[ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY 2023 ESSAY PRIZE WINNER] I argue that the term ‘naturalism’ is so empty of meaning that it is not suitable for serious theorizing in philosophy. In particular, I argue that the question of whether or not some theory or thesis should count as naturalistic is an empty verbal dispute with no further theoretical significance. I also discuss naturalism construed as a methodological thesis and argue that any plausible version will collapse into triviality. Lastly, I briefly discuss (...) the idea that naturalism is not a thesis at all but rather a ‘stance’ and suggest that this too succumbs to the charge of emptiness. I conclude that we should stop talking about naturalism altogether. (shrink)

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

I present an argument against the thesis of Uniqueness and in favour of Permissivism. Counterexamples to Uniqueness are provided, based on ‘Safespot’ propositions – i.e. a proposition that is guaranteed to be true provided the subject adopts a certain attitude towards it. The argument relies on a plausible principle: (roughly stated) If S knows that her believing p would be a true belief, then it is rationally permitted for S to believe p. One motivation for denying this principle – viz. (...) opposition to ‘epistemic consequentialism’ – is briefly discussed. The principle is extended to cover degrees of belief and compared with a couple of other well-known constraints on rational degrees of belief. (shrink)

I criticise a recent variety of argument for the representational theory of experience, which holds that the very idea of perceptual experience entails the representational view. I argue that the representational view is not simply obvious, nor is it contained in the mere idea of the world looking some way. I also clarify and re-present an argument against the representational view due to Charles Travis.

Sometimes when we describe our own sensory experiences we seem to attribute to experience itself the same sorts of familiar properties – such as shape or colour – as we attribute to everyday physical objects. But how literally should we understand such descriptions? Can there really be phenomenal elements or aspects to an experience which are, for example, quite literally square? This paper examines how these questions connect to a wide range of different commitments and theories about the metaphysics of (...) mind. In particular, I consider whether there may be phenomenological reasons to accept or reject the idea that there are elements or aspects of conscious experience itself which instantiate familiar spatial properties. I also explore how some general theses about the nature of empirical properties can motivate different answers to these questions. (shrink)

The much-discussed ‘Argument from Small Improvement’ has been advanced both as a reason to reject (tripartite) Completeness, one of the standard axioms of decision theory, and to accept the possibility of rationally incomparable choices. But this form of argument cannot be an effective basis for either of these conclusions, unless one already has some prior, independent reason to prefer Transitivity to Completeness as a constraint on rational preferences (or rational values). In particular, I show how a reverse argument from small (...) improvement can be constructed, starting from the assumption of tripartite Completeness, to the conclusion that Transitivity fails. I conclude that this form of argument as it has been standardly presented in the literature is a kind of ‘red herring’. We can only make progress here by evaluating the reasons independent of either such argument to prefer one or other of Transitivity or Completeness. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that beliefs are constitutively normative from two kinds of objection. After clarifying what a “blindspot” proposition is and the different types of blindspots there can be, I show that the existence of such propositions does not undermine the thesis that beliefs are essentially governed by a negative truth norm. I argue that the “normative variance” exhibited by this norm is not a defect. I also argue that if we accept a distinction between subjective and objective norms (...) there need be no worrying tension between doxastic norms of truth and doxastic norms of evidence. I show how a similar approach applies to the attitude of guessing. I then suggest that if we distinguish between practical and theoretical rationality, we will prefer a negative form of norm that does not positively oblige us to form beliefs. I finish by considering an alternative possible subjunctive form of norm that would also avoid problems with blindspots but suggest this has a non-intuitive consequence. (shrink)

Scheherazade Or the Future of the English Novel John Carruthers Originally published in 1928 "A brilliant essay…" Daily Herald A survey of contemporary fiction in England and America lends to the conclusion that the literary and scientific influences of the last fifty years have combined to make the novel of today predominantly analytic. The author argues that it has therefore gained in psychological subtlety, but lost its form and how this may be regained is put forward in the conclusion. 90pp (...) Thamyris Or Is There a Future for Poetry? R C Trevelyan Originally published in 1925 "Learned, sensible and very well-written." New Statesman This volume examines the possibilities of development for modern poetry. 90pp Saxo Grammaticus First Aid for the Best-Seller Ernest Weekley Originally published in 1930 "A very shocking collection of vile phrases from contemporary writers." Daily News Authored by the philologist Ernest Weekley, this volume represents the original emergency grammar manual for time-pressed best-selling writers. 88pp Deucalion Or the Future of Literary Criticism Geoffrey West Originally published in 1930 This book discusses the true function of criticism and asks how modern criticism is performing it. 86pp. (shrink)

I present two arguments that aim to establish logical limits on what we can know. More specifically, I argue for two results concerning what we can know about questions that we cannot answer. I also discuss a line of thought, found in the writings of Pierce and of Rescher, in support of the idea that we cannot identify specific scientific questions that will never be answered.

This is the introductory essay to the collection of essays: 'Acquaintance: New Essays' (eds. Knowles & Raleigh, forthcoming, OUP). In this essay I provide some historical background to the concept of acquaintance. I examine various Russellian theses about acquaintance that contemporary acquaintance theorists may wish to reject. I consider a number of questions that acquaintance theorists face. I provide a survey of current debates in philosophy where acquaintance has recently been invoked. And I also provide brief summaries of the (...) other essays in this volume. (shrink)

A good account of the agnostic attitude of Suspending Judgement should explain how it can be rendered more or less rational/justified according to the state of one's evidence – and one's relation to that evidence. I argue that the attitude of suspending judgement whether p constitutively involves having a belief; roughly, a belief that one cannot yet tell whether or not p. I show that a theory of suspending that treats it as a sui generis attitude, wholly distinct from belief, (...) struggles to account for how suspension of judgement can be rendered more or less rational (or irrational) by one's evidence. I also criticise the related idea that suspension essentially requires an 'Inquiring Attitude'. I show how a belief-based theory, in contrast, neatly accounts for the rational and epistemic features of suspending and so neatly accounts for why an agnostic has a genuine neutral opinion concerning the question whether p, as opposed to simply having no opinion. (shrink)

Instability occurs when the very fact of choosing one particular possible option rather than another affects the expected values of those possible options. In decision theory: An act is stable iff given that it is actually performed, its expected utility is maximal. When there is no stable choice available, the resulting instability can seem to pose a dilemma of practical rationality. A structurally very similar kind of instability, which occurs in cases of anti-expertise, can likewise seem to create dilemmas of (...) epistemic rationality. One possible line of response to such cases of instability, suggested by both Jeffrey (1983) and Sorensen (1987), is to insist that a rational agent can simply refuse to accept that such instability applies to herself in the first place. According to this line of thought it can be rational for a subject to discount even very strong empirical evidence that the anti-expertise condition obtains. I present a new variety of anti-expertise condition where no particular empirical stage-setting is required, since the subject can deduce a priori that an anti-expertise condition obtains. This kind of anti-expertise case is therefore not amenable to the line of response that Jeffrey and Sorensen recommend. (shrink)

According to Sparse views of perceptual content, the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is exhausted by the experiential presentation of ‘low-level’ properties such as (in the case of vision) shapes, colors, and textures Whereas, according to Rich views of perceptual content, the phenomenal character of perceptual experience can also sometimes involve experiencing ‘high-level’ properties such as natural kinds, artefactual kinds, causal relations, linguistic meanings, and moral properties. An important dialectical tool in the debate between Rich and Sparse theorists is the (...) so-called ‘method of phenomenal contrast’. I explore how this method of phenomenal contrast interacts with the sort of content-externalism made familiar by Putnam. I show that the possibility of Twin Earth style cases places important restrictions on the range of properties that the method of phenomenal contrast could plausibly apply to. Moreover, these restrictions would apply to some paradigmatically low-level properties as well as to some of the frequently advanced high-level properties. I also draw some general lessons about the different ways one might conceive of the relation between phenomenal character and representational content. (shrink)

According to the recent Perceptual Confidence view, perceptual experiences possess not only a representational content, but also a degree of confidence in that content. The motivations for this view are partly phenomenological and partly epistemic. We discuss both the phenomenological and epistemic motivations for the view, and the resulting account of the interface between perceptual experiences and degrees of belief. We conclude that, in their present state of development, orthodox accounts of perceptual experience are still to be favoured over the (...) perceptual confidence view. (shrink)

I consider the ‘inferentialist’ thesis that whenever a mental state rationally justifies a belief it is in virtue of inferential relations holding between the contents of the two states. I suggest that no good argument has yet been given for the thesis. I focus in particular on Williamson (2000) and Ginsborg (2011) and show that neither provides us with a reason to deny the plausible idea that experience can provide non-inferential justification for belief. I finish by pointing out some theoretical (...) costs and tensions associated with endorsing inferentialism. (shrink)

This chapter considers how Liberal Naturalism interacts with the main problems and theories in the philosophy of perception. After briefly summarising the traditional philosophical problems of perception and outlining the standard philosophical theories of perceptual experience, it discusses whether a Liberal Naturalist outlook should incline one towards or away from any of these standard theories. Particular attention is paid to the work of John McDowell and Hilary Putnam, two of the most prominent Liberal Naturalists, whose work was also very influential (...) in the philosophy of perception. There is also a section focusing on colour, an especially important topic not only for debates about perceptual experience but also for debates concerning how our ‘manifest image’ of the natural world relates to our best theories in the physical sciences. (shrink)

Much attention has recently been paid to the idea, which I label ‘External World Acquaintance’ (EWA), that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is partially constituted by external features. One motivation for EWA which has received relatively little discussion is its alleged ability to help deal with the ‘Explanatory Gap’ (e.g. Fish 2008, 2009, Langsam 2011, Allen 2016). I provide a reformulation of this general line of thought, which makes clearer how and when EWA could help to explain the specific (...) phenomenal nature of visual experience. In particular, I argue that by focusing on the different kinds of perceptual actions that are available in the case of visual spatial vs. colour perception, we get a natural explanation for why we should expect the specific nature of colour phenomenology to remain less readily intelligible than the specific nature of visual spatial phenomenology. (shrink)

The idea that there are features of or in our conscious experience that are, in some important sense, private has both a long history in philosophy and a large measure of intuitive attraction. Once this idea is in place, it will be very natural to assume that one can think and judge about one’s own private features. And it is then only a small step to the idea that we might communicate such thoughts and judgements about our respective private features (...) with each other. (shrink)

According to a certain kind of naïve or folk understanding of physical matter, everyday ‘solid’ objects are composed of a homogeneous, gap-less substance, with sharply defined boundaries, which wholly fills the space they occupy. A further claim is that our perceptual experience of the environment represents or indicates that the objects around us conform to this sort of conception of physical matter. Were this further claim correct, it would mean that the way that the world appears to us in experience (...) conflicts with the deliverances of our best current scientific theories in the following respect: perceptual experience would be intrinsically misleading concerning the structure of physical matter. I argue against this further claim. Experience in itself is not committed to, nor does it provide evidence for, any such conception of the nature of physical matter. The naïve/folk conception of matter in question cannot simply be ‘read-off’ from perceptual appearances. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell famously distinguished between ‘Knowledge by Acquaintance’ and ‘Knowledge by Description’. For much of the latter half of the Twentieth Century, many philosophers viewed the notion of acquaintance with suspicion, associating it with Russellian ideas that they would wish to reject. However in the past decade or two the concept has undergone a striking revival in mainstream ‘analytic’ philosophy – acquaintance is, it seems, respectable again. This is the first collection of new essays devoted to the topic of acquaintance, (...) featuring contributions from many of the world’s leading experts in this area. The volume showcases the great variety of topics in philosophy of mind, epistemology and philosophy of language for which philosophers are currently employing the concept of acquaintance. This book features an extensive introduction by one of the editors, which provides some historical background as well as summarizing the main debates and issues in contemporary philosophy where appeals to acquaintance are currently being made. The remaining thirteen essays are grouped thematically into the following four sections: (1) Phenomenal Consciousness, (2) Perceptual Experience, (3) Reference, (4) Epistemology. (shrink)

I raise a problem for common-factor theories of experience concerning the demonstrative thoughts we form on the basis of experience. Building on an insight of Paul Snowdon 1992, I argue that in order to demonstratively refer to an item via conscious awareness of a distinct intermediary the subject must have some understanding that she is aware of a distinct intermediary. This becomes an issue for common-factor theories insofar as it is also widely accepted that the general, pre-philosophical or ‘naïve’ view (...) of experience does not accept that in normal perceptual cases one is consciously aware of non-environmental (inner, mental) features. I argue then that the standard common-factor view of experience should be committed to attributing quite widespread referential errors or failures amongst the general, nonphilosophical populace – which seems an unattractively radical commitment. After clarifying the various assumptions I am making about experience and demonstrative thoughts, I consider a number of possible responses on behalf of the common-factor theorist. I finish by arguing that my argument should apply to any common-factor theory, not just avowedly ‘indirect' theories. (shrink)

Enactivist (Embodied, Embedded, etc.) approaches in cognitive science and philosophy of mind are sometimes, though not always, conjoined with an anti-representational commitment. A weaker anti-representational claim is that ascribing representational content to internal/sub-personal processes is not compulsory when giving psychological explanations. A stronger anti-representational claim is that the very idea of ascribing representational content to internal/sub-personal processes is a theoretical confusion. This paper criticises some of the arguments made by Hutto & Myin (2013, 2017) for the stronger anti-representational claim and (...) suggests that the default Enactivist view should be the weaker non-representational position. (shrink)

But Joyce did not want his hero to be either Greek or English: he wanted him to be Jewish. To that end, a third archetype, and an actual historical person, comes in: Baruch Spinoza. That Joyce himself was acquainted with Spinoza from fairly early in his career seems indubitable. In 1903 he mentioned him twice in a review of J. Lewis McIntyre's Giordano Bruno.1 Also in 1903 Joyce met Synge in Paris, and the two argued about art. Synge finally told (...) Joyce, who was at this time forging his ironclad esthetic in Aristotelian or Thomistic terms, that he had a mind like Spinoza, a remark that Joyce passed on, presumably with some pride, to his mother and his brother. These are the only times in Joyce's life of which there is any published evidence of a connection between Spinoza and Joyce, and yet, as all readers of Ulysses know, Spinoza is Bloom's philosopher, and in Ulysses as a whole Spinoza plays a greater role than any other philosopher, including Aristotle and St. Thomas who appear, surprisingly, rarely and always, with one exception, in the Stephen Dedalus context. Spinoza is also a presence in Finnegans Wake. The appeal of Spinoza to Joyce both as a man and as a mind must have been considerable. · 1. How well Joyce knew Spinoza at this time is problematical. His review of McIntyre's book, entitled "The Bruno Philosophy," published in the Dublin Daily Express, 30 Oct. 1903 , is done in English style, that is, the reviewer makes assertions as if they were his own when in fact they come from the author of the book under review. Thus when Joyce says, "in his attempt to reconcile the matter and form of the Scholastics . . . Bruno had hardily out forward an hypothesis, which is a curious anticipation of Spinoza" , he is only saying what McIntyre himself had said, as the editors of The Critical Writings point out.In point of fact there is nothing "curious" about Bruno being a precursor of Spinoza. One of Spinoza's early mentors, Francis Van den Ende, introduced him early on to the philosophy of Bruno, who thus became one of the formative influences on Spinoza's thought. John Henry Raleigh, professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley, is the author of Matthew Arnold and American Culture; Time, Place, and Idea: Essays on the Novel; and a forthcoming book on Joyce, The Chronicle of the Blooms: "Ulysses" as Narrative. He is currently writing a book on Sir Walter Scott, "Ivanhoe" and Its Times. (shrink)

A contribution to a book symposium on 'The Epistemic Role of Consciousness' by Declan Smithies (2019, OUP) in the Asian Journal of Philosophy. These comments focus on three themes from the book: (i) Zombies, (ii) the distinction between Propositional Justification and Doxastic Justification, (iii) Moorean Propositions.

In his book “Seeing Dark Things” (2008), Roy Sorensen provides many wonderfully ingenious arguments for many surprising, counter-intuitive claims. One such claim in particular is that when we a silhouetted object – i.e. an opaque object lit entirely from behind – we literally see its back-side – i.e. we see the full expanse of the surface facing away from us that is blocking the incoming light. Sorensen himself admits that this seems a tough pill to swallow, later characterising it as (...) “the most controversial thesis of the book” (2011, p199). -/- I will argue against Sorensen’s controversial thesis and in favour of what seems to me to be a much more natural and commonsensical alternative: when we see a silhouetted object, what we see is its edge and only its edge – so we do not see its entire back-side. (shrink)

I argue against one way of understanding the claim that how one’s visual experience “seems” provides support for the naïve-realist theory and weighs against sense-data theories . If my argument is correct, and we abandon this way of understanding how experience “seems”, we would lose one reason for favouring naïve-realism at the start of the dialectic of the traditional problem of perception. En route, I distinguish diff erent ways of understanding the transparency of experience, consider how to make sense of (...) rival theorists’ disagreement over the manifest nature of visual phenomenology and recount a story about Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This article provides a survey of Wittgenstein’s remarks in which he discusses various kinds of technology. I argue that throughout his career, his use of technological examples displays a thematic unity: technologies are invoked in order to illustrate a certain mechanical conception of the mind. I trace how his use of such examples evolved as his views on the mind and on meaning changed. I also discuss an important and somewhat radical anti-mechanistic strain in his later thought and suggest that (...) Wittgenstein’s attitude to mechanistic explanations in psychology was ultimately quite ambivalent. (shrink)

Barnett provides an interesting new challenge for Dogmatist accounts of perceptual justification. The challenge is that such accounts, by accepting that a perceptual experience can provide a distinctive kind of boost to one’s credences, would lead to a form of diachronic irrationality in cases where one has already learnt in advance that one will have such an experience. I show that this challenge rests on a misleading feature of using the 0–1 interval to express probabilities and show that if we (...) switch to using Odds or Log-Odds, the misleading appearance that there is only ‘a little room’ for one’s credences to increase evaporates. Moreover, there are familiar, independent reasons for taking the Log-Odds scale to provide a clearer picture of the confirmatory effect of evidence. Thus the Dogmatist can after all escape the charge of diachronic irrationality. (shrink)

Picking up on John Forrester’s (1949–2015) disclosure that he felt ‘haunted’ by the suspicion that Thomas Kuhn’s (1922–96) interests had become his own, this essay complexifies our understanding of both of their legacies by presenting two sites for that haunting. The first is located by engaging Forrester’s argument that the connection between Kuhn and psychoanalysis was direct. (This was the supposed source of his historiographical method: ‘climbing into other people’s heads’.) However, recent archival discoveries suggest that that is incorrect. Instead, (...) Kuhn’s influence in this regard was Jean Piaget (1896–1980). And it is Piaget’s thinking that was influenced directly by psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis then haunts Kuhn’s thinking through Piaget, and thus Piaget haunts Forrester through Kuhn. To better understand this second site of the haunting—which is ultimately the more important one, given the intent of this special issue—Piaget’s early psychoanalytic ideas are uncovered through their interaction with his early biology and subsequent turn to philosophy. But several layers of conflicting contemporary misunderstandings are first excavated. The method of hauntology is also developed, taking advantage of its origins as a critical response to the psychoanalytic discourse. As a result of adopting this approach, a larger than usual number of primary sources have been unearthed and presented as evidence (including new translations from French originals). Where those influences have continued to have an impact, but their sources forgotten, they have thus been returned. They can then all be considered together in deriving new perspectives of Forrester’s cases/Kuhn’s exemplars/Piaget’s stages. (shrink)

This essay takes—as its point of departure—Cavicchi’s (2006) argument that knowledge develops through experimentation, both in science and in educational settings. In attempting to support and extend her conclusions, which are drawn in part from the replication of some early tasks in the history of developmental psychology, the late realist-constructivist theory of Jean Piaget is presented and summarized. This is then turned back on the subjects of Cavicchi’s larger enquiry (education and science) to offer a firmer foundation for future debate. (...) Several of Piaget’s “forgotten works” are discussed; their theoretical contributions synthesized to form a single interdisciplinary, cross-pollinating narrative describing how it is that both children and scientists grow into the world. (In addition, translated excerpts from two related historical documents have been provided in an appendix, while detailed footnotes add further context and integrate the discussion with current advances in related fields.). (shrink)

In this chapter we will explore new avenues for developing and defending Naïve Realism (also known as Relationalism), understood as a thesis about the phenomenal character of experience. The core claim of Naive Realism is that ‘what it’s like’ for a subject who enjoys a normal, successful perceptual experience of her surroundings consists in her being directly consciously aware of mind-independent entities in her external environment. It is widely agreed that the strongest challenge to Naïve Realism comes from the alleged (...) possibility of total hallucinations, and the orthodox line of response has been to adopt Disjunctivism about perceptual experience. In this chapter, we will instead focus on an emerging alternative family of responses, which we’ll call ‘New Wave Relationalism’ (NWR). The core commitment of NWR is to reject the initial assumption that there can be total hallucinations that are both non-relational and subjectively indistinguishable from genuine perceptions. The primary aim for this chapter will be to explore and defend this broad NWR strategy for responding to the threat posed by hallucinations to Naïve Realism. We will argue that which specific version or species of NWR a Naïve Realist should adopt will depend on their background methodological and metaphysical commitments. (shrink)

In the recent epistemological literature much has been written about the nature of suspending judgement or agnosticism. There has also been a surge of recent interest in the nature of ignorance. But what is the relationship between these two epistemically significant states? Prima facie, both suspension and ignorance seem to involve the lack of a correct answer to a question. And, again prima facie, there may be some intuitive attraction to the idea that when one is ignorant whether p, one (...) ought to suspend judgement whether p. In this paper we will explore a range of different possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension of judgement. We will also discuss how both ignorance and suspension are related to having inconclusive evidence. As we will see, the issues can become quite complex due to the fact that there are different, competing views about the nature of ignorance and also about the nature of suspension. Moreover, there are importantly different kinds of epistemic norms. Our overall aim then will be to systematically chart how these different choices will impact the possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension. (shrink)