This article introduces the papers from two video conferences recently held between philosophers at Moscow State University and the University at Albany, State University of New York. The overarching theme is philosophical progress in the past fifty years, but the conferences were designed also to illustrate the range of work now being done by American analytic philosophers and by Russian thinkers. The Albany essays focus on philosophy of science, philosophical logic, Kantian studies, applied ethics, and ethical and political theory. The (...) Russian essays concern philosophy of culture, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, social philosophy, feminism, and postmodernism. This introductory essay notes similarities and differences that exist among American and Russian approaches to philosophy and the prospects for the convergence of these approaches. It also indicates ways in which contemporary Russian thinkers are striking out in new directions while seeking to recover those parts of their past that were silenced during much of the twentieth century. (shrink)

This article introduces the papers from two video conferences recently held between philosophers at Moscow State University and the University at Albany, State University of New York. The overarching theme is philosophical progress in the past fifty years, but the conferences were designed also to illustrate the range of work now being done by American analytic philosophers and by Russian thinkers. The Albany essays focus on philosophy of science, philosophical logic, Kantian studies, applied ethics, and ethical and political theory. The (...) Russian essays concern philosophy of culture, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, social philosophy, feminism, and postmodernism. This introductory essay notes similarities and differences that exist among American and Russian approaches to philosophy and the prospects for the convergence of these approaches. It also indicates ways in which contemporary Russian thinkers are striking out in new directions while seeking to recover those parts of their past that were silenced during much of the twentieth century. (shrink)

This article attempts to summarize a few criteria of progress in philosophy—clarifying problems; rejecting false theories; opening new perspectives in familiar fields; inventing new arguments or thought experiments; and so on—and to apply them to contemporary philosophy of mind. As a result, the article concludes that while some progress was obvious in the past fifty years, there is much work yet to be done. It then tries to outline a transformation of conceptual analysis needed for further developments in this field. (...) The author argues that conceptual analysis might be revived if it is treated as a clarification of the relations among our natural beliefs. (shrink)

In this Introduction we introduce the central themes of the Evaluative Perception volume. After identifying historical and recent contemporary work on this topic, we discuss some central questions under three headings: (1) Questions about the Existence and Nature of Evaluative Perception: Are there perceptual experiences of values? If so, what is their nature? Are experiences of values sui generis? Are values necessary for certain kinds of experience? (2) Questions about the Epistemology of Evaluative Perception: Can evaluative experiences ever justify evaluative (...) judgments? Are experiences of values necessary for certain kinds of justified evaluative judgments? (3) Questions about Value Theory and Evaluative Perception: Is the existence of evaluative experience supported or undermined by particular views in value theory? Are particular views in value theory supported or undermined by the existence of value experience? (shrink)

The 1994 US spectrum auction is now a paradigmatic case of the successful use of microeconomic theory for policy-making. We use a detailed analysis of it to review standard accounts in philosophy of science of how idealized models are connected to messy reality. We show that in order to understand what made the design of the spectrum auction successful, a new such account is required, and we present it here. Of especial interest is the light this sheds on the issue (...) of progress in economics. In particular, it enables us to get clear on exactly what has been progressing, and on exactly what theory has – and has not – contributed to that. This in turn has important implications for just what it is about economic theory that we should value. (shrink)

Julian Reiss correctly identified a trilemma about economic models: we cannot maintain that they are false, but nevertheless explain and that only true accounts explain. In this reply we give reasons to reject the second premise ? that economic models explain. Intuitions to the contrary should be distrusted.

We distinguish between two different strategies in methodology of economics. The big picture strategy, dominant in the twentieth century, ascribed to economics a unified method and evaluated this m...

Evaluation is ubiquitous. This volume brings together philosophers to investigate whether there is a distinctive kind of perception that is evaluative. If so, what role does it play in evaluative knowledge, and what does its existence tell us about the nature of value?

The existence of a self seems both mysterious and inevitable. On the one hand, philosophers from the Buddha to Sartre doubt its existence. As Hume writes, when we introspect we find thoughts, feelings, and conscious states, but nothing that has them. The subject of experience is elusive, but its existence seems certain. Descartes’ cogito is beyond doubt and the thought that “I am thinking” involves an undeniable form of self-awareness. Self-Awareness and the Elusive Subject develops and defends the claim that (...) we don’t find ourselves in introspection, and that consciousness is, in general, impersonal. It then develops an account of self-awareness that takes these phenomenological data seriously. Our grasp of ourselves is epistemically robust but introspectively slight: we know ourselves most fundamentally as the bearers of our conscious states. (shrink)

I defend the conception of musical works as indicated temporally initiated types against Julian Dodd's recent argument that all types are eternal and uncreated. In doing so, I develop a new account of both cultural and natural types. While types are in a certain sense determined by the properties that underlie them, not all properties determine types; and properties such as being indicated by Beethoven exist only once the temporally initiated entities that those properties essentially involve exist. A cultural type (...) such as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is a sound pattern that has the essential property of being used in the way specified by Beethoven's singling out of that pattern. (Natural types, such as bird songs or biological species, are patterns having places in actual causal chains in nature.) Given this framework, the Fifth Symphony is an indicated type that was, in a straightforward literal sense, created by Beethoven in 1804–1808. (shrink)

A purely metaphysical formulation of physicalism is surprisingly elusive. One popular slogan is, 'There is nothing over and above the physical'. Problems with this arise on two fronts. First, it is difficult to explain what makes a property 'physical' without appealing to the methodology of physics or to particular ways in which properties are known. This obviously introduces epistemic features into the core of a metaphysical issue. Second, it is difficult to cash out 'over-and-aboveness' in a way that is rigorous, (...) metaphysically pure and extensionally apt for the purposes of the debate. In this paper I will touch on the first problem, but I wish to focus on the second. In particular, I will focus on the claim that supervenience theses cannot define physicalism because they allow classical emergentist dualism through the physicalist door [Horgan 1993; Kim 1998; Wilson 2005]. I will argue that when the relevant supervenience thesis is metaphysical, emergentism is excluded. Against recent arguments to the contrary, I maintain that this is the case even given necessitarianism about natural laws [Wilson 2005]. I will argue that a necessitarian with emergentist sympathies will be forced either into a type of quasi-panpsychism, where our basic physical properties contain the illicit seeds of mentality at their core, or she will be forced to admit that emergence laws are not necessary after all. Either way, the combination of necessitarianism and emergentism does not provide a counterexample to supervenience physicalism. (shrink)

In this article the author suggests that progress in philosophy can be conceived through contemporary French theories that propose a new, polysemantic way of thinking. Postmodern philosophy has tried to renew the meaning of the subject, of the subject's identity, and of language and communication. The author believes that the postmodern, feminist approach to those concepts represents significant progress in philosophy. It is, in fact, exactly in the context of feminism—conceived of not just as a women's sociopolitical or scientific activity (...) but as a broad theoretical approach to many areas—that Western philosophy has acquired its most explicit and adequate meaning. A crucial example here is the new historicophilosophical analysis of the concept of gender. The author appeals to Lipovetsky, Lacan, Derrida, Kristeva, and other thinkers to show how postmodern feminism helps to overcome the binary vision of the contemporary world and the dichotomic composition of earlier philosophical thought. (shrink)

The problem of philosophical understanding of the status of society and the role of philosophy and intellectuals in it in the era of the empires’ collapses arose with special acuteness. The most vivid interpretations, not having its continuation, criticized by its contemporaries, recur in the history of the similar socio-political situation, having reproduced not only the model of philosophical argumentation, but also of its own social helplessness. An example in the history of philosophy can be Vekhi – Russian intellectual movement (...) organized around the collection of seven essays published in 1909 and the so-called “new philosophy” in France and repeating them respectively in the new Russia, and now – in France, after the elections of 2012. (shrink)

Self-Knowledge and Self-Reference is a defense and reconciliation of the two apparently conflicting theses that the self is peculiarly elusive and that our basic, cogito-judgments are certain. On the one hand, Descartes seems to be correct that nothing is more certain than basic statements of self-knowledge, such as "I am thinking." On the other hand, there is the compelling Humean observation that when we introspect, nothing is found except for various "impressions." The problem, then, is that the Humean and Cartesian (...) insights are both initially appealing, yet they appear to be in tension with one another. In this paper I attempt to satisfy both intuitions by developing a roughly descriptivist account of self-reference according to which our certainty in basic beliefs stems precisely from our needing to know so little in order to have them. (shrink)

Most philosophers in the phenomenological tradition hold that in addition to the explicit self-consciousness we might get in reflection, there is also a pre-reflective self-consciousness. Despite its popularity, it can be a little difficult to get a grasp on this notion. It can seem impossibly thin—such that it really amounts to little more than a restatement of the notion of consciousness—or problematically robust—such that it seems to conflict with the apparent transparency of consciousness. This paper argues for a notion of (...) pre-reflective self consciousness that avoids these extremes. It is argued that though pre-reflective self-consciousness exists and is an important part of conscious ex­perience, it is not an intrinsic feature of first-order consciousness. Instead, it is constituted by an agent’s background awareness of her ability to reflect and thereby self-ascribe her experiences. (shrink)

Both a priori physicalism and a posteriori physicalism combine a metaphysical and an epistemological thesis. They agree about the metaphysical thesis: our world is wholly physical. Most agree that this requires everything that there is must be necessitated by the sort of truths described by physics. If we call the conjunction of the basic truths of physics P, all physicalists agree that P entails for any truth Q. Where they disagree is whether or not this entailment can be known a (...) priori. The a priori physicalist says it can, the a posteriori physicalist says it cannot. Though a posteriori physicalism is probably the dominant view, it is really a surprising and somewhat unlikely stance. In this article, the nature of the view is discussed, and two arguments are presented that should cause us to look again at the potential of a priori physicalism. (shrink)

Alter’s The Matter of Consciousness is not only the most systematic defense of the knowledge argument, it is so crystal clear, so compelling, that it should be required reading not only for those interested in consciousness, but for those interested in clear philosophical writing. In some circles The Knowledge Argument (KA) gets a bad rap. Philosophers in those circles should read this book. Though I am someone who takes the argument quite seriously, I have argued that the metaphysical conclusions of (...) the argument can be resisted. Alter has convinced me that in many cases my arguments have come up short, and at the very least require further clarification and defense. For the purpose of these comments, I’m going to focus on his criticism of “subjective physicalism” (Howell, 2013) and its acquaintance response to the knowledge argument. (shrink)

It’s a familiar fact that there is something it is like to see red, eat chocolate or feel pain. More recently philosophers have insisted that in addition to this objectual phenomenology there is something it is like for me to eat chocolate, and this for-me-ness is no less there than the chocolatishness. Recognizing this subjective feature of consciousness helps shape certain theories of consciousness, introspection and the self. Though it does this heavy philosophical work, and it is supposed to be (...) relatively obvious to anyone who introspects, it is rather difficult to see just what this phenomenal me-ness is supposed to be; indeed, many philosophers deny it exists. In this paper we try to provide a clear sense of what phenomenal me-ness involves, and then then consider some arguments for the existence of phenomenal me-ness experience as well as some accounts of what gives rise to it. In the end, we argue that the plausible senses of me-ness are a good deal thinner than what often seems to be claimed. (shrink)

Robert J. Howell offers a new account of the relationship between conscious experience and the physical world, based on a neo-Cartesian notion of the physical and careful consideration of three anti-materialist arguments. His theory of subjective physicalism reconciles the data of consciousness with the advantages of a monistic, physical ontology.

The argument of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories in the Critique of Pure Reason is the deepest and most far-reaching in philosophy. In his new book, Robert Howell interprets main themes of the Deduction using ideas from contemporary philosophy and intensional logic, thereby providing a keener grasp of Kant's many subtleties than has hitherto been available. No other work pursues Kant's argument through every twist and turn with the careful, logically detailed attention maintained here. Surprising new accounts (...) of apperception, the concept of an object, the logical functions of thought, the role of the Metaphysical Deduction, and Kant's relations to his Aristotelian-Cartesian background are developed. Howell makes a precise contribution to the discussion of most of the disputed issues in the history of Deduction interpretation. Controversial in its conclusions, this book demands the attention of all who take seriously the task of understanding Kant's work and evaluating it dispassionately. (shrink)

SummaryThe paper discusses major issues concerning the A104‐10 transcendental‐object theory. For that theory, our de re knowledge becomes related to its object just because our understanding thinks a certain object to stand related to the intuition via which we know. Employing an apparatus of intensional logic, I argue that this thought of an object is to be understood as a certain sort of intuition‐related, de dicto thought. Then I explore how, via such a de dicto thought, we can nevertheless achieve (...) de re knowledge. This question involves an important Kantian reduction of de re to de dicto outer‐object thinking, which I consider. Finally, I investigate some further topics about the transcendental object. I endeavor to show, throughout, that Kant's theory of that object is crucially related to matters of intensionality. (shrink)

I argue, contrary to Dennis Schulting inKant’s Radical Subjectivism, that the main reasoning of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories is progressive, not regressive. Schulting is right, however, to emphasize that the deduction takes the object cognized to be constituted in an idealism-entailing way. But his reasoning has gaps and bypasses Kant’s most explicit deduction argument, independent of the Transcendental Aesthetic, for idealism. Finally, Schulting’s claim that Kantian discursivity itself requires idealism overlooks the fact that Kantian general judgements can be (...) true in a domain of objects without being specificallyofor about any particular ones of those objects. (shrink)

Since Sydney Shoemaker published his seminal article ‘Self-Reference and Self-Awareness’ in 1968, the notion of ‘Immunity to Error through Misidentification’ has received much attention. It crops up in discussions of personal identity, indexical thought and introspection, and has been used to interpret remarks made by philosophers from Wittgenstein to William James. The precise significance of IEM is often unspecified in these discussions, however. It is unclear, for example, whether it constitutes an important status of judgments, whether it explains an important (...) characteristic of judgments, or whether it merely marks an important characteristic of judgments. Nevertheless, reference to IEM abounds, making this obscure notion seem all the more significant. (shrink)

This article notes six advances in recent analytic Kant research: (1) Strawson's interpretation, which, together with work by Bennett, Sellars, and others, brought renewed attention to Kant through its account of space, time, objects, and the Transcendental Deduction and its sharp criticisms of Kant on causality and idealism; (2) the subsequent investigations of Kantian topics ranging from cognitive science and philosophy of science to mathematics; (3) the detailed work, by a number of scholars, on the Transcendental Deduction; (4) the clearer (...) understanding of transcendental idealism sparked by reactions to Allison's epistemic account; (5) the resulting need—prompted also by new studies of the thing in itself—to face up to the old question of the philosophical defensibility of such idealism; and (6) the active engagement with Kant's ethics and political philosophy that derives from Rawls's and others' work. (shrink)

How could physicalism be true of a world in which there are no fundamental physical phenomena? A familiar answer, due to Barbara Gail Montero and others, is that physicalism could be true of such a world if that world does not contain an infinite descent of mentality. Christopher Devlin Brown has produced a counterexample to that solution. We show how to modify the solution to accommodate Brown’s example: physicalism could be true of a world without fundamental physical phenomena if that (...) world does not contain an infinite descent of mentally constituted mentality. This solution is independently plausible and is available to physicalists of virtually all significant varieties. (shrink)

I discuss Tooley's use of the concept of a person with respect to other moral issues such as justifiable suicide.

It is an intuitively attractive view that the importance of a proposition affects the amount of evidence a subject needs in order to know that proposition—the more important the proposition is to the subject, the more evidence the subject must have in order for her to count as knowing the proposition. This paper argues that because unimportant propositions entail the falsity of very important propositions this position either results in the lack of closure of knowledge under known implication, or it (...) results in standards for evidence being universally high. (shrink)