Aims: The aim of this narrative synthesis was to explore the necessary and sufficient conditions required to define moral distress. Background: Moral distress is said to occur when one has made a moral judgement but is unable to act upon it. However, problems with this narrow conception have led to multiple redefinitions in the empirical and conceptual literature. As a consequence, much of the research exploring moral distress has lacked conceptual clarity, complicating attempts to study the phenomenon. Design: Systematic literature (...) review and narrative synthesis (November 2015–March 2016). Data sources: Ovid MEDLINE® In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations 1946–Present, PsycINFO® 1967–Present, CINAHL® Plus 1937–Present, EMBASE 1974–24 February 2016, British Nursing Index 1994–Present, Social Care Online, Social Policy and Practice Database (1890–Present), ERIC (EBSCO) 1966–Present and Education Abstracts. Review methods: Literature relating to moral distress was systematically retrieved and subjected to relevance assessment. Narrative synthesis was the overarching framework that guided quality assessment, data analysis and synthesis. Results: In all, 152 papers underwent initial data extraction and 34 were chosen for inclusion in the narrative synthesis based on both quality and relevance. Analysis revealed different proposed conditions for the occurrence of moral distress: moral judgement, psychological and physical effects, moral dilemmas, moral uncertainty, external and internal constraints and threats to moral integrity. Conclusion: We suggest the combination of (1) the experience of a moral event, (2) the experience of ‘psychological distress’ and (3) a direct causal relation between (1) and (2) together are necessary and sufficient conditions for moral distress. (shrink)

The theory of visual perception that Irvin Rock develops and supports in this book with numerous original experiments, views perception as the outcome of a process of unconscious inference, problem solving, and the building of structural descriptions of the external world.

Fiona Woollard presents an original defence of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, according to which doing harm seems much harder to justify than merely allowing harm. She argues that the Doctrine is best understood as a principle that protects us from harmful imposition, and offers a moderate account of our obligations to offer aid to others.

Edited book on the prospects of non-Platonist realism in the philosophy of mathematics. Physicalism holds that mathematics studies properties realised or realisable in the physical world. This collection of papers has its origin in a conference held at the University of Toronto in June of 1988. The theme of the conference was Physicalism in Mathematics: Recent Work in the Philosophy of Mathematics. At the conference, papers were read by Geoffrey Hellman (Minnesota), Yvon Gauthier (Montreal), Michael Hallett (McGill), Hartry Field (USC), (...) Bob Hale (Lancaster & St Andrew's), Alasdair Urquhart (Toronto) and Penelope Maddy (Irvine). This volume supplements updated versions of six of those papers with contributions by Jim Brown (Toronto), John Bigelow (La Trobe), John Burgess (Princeton), Chandler Davis (Toronto), David Papineau (Cambridge), Michael Resnik (North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Peter Simons (Salzburg) and Crispin Wright (St Andrews & Michigan). Together they provide a vivid, expansive snapshot of the exciting work which is currently being carried out in philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

The body is a rich object for aesthetic inquiry. We aesthetically assess both our own bodies and those of others, and our felt bodily experiences have aesthetic qualities. The body features centrally in aesthetic experiences of visual art, theatre, dance and sports. It is also deeply intertwined with one's identity and sense of self. Artistic and media representations shape how we see and engage with bodies, with consequences both personal and political. This volume contains sixteen original essays by contributors in (...) philosophy, sociology, dance, disability theory, critical race studies, feminist theory, medicine, and law. They explore bodily beauty, sexual attractiveness, the role of images in power relations, the distinct aesthetics of disabled bodies, the construction of national identity, the creation of compassion through bodily presence, the role of bodily style in moral comportment, and the somatic aesthetics of racialized police violence. -/- Contents: Maria del Guadalupe Davidson, "Black Silhouettes on White Walls: Kara Walker’s Magic Lantern"; A. W. Eaton, "Taste in Bodies and Fat Oppression"; C. Winter Han, "From 'Little Brown Brothers' to 'Queer Asian Wives': Constructing the Asian Male Body"; Deborah L. Rhode, "Appearance as a Feminist Issue"; Shirley Anne Tate, "A Tale of Two Olympians—Beauty, 'Race,' Nation"; Glenn Parsons, "The Merrickites"; Stephen Davies, "And Everything Nice"; Tobin Siebers, "In/Visible: Disability on the Stage"; Jill Sigman, "Live, Body-Based Performance: An Account from the Field"; Barbara Gail Montero, "Aesthetic Effortlessness"; Peg Brand Weiser and Edward B. Weiser, "Misleading Aesthetic Norms of Beauty: Perceptual Sexism in Elite Women's Sports"; Yuriko Saito, "Body Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues"; George Yancy, "White Embodied Gazing, the Black Body as Disgust, and the Aesthetics of Un-Suturing"; Richard Shusterman, "Somaesthetics and the Fine Art of Eating"; Ann J. Cahill, "Sexual Desire, Inequality, and the Possibility of Transformation"; Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin, "Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects: A Feminist Reclamation of Sexiness" -/- . (shrink)

Consciousness is now a hot topic in both philosophy and the cognitive sciences, yet there is much controversy over how to measure it. First, it is not clear whether biased subjective reports should be taken as adequate for measuring consciousness, or if more objective measures are required. Ways to benefit from the advantages of both these measures in the form of ‘Type 2’ metacognitive measures are under development, but face criticism. Research into neurophysiological measures of consciousness is potentially very valuable, (...) but often hindered by its dependence on behavioural measures that are themselves controversial. Newer informational measures are theoretically interesting, but as yet not easily applicable, while other measures of consciousness are designed for application in clinical cases . Although much optimism accompanies research into measures of consciousness, the controversies and methodological problems reviewed here suggest that making progress in this area may be more difficult than is often acknowledged. (shrink)

Open Access: This article argues for an aesthetic approach to resisting oppression based on judgments of bodily unattractiveness. Philosophical theories have often suggested that appropriate aesthetic judgments should converge on sets of objects consensually found to be beautiful or ugly. The convergence of judgments about human bodies, however, is a significant source of injustice, because people judged to be unattractive pay substantial social and economic penalties in domains such as education, employment and criminal justice. The injustice is compounded by the (...) interaction between standards of attractiveness and gender, race, disability, and gender identity. -/- I argue that we should actively work to reduce our participation in standard aesthetic practices that involve attractiveness judgments. This does not mean refusing engagement with the embodiment of others; ignoring someone’s embodiment is often a way of dehumanizing them. Instead, I advocate a form of practice, aesthetic exploration, that involves seeking out positive experiences of the unique aesthetic affordances of all bodies, regardless of whether they are attractive in the standard sense. I argue that there are good ethical reasons to cultivate aesthetic exploration, and that it is psychologically plausible that doing so would help to alleviate the social injustice attending judgments of attractiveness. -/- This essay was the winner of the 30th Anniversary of the American Society for Aesthetics Feminist Caucus Committee Feminist Research Essay prize in 2020. (shrink)

Irvine looks at various Stoic techniques for attaining tranquility and shows how to put these techniques to work in our own life.

Can the phenomenal character of perceptual experience be altered by the states of one's cognitive system, for example, one's thoughts or beliefs? If one thinks that this can happen then one thinks that there can be cognitive penetration of perceptual experience; otherwise, one thinks that perceptual experience is cognitively impenetrable. I claim that there is one alleged case of cognitive penetration that cannot be explained away by the standard strategies one can typically use to explain away alleged cases. The case (...) is one in which it seems subjects' beliefs about the typical colour of objects affects their colour experience. I propose a two-step mechanism of indirect cognitive penetration that explains how cognitive penetration may occur. I show that there is independent evidence that each step in this process can occur. I suspect that people who are opposed to the idea that perceptual experience is cognitively penetrable will be less opposed to the idea when they come to consider this indirect mechanism and that those who are generally sympathetic to the idea of cognitive penetrability will welcome the elucidation of this plausible mechanism. (shrink)

Desires often come to us unbidden and unwanted, and they can have a dramatic impact, sometimes changing the course of our lives. In On Desire, William B. Irvine takes us on a wide-ranging tour of our impulses, wants, and needs, showing us where these feelings come from and how we can try to rein them in. Irvine spices his account with engaging observations by both ancient and modern writers, philosophers, and religious leaders. Irvine also looks at what (...) modern science can tell us about desire--such as what happens in the brain when we desire something--and advances a new theory about how desire evolved. Irvine concludes that the best way to attain lasting happiness is not to change the world around us or our place in it, but to change ourselves. If we can convince ourselves to want what we already have, we can dramatically enhance our happiness. (shrink)

This powerfully iconoclastic book reconsiders the influential nativist position toward the mind. Nativists assert that some concepts, beliefs, or capacities are innate or inborn: "native" to the mind rather than acquired. Fiona Cowie argues that this view is mistaken, demonstrating that nativism is an unstable amalgam of two quite different--and probably inconsistent--theses about the mind. Unlike empiricists, who postulate domain-neutral learning strategies, nativists insist that some learning tasks require special kinds of skills, and that these skills are hard-wired into (...) our brains at birth. This "faculties hypothesis" finds its modern expression in the views of Noam Chomsky. Cowie, marshaling recent empirical evidence from developmental psychology, psycholinguistics, computer science, and linguistics, provides a crisp and timely critique of Chomsky's nativism and defends in its place a moderately nativist approach to language acquisition. Also in contrast to empiricists, who view the mind as simply another natural phenomenon susceptible of scientific explanation, nativists suspect that the mental is inelectably mysterious. Cowie addresses this second strand in nativist thought, taking on the view articulated by Jerry Fodor and other nativists that learning, particularly concept acquisition, is a fundamentally inexplicable process. Cowie challenges this explanatory pessimism, and argues convincingly that concept acquisition is psychologically explicable. What's Within? is a clear and provocative achievement in the study of the human mind. (shrink)

This paper argues for a position of ‘dark pessimism’ towards introspective reports playing a strong justificatory role in consciousness science, based on the application of frameworks and concepts of measurement. I first show that treating introspective reports as measurements fits well within current discussions of the reliability of introspection, and argue that introspective reports must satisfy at least a minimal definition of measurement in order to play a justificatory role in consciousness science. I then show how treating introspective reports as (...) measurements makes it possible to identify the foundational methodological problems that underlie much of the current philosophical and scientific debate about the status of introspective evidence in studying consciousness. I argue that these problems prevent introspective reports from playing a strong justificatory role and resolving long-standing debates in consciousness science, both in contemporary work and in the future. (shrink)

Contemporary art can seem chaotic: it may be made of toilet paper, candies you can eat, or meat that is thrown out after each exhibition. Some works fill a room with obsessively fabricated objects, while others purport to include only concepts, thoughts, or language. Immaterial argues that, despite these unruly appearances, making rules is a key part of what many contemporary artists do when they make their works, and these rules can explain disparate developments in installation art, conceptual art, time-based (...) media art, and participatory art. -/- Sherri Irvin shows how rules are now an artistic medium: they are part of the work's structure and shape what it expresses. Rules are meaningful in themselves and help to activate the meanings of non-art materials and found objects, so audiences need to know about the rules to get the most out of their art experiences. Loss of information about the rules, like loss of a chunk of marble, can seriously damage the work, and preserving rules as well as objects is reshaping how museums maintain their collections. Where rules collide with real-world circumstances, they may be broken maliciously, mistakenly, or for good reasons, threatening the work's meanings and sometimes its very existence. -/- Should we celebrate the prominence of rules in contemporary art? Irvin argues that, while rules aren't always used well, they can be used to create distinctive meanings and provide powerful immersive experiences not achievable through any other means. (shrink)

The ability of videos to serve as evidence of racial injustice is complex and contested. This essay argues that scrutiny of the Black body has come to play a key role in how videos of police violence are mined for evidence, following a long history of racialized surveillance and attributions of threat and superhuman powers to Black bodies. Using videos to combat injustice requires incorporating humanizing narratives and cultivating resistant modes of looking.

The source of endless speculation and public curiosity, our scientific quest for the origins of human consciousness has expanded along with the technical capabilities of science itself and remains one of the key topics able to fire public as much as academic interest. Yet many problematic issues, identified in this important new book, remain unresolved. Focusing on a series of methodological difficulties swirling around consciousness research, the contributors to this volume suggest that ‘consciousness’ is, in fact, not a wholly viable (...) scientific concept. Supporting this ‘eliminativist‘ stance are assessments of the current theories and methods of consciousness science in their own terms, as well as applications of good scientific practice criteria from the philosophy of science. For example, the work identifies the central problem of the misuse of qualitative difference and dissociation paradigms, often deployed to identify measures of consciousness. It also examines the difficulties that attend the wide range of experimental protocols used to operationalise consciousness—and the implications this has on the findings of integrative approaches across behavioural and neurophysiological research. The work also explores the significant mismatch between the common intuitions about the content of consciousness, that motivate much of the current science, and the actual properties of the neural processes underlying sensory and cognitive phenomena. Even as it makes the negative eliminativist case, the strong empirical grounding in this volume also allows positive characterisations to be made about the products of the current science of consciousness, facilitating a re-identification of target phenomena and valid research questions for the mind sciences.​. (shrink)

Ethical medical care of pregnant women in Australia should include the real provision of information regarding the risks and benefits of vaginal birth. Routinely obtaining consent for the different ways in which childbirth is commonly intervened on and the assistance involved (such as midwife-led care or a planned caesarean section) and providing sufficient information for women to evaluate the harms and benefits of the care on offer, would not only enable the empowerment of women but would align with the current (...) standard of care as established by Rogers v Whittaker. (shrink)

History was a continuous cycle driven by the gods. Societies began by being small, impoverished, and insignificant, then became great, then proud and decadent, and finally were overthrown by a different small, impoverished people, with the cycle beginning anew. Herbert's historical universe in Dune is bound within a series of ever repeating cycle. Herbert's themes about human action, fatalism versus free will, and the repetition of religious motifs across vast distances of space and time. Greek mythology and tragedy appear on (...) the very first page of Dune with the use of a single word: Atreides. Much like in the Dune series, History emerged in the ancient Greek world by combining mythology, epic narrative, and tragedy. The Golden Path is the death of the constant cycles of imperialism and the freeing of humanity from constantly repeating old mistakes. (shrink)

Which objects and properties are represented in perceptual experience, and how are we able to determine this? The papers in this collection address these questions together with other fundamental questions about the nature of perceptual content. The book draws together papers by leading international philosophers of mind, including Alex Byrne (MIT), Alva Noë (University of California, Berkeley), Tim Bayne (St Catherine’s College, Oxford), Michael Tye (University of Texas, Austin), Richard Price (All Souls College, Oxford) and Susanna Siegel (Harvard University) Essays (...) address the central questions surrounding the content of perceptual experience Investigates how are we able to determine the admissible contents of experience Published in association with the journal Philosophical Quarterly . (shrink)

Our pollution of the environment seems set to lead to widespread problems in the future, including disease, scarcity of resources, and bloody conflicts. It is natural to think that we are required to stop polluting because polluting harms the future individuals who will be faced with these problems. This natural thought faces Derek Parfit’s famous Non-Identity Problem ( 1984 , pp. 361–364). The people who live on the polluted earth would not have existed if we had not polluted. Our polluting (...) behaviour does not make these individuals worse off. It may therefore seem that we do not harm them by polluting. Parfit argues that we should replace person-affecting principles with an impersonal principle of beneficence, Principle Q ( 1984 , p. 360.). I argue that Principle Q cannot give an adequate account of our duties to refrain from polluting. I consider attempts to solve the Non-Identity Problem by denying that to harm someone an agent must make them worse off. I argue that such responses provide a partial solution to the Non-Identity Problem. They do show that we harm future individuals in a morally relevant sense by polluting. Nonetheless, this is only a partial solution. The Non-Identity Problem still suggests that our harm-based reasons not to pollute are less strong than we intuitively believe. Thus on its own an appeal to the claim that we harm future individuals is not able to give a fully satisfactory account of why we are required not to pollute. (shrink)

How have the world's great thinkers, politicians, mathematicians, and religious figures reached their transformative moments of insight? Are there lessons to be learned from their experiences? William B. Irvine takes up these questions and others that relate to what he calls "aha moments," guiding us through the most striking examples of instantaneous intellectual breakthroughs that have shaped human civilization.

Introspective and phenomenological methods are once again being used to support the use of subjective reports, rather than objective behavioural measures, to investigate and measure consciousness. Objective measures are often seen as useful ways of investigating the range of capacities subjects have in responding to phenomena, but are fraught with the interpretive problems of how to link behavioural capacities with consciousness. Instead, gathering subjective reports is seen as a more direct way of assessing the contents of consciousness. This article explores (...) three different ways of gathering subjective reports that have been discussed in recent literature on consciousness, including immediate retrospection (Schwitzgebel [2007]) and two types of introspective training (Overgaard et al. [2004]; Schwitzgebel [2008]). Although not an exhaustive survey of the range of introspective methods now used, the discussion below highlights a range of general methodological problems with introspective methods, many identified up to a century ago. It is argued that none of the methodological problems established in earlier criticisms of the use of subjective reports have been dealt with, yet are still valid criticisms. Given that this is not the first time proponents of introspective, subjective measures of conscious have failed to answer these criticisms, this raises the question of whether the goal of providing a measure of consciousness is a methodological muddle worth pursuing. (shrink)

Snodgrass et al.’s commentary makes explicit one of the major problems in consciousness research; that there seem to be just as many definitions of basic terms are there are people in the field. Although Snodgrass et al.’s position appears at odds with the views expressed in Irvine , many of their arguments are actually consistent with the proposed views, or else fail to engage with them as a consequence of the shifting goal posts of what basic terms mean.

I argue that the experiences of everyday life are replete with aesthetic character, though this fact has been largely neglected within contemporary aesthetics. As against Dewey's account of aesthetic experience, I suggest that the fact that many everyday experiences are simple, lacking in unity or closure, and characterized by limited or fragmented awareness does not disqualify them from aesthetic consideration. Aesthetic attention to the domain of everyday experience may provide for lives of greater satisfaction and contribute to our ability to (...) pursue moral aims. (shrink)

I defend the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing: the claim that doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. A thing does not genuinely belong to a person unless he has special authority over it. The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing protects us against harmful imposition – against the actions or needs of another intruding on what is ours. This protection is necessary for something to genuinely belong to a person. The opponent of the Doctrine must claim that (...) nothing genuinely belongs to a person, even his own body. (shrink)

Representationalism is the position that the phenomenal character of an experience is either identical with, or supervenes on, the content of that experience. Many representationalists hold that the relevant content of experience is nonconceptual. I propose a counterexample to this form of representationalism that arises from the phenomenon of Gestalt switching, which occurs when viewing ambiguous figures. First, I argue that one does not need to appeal to the conceptual content of experience or to judgements to account for Gestalt switching. (...) I then argue that experiences of certain ambiguous figures are problematic because they have different phenomenal characters but that no difference in the nonconceptual content of these experiences can be identified. I consider three solutions to this problem that have been proposed by both philosophers and psychologists and conclude that none can account for all the ambiguous figures that pose the problem. I conclude that the onus is on representationalists to specify the relevant difference in content or to abandon their position. (shrink)

L.A. Paul argues that interesting issues for rational choice theory are raised by epistemically transformative experiences: experiences which provide access to knowledge that could not be known without the experience. Consideration of the epistemic effects of pregnancy has important implications for our understanding of epistemically transformative experiences and for debate about the ethics of abortion and applied ethics more generally. Pregnancy is epistemically transformative both in Paul’s narrow sense and in a wider sense: those who have not been pregnant face (...) significant barriers to acquiring the knowledge made accessible through pregnancy. This knowledge is crucial for engaging with the ethics of abortion. The epistemically transformativeWIDE nature of pregnancy may require us to use new methods to try to partially grasp what pregnancy is like such as for example, significant engagement with narrative literature. Because pregnancy is also epistemically transformative in a narrow sense, we need to work out how to engage in ethical reasoning when relevant knowledge is not fully accessible to all. This argument has implications beyond the debate about abortion. Philosophers in many areas of applied ethics will need to work out how to respond appropriately to epistemically transformative experiences. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) will drastically change the healthcare system. Radiology is one speciality that is most affected as AI algorithms are increasingly used in diagnostic imaging. AI‐enhanced health technologies will, inter alia, increase workflow efficiency, improve diagnostic accuracy, reduce healthcare‐related costs, and help alleviate medical personnel shortages in under‐resourced settings. However, the development of AI‐enhanced technologies in healthcare is fraught with legal, ethical, and human rights concerns. Currently, the use of AI in South African healthcare is not governed by sui (...) generis legislation or ethical guidance focused exclusively and specifically on AI, although various provisions and principles from law and ethics find application. This article outlines these normative principles and explains their relationship with the extant legal obligations and regulatory framework as applied to the use of AI in radiology services in South Africa. The article concludes with three key recommendations for radiology practitioners using AI in South Africa. These are the need for: vigilant monitoring of AI use in practice, reforms to the liability framework, and appropriate guidance from local regulators and the Health Professions Council of South Africa on the ethical use of AI. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship (or lack thereof) between authors’ intentions and the meaning of literary works. It considers the advantages and disadvantages of Extreme and Modest Actual Intentionalism, Conventionalism, and two versions of Hypothetical Intentionalism, and discusses the role that one’s theoretical commitments about the robustness of linguistic conventions and the publicity of literary works should play in determining which view one accepts.

Ethical perspectives on regional, rural, and remote healthcare often, understandably and importantly, focus on inequities in access to services. In this commentary, we take the opportunity to examine the implications of normalizing metrocentric views, values, knowledge, and orientations, evidenced by the recent (2022) New South Wales inquiry into health outcomes and access to hospital and health services in regional, rural and remote New South Wales, for contemporary rural governance and justice debates. To do this, we draw on the feminist inspired (...) approach to rural health ethics involving analysis of power relationships developed by Simpson and McDonald and related ideas from critical health sociology. In presenting this analysis, we extend contemporary thought about spatial health inequities and structural violence. (shrink)

Discussion of the ethics of driverless cars has often focused on supposed real-life versions of the famous trolley problem. In these cases, a driverless car is in a position where crashing is unavoidable and all possible crashes risk harm: for example, it can either continue on its current path and crash into five pedestrians or swerve and crash into one pedestrian. There are significant disanalogies between the human versions of the trolley problem and situations faced by driverless cars which affect (...) the application and moral significance of key deontological distinctions, such as the distinction between doing and allowing harm. The application and moral significance of the doing/allowing distinction in the context of the behaviour of driverless cars depend on (a) our conception of the behaviour of driverless cars; (b) the forms of driverless cars that are developed and used; (c) the background expectations of programmers/manufacturers/owners of driverless cars and the conditions of being able to put those cars on the roads. These are as yet unsettled – and may even be undetermined. Nonetheless, trolley problems may still be useful in thinking about the ethics of driverless cars. (shrink)

It is a working assumption in much of the literature on the meta-problem that problem intuitions are (fairly) universal, and they are (fairly) universally treated as being psychological or rationally significant. I argue that variation in the universality and psychological or rational significance of problem intuitions is worth taking seriously, and that doing so places significant and challenging constraints on what an answer to the meta-problem might look like. In particular, it raises a potential challenge for (full-blown) realists on how (...) solutions to the meta-problem link to the hard problem. (shrink)

An overview of the philosophy and psychology of hallucination and its relevance to the philosophy of perception.

According to Brad Hooker's rule-consequentialism, as well as ordinary moral prohibitions against lying, stealing, killing, and harming others, the optimific code will include an over-riding “prevent disaster clause”. This paper explores two issues related to the disaster clause. The first issue is whether the disaster clause is vague—and whether this is a problem for rule-consequentialism. I argue that on Hooker's rule-consequentialism, there will be cases where it is indeterminate whether a given outcome counts as a disaster such that it is (...) permissible to infringe a given prohibition to avoid that outcome. I argue that it counts in favour of Hooker's rule-consequentialism that it makes this space for vagueness. The second issue is how to understand the disaster clause so that it does not make rule-consequentialism intolerably demanding—and more particularly whether avoiding over-demandingness requires the rule-consequentialist to place a counterintuitive limit on requirements to aid. I will argue that rule-consequentialism can avoid over-demandingness without placing a counterintuitive limit on requirements to aid. (shrink)

The senses, or sensory modalities, constitute the different ways we have of perceiving the world, such as seeing, hearing , touching, tasting, and smelling. But what makes the senses different? How many senses are there? How many could there be? Wha t interaction takes place between the senses? This introduction is a guide to thinking about these questions.

In the Grundlagen , Frege offers eight main arguments, together with a series of more minor supporting arguments, against Mill’s view that numbers are “properties of external things”. This paper reviews all eight of these arguments, arguing that none are conclusive.

The Hard Problem is surrounded by a vast literature, to which it is increasingly hard to contribute to in any meaningful way. Accordingly, the strategy here is not to offer any new metaphysical or ‘in principle’ arguments in favour of the success of materialism, but to assume a Type Q(uinian) approach and look to contemporary consciousness science to see how the concept of consciousness fares there, and what kind of explanations we can hope to offer of it. It is suggested (...) that while they will be materialist explanations, they will not be of the form that many scientists and philosophers would have us believe, but instead prompt a very different set of expectations and research projects. (shrink)

In this paper, we present new cases of illusion and hallucination that have not heretofore been identified. We argue that such cases show that the traditional accounts of illusion and hallucination are incorrect because they do not identify all of the cases of non-veridical experience that they need to and they elide important differences between cases. In light of this, we present new and exhaustive definitions of illusion and hallucination. First, we explicate the traditional accounts of illusion and hallucination. We (...) then proceed to outline cases of pure property experience—that is, experience as of properties, but not as of objects. We suggest that some might find it to be plausible that olfactory experience is of this kind. We argue that, within instances of such pure property experience, one can identify cases of veridical property perception, illusory property perception and hallucinatory property experience. With these distinctions in hand, we re-examine ordinary cases of experiences as of objects having properties. Drawing on the ideas uncovered by considering pure property experience, we bring to light many new cases of illusion and hallucination within ordinary experience as of objects having properties. These consist in different combinations of veridical perception, illusory perception and hallucination of both objects and properties. In order to accept that these new cases of illusion and hallucination exist in ordinary experience as of objects having properties, nothing turns on accepting the idea that there is pure property experience, or that olfactory experience is an instance of it. Such a conception of experience is simply a tool—a ladder to gain a good vantage point from which one can appreciate that there are these further cases. But this is a ladder that, as Wittgenstein might say, can be thrown away once it is used. Identifying new instances of illusion and hallucination provides much needed, important data for testing theories of experience and perception—theories that are frequently motivated, and should be judged, by their ability to account for cases of illusion and hallucination. (shrink)