Reality testing is the process by which we distinguish our own perceptual states from imagination or episodic memory. I argue that reality testing is a metacognitive process. Since reality testing is also accomplished by creatures who lack mental state concepts, it follows that reality testing is a nonconceptual metacognitive process. I also provide prima facie evidence that reality testing is a necessary condition for prototypical cognitive states like belief. It follows that metacognition is phylogenetically and logically prior to cognition in (...) many cases. (shrink)

This paper concerns the role of the structural properties of representations in determining the nature of their content. I take as a starting point Fodor's (2007) and Heck's (2007) recent arguments making the iconic structure of perceptual representations essential in establishing their content as content of a different (nonconceptual) kind. I argue that the prima facie state–content error this strategy seems to display is nothing but a case of “state–content error error,” i.e., the mistake of considering that the properties that (...) characterize the type of content certain representations have are indeed independent of their structural properties. I also consider another objection to the general strategy, namely that it falls short of showing that the nonconceptual content of perceptual experiences thus established is the kind of content that figures in true explanations of intentional behavior. I concede this point in respect of Fodor's version of the strategy, while denying that it has any bearing on Heck's approach. The success of this objection in Heck's case ultimately depends, I argue, upon an unjustified commitment to a certain empirically suspect model of perception. (shrink)

In this paper I display a general metaphysical assumption that characterizes basic naturalistic views and that is inherited, in a residual form, by their leading teleological rivals. The assumption is that intentional states require identifiable inner vehicles and that to explain intentional properties we must develop accounts that bind specific contents to specific vehicles. I show that this assumption is deeply rooted in representationalist and reductionist theories of content and I argue that it is deeply inappropriate. I sketch the main (...) features of plausible alternatives: such alternatives are either anti-representationalist (Dynamical Systems' models) or anti-reductionist (institution-based approaches), and are not committed to any such metaphysical premise. (shrink)

This article discusses the problems which concepts pose for the attribution of thoughts to animals. It locates these problems within a range of other issues concerning animal minds (section 1), and presents a ‘lingualist master argument’ according to which one cannot entertain a thought without possessing its constituent concepts and cannot possess concepts without possessing language (section 2). The first premise is compelling if one accepts the building-block model of concepts as parts of wholes – propositions – and the idea (...) that intentional verbs signify relations between subjects and such propositions. But I shall find fault with both (section 3). This opens the way for recognizing a form of ‘holodoxastic’ thought-ascription which does not presuppose concept-possession on the part of the subject (section 4). Section 5 defends this idea against objections. Section 6 turns to the second premise of the lingualist master argument. I press the idea of judgement into service as a label for conceptual thought that need not be linguistic and argue that the possession of concepts is an ability. Section 7 accepts that concept-possession requires the ability to classify rather than merely to discriminate, but suggests that this need not disqualify animals. In the final section I confirm this verdict by returning to the notion of judgement: classification is the deliberate and considered response to a range of options in a sorting or discrimination task. Notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, the capacity for such a response does not presuppose the linguistic ability to answer questions. Judgement is a feature of a type of problem-solving that we share with some non-linguistic creatures. (shrink)

Recently, the construct ‘lucid dreamless sleep’ has been proposed to explain the state of ‘clear light’ described by Tibetan Buddhist traditions, a special state of consciousness during deep sleep in which we’re told to be able to recognise the nature or essence of our mind (Padmasambhava & Gyatrul 2008; Ponlop 2006; Wangyal 1998). To explain the sort of awareness experienced during this state, some authors have appealed to the sort of lucidity acquired during lucid dreaming and suggested a link between (...) both phenomena (Thompson 2014, 2015; Windt 2015a; Windt et al. 2016). Whilst these authors appeal to a non-conceptually mediated form of lucidity, which doesn’t consist of reflective awareness and propositional thought, the question as to whether the state of clear light should be considered a lucid state similar to lucid dreaming still arises. I argue that the concept ‘lucidity’ used to describe this sort of state is imprecise and that two theoretical notions of lucidity should be distinguished. The first one, which I call the technical notion, requires the recognition of the hallucinatory character of my current experience. The second, the broader notion, involves the seeming recognition of being directly acquainted with the phenomenal character of my experience. I spell out these two notions of lucidity and argue that only the latter could apply to the state of clear light sleep. (shrink)

¿Necesitamos representaciones del cuerpo para llevar a cabo actividades como cruzar la calle, montar en bicicleta o salir por la puerta? En este trabajo se defiende la idea de que la ejecución de este tipo de acciones involucra representaciones del cuerpo con contenido no conceptual. Primero se discuten los argumentos en contra de la noción de representación del cuerpo en la acción, para extraer sus principales consecuencias. Se propone una versión delcontenido de las representaciones del cuerpo involucradas en la acción (...) cotidiana, y se finaliza con una discusión acerca de una objeción potencial, y con una reflexión sobre la relación entre contenido conceptual y contenido no conceptual. (shrink)

Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel. Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were (...) hard at work. If we want to properly understand the evolution of the mind, we must explore this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel. Emotions saturate every thought and perception with the weight of feelings. The Emotional Mind reveals that many of the distinctive behaviors and social structures of our species are best discerned through the lens of emotions. Even the roots of so much that makes us uniquely human—art, mythology, religion—can be traced to feelings of caring, longing, fear, loneliness, awe, rage, lust, playfulness, and more. From prehistoric cave art to the songs of Hank Williams, Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel explore how the evolution of the emotional mind stimulated our species’ cultural expression in all its rich variety. Bringing together insights and data from philosophy, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology, The Emotional Mind offers a new paradigm for understanding what it is that makes us so unique. (shrink)

Philosophers have understood propositional contents in many different ways, some of them imposing stricter demands on cognition than others. In this paper, I want to characterize a specific sub-type of propositional content that shares many core features with full-blown propositional contents while lacking others. I will call them modest propositional contents, and I will be especially interested in examining which behavioral patterns would justify their attribution to non-human animals. To accomplish these tasks, I will begin by contrasting modest propositional contents (...) with primitive feature-placing contents: a kind of content that, according to some philosophers, can explain the behavior of non-human animals. I will examine which cognitive abilities are involved in having mental states with each of these contents and which sorts of behavioral patterns would provide evidence that an animal has one of them or another. Finally, I will present some empirical evidence which strongly suggests that some non-human animals have mental states with modest propositional contents. (shrink)

I develop a “two-systems” interpretation of Husserl’s theory of belief. On this interpretation, Husserl accounts for our sense of the world in terms of (1) a system of embodied horizon meanings and passive synthesis, which is involved in any experience of an object, and (2) a system of active synthesis and sedimentation, which comes on line when we attend to an object’s properties. I use this account to defend Husserl against several forms of Heideggerean critique. One line of critique, recently (...) elaborated by Taylor Carman, says that Husserl wrongly loads everyday perception with explicit beliefs about things. A second, earlier line of critique, due to Hubert Dreyfus, charges Husserl with thinking of belief on a problematic Artificial Intelligence (AI) model which involves explicit rules applied to discrete symbol structures. I argue that these criticisms are based on a conflation of Husserl’s two systems of belief. The conception of Husserlian phenomenology which emerges is compatible with Heideggerean phenomenology and associated approaches to cognitive science (in particular, dynamical systems theory). (shrink)

If we are to preserve qualia, one possibility is to take the current academic, philosophical, and theoretical notion less seriously and current natural science and some pre-theoretical intuitions about qualia more seriously. Dennett (1997) is instrumental in showing how ideas of the intrinsicalness and privacy of qualia are misguided and those of ineffability and immediacy misinterpreted. However, by combining ideas of non-mechanicalness used in contemporary natural science with the pre-theoretical idea that qualia are special because they are unique, we get (...) a notion of qualia that is acceptable to naturalistic philosophy. The notion of unique qualia is not opposed to the idea that some of the characterizations of qualia have to be qualified. It is the folk-philosophical, academic, notions of theoreticity and conceptuality that have to be modified. (shrink)

The article explores the ways knowledge and space are co-produced performatively through bodily movement in an examination of the Maltese megaliths the first complex stone structures in the world. It is argued that knowledge is best seen as spatialized narratives of human actions and objects as materialized forms of those spatial narratives. Rewriting our social and historical narratives so that the performativity of place, space and knowledge is restored opens new possibilities for rethinking the social and material order.

The paper addresses the question of whether, as Nanda claims, treating all knowledge traditions including science as local, denies the possibility of criticism. It accepts the necessity for criticism but denies that science can be the sole arbiter of truth and argues that we have to live with holding differing knowledges in tension with one another.

In this paper I attempt to develop a notion of responsibility (semantic responsibility) that is to the notion of belief what epistemic responsibility is to the notion of justification. 'Being semantically responsible' is shown to involve the fulfilment of cognitive duties which allow the agent to engage in the kind of reason-laden discourses which render her beliefs appropriately sensitive to correction. The concept of semantic responsibility suggests that the notion of belief found in contemporary philosophical debates about content implicitly encompasses (...) radically different classes of beliefs. In what follows I make those different types explicit, and sketch some implications for naturalisation projects in semantics and for accounts of the (putative) non-conceptual content of perceptual experiences. (shrink)

Nonconceptualists maintain that there are ways of representing the world that do not reflect the concepts a creature possesses. They claim that the content of these representational states is genuine content because it is subject to correctness conditions, but it is nonconceptual because the creature to which we attribute it need not possess any of the concepts involved in the specification of that content. Appeals to nonconceptual content have seemed especially useful in attempts to capture the representational properties of perceptual (...) experiences, the representational states of pre-linguistic children and non-human animals, the states of subpersonal visual information-processing systems, and the subdoxastic states involved in tacit knowledge of the grammar of a language. Nonconceptual content is also invoked in the explanation of concept possession, concept acquisition, sensorimotor behaviour, and in the analysis of the notion of self-consciousness. The notion of nonconceptual content plays an important role in many discussions about the relationships between perception and thought. (shrink)

Intellectualists hold that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that, and consequently that the knowledge involved in skill is propositional. In support of this view, the intentional action argument holds that since skills manifest in intentional action and since intentional action necessarily depends on propositional knowledge, skills necessarily depend on propositional knowledge. We challenge this argument, and suggest that instructive representations, as opposed to propositional attitudes, can better account for an agent’s reasons for action. While a propositional-causal theory of action, according (...) to which intentional action must be causally produced “in the right way” by an agent’s proposition-involving reasons, has long held sway, we draw on Elizabeth Anscombe’s insights offer a path toward an alternative theory of action. In so doing, we reject the implicitly Cartesian conception of knowledge at the core of the intentional action argument, while hanging on to the idea that mental states are representations of a certain kind. Our argument provides theoretical support for anti-intellectualism by equipping philosophers with an account of non-propositional, practical content. (shrink)

Two standard epistemological accounts are conflated in Dienes & Perner's account of knowledge, and this conflation requires the rejection of their four conditions of knowledge. Because their four metarepresentations applied to the explicit-implicit distinction are paired with these conditions, it follows by modus tollens that if the latter are inadequate, then so are the former. Quite simply, their account misses the link between true reasoning and knowledge.

According to our traditional conception of agency, most human beings are agents and most, if not all, nonhuman animals are not. However, recent developments in philosophy and psychology have made it clear that we need more than one conception of agency, since human and nonhuman animals are capable of thinking and acting in more than one kind of way. In this paper, I make a distinction between perceptual and propositional agency, and I argue that many nonhuman animals are perceptual agents (...) and that many human beings are both kinds of agent. I then argue that, insofar as human and nonhuman animals exercise the same kind of agency, they have the same kind of moral status, and I explore some of the moral implications of this idea. (shrink)

This paper argues that contemporary philosophical literature on meaning in life has important implications for the debate about our obligations to non-human animals. If animal lives can be meaningful, then practices including factory farming and animal research might be morally worse than ethicists have thought. We argue for two theses about meaning in life: that the best account of meaningful lives must take intentional action to be necessary for meaning—an individual’s life has meaning if and only if the individual acts (...) intentionally in ways that contribute to finally valuable states of affairs; and that this first thesis does not entail that only human lives are meaningful. Because non-human animals can be intentional agents of a certain sort, our account yields the verdict that many animals’ lives can be meaningful. We conclude by considering the moral implications of these theses for common practices involving animals. (shrink)

Controlling one's mental agency encompasses two forms of metacognitive operations, self-probing and post-evaluating. Metacognition so defined might seem to fuel an internalist view of epistemic norms, where rational feelings are available to instruct a thinker of what she can do, and allow her to be responsible for her mental agency. Such a view, however, ignores the dynamics of the mind–world interactions that calibrate the epistemic sentiments as reliable indicators of epistemic norms. A 'brain in the lab' thought experiment suggests that (...) an internalist view of epistemic feelings is unable to account for the contrast between norm-tracking, educated sentiments, and illusory feelings. (shrink)

This paper criticizes genetic naturalism, namely, the task of explaining how reason emerges from nature. We take into account Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism and his analogy of triangulation. Our aim is to criticize both the metaphysical suppositions of anomalous monism and its consequences for genetic naturalism. We propose that those suppositions and those consequences prevent the genetic question to be appropriately raised and, therefore, mislead the research for a reasonable answer to that.

The article begins with Derrida’s etymology of the word ‘archive’: a privileged site to which records are officially consigned and in which they are guarded by legal authority. It explores contemporary variations on the theme of archive. The cases presented include efforts to construct scholarly archives that stand as personal monuments, struggles over the collection and consignment of records during official investigations of government scandals, and the ‘popular archive’ produced by the media spectacle surrounding the O. J. Simpson trial. The (...) discussion orients to these archives not only as sources of documentary information but also as sites of historical struggle over the writing, collection, consignment, destruction and interpretation of writings. (shrink)

There seem to be good reasons to think that there must be body representations or some kind of body content required for riding a bike or grabbing a cup of coffee. However, when I ride a bike or grab a cup of coffee, am I just representing the bike and the cup? Or am I actually also representing my body and bodily movements? The thesis of this paper is that the body not only figures in the content that guides everyday (...) activities but that it must. How is this possible? Exactly what elements of the subject’s body can be said to figure in this content? I will proceed in three steps: in the first, I bring together the conceptual resources that seem to be required; in the second, I discuss a couple of proposals about how to link the notion of affordance and the topic of bodily representations, arguing that they are misguided; finally, I propose a view according to which the body’s physical and spatial properties are an unavoidable part of the content that guides everyday activities. (shrink)

La existencia de representaciones del cuerpo, en especial aquellas que se requerirían para actuar, ha sido objeto de largas controversias. El objetivo de este artículo es defender la idea de que hay representaciones del cuerpo involucradas en la realización de acciones cotidianas. Nuestra tesis será que lo que realmente muestran algunas dudas sobre este tipo de representaciones es que deben tener cierto tipo de contenido no-conceptual. Primero, abordamos dichas dudas, mostrando que no refutan la existencia de las representaciones en cuestión. (...) Sin embargo, señalamos que contienen dos intuiciones clave para cualquier caracterización del contenido de dichas representaciones. Así, pasamos a proponer una caracterización tal, que acomode adecuadamente las intuiciones señaladas. Finalizamos examinando una posible objeción a la propuesta y ofreciendo una lectura tentativa de la relación entre contenidos mentales y acción. (shrink)

An attempt is made to defend a general approach to the spatial content of perception, an approach according to which perception is imbued with spatial content in virtue of certain kinds of connections between perceiving organism's sensory input and its behavioral output. The most important aspect of the defense involves clearly distinguishing two kinds of perceptuo-behavioral skills—the formation of dispositions, and a capacity for emulation. The former, the formation of dispositions, is argued to by the central pivot of spatial content. (...) I provide a neural information processing interpretation of what these dispositions amount to, and describe how dispositions, so understood, are an obvious implementation of Gareth Evans' proposal on the topic. Furthermore, I describe what sorts of contribution are made by emulation mechanisms, and I also describe exactly how the emulation framework differs from similar but distinct notions with which it is often unhelpfully confused, such as sensorimotor contingencies and forward models. (shrink)

Epistemic feelings like tip-of-the-tongue experiences, feelings of knowing, and feelings of confidence tell us when a memory can be recalled and when a judgment was correct. Thus, they appear to be a form of metacognition, but a curious one: they tell us about content we cannot access, and the information is supplied by a feeling. Evaluativism is the claim that epistemic feelings are components of a distinct, primitive metacognitive mechanism that operates on its own set of inputs. These inputs are (...) heuristics that correlate with the presence of mental content that can’t be accessed directly. I will argue that evaluativism is unmotivated, unsupported, and ill-conceived. I will critique the philosophical and empirical arguments for evaluativism and conclude that there is no reason to posit a distinct mechanism to explain epistemic feelings. I will conclude, however, that epistemic feelings may constitute a nonconceptual form of metacognition, which if true is a significant claim. (shrink)

Questo articolo studia la natura dinamica della conoscenza per giungere a meglio identificarne i suoi congegni formativi, nel versante epistemico come in quello applicativo. La metafora di Jacob sulla natura come “bricoleur” è, nelle nostre intenzioni, una cornice descrittiva di come agisce l’intelligenza e si muove. Si chiarirà la relazione fra biologia e pedagogia, al fine di elaborare ipotesi operative. La prospettiva eremeneutica utilizzerà la categoria di “estetica realazionale” messa a punto da Bateson quale base di una teoria della conoscenza (...) tesa a elaborare processi di ottimizzazione dell’apprendimento. L’analisi delle teorie e delle loro aporie nel dibattito internazionale si basa su di una revisione costante del modello in relazione alle sue evidenze. La verifica si è valutata in merito alla coerenza fra obiettivi, presupposti e categorie utilizzate; infine, fra questi elementi e la possibilità di un loro riassestamento. Risultati attesi sono proposte operative sulla modificabilità cognitiva. (shrink)

Much of our know-how is acquired through practice: we learn how to cook by cooking, how to write by writing, and how to dance by dancing. As Aristotle argues, however, this kind of learning is puzzling, since engaging in it seems to require possession of the very knowledge one seeks to obtain. After showing how a version of the puzzle arises from a set of attractive principles, I argue that the best solution is to hold that knowledge-how comes in degrees, (...) and through practice a person gradually learns how to do something. However, the two standard accounts of know-how in the literature, intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, cannot properly account for the distinctive way in which know-how is gradually acquired by practice, a process in which conceptual representations and practical abilities are intimately interwoven. Drawing on Gareth Evans's work, I outline an account that may do so, and use this account to distinguish between two forms of learning to explain why skill generally cannot be learnt through testimony, and requires practice. (shrink)

In formulating a theory of perception that does justice to the embodied and enactive nature of perceptual experience, proprioception can play a valuable role. Since proprioception is necessarily embodied, and since proprioceptive experience is particularly integrated with one’s bodily actions, it seems clear that proprioception, in addition to, e.g., vision or audition, can provide us with valuable insights into the role of an agent’s corporal skills and capacities in constituting or structuring perceptual experience. However, if we are going to have (...) the opportunity to argue from analogy with proprioception to vision, audition, touch, taste, or smell, then it is necessary to eschew any doubts about the legitimacy of proprioception’s inclusion into the category of perceptual modalities. To this end, in this article, I (1) respond to two arguments that Shaun Gallagher ( 2003 ) presents in “Bodily self-awareness and objectperception” against proprioception’s ability to meet the criteria of object perception, (2) present a diagnosis of Gallagher’s position by locating a misunderstanding in the distinction between proprioceptive information and proprioceptive awareness, and (3) show that treating proprioception as a perceptual modality allows us to account for the interaction of proprioception with the other sensory modalities, to apply the lessons we learn from proprioception to the other sensory modalities, and to account for proprioceptive learning. Finally, (4) I examine Sydney Shoemaker’s ( 1994 ) identification constraint and suggest that a full-fledged notion of object-hood is unnecessary to ground a theory of perception. (shrink)

Can animals be agents? Do they want to be free? Can they have meaningful lives? If so, should we change the way we treat them? This paper offers an account of animal agency and of two continuums: between human and nonhuman agency, and between wildness and captivity. It describes how a wide range of human activities impede on animals’ freedom and argues that, in doing so, we deprive a wide range of animals of opportunities to exercise their agency in ways (...) that can give meaning to their lives. (shrink)

In “Against alief”, Mandelbaum :197–211, 2013) argues that if aliefs—a sui generis kind of mental states originally posited by Gendler :634–663, 2008a; Mind Lang 23:552–585, 2008b; Analysis 72:799–811, 2012)—are to play the explanatory role that is usually ascribed to them, their contents must be propositionally structured. However, he contends, if aliefs have propositional contents, it is unclear what distinguishes them from beliefs. I find Mandelbaum’s arguments in favour of the idea that aliefs must have propositional contents to be compelling. However, (...) I think aliefs should only be credited with a deflated kind of propositional content that I will baptize as “semi-structured propositional contents”, since they are composed by representational units that are neither fully un-detachable nor fully re-combinable. As I will argue, this way of understanding the content of aliefs not only allows us to accommodate all the worries raised by Mandelbaum regarding the nature of their contents, but it also it helps explain why aliefs have some of the peculiar features that Gendler ascribes to them. Consequently, it gives to the advocates of aliefs new tools to defend, against Mandelbaum, that these are sui generis mental states with their distinctive functional role in our cognitive lives. (shrink)

Much recent cognitive neuroscientific work on body knowledge is representationalist: “body schema” and “body images”, for example, are cerebral representations of the body (de Vignemont 2009). A framework assumption is that representation of the body plays an important role in cognition. The question is whether this representationalist assumption is compatible with the variety of broadly situated or embodied approaches recently popular in the cognitive neurosciences: approaches in which cognition is taken to have a ‘direct’ relation to the body and to (...) the environment. A “direct” relation is one where the boundaries between the body and the head, or between the environment and the animal are not theoretically important in the understanding of cognition. These boundaries do not play a theoretically privileged role in cognitive explanations of behavior. But representationalism appears to put a representational veil between the locus of cognition and that which is represented, making cognitive relations to the body and to the environment be indirect, with a high associated computational load. For this reason, direct approaches have tried to minimize the use of internal representations (Suchman 1987; Barwise 1987; Agre and Chapman 1987; Brooks 1992; Thelen and Smith 1994; van Gelder 1995; Port and van Gelder 1995; Clark 1997, 1999; Rupert 2009, p. 180). Does a cognitive neuroscience committed to direct relations rule out a representationalist approach to body knowledge? Or is direct representationalism possible? (shrink)

This paper contrasts three different schemes of reference relevant to understanding systems of perceptual representation: a location-based system dubbed "feature-placing", a system of "visual indices" referring to things called "proto-objects", and the full sortal-based individuation allowed by a natural language. The first three sections summarize some of the key arguments (in Clark, 2000) to the effect that the early, parallel, and pre-attentive registration of sensory features itself constitutes a simple system of nonconceptual mental representation. In particular, feature integration--perceiving something as (...) being both F and G, where F and G are sensible properties registered in distinct parallel streams--requires a referential apparatus. Section V. reviews some grounds for thinking that at these earliest levels this apparatus is location-based: that it has a direct and nonconceptual means of picking out places. Feature-placing is contrasted with a somewhat more sophisticated system that can identify and track four or five "perceptual objects" or "proto-objects", independently of their location, for as long as they remain perceptible. Such a system is found in Zenon Pylyshyn's fascinating work on "visual indices", in Dana Ballard's notion of deictic codes, and in Kahneman, Treisman, and Wolfe's accounts of systems of evanescent representations they call "object files". Perceptual representation is a layered affair, and I argue that it probably includes both feature-placing and proto-objects. Finally, both nonconceptual systems are contrasted with the full-blooded individuation allowed in a natural language. (shrink)

I argue that we can reconcile two seemingly incompatible traditions for thinking about concepts. On the one hand, many cognitive scientists assume that the systematic redeployment of representational abilities suffices for having concepts. On the other hand, a long philosophical tradition maintains that language is necessary for genuinely conceptual thought. I argue that on a theoretically useful and empirically plausible concept of 'concept', it is necessary and sufficient for conceptual thought that a thinker be able to entertain many of the (...) potential thoughts produced by recombining her representational abilities apart from a direct confrontation with the states of affairs being represented. Such representational abilities support a cognitive engagement with the world that is flexible, abstract, and active. (shrink)

Recently, the construct ‘lucid dreamless sleep’ has been proposed to explain the state of ‘clear light’ described by Tibetan Buddhist traditions, a special state of consciousness during deep sleep in which we’re told to be able to recognise the nature or essence of our mind (Padmasambhava & Gyatrul, 2008; Ponlop, 2006; Wangyal, 1998). To explain the sort of awareness experienced during this state, some authors have appealed to the sort of lucidity acquired during lucid dreaming and suggested a link between (...) both phenomena (Thompson, 2014, 2015; Windt, 2015a; Windt et al., 2016). Whilst these authors appeal to a non-conceptually mediated form of lucidity, which doesn’t consist of reflective awareness and propositional thought, the question as to whether the state of clear light should be considered a lucid state similar to lucid dreaming still arises. I argue that the concept ‘lucidity’ used to describe this sort of state is imprecise and that two theoretical notions of lucidity should be distinguished. The first one, which I call the technical notion, requires the recognition of the hallucinatory character of my current experience. The second, the broader notion, involves the seeming recognition of being directly acquainted with the phenomenal character of my experience. I spell out these two notions of lucidity and argue that only the latter could apply to the state of clear light sleep. (shrink)

If a person's head moves, she may or may not have moved her head, and, if she did move it, she may have actively performed the movement of her head or merely, by doing something else, caused a passive movement. And, if she performed the movement, she might have done so intentionally or not. This short array of contrasts (and others like them) has motivated questions about the nature, variety, and identity of action. Beyond the matter of her moving, when (...) the person moves her head, she may be indicating agreement or shaking an insect off her ear. Should we think of the consequences, conventional or causal, of physical behavior as constituents of an action distinct from but ‘generated by’ the movement? Or should we think that there is a single action describable in a host of ways? Also, actions, in even the most minimal sense, seem to be essentially ‘active’. But, how can we explain what this property amounts to and defend our wavering intuitions about which events fall in the category of the ‘active’ and which do not? (shrink)

Analytic philosophy was introduced in Latin America in the mid-twentieth century. Its development has been heterogeneous in different countries of the region but has today reached a considerable degree of maturity and originality, with a strong community working within the analytic tradition in Latin America. This entry describes the historical development of analytic philosophy in Latin America and offers some examples of original contributions by Latin American analytic philosophers.

Engeström’s (1987, 1999) innovations in cultural-historical activity theory emphasise the role of contradictions in analysing and transforming learning in practice. This paper considers some of the problems and possibilities contained in his analytical understanding of contradictions, in relation to activity and to what he terms ‘expansive learning’ (Engeström, 2001, 2004, 2007). In doing so, it builds upon Engeström’s stated concern with theorising activities ‘in capitalism’. Its goal is to problematise the underlying practical definition of contradictions and the claims made for (...) his ‘contradiction-driven’ analysis of work practices as a platform for transformation. This paper suggests that the definition of contradictions that underpins Engeström’s notions of ‘expansive’ learning and his ‘developmental work research’ methodology is restrictive because it underplays the wider social contradictions and antagonisms inherent in the commodification of labour-power . As such, while Engeström’s take on activity theory offers a valuable approach to reforming configurations of labour within the bounds of capitalist efficiency, its engagement with capitalism’s internal contradictions is uneven and, therefore, its claims to produce transformative, expansive learning are heavily qualified. The framework of this argument is provided by Postone’s (1996) reading of Marx’s Capital and Grundrisse as social theories of labour within capitalism and the extensive analyses of the social reproduction of labourpower developed by Rikowski (1999, 2000a, 2000b, 2002a, 2002b), Allman et al. (2000) and Dinerstein and Neary (2002). The paper ends with a consideration of the practical research possibilities emanating from its call to ground activity theory and its concern with contradictions in a sophisticated understanding of labourpower theory. It draws upon the UK-based Learning in and for Interagency Working Project’s (2004 ‑ 2008) intervention research in multiprofessional children’s service settings. It discusses the project’s rethinking of the notion of contradictions, the need to understand the division of labour as a tool in the social production of labour-power and the sense in which historical shifts in the ways that institutions organise collective labourpower make visible the social production of labourpower as an object of activity. (shrink)

Do animals have minds? We have known at least since Aristotle that humans constitute one species of animal. And some benighted contemporaries apart, we also know that most humans have minds. To have any bite, therefore, the question must be restricted to non-human animals, to which I shall henceforth refer simply as "animals." I shall further assume that animals are bereft of linguistic faculties. So, do some animals have minds comparable to those of humans? As regards that question, there are (...) two basic stances. Differentialists maintain that there are categorical differences separating us from animals; assimilationists hold that the differences are merely quantitative and gradual (see Brandom 2000, pp. 2–3). This paper only deals with one kind of mental phenomenon, namely intentional states such as believing, desiring, and intending. I shall also refer to these as having thoughts or thinking rather than as "propositional attitudes," since that terminology is misguided. My primary target is a variant of differentialism, namely lingualism. It maintains that animals lack intentional states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions, since, on a priori conceptual grounds, the latter require language. The term "language" is here confined to public languages, notably natural languages, and excludes inner symbolisms such as the language of thought postulated by many cognitive scientists. (shrink)

I develop an interdisciplinary framework for understanding the nature of agents and agency that is compatible with recent developments in the metaphysics of science and that also does justice to the mechanistic and normative characteristics of agents and agency as they are understood in moral philosophy, social psychology, neuroscience, robotics, and economics. The framework I develop is internal perspectivalist. That is to say, it counts agents as real in a perspective-dependent way, but not in a way that depends on an (...) external perspective. Whether or not something counts as an agent depends on whether it is able to have a certain kind of perspective. My approach differs from many others by treating possession of a perspective as more basic than the possession of agency, representational content/vehicles, cognition, intentions, goals, concepts, or mental or psychological states; these latter capabilities require the former, not the other way around. I explain what it means for a system to be able to have a perspective at all, beginning with simple cases in biology, and show how self-contained normative perspectives about proper function and control can emerge from mechanisms with relatively simple dynamics. I then describe how increasingly complex control architectures can become organized that allow for more complex perspectives that approach agency. Next, I provide my own account of the kind of perspective that is necessary for agency itself, the goal being to provide a reference against which other accounts can be compared. Finally, I introduce a crucial distinction that is necessary for understanding human agency: that between inclinational and committal agency, and venture a hypothesis about how the normative perspective underlying committal agency might be mechanistically realized. (shrink)

This chapter describes a perspective on emotion, according to which emotions are: 1. Designed to function in a social context: an emotion is often an act of relationship reconfiguration brought about by delivering a social signal; 2. Forms of skillful engagement with the world which need not be mediated by conceptual thought; 3. Scaffolded by the environment, both synchronically in the unfolding of a particular emotional performance and diachronically, in the acquisition of an emotional repertoire; 4. Dynamically coupled to an (...) environment which both influences and is influenced by the unfolding of the emotion We draw heavily on ‘transactional’ accounts of emotion proposed by some contemporary psychologists. Although these authors do not, to our knowledge, conceive their work as a contribution to the ‘situationist’ literature that is the focus of this volume, we contend that their proposals constitute a fairly exact, affective parallel to situationist ideas about cognition. The primary aim of this chapter is to demonstrate that a situated approach to emotion already exists and is backed by a substantial experimental literature. (shrink)