Ordinary people tend to be realists regarding perceptual experience, that is, they take perceiving the environment as a direct, unmediated, straightforward access to a mindindependent reality. Not so for (ordinary) philosophers. The empiricist influence on the philosophy of perception, in analytic philosophy at least, made the problem of perception synonymous with the view that realism is untenable. Admitting the problem (and trying to offer a view on it) is tantamount to rejecting ordinary people’s implicit realist assumptions as naive. So what (...) exactly is the problem? We can approach it via one of the central arguments against realism – the argument from hallucination. The argument is intended as a proof that in ordinary, veridical cases of perception, perceivers do not have an unmediated perceptual access to the world. There are many versions of it; I propose the following1: 1. Hallucinations that are subjectively indistinguishable from veridical perceptions are possible. 2. If two subjective states are indistinguishable, then they have a common nature. 3. The contents of hallucinations are mental images, not concrete external objects. 4. Therefore, the contents of veridical perceptions are mental images rather than concrete external objects. The key move is, I believe, from the fact that hallucinations that are subjectively indistinguishable from cases of veridical perception are possible to an alleged common element, factor, or nature, in the form of a mental state, in the two cases – that is, premise 2. Disjunctivism, at its core, can be taken as simply denying this move, and arguing that all that follows from the premise stating the possibility of hallucinations that are subjectively indistinguishable from cases veridical perception is that there is a broader category, that of “experience as of...”, which encompasses both cases.. (shrink)

Phenomenal character is determined by representational content, which both hallucinatory and veridical experiences can share. But in the case of veridical experience, unlike hallucination, the external objects of experience literally have the properties one is aware of in experience. The representationalist can accept the common factor assumption without having to introduce sensory intermediaries between the mind and the world, thus securing a form of direct realism.

Sethi (2020) attempts to show that even if we keep Price’s intuition: the claim that having an experience as of an F make us aware of an instance of Fness, we can still block the Argument from Hallucination, and so reject the conclusion that we are aware of mind-dependent rather than mind-independent items when we undergo successful perceptions. In an attempt to demonstrate this, she formulates the Argument from Hallucination so that it relies on (...) the principle that if the existence of a neural state is sufficient for the existence of a property-instance, that property-instance is mind-dependent. I show how to reformulate the argument to avoid reliance on this, thus demonstrating against Sethi that it is possible to argue from acceptance of Price’s intuition to the claim that the items we’re directly aware of in the successful perceptual case are mind-dependent. (shrink)

In his article “Constructive Empiricism Now” van Fraassen chooses an extremely interesting example to defend his thesis that scientific theories are only representations, so that the aim of science is to give us reliable, empirically adequate, descriptions of the observable aspects of the world. For him, there is no continuum of observable/unobservable, as he draws a line of distinction at a point that eliminates from his ontology such cases as fields of forces and sub-atomic particles. As a result, he (...) puts forward the position that electronic images in the microscope and subatomic particles are “public hallucinations” and not “real things”. What I thus propose to do is to examine van Fraassen’s anti-realism through the looking class of realism, my aim being to defend a realist view of science: To this purpose, I will focus on two main issues: (a) the question of representations in science and in particular of images we “see” through a microscope and (b) the question of the criteria for defining physical reality. In this context, I will argue that van Fraassen’s definition of the “real” is an anti-realist version of the positivist trend, which cannot fit in the picture of science that emerges today. To understand, thus, the world of physics we need to re-examine our definition of reality and make space for an ontology that goes beyond the well-defined spatio-temporal existence of what van Fraassen calls a “real thing”. (shrink)

The author puts forward and defends a new argument for indirect realism called the argument from pain. The argument is akin to a well-known traditional argument to the same end, the argument from hallucination. Like the latter, it contains one premise stating an analogy between veridical perceptions and certain other states and one premise stating that those states are states of acquaintance with sense-data. The crucial difference is that the states that are (...) said to be analogous to veridical perceptions are pain-states instead of hallucinations. This difference makes the argument from pain immune to the standard objections against the argument from hallucination. (shrink)

In an attempt to revive discussion of the argument from illusion this paper amends the classic version of the argument to avoid Austin's main objection. It then develops and defends a version of the intentional object reply to the argument, arguing that an "unendorsed story" account of reports of dreams and hallucinations avoids commitment to nonexistent objects.

I examine two arguments for nonconceptualism from the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. The idea is that only the assumption that experience content is nonconceptual does justice to the phenomenology of experience. In particular, if experience content is conceptual, we cannot account for its finely grained representational content. The problem is that visual color experience makes differences between shades of a color that are much more fine-grained than our conceptual repertoire allows. Further, conceptualism is incompatible with the situation-dependence of (...) perceptual content Kelly (Philos Phenomenol Res 62:601–608, 2001b). For instance, it is hard if not impossible to make room, in purely conceptual terms, for the difference between perceiving a certain shade of purple instantiated by a steel ball as compared to seeing it instantiated by a wool carpet. As to the argument from fineness of grain, I concede that the conceptualist’s demonstrative strategy against the argument is initially successful. However, it fails in the end because of problems with the phenomenal character of hallucination, which cannot be accounted for by appeal to only demonstrative concepts. As to the argument from situation-dependence, I point out that the conceptualist cannot convincingly account for the perceived presence, at the same time and in the same place, of situation-dependent and independent properties in experience. (shrink)

HOW MUCH DO WE LEARN ABOUT HALLUCINATIONS FROM THOUGHT-EXPERIMENTS? The idea that our sensory experience cannot serve as a ground for knowledge lingers on within philosophical thinking from its very beginning. Since even the ancient sceptics argued against the possibility of knowledge based on sense perception due to its potentially illusory or hallucinatory character, it seems reasonable to address the issue of hallucination itself. The purpose of this paper is to discuss upon the philosophical account of (...) class='Hi'>hallucination present in current debates. I will mainly work on the so-called ‘argument from hallucination’ which provides a prevalent objection both against the direct realism theory of perception, and externalist theories of content of experience. My primary intention will be to single out the ontological claims concerning hallucinatory experience that constitute the core of the argument from hallucination. Moreover, the legitimacy of philosophical theses concerning hallucination will be discussed both by means of philosophical analysis, and in the light of chosen empirical findings. (shrink)

Relationalism maintains that mind-independent objects are essential constituents of veridical perceptual experiences. According to the argument from hallucination, relationalism is undermined by perfect hallucinations, experiences that are introspectively indistinguishable from veridical perceptual experiences but lack an object. Recently, a new wave of relationalists have responded by questioning whether perfect hallucinations are possible: what seem to be perfect hallucinations may really be something else, such as illusions, veridical experiences of non-obvious objects, or experiences that are not genuinely (...) possible. This paper argues that however well new wave relationalism may handle brains in vats, drug users “seeing” pink elephants, and other extraordinary hallucinations, it struggles to accommodate mundane hallucinations, such as “hearing” your child cry out from the room down the hall when she is actually sound asleep or “feeling” vibrations on your thigh even when your phone isn't in your pocket. Mundane hallucinations are best explained as byproducts of noise in the perceptual system, and noise-induced hallucinations are resistant to the strategies that new wave relationalists deploy to explain away other hallucinations. Mundane hallucinations can thus underpin an especially powerful version of the argument from hallucination. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the so-called disjunctive views on hallucinations. I argue that neither of the options open to the disjunctivist is capable of accommodating basic phenomenological facts about hallucinatory experiences and the explanatory demands behind the classical argument from hallucination. A positive characterization of the hallucinatory case is not attractive to a disjunctivist once she is disposed to accept certain commonalities with veridical experiences. Negative disjunctivism glosses the hallucinatory disjunct in terms of indiscriminability. I will (...) argue that this move either renounces to characterize phenomenally the hallucinatory experience or does not take seriously questions about why indiscriminability is possible in the phenomenal realm. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences have been construed either as representational mental states—Representationalism—or as direct mental relations to the external world—Disjunctivism. Both conceptions are critical reactions to the so-called ‘Argument from Hallucination’, according to which perceptions cannot be about the external world, since they are subjectively indiscriminable from other, hallucinatory experiences, which are about sense-data ormind-dependent entities. Representationalism agrees that perceptions and hallucinations share their most specific mental kind, but accounts for hallucinations as misrepresentations of the external world. According (...) to Disjunctivism, the phenomenal character of perceptions is exhausted by worldly objects and features, and thus must be different from the phenomenal character of hallucinations. Disjunctivism claims that subjective indiscriminability is not the result of a common experiential ground, but is because of our inability to discriminate, from the inside, hallucinations from perceptions. At first sight, Representationalism is more congenial to the way cognitive science deals with perception. However, empirically oriented revisions of Disjunctivism could be developed and tested by giving a metacognitive account of hallucinations. Two versions of this account can be formulated, depending on whether metacognition is understood as explicit metarepresentation or as implicit monitoring of first-order informational states. The first version faces serious objections, but the second is more promising, as it embodies a more realistic view of perceptual phenomenology as having both sensory and affective aspects. Affectbased phenomenology is constituted by various metacognitive feelings, such as the feeling of being perceptually confronted with the world itself, rather than with pictures or mere representations. (shrink)

I consider a new, non-disjunctive strategy for ‘relational’ or ‘naïve realist’ theories to respond to arguments from ‘perfect’ (causally matching) hallucinations. The strategy, in a nutshell, is to treat such hypothetical cases as instances of perception rather than hallucination. After clarifying the form and dialectic of such arguments, I consider three objections to the strategy. I provide answers to the first two objections but concede that the third — based on the possibility of ‘chaotic’ (uncaused) perfect hallucinations — (...) cannot obviously be dealt with by the proposed strategy. However, such ‘chaotic’ scenarios are also problematic for standard representational accounts of experience. Thus I conclude that perfect hallucinations pose no more of a threat to the relational theory than to its main representational rival. (shrink)

Many take the possibility of hallucinations to imply that a relationalist account, according to which perceptual experiences are constituted by direct relations to ordinary mind-independent objects, is false. The common reaction among relationalists is to adopt a disjunctivist view that denies that hallucinations have the same nature as perceptual experiences. This paper proposes a non-disjunctivist response to the argument from hallucination by arguing that the alleged empirical and a priori evidence in support of the possibility of hallucinations (...) is inconclusive. A corollary upshot of the article is that whether hallucinations are possible or not is still an open empirical question. (shrink)

This commentary challenges the argument that the diathesis for hallucinations is equivalent to that for schizophrenia. Evidence against this comes from data on the prevalence of hallucinations in schizophrenia, their nonspecificity, and their relationships with moderating variables. We also highlight, however, the manner in which the Behrendt & Young (B&Y) hypothesis extends recent neuroscientific theories of schizophrenia, and its potential treatment applications.

Direct realists think that we can't get a clear view the nature of /hallucinating a white picket fence/: is it /representing a white picket fence/? is it /sensing white-picket-fencily/? is it /being acquainted with a white' picketed' sense-datum/? These are all epistemic possibilities for a single experience; hence they are all metaphysical possibilities for various experiences. Hallucination itself is a disjunctive or "multidisjunctive" category. I rebut MGF Martin's argument from statistical explanation for his "epistemic" conception of (...) class='Hi'>hallucination, but his view embeds in my view as a "reference-fixer". (shrink)

Although it has been something of a fetish for philosophers to distinguish between hallucination and illusion, the enduring problems for philosophy of perception that both phenomena present are not essentially different. Hallucination, in its pure philosophical form, is just another example of the philosopher’s penchant for considering extreme and extremely idealized cases in order to understand the ordinary. The problem that has driven much philosophical thinking about perception is the problem of how to reconcile our evident direct perceptual (...) contact with objects and properties with the equally evident fact that there is no phenomenological signal separating error and truth. “The obscure object of hallucination” offers a subtle and plausible solution to this problem and one that solves the problem generally, not just in the special case of hallucination. Johnston’s objective is to offer a theory of perception that meets two constraints: (1) that it provide an explanation of the possibility of delusive and veridical sensings that are indistinguishable from the first-person perspective and (2) that it count as form of direct realism where this is taken to involve acquaintance with the objects of perception. Johnston uses the first constraint to rule out disjunctivism. The second constraint is used to rule out conjunctivism, which as Johnston uses the term, includes most of the widely adopted philosophical theories of perception. Johnston also develops his own sophisticated and interesting theory of perception. In what follows, I will discuss the relation of Johnston’s theory to conjunctivism, examine one of his anti-conjunctivist arguments and finally compare Johnston’s theory with some other versions of direct realism. These topics constitute a very incomplete selection of the important issues discussed in this rich and interesting paper. I will also not disagree, in any fundamental way, with any of the central theses of Johnston’s discussion.. (shrink)

Naïve realists hold that the phenomenology of veridical perceptual experience is in part constituted by environmental objects that the subject is perceiving. Although naïve realism is well-motivated by considering the cognitive and epistemic roles of the phenomenology of veridical perceptual experience, it is considered difficult to explain hallucinatory and imaginative experiences. This paper provides three arguments to address these explanatory problems systematically on behalf of naïve realism. First, I argue that the imagination view of hallucination (IH), which states that (...) hallucinations are involuntary sensory imagination, can be applied to total and neutrally matching hallucinations. Second, I argue for the conjunction of IH and the representational view of imagination (RI), according to which sensory imagination (including hallucination) is representational (shortly RIH). Third, I argue that naïve realism can coherently be integrated with RIH. I finally present an integrative model of perception, imagination and hallucination from the perspective of the combination of naïve realism and RIH. (shrink)

Wegner’s argument on the illusory nature of conscious will, as developed in The Illusion of Conscious Will (2002) and other publications, has had major impact. Based on empirical data, he develops a theory of apparent mental causation in order to explain the occurrence of the illusion of conscious will. Part of the evidence for his argument is derived from a specific interpretation of the phenomenon of auditory verbal hallucinations as they may occur in schizophrenia. The aim of (...) this paper is to evaluate the validity of the evidence on auditory verbal hallucinations as employed by Wegner. I conclude that auditory hallucinations do not provide solid evidence for Wegner’s theory. Moreover, the phenomena in schizophrenia provide, in fact, an argument against part of Wegner’s theory of apparent mental causation. (shrink)

A theory of the structure and cognitive function of the human imagination that attempts to do justice to traditional intuitions about its psychological centrality is developed, largely through a detailed critique of the theory propounded by Colin McGinn. Like McGinn, I eschew the highly deflationary views of imagination, common amongst analytical philosophers, that treat it either as a conceptually incoherent notion, or as psychologically trivial. However, McGinn fails to develop his alternative account satisfactorily because (following Reid, Wittgenstein and Sartre) he (...) draws an excessively sharp, qualitative distinction between imagination and perception, and because of his flawed, empirically ungrounded conception of hallucination. His arguments in defense of these views are rebutted in detail, and the traditional, passive, Cartesian view of visual perception, upon which several of them implicitly rely, is criticized in the light of findings from recent cognitive science and neuroscience. It is also argued that the apparent intuitiveness of the passive view of visual perception is a result of mere historical contingency. An understanding of perception (informed by modern visual science) as an inherently active process enables us to unify our accounts of perception, mental imagery, dreaming, hallucination, creativity, and other aspects of imagination within a single coherent theoretical framework. (shrink)

Patients with psychotic disorders experience a range of reality distortions. These often include auditory-verbal hallucinations, and thought insertion to a lesser degree; however, their mechanisms and relationships between each other remain largely elusive. Here we attempt to establish a integrative model drawing from the phenomenology of both AVHs and TI and argue that they in fact can be seen as ‘spectra’ of experiences with varying degrees of agency and ownership, with ‘silent and internal own thoughts’ on one extreme and (...) ‘fully external and clearly audible voices’ in the absence of a speaker on the other. We believe a spectral model will add emphasis to the continuity of experience and help to better understand how one type of psychotic symptom may interact with another, and put forward the argument that the experience of TI itself is not sufficient to classify as a delusion. In addition we aim to discuss some of the conceptual issues surrounding AVHs and TI with first-person accounts and current philosophical and neuropsychological theories in mind. We propose that the mechanisms behind AVHs and TI are more complex than source-monitoring deficits; indeed, to understand such phenomena one must appreciate that their very ‘existence’ and ‘reality’ as experienced by the individual have much deeper implications and meaning, both philosophically and clinically. (shrink)

Psycholinguistic methods hold great promise for experimental philosophy. Many philosophical thought experiments and arguments proceed from verbal descriptions of possible cases. Many relevant intuitions and conclusions are driven by spontaneous inferences about what else must also be true in the cases described. Such inferences are continually made in language comprehension and production. This chapter explains how methods from psycholinguistics can be employed to study such routine automatic inferences, with a view to assessing intuitions and reconstructing arguments. We demonstrate (...) how plausibility ratings, pupillometry, and reading time measurements can be used to examine hypotheses about automatic inferences in speech and text comprehension. Two experiments on inferences from polysemous (perception-)verbs provide evidence of a potentially consequential ‘salience bias’. Findings help assess intuitions about unusual cases and analyse a philosophical paradox (‘argument from hallucination’). The paper thus illustrates how we can adapt psycholinguistic methods for philosophical purposes and demonstrates the methods’ philosophical usefulness. (shrink)

Recent work in defence of direct realism has concentrated on the representationalist and disjunctivist responses to the arguments from illusion and hallucination, whilst relatively little attention has been given to the argument from causation which has been dismissed lightly as irrelevant or confused. However such charges arise from an ambiguity in the thesis which is being defended and the failure to distinguish between metaphysical and epistemological issues and between factual and conceptual claims. The argument (...) from causation, as an argument against the conjunction of metaphysical direct realism and an explanation of the perceptual process in terms of a naturalistically understood causal chain of events, has not been answered in the philosophical literature. Moreover when the process of perception is fleshed out in terms of contemporary cognitive science, the difficulties are compounded. Neither representation-friendly mainstream cognitive science, nor representation-averse radical embodied cognitive science, is compatible with a theory of perception which is at the same time both direct and robustly realist. (shrink)

Sensations can occur in the absence of perception and yet be experienced ‘as if’ seen, heard, tasted, or otherwise perceived. Two concepts used to investigate types of these sensory-like mental phenomena (SLMP) are mental imagery and hallucinations. Mental imagery is used as a concept for investigating those SLMP that merely resemble perception in some way. Meanwhile, the concept of hallucinations is used to investigate those SLMP that are, in some sense, compellingly like perception. This may be a difference of degree. (...) Attempts to reliably differentiate between instances of each type of SLMP remain unresolved. Despite this, the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations are each routinely used independently of the other. These uses are especially interesting in those published accounts of experiments where equivalent findings about the neuroanatomical correlates of SLMP are reported in support of diverging knowledge-claims about the role of SLMP in neurocognitive processes. This practice presents a puzzle. To examine one aspect of this puzzle, I compare the uses of these two scientific concepts in three ways: examining their roles in differentiating between types of SLMP; exploring how their respective historical developments intersect; and analysing their contributions in neuroimaging experiments. In presenting this series of comparative analyses, I will draw on three themes from historical, philosophical, and social studies of scientific practices: interest in material contributions to knowledge; accounts of how concepts are used in experiments; and explorations of the historical conditions within which current practices emerge. Building on this literature, my comparative analyses supports five related claims. My first claim is that the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations are each used as independent tools in neuroimaging experiments. My second claim is that, as experimental tools, the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations are each used for investigating discrete epistemic goals. My third claim is that there are implicit interdependent associations that structure the uses of these two concepts as tools for independently investigating these discrete epistemic goals in neuroimaging experiments. This third claim rests on my analyses of both past and present uses of each concept. Firstly, as seen in their intersecting histories, there are disciplined performances of using the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations that carry-along shared associations about the mediating role of SLMP in thought. Secondly, these interdependent ‘mediator-view’ associations continue to structure the independent uses of each concept as a tool for investigating SLMP in pursuit of specific goals. Taking this further, my fourth claim is that recognising the structured uses of the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations can help to account for how equivalent SLMP-neuro-correlates are generated in support of diverging knowledge-claims. Finally, my fifth claim is that the structured uses of these concepts as tools can contribute to experiments in ways analogous to, yet not equivalent with, the active contributions of material instruments. Bringing these claims together, I argue that the concepts of mental imagery and hallucinations operate as structured tools that can actively contribute to the knowledge generated by neuroimaging experiments. In presenting this argument I seek to demonstrate that examining the structured uses of concepts as tools can complement existing approaches to studying how the heterogeneous dynamics of experimental practices can come to contribute to scientific knowledge in unintended ways. (shrink)

Howard Robinson’s “revised causal argument” for the sense-datum theory of perception combines elements from two other arguments, the “original” causal argument and the argument from hallucination. Mark Johnston, however, has argued that, once the nature of the object of hallucinatory experience is properly addressed, the errors in hallucination-based arguments for conjunctivist views of perception like the sense-datum theory become apparent. I outline Robinson’s views and then consider the implications of Johnston’s challenge for the (...) revised causal argument. (shrink)

The argument from reason states that if naturalism is true, then our beliefs are caused by physical processes rather than being causally based in their reasons, so our beliefs are not knowledge—including the belief in naturalism itself. Recent critics of the argument from reason provide dual process replies to the argument from reason—our beliefs can have both a naturalistic cause/ explanation and be caused/explained by its reasons, thereby showing that naturalism can accommodate knowledge. In (...) this paper I consider three dual process replies and conclude that none of them are successful. (shrink)

Psychopathy fascinates. Modernist writers construct out of it an image of alienated individualism pursuing the moment, killing they know not why, exploiting in passing, troubled, if troubled at all, not by guilt, but by perplexity (Camus 1989; Gide 1995; Mailer 1957; Musil 1996). Psychiatrists and psychologists—even those who should know better—are drawn by it to take off into philosophical speculation about morality, evil, and the beast in man (Mullen 1992; Simon 1996). Philosophers succumb to the temptation of attempting to ground (...) speculation in the supposed facticity of psychopathy. -/- Psychopathy is a cultural construct with roots going back to the eighteenth century, but which only came to full flower over the last fifty years (Hare 1998; Lewis 1974). The currently fashionable constructions of psychopathy find wide acceptance among clinicians and academics. The problem is, however, whether the concept has connections that have been established to the behavior, psychopathology, or the structure and function of brain worthy of according even a modest level of scientific status. There is little point in basing an argument on some supposed scientific gold standard if what glitters is iron pyrites (fools' gold). -/- Neil Levy's opening paragraph contains the statement "Yet in other respects they seem quite irrational; so much so that the term moral insanity has sometimes been applied to them" (p. 129). This both asserts that there is a category "them," namely the psychopaths, and connects them to "moral insanity." Moral insanity entered the language of psychiatry when Pritchard chose to use the term to translate Pinel's category of mania sans deliré (Pritchard 1836). Pinel was attempting to conceptualize a range of disorders that bordered on insanity in the sense of severe disturbances of affect, judgment, and behavior, but that were not accompanied by hallucinations or delusions (Pinel 1798/1964). In today's terminology, the cases he described would probably fall into diagnostic groups, including major depression, bipolar disorder, epilepsy, and a range of personality disorders. A number of his more striking case histories involved antisocial and even murderous behavior, which probably reflected Pinel's role in assessing offenders for the criminal courts of Paris. Pritchard's use of the English word "moral" reflected an appeal first to its use at the time to designate something which was like or similar, but not identical (a usage the OED labels "vulgar"), and second moral in the sense of ethical, conforming to virtuous behavior. Anglophones seized on the latter meaning, although Pinel emphasized the former. Forty years later, Henry Maudsley, the most widely read psychiatrist of his generation, could assert that moral insanity was as real as Colour blindness, some people being Colour blind and some moral blind (Maudsley 1879). Moral insanity became connected variously to phrenology with its own bump over the underlying moral cortex, with the twisted genetics of degeneration, with atavistic theories of criminality, and with a range of disorders of brain from epilepsy to frontal lobe damage (Combed 1853; Ellis 1890; Pick 1989). Although it is anachronistic to use the terms "psychopathy" and "moral insanity" together, it is clear they occupied a similar social and psychiatric space, albeit in different era. This should caution against too ready acceptance of psychopathy which may turn out to be as empty and dangerous a conceptualization as moral insanity. Why dangerous? Dangerous to those labeled, because the morally insane and the moral imbeciles were placed in preventive detention in asylums and prisons, and even sterilized in some jurisdictions. Dangerous to society, because it gave a spurious scientific justification for viewing crime not as reflecting the social evils of deprivation, ignorance, and inequality but as the ravages of the born criminals. -/- Psychopaths are not, as Levy asserts, "(causally) responsible for … more than fifty percent of violent crime" (p. 129). A proportion of violent offenders, which varies widely between observers, are labeled psychopaths. This is often on the basis of Hare's psychopathy checklist, which is a subjective, albeit through training aspiring to be reproducible, and to some extent self-sustaining, evaluation system (Hare 1980, 2003). Part of the checklist gathers data on prior antisocial behavior; part constrains the examiner to subjectively estimate such matters as glibness and callousness, part requires judgments about whether the... (shrink)

Arguments from fairness as described in Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_ are usually taken to aim at mitigating the strictness of the law or, in terms of procedure, to favour the defendant. This paper considers a more inclusive interpretation, that is, that arguments from fairness can work both ways. In the example given in the _Rhetoric,_ arguments from fairness are directed at a restrictive interpretation of the text. That may not be necessary however. Likewise, fairness may speak for the claimant. (...) Two examples may support this conclusion: a judicial speech by Hyperides, and the doctrine of issues appearing in Hellenistic school rhetoric. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, argument from fallacy. Also known as argumentum ad logicam, argument to logic, fallacy fallacy, and fallacist's fallacy, the argument from fallacy occurs when one reasons that because the argument for some conclusion is fallacious, the conclusion of that argument is false. Truth and falsity are features of claims. Fallacies are errors in reasoning, not errors about truth or falsity. That is, if (...) someone has committed a fallacy, then he has made an error in reasoning; but it does not follow that he has made a factual error. As a deductive argument, fallacy of affirming the consequent is invalid ‐ one cannot draw/infer the conclusion from the premises ‐ and yet the conclusion is true. As such, it should be clear that poor reasoning (committing a fallacy) does not entail a false conclusion. (shrink)

The argument from illusion/hallucination have been proposed many times as supporting the strong conclusion that we are always perceiving directly sense-data. In Sense & Sensibilia, Austin argues that this argument is based on a “mass of seductive (mainly verbal) fallacies”. In this paper, I argue that Austin's argumentative moves to deconstruct the argument from illusion is better understood if they are seen as due to his implicit commitment to some disjunctivist conception of perception. His (...) considerations should be taken as a depth discussion about how to conceive perception. If we conceive the perceptual capacity disjunctively, even the weaker conclusion that we sometimes perceive sense-data does not hold. In response to Austin, Ayer claimed that the strong conclusion of the argument from illusion could be sustained by the method of the possibility of error. I argue that this method alone does not sustain that conclusion and the controversy turns back to the conflict between different conceptions of perception. The argument from illusion is philosophically interesting by putting in evidence the problem of how the perceptual capacity should be articulated and conceived. Although matters of fact are relevant to this question, they alone do not decide it. (shrink)

This paper expands on the discussion in the first section of 'Beyond phenomenal naivete'. Let Phenomenal Naivete be understood as the doctrine that some phenomenal characters of veridical experiences are factive properties concerning the external world. Here I present in detail a phenomenological case for Phenomenal Naivete and an argument from hallucination against it. I believe that these arguments show the concept of phenomenal character to be defective, overdetermined by its metaphysical and epistemological commitments together with the (...) world. This does not establish a gappish eliminativism, but a gluttish pluralism, on which there are many imperfect deservers of the name 'phenomenal character'. Different projects in the philosophy of mind -- phenomenology, philosophy of conscious, metaphysics and epistemology of perception -- are concerned with different deservers of the name. (shrink)

Uriah Kriegel has attempted to describe the varieties of consciousness, that is, the primitive elements that constitute the phenomenal realm. Perceptual, imaginative, algedonic, cognitive, entertai...

In a recent exchange with prominent skeptical theists, Paul Draper has argued that skeptical theism bears no relevance to Humean versions of the argument from suffering. His argument rests, however, on a particular way of construing epistemically rational updating procedures that is not adopted by all forms of skeptical theism. In particular, a perspectival variety of skeptical theism, I argue, is relevant to his Humean arguments. I then generalize this result and explain how any argument (...) class='Hi'>from evil employing probabilistic premises is similarly threatened. (shrink)

The argument from silence is a pattern of reasoning in which the failure of a known source to mention a particular fact or event is used as the ground of an inference, usually to the conclusion that the supposed fact is untrue or the supposed event did not actually happen. Such arguments are widely used in historical work, but they are also widely contested. This paper surveys some inadequate attempts to model this sort of argument, offers a (...) new analysis using a Bayesian probabilistic framework that isolates the most problematic step in such arguments, illustrates a key problem besetting many uses of the argument, diagnoses the attraction of the argument in terms of a known human cognitive bias affecting the critical step, and suggests a standard that must be met in order for any argument from silence to have more than a very weak influence on historical reasoning. (shrink)

In C. S. Lewis’s Christian Apologetics: Pro and Con, I took the con in a debate with Victor Reppert about the soundness of Lewis’s famous “argument from reason.” Reppert then extended his argument in an article for Philosophia Christi; this article is my reply. I show that Reppert’s argument fails for three reasons. (1) It “loads the die” by falsely assuming that naturalism, by definition, can't include mental causation "on the basic level." (I provide multiple examples (...) of naturalist theories of mind that do exactly that). (2) Physical processes can reliably produce true beliefs. And (3) reasoning isn’t necessarily mental. (shrink)

Various attempts have been made recently to bring Husserl into the contemporary analytic discussion on sensory illusion and hallucination. On the one hand, this has resulted in a renewed interest in what one might call a ‘phenomenology of sense-deception.’ On the other hand, it has generated contrasting—if not utterly incompatible—readings of Husserl’s own account of sense perception. The present study critically evaluates the contemporary discourse on illusion and hallucination, reassesses its proximity to Husserl’s reflection on sensory perception, and (...) highlights the philosophical limits and structural deficiencies of the current debate in light of some of Husserl’s insights. The analysis first provides a synopsis of the argumentative structures, aims, and assumptions informing the conjunctivism-disjunctivism debate. This assessment is then critically elaborated through the lens of Husserlian phenomenology in its historical and theoretical distance from the recent debate. Contrary to certain readings of Husserl, the reconstruction of some cardinal phenomenological themes provides all the elements necessary to dislocate his own account from the conjunctivism-disjunctivism dispute, by means of both a ‘global’ and a ‘local’ analysis, and both exegetically and theoretically. Most importantly, a ‘return’ to Husserl shows the philosophical untenability of the whole controversy as not only leaving untouched the core problem of perception but also altering some of its essential traits. This critique of the image of experience portrayed in the contemporary discussion is conducted through a phenomenological clarification of perception as a distinct ‘structure of rules’ of consciousness and, more specifically, by means of a descriptive analysis centered on the core notion of horizonal-intentionality. (shrink)

Disjunctivism about perceptual appearances, as I conceive of it, is a theory which seeks to preserve a naïve realist conception of veridical perception in the light of the challenge from the argument from hallucination. The naïve realist claims that some sensory experiences are relations to mind-independent objects. That is to say, taking experiences to be episodes or events, the naïve realist supposes that some such episodes have as constituents mind-independent objects. In turn, the disjunctivist claims that (...) in a case of veridical perception like this very kind of experience that you now have, the experiential episode you enjoy is of a kind which could not be occurring were you having an hallucination. The common strategy of arguments from hallucination set out to show that certain things are true of hallucinations, and hence must be true of perceptions. For example, it is argued that hallucinations must have non-physical objects of awareness, or that such states are not relations to anything at all, but are at best seeming relations to objects. In insisting that veridical perceptual experience is of a distinct kind from hallucination, the disjunctivist denies that any of these conceptions of hallucination challenges our conception of veridical perceptions as relations to mind-independent objects. More specifically, I assume that the disjunctivist advocates naïve realism because they think that this position best articulates how sensory experience seems to us to be just through reflection. If the disjunctivist is correct in this contention, then anyone who accepts the conclusion of the argument from hallucination must also accept that the nature of sensory experience is other than it seems to us to be. In turn, one may complain that any such error theory is liable to lead to sceptical consequences. A Humean scepticism about the senses launches a challenge about our knowledge of the world through questioning the conception we have of what sense experience is, and how it can provide knowledge of the world. (shrink)

The recent scholarship on Advaita testifies that the epistemology of Advaita Vedānta is of a special sort that warrants a philosophical process of analysis and speculation in its quest for ultimate knowledge. The aim of this paper is to make a case in favour of Advaita as a philosophy than a theological enterprise and address the philosophical process required to reach the zenith of Advaita Philosophy. This would in turn give Advaita its own identity as a perennial philosophy in praxis (...) than to hide its uniqueness under the garb of a religion or philosophy by any other standards. The first part of this paper attempts to clarify the notion of philosophy and religion and their mutual interdependence in the system of Advaita. The second part of the paper discusses the significance of language, culture, and religion, and their subsequent sublation (tūlāvidyā) as a useful tool in enabling a state of mind unfettered from hallucinations and superimpositions that is essential for undertaking uninterrupted meditative reflections. The third part of the paper refutes any suggestion that Advaita is a religious enterprise by highlighting its philosophical significance through its analytic-deductive model as an essential contribution for attaining self-realisation. The fourth part of the paper refutes the suggestion that Advaita is merely an analytical philosophy and points out the importance of speculative element in the advanced state as a necessary substitute for analysis. The fifth part of this paper, as the conclusion, argues that though the initial path of enquiry in Advaita is somewhat loaded with religio-cultural connotations and symbols, in the later phase it is transcended and overwhelmingly identified with the methods of analysis and speculation. To sum up, the philosophical significance of Advaita significantly gains prominence than its religious counterpart, namely theology. (shrink)

Accounts of arguments from expert opinion take it for granted that expert judgments count as (defeasible) evidence for propositions, and so an argument that proceeds from premises about what an expert judges to a conclusion that the expert is probably right is a strong argument. In Mizrahi (2013), I consider a potential justification for this assumption, namely, that expert judgments are significantly more likely to be true than novice judgments, and find it wanting because of empirical (...) evidence suggesting that expert judgments under uncertainty are not significantly more likely to be true than novice judgments or even chance. In this paper, I consider another potential justification for this assumption, namely, that expert judgments are not influenced by the cognitive biases novice judgments are influenced by, and find it wanting, too, because of empirical evidence suggesting that experts are vulnerable to pretty much the same cognitive biases that novices are vulnerable to. If this is correct, then the basic assumption at the core of accounts of arguments from expert opinion, namely, that expert judgments count as (defeasible) evidence for propositions, remains unjustified. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Goal and Scope of the Argument The Concept of a Miracle Textual Assumptions Background Facts: Death and Burial The Salient Facts: W, D, and P Probabilistic Cumulative Case Arguments: Nature and Structure The Testimony of the Women: Bayes Factor Analysis The Testimony of the Disciples: Bayes Factor Analysis The Conversion of Paul: Bayes Factor Analysis The Collective Force of the Salient Facts Independence Hume's Maxim and Worldview Worries Plantinga's Principle of Dwindling Probabilities Knavery, (...) Folly, and the Love of Wonder Conclusion References. (shrink)