65 found
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  1. Perception.Adam Pautz - 2020 - New York, NY: Routledge.
    Perception is one of the most pervasive and puzzling problems in philosophy, generating a great deal of attention and controversy in philosophy of mind, psychology and metaphysics. If perceptual illusion and hallucination are possible, how can perception be what it intuitively seems to be, a direct and immediate access to reality? How can perception be both internally dependent and externally directed? Perception is an outstanding introduction to this fundamental topic, covering both the perennial and recent work on the problem. Adam (...)
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  2. Consciousness meets Lewisian interpretation theory: A multistage account of intentionality.Adam Pautz - 2021 - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind, Vol. 1. OUP.
    In “Radical Interpretation” (1974), David Lewis asked: by what constraints, and to what extent, do the non-intentional, physical facts about Karl determine the intentional facts about him? There are two popular approaches: the reductive externalist program and the phenomenal intentionality program. I argue against both approaches. Then I sketch an alternative multistage account incorporating ideas from both camps. If we start with Karl's conscious experiences, we can appeal to Lewisian ideas to explain his other intentional states. This account develops the (...)
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  3. Does Phenomenology Ground Mental Content?Adam Pautz - 2013 - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), The Phenomenal Intentionality Research Program. , US: Oxford University Press. pp. 194-234.
    I develop several new arguments against claims about "cognitive phenomenology" and its alleged role in grounding thought content. My arguments concern "absent cognitive qualia cases", "altered cognitive qualia cases", and "disembodied cognitive qualia cases". However, at the end, I sketch a positive theory of the role of phenomenology in grounding content, drawing on David Lewis's work on intentionality. I suggest that within Lewis's theory the subject's total evidence plays the central role in fixing mental content and ruling out deviant interpretations. (...)
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  4. (1 other version)What are the contents of experiences.Adam Pautz - 2009 - Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236):483-507.
    I address three interrelated issues concerning the contents of experiences. First, I address the preliminary issue of what it means to say that experiences have contents. Then I address the issue of why we should believe that experiences have contents. Finally, I address the issue of what the contents of experiences are.
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  5. Intentionalism and perceptual presence.Adam Pautz - 2007 - Philosophical Perspectives 21 (1):495-541.
    H. H. Price (1932) held that experience is essentially presentational. According to Price, when one has an experience of a tomato, nothing can be more certain than that there is something of which one is aware. Price claimed that the same applies to hallucination. In general, whenever one has a visual experience, there is something of which one is aware, according to Price. Call this thesis Item-Awareness.
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  6. (1 other version)A Simple View of Consciousness.Adam Pautz - 2010 - In Robert C. Koons & George Bealer (eds.), The waning of materialism. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 25--66.
    Phenomenal intentionality is irreducible. Empirical investigation shows it is internally-dependent. So our usual externalist (causal, etc.) theories do not apply here. Internalist views of phenomenal intentionality (e. g. interpretationism) also fail. The resulting primitivist view avoids Papineau's worry that terms for consciousness are highly indeterminate: since conscious properties are extremely natural (despite having unnatural supervenience bases) they are 'reference magnets'.
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  7. The significance argument for the irreducibility of consciousness.Adam Pautz - 2017 - Philosophical Perspectives 31 (1):349-407.
    The Significance Argument (SA) for the irreducibility of consciousness is based on a series of new puzzle-cases that I call multiple candidate cases. In these cases, there is a multiplicity of physical-functional properties or relations that are candidates to be identified with the sensible qualities and our consciousness of them, where those candidates are not significantly different. I will argue that these cases show that reductive materialists cannot accommodate the various ways in which consciousness is significant and must allow massive (...)
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  8. Experiences are Representations: An Empirical Argument (forthcoming Routledge).Adam Pautz - 2016 - In Bence Nanay (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Perception. New York: Routledge.
    In this paper, I do a few things. I develop a (largely) empirical argument against naïve realism (Campbell, Martin, others) and for representationalism. I answer Papineau’s recent paper “Against Representationalism (about Experience)”. And I develop a new puzzle for representationalists.
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  9. Can disjunctivists explain our access to the sensible world?Adam Pautz - 2011 - Philosophical Issues 21 (1):384-433.
    Develops an empirical argument against naive realism-disjunctivism: if naive realists accept "internal dependence", then they cannot explain the evolution of perceptual success. Also presents a puzzle about our knowledge of universals.
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  10. Identity Physicalism vs Ground Physicalism about Consciousness.Adam Pautz - forthcoming - In G. Rabin (ed.), Grounding and Consciousness. Oxford University Press.
    Unlike identity physicalism, ground physicalism does not achieve the physicalist dream. It faces the T-shirt problem for ground physicalism (Pautz 2014; Schaffer this volume; Rubenstein ms). In the case of insentient nature, it may be able to get by with small handful of very general ground laws to explain the emergence of nonfundamental objects and properties – for example, a few “principle of plenitude”. But I argue that for the case consciousness it will require a separate huge raft of special, (...)
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  11. The puzzle of the laws of appearance.Adam Pautz - 2020 - Philosophical Issues 30 (1):257-272.
    In this paper I will present a puzzle about visual appearance. There are certain necessary constraints on how things can visually appear. The puzzle is about how to explain them. I have no satisfying solution. My main thesis is simply that the puzzle is a puzzle. I will develop the puzzle as it arises for representationalism about experience because it is currently the most popular theory of experience and I think it is along the right lines. However, everyone faces a (...)
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  12. Discussion of Bill Brewer's “Perceptual Experience and Empirical Reason”.Bill Brewer, David de Bruijn, Chris Hill, Adam Pautz, T. Raja Rosenhagen, Miloš Vuletić & Wayne Wu - 2018 - Analytic Philosophy 59 (1):19-32.
    What is the role of conscious experience in the epistemology of perceptual knowledge: how should we characterise what is going on in seeing that o is F in order to illuminate the contribution of seeing o to their status as cases of knowing that o is F? My proposal is that seeing o involves conscious acquaintance with o itself, the concrete worldly source of the truth that o is F, in a way that may make it evident to the subject (...)
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  13. Do theories of consciousness rest on a mistake?Adam Pautz - 2010 - Philosophical Issues 20 (1):333-367.
    Using empirical research on pain, sound and taste, I argue against the combination of intentionalism about consciousness and a broadly ‘tracking’ psychosemantics of the kind defended by Fodor, Dretske, Hill, Neander, Stalnaker, Tye and others. Then I develop problems with Kriegel and Prinz's attempt to combine a Dretskean psychosemantics with the view that sensible properties are Shoemakerian response-dependent properties. Finally, I develop in detail my own 'primitivist' view of sensory intentionality.
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  14. What Is the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness?Adam Pautz - 2019 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (1-2):1-2.
    In the first instance, IIT is formulated as a theory of the physical basis of the 'degree' or ‘level’ or ‘amount’ of consciousness in a system. In addition, integrated information theorists have tried to provide a systematic theory of how physical states determine the specific qualitative contents of episodes of consciousness: for instance, an experience as of a red and round thing rather than a green and square thing. I raise a series of questions about the central explanatory target, the (...)
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  15. Consciousness and Coincidence: The Puzzle of Psychophysical Harmony.Adam Pautz - 2020 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 1 (5-6):143-155.
    In “The Meta-Problem of Consciousness”, David Chalmers briefly raises a problem about how the connection between consciousness and our verbal and other behavior appears “lucky”. I raise a counterexample to Chalmers’s formulation of the problem. Then I develop an alternative formulation. Finally, I consider some responses, including illusionism about consciousness.
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  16. Sensory awareness is not a wide physical relation: An empirical argument against externalist intentionalism.Adam Pautz - 2006 - Noûs 40 (2):205-240.
    Phenomenal intentionality is a singular form of intentionality. Science shows it is internally-determined. So standard externalist models for reducing intentionality don't apply to it.
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  17. The real trouble for phenomenal externalists: New empirical evidence (with reply by Klein&Hilbert).Adam Pautz - 2013 - In Richard Brown (ed.), Consciousness Inside and Out: Phenomenology, Neuroscience, and the Nature of Experience. Dordrecht: Springer Studies in Brain and Mind. pp. 237-298.
  18. How to Achieve the Physicalist Dream Theory of Consciousness: Identity or Grounding? (2020).Adam Pautz - forthcoming - In G. Rabin (ed.), Grounding and Consciousness. Oxford University Press.
    Unlike identity physicalism, ground physicalism does not achieve the physicalist dream. It faces the T-shirt problem for ground physicalism (Pautz 2014; Schaffer this volume; Rubenstein ms). In the case of insentient nature, it may be able to get by with small handful of very general ground laws to explain the emergence of nonfundamental objects and properties – for example, a few “principle of plenitude”. But I argue that for the case consciousness it will require a separate huge raft of special, (...)
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  19. How Does Colour Experience Represent the World?Adam Pautz - 2017 - In Derek Brown & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour. New York: Routledge.
    Many favor representationalism about color experience. To a first approximation, this view holds that experiencing is like believing. In particular, like believing, experiencing is a matter of representing the world to be a certain way. Once you view color experience along these lines, you face a big question: do our color experiences represent the world as it really is? For instance, suppose you see a tomato. Representationalists claim that having an experience with this sensory character is necessarily connected with representing (...)
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  20.  98
    Do the benefits of naïve realism outweigh the costs? Comments on fish, perception, hallucination and illusion.Adam Pautz - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 163 (1):25-36.
  21. Representationalism about Consciousness.Adam Pautz - 2020 - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Discusses recent work on representationalism, including: the case for a representationalist theory of consciousness, which explains consciousness in terms of content; rivals such as neurobiological type-type identity theory (Papineau, McLaughlin) and naive realism (Allen, Campbell, Brewer); John Campbell and David Papineau's recent objections to representationalism; the problem of the "laws of appearance"; externalist vs internalist versions of representationalism; the relation between representationalism and the mind-body problem.
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  22. Can the physicalist explain colour structure in terms of colour experience?1.Adam Pautz - 2006 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (4):535 – 564.
    Physicalism about colour is the thesis that colours are identical with response-independent, physical properties of objects. I endorse the Argument from Structure against Physicalism about colour. The argument states that Physicalism cannot accommodate certain obvious facts about colour structure: for instance, that red is a unitary colour while purple is a binary colour, and that blue resembles purple more than green. I provide a detailed formulation of the argument. According to the most popular response to the argument, the Physicalist can (...)
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  23. How Can Brains in Vats Experience a Spatial World? A Puzzle for Internalists.Adam Pautz - 2018 - In Adam Pautz & Daniel Stoljar (eds.), Blockheads! Essays on Ned Block’s Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness. new york: MIT Press.
    In this chapter, Pautz raises a puzzle about spatial experience for phenomenal internalists like Ned Block. If an accidental, lifelong brain-in-the-void (BIV) should have all the same experiences as you, it would have an experience as of items having various shapes, and be able to acquire concepts of those shapes, despite being cut off from real things with the shapes. Internalists cannot explain this by saying that BIV is presented with Peacocke-style visual field regions having various shapes, because these would (...)
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  24. The Real Trouble for Armchair Arguments Against Phenomenal Externalism.Adam Pautz - 2014 - In Mark Sprevak & Jesper Kallestrup (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Mind. London: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 153-181.
    I criticize some armchair arguments against phenomenal externalism due to Block, Hawthorne, Kriegel, Levine, Shoemaker and others. I conclude by discussing an overlooked armchair argument: the argument from phenomenal localism.
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  25. Propositions and Properties.Adam Pautz - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (2):478-486.
  26. A Dilemma for Russellian Monists About Consciousness.Adam Pautz - 2015
    I develop a new argument against Russellian Monism about consciousness.
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  27. What is my evidence that here is a cup? Comments on Susanna Schellenberg.Adam Pautz - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (4):915-927.
    This paper is about Susanna Schellenberg's view on the explanatory role of perceptual experience. I raise a basic question about what the argument for her view might be. Then I develop two new problem cases: one involving “seamless transitions” between perception and hallucination and another involving the graded character of perceptual evidence and justification.
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  28. How Is Constitutive Russellian Monism (or Pansychism) Better than Dualism?Adam Pautz - manuscript
    This is a reply to Luke Roelof's comments (2017) on my paper "A Dilemma for Russellian Monists about Consciousness" (2015). On both Russellian monism and dualism, experiences are distinct from neural-functional states and they are correlated with some neural-functional states and not others. The only difference between them concerns the status of the extra-logical principles linking experiences with their neural-functional correlates (e. g. increasing S1 firing rates results in increasing pain): Russellian monists hold that they are a priori and necessary, (...)
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  29. (1 other version)Why Explain Visual Experience in Terms of Content?Adam Pautz - 2010 - In Bence Nanay (ed.), Perceiving the world. New York: Oxford University Press.
  30. Naive Realism and the Science of Consciousness (2018).Adam Pautz - manuscript
    I begin by describing what I call simple naïve realism. Then I describe relevant empirical results. Next, I develop two new empirical arguments against simple naive realism. Then I briefly look at two new, more complex forms of naïve realism: one due to Keith Allen and the other due to Heather Logue and Ori Beck. I argue that they are not satisfactory retreats for naive realists. The right course is to reject naive realism altogether. My stalking horse is contemporary naive (...)
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  31. The Interdependence of Phenomenology and Intentionality.Adam Pautz - 2008 - The Monist 91 (2):250-272.
    I address the question of whether phenomenology is "prior to" all intentionality. I also sketch a version of David Lewis's interpretationism in which phenomenal intentionality plays the role of source intentionality.
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  32. The Arationality of Perception: Comments on Susanna Siegel.Adam Pautz - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (3):755-763.
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.
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  33. Blockheads! Essays on Ned Block’s Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness.Adam Pautz & Daniel Stoljar (eds.) - 2018 - new york: MIT Press.
    Perhaps more than any other philosopher of mind, Ned Block synthesizes philosophical and scientific approaches to the mind; he is unique in moving back and forth across this divide, doing so with creativity and intensity. Over the course of his career, Block has made groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of intelligence, representation, and consciousness. Blockheads! (the title refers to Block's imaginary counterexample to the Turing test—and to the Block-enthusiast contributors) offers eighteen new essays on Block's work along with substantive and (...)
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  34. A simple view of consciousness.Adam Pautz - 2010 - In Robert C. Koons & George Bealer (eds.), The waning of materialism. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 25--66.
    Phenomenal intentionality is irreducible. Empirical investigation shows it is internally-dependent. So our usual externalist (causal, etc.) theories do not apply here. Internalist views of phenomenal intentionality (e. g. interpretationism) also fail. The resulting primitivist view avoids Papineau’s worry that terms for consciousness are highly indeterminate: since conscious properties are extremely natural (despite having unnatural supervenience bases) they are ’reference magnets’.
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  35. Color Eliminativism (2006 Manuscript).Adam Pautz - manuscript
    This paper (from 2006) is now defunct. I argue against "realist primitivism". One of my arguments is a kind of "evolutionary debunking argument". Some of the material of this was incorporated into “Can Disjunctivists Explain Our Access to the Sensible World?” and "How Does Color Experience Represent the World?".
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  36. How do brains in vats experience a spatial world? a puzzle for internalists.Adam Pautz - 2018 - In Adam Pautz & Daniel Stoljar (eds.), Blockheads! Essays on Ned Block’s Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness. new york: MIT Press.
     
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  37. What is Integrated Information Theory a Theory Of?Adam Pautz - manuscript
    In the first instance, IIT is formulated as a theory of the physical basis of the 'degree' or ‘level’ or ‘amount’ of consciousness in a system. I raise a series of questions about the central explanatory target, the 'degree' or ‘level’ or ‘amount’ of consciousness. I suggest it is not at all clear what scientists and philosophers are talking about when they talk about consciousness as gradable. This point is developed in more detail in my paper "What Is the Integrated (...)
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  38.  74
    Have Byrne & Hilbert answered Hardin's challenge?Adam Pautz - 2003 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (1):44-45.
    I argue that Byrne & Hilbert (B&H) have not answered Hardin's objection to physicalism about color concerning the unitary-binary structure of the colors for two reasons. First, their account of unitary-binary structure seems unsatisfactory. Second, pace B&H, there are no physicalistically acceptable candidates to be the hue-magnitudes. I conclude with a question about the justification of physicalism about color.
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  39. An Argument Against Papineau’s Qualitative View of Sensory Experience.Adam Pautz - 2023 - Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Mind 3.
    In his excellent book *The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience* (2021), David Papineau argues against standard theories of sensory experience: the sense datum view, representationalism, naïve realism, and so on. The only view left standing is his own “qualitative view”. On Papineau’s physicalist version, all experiences are nothing but neural states, and the only features essentially involved in experience are intrinsic neural properties (29-30, 95-97). In my book *Perception* (2021), I developed an argument from spatial experience against this kind of view (...)
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  40. Naive Realism v Representationalism: An Argument from Science.Adam Pautz - 2007 - In Brian P. McLaughlin & Jonathan Cohen (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind. Wiley-Blackwell.
    This paper elaborates on an argument in my book *Perception*. It has two parts. In the first part, I argue against what I call "basic" naive realism, on the grounds that it fails to accommodate what I call "internal dependence" and it requires an empirically implausible theory of sensible properties. Then I turn Craig French and Ian Phillips’ modified naïve realism as set out in their recent paper "Austerity and Illusion". It accommodates internal dependence. But it may retain the empirically (...)
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  41.  38
    Perception and illusion: replies to Sethi, Speaks and Cutter.Adam Pautz - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (8):2294-2320.
    I reply to comments on my book Perception (Routledge 2021) by Umrao Sethi, Jeff Speaks and Brian Cutter. Sethi objects to my representational view of perception on the ground that that having an experience of a color or shape can enable you to know what that color or shape is like only if it is actually present in the experience. Speaks has a very interesting discussion of my puzzle of the laws of appearance for the representational view. And Cutter asks (...)
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    An argument against Armstrong's analysis of the resemblance of universals.Adam Pautz - 1997 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (1):109 – 111.
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  43. Discussion of Anil Gupta's “Outline of an Account of Experience”.Alex Byrne, Charles Goldhaber, Anil Gupta, Adam Pautz & T. Raja Rosenhagen - 2018 - Analytic Philosophy 59 (1):75-88.
  44. The Representational View: Experiencing as Representing (chap. from *Perception*).Adam Pautz - 1996 - In Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Perception. Ridgeview Pub. Co.
    This is a chapter from my introductory book *Perception* covering the representational view of experience. I use the Ramsey-Lewis method to define the theoretical term "experiential representation". I clarify and discuss various questions for representationalists, for instance, "how rich is the content of experience?" and "is the content of visual experience singular or general?" Finally, I address some objections to representationalism - in particular, that it cannot explain perceptual presence (John Campbell), and that it cannot explain the "laws of appearance" (...)
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  45.  70
    The Perceptual Representation of Objects and Natural Kinds: Comments on Speaks.Adam Pautz - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95 (2):470-477.
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  46. An argument against Fregean that-clause semantics.Adam Pautz - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 138 (3):335 - 347.
    I develop a problem for the Fregean Reference Shift analysis of that-clause reference. The problem is discussed by Stephen Schiffer in his recent book The Things We Mean (2003). Either the defender of the Fregean Reference Shift analysis must count certain counterintuitive inferences as valid, or else he must reject a plausible Exportation rule. I consider several responses. I find that the best response relies on a Kaplan-inspired analysis of quantified belief reports. But I argue that this response faces some (...)
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  47. *Perception* (2021, preview).Adam Pautz - 1996 - In Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Perception. Ridgeview Pub. Co.
    A preview of my book *Perception*. Discusses the relationship between perception and the physical world and the issue of whether reality is as it appears. Useful examples are included throughout the book to illustrate the puzzles of perception, including hallucinations, illusions, the laws of appearance, blindsight, and neuroscientific explanations of our experience of pain, smell and color. The book covers both traditional philosophical arguments and more recent empirical arguments deriving from research in psychophysics and neuroscience. The addition of chapter summaries, (...)
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  48. The Internal Physical State View of Sensory Experience (chapter from my book *Perception*).Adam Pautz - 1996 - In Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Perception. Ridgeview Pub. Co.
    This is a chapter from my book Perception (Routledge). I explain the physical state view of sensory experience (Papineau, McLaughlin, others). I criticize an argument against it based on the "transparency observation". Then I develop two alternative arguments against it. The first is a Leibniz's Law argument based on the essentially externally directed character of some experiences. The second concerns "brains in vats". Finally I consider a recent response due to David Papineau, which involves rejecting essential external directedness.
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  49. Varieties of Interpretationism about Belief and Desire.Adam Pautz - 2021 - Analysis 21 (3):512-524.
    In his superb book, The Metaphysics of Representation, Williams sketches biconditional reductive definitions of representational states in non-representational terms. The central idea is an extremely innovative variety of interpretationism about belief and desire. Williams is inspired by David Lewis but departs significantly from him. I am sympathetic to interpretationism for some basic beliefs and desires. However, I will raise three worries for Williams’s version (§2–4). It neglects the role of conscious experience, it makes beliefs and desire too dependent on "hidden (...)
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  50. An Argument Against Fodorian Inner Sentence Theories of Belief and Desire.Adam Pautz - manuscript
    One of Jerry Fodor’s many seminal contributions to philosophy of mind was his inner sentence theory of belief and desire. To believe that p is to have a subpersonal inner sentence in one’s “belief-box” that means that p, and to desire that q is to have a subpersonal inner sentence in one’s “desire-box” that means that q. I will distinguish between two accounts of box-inclusion that exhaust the options: liberal and restrictive. I will show that both accounts have the mistaken (...)
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