Most answers to the mind-body problem are claims about the nature of mental properties and substances. But advocates of non-reductive physicalism have generally neglected the topic of the nature of substance, quickly nodding to the view that all substances are physical, while focusing their intellectual energy on understanding how mental properties relate to physical ones. Let us call the view that all substances are physical or are exhaustively composed of physical substances substance physicalism (SP). Herein, I argue that non-reductive physicalism (...) (NRP) cannot uphold substance physicalism and is thereby false. For NRP faces a mind problem: its commitment to property irreducibility prevents that which bears the mental properties—the mind, or on some views, the self or person—from being a physical thing. (shrink)

I defend a how-possibly argument for Kantian (or Kant*-ian) transcendental idealism, drawing on concepts from David Chalmers, Nick Bostrom, and the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. If we are artificial intelligences living in a virtual reality instantiated on a giant computer, then the fundamental structure of reality might be very different than we suppose. Indeed, since computation does not require spatial properties, spatiality might not be a feature of things as they are in themselves but instead only the way that (...) things necessarily appear to us. It might seem unlikely that we are living in a virtual reality instantiated on a non-spatial computer. However, understanding this possibility can help us appreciate the merits of transcendental idealism in general, as well as transcendental idealism’s underappreciated skeptical consequences. (shrink)

If you’re a materialist, you probably think that rabbits are conscious. And you ought to think that. After all, rabbits are a lot like us, biologically and neurophysiologically. If you’re a materialist, you probably also think that conscious experience would be present in a wide range of naturally-evolved alien beings behaviorally very similar to us even if they are physiologically very different. And you ought to think that. After all, to deny it seems insupportable Earthly chauvinism. But a materialist who (...) accepts consciousness in weirdly formed aliens ought also to accept consciousness in spatially distributed group entities. If she then also accepts rabbit consciousness, she ought to accept the possibility of consciousness even in rather dumb group entities. Finally, the United States would seem to be a rather dumb group entity of the relevant sort. If we set aside our morphological prejudices against spatially distributed group entities, we can see that the United States has all the types of properties that materialists tend to regard as characteristic of conscious beings. (shrink)

In the first experiment, I exhibit unreliable judgment about the primeness or divisibility of four-digit numbers, in contrast to a seeming Excel program. In the second experiment, I exhibit an imperfect memory for arbitrary-seeming three-digit number and letter combinations, in contrast to my seeming collaborator with seemingly hidden notes. In the third experiment, I seem to suffer repeated defeats at chess. In all three experiments, the most straightforward interpretation of the experiential evidence is that something exists in the universe that (...) is superior in the relevant respects – theoretical reasoning (about primes), memorial retention (for digits and letters), or practical reasoning (at chess) – to my own solipsistically-conceived self. (shrink)

Need-claims are ubiquitous within moral and political theory. However, need-based theories are often criticized for being too narrow in scope and too focused on the material preconditions for leading a decent life for grounding a substantial theory of social justice. The aim of this paper is threefold. Firstly, it will investigate the nature and scope of needs by analysing existing conceptualizations of the idea of needs. In so doing, we will get a better understanding of needs, which will help us (...) to carve out the importance and singularity of basic need claims. Secondly, on the basis of the analysis of needs, it will argue for the concept of a fundamental interest in free social agency, which is much better suited than the idea of basic needs actually to ground a theory of social justice, as it highlights the social and institutional conditions for free agency. Thirdly, using the distinction between basic needs and fundamental interests, it will clarify their respective role in and importance for grounding moral principles. Overall, the paper offers a friendly critique of need-based theories, while arguing for a shift of focus to the idea of fundamental interests. (shrink)

Many friends of the category of particularised qualities subscribe to the view that particularised qualities have a unique bearer in which they inhere; no such quality then can inhere in two different entities. But it seems that this idea is flawed, for there are apparent counterexamples. An apple's redness is identical with the redness of its skin, though the apple is distinct from its skin. So it seems that a principle of bearer‐uniqueness has to be modified, maybe by excluding certain (...) unwanted cases. However, I argue that the need of a modification is not a direct consequence of the supposed counterexamples. Their dangerous potential for the principle arises if one takes the genitive in expressions of the form ‘a's F‐ness’ to signify the relation of inherence. I propose an alternative view: The genitive signifies a relation which is indeed closely related to inherence, but which is, contrary to inherence itself, partitive. That is, it may hold between a particularised quality and another entity because it holds between the quality and a part of the entity. If one regards the ontologically interesting relation of inherence as non‐partitive, one can still adhere to an unrestricted principle of bearer‐uniqueness. (shrink)

In this paper, I’ll sketch an approach to epistemology that draws its inspiration from two aspects of Kant’s philosophical project. In particular, I want to explore how we might develop a Kantian conception of rationality that combines a virtue-theoretical perspective on the nature of rationality with a role for transcendental arguments in defining the demands this conception of rationality places upon us as thinkers. In discussing these connections, I’ll proceed as follows. First, I’ll describe the sorts of epistemological questions I’ll (...) be focusing on, and the framework within which I’ll try to address them. Then I’ll say a bit about the connections between this framework on Kant’s own views. Next, I’ll explain in more detail how the two main elements of this framework relate to one another by explaining how a certain sort of “transcendental argument” allows us to derive conclusions about the requirements of rationality from facts about the nature of rational capacities. Then, I’ll briefly illustrate these connections with two examples: the rationality of explanatory inference like inference to the best explanation and the rationality of perceptual belief. Finally, I’ll conclude by saying a bit about the relevance of this ideas for debates about the rationality of basic beliefs or prior probabilities. (shrink)

I offer an explanation of how subjects are able to perceive the intrinsic spatial properties of objects, given that subjects always perceive from a particular location. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, I argue that a conception of space is necessary to perceive the intrinsic spatial properties of objects. This conception of space is spelled out by showing that perceiving intrinsic properties requires perceiving objects as the kind of things that are perceivable from other locations. Second, I show that (...) having such a conception of space presupposes that a subject represent her location in relation to perceived objects. More precisely the thesis is that a subject represents her location as the location from which she both perceives objects and would act in relation to objects were she to act. So I argue that perception depends on the capacity to know what it would be to act in relation to objects. (shrink)

The relational approach to tense holds that the now, passage, and becoming are to be understood in terms of relations between events. The debate over the adequacy of this framework is illustrated by a comparative study of the sense in which physical theories, (in)deterministic and (non)relativistic, can lend expression to the metaphysics at issue. The objective is not to settle the matter, but to clarify the nature of this metaphysics and to establish that the same issues are at stake in (...) the relational approach to value-definiteness and probability in quantum mechanics. They concern the existence of a unique present, respectively actuality, and a notion of identity over time that cannot be paraphrased in terms of relations. (shrink)

Do we think in a language-like format? Taking the marker of language-like formats to be the property of unconstrained systematicity, this paper considers the following master argument for the claim that we do: language is unconstrainedly systematic, if language is unconstrainedly systematic then so is thought, so thought is unconstrainedly systematic. It is easy to feel that there is something right about this argument, that there will be some way of filling in its details that will vindicate the idea that (...) our thought must be unconstrainedly systematic given that the language in which we express it is. Clearly, however, the second premise needs support—we need a principled reason for moving from the unconstrained systematicity of language to the unconstrained systematicity of thought. This paper gives three passes at formulating such a principle. This turns out to be much harder than it might seem. We should, I conclude, resist falling too easily for the lure of this master argument for the language-like format of thought. (shrink)

Assume for the sake of argument that doing philosophy is intrinsically valuable, where “doing philosophy” refers to the practice of forging arguments for and against the truth of theses in the domains of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and so on. The practice of the history of philosophy is devoted instead to discovering arguments for and against the truth of “authorial” propositions, that is, propositions that state the belief of some historical figure about a philosophical proposition. I explore arguments for thinking that (...) doing history of philosophy is valuable—specifically, valuable in such a way that its value does not reduce to the value of doing philosophy. Most such arguments proffered by historians of philosophy fail, as I show. I then offer a proposal about what makes doing history of philosophy uniquely valuable, but it is one that many historians will not find agreeable. (shrink)

Recent work on the early development of episodic memory in my laboratory has been fuelled by the following assumption: if episodic memory is re-experiential memory then Kant’s analysis of the spatiotemporal nature of experience should constrain and positively influence theories of episodic memory development. The idea is that re-experiential memory will “inherit” these spatiotemporal features. On the basis of this assumption, Russell and Hanna (Mind and Language 27(1):29–54, 2012) proposed that (a) the spatial element of re-experience is egocentric and (b) (...) that the temporal element of re-experiencing involves order/simultaneity. The first of these assumptions is immediately problematic for two reasons. In the first place, if we assume that early episodic recall mediated by processing in the hippocampus, then (a) is clearly in tension with the fact that spatial coding in the hippocampus is allocentric/environment-centred. Second, two of our own recent experiments (described here) show that when only egocentric cues are available in a What/When/Where episodic memory task it is not possible to distinguish young children’s performance from semantic memory. I argue that this tension should be resolved by recognising that the egocentric coding of the original experience as being of an objective scene relies upon allocentric representations and these are preserved in re-experiential memory, allowing a recollection of the objective nature of the scene on which one takes a subjective view. (shrink)

The ascription of intentional states to the self involves knowledge, or at least claims to knowledge. Armed with the working definition of knowledge as 'the ability to do things, or refrain from doing things, or believe, or want, or doubt things, for reasons that are facts' [Hyman, J. Philos. Quart. 49:432—451], I sketch a simple competence model of acting and believing from knowledge and when knowledge is defeated by un-experienced changes of state. The model takes the form of three concentric (...) circles. The 'periphery' is analogous to Fodor's [(1983), The modularity of mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] input systems. The 'core' contains copies of peripheral representations, and between these representations there is executive competition. At the 'nucleus', operations are performed on the core representations of, at least, negation and recursion. I argue that this provides a fruitful way in which to conceptualise why theory-of-mind tasks challenge pre-school children, how some degree of first-person authority is mental state attribution is possible, and how executive inhibition is achieved. (shrink)

Remarks such as ‘I am in pain’ and ‘I think that it’s raining’ are puzzling, since they seem to literally describe oneself as being in pain or having a particular thought, but their conditions of use tend to coincide with unequivocal expressions of pain or of that thought. This led Wittgenstein, among others, to treat such remarks as expressing, rather than as reporting, one’s mental states. Though such expressivism is widely recognized as untenable, Bar-On has recently advanced a neo-expressivist view, (...) on which such remarks exhibit characteristics of both expressions of mental states and reports of those states. I argue against any attempt to see such remarks as both reporting and expressing the same mental states, and that a correct account rests on distinguishing the truth conditions of such remarks from their conditions of use. (shrink)

The question of whether we can perceive absences, in addition to ‘positives’, has received recent attention in the literature on the nature of vision and audition. The aim is to demonstrate that there can be objectless forms of perceptual consciousness; specifically, to show that such episodes can be distinguished from those in which there is merely no perception at all. The current article explores this question for the domain of olfaction, and argues that there can be experiences of the absence (...) of odours, in addition to positive smell perception. Doing so sheds light upon the structure and spatial content of olfaction. (shrink)

How should interaction between the senses affect thought about them? I try to capture some ways in which non sense-specific perception might be thought to make it impossible or pointless or explanatorily idle to distinguish between senses. This task is complicated by there being more than one view of the nature of the senses, and more than one kind of non sense-specific perception. I argue, in particular, that provided we are willing to forgo certain assumptions about, for instance, the relationship (...) between modes or kinds of experience, and about how one should count perceptual experiences at a time, at least one way of thinking about the senses survives the occurrence of various kinds of non sense-specific perception relatively unscathed. (shrink)

RESUMO O artigo pretende mostrar o sentido da noção de transcendental no interior do método reconstrutivo de Jürgen Habermas. Para isso, ele procura apresentar em primeiro lugar a diferença entre a argumentação transcendental como argumentação anticética e a prova transcendental em Kant e, em seguida, a diferença entre Habermas e Apel sobre a possibilidade de uma fundamentação última da racionalidade comunicativa. Segundo minha interpretação, há razões de ordem lógica para a recusa da fundamentação última em Habermas, mas também razões ligados (...) à historicidade da compreensão da razão. ABSTRACT The article aims to show the meaning of the notion of "transcendental" inside the reconstructive method of Jürgen Habermas. For such, first of all, it attempts to present the difference between the transcendental argumentation as anti-skeptical argumentation and the transcendental proof in Kant and, then, the difference between Habermas and Apel about the possibility of an ultimate foundation of communicative rationality. According to my interpretation, there are reasons of logical order for the refusal of the ultimate foundation in Habermas, but also reasons related to the historicity of understanding of reason. (shrink)

In his theory of communication Schutz exhibits a significant tension between two fundamental perspectives, phenomenology and pragmatism, and in the long run he fails to reconcile the contradictory implications these perspectives have with regard to his model of interaction.The main problem seems to be the notion of sense-constitution. Schutz develops two distinguishable accounts of constitution: an egological one and a model based on the phenomenon of direct interaction of empirical subjects. Two key concepts are related to these different modes of (...) constitution: the model of appresentation with regard to language, symbols and signs, and the model of synchronisation as triangulation of streams of consciousness and outward action sequences. They are analyzed as significant for two different methods and two different theories of communication. I propose some reasons for Schutz's insistence on a phenomenological account of the ego and the constitution of sense, and offer a brief sketch of an alternative strategy that is implicit in Schutz's theory. (shrink)

Social thinkers often use the concept of intersubjectivity to mark out a problem of theoretical sociology: If people are unable to look into each others' minds, why do they often understand each other nonetheless? This issue has been debated extensively by philosophers and sociologists in three largely disconnected discourses. The article investigates the three discourses for isolable ideas that can be fitted into a sociological answer to the problem of intersubjectivity. An interactional solution, fully coherent with key insights from the (...) discourses, is offered at the end of the article. Its main point is to identify coordinative interactional mechanisms that compel participants to "make themselves understandable" vis-à-vis their interaction partners. (shrink)

Barresi & Moore do not consider information about intentional relations available within emotional engagement with others and do not see that others are perceived in the second as well as the third person. Recognising second person information forces recognition of similarities and connections not otherwise available. A developmental framework built on the assumption of the complete separateness of self and other is inevitably flawed.

Extending work of Wittgenstein, Lakoff and Johnson I suggest that it is the metaphors we rely on in order to conceptualise time that provide an illusory space for time-travel-talk. For example, in the “Moving Time” spatialisation of time, “objects” move past the agent from the future to the past. The objects all move in the same direction – this is mapped to time always moving in the same direction. But then it is easy to imagine suspending this rule, and asking (...) why the objects should not start moving in the opposite direction. This is one way of generating the idea of time-travel “back” into the past. Time-travel-talk essentially involves the unaware projection of fragments of our time-talk – taken from powerful conceptual metaphors – onto the nature of reality itself. Understanding this dissolves away the charm and attractions of such talk. (shrink)

This essay develops a theory of identities, selves, and ‘the self’ that both explains the sense in which selves are narratively constituted and also explains how the self relates to a person's individual autobiographical identity and to their various social identities. I argue that identities are the contents of narratively structured representations, some of which are hosted individually and are autobiographical in form, and others of which are hosted collectively and are biographical in form. These identities, in turn, give rise (...) to selves of various sorts—true selves, autobiographical selves, public and private selves, merely possible selves, and so on—which are the characters (or presupposed subjects) that appear in our various identities. Although the theory I develop bears some obvious affinities with the view that selves are fictional characters, the two views are in fact distinct, for reasons explained at the end. (shrink)

This essay begins with an outline of the early Heidegger's distinction between beings and the Being1 of those beings, followed by a discussion of Heideggerian teleology. It then turns to contemporary analytic metaphysics to suggest that analytic metaphysics concerns itself wholly with beings and does not recognize distinct forms of questioning concerning what Heidegger calls Being . This difference having been clarified, studies of identity and individuation in the analytic tradition are examined and it is demonstrated that such inquiries have (...) far more in common with Heidegger than one might initially suspect. Indeed, it turns out that much of what the early Heidegger says about Being is tacitly presupposed by the workings of certain being-centric metaphysical projects in the analytic tradition. The discussion concludes with the suggestion that the central difference between the two projects should be understood as one of emphasis and that Heidegger's discussion of Being and a realist metaphysics in the analytic tradition can complement each other as aspects of a broader, more unified philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

The idea that there are features of or in our conscious experience that are, in some important sense, private has both a long history in philosophy and a large measure of intuitive attraction. Once this idea is in place, it will be very natural to assume that one can think and judge about one’s own private features. And it is then only a small step to the idea that we might communicate such thoughts and judgements about our respective private features (...) with each other. (shrink)

How do human children come up to carve up and think of the world around them in its most general and abstract structure? And to which degree are these general forms of viewing the world shared by other animals, notably by non-human primates? In response to these questions of what could be called comparative metaphysics, this paper discusses new evidence from developmental and comparative research to argue for the following picture: human children and non-human primates share a basic framework of (...) natural ontology: they think about their natural surroundings in essentialist ways in terms of natural kind objects constituted by their essential properties, and in generic terms as governed by general descriptive regularities. In contrast, there is a great divide when it comes to how human children and non-human primates carve up their social environment: only human children then go on to use their essentialist and generic thinking for developing a distinctively social ontology, to conceive of their surrounding in terms of socially constituted objects governed by general prescriptive norms. (shrink)

The paper argues that the reference of perceptual demonstratives is fixed in a causal nondescriptive way through the nonconceptual content of perception. That content consists first in spatiotemporal information establishing the existence of a separate persistent object retrieved from a visual scene by the perceptual object segmentation processes that open an object-file for that object. Nonconceptual content also consists in other transducable information, that is, information that is retrieved directly in a bottom-up way from the scene (motion, shape, etc). The (...) nonconceptual content of the mental states induced when one uses a perceptual demonstrative constitutes the mode of presentation of the perceptual demonstrative that individuates but does not identify the object of perceptual awareness and allows reference to it. On that account, perceptual demonstratives put us in a de re relationship with objects in the world through the non-conceptual information retrieved directly from the objects in the environment. (shrink)

Alvin Goldman (1993) presents three arguments against the psychological plausibility of representational functionalism (RF) as a theory of how subjects self-ascribe mental predicates. Goldman appears to construe RF as an account of attitude type self-ascription. His “combinatorial explosion” argument, however, proves devastating only to an implausible construal of RF as an account of attitude content self-ascription.

Contrary to received opinion among philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, conscious duality as a principle of brain organization is neither incoherent nor demonstrably false. The present paper begins by reviewing the history of the theory and its anatomical basis and defending it against the claim that it rests upon an arbitrary decision as to what constitutes the biological substratum of mind or person.

According to the Particularist Theory of Events, events are real things that have a spatiotemporal location. I argue that some events do not have a spatial location in the sense required by the theory. These events are ordinary, nonmental events like Smith’s investigating the murder and Carol’s putting her coat on the chair. I discuss the significance of these counterexamples for the theory.

Barresi & Moore's “intentional schema” will not do the work of “theory of mind.” Their model will account neither for fundamental facts of social competence, such as the social attributions of the 10-month-old infant, nor the possibility that, though having a theory of mind, the chimpanzee's theory is “weaker” than the human's.

Biological individuality is a major topic of discussion in biology and philosophy of biology. Recently, several objections have been raised against traditional accounts of biological individuality, including the objections of monism, theory-centrism, ahistoricity, disciplinary isolationism, and the multiplication of conceptual uncertainties. In this introduction, I will examine the current philosophical landscape about biological individuality, and show how the contributions gathered in this special issue address these five objections. Overall, the aim of this issue is to offer a more diverse, unifying, (...) and scientifically informed conception of what a biological individual is. (shrink)