Philosophy of Mind, Miscellaneous

The aim of this article was to try to address the problem of theoretical coherence and adequacy theory in psychology from the perspective of one of the most influential schools of psychology in Europe at the time, namely the Brentano School. Unfortunately, this school has been marginalized in contemporary psychological science. The conceptual instrumentarium developed in the school—especially the concept of intentionality—offers attractive solutions, the greatest asset of which is the proposal of a coherent theoretical perspective for different types of (...) psychological variables, such as beliefs, emotions, and behavior, which could be defined and explained according to their specificity and not based on concepts adopted from different scientific disciplines. The lack of such a coherent perspective prevents the construction of adequate and precise definitions of variables that could be the starting point for strong psychological theories and resulting hypotheses. Psychological science should not limit its theoretical paradigms to deterministic explanations as these narrow the research perspective and, in many cases, transfer the researcher to the realm of mechanisms of little value for understanding the nature and even the function of mental processes. (shrink)

People usually think that phenomenal consciousness is unique to humans and animals, but panpsychism extends it to other beings and considers consciousness to be fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. This extension is the common claim of panpsychists and has ethical implications. Panpsychists differ from each other in the extent of extension of consciousness. Micropsychism extends consciousness to the fundamental particles at the micro-level, and macropsychism extends it to cosmos and all physical objects in the universe. According to micropsychism, (...) fundamental particles have moral status and significant moral standing, but this truth has no practical moral consequences and does not require us to change our behavior towards them. According to macropsychism, the universe has moral status and significant moral standing, and we should act in a way that increases the pleasure and decreases the pain of all beings that we know the cause of their pleasure and pain. Also, macropsychism requires admitting the moral status and significant moral standing of all animate and inanimate beings, and we must behave in such a way that the pleasure of animals and plants increases and their pain decreases, but we do not have any moral obligation regarding inanimate beings. (shrink)

This volume features new essays on the application and role of naturalism in philosophical inquiry. It serves as an important update on current controversies about naturalism. The contributors include leading figures who have written on naturalism and its relevance to a wide range of issues across philosophical subdisciplines. The chapter discuss how naturalism can be properly employed in different philosophical areas such as epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of religion, philosophy of time, philosophy of science, philosophy (...) of mathematics, philosophy of memory, cognitive science, ethics, meta-ethics, and normativity. Naturalism and Its Challenges will be of interest to scholars and advance students working in a wide range of philosophical disciplines. (shrink)

Two approaches to prehistoric numeracy are analyzed and compared. The first uses traditional archaeological methods and criteria to examine and characterize marks on prehistoric artifacts for the purpose of assessing whether they were notations. The second uses a theoretical framework in which cognition is extended—meaning that material forms are a component of the mind—in order to understand the role of counting devices in numerical cognition. Each answers a different question: The traditional approach is concerned with understanding the intent and meaning (...) of artifactual marks, while the extended approach focuses on how material forms contribute to numerical realization, explication, and elaboration. Both highlight ongoing issues in investigating prehistoric numeracy, which might benefit from a combined and expanded methodology. (shrink)

I respond to P. McLaughlin and O. Schlaudt’s critique of my analysis of the cross-cultural origins of numbers, noting that my work draws extensively upon number systems as ethnographically attested around the globe, and thus is based only in part on the important Mesopotamian case study. I place the work of Peter Damerow in its historical context, noting its genesis in Piaget’s genetic epistemology and the problems associated with applying Piaget’s developmental theory to societies. While Piaget assumed numeracy involves invariant (...) mental transformations, ongoing research in numerical cognition has been largely unsuccessful in identifying specific brain-bound mechanisms for numerical structure. Accordingly, I suggest the extended mind paradigm from the philosophy of mind may be a more fruitful approach, and detail such an approach using Material Engagement Theory. (shrink)

This edited volume aims to gather philosophers, archaeologists, and psychologists/cognitive scientists working at the intersection of paleoanthropology, cognitive archaeology, psychology, and philosophy of mind and cognition. It is a result of the Sciences of the Origin project supported by the University of Oxford project ‘New Horizons for Science and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe’ funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

This paper explores the intersection between the extended mind thesis and transhumanism, with a particular focus on how technology may influence, alter, or enhance human cognitive abilities. The extended mind thesis posits that external elements can become integral components of cognitive processes. Drawing on this notion, the paper contends that transhumanism adopts such perspective in advocating for the possibility of cognitive enhancement. In this sense, it assesses whether technology can truly improve cognitive function or whether it might, instead, induce a (...) specific type of ignorance by diminishing cognitive phenomenology—the lived, experiential dimension of mental processes or the phenomenal aspect of cognitive consciousness. The assumption that cognitive technologies inherently enhance independent mental performance is challenged, with the argument that overreliance on technology may impair the ability to execute cognitive tasks autonomously. The analysis concludes that the integration of technological artifacts with human cognition can indeed lead to a specific form of ignorance by compromising cognitive phenomenology. It also suggests that such ignorance signals that the excessive use of technology may undermine the ability to perform cognitive tasks independently. These two conclusions invite reconsideration of the transhumanist claim that technology can improve human cognition. -/- El artículo explora la intersección entre la tesis de la mente extendida y el transhumanismo, enfocándose, específicamente, en cómo las tecnologías pueden influir, alterar o expandir nuestras capacidades y habilidades cognitivas. A través de un análisis de la tesis de la mente extendida, que propone que algunos elementos externos pueden formar parte constitutiva de nuestros procesos cognitivos, se argumenta que el transhumanismo adopta dicha tesis al tratar el asunto del mejoramiento cognitivo, y se examina si la tecnología puede realmente mejorar nuestras capacidades mentales, o si, por el contrario, podría inducir a un tipo específico de ignorancia al hacernos perder la fenomenología cognitiva, es decir, la vivencia de nuestros procesos mentales o el aspecto fenoménico de nuestra conciencia cognitiva. Se cuestiona, además, si el acoplamiento con tecnologías cognitivas disminuiría nuestra capacidad de realizar tareas mentales de forma autónoma, sugiriendo que una dependencia excesiva de la tecnología podría reducir nuestra habilidad para realizar procesos cognitivos sin ayuda de artefactos tecnológicos. Luego del análisis, el artículo concluye que, efectivamente, nuestro acoplamiento con artefactos tecnológicos puede conducirnos a un tipo específico de ignorancia al eliminar nuestra fenomenología cognitiva. También determina que dicha ignorancia es síntoma de que el uso excesivo de tecnologías puede despojarnos de nuestra habilidad de realizar tareas cognitivas sin asistencia tecnológica. Estas dos conclusiones deberían minar, o al menos replantear, las aspiraciones transhumanistas acerca del mejoramiento tecnológico de nuestra mente. (shrink)

Dans la philosophie contemporaine, la mémoire n’est plus un instrument qui apprend des évènements de manière passive. Ici, on parlera de la mémoire qu’une personne possède quand elle se souvient de sa propre vie ou d’un moment spécifique. Ce concept, un des plus anciens de la psychologie cognitive, s’appelle mémoire autobiographique. Grâce à cette pertinente interprétation d’un concept plus vivant de mémoire dans la science, la littérature et la philosophie de notre temps, on se demandera si, à travers son activité, (...) elle est dépendante d’un concept d’une temporalité linéaire ou si en fait sa vivacité lui permet de créer un temps propre. Quelques auteurs ont essayé de répondre à ce problème-là et ici on traitera de trois: Henri Bergson, Bertrand Russell et John Campbell, ce dernier étant un philosophe contemporain, en essayant d’établir les liens parmi les trois, avec pour but la mise de lumière des questions et des réponses qui ont survécu la mort des deux premiers auteurs mentionnés. À travers cette recherche, on se rendra compte que si le concept de mémoire était auparavant plus spécifiquement étudié toujours en connexion avec le concept d’image, dans la tradition analytique elle de plus en plus est mise à coté de la notion moderne d’identité personnelle. Toutefois, ce qui reste commun est l’effort de penser le souvenir au delà de la vie pratique; notamment en tant qu’une faculté psychique qui oriente tous nos choix et notre appréhension du monde et qui toujours semble échapper la dualité schématique entre circularité et linéarité temporelle, déjà mise en question dans les années 1990. (shrink)

The book results from several years of work on the problems of consciousness and the self as they are currently posed in the Philosophy of mind and Philosophy of psychiatry. I debate various theories of the self, including those found in contemporary versions of dualism, panpsychism, structuralism, enactivism, and predictive processing, while working towards naturalising the phenomenology of subjectivity.

Generally, we confidently ascribe valuing states to ourselves. We make statements such as “I value democracy” or “I value my best friend” - our sense of who we are depends on doing so. Yet what justifies that confidence? If you were asked “Do you value philosophy, or are you just doing it for the money?”, how might you go about generating such knowledge? I will operate with the notion that valuing involves, at a minimum, a set of distinctive emotional dispositions (...) toward the valued object. Given this view of valuing, a plausible explanation stemming from Tooming and Miyazono is the following: to know whether we value, we need to predict our potential or future emotional reactions. That is, they suggest that affective forecasting is necessary to generate knowledge of valuing states. I argue that, despite its intuitive appeal, affective forecasting is not necessary. I then consider a more modest claim, namely that affective forecasting is still explanatorily powerful when it comes to self-knowledge of valuing states, as it explains the difficulty of generating such knowledge. I reject this further claim, arguing that there is a stronger available explanation: the use of theories about valuing. (shrink)

In this essay we focus on our vast web of beliefs that serves us as a rough and ready map of reality, generated more to give us comfort and confidence in an intimidating world than to be accurate. Maps of reality can never be accurate in any ultimate sense since reality itself is a convoluted entity that can only be accessed in never- ending layers. Our repertoire of beliefs, generated compulsively in the mind, span a huge spectrum in respect of (...) ties to affect and emotions on the one hand and of their credibility in depicting reality on the other. The interaction between our affect-based psychological needs, our need for having a sound comprehension of reality, and the infinitely tangled reality itself, leads to the generation of a large diversity of types of beliefs, where these get revised under the impact of reality by overcoming the restrain- ing effect of emotions in diverse ways and over diverse time scales—interestingly, the ‘reality’ includes the complex repertoire of affect and emotions itself that may, in cer- tain cases, generate the impact for our beliefs to change. Beliefs represented by small clusters in our belief network (see below) are commonly prone to frequent revision in a more or less random manner, though there are beliefs acquired in early life that are intransigent to change because of overriding ties to emotions. Beliefs represented by larger clusters are comparatively durable, and their revision has a systematic aspect to it because of a greater role of evidence-based factors—however,the evidence may, once again, be tied with emotions and beliefs oriented away from reason. Finally, there are prepotent beliefs that are resistant to change even over a lifetime. Often, these beliefs get revised only if we engage with our own selves, looking at conflicting forces within ourselves. In this context, we refer to narratives that are self-reinforcing and exercise almost a mesmerizing influence on us. In all this, there is a dual role of ‘rationality’ that needs being attended to in describing and explaining belief revision—rationality is not exclusively based on evidence and reason, but includes the implicit operation of affect and emotions too. (shrink)

Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) have gripped the public imagination ever since Raymond Moody’s watershed book Life After Life brought them to widespread attention in 1975. These experiences are commonly reported to involve the sensation of leaving one’s body and watching efforts by medical per-sonnel at resuscitation or even events further afield, as well as experiences of passing through a tunnel towards a being of light and love and meeting deceased friends and relatives. Such experiences are some-times alleged to constitute evidence for (...) an afterlife, but exactly how they do so is seldom spelled out pre-cisely. The aim of this paper, then, is to carefully consider three different inferential pathways from data about NDEs to the conclusion that there is an afterlife. I shall argue that at least two of them provide moderately strong support to this conclusion. (shrink)

This thesis is about perceptual experience, its subjective character, and how it is essentially structured. It focuses specifically on how the nature of perception is shaped not only by our acquaintance with the world but also by the very structure of experience itself. My central claim is that perceptual consciousness incorporates different aspects, some of which constitute the very way in which experiences are organized, sustained, and structured. Over the course of this thesis, I develop and defend an original account (...) of the nature of perceptual experience by integrating naïve realism, a prominent contemporary Anglophone theory of perception, with insights and ideas from the Phenomenological tradition. In particular, I argue that there are fruitful grounds for combining naïve realism and a phenomenologically grounded account of the essential structural features of experience (‘minimal self’, ‘temporality’, ‘anticipation’). Naïve realism holds that perception is fundamentally a matter of being in direct contact with some mind-independent entities. Proponents of naïve realism often emphasize the ‘object-dependent’ nature of perception. The appeal to the structural features of experience offers us a promising way to delineate the oft-overlooked ‘subject-dependent’ nature of perception and capture the phenomenological richness of our conscious experiential life. This thesis offers a rich, phenomenologically informed account of the nature of perception which in turn places us in a better position to understand the nature of hallucination. The integration of naïve realism and the structural approach to consciousness I develop in this thesis yields a novel solution to the problem of hallucination: structural disjunctivism. According to this view, the ‘partially overlapping’ psychological nature of perception and hallucination is accounted for in terms of their structural similarities and differences. I seek to show how detailed analyses and reflections on the structures of perceptual experience pave the way to reconceive the phenomenological basis of naïve realism. (shrink)

How can we have a sense of the presence of ordinary three-dimensional objects (e.g., an apple on my desk, a partially occluded cat behind a picket fence) when we are only presented with some parts of objects perceived from a particular egocentric viewpoint (e.g., the facing side of the apple, the unoccluded parts of the cat)? This paper presents and defends a novel answer to this question by incorporating insights from two prominent contemporary theories of perception, naïve realism and sensorimotor (...) theory. Naïve realism is the view that perception is fundamentally a matter of obtaining a relation of ‘acquaintance’ with some mind-independent entities (e.g., objects, properties, events). Sensorimotor theory holds that perception involves implicit practical understanding or ‘anticipation’ of the covariance between movements and sensory changes. I argue that perceptual presence is best accounted for in terms of the combination of our direct ‘acquaintance’ with some parts of perceived objects and sensorimotor ‘anticipations’ of how the objects would look different depending on some movements and actions. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind and epistemology have studied extensively what beliefs are and what we ought to believe. Yet, we are guided toward many of our beliefs by our perspectives: cognitive structures that guide how we see and think. A chief role of ordinary perspective talk is to describe clashes between different points of view that arise when people interact. In this paper, I argue that the most developed extant account of perspectives, by Elisabeth Camp, lacks the resources to analyze interactions (...) between perspectives. By contrast, my account of perspectives—the agenda view—better captures the kinds of differences and confrontations that underlie ordinary perspective talk by focusing on the ‘zetetic’ role of perspectives in directing inquiry. (shrink)

Given the ever-present subject of consciousness wherever consciousness is, it is peculiar that consciousness researchers often mention mental states as if they are conscious independently of being the conscious states of someone [1, p. 132]. We refer to visual perceptions that become conscious, when in reality no one has ever studied mere conscious visual perceptions. What are studied are visual perceptions belonging to conscious human or animal subjects; it is the subjects who are conscious of visual stimuli, not the visual (...) perceptions. I do not know all the reasons why conscious subjects are rarely mentioned in consciousness science, but one could be pragmatic. Explaining the mysterious jump from the nonconscious nuts and bolts of neurons to the aurora borealis of consciousness is a hard problem. But it is an easy problem compared to explaining the emergence of a single conscious subject from the human brain’s 86 billion neurons [cf. 5]. Perhaps it is more practically realistic to solve the less hard problem before attempting to solve the harder hard problem. On the other hand, if we ignore a necessary condition for the presence of consciousness, our explanations of it could be plagued by inadequacy. And how can we explain our whole data set regarding consciousness if we neglect the most fundamental aspect of the data? (shrink)

Folk psychology is often seen as a conceptual framework for our understanding of the mind. If so, then what does it tell us about the concept of mind? Does folk psychological vocabulary play a fundamental role in mindreading? Are folk psychological explanations autonomous? This issue is dedicated to these and other topics associated with folk psychology, mindreading and the mind, such as self-knowledge, pre-linguistic understanding of others, normativity, infant and chimpanzee mindreading, pain and emotions.

Karl Pfeifer argues against Searle's "Connection Principle" which requires that unconscious intentional mental states must be in principle accessible to consciousness.

Towing the line of the shared interaction between Indian and Western phenomenological thought, the paper presents a phenomenological analysis and appreciation of the idealistic esoteric tradition of Pratyabhijna, a sub-school of what is popularly known as Kasmir Saivism. Armed with the lens of the Husserlian phenomenological method, the paper looks at the phenomenological elements of epistemological 'world-making' within Pratyabhijna. With the vantage point supplied by previous research that has investigated parallels in the notions of consciousness between Husserlian phenomenology and the (...) Indian philosophical traditions of Samkara, Ramanuja, and the Yogacara Buddhists, the paper suggests that both transcendental phenomenology and Pratyabhijna postulate a foundational, temporal, and intentional consciousness, in contradistinction to the aforementioned traditions. In underscoring the intentional nature of consciousness in Pratyabhijna, the paper emphasises the epistemological dyad of prakasa-vimarsa. While doing the following, it also points to the differences in the key metaphysical assumptions of the two traditions. (shrink)

We offer philosophical motivations for a method we call Virtual World Cognitive Science (VW CogSci), in which researchers use virtual embodied agents that are embedded in virtual worlds to explore questions in the field of Cognitive Science. We focus on questions about mental and linguistic representation and the ways that such computational modeling can add rigor to philosophical thought experiments, as well as the terminology used in the scientific study of such representations. We find that this method forces researchers to (...) take a god’s-eye view when describing dynamical relationships between entities in minds and entities in an environment in a way that eliminates the need for problematic talk of belief and concept types, such as the belief that cats are silly, and the concept CAT, while preserving belief and concept tokens in individual cognizers’ minds. We conclude with some further key advantages of VW CogSci for the scientific study of mental and linguistic representation and for Cognitive Science more broadly. (shrink)

In this paper I return to Hubert Dreyfus’ old but influential critique of artificial intelligence, redirecting it towards contemporary predictive processing models of the mind (PP). I focus on Dreyfus’ arguments about the “frame problem” for artificial cognitive systems, and his contrasting account of embodied human skills and expertise. The frame problem presents as a prima facie problem for practical work in AI and robotics, but also for computational views of the mind in general, including for PP. Indeed, some of (...) the issues it presents seem more acute for PP, insofar as it seeks to unify all cognition and intelligence, and aims to do so without admitting any cognitive processes or mechanisms outside of the scope of the theory. I contend, however, that there is an unresolved problem for PP concerning whether it can both explain all cognition and intelligent behavior as minimizing prediction error with just the core formal elements of the PP toolbox, and also adequately comprehend (or explain away) some of the apparent cognitive differences between biological and prediction-based artificial intelligence, notably in regard to establishing relevance and flexible context-switching, precisely the features of interest to Dreyfus’ work on embodied indexicality, habits/skills, and abductive inference. I address several influential philosophical versions of PP, including the work of Jakob Hohwy and Andy Clark, as well as more enactive-oriented interpretations of active inference coming from a broadly Fristonian perspective. (shrink)

In our everyday interaction with the environment, we often perceive objects and spaces as opportunities to feel, maintain, enhance, and change our affective states and processes. The concept of affective affordance was coined to accommodate this aspect of ordinary perception and the many ways in which we rely on the material environment to regulate our emo- tions. One natural way to think of affective affordances in emotion regulation is to interpret them as tools for regulating felt affective states. We argue (...) that this way of conceiving of affective affordances is too restrictive. By analyzing the role of expressive properties of objects and spaces in emotion regulation, we show that our environment does not need to elicit felt affective states to regulate our emotions. Thus, we revise the concept of affective affordance to accommodate these cases. This revised concept explains more with less. Hence, it should be preferred in wide-reaching philosophical projects that aim to explain human affectivity as a situated phenomenon. (shrink)

The subject of mental processes or mental states is usually assumed to be an individual, and hence the boundaries of mental features – in a strict or metaphorical sense – are naturally regarded as reaching no further than the boundaries of the individual. This chapter addresses various philosophical developments in the 20th and 21st century that questioned this natural assumption. I will frame this discussion by fi rst presenting a historically infl uential commitment to the individualistic nature of the mental (...) in Descartes’ theory. I identify various elements in the Cartesian conception of the mind that were subsequently criticized and rejected by various externalist theories, advocates of the extended mind hypothesis and defenders of embodied cognition. Then I will indicate the main trends in these critiques. (shrink)

In this paper I will address the specifics of Peirce’s concept of qualia. Peirce is the first philosopher to ever use the term qualia as philosophical, but his understanding of it differs considerably from the contemporary philosophy of mind. There are certain tendencies to present Peirce in this regard as a forerunner of contemporary debates. Although such an interpretation is not unfounded, I believe that it does not do full justice to the significance of the concept for Peirce’s thought. I (...) will try to elucidate its importance with an adequate web of synonyms, that is, the other important concepts in Peirce’s philosophy. The main idea of the paper is that Peirce’s concept of qualia is not a technical term meant to tackle a finite group of problems within an already accepted ontology, but one of the concepts that Peirce uses to build his ontology. (shrink)

We reply to commentaries by Anthony Fernandez and Daryl Efron and Ivan Mathieson, outlining the nature of our phenomenological interviews.

The so-called ‘mental files theory’ in the philosophy of mind stems from an analogy comparing object-concepts to ‘files’, and the mind to a ‘filing system’. Though this analogy appears in philosophy of mind and language from the 1970s onward, it remains unclear to many how it should be interpreted. The central commitments of the mental files theory therefore also remain unclear. Based on influential uses of the file analogy within philosophy, I elaborate three central explanatory roles for mental files. Next, (...) I outline several common criticisms of the file picture, which have been a source of resistance to the view. Finally, I outline several interpretations of the theory, thus highlighting that the best interpretation of the file-theory's central analogy remains a live issue. (shrink)

Justin Garson has recently argued that proper functions are proximal activities of traits selected by phylogenetic or ontogenetic selection processes, and that traits are dysfunctional only if they cannot perform their proper functions for constitutional reasons. We partially agree with Garson, but reject the view that functions are proximal activities, as well as his account of dysfunctions. Instead, we propose our own theory that biological functions are selected dispositions and that a trait is dysfunctional in virtue of not having the (...) dispositions for which it was selected. This account can explain both defects (or dysfunctions in Garson’s sense) and dysfunctions due to environmental factors. Moreover, it offers a neat way to explain the graduality of dysfunction. (shrink)

This paper is my very first publication, please feel free to give me feedback and constructive criticism. I hope to be able to pitch into the discussion around the extension of mind and the philosophy of mind in general. It is my Bachelor's thesis, supervised and graded by a lecturer and assistant professor at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. Simply for their own privacy, I have censored their name from the publication. -/- Thank you for reading.

The resolution of subjective-objective dichotomy is not lies in reduction rather grounded on the synthesis of phenomenal aspect and intentional-representational aspect of experience. We have to acknowledge the limits of both physical and mental objectivity and gradually transcend and expand the scope of physical as well as mental objectivity through neutral perspective. The Nagelian version of phenomenal realism has indicated for resolving the subjective-objective dichotomy by observing the interaction of subjective point of view and objective point of view about the (...) reality from neutral perspective. (shrink)

Human language, hominin tool production modes, and multimodal communications systems of primates and other animals are currently well-studied for how they display compositionality or combinatoriality. In all cases, the former is defined as a kind of hierarchical nesting and the latter as a lack thereof. In this article, I extend research on combinatoriality and compositionality further to investigations of everyday primate skills. Daily locomotion modes as well as behaviors associated with subsistence practices, hygiene, or body modification rely on the hierarchical (...) nesting of different behavioral and cognitive actions into complex skills. I introduce a scheme which uses hierarchical organization to differentiate combinatorial from compositional skills. Combinatorial skills are defined either as aggregational or linearly hierarchical depending on whether the skill occurs momentarily in space or unfolds sequentially over time. Compositional skills are defined either as nested or interactionally hierarchical depending on whether the skill results in new constructs or in new interactions between existing constructs. The methodology I propose combines epistemological hierarchy theory with data from primatological field research and experimental and comparative psychological research and provides a means to integrate current constructionist and extended views on cognition and action with older research on behavioral logics in psychology and operational chain thinking in anthropology. The approach furthermore synchronizes with ongoing research on teleonomy, intentionality, and creativity. -/- . (shrink)

In the history of philosophy, the concept of self has been perennially elusive. The philosophical quest to understand the self is rife with phenomenological and metaphysical analyses, often overlooking other kinds of selves present in the biological realm. To systematically explore this question of non-human selves, I categorize the literature on philosophical and biological notions of self into the biogenic, the zoogenic, and the anthropogenic approaches to self. This article attempts to chart the genesis, the continuum, and the lowest bound (...) of the self. Further, I enumerate challenges in developing a biogenic approach to self or taking the concept of self all the way down in the phylogenetic tree. (shrink)

Relationalism is the view that perception is partly constituted by external objects (McDowell 1994; Campbell 2002; Martin 2004). Faced with the hallucination argument, and unsatisfied with the standard disjunctivist reply, some ‘new wave’ relationalists explain away the possibility of hallucinations as mere illusions (Alston 1999; Watzl 2010; Ali 2018; Masrour 2020). In this paper, I argue that some of these illusions (as in Chalmers 2005; Ali 2018) are perceptions of internal objects which appear as external ones. Then, in response to (...) the obvious screening-off objection, I argue for a novel reply called ‘intrameralism’: roughly, external objects are ordinarily perceived because they gain internal parts—they ‘grow into the head’. The preceding hallucinations are thus ultimately explained away as a kind of perceptual synecdoche, in which internal parts appear as their (ordinarily perceived) external wholes. The paper concludes by addressing some objections. (shrink)

From artistic performances in the visual arts and in music to motor control in gymnastics, from tool use to chess and language, humans excel in a variety of skills. On the plausible assumption that skillful behavior is a visible manifestation of intelligence, a theory of intelligence—whether human or not—should be informed by a theory of skills. More controversial is the question as to whether, in order to theorize about intelligence, we should study certain skills in particular. My target is the (...) view that only a particular class/kind of skill (i.e., ‘theoretical’, or ‘intellectual’ skills, versus ‘practical’, or ‘embodied’ skills) manifests intelligence, or especially does so. I call this view ‘Intelligence Elitism’. Intelligence Elitism is pervasive in popular culture, in academic culture, as well as in psychometrics. It has, arguably, a long pedigree in philosophy (though explicit arguments for it are rare). But it is a substantive view which, if false, can promote unfairness. In this article, I defend Intelligence Socialism—the claim that intelligent behavior is everywhere skillful behavior is. I go on to isolate the best case for the further Elitist claim that, even if all skillful behavior is intelligent in some modest sense of ‘intelligence’, there is a principled difference in intelligence between theoretical, or intellectual, skills, on one side, and practical, or embodied skills, on the other, and I show it wanting. (shrink)

This paper examines both creepiness and the distinctive reaction had to creepiness, being “creeped out.” The paper defends a response-dependent account of creepiness in terms of this distinctive reaction, contrasting our preferred account to others that might be offered. The paper concludes with a discussion of the value of detecting creepiness.

A popular positivistic line of thinking seems to be cropping up again, declaring that the sciences are on the verge of a paradigmatic shift. One that will merge science and philosophy to finally answer all the great big questions once and for all. Questions such as What is life? What is consciousness? What makes individuals who they are? Why does our universe seem fine-tuned for our existence? How did it all begin? While such questions are undoubtedly important, the truth is, (...) they are essentially philosophical. That is to say, they escape the kind of exactness required of the hard sciences. The upshot is that they are at best only answerable to a limited extent, if they are even answerable at all. (shrink)

Both lay people and philosophers assume that hoping for something implies imagining it. According to contemporary philosophical accounts of hope, hope involves an element of imagination as input, part, or output of hope. However, there is no systematic view of the interaction between hope and the different processes constituting imagination. In this paper we put forward a view of (i) the kind of imaginings typically triggered by hopeful states, (ii) the nature of the interaction between hope and hopeful imaginings, and (...) (iii) the epistemic value of imagining out of hope. We argue that a paradigmatic output of hope is an immersive kind of cognitive imagination. Additionally, justified hopes constrain our immersive imaginings in such a way as to provide them with a specific epistemic value. Hopeful imaginings are not mere fantasies or wishful thinking; they constitute valuable experiences we can learn from and rely on in planning our future. (shrink)

This paper explores how the social and affective lives of people with marginalized social identities are particularly affected by digital influences. Specifically, the paper examines whether and how social media enables LGBTQ+ people to experience feelings of belonging. It does so by drawing on literature from digital epistemology and phenomenology of the digital, and by presenting and analyzing the results of a qualitative study consisting of 25 interviews with LGBTQ+ people. The interviews were conducted to explore the social media experiences (...) of LGBTQ+ people through an empirical framework informed by both phenomenology and social epistemology, particularly feminist standpoint theory. The paper emphasizes the importance of positionality and the epistemic value of research that centers marginalized perspectives and employs an anti-oppressive research approach, and focuses on understanding the digital experiences of LGBTQ+ people from within their marginalized perspective. (shrink)

The article "Philosophy is the unborn child of science: in search of a universal commonly used language" explores the problem of creating a universal philosophical language that includes not only the language of classification concepts of natural language that define people's reasoning thinking, but also the language of comparative concepts, which is the basis their mind and wisdom. At the same time, the author divides comparative concepts into two parts, the first of which is determined by particular concepts – concepts (...) of practical mind peculiar to natural and exact sciences, while the second part is determined by extremely general concepts – categories of pure mind, which were supposed to become the beginnings of philosophy as a verifiable rigorous science. Along with the majority of thinking people, the author sees that as a cumulative rigorous science, philosophy has not taken place, and therefore considers it an unborn child of science. In this regard, he analyzes various philosophical traditions and comes to the conclusion that "everything is known in comparison." Therefore, the basis of a language that would facilitate effective communication between different philosophical directions, as well as between natural and humanitarian disciplines, can only be the language of comparative concepts. As a result of using the four types of opposition identified by Aristotle as the principles of philosophy: "contradictory", "correlated", "opposite", "deprivation and possession", the author built a philosophical Matrix from which he approaches the creation of such a universal language. At the same time, the Matrix includes other more complex comparative concepts than those of Aristotle – concepts of pure mind found by the author in the teachings of outstanding thinkers of the past: Lao Tzu, Pythagoras, Heraclitus and K. Marx, but today misunderstood or forgotten. The comparative concepts returned from oblivion, in the author's opinion, represent a valuable contribution to many areas of philosophy and linguistics, and can be useful for philosophers, psychologists, educators, linguists and anyone interested in the problem of language in philosophy and their undeniable role in the development of mind and wisdom. (shrink)

Henry Habberley Price, who published as H. H. Price, was born in 1899. From 1935 to 1959 he was Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University. Price was a major figure in his lifetime well-known especially for the “clarity and elegance of style”, which, according to Martha Kneale (1996: xix), make his works readable in spite of changing fashions in philosophy. Many people’s acquaintance nowadays with Price’s philosophical work derives from his being a target in Austin’s (1962) famous attack on (...) the sense-datum theory. This restricted acquaintance with his output is one reason that Price has been ignored in recent philosophy. -/- Mainstream philosophy neglected him after the Second World War, perhaps partly because, when articulating his ideas, he mainly engaged with philosophers of the past, such as Locke and Hume. His thought was, however, valued by fellow philosophers such as Broad, Moore, Ayer, and generations of his students at Oxford, including Sellars, Armstrong, and Anscombe. -/- Although Price is seen mainly as a philosopher of perception, only two of his six books are about perception and he had a major influence, also publishing many articles, on a variety of topics, including some we cannot focus on here, e.g., our evidence of other minds (1938; 1930b: 195) and psychical research (1940c; 1953b; 1972; 1995; an interest he claims to share with Neo-Platonists [1968a: 447]). We can only provide a sketch of his rich contributions. After briefly sketching his life (§1), we discuss his philosophy’s general features (§2), contributions to the studies of perception (§3), properties (§5.1), recognition (§5), belief (§6), religious belief (§6.8), his revival and serious study of Hume (§4), and some remarkable anticipations (§7). (shrink)

This article explores the concept of the "Word of God" from three perspectives: the perspective of classification concepts inherent in natural language with its reasoning thinking (rassudok), and the perspective of mind thinking (razum). At the same time, mind thinking in comparative terms is divided into two fundamentally different parts, limited by particular and general concepts. The former arise from nature through our sense organs, for example, light and darkness, day and night, heavy and light - these are practical mind (...) concepts, the foundations of natural sciences. Whereas the latter are categories of pure mind, such as identity and difference, oppositions - the product of our conceptualizing thinking, providing the foundations of philosophy, understood as a rigorous Divine science. The author analyzes the text of the Torah and concludes that the words of the Almighty: light and darkness, day and night, evening and morning, and others - are accessible to universal understanding as particular comparative concepts of a gradational nature. Furthermore, the Torah presents another, more complex type of particular comparative concepts - concepts of an orthogonal nature, describing all six days of creation as the transition from day and night to evening and morning - "And there was evening and there was morning: the first day." At the same time, it is known that the words of God the almighty express his actions, and not so much in the form of their specific manifestation – they relate to the general principles of the Universe, which require extremely general comparative concepts far from the sensory world. The task of creating a science that reveals the mind and wisdom of the one and invisible God was taken up by the ancient Greek philosophers - lovers of wisdom. Unlike the reasoning thinking of most people, they comprehended the diversity of reality not only from the standpoint of particular comparative concepts - concepts of practical mind, but also from the standpoint of extremely general comparative concepts - categories of pure mind, revealing the universal design of the Creator. By separating from religious and emotional prejudices, the author comprehends forgotten or misunderstood thoughts of famous thinkers of the past, revealing the essence of comparative concepts, and collects them according to their rank into a verifiable cumulative philosophical Matrix - a panlogical paradigm of knowledge. As a result, the author concludes that these insights can be used not only for a correct understanding of biblical texts, particularly the Words of the Almighty, but also to bridge the gap between theology, humanities, and natural sciences, which is determined by the fundamental divergence between reasoning, mind, and wisdom. (shrink)

In this work, I investigate the implications of reversing the common assumption of rationality on behalf of human agents typically underlying philosophical research. Instead, I assume that human agents can become rational only if they learn to edge against their dumbness. Specifically, I show that intelligence cannot be considered the opposite of dumbness. To this end, I embrace the difference among System 1, System 2, and System 1.5. On these grounds, I argue that System 2 can be considered the system (...) of intelligence, whereas Systems 1 and 1.5 can be viewed as the systems of rationality. More precisely, I argue that System 2 concerns theoretical reasoning, whereas System 1 and 1.5 concern practical reasoning. Accordingly, I show that people are dumber whenever they fail to have rational control over System 1 via System 1.5, whereas people become more rational whenever they manage to have rational control over System 1 via System 1.5. Interestingly, both cases can be considered the causes of two distinct social processes. On one side, when dumbness increases among individuals, social groups achieve coordination that detriments general welfare. On the other, when dumbness decreases among individuals, social groups achieve coordination that maximizes general welfare. (shrink)

This paper is a new defense of type-B materialism against Jackson’s knowledge argument (1982) inspired by the Kantian main opposition between concepts and sensible intuitions. Like all materialists of type B, I argue that on her release from her black-and-white room, Mary makes cognitive progress. However, contrary to the so-called phenomenal concept strategy (henceforth PCS), I do not think that such progress can be accounted for in terms of the acquisition of new concepts. I also reject Tye’s recent account of (...) Mary’s cognitive progress as the acquisition of a “thing-knowledge.” What is crucial is not the Russellian opposition between knowing things and knowing truths but rather the Kantian opposition between conceptual and nonconceptual representations of the same thing (property). Mary’s phenomenal knowledge is here accounted for as the result of the cooperation of her newly acquired nonconceptual representation of the same phenomenal redness (the same thing) she had a conceptual representation before. As that new nonconceptual representation carries information about the same physical property she already represented but is now coded in analog rather than in digital form (Dretske, 1981), that nonconceptual representation can be accounted for in physical terms as Chalmers’s Master argument requires. Nevertheless, that representation can account for Mary’s cognitive progress since it carries information coded in analog form, something that the imprisoned she could never possess. (shrink)

PENULTIMATE DRAFT. At times, weird stories such as the Pizzagate spread surprisingly quickly and widely. In this paper I analyze the mental attitudes of those who seem to take those absurdities seriously: I argue that those stories are often imagined rather than genuinely believed. Then I make room for the claim that often these imaginings are used to support group ideologies. My main contribution is to explain how that support actually happens by showing that motivated cognition can employ imagination as (...) a seemingly rational tool to reinforce and protect beliefs. (shrink)

We have used the term 'fetish' in a broader sense and especially related to the functions that a 'fetish' has in society. We are talking either about the tags that any 'fetish' receives [as undesirable, unwanted, forbidden, and peculiar], or about the uncertainty of its social approval, about the coagulating role it plays on individuals with the same repulsive vision/orientation that were previously unidentifiable, or many other aspects under which a so-called fetish works socially. The object or action in question (...) passes from individual preference to the group emblem and then determines its actions and ideas, internally as well as in social exchanges with other groups. This is done in a fetishistic way with everything that is 'new' emerging in society, either previously non-existent, or competitive with something already standardized, or - as in the case of many fetishes - forbidden and socially stigmatized. If the first category does not meet a social resistance and does not end up turning into a fetish, for the group and the society, the other two have all the advantages to do so. The odd - competitive and forbidden alternatives - becomes the fetish for the group that adopts it as its emblem because it later regulates all its actions, as well as for the Society, because it keeps around the group and its actions the atmosphere in the sphere of fetishism - equivocal, promiscuous, and detestable. But precisely these very fetishistic attributes are the same ones that determine society to fight against the group and its 'fetish', new and peculiar, that also help disparate individuals to identify with that fetus, to coagulate as a group borrowing precisely this infamous, shameless identity. Therefore, the question we try to find answers here is but legitimate: since and until when oddity is ‘odd’? (shrink)