Showing papers in "Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement in 1998"

Intentionality as the mark of the mental

Abstract: ‘It is of the very nature of consciousness to be intentional’ said Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘and a consciousness that ceases to be a consciousness of something would ipso facto cease to exist.’ Sartre here endorses the central doctrine of Husserl's phenomenology, itself inspired by a famous idea of Brentano's: that intentionality, the mind's ‘direction upon its objects’, is what is distinctive of mental phenomena. Brentano's originality does not lie in pointing out the existence of intentionality, or in inventing the terminology, which derives from scholastic discussions of concepts or intentiones. Rather, his originality consists in his claim that the concept of intentionality marks out the subject matter of psychology: the mental. His view was that intentionality ‘is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon manifests anything like it.’ This is Brentano's thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mental.

Self-knowledge: the Wittgensteinian Legacy

Abstract: Etude du probleme psychologique de la connaissance de soi longtemps delaisse au profit du probleme de la connaissance des autres esprits. Soulevant la question de la domination cognitive immediate de notre propre esprit, l'A. se refere a la philosophie tardive de Wittgenstein et s'interesse en particulier au motif anti-explicatif de la presentation de la methode philosophique propre aux «Investigations philosophiques». Mesurant la possibilite de l'auto-illusion qui survient a cause de l'evidence que nous avons de nos propres caracteristiques psychologiques, l'A. etablit une distinction entre les aveux phenomenaux et les aveux attitudinaux qui constituent les formes non-inferentielles de l'auto-attribution. Rejetant les modeles observationnel et expressiviste de la connaissance de soi, l'A. avance la perspective par defaut fondee sur le principe constitutif de l'identificiation des croyances et autres etats intentionnels du sujet

Setting Things before the Mind

Abstract: Soulevant le probleme de la nature de la perception, des apparences perceptuelles et de la conscience phenomenale, qui oppose les philosophes sur la question des etats representationnels ou intentionnels, l'A examine les differentes conceptions critique, representationnelle, actuel-objectuelle et adverbiale de la notion de qualia chez D Chalmers, D Dennett, F Dretske, H H Price, C J Ducasse, d'une part, et determine les conditions de la description d'une experience visuelle chez M Baxandall, d'autre part Distinguant le caractere phenomenal et les proprietes phenomenales des aspects presentes de l'experience, l'A montre que l'arriere-plan commun a toutes les theories de la conscience est la reconnaissance de ce qui est present a l'esprit ou de ce qui se presente a l'esprit (donnees sensibles ou etats intentionnels)

Dualism in action

Abstract: We know what one dualist account of human action looks like, because Descartes gave us one. I want to explore the extent ot which presnet-day accounts of physical action are vulnerable to the charges that may be made against Descartes's dualist account. I once put forward an account of human action, and I have always maintained that my view about the basic shape of a correct ‘theory of aciton’ can be combined with a thoroughgoing opposition to dualism. But the possibility of the combination has been doubted and it will remain doubtful until we have a better understanding of what makes an account objectionably dualistic. In this paper, I hope to deflect some of the criticims aimed what I shall call my account, and to show that when they are turned onto their proper path their actual target is some physicalist accounts.

Embodiment and the philosophy of mind

Abstract: Cognitive science is in some sense the science of the mind. But an increasingly influential theme, in recent years, has been the role of the physical body, and of the local environment, in promoting adaptive success. No right-minded cognitive scientist, to be sure, ever claimed that body and world were completely irrelevant to the understanding of mind. But there was, nonetheless, an unmistakeable tendency to marginalize such factors: to dwell on inner complexity whilst simplifying or ignoring the complex inner-outer interplays that characterize the bulk of basic biological problem-solving. This tendency was expressed in, for example, the development of planning algorithms that treated real-world action as merely a way of implementing solutions arrived at by pure cognition (more recent work, by contrast, allows such actions to play important computational and problem-solving roles). It also surfaced in David Marr's depiction of the task of vision as the construction of a detailed threedimensional image of the visual scene. For possession of such a rich inner model effectively allows the system to ‘throw away’ the world and to focus subsequent computational activity on the inner model alone.

Understanding Other Minds from the Inside

Abstract: Can we understand other minds ‘from the inside’? What would this mean? There is an attraction which many have felt in the idea that creatures with minds, people (and perhaps animals), invite a kind of understanding which inanimate objects such as rocks, plants and machines, do not invite and that it is appropriate to seek to understand them ‘from the inside’. What I hope to do in this paper is to introduce and defend one version of the so-called ‘simulation’ approach to our grasp and use of psychological concepts, a version which gives central importance to the idea of shared rationality, and in so doing to tease out and defend one strand in the complex of ideas which finds expression in this mysterious phrase.

How to Find the Neural Correlate of Consciousness

Abstract: There are two concepts of consciousness that are easy to confuse with one another, access-consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. However, just as the concepts of water and H2O are different concepts of the same thing, so the two concepts of consciousness may come to the same thing in the brain. The focus of this paper is on the problems that arise when these two concepts of consciousness are conflated. I will argue that John Searle's reasoning about the function of consciousness goes wrong because he conflates the two senses. And Francis Crick and Christof Koch fall afoul of the ambiguity in arguing that visual area V1 is not part of the neural correlate of consciousness. Crick and Koch's work raises issues that suggest that these two concepts of consciousness may have different (though overlapping) neural correlates – despite Crick and Koch's implicit rejection of this idea.

Perceptual Intentionality. Attention and Consciousness

Abstract: Rejetant la distinction entre le probleme difficile de la conscience phenomenale en termes d'abime explicatif entre un systeme physique et des etats subjectifs, d'une part, et le probleme plus facile de la conscience-acces dans le cadre de la theorie de la representation mentale (intentionnalite) et de la theorie fonctionnaliste, d'autre part, l'A. etudie la question de la definition de la conscience de et de la conscience-acces dans le domaine de la perception. Defendant une approche de l'intentionnalite et de l'accessibilite independante des aspects phenomenaux de l'experience, l'A. montre que le probleme facile de la conscience apparait comme plus difficile, mais en un sens different, que le probleme soit-disant difficile de la conscience

Folk psychology and mental simulation

Abstract: This paper is about the contemporary debate concerning folk psychology–the debate between the proponents of the theory theory of folk psychology and the friends of the simulation alternative At the outset, we need to ask: What should we mean by this term ‘folk psychology’?

The Mind–Body Problem after Fifty Years

Abstract: Retracant l'histoire de la problematique esprit-corps depuis la parution de l'ouvrage de C. D. Broad en 1925 et depuis la perspective de la theorie de l'identite inauguree par Place, Smart et Feigl au debut des annees 1950, l'A. etudie l'interaction des trois idees principales qui ont alimente le debat: 1) l'idee que le mental est realise par le physique; 2) l'idee que le mental survient au physique; 3) l'idee que le mental est emergent du physique. Soulignant le role non-explicatif de la notion de survenance, et substituant au reductionnisme de Nagel un modele fonctionnaliste de la reduction, l'A. fait etat des resultats actuels concenrant le probleme esprit-corps: la distinction intentionnel/phenomenal, la notion de qualia, la question metaphysique de la causation mentale et de la conscience

Joint Attention and the First Person

Abstract: Soulignant le role de l'attention conjointe dans la conversation courante, l'A. se propose d'appliquer cette notion de la theorie de la signification et de la reference a la perspective de la premiere personne. Examinant le cas des noms propres et des demonstratifs perceptuels, et definissant les principes de la premiere personne (regle du token reflechi, principe de la concorde, principe de l'action effective, processus d'entree et sortie), l'A. souleve le probleme de la justification semantique des regles eliminativistes de la premiere personne, d'une part, et fait appel a l'attention interne pour l'exactitude des processus d'entree et sortie, d'autre part

Consciousness as Existence

Abstract: The difference for present purposes between ourselves and stones, chairs and our computers is that we are conscious. The difference is fundamental. Being conscious is sufficient for having a mind in one sense of the word ‘mind’, and being conscious is necessary and fundamental to having a mind in any decent sense. What is this difference between ourselves and stones, chairs and our computers? The question is not meant to imply that there is a conceptual or a nomic barrier in the way of non-biological things being conscious. It may happen one decade that the other minds problem will shoot up the philosophical agenda and get a lot of attention as a result of a wonderful computer attached to perceptual and behavioural mechanisms, and that the thing will in the end be taken as conscious, rightly. Our question is not what things can be conscious, but what the Property or nature of consciousness is.

Intentionality and interpretation

Abstract: Examinant l'approche analytique de la question de l'intentionnalite sous l'angle du comportement linguistique, l'A. mesure l'influence du behaviourisme sur la philosophie analytique de l'esprit, d'une part, et defend une position intermediaire entre le behaviourisme et le mentalisme fondee sur les theses de Quine et Davidson, d'autre part. Analysant les idees de traduction radicale, inscrutabilite de la reference, impuissance de l'intentionnalite et tenir pour vrai chez Quine, et soulignant la primaute des phrases et de la traduction chez Davidson, l'A. montre que ni l'analyse radicale ni le mentalisme anti-behaviouriste ne rendent compte de la phenomenologie du contenu, et que seul un mentalisme comprenant le behaviourisme peut localiser la realite semantique dans son domaine public

Experience and reason in perception

Abstract: The question I am interested in is this. What exactly is the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of knowledge on the basis of perception? The problem here, as I see it, is to solve simultaneously for the nature of this experience, and its role in acquiring and sustaining the relevant beliefs, in such a way as to vindicate what I regard as an undeniable datum, that perception is a basic source of knowledge about the mind-independent world, in a sense of ‘basic’ which is also to be elucidated. I shall sketch the way in which I think that this should be done. In section I, I argue that perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs. In section II, I explain how they do so. My thesis is that a correct account of the sense in which perceptual experiences are experiences of mind-independent things is itself an account of the way in which they provide peculiarly basic reasons for beliefs about the world around the perceiver.

The Modality of Freedom

Abstract: The classical problem of free will is one instance of the Integration Challenge. The Integration Challenge in its general form is that of reconciling our metaphysics of any given area with our epistemology for that same area. In the case of free will, the challenge is that of reconciling our seeming first-person knowledge of our exercise of free thought, deliberation, choice and action with a description of what is really going on in the world as characterized in terms of causation, determination, explanation and causal possibility.

Externalism and Norms

Abstract: Soulevant la question de la relation entre le contenu de nos etats mentaux et le monde des proprietes observationnelles au-dela de nos corps, l'A. etudie differentes versions de l'externalise du type ou du contenu, d'une part, et examine l'opposition entre T. Burge et J. Fodor concernant la verite de l'anti-individualisme comme taxinomie des categories mentales ordonnees aux buts de la psychologie scientifique, d'autre part. Defendant la position de Burge a partir de la normativite rationaliste du domaine psychologique, l'A. etablit une analogie entre l'explication psychologique et l'explication fonctionnelle en biologie

Mind, Knowledge and Reality: Themes from Kant

Abstract: According to what might be described as ‘humanist’ approaches to epistemology, the fundamental task of epistemology is to investigate the nature, scope and origins of human knowledge. Evidently, what we can know depends upon the nature of our cognitive faculties, including our senses and our understanding. Since there may be significant differences between human cognitive faculties and those of other beings, it would seem that an investigation of the nature, scope and origins of human knowledge must therefore concern itself, in the first instance, with uncovering the structure and operations of the human cognitive apparatus. The most influential versions of humanism in epistemology have also been inclined to insist both that it is contingent that our cognitive faculties are as they are, and that an investigation of these faculties must be largely empirical. An empirical investigation is to be understood, very roughly, as one which relies upon observation and experiment, and to describe such an investigation as naturalistic is to draw attention to the fact that it is presupposed by humanism that the faculties being investigated are a part of the natural world, the world of space, time and causal law.

Mind, World and Value

Abstract: Naturalism is the dominant philosophy of the age. It might be characterized as the view that the only real facts are facts of natural science, or that only statements of natural science are really true. But perhaps this scientistic formulation underestimates the depth and everydayness of the dominance of naturalism. More informally, we might say that naturalism is the view that the world is a world of natural objects and natural phenomena, that the only properties of these objects are natural properties, and the relations between them are all natural relations – in short, there are only natural facts, natural truths. There are obvious questions to be raised about the coherence of naturalism (for example: can the truth of naturalism really be supposed to be a natural truth?); but I shall not dwell on these here. I want to put naturalism into question in a different way: by suggesting an alternative to it in the philosophy of mind which is rich enough to stop naturalism seeming compulsory. It is often simply assumed that a good account of the mind must be naturalistic. What does this rule out? Sometimes it seems to be supposed that all that is ruled out is an account which presents the mind as something supernatural . (A particular kind of Cartesian bogeyman will be imagined.) But this is a shallow contrast which is in danger of blinding its opponents to the strength of naturalism's own commitments.