In this paper, I advance a new hypothesis about what the ordinary concept of perceptual experience might be. To a first approximation, my hypothesis is that it is the concept of something that seems to present mind-independent objects. Along the way, I reveal two important errors in Michael Martin’s argument for the very different view that the ordinary concept of perceptual experience is the concept of something that is impersonally introspectively indiscriminable from a veridical perception. This conceptual work is significant (...) because it provides three pieces of good news for the common kind theorist. (shrink)

For some, the states and processes involved in the realisation of phenomenal consciousness are not confined to within the organismic boundaries of the experiencing subject. Instead, the sub-personal basis of perceptual experience can, and does, extend beyond the brain and body to implicate environmental elements through one’s interaction with the world. These claims are met by proponents of predictive processing, who propose that perception and imagination should be understood as a product of the same internal mechanisms. On this view, as (...) visually imagining is not considered to be world-involving, it is assumed that world-involvement must not be essential for perception, and thus internalism about the sub-personal basis is true. However, the argument for internalism from the unity of perception and imagination relies for its strength on a questionable conception of the relationship between the two experiential states. I argue that proponents of the predictive approach are guilty of harbouring an implicit commitment to the common kind assumption which does not follow trivially from their framework. That is, the assumption that perception and imagination are of the same fundamental kind of mental event. I will argue that there are plausible alternative ways of conceiving of this relationship without drawing internalist metaphysical conclusions from their psychological theory. Thus, the internalist owes the debate clarification of this relationship and further argumentation to secure their position. (shrink)

Concepts are highly theoretical entities. One cannot study them empirically without committing oneself to substantial preliminary assumptions. Among the competing theories of concepts and categorization developed by psychologists in the last thirty years, the implicit theoretical assumption that what falls under a concept is determined by description () has never been seriously challenged. I present a nondescriptionist theory of our most basic concepts, which include (1) stuffs (gold, milk), (2) real kinds (cat, chair), and (3) individuals (Mama, Bill Clinton, (...) the Empire State Building). On the basis of something important that all three have in common, our earliest and most basic concepts of substances are identical in structure. The membership of the category like that of is a natural unit in nature, to which the concept does something like pointing, and continues to point despite large changes in the properties the thinker represents the unit as having. For example, large changes can occur in the way a child identifies cats and the things it is willing to call without affecting the extension of its word The difficulty is to cash in the metaphor of in this context. Having substance concepts need not depend on knowing words, but language interacts with substance concepts, completely transforming the conceptual repertoire. I will discuss how public language plays a crucial role in both the acquisition of substance concepts and their completed structure. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons ed. by Alexandru Matei, Christian Moraru and Andrei TerianLaura Elena Savu WalkerMatei, Alexandru, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian, editors. Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons. Bloomsbury, 2021. 376pp.Far from “mourning” the demise of theory, this timely and thoughtfully curated essay collection testifies to its “renewed vitality,” its (...) compelling presence “across fields, domains of life, and geocultural boundaries,” and its power to build an ever-expanding world community of practioners who are forming what has come to be known as a “theory commons” (ix). As the collection’s editors point out, theory’s new lease on life hinges on ensuring both the democratic workings of this “world discourse formation” (1) and on the responsible theorizing of the very notion of community in “a world threatened by all kinds of anti-communal actions and reactions, from runaway globalization to exacerbated tribalism and tunnel-vision politics” (x). Working on the margins, specifically, out of a Romanian “lab” called The Critical Theory Institute (CTI), which opened its doors in early 2000, the contributors seek to revise the “standard history of theory,” one whose “Western origins, authority, and cultural compass ” strike them as “exceedingly reductive” (3). This project of geotheoretical repositioning and recalibration aims to recast theory as a “quintessentially cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, trans- and intercontinental undertaking” (4). As such, it carries on the project, launched in a previous volume, Romanian Literature as World Literature (2018), of fashioning an alternative to the nation-state paradigm that has long shaped literary and intellectual histories. In both of these works, Romanian critics and theorists have tuned into a wide range of voices, and tapped into a shared conceptual and methodological apparatus—itself the product of “an ethno-linguistic medley of traditions” (8). This approach informs what editors see as the “epoch-making” (17) discursive paradigm that has taken shape in globally networked post-Cold War societies (17), a viral model of cultural influence that fosters an ontology of “contact, contagion, of infection, dissemination, and horizontal accumulation” (15).To give us a sense of theory’s complex genealogy and evolution, the editors reference the Bulgarian critic Galin Tihanov, who has attributed [End Page 122] important developments in contemporary theory to the achievements of theorists (Nikolai Trubetskoi, Roman Jakobson, Vladimir Propp, and Georg Lukács) and schools of thought (Russian Formalism and the Prague Linguistic Circle). In “Traveling Theory” (1983) and “Traveling Theory Reconsidered” (2000), Edward Said called attention to the migratory nature of contributions made, for instance, by Georg Lukács, whose theories moved across different European locales in this period. Since then, contemporary theory has branched out to integrate the travels and travails of scholars affiliated with theory labs located in Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and last, but not least, Romania (10).Theory in the “Post” Era highlights five characteristics that distinguish theory in the “post” era from earlier forms: 1) It has a “reluctantly epoch-alist” thrust (19; original italics), which assumes that the “post” lexicon entails “rupture, discontinuity, and opposition” (19), radical departures, tentative claims, provisional conclusions, and ex-centric perspectives; 2) it adopts a “self-reflexive and experimental” (20; original italics) stance in which theorists invoke inherited approaches or invent new ones; 3) it introduces a “transdisciplinary” (21; original italics) scope that allows authors to interrogate the foundations, aims, and methods of theoretical discourse and practice across several knowledge domains, from which they “borrow whole vocabularies and toolkits” (21); 4) it is “nationally, transnationally, and ecologically affiliative” (20) in ways that allow theorists to “think with others at a distance” (21) about global issues; and 5) it is programmatic, placing critical and theoretical concerns in the service of “the ethical, the political, and the communal” (22). Organized around three main themes (“Aesthetics,” “Temporalities,” and “Critical Modes”), the essays juxtapose discussions of pivotal historical events and cultural phenomena with literary analyses of Romantic era “classics,” modernist experiments, and postmodern works of the post-Communist era, a corpus that includes, but is not limited to, landmark works of national culture that are now part of a fast-expanding planetary... (shrink)

Contents: 1) Peter Kung, Why We Need Something Like Imagery; 2) Derek Lam, An Imaginative Person’s Guide to Objective Modality; 3) Rebecca Hanrahan, Crossing Rivers: Imagination and Real Possibilities; 4) Michael Omoge, Imagination, Metaphysical Modality, and Modal Psychology; 5) Joshua Myers, Reasoning with Imagination; 6) Franz Berto, Equivalence in Imagination; 7) Christopher Badura, How Imagination Can Justify; 8) Antonella Mallozzi, Imagination, Inference, and Apriority; 9) Margherita Arcangeli, Narratives and Thought Experiments: Restoring the Role of Imagination; 10) Margot Strohminger, Two Ways (...) of Imagining Galileo’s Experiment; 11) Eric Peterson, Attention to Details: Imagination, Attention, and Epistemic Significance; 12) Amy Kind, Bridging the Divide: Imagining Across Experiential Perspectives; 13) Julia Langkau, On Imagining Being Someone Else; 14) Luke Roelofs, “Imagine If They Did That to You!”: The Complexity of Empathy; 15) Nick Wiltsher and Bence Nanay, Imagination, Selves, and Knowledge of Self: Pessoa’s Dreams in The Book of Disquiet . (shrink)

David Lewis has argued that “having an experience is the best way or perhaps the only way, of coming to know what that experience is like”; when an experience is of a sufficiently new sort, mere science lessons are not enough. Developing this Lewisian line, L.A. Paul has suggested that some experiences are epistemically transformative. Until an individual has such an experience it remains epistemically inaccessible to her. No amount of stories and theories and testimony from others can teach her (...) what it is like to have it, nor is she able to achieve this knowledge by way of imaginative projection. It’s this last claim that is the focus of this paper. In particular, I explore the case for the claim that some experiences are in principle imaginatively inaccessible to someone who has not undergone the experience itself or one relevantly similar. As I will suggest, this case is not as strong as is often thought. Close attention to the mechanisms of imagination, and in particular, to cases of skilled imaginers, suggests how techniques of imaginative scaffolding can sometimes be used to give us epistemic access to experiences we have not had, even ones that are radically different from any that we have had before. As a result, considerably fewer experiences remain imaginatively out of reach than proponents of transformative experience would have us believe. Experience may well be the best teacher, but this paper aims to show that imagination comes in a close second. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, as philosophers of mind have begun to rethink the sharp divide that was traditionally drawn between the phenomenal character of an experience (what it’s like to have that experience) and its intentional content (what it represents), representationalist theories of consciousness have become increasingly popular. On this view, phenomenal character is reduced to intentional content. This article explores a key motivation for this theory, namely, considerations of experiential transparency. Experience is said to be transparent in (...) that we ‘look right through it’ to the objects of that experience, and this is supposed to support the representationalist claim that there are no intrinsic aspects of our experience. (shrink)

According to representationalism, the phenomenal character of a mental state reduces to its intentional content. Although representationalism seems plausible with respect to ordinary perceptual states, it seems considerably less plausible for states like moods. Here the problem for representationalism arises largely because moods seem to lack intentional content altogether. In this paper, I explore several possible options for identifying the intentional content of moods and suggest that none of them is wholly satisfactory. Importantly, however, I go on to argue that (...) the plausibility of representationalism should not be seen to rest on the question of whether moods have intentional content but rather on the question of whether the intentional content of moods, were there any, would be sufficient to determine their phenomenal character. As I argue, even if we concede to the representationalist that moods have intentional content, their phenomenal character outstrips their intentional content; thus, the representationalist reduction cannot succeed. Ultimately, then, I conclude that moods do indeed pose a serious objection to the representationalist theory. (shrink)

What is consciousness and why is it so philosophically and scientifically puzzling? For many years philosophers approached this question assuming a standard physicalist framework on which consciousness can be explained by contemporary physics, biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. This book is a debate between two philosophers who are united in their rejection of this kind of "standard" physicalism - but who differ sharply in what lesson to draw from this. Amy Kind defends dualism 2.0, a thoroughly modern version (...) of dualism (the theory that there are two fundamentally different kinds of things in the world: those that are physical and those that are mental) decoupled from any religious or non-scientific connotations. Daniel Stoljar defends non-standard physicalism, a kind of physicalism different from both the standard version and dualism 2.0. The book presents a cutting-edge assessment of the philosophy of consciousness and provides a glimpse at what the future study of this area might bring. (shrink)

As persons, we are importantly different from all other creatures in the universe. But in what, exactly, does this difference consist? What kinds of entities are we, and what makes each of us the same person today that we were yesterday? Could we survive having all of our memories erased and replaced with false ones? What about if our bodies were destroyed and our brains were transplanted into android bodies, or if instead our minds were simply uploaded to computers? -/- (...) In this engaging and accessible introduction to these important philosophical questions, Amy Kind brings together three different areas of research: the nature of personhood, theories of personal identity over time, and the constitution of self-identity. Surveying the key contemporary theories in the philosophical literature, Kind analyzes and assesses their strengths and weaknesses. As she shows, our intuitions on these issues often pull us in different directions, making it difficult to develop an adequate general theory. Throughout her discussion, Kind seamlessly interweaves a vast array of up-to-date examples drawn from both real life and popular fiction, all of which greatly help to elucidate this central topic in metaphysics. -/- A perfect text for readers coming to these issues for the first time, Persons and Personal Identity engages with some of the deepest and most important questions about human nature and our place in the world, making it a vital resource for students and researchers alike. (shrink)

One common response to the knowledge argument is the ability hypothesis. Proponents of the ability hypothesis accept that Mary learns what seeing red is like when she exits her black-and-white room, but they deny that the kind of knowledge she gains is propositional in nature. Rather, she acquires a cluster of abilities that she previously lacked, in particular, the abilities to recognize, remember, and imagine the color red. For proponents of the ability hypothesis, knowing what an experience is (...) like simply consists in the possession of these abilities. Criticisms of the ability hypothesis tend to focus on this last claim. Such critics tend to accept that Mary gains these abilities when she leaves the room, but they deny that such abilities constitute knowledge of what an experience is like. To my mind, however, this critical strategy grants too much. Focusing specifically on imaginative ability, I argue that Mary does not gain this ability when she leaves the room for she already had the ability to imagine red while she was inside it. Moreover, despite what some have thought, the ability hypothesis cannot be easily rescued by recasting it in terms of a more restrictive imaginative ability. My purpose here is not to take sides in the debate about physicalism, i.e., my criticism of the ability hypothesis is not offered in an attempt to defend the anti-physicalist conclusion of the knowledge argument. Rather, my purpose is to redeem the imagination from the misleading picture of it that discussion of the knowledge argument has fostered. (shrink)

According to representationalism, the qualitative character of our phenomenal mental states supervenes on the intentional content of such states. Strong representationalism makes a further claim: the qualitative character of our phenomenal mental states _consists in_ the intentional content of such states. Although strong representationalism has greatly increased in popularity over the last decade, I find the view deeply implausible. In what follows, I will attempt to argue against strong representationalism by a two-step argument. First, I suggest that strong representationalism must (...) be _unrestricted_ in order to serve as an adequate theory of qualia, i.e., it must apply to all qualitative mental states. Second, I present considerations to show that an unrestricted form of strong representationalism is problematic. (shrink)

We show 13 stages of the development of tool-use and tool making during different eras in the evolution of Homo sapiens. We used the NeoPiagetian Model of Hierarchical Complexity rather than Piaget's. We distinguished the use of existing methods imitated or learned from others, from doing such a task on one's own.

Philosophers in the Western tradition have both theorized about imagination and used imagination in their theorizing about other matters. In this chapter, I first provide a brief overview of philosophical theorizing about imagination with a special focus on its relation to other mental states such as belief and perception. I then turn to a discussion of the methodological role that imagination has played in philosophy. I here focus on the imaginability principle, i.e., the claim that the imaginability of a given (...) scenario entails that such a scenario is in some sense possible. Relying on this kind of principle, philosophers have used imagination to justify theories in domains such as philosophy of mind, metaphysics and ethics. (shrink)

A sequential, hierarchical stage model of empathy can account for a comprehensive range of empathic behaviors. We provide an illustrative table, “Stages of Empathy,” to demonstrate how increasingly complex empathic behaviors emerge at each stage, beginning with the infant's “automatic empathy” and ending with the advanced adult's “coconstruction of empathetic reality.”.

Environmental theorists and practitioners generally accept that responsibility for environmental harm is best understood as common but differentiated, yet little work has been done to philosophically articulate this idea. This paper develops this theory by bringing Iris Marion Young's two-tiered model of responsibility to bear on the topic of addressing and redressing environmental damage. I demonstrate how her approach can satisfy the commonality criterion (i.e. that everyone has a role to play in confronting environmental harm), while still satisfying (...) the differentiation criterion (i.e. that different actors have different kinds and degrees of responsibility), and that it does so in a manner that is persuasive, politically useful, and reasonably acceptable to all sides. In aiming to satisfy the commonality criterion, the paper identifies traditional sustainable communities as environmentalist exemplars, emphasizing that these communities have a vital role to play in combatting our present ecological crisis. (shrink)

In Only Imagine, Kathleen Stock defends a theory of fictional content she calls extreme intentionalism. Roughly put, this view holds that the fictional content of a text is determined solely by its author’s intention. What is true in a given work of fiction gets fixed by what the author of that fiction intends a reader to imagine.

Among the many commonalities between memory and imagination is the fact that they can both be understood as skills. In this chapter, I aim to draw out some connections between the skill of memory and the skill of imagination in an effort to learn something about the nature of these activities and the connection between them. I start by considering the ways that one might work to cultivate these skills in the hope that we could learn something about imagination training (...) by reflection on memory training and vice versa. Interestingly, however, an initial look at the empirical research on the respective training regimens does not show much potential for this kind of crossover. Though there are some commonalities that can be found across the training regimens, these commonalities are nothing special over and above the kinds of commonalities one might find in training regimens for skills of any sort. Fortunately, however, the matter does not end there. When we think more deeply about the details of some of the training regimens for memory, we discover some important connections between the skill of memory and the skill of imagination. In particular, I argue that the two skills turn out to be interestingly intertwined. (shrink)

This article proposes a way of understanding Kantianism, act-utilitarianism and some other important ethical theories according to which they are all versions of the same kind of theory, sharing a common structure. I argue that this is a profitable way to understand the theories discussed. It is charitable to the theories concerned; it emphasizes the common ground between them; it gives us insights into the differences between them; and it provides a method for generating new ethical (...) theories worth studying. The article briefly discusses the relationship between these ideas and some other recent proposals that emphasize the common ground between Kantianism and versions of consequentialism. (shrink)

Philosophers have long suggested that our attitude of special concern for the future is problematic for a reductionist view of personal identity, such as the one developed by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons. Specifically, it is often claimed that reductionism cannot provide justification for this attitude. In this paper, I argue that much of the debate in this arena involves a misconception of the connection between metaphysical theories of personal identity and our special concern. A proper understanding of this (...) connection reveals that the above-mentioned objection to reductionism cannot get off the ground. Though the connection I propose is weaker than the connection typically presupposed, I nonetheless run up against a conclusion reached by Susan Wolf in “Self-Interest and Interest in Selves.” According to Wolf, metaphysical theses about the nature of personal identity have no significance for our attitude of special concern. By arguing against Wolf’s treatment of self-interest, I suggest that her arguments for this conclusion are misguided. This discussion leads to further clarification of the nature of the link between theories of personal identity and our special concern and, ultimately, to a better understanding of the rationality of this attitude. (shrink)

We distinguish traditional cognition theories from hierarchically complex stacked neural networks that meet many of Newell's criteria. The latter are flexible and can learn anything that a person can learn, by using their mistakes and successes the same way humans do. Shortcomings are due largely to limitations of current technology.

The formal theory of the Model of Hierarchical Complexity is presented. Complexity theories generally exclude the concept of hierarchical complexity; Developmental Psychology has included it for over 20 years. It also applies to social systems and non-human systems. Formal axioms for the Model are outlined. The model assigns an order of hierarchical complexity to every task, using natural numbers, establishing a quantal notion of stage and stages of performance. This formalizes properties of stage theories in psychology. The formal (...) class='Hi'>theory of the model enables extending the concept of hierarchical complexity to any field where tasks and their performances exist. (shrink)

The Model of Hierarchical Complexity is introduced in terms of its main concepts, background, and applications. As a general, quantitative behavioral developmental theory, the Model enables examination of universal patterns of evolution and development. Behavioral tasks are definable and their organization of information in increasingly greater hierarchical, or vertical, complexity is measurable. Fifteen orders of hierarchical complexity account for task performances across domains, ranging from those of machines to creative geniuses. The four most complex orders are demonstrated by postformal (...) stages of thought, which measure beyond formal operations, the highest stage found by Piaget for adults. (shrink)

The vast advances in biometrics over the past several decades have brought with them a host of pressing concerns. Philosophical scrutiny has already been devoted to many of the relevant ethical and political issues, especially ones arising from matters of privacy, bias, and security in data collection. But philosophers have devoted surprisingly little attention to the relevant metaphysical issues, in particular, ones concerning matters of personal identity. This paper aims to take some initial steps to correct this oversight. After discussing (...) the philosophical problem of personal identity, the ways in which the notion of biometric identity connects with, or fails to connect with, the philosophical notion of personal identity is explored. Though there may be some good reasons to use biometric identity to track personal identity, it is contended that biometric identity is not the same thing as personal identity and thus that biometrics researchers should stop talking as if it were. (shrink)

__: In this essay I explore the account of imaginative phenomenology developed by Uriah Kriegel in _The Varieties of Consciousness_. On his view, the difference between perceptual phenomenology and imaginative phenomenology arises from the way that they present the existential status of their object: While perceptual experience presents its object as existent, imaginative experience presents its object as non-existent. While I agree with Kriegel that it’s likely that the difference between imaginative phenomenology and perceptual phenomenology is one not just of (...) degree but of kind, I worry about the particular account that he has developed. I thus develop two lines of criticism. First, I question whether Kriegel is right that imagination presents its object as non-existent. Second, I question whether this account of imaginative phenomenology is consistent with other commonly-accepted facts about the nature of imagination. _Keywords_: Imagination; Perception; Phenomenology; J.-P. Sartre; Epistemic Value; Emotion ___Fenomenologia dell’immaginazione e status esistenziale_ _Riassunto_: In questo articolo intendo indagare l’approccio alla descrizione della fenomenologia dell’immaginazione sviluppata da Uriah Kriegel in _The Varieties of Consciousness_. Dal suo punto di vista, la differenza tra fenomenologia della percezione e fenomenologia dell’immaginazione si mostra nel modo in cui queste presentano lo status esistenziale dei loro oggetti: se l’esperienza percettiva presenta il proprio oggetto come esistente, l’esperienza immaginativa lo presenta come non-esistente. Per un verso, concordo con Kriegel sulla probabilità che la differenza tra fenomenologia dell’immaginazione e fenomenologia della percezione non sia di grado ma di genere, mentre, per altro verso, non sono convinta della correttezza del suo approccio. Pertanto vorrei sollevare due criticità. In primo luogo, mi chiedo se Kriegel sia nel giusto quando ritiene che l’immaginazione presenti il proprio oggetto come non-esistente; in secondo luogo, mi chiedo se questa descrizione della fenomenologia dell’immaginazione sia coerente con altri fatti, comunemente accettati, circa la natura dell’immaginazione. _Parole chiave_: Immaginazione; Percezione; Fenomenologia; J.-P. Sartre; Valore epistemico; Emozione. (shrink)

While the philosophical study of mind has always required philosophers to attend to the scientific developments of their day, from the twentieth century onwards it has been especially influenced and informed by psychology, neuroscience, and computer science. Philosophy of Mind in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuriesprovides an outstanding survey of the most prominent themes in twentieth-century and contemporary philosophy of mind. It also looks to the future, offering cautious predictions about developments in the field in the years to come. Following (...) an introduction by Amy Kind, twelve specially commissioned chapters by an international team of contributors discuss key topics, thinkers, and debates, including: the phenomenological tradition, the mind-body problem, theories of consciousness, theories of perception, theories of personal identity, mental causation, intentionality, Wittgenstein and his legacy, cognitive science, and future directions for philosophy of mind. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology, Philosophy of Mind in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuriesis also a valuable resource for those in related disciplines such as psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

Philosophy of Mind: The Basics is a concise and engaging introduction to the fundamental philosophical questions and theories about the mind. The author Amy Kind, a leading expert in the field, examines central issues concerning the nature of consciousness, thought, and emotion. The book addresses key questions such as: • What is the nature of the mind? • What is the relationship between the mind and the brain? • Can machines have minds? • How will future technology impact the (...) mind? With a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, Philosophy of Mind: The Basics is an ideal starting point for anyone seeking a lively and accessible introduction to the rich and complex study of philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In this paper, by analyzing the Chalmers-Searle debate about Chalmers’ zombie thought experiment, I attempt to determine the implications that the irreducibility of consciousness has for the truth of materialism. While Chalmers claims that the irreducibility of consciousness forces us to embrace dualism, Searle claims that it has no deep metaphysical import and, in particular, that it is fully consistent with his materialist theory of mind. I argue that this disagreement hinges on the notion of physical identity in play (...) in the discussion. Clarifying this notion in turn helps to clarify what it means to claim that consciousness is irreducible, and provides insight into the implications that the truth of this claim would have for the dualism-materialism debate. Ultimately, I suggest that the sort of irreducibility that can be motivated by the zombie thought experiment is not sufficient to require the rejection of materialism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Bedtime Stories It's For Your Own Good; Or Is It? Truth, Lies, and Parental Whoppers Lies, Rights, and Rationality Conclusion: It Isn't Easy Being Honest Notes.

An important question in the philosophy of psychiatry is: what is the proper method of psychiatric diagnostic reasoning? Let us call this the Methodological Question. In this paper, I criticize the answer that proponents of phenomenological psychiatry have given to this question and present an alternative. I argue that their answer fails to meet several adequacy conditions for a theory of psychiatric diagnostic reasoning. I then show how my own answer to the Methodological Question – the Model-Based Account of (...) diagnostic reasoning – meets these adequacy conditions. I conclude that the Model-Based Account of diagnostic reasoning is preferable to the Phenomenological Account. (shrink)

My purpose in this dissertation is to investigate the workings of the imagination. As I argue in Chapter One, such an investigation reveals that we cannot adequately account for the phenomenon of imagining without invoking mental imagery. I thus develop and defend an imagery-based account of the imagination, which I call the imagery model. ;Despite its intuitive appeal and a long philosophical history, the imagery model has nonetheless fallen into disfavor in contemporary discussions of the imagination. This is due, at (...) least in part, to a strong presumption against mental images that has developed in this century. Overcoming this presumption is the primary task of Chapter Two. In Chapter Three, I address a second motivation for the rejection of the imagery model, namely, that there seem to be some mental exercises which are clearly exercises of the imagination but yet which do not consist of imagery. By separating the imagery model from several controversial theses with which it has been associated, I show how the imagery model can protect itself from the threat of these counterexamples. ;Once these obstacles to the acceptance of the imagery model have been removed, the need remains to provide an explanation of the role that the image plays in imagining. As I suggest, although the image is not what is imagined, it is in virtue of the image that anything is imagined at all. More specifically, the image serves to capture the subject of the imagining. My discussion of this claim in Chapter Four is heavily influenced by recent work in the philosophy of language; in particular, I rely on many of the insights of the causal theory of reference developed by Saul Kripke and Keith Donnellan. ;Ultimately, having developed a picture of the workings of the imagination, I take up what I call the question of imaginability, namely, "What can we imagine?" The imagery model yields the obvious result that the imaginable is limited to the imageable. I explore the consequences of this result and, in particular, the consequences it has for the use of the imagination as an epistemological guide to modality. (shrink)

Evolution means different things at different stages of development. Higher stage explanations for it are downward assimilated at lower stages. Different scientific explanations for evolution also reflect different stages of development. Hierarchical complexity of tasks in evolution is a behavioral analytic explanation. It is selection processes of various kinds in tandem with changes in selection tasks' orders of hierarchical complexity. There is neither teleology nor evolutionary favoring of the highest stages of performance. Selection tasks at higher orders of complexity increasingly (...) decenter at all scales of behaviors from thought to history's social periods. These processes account for sociopolitical conflicts over evolution. (shrink)

The four stages of postformal thought are Systematic, Metasystematic, Paradigmatic, and Cross-Paradigmatic. Each successive stage is more hierarchically complex than the one that precedes it. Each stage uses the elements formed at the previous stage to construct more hierarchically complex elements (e.g., metasystems, paradigms). An actual instrument constructed using the Model of Hierarchical Complexity illustrates the progression in hierarchical complexity. Another example illustrates the nonlinear nature of hierarchical complexity. The distinct tasks of the four stages are described. Postformal thought benefits (...) interpersonal, societal, and academic endeavors by virtue of the kinds of tasks performed at each stage. (shrink)

Selectionism addresses the process of transition or change. In its evolution, Homo Sapiens has demonstrated such transitions to more hierarchically complex stages of performance at the individual, organizational, cultural, and biological levels. Traditionally, changes in biological, cultural, organizational, and individual behavior have been studied separately, with very little overlap. The current theory integrates selectionism across these realms, while noting that in each, selectionism operates through somewhat different mechanisms. Selectionism is comprised of complex processes in which tasks of greater hierarchical (...) complexity may be selected. Increased stages of performance underlie evolution's dynamics of increased complexity. (shrink)

Science requires postformal capabilities to compare competing explanations and conceptualize how to coordinate or integrate them. With conflicts thus reconciled, science advances. The Model of Hierarchical Complexity facilitates the coordination of current arguments about intelligence. A cross-species measurement theory of comparative cognition is proposed. It has potential to overcome the lack of a general measurement theory for the science of comparative cognition, and the lack of domain-general mechanisms for evolutionary psychologists. The hierarchical complexity of concepts and debates as (...) well as the new theory are scored, and demonstrate the postformal hierarchical complexity of the proposed theory. (shrink)

Philosophers have been referring to the “Kripke–Putnam” theory of naturalkind terms for over 30 years. Although there is one common starting point, the two philosophers began with different motivations and presuppositions, and developed in different ways. Putnam’s publications on the topic evolved over the decades, certainly clarifying and probably modifying his analysis, while Kripke published nothing after 1980. The result is two very different theories about natural kinds and their names. Both accept that the meaning of a naturalkind (...) term is not given by a description or defining properties, but is specified byits referents. From then on, Putnam rejected even the label, causal theory of reference, preferring to say historical, or collective. He called his own approach indexical. His account of substance identity stops short a number of objections that were later raised, such as what is called the qua problem. He came to reject the thought that water is necessarily H2O, and to denounce the idea of metaphysical necessity that goes beyond physical necessity. Essences never had a role in his analysis; there is no sense in which he was an essentialist. He thought of hidden structures as the usual determinant of natural kinds, but always insisted that what counts as a natural kind is relative to interests. “Natural kind” itself is itself an importantly theoretical concept, he argued. The paper also notes that Putnam says a great deal about what natural kinds are, while Kripke did not. Moreover, a theory about names of natural kinds is to some extent independent of a theory of natural kinds themselves, to the extent that one can accept the one and reject the other, even when both are advanced by the same philosopher. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.3 (2002) 219-227 [Access article in PDF] The Practical Kinds Model as a Pragmatist Theory of Classification Peter Zachar Pragmatist theories of scientific classification are intended to be pluralistic models that recognize different ways of cutting up the world as valuable, but do not require us to adopt whatever-goes relativism or metaphysical antirealism. How ironic that my application of pragmatism to psychopathology has been (...) charged with not being sufficiently pluralistic because it tries to fit all psychiatric disorders into the Procrustean bed of practical kinds. The Practical Kinds Model in General As a point of clarification, the practical kinds model is not a description of a type of category combined with an argument that all psychiatric disorders should be seen as belonging to that type. If it were that kind of model, I would fully agree with Haslam that practical kinds, fuzzy kinds, and discrete kinds are all potential types of psychiatric disorders. Like Nick Haslam, I believe that there are many different things in the DSM-IV and the ICD-10, and they cannot neatly be classified as the same type of thing.Rather than identifying a type of category, the practical kinds model is a general theory of scientific classification. It is a nonessentialistic theory. Essentialism is the view that things have real essences. In the Aristotelian version of essentialism, an essence is an internal structure, and it is the internal structure that makes anything be the kind of thing it really is. In this classical category model, category members either have the essence or they do not, and everything that has the appropriate essence is a member of that category. The world is supposed to therefore have a well-defined structure, and the job of the scientist is to discover that structure. Ian Hacking (1999) has termed this view of categorization inherent structurism.The practical kinds model does not deny that things have internal structures; it only denies that internal structure by itself determines category membership. Internal structure is an important consideration in identifying categories, but external criteria can always play a role. External or relational criteria play more important roles in some cases than they do in others, but they cannot be eliminated once and for all. Essentialistic theories, which favor an almost exclusive focus on inherent structures, have the advantage of being more parsimonious, but they do so by ignoring real complexity.The best way to illustrate this point is to examine a category whose identification is heavily weighted in terms of internal criteria, or an inherent structure, such as a chemical element. [End Page 219] For example, hydrogen is defined as the element that has an atomic number of 1. This means that it has one proton in its nucleus and normally one electron orbiting its nucleus. The atomic number reflects an internal property, and anything that has an atomic number of 1 is hydrogen. The same is true for the other elements. Anything that has an atomic number of 79 is gold; anything that has an atomic number of 19 is potassium, and so on. Also part of the essentialistic view is the notion that all the important properties of an element are systematically (or lawfully) related to its internal structure.It would be foolish to deny the practical utility of the atomic theory of chemistry. But even in this strongest of cases, external criteria can potentially play a role in how we decide to carve up the world and what we identify as the relevant categories. The point can be clearly illustrated with a Gedanken experiment based on the ideas of Donnellan (1983). Assume that we were to make contact with extraterrestrial life, and the result of that contact was our initiation into a larger galactic community like those portrayed on Star Trek or Babylon 5. Fortunately for us, it turns out that all planets in the community use a gold-based currency, just like we do on Earth. What we call gold, however, is too common to be the galactic basis of a currency, but a particular isotope... (shrink)

Carruthers’s central project in Phenomenal Consciousness is to naturalize consciousness. Given the vast success of naturalism in science, he maintains that we should require powerful reasons to abandon it when constructing philosophical theories of consciousness. Unsurprisingly, he then argues that there are no such reasons. In particular, he claims that the well-known arguments of Thomas Nagel and Frank Jackson fail, as do inverted and absent qualia arguments. Carruthers’s main strategy for defusing these arguments involves first distinguishing a “thin” notion of (...) property from a “thick” notion of property and then arguing that the various antinaturalistic arguments conflate these two different notions. Although he admits that the antinaturalist may not find these considerations wholly convincing, he construes the dialectical situation in such a way as to relieve him of any obligation to do more. As long as it can be shown that the antinaturalistic arguments are not obviously successful, which he takes himself to have done, Carruthers claims that the presumption in favor of naturalism remains. Thus, a theory of consciousness must be compatible with the following two naturalistic claims: first, all mental events occur in accordance with causal laws; and second, all mental events can be given a reductive explanation in physical terms. (shrink)

Disease transmission is a fruitful domain in which to examine how scientific and folk theories interrelate, given laypeople’s access to multiple sources of information to explain events of personal significance. The current paper reports an in-depth survey of U.S. adults’ causal reasoning about two viral illnesses: a novel, deadly disease that has massively disrupted everyone’s lives, and a familiar, innocuous disease that has essentially no serious consequences. Participants received a series of closed-ended and open-ended questions probing their reasoning about disease (...) transmission, with a focus on causal mechanisms underlying disease contraction, transmission, treatment, and prevention; non-visible biological processes; and ontological frameworks regarding what kinds of entities viruses are. We also assessed participants’ attitudes, such as their trust in scientific experts and willingness to be vaccinated. Results indicated complexity in people’s reasoning, consistent with the co-existence of multiple explanatory frameworks. An understanding of viral transmission and viral replication existed alongside folk theories, placeholder beliefs, and lack of differentiation between viral and non-viral disease. For example, roughly 40% of participants who explained illness in terms of the transmission of viruses also endorsed a non-viral folk theory, such as exposure to cold weather or special foods as curative. Additionally, participants made use of competing modes of construal when explaining how viruses operate, such as framing the immune system response as cells trying to fight off the virus. Indeed, participants who displayed greater knowledge about viral transmission were significantly more likely to anthropomorphize bodily processes. Although comparisons of COVID-19 and the common cold revealed relatively few differences, the latter, more familiar disease elicited consistently lower levels of accuracy and greater reliance on folk theories. Moreover, for COVID-19 in particular, accuracy positively correlated with attitudes, self-protective behaviors, and willingness to be vaccinated. For both diseases, self-assessed knowledge about the disease negatively predicted accuracy. The results are discussed in relation to challenges for formal models of explanatory reasoning. (shrink)

Dual process theory proposes clusters of features that form two dichotomous groups in cognition. One standing internal issue is defining what the reference of these two dichotomous groups could be in the mind or brain. Does dual process theory speak of two systems, types, minds, modes, kinds or just metaphors? A particular common answer is that differences in clusters of features are evidence of different underlying systems, often called system 1 and system 2. However, the suggestion to (...) abandon the ‘system’ terminology is now common in the literature, but the consequences of doing so need to be addressed. This work reviews and critically discusses previous suggestions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.2 (2001) 93-112 [Access article in PDF] Enthymemes, Common Knowledge, and Plausible Inference Douglas Walton The study of enthymemes has always been regarded as important in logic, critical thinking, and rhetoric, but too often it is the formal or mechanistic aspect of it that has been in the forefront. This investigation will show that there is a kind of plausibilistic script-based reasoning, of a (...) kind that has mainly been studied in artificial intelligence, that should have a much more important role to play in the study of enthymemes. But then curiously, as will also be shown, this plausibilistic type of reasoning was familiar in the ancient world, to the Sophists, as well as to leading philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. By linking this ancient notion of plausibility to the modern notion used in computer science, this investigation reveals an important basis for the enthymeme that has a type of logical structure in its own right, but also has an informal aspect.An enthymeme, in current usage, is an argument that has one or more premises, or possibly a conclusion, not explicitly stated in the text, but that needs to have these propositions explicitly stated to extract the complete argument from the text. Sometimes enthymemes are described as arguments with "missing premises." That vocabulary is awkward, however, because the nonexplicit statement that needs to be added can be a conclusion, at least in a minority of cases. To make the exposition below smoother, the term nonexplicit assumption will be used to cover either the case of a nonexplicit premise or that of a nonexplicit conclusion. The problem with enthymemes is that if the nonexplicit assumptions in an argument are supposed to be propositions used by the arguer (as opposed to just the propositions needed to make the argument structurally correct, according to some standard), reasonable people can have differences of opinion on what the nonexplicit assumptions are supposed to be. The problem is that filling in the missing parts of enthymemes depends on interpreting the natural language [End Page 93] in which the argument was put forward to try to determine what the speaker meant to say.The solution to the problem comes through the recognition that enthymemes rest not only on formal (structural) criteria, but also on informal criteria. One of the most important of these informal criteria is something often called "common knowledge" (Govier 1992; Freeman 1995). But as shown below in a set of selected case studies of enthymemes, "common knowledge" is not really a kind of knowledge at all. It is really plausibility, or eikos, something well known in the ancient world and often misleadingly translated as "probability." Curiously, Aristotle's original doctrine of the enthymeme was based on this notion of plausibility. This historical fact has often been a source of puzzlement and confusion, and sometimes it has even been taken to indicate a defect or contradiction in Aristotle's treatment of the enthymeme. However, the goal of this investigation is not primarily historical. It is to work out one of the most important required steps toward a solution to the problem of enthymemes. But to do this, it is necessary to come back to the ancient notion of plausible inference. 1. The problem with enthymemes Once you have any formal theory of inference, like syllogistic, for example, you will be confronted by cases of arguments in everyday discourse that meet all the requirements for a structurally correct inference except that some part or parts, usually a premise or a conclusion, is missing. By "missing" is meant that the proposition in question has not been explicitly stated in the text of discourse, even though it may be clear enough that the speaker (writer) was relying on it, or including it, as part of the argument. The classic example is the following inference: All men are mortal; therefore, Socrates is mortal. To evaluate such an argument, surely some account of the "hidden" or "missing" assumption needs to be taken. The problem with enthymemes (Burke 1985; Gough and Tindale 1985; Hitchcock 1985) is that, if given carte... (shrink)

According to the causal-historical theory of reference, natural kind terms refer in virtue of complicated causal relations the speakers have to their environment. A common objection to the theory is that purely causal relations are insufficient to fix reference in a determinate fashion. The so-called hybrid view holds that what is also needed for successful fixing are true descriptions associated in the mind of the speaker with the referent. The main claim of this paper is that (...) the objection fails: reference fixing of natural kind terms can be purely causal. The main argument draws inspiration from recent theoretical advances made in metaphysics of kinds by Marion Godman, Antonella Mallozzi, and David Papineau. The main claim is that their notion of super-explanatory properties may explain how reference of many kind terms can be fixed purely causally. (shrink)

Many philosophers and scientists have argued that the difference between phenomenally conscious states and other kind of states lies in the implicit self-awareness that conscious states have. Higher-Order Representationalist theories, attempt to explain such a self-awareness by means of a higher-order representation. Consciousness relies on our capacity to represent our own mental states, consciousness depends on our Theory of Mind. Such an ability can, at least conceptually, be decomposed into another two: mindreading and metacognition. In this paper I (...) will argue that consciousness cannot depend on mindreading. The tenability of HOR theories depends, therefore, on the relation between mindreading and metacognition. I analyze several views on such a relation and argue that none of them seem to be a plausible option for HOR theories. (shrink)

The literature on the wrong kind of reason problem largely assumes that such reasons pose only a theoretical problem for certain theories of value rather than a practical problem. Since the normative force of the canonical examples is obvious, the only difficulty is to identify what reasons of the right and wrong kind have in common without circularity. This chapter argues that in addition to the obvious WKRs on which the literature focuses, there are also more interesting (...) WKRs that do not overtly refer to the advantages of having some evaluative attitude. Instead they refer to features of the object that bear on the propriety of having certain attitudes toward it. What is interesting about these cases is that their normative force is opaque. It can be clear that some consideration bears on whether or not to feel shame, pity, or amusement, for example, but unclear just how it does so—specifically, whether the consideration helps make the object of the attitude shameful, pitiable, or funny. The problems caused by WKRs are ubiquitous, and they outstrip the wrong kind of reason problem as it has ordinarily been conceived, since extant solutions to the technical problem offer no help resolving the opacity of normative force. (shrink)

The evolution of humans required performing increasingly hierarchically complex tasks within multiple domains. Hierarchical complexity increases task by task. Tasks occur within, and differ by, determinable domains, their stages of performance measurable using the Model of Hierarchical Complexity. How well one performs within single and multiple domains is considered to indicate intelligence. Original task-initiation is more difficult than imitational learning and can create new domains. Levels of support reduce task difficulty, increasing performance. Task-performance may be generalized to other domains. Stages (...) of developing tools and empathy are presented to demonstrate domains' roles in the evolution of human intelligence. (shrink)