Reissued in its revised 1866 second edition, this work by John Stuart Mill discusses the positivist views of the French philosopher and social scientist Auguste Comte. Comte is regarded as the founder of positivism, the doctrine that all knowledge must derive from sensory experience. The two-part text was originally printed as two articles in the Westminster Review in 1865. Part 1 offers an analysis of Comte's earlier works on positivism in the natural and social sciences, while Part 2 considers its (...) application in areas such as religion and ethics. Mill states that Comte is the first philosopher who has attempted to extend positivism 'to all objects of human knowledge'. Despite being critical of a number of Comte's views, such as the exclusion of psychology from positivist science, Mill acknowledges his fellow philosopher's influence in the face of common negative perceptions of the positivist movement. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to develop a terminological structure in which private perceptions can be discussed publicly without bringing into existence the usual unnecessary philosophical problems of confused usage of language. chisholm displays an appraisive, quasi-ethical use of language, whereby he claims that a thing has some particular sensible property is to have adequate evidence that it actually does have that property. (staff).

Breaking new ground in the debate about the relation of mind and body, David Armstrong's classic text - first published in 1968 - remains the most compelling and comprehensive statement of the view that the mind is material or physical. In the preface to this new edition, the author reflects on the book's impact and considers it in the light of subsequent developments. He also provides a bibliography of all the key writings to have appeared in the materialist debate.

In the 1950s, dream researchers commonly thought that dreams were predominantly a black and white phenomenon, although both earlier and later treatments of dreaming assume or assert that dreams have color. The first half of the twentieth century saw the rise of black and white film media, and it is likely that the emergence of the view that dreams are black and white was connected to this change in film technology. If our opinions about basic features of our dreams can (...) change with changes in technology, it seems to follow that our knowledge of the experience of dreaming is much less secure than we might at first have thought it to be. (shrink)

Researchers from the 1940's through the present have found that normal, sighted people can echolocate - that is, detect properties of silent objects by attending to sound reflected from them. We argue that echolocation is a normal part of our perceptual experience and that there is something 'it is like' to echolocate. Furthermore, we argue that people are often grossly mistaken about their experience of echolocation. If so, echolocation provides a counterexample to the view that we cannot be mistaken about (...) our own current phenomenology. (shrink)

This paper describes and defends in detail a novel account of belief, an account inspired by Ryle's dispositional characterization of belief, but emphasizing irreducibly phenomenal and cognitive dispositions as well as behavioral dispositions. Potential externalist and functionalist objections are considered, as well as concerns motivated by the inevitably ceteris paribus nature of the relevant dispositional attributions. It is argued that a dispositional account of belief is particularly well-suited to handle what might be called "in-between" cases of believing - cases in (...) which it is neither quite right to describe a person as having a particular belief nor quite right to describe her as lacking it. (shrink)

No mental phenomenon is more central than consciousness to an adequate understanding of the mind. Nor does any mental phenomenon seem more stubbornly to resist theoretical treatment. Consciousness is so basic to the way we think about the mind that it can be tempting to suppose that no mental states exist that are not conscious states. Indeed, it may even seem mysterious what sort of thing a mental state might be if it is not a conscious state. On this way (...) of looking at things, if any mental states do lack consciousness, they are exceptional cases that call for special explanation or qualification. Perhaps dispositional or cognitive states exist that are not conscious, but nonetheless count as mental states. (shrink)

Since Socrates, and through Descartes to the present day, the problems of self-knowledge have been central to philosophy's understanding of itself. Today the idea of ''first-person authority''--the claim of a distinctive relation each person has toward his or her own mental life--has been challenged from a number of directions, to the point where many doubt the person bears any distinctive relation to his or her own mental life, let alone a privileged one. In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran argues for (...) a reconception of the first-person and its claims. Indeed, he writes, a more thorough repudiation of the idea of privileged inner observation leads to a deeper appreciation of the systematic differences between self-knowledge and the knowledge of others, differences that are both irreducible and constitutive of the very concept and life of the person.Masterfully blending philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Moran develops a view of self-knowledge that concentrates on the self as agent rather than spectator. He argues that while each person does speak for his own thought and feeling with a distinctive authority, that very authority is tied just as much to the disprivileging of the first-person, to its specific possibilities of alienation. Drawing on certain themes from Wittgenstein, Sartre, and others, the book explores the extent to which what we say about ourselves is a matter of discovery or of creation, the difficulties and limitations in being ''objective'' toward ourselves, and the conflicting demands of realism about oneself and responsibility for oneself. What emerges is a strikingly original and psychologically nuanced exploration of the contrasting ideals of relations to oneself and relations to others. (shrink)

This is an important book precisely because there is none other quite like it.

Forthright and wryly humorous, philosopher Susan Haack deploys her penetrating analytic skills on some of the most highly charged cultural and social debates of recent years. Relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, affirmative action, pragmatisms old and new, science, literature, the future of the academy and of philosophy itself—all come under her keen scrutiny in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate.

In this important new work, Haack develops an original theory of empirical evidence or justification, and argues its appropriateness to the goals of inquiry. In so doing, Haack provides detailed critical case studies of Lewis's foundationalism; Davidson's and Bonjour's coherentism; Popper's 'epistemology without a knowing subject'; Quine's naturalism; Goldman's reliabilism; and Rorty's, Stich's, and the Churchlands' recent obituaries of epistemology.

It is often said that we can know our own thoughts more directly or with more certainty than anyone else can know them. And this disparity is usually taken to be principled, in that we would not be the rational, reflective beings that we are without it. My aim is to trace the consequences of a principled disparity between self-knowledge and other-knowledge for what may be termed the “mechanics ” of self-knowledge . I use a new thought experiment to show (...) that if introspective states are merely causally related to introspected thoughts, the disparity between self-knowledge and other-knowledge is not truly principled. An account of self-knowledge adequate to a truly principled disparity will allow that thought tokens can be. (shrink)

Hurley’s is a difficult book to work through—partly because of its length and the complexity of its arguments, but also because each of the ten essays of which it is composed has a rather different starting point and focus, and because few of her arguments achieve real closure. Essay 2 discusses competing interpretations of Kant, essay 4 articulates nonconceptual forms of self-consciousness, essay 5 offers fresh interpretations of commissurotomy patients’ behavior, essay 6 develops an objection to Wittgenstein on rule following, (...) essay 8 attacks an alleged assumption of externalism, and chapter 10 explores the possibility of combining a “motor theory” and a “control theory” of perception. This is a very rich brew, and at least half the challenge this book presents consists in discerning its central argument and conclusion with enough precision to bring criticism to bear. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question whether introspection plus externalism about mental content warrant an a priori refutation of external-world skepticism and ontological solipsism. The suggestion is that if thought content is partly determined by affairs in the environment and if we can have non-empirical knowledge of our current thought contents, we can, just by reflection, know about the world around us -- we can know that our environment is populated with content-determining entities. After examining this type of transcendental argument and (...) discussing various objections found in the literature, I argue that the notion of privileged self-knowledge underlying this argument presupposes that we can learn, via introspection, that our so-called thoughts are propositional attitudes rather than contentless states. If, however, externalism is correct and thought content consists in the systematic dependency of internal states on relational properties, we cannot know non-empirically whether or not we have propositional attitudes. Self-knowledge (apropositional attitude) is consistent with us lacking the ability to rule out, via introspection, the possibility that we don't have any propositional attitudes. Self-knowledge provides us with knowledge of what is in our minds, but not that we have minds. Hence, the combination of externalism with the doctrine of privileged self-knowledge does not allow for an a priori refutation of skepticism and is therefore unproblematic. (shrink)

This textbook on vision reflects the integrated computational approach of modern research scientists, combining psychological, computational and neuroscientific perspectives.

Forthright and wryly humorous, philosopher Susan Haack deploys her penetrating analytic skills on some of the most highly charged cultural and social debates of recent years. Relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, affirmative action, pragmatisms old and new, science, literature, the future of the academy and of philosophy itself—all come under her keen scrutiny in _Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate_. "The virtue of Haack's book, and I mean _virtue_ in the ethical sense, is that it embodies the attitude that it exalts... Haack's voice (...) is urbane, sensible, passionate—the voice of philosophy that matters. How good to hear it again."—Jonathan Rauch, _Reason_ "A tough mind, confident of its power, making an art of logic... a cool mastery."—Paul R. Gross, _Wilson Quarterly_ "Few people are better able to defend the notion of truth, and in strong, clear prose, than Susan Haack... a philosopher of great distinction."—Hugh Lloyd-Jones, _National Review_ "If you relish acute observation and straight talk, this is a book to read."—_Key Reporter_ "Everywhere in this book there is the refreshing breeze of common sense, patiently but inexorably blowing."—Roger Kimball, _Times Literary Supplement_ "A refreshing alternative to the extremism that characterizes so much rhetoric today."—_Kirkus Reviews_. (shrink)

The book develops empirical generalizations about the major issues and suggests possible underlying theoretical principles.

The book is an extended study of the problem of consciousness. After setting up the problem, I argue that reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible , and that if one takes consciousness seriously, one has to go beyond a strict materialist framework. In the second half of the book, I move toward a positive theory of consciousness with fundamental laws linking the physical and the experiential in a systematic way. Finally, I use the ideas and arguments developed earlier to defend (...) a form of strong artificial intelligence and to analyze some problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

In The Nature of Consciousness, Mark Rowlands develops an innovative account of the nature of phenomenal consciousness, one that has significant consequences for attempts to find a place for it in the natural order. The most significant feature of consciousness is its dual nature: consciousness can be both the directing of awareness and that upon which awareness is directed. Rowlands offers a clear and philosophically insightful discussion of the main positions in this fast-moving debate, and argues that the phenomenal aspects (...) of conscious experience are aspects that exist only in the directing of experience towards non-phenomenal objects, a theory that undermines reductive attempts to explain consciousness in terms of what is not conscious. His book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in the philosophy of mind and language, psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

Lycan not only uses the numerous arguments against materialism, and functionalist theories of mind in particular, to gain a more detailed positive view of the ..

In this important book, Susan Hurley sheds new light on consciousness by examining its relationships to action from various angles. She assesses the role of agency in the unity of a conscious perspective, and argues that perception and action are more deeply interdependent than we usually assume. A standard view conceives perception as input from world to mind and action as output from mind to world, with the serious business of thought in between. Hurley criticizes this picture, and considers how (...) the interdependence of perceptual experience and agency at the personal level (of mental contents and norms) may emerge from the subpersonal level (of underlying causal processes and complex dynamic feedback systems). Her two-level view has wide implications, for topics that include self-consciousness, the modularity of mind, and the relations of mind to world. The self no longer lurks hidden somewhere between perceptual input and behavioral output, but reappears out in the open, embodied and embedded in its environment. Hurley traces these themes from Kantian and Wittgensteinian arguments through to intriguing recent work in neuropsychology and in dynamic systems approaches to the mind, providing a bridge from mainstream philosophy to work in other disciplines. Consciousness in Action is unique in the range of philosophical and scientific work it draws on, and in the deep criticism it offers of centuries-old habits of thought. (shrink)