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Sense and Sensibilia
... Estas observaciones nos llevan a identificar un segundo defecto en el razonamiento anterior. Es fácil identificar las situaciones en las cuales cometemos errores perceptuales, razón por la cual no es muy plausible asumir que los sentidos puedan engañarnos siempre (Austin 1962). Si queremos desarrollar argumentos escépticos de aplicación general, no podremos enfocarnos en errores perceptuales ordinarios. ...
... 32 31 Pritchard emplea 'razones' para referirse a evidencia a la cual tenemos acceso reflexivo. 32 Moore (1944), Austin (1962) y Dretske (1969) desarrollan ideas que prefiguran muchos de estos temas. La teoría del 'conocimiento primero' de Williamson (2000) también ofrece una respuesta análoga. ...
En la vida diaria, solemos entender el escepticismo como una posición que podemos rechazar por considerarla absurda o incoherente. En la filosofía griega, el escepticismo era más bien una actitud inquisitiva que llevaba a la suspensión del juicio y, en consecuencia, a la tranquilidad del alma. En la filosofía moderna, muchos filósofos veían el escepticismo como una fase del pensamiento que debía superarse antes de sentar las bases firmes para las ciencias. Estas concepciones contrastan con la visión dominante en la epistemología analítica actual, donde el escepticismo suele entenderse como una serie de paradojas que surgen al reflexionar sobre el funcionamiento de conceptos epistémicos ordinarios como CONOCIMIENTO y JUSTIFICACIÓN EPISTÉMICA. Una paradoja escéptica emerge cuando identificamos cierta condición que parece ser necesaria para tener conocimientos o justificación epistémica, pero también parece que dicha condición no se puede cumplir. Este capítulo explica por qué la concepción del escepticismo como una serie de paradojas es central para la epistemología analítica contemporánea e identifica algunos rasgos centrales de las paradojas escépticas sobre el mundo externo. Después de identificar dos tipos de respuestas, se presentan dos paradojas escépticas influyentes basadas en los principios de cierre y de subdeterminación, se señalan algunas diferencias importantes entre ambas paradojas y se examinan críticamente algunas tentativas para resolverlas.
... But it is also indisputable that there were and still are various ways of inheriting Wittgenstein and that these ways have an important philosophical relevance. This is somehow illustrated in the way Elizabeth Anscombe deals with the issue of sensation (Anscombe 1981a, 11-14) and defends Wittgensteinian "grammar" against "ordinary language philosophy" illustrated by the work of J.L. Austin (1964). In this paper, I explore some of the philosophical differences that characterise this Oxbridge dispute over what it means to start doing philosophy within ordinary language. ...
... However, he invites philosophers to imagine actual (realistic) situations where our words are or would be at play and confront these 'normal' and 'ordinary' situations to the misuses of philosophy which are often symptomatic of the philosopher's tendency to focus on abnormal cases and take them as central to the understanding of a concept. This is what happens, for instance, when sense-data philosophers (see Ayer 1940) jump from the possibility of using 'see' in an abnormal situation, say of illusion, to the idea that what we do directly perceive in any case is not what is there to be seen but mere sense-data (Austin 1964). From this perspective, Austin enquires central, 'normal', 'ordinary uses' of words as opposed to 'parasitic uses' (Austin 1962, 104) or 'stretched uses' (Austin 1964, 15, 91). ...
In this paper I explore what it means to take ordinary language as the raw material of philosophy. To do so, I contrast what I call ‘grammar’ or the grammatical approach, which is characteristic of L. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and ‘ordinary language philosophy’ (OLP) as J.L. Austin understood it. I show that, while ‘standard’ OLP tends to focus on ‘historical situations’ understood as virtually plausible stagings of our actual uses of concepts, and thus contrasts ‘normal’ and ‘parasitic’ uses of language; the grammarian focuses on the logical possibilities of language through the invention of fictitious language-games. The latter thus extends the ‘ordinary’ up to the abnormal and the extraordinary and rather contrasts it with mere apparent uses that are no uses of language at all.
... But would it not be weird to regard someone's seeing something as additional evidence for their perceptual experience? Consider the example of the pig illustrated in Austin (1962). We can be said to possess evidence for the proposition that some beast is a pig if what we have before our senses is not the pig itself, but pig-like marks on the ground, pig food, pig smell, etc. ...
... With that said, Hallie deserves some appraisal for fulfilling her "epistemic obligations." Her 9 AUSTIN 1962, 115. 10 Cf. WILLIAMSON 2002 belief that there is a white cup on a desk is admirable, for it is the same as Percy's. ...
In this paper, I argue for phenomenology, Husserlian phenomenology to be precise, as providing a solid paradigm on how to determine and assess hallucination. To be more explicit, in the context of my deliberations, I analyze Susanna Schellenberg’s arguments for “phenomenal” evidence and “factive” evidence, as regards her evidential theory of perception. To pinpoint the inadequacies raised in her account of (the hallucinating) Hallie and (the veridically perceiving) Percy sharing any kind of evidence, I propose Edmund Husserl’s epistemic fulfillment as a detailed epistemological analysis of perception, which takes into consideration the latter’s phenomenological complexity.
... That situation is required for~Lbl occurring as a response to, hence after,~Llb. The imagined history of Liz and Brian may be an effective counterexample to a conceptual reciprocity thesis 6 . ...
... I wish he had done A Plea for Love. 6 I once examined the arguments of proponents of the conceptual reciprocity thesis ( [1], 238-43). I found all unconvincing. ...
Consider this propositional function which includes the dyadic predicate “loves”: “X does not love Y unless Y loves X” (or “if Y does not love X”). This function may be treated in four ways. (1) If universally quantified, it states a (purported) conceptual truth about “love” or the nature or essence of love. Love is necessarily reciprocal. (2) If universally quantified, it may alternatively be a nomological generalization stating an empirical or factual truth about human nature, i.e., about a pattern of reciprocity that occurs among people who are independently identified as lovers. (3) If instantiated with constants, it is an empirical proposition about the attitudes or behaviors of particular individuals (a, b, c). Finally, (4) the function may be treated axiologically; it expresses a normative judgment about what love ought to be or what lovers ought to feel or do. Other propositional functions may be constructed for the constancy, exclusivity, and benevolence of love. This essay investigates the implications of these understandings of the function and how they are logically related to each other.
... Examining two models of the word-the suitcase model and the trousers model-reveals that universally, a word is a blend of knowledge (what humans know) and ignorance (what humans do not know). In the trousers model, the trousers symbolize the knowledge embedded in the word, while ignorance is personified as the entity wearing the trousers [24,25]. The ignorance content of the trousers can be reduced by adding knowledge (other words) to the pockets. ...
This article addresses the pressing issue of software thieving by using a software-update case study to examine the underlying ethical challenges in software production and usage. A proposed foundational framework highlights four critical factors: 1) the application of force, 2) the taking of resources, 3) knowledge processing, and 4) direction setting. This approach enables a comprehensive global analysis of the ethical dimensions in software development and use, contrasting voluntary exchanges with those compelled by thieving. Focusing on a case study of a large manufacturer, these foundational factors are applied to both individual and organizational behavior. The core challenge identified is the temptation for individuals and organizations to exploit the ease of force-driven resource acquisition rather than adhering to foundational ethical guidelines. Traditional reliance on published codes of ethics for moral reassurance is found to be inadequate, particularly within complex organizational structures where key decisions are predetermined before employees are tasked with their execution. The foundational approach reveals the susceptibility of organizations to distorted and high-ignorance-content interpretations of law and ethics. This article outlines potential solutions to enhance ethical adherence, emphasizing the need for robust ethical guidelines that permeate all levels of decision-making within organizations.
... According to Grice (1975), conversational implicature appears from a violation of four maxim, which are the maxim of quantity, the maxim of quality, the maxim of relation, and the maxim of manner. Austin (1962) classify speech act into three types, which are locution act (an act of saying something), illocution act (an act of doing something), and perlocution act (an act of affecting something). Locution act is solely an act of saying something with words or sentences correspond on its own meaning in the dictionary and those meaning is also corresponded to its syntax principle. ...
This research discusses the use of translation techniques on speech act in short movie entitled TILIK that contains implicature and its effect to pragmatical shift. The method used in this research are descriptive qualitative process oriented on translation product. This aims to describe: 1) to identify the types of speech act as well as the maxims involved; 2) to identify translation techniques applied in translating the speech act that contains implicatures found in the movie; and 3) to describe the influence of translation techniques towards the pragmatic force shift that might occur in the illocutionary speech act that contains implicatures in the movie. The data source of this research is the dialogue between actors in the short movie entitled TILIK produced by Ravacana Films. The data was collected through several methods, such as content analysis, questionnaire, and focus group discussion (FGD). There were 4 types of speech act that contained implicature found in 132 data. 12 translation techniques used in translating implicatures, and established equivalent was one that frequently used. It was found that the shift of pragmatic force happened in some of data which applied amplification, discursive creation, established equivalent, and reduction techniques in its translation process
... Sense-data theory has many staunch supporters in contemporary philosophy, but it has also been criticized from different perspectives (Austin, 1962;Chisholm, 1957). The criticism from the holistic perspective is relevant to the discussion of this chapter. ...
... 1 Apesar do seu apelo inicial, foi exemplarmente mostrado por Austin (1962) que o argumento da ilusão é logicamente capenga. O suposto fato de que, quando entretemos estados ilusórios estamos em contato com entidades internas apenas pode conferir apoio à conclusão de que a percepção genuína é semelhantemente mediada por entidades internas sob a suposição de que ambos os estados, percepção e ilusão, possuem o mesmo perfil epistêmico. ...
Virtual reality has become increasingly present, which gives rise to new philosophical questions: what is the nature of virtual reality experiences? Would they be exactly like usual perceptions, or do they have some feature that differentiates them? Are they illusory? We argue that virtual reality experiences should not be treated as illusory, as claimed by most contemporary theorists on the topic, but rather as allusive, conditioned to the incorporation of hardware and practical knowledge involved in the use of technology. To this end, we address their relation with illusions, explore how they relate to our everyday experiences and present our proposal that they can be understood as allusions. We then show that their allusive character does not make them indistinguishable from non-virtual experiences, since the biological and sensorimotor limits of cognition provide the threshold of differentiation, even in cases of augmented reality. In addition, we explore the emergence of augmented reality technology and discuss the possibility of systematically replacing perception with illusory projections. However, to date, there is no empirical evidence to support this possibility. We highlight the importance of the relationship between perception and action in the physical environment and argue that specific errors in virtual experiences do not characterize their state as illusory.
Keywords:
illusion; allusion; embodiment; cognition.
... After all, if the dreaming hypothesis obtained while you thought you were looking at a fire, then this would seem to imperil at most (would-be) items of perceptual knowledge (e.g., if you believed you were looking at a fire, you'd be wrong) but it wouldn't (not obviously, anyway) imperil any logical or mathematical beliefs you might form while dreaming 3 ; whereas, if the evil genius hypothesis obtained, then (ex hypothesi) even logical and mathematical propositions might seem necessarily true, clearly and distinctly so, when they were false, something not typical of even our most bizarre dreams. What is more, as Descartes (in Meditation Six) as well as Austin (1962) 4 had thought, there would plausibly be various tell-tale signs that we could exploit while dreaming to tell we are dreaming, but there would be ex hypothesi be no such signs to exploit were the evil genius hypothesis to obtain. ...
A common objection to Sosa’s epistemology is that it countenances, in an objectionable way, unsafe knowledge. This objection, under closer inspection, turns out to be in far worse shape than Sosa’s critics have realised. Sosa and his defenders have offered two central response types to the idea that allowing unsafe knowledge is problematic: one response type adverts to the animal/reflective knowledge distinction that is characteristic of bi-level virtue epistemology. The other less-discussed response type appeals to the threat of dream scepticism, and in particular, to the idea that many of our everyday perceptual beliefs are unsafe through the nearness of the dream possibility. The latter dreaming response to the safety objection to Sosa’s virtue epistemology has largely flown under the radar in contemporary discussions of safety and knowledge. We think that, suitably articulated in view of research in the philosophy and science of dreaming, it has much more going for it than has been appreciated. This paper further develops, beyond what Sosa does himself, the dreaming argument in response to those who think safety (as traditionally understood) is a condition on knowledge and who object to Sosa’s account on the grounds that it fails this condition. The payoffs of further developing this argument will be not only a better understanding of the importance of insights about dreaming against safety as a condition on knowledge, but also some reason to think a weaker safety condition, one that is relativised to SSS (i.e., skill/shape/situation) conditions for competence exercise, gets better results all things considered as an anti-luck codicil on knowledge.
... According to Hansen (2014), the constructive approach refers to the "moves from observations about how certain words are used to facts about the meaning of those words and then draws conclusions about the 'realities' those words are used to talk about." The constructive approach is based on the idea of moving from observing ordinary use of certain expressions to drawing conclusions about the realities of those expressions (Austin, 1962). Therefore, it moves from knowing the knowledge to examining the nature of the knowledge. ...
It has been claimed that the application of ordinary language philosophy has almost entirely declined since the 1970s following the development of systematic semantic theory. This is due to the allegation that it had less interest among philosophers and moved to be a historical movement. This paper presents an overview of the application of ordinary language philosophy and offers a critical discussion of the different approaches available with the motive to reinvent this philosophy. The expository and dialectical approaches were used to examine the constructive and critical paradigms of contemporary ordinary language philosophy. The data was collected through desk research and documentation search techniques from archives, libraries and research databases. A qualitative data analysis was done of all the data to conclude that ordinary language philosophy contributes to the clarity of philosophical problems, concepts, and expressions used in ordinary language. It is yet not clear whether certain knowledge is intended to be employed in ordinary circumstances. The study recommends that an updated version of ordinary language is needed highlighting the importance of experimental examinations in probing knowledge about meanings.
... (1) Linguistic analysis: In this analysis, asakti or attachment was examined linguistically in Sanskrit, Hindi, and English, along with its synonyms. This process was adopted to sharpen the awareness and understanding of asakti, as suggested by Austin (1962). ...
Within the Euro-American scholarship, the theme of attachment has received considerable attention, in the context of the relationship between children and their parents or caregivers. Attachment can occur in diverse forms. It can be secure, insecure, healthy, or unhealthy. This work explores the theme of asakti from an indigenous perspective, as elaborated in the text of the Bhagavad Gita. Asakti interferes with the movement along the path of self-realization. The analysis in this study yielded five core themes: (i) asakti is a combination of Raga (approach), Dwesha (aversion) and Ahamkara (ego focus); (ii) unregulated asakti toward material things leads to intellectual, mental, and spiritual decay; (iii) asakti is linked with the operation of three gunas, namely Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas; (iv) the control and regulation of asakti would lead to attainment of a state of anasakti (or non-attachment); and (v) asakti in the form of devotion and dedication (Prapatti/Sharangati) to higher consciousness or God frees one from bondage and the negative effects of attachment. It is concluded that anasakti contributes to bring peace and happiness. The movement from asakti to anasakti can be integrated with health interventions, such as counseling and therapy.
... Pragmatic vagueness can take two forms: generality vagueness [Fine] when it relies on using underspecific expressions such as "some", "most", "always"; or approximation [Lasersohn, 1999] when it consists in modifying precise expressions (e.g. "around", "about", "nearly", "roughly") or in using an expression with a coarser meaning, like in the sentence "France is hexagonal" [see Austin, 1962, Lewis, 1970. ...
Traditionally, intelligence officers use an alphanumeric scale known as the Admiralty System to evaluate informational messages by rating the credibility of their contents and the reliability of their sources (e.g. NATO AJP-2.1, 2016). Amongst other duties, they are expected to clearly distinguish objective facts from subjective interpretations during this evaluation (NATO STANAG-2511, 2003). That being said, various experimental results show that officers are unable to properly fulfill this methodological duty (e.g. Baker et al., 1968; Kelly & Peterson, 1971; Johnson, 1973). Our explanation is that the extant scale, which is evaluative by nature, does not allow them to endorse a more objective, that is to say descriptive, perspective on information. In this article, we aim to help enforce the facts versus interpretations recommendation in the intelligence domain. By extracting the descriptive dimensions that underlie the scale, and by grouping them by linguistic directionality (e.g. Teigen & Brun, 1995; Mandel et al., 2022), we introduce a taxonomy to categorize intelligence messages more objectively. This taxonomy is fine-grained: it integrates messages which are informative or deceptive in the classical sense (e.g. misinformation, lying), but also more borderline messages, such as omissions and half-truths, which rely on the use of linguistic vagueness (following Égré & Icard, 2018; Icard et al., 2022). By putting descriptive lenses on information evaluation, we seek to provide new categories to help officers make more acute evaluations of information.
... These "definitions" of the four realities are thus limited to two distinctions, sharing features 1 and 2 but differing on the other 34Difficulties for defining the notion of object of perception and immediate perception will be familar from J. L. Austin (1961). three features. ...
The article describes the background of Roman Ingarden's 1922 review of Leon Chwistek's book Wielość rzeczywistości (The Plurality of Realities), and the back-and-forth that followed. Despite the differences, the two shared some interesting similarities. Both authors had important ties to the intellectual happenings outside Poland and were not considerd mainstream at home. In the end, however, it is these connections that allowed them to gain recognition. Ingarden, who had been a student of Husserl, became the leading phenomenologist in the postwar Poland. For Chwistek, a painter, philosopher, and logician interested in Russell’s work, such connections meant that he won the competition for a professorship at the university in Lwów over Alfred Tarski. Until recently, Chwistek’s place in Polish logic remains unclear and Ingarden’s interactions with Polish logic and the Vienna Circle have not been investigated extensively. A deeper look at this intellectual fracas between Ingarden and Chwistek helps one in the study of the complicated mesh of alliances within the Lwów-Warsaw School. The article also identifies the origins of the split between phenomenology and the analytic philosophical tradition in Poland. The article is also accompanied by the translations of the reviews.
... La causa de esta ausencia bien podría ser el difícil encaje dentro de las concepciones más tradicionales de la emoción: simplificando, una explicación que reduce las emociones a percepciones o sensaciones fisiológicas (como la llamada teoría de James-Lange, James-1884) deja fuera el logro cognitivo asociado a la comprensión del texto, una explicación que reduzca emociones a juicios o evaluaciones (como Kenny-1963o Nussbaum-2001 no acaba de apresar la vivencia subjetiva que acompaña a la risa. Más prometedoras a este respecto son concepciones hibridas como la teoría perceptiva de las emociones de Prinz-2004 (donde la percepción directa de un estado fisiológico es la percepción indirecta de un objeto o estado del entorno causal o representacionalmente ligado al primero) o Tappolet-2016 (donde la emoción es directamente la percepción evaluativa de un objeto), pero aquí se hace muy difícil encajar el aspecto intelectivo de la captación del chiste, ya que en ambos casos se la sonrisa de Austin Saleta de Salvador Agra *31 Universidad Complutense de Madrid La posición de Austin contra las dicotomías (Austin, 1964), su sospecha de hipersimplificación y apriorismo (Sbisà, 1973), será el punto de partida para pensar el supuesto binarismo de los usos "serios" y "no serios" del lenguaje. Mi propuesta se centrará entonces en sumar a la discusión de las dicotomías, entre "verdadero/falso" y "valorativo/ factual" , aquella que el propio filósofo enuncia en la Lecture II al hilo de la discusión sobre las condiciones de felicidad de los performativos. ...
En 1972, en un hospital de Londres un tumor cerebral en una paciente llevó a ex- plorar la tomografía computarizada (TC), una tecnología basada en la combinación de radiología y computación. La cabeza del paciente se introdujo en un escáner fabricado por EMI, la empresa británica líder en la producción de discos musicales. El dispositivo emitió rayos X a la cabeza del paciente durante nueve horas. En el lado opuesto estaban los receptores de la información numérica relacionada con la cantidad de rayos X absor- bidos por el cerebro. Esta información fue procesada mediante un algoritmo algebraico en un laboratorio de Londres. Cada valor se recogió con una intensidad tonal diferente en blanco y negro. La matriz digital que se obtuvo se materializó en papel prensa, un tubo de rayos catódicos y una fotografía Polaroid.
El conocimiento que llevó a la construcción del dispositivo circuló entre la clínica, la industria y el laboratorio. En la construcción de la TC participaron una diversidad de agentes, incluida la computadora, la experiencia en rayos X, ingenieros electrónicos, neu- rorradiólogos del Hospital Atkinson Marley y el escáner de rayos X de la empresa EMI. En esta presentación se mostrarán los procesos de producción de imágenes digitales de TC que la convertirían, a partir de la década de 1970, en una tecnología habitual para las neurociencias.
Una presentación típica afirma que la epistemología contemporánea de la virtud, concebida como un movimiento distintivo dentro de la epistemología, comenzó con el artículo de Ernest Sosa "La balsa y la pirámide", publicado en 1980. Tal versión es casi canónica. Este artículo presenta una narrativa diferente, es decir, la tesis contrafáctica (tal vez materialmente falsa y de alguna manera ilógica, aunque significativa) de que la epistemología de la virtud puede tener dos puntos de partida distintos y oportunos, respondiendo a los enigmas heredados del problema de Gettier. Por supuesto, nuestra intención no es discutir seis años ni negar la relevancia de "La balsa y la pirámide", sino mostrar que algunas páginas de "¿Cómo lo sabes?", un artículo publicado en 1974, fueron escritas en el espíritu propio de la epistemología de la virtud de Sosa e incluso están relacionadas internamente con su perspectiva general. probablemente incluyendo sus pasos más recientes. Como pretendemos demostrar, Sosa era consciente en 1974 de la novedad de su perspectivismo venidero, especialmente del aspecto normativo de una reflexión propiamente epistemológica, entonces claramente expresada: (1) en su énfasis en la condición del sujeto; (2) en la especificidad afirmada del interés epistémico; (3) en la noción de "estar en posición de conocer" (tanto a través de la cara negativa y prototípica de las situaciones de Magoo como de la descripción positiva de la figura del conocedor); y (4) incluso en una nueva definición de conocimiento, propia del campo de la epistemología de la virtud. Como dijimos en nuestra conclusión, la comunidad filosófica debería celebrar los 50 años de la epistemología de la virtud dos veces, a partir de 2024. Después de todo, 1974 fue un año brillante para la investigación epistemológica; 1980, también. En este espíritu de reflexión, todos nos beneficiamos de celebrar muchas veces la hermosa y singular aventura intelectual de Sosa.
Philosophical reasoning in ordinary language is subject to inference traps. There are several philosophical responses to such traps: mysticism (language and our senses, etc., are metaphysically misleading. We need mystical insight); the modern approach of deserting natural languages for artificial ones; that of cleaning up natural-language reasoning on an ad hoc basis; and the “it’s all good” approach—run with the reasoning as our ways of speaking seem to allow. An extended analysis of Markus Gabriel’s Why the world does not exist shows how he consistently engages in the “it’s all good” approach to motivate both his claim that the world does not exist as well as the claim that, nevertheless, everything in the world does exist. It is shown how he uses various fallacies involved in natural language—notably ones about the word “in” to facilitate his metaphysical arguments.
The lecture spells out the difference between the validity of inference (‐figure)s and validity applied to demonstrations (‘proof acts’). The latter notion is not an ordinary characterizing one; in Brentano's terminology it is a modifying one. A demonstration lacking validity is not a real demonstration, just as a false friend is no true friend. Throughout, the treatment makes crucial use of an epistemological perspective that is cast in the first person. Furthermore, the difference between (logical) consequence among propositions and the validity of inference from judgement to judgement is explained. Particular attention is paid to alleged issues of circularity in the definition of the validity of inference, and to the ‘explosion’ validity of inference from contradictory premisses. Drawing upon a version of the dialogical framework of Per Martin‐Löf, namely, ‘When I say Therefore , I give others my permission to assert the conclusion’, while stressing also the importance of the first person perspective, both difficulties can be neutralized.
Cet article propose une analyse approfondie des réflexions de Friedrich Nietzsche sur les notions de vérité et de mensonge en lien avec le mythe et d’autres formes symboliques, à la lumière de la théorie de la véridiction. Il s’attache d’abord à mieux cerner les problématiques soulevées par Nietzsche concernant le rôle du mythe dans la culture. Ensuite, il met à profit les observations de Nietzsche et les recherches sémiotiques contemporaines sur le mythe afin d’explorer l’enjeu de la problématique sémiotique de la véridiction. Cette dernière s’inscrit dans le cadre plus large des modalités épistémiques et est à lire en relation avec les problématiques épistémiques de la philosophie du langage et de la philosophie générale.
Is it plausible to hold, as I do, that natural mechanical systems have no efficacious causal powers of their own, and only inherit any and all causal powers that they do have, in a metaphysically-&-ontologically derivative, secondary, shadowy, skeletal, and therefore epiphenomenal way, from the inherently more concrete and richer organic systems in which they’re necessarily embedded and from which they’re derived by natural or nomological strong supervenience—i.e., the explanatory inversion thesis, as applied specifically to natural mechanical systems? In this chapter, I do my level best to answer that hard question affirmatively.
For those who think the notion of representation plays a critical role in visual perception, a pressing question—at least for those who are naturalistically inclined—should be that of how the mental representations acquire their contents. However, whilst this question was the source of a great deal of philosophy in the latter part of the twentieth century, this has not been the case more recently, despite the fact that the notion of representation continues to play a central role in philosophical theorising about perception. In this paper, I will argue (i) that this is a significant oversight for representationalist theories, and that absent a psychosemantics, these theories remain critically incomplete; (ii) that the problems identified with extant theories have not been resolved, so the representationalist cannot resolve this issue by simply plucking a theory off the shelf; (iii) that an appeal to a naïve realist notion of acquaintance nevertheless has the potential to ground the kind of psychosemantics the representationalist requires. This shows that the common assumption that naïve realism and representationalism are in competition is mistaken, and that theories of perception that make use of a notion of representation can only get off the ground if naïve realism, or something like it, is true.
In this paper I begin by explaining what epistemic injustice is and what ordinary language philosophy is. I then go on to ask why we might doubt the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy in examining epistemic injustice. In the first place, we might wonder how ordinary language philosophy can be of use, given that many of the key terms used in discussing epistemic injustice, including 'epistemic injustice' itself, are not drawn from our ordinary language. We might also have doubts about the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy in this area, given ordinary language philosophers' aversion to theory. Finally, we might have doubts about the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy due to the fact that the study of epistemic injustice is clearly a study of practical matters concerning the way the world is and has been historically. If ordinary language philosophy is just concerned with grammar, what use can it be to practical and social philosophy concerning current issues? In response to these worries, I demonstrate the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy in practice by applying the insights of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Alan R. White to a problem that Miranda Fricker raises, but does not answer: about whether there is a confidence condition on knowledge. I also make use of Gilbert Ryle's distinction between 'the use of ordinary language' and 'the ordinary use of an expression' to show that the terminology used in examining epistemic injustice is ordinary in some sense.
This chapter consists of five exchanges between Annalisa Coliva, Anil Gupta, and Crispin Wright. These philosophers debate a wide range of issues including (i) whether perceptual judgments presuppose general hinge propositions (e.g., “External objects are, by and large, as they appear to be”); (ii) whether the justification of perceptual judgments requires that the hinge propositions be justified; (iii) whether the idea of hinge proposition helps address skeptical arguments; and (iv) which skeptical arguments deserve a constructive response and which deserve to be dismissed as fallacious.
An attractive thought about perceptual experience is that it puts us in contact with the world, that it is “openness to the layout of reality” (McDowell, Philosophical Quarterly 44:190–205, 1994/1996: 26), that in perception we are confronted with the world. It is openness to the layout of reality that Johnston longs for in this vignette.
Some theories of consciousness emphasize its relationship to
language, its emergent quality, and its causal role. Prominent among
these theories is the one that Dennett has been developing for nearly
four decades. According to Dennett’s most recent version,
consciousness is a kind of cerebral clout. But consideration of
examples of pain—arguably the best candidate on offer for a paradigm of consciousness—reveals that clout is neither necessary nor sufficient for consciousness. Moreover, pain doesn’t necessarily have the aftermath that is predicted by Dennett’s Clout Theory (CT); pain cannot always be accommodated by Dennett’s methodology; and, pain does not always conform to Dennett’s proposed ontology. Dennett might wish to substitute episodic memory as a preferred paradigm for consciousness, but episodic memory is shown to be non-essential. And, were it to be treated as a paradigm of consciousness, it would create new explanatory problems for CT. Rather than abandoning CT, because it does seem to help explain some pain phenomena and because it does comport well with certain views of language, I propose that some of its more intriguing proposals be retained and treated as hypotheses to guide further empirical inquiry. Finally, I recommend some specific empirical cases wherein relevant research might be pursued.
Numerous philosophers accept the differentiation condition, according to which one does not see an object unless one visually differentiates it from its immediate surroundings. This paper, however, sounds a sceptical note. Based on suggestions by Dretske (2007) and Gibson (2002 [1972]), I articulate two ‘principles of occlusion’ and argue that each principle admits of a reading on which it is both plausible and incompatible with the differentiation condition. To resolve the inconsistency, I suggest we abandon the differentiation condition.
This paper describes two ways in which Plato addresses the compresence of opposites in appearances and shows how his treatment of the phenomenon is a response to Protagoras: (1) by relativizing the opposites so as to avoid making the contradictory claims that the same thing is characterized by F and not-F, and (2) by seeking the cause of the conflicting phenomena. Relativization, a rational strategy for avoiding contradiction which Plato inherits from Protagoras, enables the user to avoid refutation in a dialectical encounter, though Plato thinks (like Heraclitus and Democritus) that knowledge requires explaining, rather than only resolving, the contradictions that arise from compresent opposition. But the metaphysics that would explain unlimited relativization is a metaphysics of relative-coming-to-be that, even though it guarantees infallibility of and contact with reality for each perceiver, ends in the impossibility of knowledge. For Plato, knowledge requires relativization limited by, and in the service of, explanation.
This article investigates the origins of the experiences involved in the diagnostics (detection and normative evaluation) of biological entities in image-based medical praxis. Our specific research aim presupposes a vast discussion regarding the origins of knowledge in general, but is narrowed down to the alternatives of anthropomorphism and biomorphism. Accordingly, in the subsequent chapters we will make an attempt to investigate and illustrate what holds the diagnostic experiential situation together—biological regularities, manifestation via movement, conscious synthesis, causal categories, or something else. We argue that as long as knowledge originates out of practices, a promising way forward is to oscillate between the prominent although controversial ideas of the history of philosophy and observations of concrete human practices, such as, in our chosen example, image-based medical diagnostics of biological pathologies. Although a number of thinkers are involved in the discussion, Aristotle and Husserl are most important here as the representatives of historical paradigms on the matter. The body in this research was not taken solely as the physical entity (Körper) but rather as a transcendental, constitutive structure where diagnostic and biological processes synchronize in teleological movement (Leib). However, philosophical speculations are illustrated by actual radiograms, the interpretation of which brings us back to the aforementioned question of primacy regarding cognition.
Philosophers often treat beliefs as propositional attitudes that entail taking the content as true. However, there exist certain mental states, such as delusions, that challenge this dogmatic norm, leading some researchers to question its validity. This chapter delves into that philosophical inquiry that surrounds the nature of beliefs and establishes a contrastive perspective in cases of delusion, self-deception, sectarian influence, and scientific negationism. We should explore the notion of privileged access to our own mental states acknowledging the importance of self-ascription as being more indirect than commonly believed. We may find that self-ascription is a result of our mindreading ability applied to ourselves and there could be a plausible biological evolution of the cognitive mechanism that underlies. This chapter discusses the evolutionary escalation of mindreading in humans, reviews philosophical accounts of mindreading, and evaluates different theories of belief self-attribution. It concludes with the implications for understanding belief-related phenomena and their cognitive underpinnings.
This paper is an essay in what Austin (Proc Aristotel Soc 57: 1–30, 1956–1957) called "linguistic phenomenology". Its focus is on showing how the grammatical features of ordinary causal verbs, as revealed in the kinds of linguistic constructions they can figure in, can shed light on the nature of the processes that these verbs are used to describe. Specifically, drawing on the comprehensive classification of English verbs founds in Levin (English verb classes and alternations: a preliminary investigation, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993), I divide the forms of productive causal processes into five classes, corresponding to Aristotle's ontological categories: there are processes that cause change in location, in state, and in quantity; and that lead to the creation and destruction of substances. These broader categories are then subdivided into other ones, corresponding to different Levin classes, according to further differences in the causal processes they involve. I conclude by discussing the relevance of this argument to research in metaphysics and experimental philosophy.
This volume takes cue from the idea that the thought of no philosopher can be understood without considering it as the result of a lively dialogue with other thinkers. On this ground, it addresses the ways in which René Descartes’s philosophy evolved and was progressively understood by intellectuals from different contexts and eras, either by considering direct interlocutors of Descartes such as Isaac Beeckman and Elisabeth of Bohemia, thinkers who developed upon his ideas and on particular topics as Nicolas Malebranche or Thomas Willis, those who adapted his overall methodology in developing new systems of knowledge as Johannes Clauberg and Pierre-Sylvain Régis, and contemporary thinkers from continental and analytic traditions like Emanuele Severino and Peter Strawson.
This is the first of four papers prompted by a recent literature about a doctrine dubbed spacetime functionalism. This paper gives our general framework for discussing functionalism. Following Lewis, we take it as a species of reduction. We start by expounding reduction in a broadly Nagelian sense. Then we argue that Lewis’ functionalism is an improvement on Nagelian reduction.This paper sets the scene for the other papers, which will apply our framework to theories of space and time. (So those papers address the space and time literature: both recent and older, and physical as well as philosophical literature. But the four papers can be read independently.)Overall, we come to praise spacetime functionalism, not to bury it. But we criticize the recent philosophical literature for failing to stress:
(i)
functionalism’s being a species of reduction (in particular: reduction of chrono-geometry to the physics of matter and radiation);
(ii)
functionalism’s idea, not just of specifying a concept by its functional role, but of specifying several concepts simultaneously by their roles;
(iii)
functionalism’s providing bridge laws that are mandatory, not optional: they are statements of identity (or co-extension) that are conclusions of a deductive argument, rather than contingent guesses or verbal stipulations; and once we infer them, we have a reduction in a Nagelian sense.
On the other hand, some of the older philosophical literature, and the mathematical physics literature, is faithful to these ideas (i) to (iii)—as are Torretti’s writings. (But of course, the word ‘functionalism’ is not used; and themes like simultaneous unique definition are not articulated.) Thus in various papers, falling under various research programmes, the unique definability of a chrono-geometric concept (or concepts) in terms of matter and radiation, and a corresponding bridge law and reduction, is secured by a precise theorem. Hence our desire to celebrate these results as rigorous renditions of spacetime functionalism.
We begin from the assumption that where scientific research will predictably be used to affect things of moral significance in the world, you have a special duty, a duty of care, to ‘get it right’. This, we argue, requires a special kind of objectivity, ‘objectivity to be found’. What is it that’s to be found? In any kind of scientific endeavour, you should make all reasonable efforts to find the right methods to get the right results to serve the purposes at stake and neither exaggerate nor underestimate the credibility of what you have done. That, we take it, is what in this context constitutes objectivity and intellectual humility. But where your results will affect the world, you have a more demanding duty: a duty to ‘get it right’ about the purposes the endeavour should serve. Often the most morally significant purposes are those that ‘go without saying’ and because they are not said, we can too easily overlook them, sometimes at the cost even of human lives. We illustrate this with the example of the Vajont dam design and the flawed modelling that resulted in the Hillsborough football disaster.
This paper presents a counterexample to the principle that all epistemic reasons for doxastic attitudes towards p are provided by evidence concerning p . I begin by motivating and clarifying the principle and the associated picture of epistemic reasons, including the notion of evidence concerning a proposition, which comprises both first- and second-order evidence. I then introduce the counterexample from incoherent doxastic attitudes by presenting three example cases. In each case, the fact that the subject’s doxastic attitudes are incoherent is an epistemic reason to suspend, which is not provided by evidence. I argue that this incoherence fact is a reason for the subject to take a step back and reassess her evidence for her conflicting attitudes, and thus a reason to suspend all of them. Suspending judgment enables the subject to revise attitudes where appropriate and thus (typically) to arrive at a set of coherent and well-supported attitudes. I then address a dilemma for my proposal and, in conclusion, briefly suggest a picture of epistemic reasons on which they are to be understood against the background of the subject’s virtuous intellectual conduct.
Contrary to most speech acts theorists, Sbisà’s reading of Austin rightly emphasizes the conceptual, or “internal,” link between the necessity of uptake for an illocutionary act to be achieved and its conventional nature. She thus refuses to consider the uptake as a theoretical means to promote an intentionalist account of speech acts. I submit, first, that this is the only correct understanding of Austin’s revolutionary conception of speech efficiency; and second that she is right in drawing such an internal link between “conventionality” and the necessity of some kind of “recognition” or “acknowledgment” for any symbolic (or ritual) action (such as an illocutionary act) to take place. In this chapter, I examine Sbisà’s arguments in favor of this claim and borrow some insights from linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics to reinforce her position. Thus, I will concur with her in defending a conventionalist account of speech acts, including assertions, orders, and so on.
Empirical insights into language processing have a philosophical relevance that extends well beyond philosophical questions about language. This chapter will discuss this wider relevance: We will consider how experimental philosophers can examine language processing in order to address questions in several different areas of philosophy. To do so, we will present the emerging research program of experimental argument analysis (EAA) that examines how automatic language processing shapes verbal reasoning – including philosophical arguments. The evidential strand of experimental philosophy uses mainly questionnaire-based methods to assess the evidentiary value of intuitive judgments that are adduced as evidence for philosophical theories and as premises for philosophical arguments. Extending this prominent strand of experimental philosophy, EAA underpins such assessments, extends the scope of the assessments, and expands the range of the empirical methods employed: EAA examines how automatic inferences that are continually made in language comprehension and production shape verbal reasoning, and draws on findings about comprehension biases that affect the contextualisation of such default inferences, in order to explain and expose fallacies. It deploys findings to assess premises and inferences from premises to conclusions, in philosophical arguments. To do so, it adapts methods from psycholinguistics and recruits methods from computational linguistics.
Common arguments for realism about phenomenal consciousness contend that this is a folk concept, with proponents expecting it to be lexicalised in ordinary language. In English, the word ‘experience’ is typically regarded as the best candidate. This predicts that ‘experience’ will be used to refer to mental states and episodes, not only in philosophical but also in ordinary discourse. We conduct a corpus study in order to assess this claim and to understand the actual use of the word in non-academic, academic, and philosophical discourse. In non-academic discourse, uses that refer to knowledge or sources of knowledge, and to public events, are found to dominate. Uses that refer to mental states or episodes dominate only in the philosophy of mind (and not even in philosophy at large).
This essay presents an array of arguments demonstrating that truth is necessarily pragmatic. Evaluations of truth derive from human experience, from the individual’s weltanschauung which molds their point of view and ideological perspective. Consequently, within any community, there exist alternative truths. Traditional takes on truth are reviewed. The fuzziness of many truths is examined. The existence within the community of alternative, sometimes contradictory, truths is explicated and shown to be fairly common in practice, even though it can occasionally lead to social dissension. The essay expatiates on the alleged incontrovertibility of logical, mathematical, and scientific truths (supposedly true in all possible worlds) showing that they are necessarily subject to specific conditions which render the assessment pragmatic. In sum, Φ is true resolves into Φ functions as true under specific conditions a 1…n . Certainly, a hegemonic group within the community will often assert a preference for one truth over its alternatives, but that does not eliminate the existence of alternative truths within that community. The only way to manage this state of affairs is to admit that truth does not exist independent of human beings but is necessarily evaluated according to the set of perceptions, conceptions, and beliefs that constitute the individual’s weltanschauung at the time the judgment is made, such that different weltanschauungen often give rise to different judgments about what functions as true.
This article analyzes the experience of heightened reality, whereby subjects feel or think that what they are facing is reality itself, or somehow a ‘more real reality’, a hyperreality. My main examples for this specific kind of metacognitive supervision are from reports about the near-death experience, the psychedelic experience and the mystical experience. I will interpret accounts of such experiences using first of all philosophical phenomenology and theories of sense of reality. I criticize and try to complement Martin Fortier’s model of the plural taxonomy of sense of reality. In addition, I propose a triadic model of the experience of reality and, based on the analysis of the testimonies of heightened reality, I have developed a triadic model, according to which one dimension of reality experience is merely heightened reality, the other two being self-evident immersion in reality and the irruptive suspension of ordinary experience.
We propose a bridge-builder perspective on social ontology. Our point of departure is that an important task of philosophy is to provide the bigger picture. To this end, it should investigate folk views and determine whether and how they can be preserved once scrutinized from the perspective of the sciences. However, the sciences typically present us with a fragmented picture of reality. Thus, an important intermediate step is to integrate the most promising social scientific theories with one another. In addition to this, social ontology can provide input to and benefit from other philosophical disciplines that engage in normative theorizing. Thus, we propose that social ontology connects not only with folk ontology and scientific ontology but also with fields such as ethics and political philosophy. Building bridges between them serves to formulate a credible and encompassing worldview that is of theoretical and practical significance.
Several important philosophical problems (including the problems of perception, free will, and scepticism) arise from antinomies that are developed through philosophical paradoxes. The critical strand of ordinary language philosophy (OLP), as practiced by J.L. Austin, provides an approach to such ‘antinomic problems’ that proceeds from an examination of ‘ordinary language’ (how people ordinarily talk about the phenomenon of interest) and ‘common sense’ (what they commonly think about it), and deploys findings to show that the problems at issue are artefacts of fallacious reasoning. The approach is capable, and in need of, empirical development. Proceeding from a case-study on Austin’s paradigmatic treatment of the problem of perception, this paper identifies the key empirical assumptions informing the approach, assesses them in the light of empirical findings about default inferences, contextualisation failures, and belief fragmentation, and explores how these findings can be deployed to address the problem of perception. This facilitates a novel resolution of the problem of perception. Proceeding from this paradigm, the paper proposes ‘experimental critical OLP’ as a new research program in experimental philosophy that avoids apparent non-sequiturs of OLP, extends and transforms experimental philosophy’s ‘sources program’, and provides a promising new strategy for deploying empirical findings about how people ordinarily talk and think about phenomena, to address longstanding philosophical problems.
This article critiques Stephen Mulhall's reading of Cavell's response to skepticism. In the first half of the article, I argue that Mulhall is mistaken in two respects: he elides differences Cavell notes between external world and other minds skepticism as well as conflates empathetic projection and acknowledgment. In the second half of the article, I argue for a novel reading of Cavell's account of acknowledgment, which addresses the concerns I raise for Mulhall. The paper closes by considering and responding to a worry that one's efforts at acknowledgment are more complicated projections of one's self onto the other.
This article defends Cavell and Levinas’ view that anti-skeptical arguments cannot attain universal assent. In the first half of the article, I argue that Conant’s reading of Cavell is mistaken in two respects: he ignores Cavell’s inheritance of Kant as well as the differences Cavell emphasizes between external world and other minds skepticism. In the second half of the paper, I examine affinities between Cavell and Levinas’ thought, viz., acknowledging the facticity of the other and their remarks on skepticism. I close the paper by noting three metaphysical and ethical truths that arise from Cavell’s way with skepticism.
News 'fixers' are translators and guides who assist foreign journalists. Sometimes key contributors to bold, original reporting and other times key facilitators of homogeneity and groupthink in the news media, they play the difficult but powerful role of broker between worlds, shaping the creation of knowledge from behind the scenes. In Fixing Stories, Noah Amir Arjomand reflects on the nature of news production and cross-cultural mediation. Based on human stories drawn from three years of field research in Turkey, this book unfolds as a series of narratives of fixers' career trajectories during a period when the international media spotlight shone on Turkey and Syria. From the Syrian Civil War, Gezi Park protest movement, rise of authoritarianism in Turkey and of ISIS in Syria, to the rekindling of conflict in both countries' Kurdish regions and Turkey's 2016 coup attempt, Arjomand brings to light vivid personal accounts and insider perspectives on world-shaking events alongside analysis of the role fixers have played in bringing news of Turkey and Syria to international audiences.
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