Sven Bernecker
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199577569
- eISBN:
- 9780191722820
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577569.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter examines the nature of memory causation. This involves identifying the vehicle of memory causation, specifying the strength of the causal relation constitutive of memory, and ruling out ...
More
This chapter examines the nature of memory causation. This involves identifying the vehicle of memory causation, specifying the strength of the causal relation constitutive of memory, and ruling out deviant causal chains. It is argued that the causal chains connecting the past and present representation must consist in a persisting memory trace. Memory traces are either dispositional beliefs or subdoxastic states. For a memory trace to give rise to a genuine memory it must at least be an INUS condition for one's present state of seeming to remember. If the memory trace is an independently sufficient condition for the state of seeming to remember, it may not be preempted by another independently sufficient condition. The dependence of memory states on past representations must support counterfactuals of the form: if the subject hadn't represented a particular proposition in the past he wouldn't represent it now. This chapter discusses, among other things, the possibility of trace transplants, connectionism, the Gettier problem, hypnosis, and suggestibility.Less
This chapter examines the nature of memory causation. This involves identifying the vehicle of memory causation, specifying the strength of the causal relation constitutive of memory, and ruling out deviant causal chains. It is argued that the causal chains connecting the past and present representation must consist in a persisting memory trace. Memory traces are either dispositional beliefs or subdoxastic states. For a memory trace to give rise to a genuine memory it must at least be an INUS condition for one's present state of seeming to remember. If the memory trace is an independently sufficient condition for the state of seeming to remember, it may not be preempted by another independently sufficient condition. The dependence of memory states on past representations must support counterfactuals of the form: if the subject hadn't represented a particular proposition in the past he wouldn't represent it now. This chapter discusses, among other things, the possibility of trace transplants, connectionism, the Gettier problem, hypnosis, and suggestibility.
Quassim Cassam
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- December 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199657575
- eISBN:
- 9780191793110
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199657575.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Rationalists like Moran take it that use of the Transparency Method (TM) is a basic source of intentional self-knowledge. Three problems for simple Rationalism are identified: the Generality Problem, ...
More
Rationalists like Moran take it that use of the Transparency Method (TM) is a basic source of intentional self-knowledge. Three problems for simple Rationalism are identified: the Generality Problem, the Substitution Problem, and the Matching Problem. The Matching Problem suggests that TM can’t deliver immediate self-knowledge, as claimed by Moran. Gendler’s distinction between belief and alief doesn’t help. An alternative to simple Rationalism is Activism, according to which we can know our minds by actively shaping their contents. Activism runs into versions of the three problems for simple Rationalism and has difficulties accounting for self-knowledge of attitudes that are not formed by active deliberation. In addition, the epistemology of active self-knowledge remains obscure. On a dispositional account of belief Activism fails to secure what Rationalists regard as the immediacy of self-knowledge.Less
Rationalists like Moran take it that use of the Transparency Method (TM) is a basic source of intentional self-knowledge. Three problems for simple Rationalism are identified: the Generality Problem, the Substitution Problem, and the Matching Problem. The Matching Problem suggests that TM can’t deliver immediate self-knowledge, as claimed by Moran. Gendler’s distinction between belief and alief doesn’t help. An alternative to simple Rationalism is Activism, according to which we can know our minds by actively shaping their contents. Activism runs into versions of the three problems for simple Rationalism and has difficulties accounting for self-knowledge of attitudes that are not formed by active deliberation. In addition, the epistemology of active self-knowledge remains obscure. On a dispositional account of belief Activism fails to secure what Rationalists regard as the immediacy of self-knowledge.
Ted Honderich
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198714385
- eISBN:
- 9780191782794
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198714385.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
There is an ordinary division into consciousness in perceiving and consciousness of thinking and of wanting—perceptual, cognitive and affective consciousness. Each of us has a hold on our own ...
More
There is an ordinary division into consciousness in perceiving and consciousness of thinking and of wanting—perceptual, cognitive and affective consciousness. Each of us has a hold on our own consciousness, misnamed introspection, and we have a common sense definition of consciousness. But there is pessimism, greater and lesser, about our coming to a theory or analysis of consciousness in the primary ordinary sense, an account of its nature. Has this been owed in part to the absence of an adequate initial clarification of the consciousness under discussion? To not answering the same question? Has it resulted in particular from a conflation of conscious and unconscious mentality in science in particular but also philosophy? Clearly there is a distinction between, say, dispositional and occurring belief, between knowing where the 43 bus goes when you are having no such thought, and believing it when you are doing so.Less
There is an ordinary division into consciousness in perceiving and consciousness of thinking and of wanting—perceptual, cognitive and affective consciousness. Each of us has a hold on our own consciousness, misnamed introspection, and we have a common sense definition of consciousness. But there is pessimism, greater and lesser, about our coming to a theory or analysis of consciousness in the primary ordinary sense, an account of its nature. Has this been owed in part to the absence of an adequate initial clarification of the consciousness under discussion? To not answering the same question? Has it resulted in particular from a conflation of conscious and unconscious mentality in science in particular but also philosophy? Clearly there is a distinction between, say, dispositional and occurring belief, between knowing where the 43 bus goes when you are having no such thought, and believing it when you are doing so.
