What are the philosophical views of professional philosophers, and how do these views change over time? The 2020 PhilPapers Survey surveyed around 2000 philosophers on 100 philosophical questions. The results provide a snapshot of the state of some central debates in philosophy, reveal correlations and demographic effects involving philosophers' views, and reveal some changes in philosophers' views over the last decade.

What are the philosophical views of contemporary professional philosophers? We surveyed many professional philosophers in order to help determine their views on 30 central philosophical issues. This article documents the results. It also reveals correlations among philosophical views and between these views and factors such as age, gender, and nationality. A factor analysis suggests that an individual's views on these issues factor into a few underlying components that predict much of the variation in those views. The results of a metasurvey (...) also suggest that many of the results of the survey are surprising: philosophers as a whole have quite inaccurate beliefs about the distribution of philosophical views in the profession. (shrink)

In their monograph Narrow Content, Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne argue that all versions of internalism about mental content are either false or "pointless" (roughly, of no interest). We overview Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne's main line of argument and suggest that, while largely correct, it does not touch the core internalist claim that mental states have internally determined contents. Instead of engaging with this claim, Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne attack a variety of stronger or weaker claims. The stronger claims fall prey to the Mirror (...) Man argument and other considerations. The weaker claims fall prey to the charge of pointlessness. But the core internalist view is left untouched. (shrink)

One sometimes believes a proposition without grasping it. For example, a complete achromat might believe that ripe tomatoes are red without grasping this proposition. My aim in this paper is to shed light on the difference between merely believing a proposition and grasping it. I focus on two possible theories of grasping: the inferential theory, which explains grasping in terms of inferential role, and the phenomenal theory, which explains grasping in terms of phenomenal consciousness. I argue that the phenomenal theory (...) is more plausible than the inferential theory. (shrink)

Phenomenal intentionality is a kind of intentionality, or aboutness, that is grounded in phenomenal consciousness, the subjective, experiential feature of certain mental states. The phenomenal intentionality theory (PIT), is a theory of intentionality according to which there is phenomenal intentionality, and all other kinds of intentionality at least partly derive from it. In recent years, PIT has increasingly been seen as one of the main approaches to intentionality.

There is a difference between merely thinking that P and really grasping that P. For example, Jackson's (1982) black-and-white Mary cannot (before leaving her black-and-white room) fully grasp what it means to say that fire engines are red, but she can perfectly well entertain the thought that fire engines are red. The contrast between merely thinking and grasping is especially salient in the context of certain moral decisions. For example, an individual who grasps the plight of starving children thanks to (...) evocative images seems much more likely to donate for the children's benefit than someone who is merely told about their plight. This paper offers a phenomenal account of grasping according to which grasping a content (whether a proposition or concept) consists in one's thoughts about the content being constituted by phenomenal experiences of constituents of the content. This account improves on earlier phenomenal accounts of grasping (Bourget 2017a, 2018) by allowing for partial grasping and generalizing to concepts. The paper also addresses objections to phenomenal accounts of grasping, including the objection that recent developments in AI technology show that consciousness is irrelevant to grasping and understanding. (shrink)

One central brand of representationalism claims that the specific phenomenal character of an experience is fully determined by its content. A challenge for this view is that cognitive and perceptual experiences sometimes seem to have the same representational content while differing in phenomenal character. In particular, it might seem that one can have faint imagery experiences or conscious thoughts with the same contents as vivid perceptual experiences. This paper argues that such cases never arise, and that they are probably metaphysically (...) impossible. I also suggest a fully representational account of differences in vividness between phenomenal experiences. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that perceptual ascriptions such as “Jones sees a cat” are sometimes intensional. I offer a range of examples of intensional perceptual ascriptions, respond to objections to intensional readings of perceptual ascriptions, and show how widely accepted semantic accounts of intensionality can explain the key features of intensional perceptual ascriptions.

This paper overviews the current status of debates on tracking representationalism, the view that phenomenal consciousness is a matter of tracking features of one's environment in a certain way. We overview the main arguments for the view and the main objections and challenges it faces. We close with a discussion of alternative versions of representationalism that might overcome the shortcomings of tracking representationalism.

Representationalists argue that phenomenal states are intentional states of a special kind. This paper offers an account of the kind of intentional state phenomenal states are: I argue that they are underived intentional states. This account of phenomenal states is equivalent to two theses: first, all possible phenomenal states are underived intentional states; second, all possible underived intentional states are phenomenal states. I clarify these claims and argue for each of them. I also address objections which touch on a range (...) of topics, including meaning holism and concept empiricism. I conclude with a brief discussion of the consequences of the proposed view for the project of naturalizing consciousness. (shrink)

This paper replies to objections from perceptual distortion against the representationalist thesis that the phenomenal characters of experiences supervene on their intentional contents. It has been argued that some pairs of distorted and undistorted experiences share contents without sharing phenomenal characters, which is incompatible with the supervenience thesis. In reply, I suggest that such cases are not counterexamples to the representationalist thesis because the contents of distorted experiences are always impoverished in some way compared to those of normal experiences. This (...) can be shown by considering limit cases of perceptual distortion, for example, maximally blurry experiences, which manifestly lack details present in clear experiences. I argue that since there is no reasonable way to draw the line between distorted experiences that have degraded content and distorted experiences that do not, we should allow that an increase in distortion is always accompanied by a change in content. This applies to perceptual distortions due to blur, double vision, perspective, and illumination conditions. (shrink)

VIRGINIE MARIS,ÉLISE HUCHARD | : Considérant l’ubiquité de la souffrance dans le monde sauvage, la question se pose de notre obligation d’intervenir. Du simple devoir d’assistance dans des situations ponctuelles à des projets de transformation des conditions de vie animale à grande échelle, la défense de l’interventionnisme entre en conflit avec la pensée conservationniste qui valorise la naturalité ou l’autonomie des systèmes écologiques. Dans cet article, nous tentons de mettre en dialogue les intuitions interventionnistes et la pensée conservationniste. Nous (...) exposons tout d’abord l’argument interventionniste et ses limites épistémiques. Nous mitigeons ensuite le constat selon lequel les conditions de vie des animaux sauvages justifient notre intervention en replaçant le problème de la souffrance dans un cadre évolutif et écologique plus large puis en insistant sur d’autres obligations vis-à-vis des animaux sauvages comme le respect de leur autonomie ou de leur souveraineté. Enfin, nous défendons une conception pluraliste de nos relations au monde naturel dans laquelle le souci pour les animaux s’équilibre avec d’autres valeurs écocentrées. Nous concluons en présentant les ressources encore peu explorées d’une conservation compassionnelle qui intègre le souci pour les individus et le souci pour les collectifs écologiques dans les normes de ses actions. | : The ubiquity of suffering in the wild raises the question of our obligation to intervene. From a simple duty of assistance in particular situations to large-scale projects aimed at transforming animal living conditions, the defense of interventionism often conflicts with conservationist values, which emphasize the naturalness or autonomy of ecological systems. In this article, we attempt to open a dialogue between interventionist intuitions and the conservationist school of thought. We first expose the interventionist argument and its epistemic limitations. We subsequently mitigate the statement according to which the living conditions of wild animals justify human intervention by replacing the problem of suffering in a broader ecological and evolutionary framework, as well as by insisting on other obligations that we may have towards wild animals, such as the respect of their autonomy and sovereignty. Finally, we defend a pluralistic conception of our relationships to the natural world, in which care for animals has to be balanced with other, eco-centered, values. We conclude by presenting the resources of a compassionate conservation approach, which remains largely unexplored and integrates care for individual animals as well as for ecological entities in its norm for action. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage explore les critiques du donné dans le néokantisme et la phénoménologie allemands. Il révèle la portée considérable de ces critiques, qui impliquent en même temps une controverse avec le positivisme de la fin du XIXème siècle et un dialogue substantiel avec l’Esthétique transcendantale de Kant. En posant les questions de la sensation et de la perception, la présente monographie permet de ménager un accès privilégié aux enjeux fondamentaux de la philosophie austro-allemande au tournant du XXème siècle. Lorsqu’il est (...) question du donné ou des critiques du donné dans le discours philosophique contemporain, et cela arrive souvent dans les débats sur la perception en philosophie de l’esprit, c’est toujours à la controverse analytique autour du « mythe du donné » que l’on fait référence – controverse, qui a vu le jour en 1956, lorsque le philosophe américain Wilfrid Sellars publie Empirisme et philosophie de l’esprit. Or, il est intéressant d’observer que la critique sellarsienne du « mythe du donné » a été préfigurée, en un sens partiel mais important, par les objections que les néokantiens et les phénoménologues ont adressées à la notion de donné au tournant du XXesiècle. La présente monographie comble cette lacune béante de l’historiographie classique, qui a jusqu’ici accordé peu d’attention à la constance de cette critique dans toutes les philosophies marquées par l’héritage de Kant. (shrink)

The majority of evidence on social anxiety -linked attentional biases to threat comes from research using facial expressions. Emotions are, however, communicated through other channels, such as voice. Despite its importance in the interpretation of social cues, emotional prosody processing in SA has been barely explored. This study investigated whether SA is associated with enhanced processing of task-irrelevant angry prosody. Fifty-three participants with high and low SA performed a dichotic listening task in which pairs of male/female voices were presented, one (...) to each ear, with either the same or different prosody. Participants were instructed to focus on either the left or right ear and to identify the speaker’s gender in the attended side. Our main results show that, once attended, task-irrelevant angry prosody elicits greater interference than does neutral prosody. Surprisingly, high socially anxious participants were less prone to distraction from attended-angry prosody than were low socially anxious individuals. These findings emphasise the importance of examining SA-related biases across modalities. (shrink)

Based on Claudia Moatti’s Res publica. Histoire romaine de la chose publique, we strive to draw the outlines of what would be a historical science of antiquity that would isolate, in order to protect itself, the political representations that link us to Rome? The aim here is to study the political concepts used in ancient Rome by placing, at the fore, language and anthropology of the practices that we are trying to identify, in the background. This feature therefore seeks to (...) extend Claudia Moatti’s work by resuming the study of Res publica to perceive how it has been received by posterity. (shrink)

Résumé Le silence de Lorna de Jean-Pierre et Luc Dardenne met en scène la grossesse fictive que Lorna s’invente suite à la disparition de Claudy. La perte de l’être aimé engendre une mélancolie qui s’appréhende dans une dépersonnalisation de la chair féminine. Est analysée la manière qu’ont les cinéastes de rendre présente la relation à l’absent, et de parler de leur création, soit d’une chair masculine qui crée, par l’intermédiaire de l’enfantement de Lorna, qui devient leur ego alter.

Although there exists a strong uncertainty surrounding the evaluation of the decline of biodiversity, and a larger uncertainty still regarding projections of the decline to come, there is no controversy on the fact that the current rate of extinction is in a crisis. The fact that this decline is above all of anthropic origin is the object of a consensus within the scientific community. This text thus takes as a starting point the existence of a true crisis of biodiversity. This (...) crisis of biodiversity must conclude in the adoption of a principle of protection of the biodiversity, a normative principle which would constrain the relation of man with nature with regard to its diversity. I will show in this text that the principle of sustainable development is not sufficient to adequately define a principle of protection of the biodiversity. (shrink)

Sur un bloc, connu depuis longtemps en raison d’une inscription (FD III, 4, 189) et déposé sur la terrasse Sud, à l’angle Sud-Est du Temple d’Apollon, on voit deux séries de lignes et deux demi-cercles accolés à deux d’entre elles qui n’ont jamais été signalés à notre connaissance. Il s’agit d’un abaque. Après avoir indiqué rapidement comment les Grecs utilisaient cet instrument, on décrit la pierre et donne les raisons d’une telle identification avant de rappeler les questions que pose cet (...) abaque en particulier et les tables à calcul grecques en général. (shrink)

Ah! Nana est un journal de bande dessinée publié entre 1976 et 1978. Adapté d’un magazine apparu aux USA en 1970, le Wimmen’s comix, sa spécificité est d’être réalisé par des femmes et de viser un lectorat féminin. C’est pourquoi il représente une aventure pionnière dans le monde de la bande dessinée française. Son contenu reflète les préoccupations féministes de son temps, pour aborder des sujets les plus délicats comme les plus tabous de la société de la fin des années (...) 1970, parmi lesquels la sexualité féminine, l’inceste ou les différentes violences subies par les femmes. Des dossiers consacrés à une thématique particulière sont appuyés par une mise en image sans détours, crue et parfois cruelle. Il en faut beaucoup pour bouleverser les mentalités. Les femmes d’Ah! Nana en ont-elles trop fait? En tout cas ce projet était trop original pour survivre à cette époque. Il est un échec commercial que le poids de la censure condamne définitivement. Mais il reste une tentative, jusqu’ici jamais reconduite en France, de permettre aux femmes de s’exprimer dans la bande dessinée et il rend compte de leurs difficultés à être publiées. (shrink)

Depuis une vingtaine d’années, un ensemble diversifié de domaines de recherche s’est constitué autour de l’étude et de la fabrication de systèmes artificiels visant à reproduire l’organisation de la vie. Pluridisciplinaire, la vie artificielle est consacrée nouvelle discipline scientifique en 19871. Elle a été définie par Langton comme « l’étude de systèmes construits..

This dialogue explores the question of whether intentionality—the “ofness”, “aboutness”, or “directedness” of mental states—is a relation. We explore three views: the Naive View, on which intentionality is a relation to ordinary, everyday objects, facts, and other such items; the Abstract Contents View, on which intentionality is a relation to mind-independent abstract entities that are our contents; and the Aspect View, on which intentionality is a matter of having intentional states with particular (non-relational) aspects that are our contents. We consider (...) the challenges facing these views, which include empirical challenges in accounting for all the contents our intentional states can represent, metaphysical challenges in making sense of how contents can be entertained or otherwise represented by us and how they can play a psychological role in the mental economy, and challenges in making sense of how intentionality connects us to the world—if at all. Along the way, we consider the question of how consciousness is related to intentionality and how this affects one’s choice of views. (shrink)

A satisfactory solution to the problem of consciousness would take the form of a simple yet fully general model that specifies the precise conditions under which any given state of consciousness occurs. Science has uncovered numerous correlations between consciousness and neural activity, but it has not yet come anywhere close to this. We are still looking for the Newtonian laws of consciousness. -/- One of the main difficulties with consciousness is that we lack a language in which to formulate illuminating (...) generalizations about it. Philosophers and scientists talk about "what it’s like", sensations, feelings, and perceptual states such as seeing and hearing. This language does not allow a precise articulation of the internal structures of conscious states and their inter-relations. It is inadequate to capture relations of the kind we are looking for between conscious states and physical states. -/- In this thesis I refine and defend a theory of consciousness which promises to solve this regimentation problem: the representational theory of consciousness. I argue that the representational theory can solve the regimentation problem and smooth out other important obstacles to a fruitful study of consciousness. I also make a case for the theory independently of its payoffs, and I discuss the leading opposing theories at some length. (shrink)

A representationalist-friendly introduction to representationalism which covers a number of central problems and objections.

I discuss the prospects for novel communication methods in academic research. I describe communication tools which could enhance the practice of conceptual analysis.

According to the Appraisal-Tendency Framework (Han, Lerner, & Keltner, 2007), certainty-associated emotions increase risk taking compared with uncertainty-associated emotions. To date, this general effect has only been shown in static judgement and decision-making paradigms; therefore, the present study tested the effect of certainty on risk taking in a sequential decision-making task. We hypothesised that the effect would be reversed due to the kind of processing involved, as certainty is considered to encourage heuristic processing that takes into account the emotional cues (...) arising from previous decisions, whereas uncertainty leads to more systematic processing. One hundred and one female participants were induced to feel one of three emotions (film clips) before performing a decision-making task involving risk (Game of Dice Task; Brand et al., 2005). As expected, the angry and happy participants (certainty-associated emotions) were more likely than the fearful participants (uncertainty-associated emotion) to make safe decisions (vs. risky decisions). (shrink)

On explanationist accounts of genealogical debunking, roughly, a belief is debunked when its explanation is not suitably related to its content. We argue that explanationism cannot accommodate cases in which beliefs are explained by factors unrelated to their contents but are nonetheless independently justified. Justification-specific versions of explanationism face an iteration of the problem. The best account of debunking is a probabilistic account according to which subject S’s justification J for their belief that P is debunked when S learns that (...) J is no more likely to be true on the hypothesis that P than on the hypothesis that ¬P. The probabilistic criterion is fully general, applying not only to cases where the learned undercutting defeater is a proposition about our beliefs or other mental states but to any case of undercutting defeat, providing the grounds for a debunking argument against the existence of a special, metacognitive debunking principle. (shrink)

L’essence de la manifestation semblait laisser dans l’ombre le problème du corps pourtant appelé par la critique de la subjectivité purement formelle. La lecture de l’Essai sur l’ontologie biranienne, initialement destiné à constituer un chapitre de la célèbre thèse de Michel Henry, venait éclairer par la..

In first, we recall some properties of polygons under the action of an irregular monoid which may be written M = G ∪ I, where G is a group and I the only one ideal. Then, we completely describe monoids when G has only one orbit on I. We also describe all possible polygons and types of their elements.

The objective of this paper is to reconstruct Husserl’s two-pronged approach of sensory givenness. On the one hand, the phenomenological focus on intentional consciousness implies a virulent criticismof the positivistic myth of the sensory given. On the other hand, there is also a positive appeal to sensory givenness in phenomenology, without which phenomenology would not be worthy of its name and would, ultimately, be nothing other than a form of neo-Kantianism. In the context of transcendental genetic phenomenology, Husserl manages to (...) rehabilitate sensory givenness in a reduced, viz. demythologized form. This reconstruction of Husserl’s ambivalent reference to the given can help phenomenology defend itself against some actual trends, which tend to reduce it to phenomenalismor to conceptualism. (shrink)

The ventricular pressure profile is characteristic of the cardiac contraction progress and is useful to evaluate the cardiac performance. In this contribution, a tissue-level electromechanical model of the left ventricle is proposed, to assist the interpretation of left ventricular pressure waveforms. The left ventricle has been modeled as an ellipsoid composed of twelve mechano-hydraulic sub-systems. The asynchronous contraction of these twelve myocardial segments has been represented in order to reproduce a realistic pressure profiles. To take into account the different energy (...) domains involved, the tissue-level scale and to facilitate the building of a modular model, multiple formalisms have been used: Bond Graph formalism for the mechano-hydraulic aspects and cellular automata for the electrical activation. An experimental protocol has been defined to acquire ventricular pressure signals from three pigs, with different afterload conditions. Evolutionary Algorithms have been used to identify the model parameters in order to minimize the error between experimental and simulated ventricular pressure signals. Simulation results show that the model is able to reproduce experimental ventricular pressure. In addition, electro-mechanical activation times have been determined in the identification process. For example, the maximum electrical activation time is reached, respectively, 96.5, 139.3 and 131.5 ms for the first, second, and third pigs. These preliminary results are encouraging for the application of the model on non-invasive data like ECG, arterial pressure or myocardial strain. (shrink)