Online research in philosophy

Critics of wide functionalism have traditionally sought to attack the theory by exposing weaknesses in its account of the qualitative content of experience. Wide functionalist theories of intentional content, however, were spared philosophical scrutiny. I propose that wide functionalist accounts of the intentional content are equally susceptible to attack. I will attempt to demonstrate this by enlisting the functionalist's old foe from the qualia wars - the inverted spectrum hypothesis - in a new way. If the argument is sound, not only will I have shown that the inverted spectrum hypothesis may have more use than philosophical literature recognizes, I will have also exposed a weakness in a dominant philosophical theory: the wide functionalist theory of intentional content.

During the last decade Jessica Brown has been one of the main participants in the on-going debate over the compatibility of anti-individualism and self-knowledge. It is therefore of great interest that she is now publishing a book examining the various epistemological consequences of anti-individualism. The book is divided into three sections. The first discusses the question of whether a subject can have privileged access to her own thoughts, even if the content of her thoughts is construed anti-individualistically. This section contains a detailed and useful discussion not only of how we are to understand privileged access, but also of epistemological issues of more general import, such as the connection between knowledge and reliability. The second section focuses on various aspects of the problem of anti-individualism and reasoning, including an extensive discussion of the relation between anti-individualism and a Fregean account of content. The final section discusses the so-called reductio argument against compatibilism (i.e. the view that anti-individualism is compatible with a priori knowledge of one’s own thoughts), according to which compatibilism implies that we can have a priori knowledge of certain facts about the world that, intuitively, are not knowable that way. The book is very clearly written and structured. Readers unfamiliar with the debate will get a good sense of its broad contours and the various positions taken. Brown starts out by distinguishing different forms of anti-individualism. This is very helpful since it is quite clear that the term has come to be rather carelessly used, as if it referred to one particular thesis, whereas in fact a number of loosely related positions are labeled ‘antiindividualist’. At the outset she distinguishes three familiar anti-individualist theses: natural kind anti-individualism, social anti-individualism, and singular anti-individualism. These..

Jerry Fodor argues for individualism and for narrow content by way of rejecting an argument based on the conceptual connections between reason-properties and action-properties. In this paper I show that Fodor’s argument fails. He is right that there is a New Logical Connections Argument to be made, and that it does show that water thoughts and XYZ thoughts are not different causal powers with respect to intentional properties of behaviors. However, the New Logical Connections Argument also shows that they are not causal powers at all with respect to intentional properties ofbehaviors, and so Fodor’s argument to individualism and narrow content is unsound. Along the way I show that Fodor’s version of the New Logical Connections argument has serious problems of overkill.

Psychological individualism is motivated by two taxonomic principles: (i) that psychological states are individuated by their causal powers, and (ii) that causal powers supervene upon intrinsic physiological state. I distinguish two interpretations of individualism--the 'orthodox' and the 'alternative'--each of which is consistent with these motivating principles. I argue that the alternative interpretation is legitimately individualistic on the grounds that it accurately reflects the actual taxonomic practices of bona fide individualistic sciences. The classification of homeobox genes in developmental genetics provides an illustration. When applied to the taxonomy of psychological kinds, alternative individualism has some surprising consequences. In particular, externalist taxonomies of thought are consistent with the alternative interpretation, and hence consistent with individualism. I conclude, on this basis, that the individualism/externalism dispute which has long preoccupied philosophy of psychology is an empty one.

In his recent book "Explaining Behavior," Fred Dretske has outlined a naturalized theory of intentionality. Several philosophers, including Dretske himself, view his theory as lending credence to the claim that mental state content should be construed widely. In this paper I argue that careful analysis of his theory reveals that this view is mistaken. In Dretske's theory, the notion of the function of a state plays a central role in the determination of content. It will be my contention that this notion of function cannot be used in Dretske's theory to distinguish between the wide construal of the content of an intentional state and the narrow or individualistic construal. This inability of his notion of function to discriminate between wide content and individualistic content undermines any claim that Dretske's theory endorses wide content. Instead, we are lead to the conclusion that Dretske's theory entails pervasive content indeterminacy.

Brian Loar has argued that the well-known arguments against individualism in the philosophy of mind are insufficient because they rely on the assumption that that-clauses uniquely capture psychological content. He tried to show that this is not the use of that-clauses in philosophical psychology. I argue that he does not succeed in his argument. That-clauses sometimes capture psychological content, if our system of mental ascription is to be workable at all. I argue further that individualism tends to be at odds with a requirement of intersubjective shareability of contents and that Loar is alternative conception of psychological content is beset with difficulties.

It has become increasingly popular to suggest that non-individualistic theories of content undermine our purported a priori knowledge of such contents because they entail that we lack the ability to distinguish our thoughts from alternative thoughts with different contents. However, problems relating to such knowledge of 'comparative' content tell just as much against individualism as non-individualism. Indeed, the problems presented by individualistic theories of content for self-knowledge are at least, if not more, serious than those presented by non-individualistic theories. Consequently, considerations of self-knowledge give one no reason to embrace individualism. If anything, they give one reason to reject it.