, the study realized that citizenship in the modern state is determined largely by the protection, in various ramifications, given to the citizen by the state, but that given a change in the circumstances many would decline to die for the state. Accordingly, it recommended a mutualism in the relationship and responsibilities between that state and the citizen of the modern state, particularly the underdeveloped states of the Third World. (shrink)

In Measuring the Immeasurable Mind: Where Contemporary Neuroscience Meets the Aristotelian Tradition, Matthew Owen argues that despite its nonphysical character, it is possible to empirically detect and measure consciousness. -/- Toward the end of the previous century, the neuroscience of consciousness set its roots and sprouted within a materialist milieu that reduced the mind to matter. Several decades later, dualism is being dusted off and reconsidered. Although some may see this revival as a threat to consciousness science aimed at (...) measuring the conscious mind, Owen argues that measuring consciousness, along with the medical benefits of such measurements, is not ruled out by consciousness being nonphysical. Owen proposes the Mind-Body Powers model of neural correlates of consciousness, which is informed by Aristotelian causation and a substance dualist view of human nature inspired by Thomas Aquinas, who often followed Aristotle. In addition to explaining why there are neural correlates of consciousness, the model provides a philosophical foundation for empirically discerning and quantifying consciousness. En route to presenting and applying the Mind-Body Powers model to neurobiology, Owen rebuts longstanding objections to dualism related to the mind-body problem. With scholarly precision and readable clarity, Owen applies an oft forgotten yet richly developed historical vantage point to contemporary cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

It's often thought that when we reason to new judgments in inference, we aim at believing the truth, and that this aim of ours can explain important psychological and normative features of belief. I reject this picture: the structure of aimed activity shows that inference is not guided by a truth‐aim. This finding clears the way for a positive understanding of how epistemic goods feature in our doxastic lives. We can indeed make sense of many of our inquisitive and deliberative (...) activities as undertaken in pursuit of such goods; but the evidence‐guided inferences in which those activities culminate will require a different theoretical approach. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is reason to distinguish between moral responsibility and blameworthiness and, in particular, that we can acknowledge that a person is responsible for the negative outcomes of their behavior without this necessarily informing our judgments about the person’s blameworthiness. This general theme is elaborated in the context of a discussion of some of Björn Petersson’s work on collective moral responsibility.

MacIntyre argues that management embodies emotivism, and thus is inherently amoral and manipulative. His claim that management is necessarily Weberian is, at best, outdated, and the notion that management aims to be neutral and value free is incorrect. However, new forms of management, and in particular the increased emphasis on leadership which emerged after MacIntyre’s critique was published, tend to support his central charge. Indeed, charismatic and transformational forms of leadership seem to embody emotivism to a greater degree than do (...) more Weberian, bureaucratic forms of management; hence, MacIntyre’s central contention about our emotivistic culture seems to be well founded. Having criticised the details but defended the essence of MacIntyre’s critique of management, this paper sketches a MacIntyrean approach to management and leadership by highlighting the affinities between MacIntyre’s political philosophy and Greenleaf’s concept of servant leadership. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychologists attempt to infer our evolved psychology from the selection pressures present in our ancestral environments. Their use of this inference strategy—often called “adaptive thinking”—is thought to be justified by way of appeal to a rather modest form of adaptationism, according to which the mind's adaptive complexity reveals it to be a product of selection. I argue, on the contrary, that the mind's being an adaptation is only a necessary and not a sufficient condition for the validity of adaptive (...) thinking, and that evolutionary psychology's predictive project is in fact committed to an extremely strong and highly implausible form of adaptationism. According to this “strong adaptationism,” the macroevolutionary trajectory of a population is determined by, and therefore predictable on the basis of, the selection pressures acting upon it. Not only is this form of adaptationism prima facie highly implausible, it requires making a number of naïve and likely false assumptions concerning the nature of heritable phenotypic variation in natural populations. In particular, it assumes that phenotypic variation is inevitably small in its extent, unbiased in its direction, and copious in its quantity. Because it is unlikely that these conditions obtain as a general rule, and even more unlikely that they obtained in early human populations, I conclude that there is little reason to believe that adaptive thinking can be used to infer the current structure of our minds from evidence of past selection pressures. (shrink)

Basal cognition investigates cognition working upward from nonneuronal organisms. Because basal cognition is committed to empirically testable hypotheses, a methodological challenge arises: how can experiments avoid using zoocentric assumptions that ignore the ecological contexts that might elicit cognitively driven behavior in nonneuronal organisms? To meet this challenge, I articulate the principle of dynamic holism (PDH), a methodological principle for guiding research on nonneuronal cognition. I describe PDH’s relation to holistic research programs in human-focused cognitive science and psychology then present an (...) argument from analogy based on holistic developmental biology. Last, I examine two experiments exemplifying the need for PDH. (shrink)

What makes teaching a moral endeavor? How can we prepare classroom practitioners for engaging in that moral endeavor in meaningful and effective ways? This volume brings together leading scholars who draw upon both their academic expertise and substantial wisdom of practice to offer a variety of perspectives on the challenge of preparing today’s teachers for the moral work of teaching. Book Features: Examines the role that teacher preparation and development can play in addressing the moral work of teaching. Highlights the (...) work of leading scholars from educational psychology, educational philosophy, and teacher education. Provides compelling insights for identifying the next generation of our nation’s best teachers. Contributors: Wolfgang Althof, Karen Benson, Marvin Berkowitz, Donald Blumenfeld-Jones, Elizabeth Campbell, Julie Canniff, Mary Crawford, Lana Daly, Rebecca Evers, Catherine Fallona, Gary Fenstermacher, Anthony Holter, Lisa Johnson, Daniel Lapsley, Darcia Narvaez, Virginia Navarro, Larry Nucci, Joy Pelton, Virginia Richardson, Don Senneville, David Light Shields, Barbara Stengel, Jonatha Vare, Marilyn Watson. (shrink)

According to George Lucas, Star Wars is a morality play, a mythological tale of good and evil that's meant to teach timeless lessons about the moral life. This chapter shows how the moral framework of natural law ethics provides a philosophical foundation for the morality of the Force and helps illuminate Star Wars' moral themes.

It has been argued that nonreductive physicalism’s problems with mental causation disappear if we abandon the intuitive but naïve production-based conception of causation in favor of one based on counterfactual dependence and difference-making. In recent years, this response has been thoroughly developed and defended by James Woodward, who contends that Kim’s causal exclusion argument, widely thought to be the most serious threat to nonreductive mental causation, cannot even be given a coherent formulation within Woodward’s preferred interventionist framework. But Woodward has, (...) even more recently, defended a pair of necessary conditions on mental causation and higher-order causation more generally, and it is here that the interventionist framework proves less friendly to nonreductive mental causation. Functionalism is arguably the most important species of nonreductive physicalism concerning specifically mental properties, but, as I argue, functional properties fail both of Woodward’s tests of causal relevance, one of them in two different ways. The problem, moreover, seems unique to functionalism, for other types of higher-order properties appear to pass Woodward’s tests. If functionalism faces defeat even in such friendly territory, its problems with mental causation are not an artifact of naïve metaphysics. They run deep. (shrink)

This paper reassesses the Cooper-Hadot debate surrounding how students are converted to philosophy as a way of life (section 1) through engagement with philosophical protreptics. In section 2, the paper identifies the core “argument from finality” in philosophical protreptics seeking to convert non-philosophers to philosophy, starting from the universal human interest in securing eudaimonia. In line with Cooper, this argument seeks to persuade prospective students on rational grounds, so that their choice to philosophise would be rationally motivated. In section 3.1, (...) the paper illustrates how in Plato's Euthydemus (a) the choice to undertake philosophy is rationally justified by Socrates, using the eudaimonistic argument from finality. In section 3.2, by recourse to Aristotle's Protrepticus, the paper shows how the protreptic texts also compared philosophy to other intellectual pursuits, notably rhetoric, so as to recommend philosophy specifically for delivering a directive wisdom concerning how to live. (shrink)

Aby Warburg's Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, left unfinished in 1929, has attracted significant interest in recent decades. This essay offers a new interpretation of Warburg's “picture atlas,” not in relation to modernist collage and photomontage, but as an heir to scientific pedagogical exhibitions of the late Wilhelmine period. It deals in particular with two “public enlightenment” shows curated by the Leipzig medical historian Karl Sudhoff, whose work Warburg admired and employed: the first on with the history of hygiene in Dresden in 1911, (...) the second in Leipzig, three years later, on the development of scientific images. Like Warburg, Sudhoff appreciated artworks and artifacts as sources for the history of science and medicine. His exhibitions consisted of assemblages of photographic reproductions—some of which were provided by Warburg himself—and uncannily anticipate Mnemosyne in both form and content. By examining the exchange of materials and display methods between the two scholars, the article explores how their respective visual projects reflected deeper disagreements over the public role of science, the epistemic power of images, and the persistence of the irrational in the human psyche. (shrink)

This book is the first English-language collection of essays by leading Camus scholars around the world to focus on Albert Camus’ place and status as a philosopher amongst philosophers, engaging with leading Western thinkers, and considering themes of enduring interest.

Joanna Leidenhag’s research monograph Minding Creation: Theological Panpsychism and the Doctrine of Creation argues that theologians should seriously consider and perhaps even support panpsychism. In light of rekindled interest in panpsychism amongst philosophers of mind and a noteworthy minority of cognitive neuroscientists, which comes in the wake of physicalism’s faltering, Leidenhag’s thesis is timely. This work briefly analyzes some key aspects of Minding Creation.

The idea of philosophy as a 'way of life' is not a new one. From the first recorded philosophy by Plato, there has been a tradition of thinking about philosophy as pointing us towards the good life, happiness and an ethical existence. But where does this notion that philosophy has anything to offer in terms of guiding us in how to live and live well come from? In this first ever introduction to philosophy as a way of life, Matthew (...) Sharpe and Michael Ure take us us through the history of the idea from Plato and the Buddha to Foucault, Hadot and Zizek. They examine the kinds of practical exercises each thinker recommended and practiced to transform their philosophy into manners of living and acting. Philosophy as a Way of Life also examines the recent resurgence of thinking about philosophy as a practical, lived reality and why this ancient tradition still has so much relevance and power in the contemporary world. (shrink)

If God is good, then why did he do that? Violent wars, harsh laws, pronounced judgments. Christianity proclaims God's goodness, yet the Bible is filled with passages that seem to paint a different picture. On the surface, such depictions can hinder our confidence in God's goodness. But when we're willing to look deeper, we discover a consistent purpose behind everything God does--and that he is greater than we could ever imagine. Alongside bestselling author Josh McDowell, Matthew Tingblad invites you (...) to discover how a good God has good reasons for his challenging actions in the Bible. Throughout, you will uncover the reality of God's consistent motives and purposes: holiness, justice, and radical mercy. Whether you have your own questions about God or are ministering to those who do, Matthew and Josh will guide you through these difficult passages and ideas, all the while pointing to God's power and redeeming love. Find confidence and joy in discovering that God is good--always good--even in the passages of Scripture that appear to convey otherwise." - back cover. (shrink)