A venerable view holds that a border between perception and cognition is built into our cognitive architecture and that this imposes limits on the way information can flow between them. While the deliverances of perception are freely available for use in reasoning and inference, there are strict constraints on information flow in the opposite direction. Despite its plausibility, this approach to the perception-cognition border has faced criticism in recent years. This article develops an updated version of the architectural approach, which (...) I call the dimension restriction hypothesis (DRH). According to DRH, perceptual processes are constrained to compute over a bounded range of dimensions, while cognitive processes are not. This view allows that perception is cognitively penetrable, but places strict limits on the varieties of penetration that can occur. The article argues that DRH enjoys both theoretical and empirical support, and also defends the view against several objections. (shrink)

The ability to perceive the shapes of things as enduring through changes in how they stimulate our sense organs is vital to our sense of stability in the world. But what sort of capacity is shape constancy, and how is it reflected in perceptual experience? This paper defends a pluralist account of shape constancy: There are multiple kinds of shape constancy centered on geometrical properties at various levels of abstraction, and properties at these various levels feature in the content of (...) perceptual experience, governing patterns of apparent shape similarity. I propose that the varieties of shape constancy are subserved by the syntactic complexity of perceptual shape representations. By assigning discrete constituents to various abstract shape parameters, these representations attune us to the preservation of certain abstract shape properties through changes in more determinate shape properties. Finally, I draw broader lessons concerning the nature and function of perceptual constancy. (shrink)

Thepuzzle of cross‐modal shape experienceis the puzzle of reconciling the apparent differences between our visual and haptic experiences of shape with their apparent similarities. This paper proposes that we can resolve the cross‐modal puzzle by reflecting on another puzzle. Thepuzzle of perspectival characterchallenges us to reconcile the variability of shape experience through shifts in perspective with its constancy. An attractive approach to the latter puzzle holds that shape experience is complex, involving bothperspectivalaspects andconstantaspects. I argue here that parallel distinctions between (...) perspectival and constant aspects of shape experience arise in sight and touch, and that perspectival aspects are modality‐specific while at least some constant aspects are constitutively multisensory. I then address a powerful challenge to the idea that aspects of spatial phenomenology are shared cross‐modally. (shrink)

We represent shape in both sight and touch, but how do these abilities relate to one another? This issue has been discussed in the context of Molyneux's question of whether someone born blind could, upon being granted sight, identify shapes visually. Some have suggested that we might look to real‐world cases of sight restoration to illuminate the relation between visual and tactual shape representations. Here, I argue that newly sighted perceivers should not be relied on in this way because they (...) are unlikely to form the kinds of shape representations responsible for cross‐modal recognition in normally sighted perceivers. I then argue that the available evidence makes a compelling case for the type identity view, on which the visual and tactual representations responsible for cross‐modal recognition are type‐identical. (shrink)

Non‐Cartesian substance dualism is a position in the philosophy of mind concerning the nature of the mind‐body relation or, more exactly, the person‐body relation. Whereas Cartesian substance dualism takes subjects of experience to be necessarily immaterial and indeed nonphysical substances, non‐Cartesian substance dualism does not insist on this. This distinctive feature of non‐Cartesian substance dualism gives it certain advantages over Cartesian dualism, without compelling it to forfeit any of the intuitive appeal that attaches to its more traditional rival. In this (...) chapter, the author's own view is that the self is indeed a simple substance. The simplicity of the self goes some way toward explaining its unity, including the unity of consciousness that characterizes its normal condition. A divided consciousness is in principle consistent with self‐identity: what is not consistent with this is a radical disunity of beliefs and values, manifested in a radical inconsistency of thought and action. (shrink)

This chapter examines how our sense modalities interact in the perception of persistence. The chapter concentrates on two questions. The first concerns perceptual processing—do perceptual computations of object persistence ever integrate and compute over representations from more than one modality? It argues that this question should be answered affirmatively. The second question concerns perceptual experience—do experiences of object persistence ever exhibit a constitutively multisensory phenomenal character, or is the phenomenology of object persistence always uniquely associated with just one modality? The (...) chapter argues that the available evidence underdetermines the answer to this question, but suggests ways it might be empirically resolved. (shrink)

In Without Justification,[1] Jonathan Sutton undermines the orthodox view that a justified belief needn’t constitute knowledge; develops a battery of arguments for the unorthodox thesis that you justifiedly believe P iff you know P; and explores the topics of testimony and inference in light of his equation of justification and knowledge (J=K). This book is essential reading at epistemology’s cutting edge. In §I, we’ll take an extended tour of the book, raising various questions and objections along the way. In §II, (...) we’ll assess Sutton’s three main arguments for J=K, which form the heart of his project. (shrink)

In a famous passage in her book, Intention , Professor G. E. M. Anscombe argues that we can only render intelligible the idea of someone wanting a thing if we know under what aspect the person sees the thing as desirable. The wanted thing must be characterized by the wanter as desirable in some respect. ‘[What] is required for our concept of “wanting”’, she says, ‘is that a man should see what he wants under the aspect of some good’ . (...) And furthermore, ‘the good conceived by the agent to characterize the thing must really be one of the many forms of good’ . Thus, while the object of desire need only be conceived as good by the wanter, and need not be really good, this can only be because the object does not have the desirable character the wanter believes it to have, not because the character supposed to be desirable is not really so. Desire cannot but be for one of the real forms of good. (shrink)

Uitvoerige historische speurtocht naar de betrekkingen van Erasmus met zijn Hollandse humanistische vrienden en zijn invloed op hun leven en werken.

This paper analyses Quentin Meillassoux’s criticism of Kantian philosophy. The objective of the paper is to delineate the connection Meillassoux asserts between the problem of induction and Kant’s account of finitude. After examining Meillassoux’s elucidations on the connection between the two, I argue that Meillassoux’s characterization of Kantian philosophy as ‘weak correlationism’ is not only inaccurate but also undermines the novelty of Kantian philosophy, especially Kant’s (critical) response to the problem of induction. The paper concludes with the claim that Meillassoux’s (...) criticism of modern philosophy, especially Kantian critical philosophy, does not convince us to abandon the problem of finitude but points to the need for a more accurate understanding of finitude. (shrink)

If metaphysics is centrally concerned with charting the domain of the possible, the only coherent account of the ground of metaphysical possibility and of our capacity for modal knowledge is to be found in a version of essentialism: a version that I call serious essentialism, to distinguish it from certain other views which may superficially appear very similar to it but which, in fact, differ from it fundamentally in certain crucial respects. This version of essentialism eschews any appeal whatever to (...) the notion of possible worlds in its account of the nature and ground of metaphysical possibility, for reasons that which I shall endeavour to explain and justify in this paper. (shrink)

In this innovative study of the relationship between persons and their bodies, E. J. Lowe demonstrates the inadequacy of physicalism, even in its mildest, non-reductionist guises, as a basis for a scientifically and philosophically acceptable account of human beings as subjects of experience, thought and action. He defends a substantival theory of the self as an enduring and irreducible entity - a theory which is unashamedly committed to a distinctly non-Cartesian dualism of self and body. Taking up the physicalist challenge (...) to any robust form of psychophysical interactionism, he shows how an attribution of independent causal powers to the mental states of human subjects is perfectly consistent with a thoroughly naturalistic world view. He concludes his study by examining in detail the role which conscious mental states play in the human subject's exercise of its most central capacities for perception, action, thought and self-knowledge. (shrink)

Introduction , Sophie Gibb 1. Mental Causation , John Heil 2. Physical Realization without Preemption , Sydney Shoemaker 3. Mental Causation in the Physical World , Peter Menzies 4. Mental Causation: Ontology and Patterns of Variation , Paul Noordhof 5. Causation is Macroscopic but not Irreducible , David Papineau 6. Substance Causation, Powers, and Human Agency , E. J. Lowe 7. Agent Causation in a Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics , Jonathan D. Jacobs and Timothy O’Connor 8. Mental Causation and Double Prevention , (...) Sophie Gibb 9. The Identity Theory as a Solution to the Exclusion Problem , David Robb 10. Continuant Causation, Fundamentality, and Freedom , Peter Simons 11. There is no Exclusion Problem , Steinvor Tholl Arnadottir and Tim Crane. (shrink)

Cet article est un nouvel examen des objections soulevées par Leibniz dans la controverse avec Clarke contre la théorie absolutiste de l'espace et du temps. Or la plupart de ces objections sont fondées sur le principe de raison suffisante; mais Leibniz utilise aussi le principe de l'identité des indiscernables, qu'il prétend déduire du principe de raison suffisante . Ce qui m'intéresse c'est que Leibniz présente parfois deux versions de la même objection: l'une reposant uniquement sur le principe de raison suffisante, (...) l'autre uniquement sur le principe de l'identité des indiscernables. Se pose alors la question suivante: Leibniz aurait-il pu soulever toutes les objections qu'il voulait contre la théorie absolutiste, en utilisant seulement le principe de l'identité des indiscernables? Il me semble qu'il aurait certainement pu le faire. Et de plus, je crois que si Leibniz avait suivi cette voie, son raisonnement contre la théorie absolutiste aurait été beaucoup plus convaincant. Ainsi donc, je me propose de mener l'attaque de Leibniz contre la théorie absolutiste, en isolant, reformulant, et exposant systématiquement sept arguments dont il se servait ou dont il aurait pu se servir, qui sont tous fondés sur le principe de l'identité des indiscernables. (shrink)

As thinkers in the market for knowledge and agents aspiring to morally responsible action, we are inevitably subject to luck. This book presents a comprehensive new theory of luck in light of a critical appraisal of the literature's leading accounts, then brings this new theory to bear on issues in the theory of knowledge and philosophy of action.