Locke’s account of personal identity has been highly influential because of its emphasis on a psychological criterion. The same consciousness is required for being the same person. It is not so clear, however, exactly what Locke meant by ‘consciousness’ or by ‘having the same consciousness’. Interpretations vary: consciousness is seen as identical to memory, as identical to a first personal appropriation of mental states, and as identical to a first personal distinctive experience of the qualitative features of one’s own thinking. (...) There is wide agreement, however, that Locke’s theory of personal identity is meant to complement his moral and theological commitments to a system of divine punishment and reward in an afterlife. But these commitments seem to require also a metaphysical criterion, and Locke is insistent that it cannot be substance. The difficulty reconciling the psychological and metaphysical requirements of the theory has led, at worst, to charges of incoherence and, at best, to a slew of interpretations, none of which is widely accepted. (shrink)

In this paper I adduce a new argument in support of the claim that IBE is an autonomous form of inference, based on a familiar, yet surprisingly, under-discussed, problem for Hume’s theory of induction. I then use some insights thereby gleaned to argue for the claim that induction is really IBE, and draw some normative conclusions.

When we look at a tree, two images of it are formed, one on each of our retinas. Why, then, asks the child or the philosopher, do we not see two trees?1 Thomas Reid offers an answer to this question in the section of his Inquiry into the Human Mind entitled ‘Of seeing objects single with two eyes’. The principles he invokes in his answer serve at the same time to explain why we do occasionally see objects double. In Part (...) I of this essay, I examine the principles Reid uses to explain single and double vision. This part is mostly an exercise in the history of cognitive science, but it raises questions of interest to philosophers along the way. In Part II, I turn to a hard-core philosophical problem raised by double vision, namely, whether double vision constitutes an objection to the direct realist theory of perception, which was one of Reid's main philosophical purposes to promote. (shrink)

Brentano held that every mental phenomenon has an object and is conscious (the dual relation thesis). The dual relation thesis faces a number of well-known problems. The paper explores how Brentano tried to overcome these problems. In considering Brentano's responses, the paper sheds light on Brentano's theory of judgement that underpins his philosophy of mind.

Intuition serves a variety of roles in contemporary philosophy. This paper provides a historical discussion of the revival of intuition in the 1970s, untangling some of the ways that intuition has been used and offering some suggestions concerning its proper place in philosophical investigation. Contrary to some interpretations of the results of experimental philosophy, it is argued that generalized skepticism with respect to intuition is unwarranted. Intuition can continue to play an important role as part of a methodologically conservative stance (...) towards philosophical investigation. I argue that methodological conservatism should be sharply distinguished from the process of evaluating individual propositions. Nevertheless, intuition is not always a reliable guide to truth and experimental philosophy can serve a vital ameliorative role in determining the scope and limits of our intuitive competence with respect to various areas of inquiry. (shrink)

Aristotle, Dignāga, Descartes, Arnauld, Locke, Brentano, Sartre and many others are right about the nature of conscious awareness: all such awareness comports—somehow carries within itself—awareness of itself . This is a necessary condition of awareness being awareness at all: no ‘higher-order’ account of what makes conscious states conscious can be correct. But is very paradoxical: it seems to require that awareness be somehow already present, in such a way as to be available to itself as object of awareness, in order (...) to be constituted as awareness in the first place. Can anything relate to itself in this way? Can there be a relation that is necessarily one-term, reflexive, non-logical , concretely realizable, dynamically real, such that its holding is a necessary condition of the existence of the thing it holds of? It helps to consider the thought this very thought is puzzling. Many accept the reality of the kind of awareness of awareness posited in and , and think it must be not only ‘pre-reflective’ and ‘non-positional’, but also irrelational or non-intentional. But perhaps such awareness of awareness can be fully relational and fully intentional, and can be legitimately said to be its own object or content, even while being pre-reflective and non-positional. (shrink)

Do we need light to see? I argue that the black experience of a man in a perfectly dark cave is a representation of an absence of light, not an absence of representation. There is certainly a difference between his perceptual knowledge and that of his blind companion. Only the sighted man can tell whether the cave is dark just by looking. But perhaps he is merely inferring darkness from his failure to see. To get an unambiguous answer, I switch (...) the focus from perceptual knowledge to non-epistemic seeing. My conclusion is that we see even in the limiting case of absolute darkness - regardless of whether we believe we are seeing. We see little of pratical interest. But in terms of basic information, we see about as much as we do when the lights are on. Depending on what has gone before and after, we may even see ordinary objects. (shrink)

In this article, I develop and defend a conception of psychological continuity that differs from the 'orthodox' conception in terms of overlapping chains of strongly connected mental states. By recognizing the importance of the (narrative) interrelatedness of qualitatively dissimilar mental contents, as well as the role of the body in psychological continuity, I argue, serious problems confronting the orthodox view can be solved.

The Crazyist Metaphysics of Mind. . ???aop.label???

Jonathan Dancy has developed a very refined theory called ethical particularism. He has argued extensively for the metaphysical part of his position. However, the accompanying epistemology is not yet clear. In this paper I will sketch a particularist epistemology that is consistent with Dancy’s particularist metaphysics, although my approach differs in certain respects from epistemological claims Dancy has made. I will defend an epistemology that states: 1. that moral knowledge is based on intuitions and 2. that we need emotions in (...) order to have moral knowledge. I will call this approach ‘affectual intuitionism’. Dancy rejects both claims, but I will argue that his arguments against these claims are not convincing. (shrink)

This article is a discussion of Hume's maxim Nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible. First I explain this maxim and distinguish it from the principle Whatever cannot be imagined (conceived), is impossible. Next I argue that Thomas Reid's criticism of the maxim fails and that the arguments by Tamar Szábo Gendler and John Hawthorne for the claim that “it is uncontroversial that there are cases where we are misled” by the maxim are unconvincing. Finally I state the limited but real (...) value of the maxim: it does help us, in certain cases, reliably to make up our minds. Along the way I show that Reid, his criticism of the maxim notwithstanding, actually employs it, and I furthermore argue that the principle What is inconceivable, is impossible is spurious. (shrink)

Abstract Descartes's theory of volition as expressed in his Passions of the Soul is analyzed and outlined. The focus is not on Descartes's proposed answers to questions about the nature and processes of volition, but on his way of formulating questions about the nature of volition. It is argued that the assumptions underlying Descartes's questions have become ?intellectual strait?jackets? for all who are interested in volition: neuroscientists, philosophers and psychologists. It is shown that Descartes's basic assumption?that volition causes change in (...) the brain/mind, not in the world around us?has set in train a series of ?themata? that have dominated studies of the will, severely curtailing our understanding. It is then shown that these Cartesian themata are so limiting and confusing that a number of internally contradictory ideas have actually become mainstays of most theories of volition; in particular, the concepts of unconscious sensations and of involuntary volitions. (shrink)

This article investigates Hume's account of mental transparency. In this article, I will endorse Qualitative Transparency – that is, the thesis that we cannot fail to apprehend the qualitative characters of our current perceptions, and these apprehensions cannot fail to be veridical – on the basis that, unlike its competitors, it is both weak enough to accommodate the introspective mistakes that Hume recognises, and yet strong enough to make sense of his positive employments of mental transparency. Moreover, Qualitative Transparency is (...) also philosophically satisfying in providing good philosophical reason for why the mental states that are incorrigible should in fact be so. (shrink)

Mill appears to be committed to two incompatible accounts of laws. While he seems to defend a Humean account of laws similar to Ramsey’s and Lewis’s, he also appears to rely on modal notions to distinguish lawful relations from accidental regularities. This paper will show that Mill’s two accounts of laws are in fact equivalent. This equivalence results from a proper understanding of the necessity involved in laws and a proper understanding of systematization. This equivalence reveals the true source of (...) the intimate connection between laws and systematization. Mill also provides an account of natural necessity that makes clear why experimentation is essential for gaining knowledge of laws. In contrast, Lewis’s account will be shown to have counterintuitive consequences regarding the relationship between laws and experimentation. Moreover, it will be shown that Mill’s views about inference result in a distinction between two modes of systematizing: subsumption and derivation. This distinction is overlooked in contemporary accounts of systematization, but Mill rightly notes that the metaphysical implications and epistemic role of these two modes are importantly different. (shrink)

Although episodic memory is a widely studied form of memory both in philosophy and psychology, it still raises many burning questions regarding its definition and even its acceptance. Over the last two decades, cross-disciplinary discussions between these two fields have increased as they tackle shared concerns, such as the phenomenology of recollection, and therefore allow for fruitful interaction. This editorial introduction aims to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date presentation of the main existing conceptions and issues on the topic. After delineating (...) Tulving’s chief theoretical import and multifaceted legacy, it goes on to chart the different attempts to capture the episodicity feature of memory according to three categories: a first approach aims to show the cognitive abilities required for a subject to episodically remember; the second defines episodicity as a stage-specific feature; the last explains episodicity in terms of the epistemological properties of episodic memory. This state of the art thereby sets the stage for the contributions of the present volume, which will be introduced in conclusion. (shrink)

Abstract: Thought experiments about the self seem to lead to deeply conflicting intuitions about the self. Cases imagined from the 3rd person perspective seem to provoke different responses than cases imagined from the 1st person perspective. This paper argues that recent cognitive theories of the imagination, coupled with standard views about indexical concepts, help explain our reactions in the 1st person cases. The explanation helps identify intuitions that should not be trusted as a guide to the metaphysics of the self.

How are we to understand philosophical claims about sense perception being direct versus indirect? There are multiple relevant notions of perceptual directness, so I argue. Perception of external objects may be direct on some notions, while indirect on others. My interest is with the sense in which ideas count as perceptual mediators in the philosophy of Descartes and Locke. This paper has two broader aims. The first is to clarify four main notions of perceptual directness. The second is to support (...) my contention that in the texts characterizing ideas as immediate objects of perception, Descartes and Locke are invoking the notion of directness I call 'objectual'. This notion is modeled on the way a picture mediates perception of the pictured object. The upshot of my account is that – with respect to the objectual notion of directness – Descartes and Locke each hold an indirect theory of perception. (shrink)

InLeibniz: Perception, Apperception, and Thought, Robert McRae alleges a flat “contradiction” at the heart of Leibniz's doctrine of three grades of monads: bare entelechies characterized by perception; animal souls capable both of perception and of sensation; and rational souls, minds or spirits endowed not only with capacities for perception and sensation but also with consciousness of self or what Leibniz calls “apperception.” Apperception is a necessary condition of those distinctively human mental processes associated with understanding and with reason. Insofar as (...) it is also a sufficient condition of rationality, it is not ascribable to animals. But apperception is a necessary condition of sensation or feeling as well; and animals are capable of sensation, according to Leibniz, who decisively rejected the Cartesian doctrine that beasts are nothing but material automata. “On the one hand,” writes McRae, “what distinguishes animals from lower forms of life is sensation or feeling, but on the other hand apperception is a necessary condition of sensation, and apperception distinguishes human beings from animals”. “We are thus left with an unresolved inconsistency in Leibniz's account of sensation, so far as sensation is attributable both to men and animals”. (shrink)

Thomas Reid's Geometry of Visibles, according to which the geometrical properties of an object's perspectival appearance equal the geometrical properties of its projection on the inside of a sphere with the eye in its centre allows for two different interpretations. It may (1) be understood as a theory about phenomenal visual space – i.e. an account of how things appear to human observers from a certain point of view – or it may (2) be seen as a mathematical model of (...) viewpoint-relative but mind-independent relational properties of objects. This paper makes a systematic and a historical claim. I shall argue, first, that given certain features of the human visual system phenomenal visual space differs in several aspects from Reidean visual space. Secondly, I suggest that, since Reid was aware of some of these empirical facts, we should interpret Reid as endorsing the second interpretation of the Geometry of Visibles. (shrink)

Abstract: “Consciousness” seems to be a polysemic, ambiguous, term. Because of this, theorists have sought to distinguish the different kinds of phenomena that “consciousness” denotes, leading to a proliferation of terms for different kinds of consciousness. However, some philosophers—univocalists about consciousness—argue that “consciousness” is not polysemic or ambiguous. By drawing upon the history of philosophy and psychology, and some resources from semantic theory, univocalism about consciousness is shown to be implausible. This finding is important, for if we accept the univocalist (...) account then we are less likely to subject our thought and talk about the mind to the kind of critical analysis that it needs. The exploration of the semantics of “consciousness” offered here, by way of contrast, clarifies and fine-tunes our thought and talk about consciousness and conscious mentality and explains why “consciousness” means what it does, and why it means a number of different, but related, things. (shrink)

Speaking: from Intention to Articulation Willem J. M. Levelt, 1989 (1993 paperback) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press ISBN: 0–262–12137–9(hb), 0–262–62089–8(pb)Rules for Reasoning Richard E. Nisbett (Ed.), 1993 Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates ISBN: 0–8058–1256–3(hb), 0–8085–1257–1 (pb)Readings in Philosophy and Cognitive Science Alvin I. Goldman, 1993 Cambridge, MA, MIT Press ISBN: 0–262–07153–3(hb), 0–262–57100–5(pb)Language Comprehension in Ape and Child, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Serial No. 233, Vol. 58, Nos 3–4 Sue Savage‐Rumbaugh, Jeannine Murphy, Rose A. Sevcik, Karen E. (...) Brakke, Shelly L. Williams & Duane M. Rumbaugh, with commentary by Elizabeth Bates, and a reply by the authors, 1993 Chicago: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0–226–73542–7Language, Music and Mind Diana Raffman, 1993 Cambridge, MIT Press/Bradford Books ISBN: 0–262–18150–9Psychology of Proof Lance J. Rips, 1994 Cambridge, MA, MIT Press ISBN: 0–262–18153–3Human and Machine Thinking P. Johnson‐Laird, 1993 Hillsdale, NJ, Erlbaum ISBN: 0–8058–0921‐XIntelligent Behavior in Animals and Robots David McFarland & Thomas Bosser, 1993 Cambridge, MA and London, UK: MIT Press/ Bradford Books ISBN: 0–262–13293–1The Eye and the Mind: Reflections on Perception and the Problem of Knowledge Charles Landesman, 1993 Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers ISBN: 0–7923–2586–9The Moral Self GilG. Noam & Thomas E. Wren (Eds), in cooperation with Gertud Nunner‐Winkler & Wolfgang Edelstein, 1993 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press ISBN: 0–262–14052–1The Logic of Discovery: A Theory of the Rationality of Scientific Research Scott A. Kleiner, 1993 Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers ISBN: 0–7923–2371–8Folk Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind S.M. Christenson & D.R. Turner (Eds), 1993 Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum ISBN: 0–805–80931–7. (shrink)

This essay takes a transhistorical leap to connect the philosophy of Thomas Reid to the dramatic presentation of ethical choices in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Juxtaposing the two figures reveals an underlying moral ontology common to both. This shared ontology is remarkably nuanced, ultimately affirming moral liberty whilst decisively registering the fallibility of the ‘moral faculty.’ The final section asks whether the degree of comparability warrants any further speculation, revisiting the question of a ‘common humanity.’.

This paper is a response to Keith Lehrer's ‘Reid on Common Sense and Morals.’ I start by defending the general claim that it is appropriate to call Reid a moral realist. I continue by discussing three aspects of Reid's account of moral ideas. First, our first moral conceptions are non-propositional mental states that are essential ingredients of moral perception. Our first moral conceptions are not gross, indistinct and egocentric but are uninformed mental states that might be about others. Second, moral (...) perception functions like perception of aesthetic properties and of the mental states of other humans, and this kind of perception is both immediate and informed. Third, I discuss the role of moral feelings in moral motivation. (shrink)

In this paper, I first consider a famous objection that the standard interpretation of the Lockean account of diachronicity (i.e., one’s sense of personal identity over time) via psychological connectedness falls prey to breaks in one’s personal narrative. I argue that recent case studies show that while this critique may hold with regard to some long-term autobiographical self-knowledge (e.g., episodic memory), it carries less warrant with respect to accounts based on trait-relevant, semantic self-knowledge. The second issue I address concerns the (...) question of diachronicity from the vantage point that there are (at least) two aspects of self—the self of psychophysical instantiation (what I term the epistemological self) and the self of first person subjectivity (what I term the ontological self; for discussion, see Klein SB, The self and its brain, Social Cognition, 30, 474–518, 2012). Each is held to be a necessary component of selfhood, and, in interaction, they are appear jointly sufficient for a synchronic sense of self (Klein SB, The self and its brain, Social Cognition, 30, 474–518, 2012). As pertains to diachronicity, by contrast, I contend that while the epistemological self, by itself, is precariously situated to do the work required by a coherent theory of personal identity across time, the ontological self may be better positioned to take up the challenge. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss philosophical and psychological treatments of the question "how do we decide that an occurrent mental state is a memory and not, say a thought or imagination?" This issue has proven notoriously difficult to resolve, with most proposed indices, criteria and heuristics failing to achieve consensus. Part of the difficulty, I argue, is that the indices and analytic solutions thus far offered seldom have been situated within a well-specified theory of memory function. As I hope to (...) show, when such an approach is adopted, not only does a new, functionally-grounded answer emerge; we also gain insight into the adaptive significance of the process proposed to underwrite our belief in the memorial status of a mental state (i.e.,autonoetic awareness). (shrink)

This paper offers re-assessment of Scottish Common Sense rhetoric and its relationship to pluralist practice and philosophical method. It argues that the rhetorical texts of George Campbell, Hugh Blair, and Alexander Bain can be read as a practical application of Scottish Common Sense philosophy. This offers a novel means of examining the relationship that Scottish rhetoric has to the philosophy of David Hume and also its own innovative philosophy of language. Finally, I argue that Scottish rhetoric makes a unique contribution (...) to rhetorical methodology's key place in the creation of social and moral consensus. (shrink)

According to one of the most influential views in the philosophy of self-knowledge each person enjoys some special cognitive access to his or her own current mental states and episodes. This view faces two fundamental tasks. First, it must elucidate the general conceptual structure of apparent asymmetries between beliefs about one’s own mind and beliefs about other minds. Second, it must demarcate the mental territory for which first-person-special-access claims can plausibly be maintained. Traditional candidates include sensations, experiences (of various kinds), (...) thoughts, beliefs, desires, and also affective states such as emotions. I reconstruct five prominent privileged access claims that have traditionally been maintained for emotions and discuss logical relations among them. I then argue that none of these claims stands up to scrutiny. The truth is that we often suffer from affective ignorance, and that third-person ascriptions of emotional states should often be credited with more rather than less authority than corresponding self-ascriptions. I conclude by considering, and rejecting, five potential objections to my argument. (shrink)

Two notable thought experiments are discussed in this article: Reid's thought experiment about whether a being supplied with tactile sensations alone could acquire the conception of extension and Strawson's thought experiment about whether a being supplied with auditory sensations alone could acquire the conception of mind-independent objects. The experiments are considered alongside Campbell's argument that only on the so-called relational view of experience is it possible for experiences to make available to their subjects the concept of mind-independent objects. I consider (...) how the three issues ought to be construed as raising questions about woulds, coulds, or shoulds. (shrink)

The usual context for raising the issue of ‘agent-causation’ is that of human action. Cf. the excellent recent book by Fred Vollmer. And a long list of articles. The motivation for mounting a defence of the propriety of agent causation might be to restore moral concepts to a place in human life, via responsibility of actors for their actions, threatened by event causality explanation formats.

Two theses appear to be central to Reid’s view of the visual field. By sight, we do not originally perceive depth or linear distance from the eye. By sight, we originally perceive the position that points on the surface of objects have with regard to the centre of the eye. In different terms, by sight, we originally perceive the compass direction and degree of elevation of points on the surface of objects with reference to the centre of the eye. I (...) consider various problems about distance perception and perception of position with regard to the centre of the eye raised by Reid’s texts. These questions are relevant to Reid’s description of the geometry of visibles as the “intrinsic” geometry of the surface of the sphere. (shrink)

The debate on personal persistence has been characterized by a dichotomy which is due to its still Cartesian framwork: On the one side we find proponents of psychological continuity who connect, in Locke’s tradition, the persistence of the person with the constancy of the first-person perspective in retrospection. On the other side, proponents of a biological approach take diachronic identity to consist in the continuity of the organism as the carrier of personal existence from a third-person-perspective. Thus, what accounts for (...) someone’s persistence over time, is the continuity of his mind on the one hand, and the continuity of his body on the other. In contrast to those views, the paper intends to show that bodily existence represents the basis of selfhood across time, both as the continuity of the experiential self and as the continuity of the autopoietic organism. On the one hand, the lived body conveys a continuity of the self from a first-person perspective, namely a pre-reflective feeling of sameness or a felt constancy of subjectivity. Moreover, an analysis of awakening and sleep shows that there is a continuous transition from full wakefulness to periods of deep sleep which may thus not be regarded as a complete interruption of subjective experience. On the other hand, this constancy converges with the continuity of the organismic life process as conceived from a third-person perspective. Thus, the experiential self of bodily subjectivity and the autopoietic self of the living organism should be regarded as two aspects of one and the same life process. Finally, the lived body also exhibits a specific form of memory that results from the continual embodiment of existence: it consists of all the affinities, capacities and experiences, which a person has acquired throughout his life. Thus, it provides a continuity of self that must not be actively produced through remembering, but rather integrates the person’s entire past in his present being and potentiality. (shrink)

I present and defend a unified, non-reductive analysis of the a priori and a posteriori. It is a mistake to remove all epistemic conditions from the analysis of the a priori (as, for example, Alvin Goldman has recently suggested doing). We can keep epistemic conditions (like unrevisability) in the analysis as long as we insist that a priori and a posteriori justification admit of degrees. I recommend making the degree to which a belief’s justification is a priori or a posteriori (...) solely dependent on the revisability relations that obtain among the faculties that deliver the belief and all other faculties. (shrink)

Suppose that you're lying in bed. You just woke up. But you're alert. Your mind is clear and you have no distractions. As you lie there, you think to yourself, ‘2 + 2 = 4.’ The thought just pops into your head. But, wanting to be sure of your mathematical insight, you once again think ‘2 + 2 = 4’, this time really meditating on your thought. Now suppose that you're sitting in an empty movie theatre. The lighting is normal (...) and the screen in front of you is blank. Then at some point an image of a peach is flashed on the screen. The image isn't up there for long. In fact, it's only on the screen for what seems like an instant—just long enough for you to see it. These two scenarios are a bit mundane. But, as I will show, reflection on them can yield significant results concerning the nature of persons and their persistence through time. First I will show that thought and perception have temporal constraints whereby your thinking or perceiving in the above scenarios implies that you exist through a temporally.. (shrink)

Abstract It is argued that the scattered remarks on the fine arts made in Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind (1764) present a conception of the relation between perception and the fine arts that is at once compatible with and different from Reid's mature theory of art in Of Taste (1785). This alternative account of art-relevant perception also points beyond the limits of a philosophy of art developed according to the traditional theory of taste dominant in 18th-century Scottish aesthetic thought, (...) and anticipates certain 20th-century theories. (shrink)

Despite their divergent metaphysical assumptions, Reformed and evolutionary epistemologists have converged on the notion of proper basicality. Where Reformed epistemologists appeal to God, who has designed the mind in such a way that it successfully aims at the truth, evolutionary epistemologists appeal to natural selection as a mechanism that favors truth-preserving cognitive capacities. This paper investigates whether Reformed and evolutionary epistemological accounts of theistic belief are compatible. We will argue that their chief incompatibility lies in the noetic effects of sin (...) and what may be termed the noetic effects of evolution, systematic tendencies wherein human cognitive faculties go awry. We propose a reconceptualization of the noetic effects of sin to mitigate this tension. (shrink)

The ArgumentNaturalization confers authority on beliefs, conventions, and claims, but what kind of authority? Because the meaning of nature has a history, so does that of naturalization:naturalization is not the same tactic when marshaled in, say, eighteenth-century France and in late nineteenth-century Britain. Although the authority of nature may be invoked in both cases, the import of that authority depends crucially on whether nature is understood normatively or descriptively, within the framework of the natural laws of jurisprudence or within that (...) of the natural laws of mechanics. During the early modern period, the denotative center of gravity of the word “nature” shifted dramatically. Writings about the female intellect are particularly well suited to reflect and focus these changes for three reasons: first, as with so many aspects of gender identity, what was distinctively female about women's way of thinking was usually alleged to be part and parcel of their “nature”; second, thepolitical and social implications of the female intellect were debated heatedly and in unprecedented detail, particularly in France; and third, the actual content of beliefs about what traits sex the intellect as female remained relatively constant during this period, despite sharp differences of opinion over their putative “natural” causes. The female intellect was naturalized not once but repeatedly, and therein lies its value for a history of naturalization. (shrink)

Can we directly experience change? Although some philosophers have denied it, the phenomenological evidence is unambiguous: we can, and do. But how is this possible? What structures or features of consciousness render such experience possible? A variety of very different answers to this question have been proposed, answers which have very different implications for the nature of consciousness itself. In this brief survey no attempt is made to engage with the often complex (and sometimes obscure) literature on this topic. Instead, (...) a largely schematic examination of the main options is conducted, with a view to determining the most promising avenues for further investigation. (shrink)

Does moral realism deserve to be the default metaethical position? The issue is contested. While many realists have maintained that theirs is the view to beat, others contend that realists have offered no satisfactory argument for this position. In this essay and its companion, ‘Reidian Metaethics, Part II’, I maintain that Thomas Reid’s moral epistemology can help us make headway on the issue. Reid, I claim, offers an interesting line of argument, that when conjoined with some other assumptions, supports the (...) claim that realism deserves to be the default metaethical position. (shrink)

Does moral realism deserve to be the default metaethical position? The issue is contested. While many realists have maintained that theirs is the view to beat, others contend that realists have offered no satisfactory argument for this position. In this essay and its companion, ‘Reidian Metaethics, Part I’, I maintain that Thomas Reid’s moral epistemology can help us make headway on the issue. Reid, I claim, offers an interesting line of argument, that when conjoined with some other assumptions, supports the (...) claim that realism deserves to be the default metaethical position. (shrink)

Hume bequeathed to rational intuitionists a problem concerning moral judgment and the will – a problem of sufficient severity that it is still cited as one of the major reasons why intuitionism is untenable.1 Stated in general terms, the problem concerns how an intuitionist moral theory can account for the intimate connection between moral judgment and moral motivation. One reason that this is still considered to be a problem for intuitionists is that it is widely assumed that the early intuitionists (...) made little progress towards solving it. In this essay, I wish to challenge this assumption by examining one of the more subtle intuitionist responses to Hume, viz., that offered by Thomas Reid. For reasons that remain unclear to me, Reid's response to Hume on this issue has been almost entirely neglected. I shall argue that it is nonetheless one that merits our attention, for at least two reasons. In the first place, Reid's response to Hume's challenge to rational intuitionism bears a close affinity to the type of response that he offers to Hume's broadly skeptical challenge to realist views regarding our perception of the external world. Since Reid's strategy in the latter case is widely regarded as exhibiting significant promise, it is natural to wonder whether, when applied to the moral domain, this type of strategy displays similar promise.2 I will suggest that it does. That is, I will suggest that since Reid's broadly nativist position in perception is one well worth considering, then so also is his broadly nativist account of moral motivation. Second, Reid's position regarding moral motivation represents an intriguing attempt to blend a broadly intuitionist view with important insights from the sentimentalist tradition. In this respect, Reid's view is a genuine hybrid position unlike that offered by other intuitionists such as Richard Price. The synthetic character of Reid's position, I claim, gives it a unique type of theoretical richness, since it incorporates some very attractive features of both rational intuitionism and sentimentalism. (shrink)

This symposium’s objections to my book fall into two main categories: philosophical and empirical. The philosophical objections are largely sophistical. If we took them seriously, they would invalidate far more than my book: We would also have to give up social science and common sense. The empirical objections, in contrast, are often thoughtful and important. The most notable: Kiewiet and Mattozzi’s vigorous defense of the American public’s free‐trade credentials, and Wittman’s doubts about the magnitude of the belief gap between economists (...) and the public. But Kiewiet and Mattozzi put too much weight on a single survey question; and the belief gap between economists and the public is much larger than the belief gap between the American public’s far left and far right. (shrink)

The fact that we can engage in first-person discourse about our own mental states seems, intuitively, to be bound up with consciousness. David Rosenthal draws upon this intuition in arguing for his higher-order thought theory of consciousness. Rosenthal's argument relies upon the assumption that the truth-conditions for "p" and "I think that p" differ. It is argued here that the truth-conditional schema debars "I think" from playing one of its roles and thus is not a good test for what is (...) asserted when "I think" is employed in making an assertoric utterance. The critique of Rosenthal's argument allows us to make explicit the intuitions which shape higher-order representation theories of consciousness in general. Consciousness and first-person mental discourse seem to be connected primarily because consciousness is an epistemic term, used to denote first-person knowledge of minds. Higher-order thought theories of consciousness draw upon this epistemic notion of consciousness, and because self-knowledge seems to involve higher-order representation, the higher-order theorist can deploy what is in effect an "error theory" about conscious experience disguised as a kind of conceptual analysis of our ordinary concept of a conscious mental state. The conclusion reached is that there is unlikely to be a simple or direct path from considerations about mental discourse to conclusions about the nature of consciousness. (shrink)

Reid was a Newtonian and a Theist, but did he found his Theism on Newton’s physics? In opposition to commonplace assumptions about the role of Theism in Reid’s philosophy, my answer is no. Reid prefers to found his Theism on a priori reasons, rather than on physics. Reid’s understanding of physics as an empirical science stops it from contributing in any clear and efficient way to issues of natural theology. In addition, Reid is highly sceptical of our ability to discover (...) the efficient and final causes of natural phenomena, knowledge of which is essential for natural theology. To bring out Reid’s differences with classical Newtonian Theists Richard Bentley and William Whiston, I examine their use of the law and force of general gravitation, and reconstruct what would be Reidian objections.Keywords: Thomas Reid; William Whiston; Richard Bentley; Physics; Theism; Isaac Newton. (shrink)