One of the main challenges that Jerry Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn (Cognition 28:3–71, 1988) posed for any connectionist theory of cognitive architecture is to explain the systematicity of thought without implementing a Language of Thought (LOT) architecture. The systematicity challenge presents a dilemma: if connectionism cannot explain the systematicity of thought, then it fails to offer an adequate theory of cognitive architecture; and if it explains the systematicity of thought by implementing a LOT architecture, then it fails to offer an (...) alternative to the LOT hypothesis. Given that thought is systematic, connectionism can offer an adequate alternative to the LOT hypothesis only if it can meet the challenge. Although some critics tried to meet the challenge, others argued that it need not be met since thought is not in fact systematic; and some claimed not to even understand the claim that thought is systematic. I do not here examine attempts to answer the challenge. Instead, I defend the challenge itself by explicating the notion of systematicity in a way that I hope makes clear that thought is indeed systematic, and so that to offer an adequate alternative to the LOT hypothesis, connectionism must meet the challenge. (shrink)
The study of the mind has always been one of the main preoccupations of philosophers, and has been a booming area of research in recent decades, with remarkable advances in psychology and neuroscience. Oxford University Press now presents the most authoritative and comprehensive guide ever published to the philosophy of mind. An outstanding international team of contributors offer 45 specially written critical surveys of a wide range of topics relating to the mind. The first two sections cover the place of (...) the mind in the natural world: its ontological status, how it fits into the causal fabric of the universe, and the nature of consciousness. The third section focuses on the much-debated subjects of content and intentionality. The fourth section examines a variety of mental capacities, including memory, imagination, and emotion. The fifth section looks at epistemic issues, in particular regarding knowledge of one's own and other minds. The volume concludes with a section on self, personhood, and agency. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind will be an invaluable resource for advanced students and scholars of philosophy, and also for researchers in neighboring disciplines seeking a high-level survey of the state of the art in this flourishing field. (shrink)
It can happen that a single surface S, viewed in normal conditions, looks pure blue (“true blue”) to observer John but looks blue tinged with green to a second observer, Jane, even though both are normal in the sense that they pass the standard psychophysical tests for color vision. Tye (2006a) finds this situation prima facie puzzling, and then offers two different “solutions” to the puzzle.1 The first is that at least one observer misrepresents S’s color because, though normal in (...) the sense explained, she is not a Normal color observer: her color detection system is not operating in the current condition in the way that Mother Nature intended it to operate. His second solution involves the idea that Mother Nature designed our color detection systems to be reliable with respect to the detection of coarse-grained colors (e.g., blue, green, yellow, orange), but our capacity to represent the fine-grained colors (e.g., true blue, blue tinged with green) is an undesigned spandrel. On this second solution, it is consistent with the variation between John and Jane that both represent the color of S in a way that complies with Mother Nature’s intentions: both represent S as exemplifying the coarse-grained color blue, and since (we may assume) S is in fact blue, both represent it veridically. Of course, they also represent fine-grained colors of S, and, according to Tye, at most one of these representations is veridical (Tye says that only God knows which). But at the level of representation for which Mother Nature designed our color detection systems, both John and Jane (qua Normal observers) are reliable detectors. (shrink)
Sydney Shoemaker has proposed a new definition of `realization’ and used it to try to explain how mental events can be causes within the framework of a non-reductive physicalism. I argue that it is not actually his notion of realization that is doing the work in his account of mental causation, but rather the assumption that certain physical properties entail mental properties that do not entail them. I also point out how his account relies on certain other controversial assumptions, including (...) analytical filler-functionalism for mental properties, and the assumption that causes must be proportional to their effects. I conclude by pointing out that Shoemaker has provided no explanation of why, on his view, certain physical properties entail mental properties. (shrink)
Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind showcases the leading contributors to the field, debating the major questions in philosophy of mind today. Comprises 20 newly commissioned essays on hotly debated issues in the philosophy of mind Written by a cast of leading experts in their fields, essays take opposing views on 10 central contemporary debates A thorough introduction provides a comprehensive background to the issues explored Organised into three sections which explore the ontology of the mental, nature of the mental (...) content, and the nature of consciousness. (shrink)
(Tye 2006) presents us with the following scenario: John and Jane are both stan- dard human visual perceivers (according to the Ishihara test or the Farnsworth test, for example) viewing the same surface of Munsell chip 527 in standard conditions of visual observation. The surface of the chip looks “true blue” to John (i.e., it looks blue not tinged with any other colour to John), and blue tinged with green to Jane.1 Tye then in effect poses a multiple choice question.
Role-functionalism for mental events attempts to avoid epiphenomenalism without psychophysical identities. The paper addresses the question of whether it can succeed. It is argued that there is considerable reason to believe it cannot avoid epiphenomenalism, and that if it cannot, then it is untenable. It is pointed out, however, that even if role- functionalism is indeed an untenable theory of mental events, a role-functionalism account of mental dispositions has some intuitive plausibility.
We make three points. First, the concept of productance value that the authors propose in their defense of color physicalism fails to do the work for which it is intended. Second, the authors fail to offer an adequate physicalist account of what they call the hue-magnitudes. Third, their answer to the problem of individual differences faces serious difficulties.
widely held commitments: to phenomenal realism and to naturalism. Phenomenal realism is the view that (a) we are phenomenally consciousness, and that (b) there is no a priori or armchair sufficient condition for phenomenal consciousness that can be stated (non- circularly) in nonphenomenal terms (p.392).1,2 Block points out that while phenomenal realists reject.
Sensory qualities are objective properties; indeed, on the evidence, they are physical properties. However, what makes a physical property the sensory quality it is is its relationship to sensory experiences of perceivers. For instance, the redness of a surface is a physical property of the surface; what makes that physical property surface red is the fact that it disposes surfaces to look red to appropriate visual perceivers in appropriate viewing circumstances. What it is like for something to look red—that is, (...) the actual phenomenal character of visual experiences as of something red—is also a physical property; on the evidence, it is a physical property of the brain. (shrink)
[Brian P. McLaughlin] In recent years, some philosophers have claimed that we can know a priori that certain external world skeptical hypotheses are false on the basis of a priori knowledge that we are in certain kinds of mental states, and a priori knowledge that those mental states are individuated by contingent environmental factors. Appealing to a distinction between weak and strong a priority, I argue that weakly a priori arguments of this sort would beg the question of whether the (...) skeptical hypothesis under assessment is true, and that the prospect of a sound strongly a priori argument of this sort seems dim. \\\ [David Owens] Contemporary discussion of scepticism focuses on the possibility that most or all of our beliefs might be false. I argue that the hypothesis of massive falsity and the associated 'problem of the external world' are inessential to the scepticisms of Descartes and Hume. What drives Cartesian and Humean scepticism is the demand for certainty: any possibility of error, however local, must be ruled out before we can claim either justified belief or knowledge. Contemporary philosophers have ignored this form of scepticism because they doubt that the demand for certainty can be motivated. But Descartes provides a sound motivation for this demand in the Meditations. (shrink)
[Brian P. McLaughlin] In recent years, some philosophers have claimed that we can know a priori that certain external world skeptical hypotheses are false on the basis of a priori knowledge that we are in certain kinds of mental states, and a priori knowledge that those mental states are individuated by contingent environmental factors. Appealing to a distinction between weak and strong a priority, I argue that weakly a priori arguments of this sort would beg the question of whether the (...) skeptical hypothesis under assessment is true, and that the prospect of a sound strongly a priori argument of this sort seems dim. \\\ [David Owens] Contemporary discussion of scepticism focuses on the possibility that most or all of our beliefs might be false. I argue that the hypothesis of massive falsity and the associated 'problem of the external world' are inessential to the scepticisms of Descartes and Hume. What drives Cartesian and Humean scepticism is the demand for certainty: any possibility of error, however local, must be ruled out before we can claim either justified belief or knowledge. Contemporary philosophers have ignored this form of scepticism because they doubt that the demand for certainty can be motivated. But Descartes provides a sound motivation for this demand in the Meditations. (shrink)
[FIRST PARAGRAPHS]The role of Professor McLaughlin's sceptic is to introduce certain 'sceptical hypotheses', hypotheses which imply the falsity of most of what we believe about the world. Professor McLaughlin asks whether these hypotheses are coherent and thus whether they can tell us anything about what are entitled to believe, or to claim to know. He concludes that, semantic externalism notwithstanding, these hypotheses are both coherent and threatening. I shall not question this conclusion but I do wonder whether the fate of (...) scepticism hangs entirely on the coherence of the sceptical hypotheses. I shall maintain that the root of scepticism, at least as we find it in Descartes and Hume, is the demand for certainty. Recent writers are likely to dismiss this demand for certainty: in their view, inconclusive evidence is quite sufficient both to justify belief and to give us knowledge (should the proposition in question turn out to be true). Like Professor McLaughlin, recent debate focuses rather on the possibility that we might have no evidence at all for our beliefs, that our belief-forming processes might be completely unreliable, undermining both knowledge and justification. It is the sceptical hypotheses which generate this worry - ordinary error does not - and so it is they alone, not the prosaic fact of our fallibility, which provide grounds for a real sceptical doubt. Descartes and Hume are standard reference points for discussion of the sceptical hypotheses. Yet, I shall argue, in both Descartes and Hume, the sceptical hypotheses are secondary; what is really doing the work is their demand for certainty. Furthermore Descartes, at least, suggests a way in which this demand might be motivated. Both philosophers do indeed raise 'the problem of the external world' but this is only one aspect of their scepticism; we can't dispatch either the Cartesian or the Humean sceptic just by demonstrating that thought or experience presupposes the existence of an external world. Their sceptical problem is more than the problem posed by the sceptical hypotheses. (shrink)
There is currently a debate over whether cognitive architecture is classical or connectionist in nature. One finds the following three comparisons between classical architecture and connectionist architecture made in the pro-connectionist literature in this debate: (1) connectionist architecture is neurally plausible and classical architecture is not; (2) connectionist architecture is far better suited to model pattern recognition capacities than is classical architecture; and (3) connectionist architecture is far better suited to model the acquisition of pattern recognition capacities by learning than (...) is classical architecture. If true, (1)–(3) would yield a compelling case against the view that cognitive architecture is classical, and would offer some reason to think that cognitive architecture may be connectionist. We first present the case for (1)–(3) in the very words of connectionist enthusiasts. We then argue that the currently available evidence fails to support any of (1)–(3). (shrink)
[Why Davidson's Anomalous Monism Would Lead to Type Epiphenomenalism]: 1. According to Davidson, events can cause other events only in virtue of falling under physical types cited in strict laws; 2. But no mental event-type is a physical event-type cited in a strict law, since the mental is anomalous. 3. Therefore, under Davidson's theory, type epiphenomenalism is true.
Alfred Mele has recentIy attempted to direct attention to a neglected species of irrational belief which he calls ‘incontinent belief’. He has devoted a paper and an entire chapter (chapter eight) of his book, Irrationality (Oxford University Press, 1987) to explaining its logical possibility. In what follows, I will appeal to familiar facts about the difference between belief and action to make a case that it is entirely unproblematic that incontinent belief is logically possible. In the process, I will call (...) into question the philosophical intercst of incontinent belief. If what I say is correct, incontinent belief does not warrant the attention of philosophers of mind. (shrink)
00 Students of philosophy, psychology, sociology, and literature will welcome this collection of original essays on self-deception and related phenomena such as ...
00 Students of philosophy, psychology, sociology, and literature will welcome this collection of original essays on self-deception and related phenomena such as ...
In this paper, I examine, from a metaphysical point of view, a recent notable attempt by Jaegwon Kim to explain how macro-events are dependent on micro-events and how causal transactions between macro-events are dependent on causal transactions between micro-events.
