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The Property Dualism Argument

Stephen L. White

in The Waning of Materialism

Contemporary physicalists, materialists, and naturalists generally hold two theses: that mental states such as pains are identical to physical states of the brain, and that these identities are a ... More

Contemporary physicalists, materialists, and naturalists generally hold two theses: that mental states such as pains are identical to physical states of the brain, and that these identities are a posteriori. The property dualism argument raises a problem for such mental-physical identities. Suppose that pains are identical with c-fiber firings. That the identity is a posteriori means that a subject could be perfectly rational in believing what would be naturally expressed by saying ‘I am in pain’ and what would be naturally expressed by saying ‘My c-fibers are not firing’. There is, however, a pervasive ambiguity in the literature as to what is meant by ‘mode of presentation’ — whether it is representational, something on the side of our language, beliefs, or conceptual scheme, or something on the side of the world, something represented. This chapter argues that the assumption that we have a meaningful vocabulary of mentalistic terms such as ‘pain’ entails that there are modes of presentation of both kinds — concepts and the properties that give those concepts their content. And the properties that give such concepts content are thin. Thus, they confer no empirically discoverable nature on the objects that instantiate them. It concludes that there must be some irreducibly mentalistic properties — properties not identical to any physical properties — and that this is a consequence of the assumptions made by the proponents of a posteriori mental-physical identities themselves.The alternative is ‘local eliminativism’. This view is unstable — it collapses into straightforward eliminativism regarding the mental, which is incompatible with the qualia realism of the proponents of a posteriori mental-physical identities.Less

The Puzzles: Informative Identity

Howard Wettstein

in The Magic Prism: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language

“Cognitive significance” puzzles are especially problematic for anti-Fregean theories of reference, which, in particular, make it difficult to explain the informativeness of such identity sentences ... More

“Cognitive significance” puzzles are especially problematic for anti-Fregean theories of reference, which, in particular, make it difficult to explain the informativeness of such identity sentences as “Hesperus is Phosphorous”. Frege can explain this in terms of the different senses associated with the names, Russell by appealing to different associated definite descriptions. It is argued that the “classical” direct reference solution to the puzzle advanced by Kaplan and Perry, which combines singular propositions with modifications of Frege’s modes of presentation, fails. The views of Putnam and Kripke are discussed in support of the idea that modes of presentation are not central to cognitive significance.Less

On the Ways Things Appear

Sydney Shoemaker

in Perceptual Experience

How can we reconcile representationalism about phenomenal character — the view that the phenomenal character of experiences is fixed by their representational content — with the view that how things ... More

How can we reconcile representationalism about phenomenal character — the view that the phenomenal character of experiences is fixed by their representational content — with the view that how things appear to different subjects, and so the phenomenal character of their experiences of them, can differ without there being any misperception? That is, how can we reconcile representationalism with the possibility of ‘spectrum inversion?’ One view says that what in the first instance are represented by perceptual experiences are ‘appearance properties,’ which things have in virtue of producing or being disposed to produce experiences of certain sorts, and that different perceivers can perceive the same objective property, e.g. the same color, by perceiving and representing different appearance properties. Here, this is replaced by the view that properties like colors have multiple qualitative characters, and that perceivers with somewhat different perceptual systems can be such that they perceive the same property color by being sensitive to different qualitative characters of that property, and represent it by representing different qualitative characters.Less

Default Semantics for Propositional Attitude Reports

K.M. Jaszczolt

in Default Semantics: Foundations of a Compositional Theory of Acts of Communication

This chapter addresses the problem of substitutivity of coreferential expressions in belief reports, and offers an original solution to this problem in the form of degrees of mode of presentation ... More

This chapter addresses the problem of substitutivity of coreferential expressions in belief reports, and offers an original solution to this problem in the form of degrees of mode of presentation that contribute to the merger representation. Merger representations for such constructions are provided, as well as a brief introduction to the formal account accompanying them.Less

Ascribing Thoughts to Nonlinguistic Creatures Modes of Presentation

Jose Luis Bermudez

in Thinking without Words

This chapter explores how a semantics can be provided for nonlinguistic thoughts in a way that both does justice to philosophical constraints on acceptable theories of content and provides the ... More

This chapter explores how a semantics can be provided for nonlinguistic thoughts in a way that both does justice to philosophical constraints on acceptable theories of content and provides the ethologist or developmental psychologist with a workable method of assigning content to the beliefs and desires of nonlinguistic creatures. The utility condition of a belief is a state of affairs construable in purely extensional terms. Determining an ontology can be no more than the first stage in resolving the problem of indeterminacy. A single state of affairs can be apprehended by a creature in many different ways, and in order to explain how its representations of the environment cause it to behave in the way it does, one can specify not simply the state of affairs it is representing but also how it apprehends that state of affairs.Less

Frege and the Sense of ‘I’

François Recanati

in Mental Files

If singular thoughts depend upon contextual relations to the objects of thought, how can they be communicated across contexts? The mental file framework suggests an account of the communication of ... More

If singular thoughts depend upon contextual relations to the objects of thought, how can they be communicated across contexts? The mental file framework suggests an account of the communication of singular thoughts which is reminiscent of Frege's remarks regarding the two senses of ‘I’, in thought and in communication.Less

“Lately Things Don't Seem the Same” The Conceivability Argument

Joseph Levine

in Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness

The “conceivability argument” for dualism is presented and analyzed in depth. It is argued that in order to derive the possibility of zombies – creatures physically like us but without conscious ... More

The “conceivability argument” for dualism is presented and analyzed in depth. It is argued that in order to derive the possibility of zombies – creatures physically like us but without conscious experience – from their conceivability, certain unwarranted semantic and epistemic doctrines must be accepted. By introducing the idea of a nonascriptive mode of presentation, it is argued that a materialist can consistently allow the conceivability of zombies without admitting their metaphysical possibility.Less

Desperately Seeking Ψ

Charles Travis

in Perception: Essays After Frege

Tyler Burge, in arguing against (his understanding of) disjunctivism, argues that there is a perceptual state in common to each term of a certain kind of triple: seeing blah, seeing a ringer for ... More

Tyler Burge, in arguing against (his understanding of) disjunctivism, argues that there is a perceptual state in common to each term of a certain kind of triple: seeing blah, seeing a ringer for blah, and a mere ringer for seeing blah; and that there is a belief state in common to beliefs formed ‘on the basis of’ the experience in each term of such a triple. This chapter develops a case that Burge’s view is non-compulsory, and has by no means been made compulsory by the course of ‘vision science’. It is mostly about belief, but applies the lessons learned there to visual experience.Less

Two Fundamental Problems: Frege's Classical Approach

Howard Wettstein

in The Magic Prism: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language

The problem of the nature of propositions, the things we assert, is introduced. Frege’s doctrine that a proposition is the sense of a sentence, a thoroughly conceptual entity, is set out and named ... More

The problem of the nature of propositions, the things we assert, is introduced. Frege’s doctrine that a proposition is the sense of a sentence, a thoroughly conceptual entity, is set out and named the “classical account of propositions”. Frege’s doctrine must be understood in the light of his distinction between sense and reference, which is explained and which gives rise to a second fundamental problem: the relation between language and world. Frege’s solution, that the reference of a linguistic expression is derivative from its associated mode of presentation, is discussed. It is suggested that Frege’s views on the subject are mistaken and that Russell’s remarks point the way forward.Less

Singularism vs Descriptivism

François Recanati

in Mental Files

After a historical overview of the debate between Descriptivism and Singularism, it is shown that we need both a notion of sense or mode of presentation (as in Frege's work) and a notion of ... More

After a historical overview of the debate between Descriptivism and Singularism, it is shown that we need both a notion of sense or mode of presentation (as in Frege's work) and a notion of acquaintance (as in Russell's work) if we are to provide a satisfactory analysis of singular thought. Singular thought about an object involves non-descriptive ways of thinking of that object, that is, modes of presentation resting on acquaintance relations to the object.Less

Non-Descriptive Modes of Presentation as Mental Files

François Recanati

in Mental Files

Modes of presentation are needed to deal with ‘Frege cases’. A descriptivist construal of modes of presentation is known to be unsatisfactory in three types of case: cases of reference through ... More

Modes of presentation are needed to deal with ‘Frege cases’. A descriptivist construal of modes of presentation is known to be unsatisfactory in three types of case: cases of reference through perception, through communicative chains, and through indexicals. In all such cases, what is needed are non-descriptive ways of thinking of an object, resting on contextual relations to the object. Such modes of presentation can be construed as mental files in which the subject stores information gained through the contextual relations in question. The reference of the file is the entity which stands in the appropriate contextual relation to the thought (or to the thinker), and the nature of the contextual relation determines the type of file it is.Less

Modes of Presentation in Personal Memory

Christopher McCarroll

in Remembering from the Outside: Personal Memory and the Perspectival Mind

When thinking about intentional states such as memory, there is a distinction drawn between “content” and “modes of presentation” of that content. How do field and observer perspectives relate to ... More

When thinking about intentional states such as memory, there is a distinction drawn between “content” and “modes of presentation” of that content. How do field and observer perspectives relate to this distinction? By exploring the nature of first-personal de se thoughts, and how the self is represented in perspectival memory imagery, this chapter argues that field and observer perspectives are different ways of thinking about a particular past event. Field and observer perspective memories can have the same intentional object, in that they can be about the same past event, but they involve different modes of presentation of that past event. This chapter looks at how the mode of presentation affects the content of memory, and it shows that the self-presence of remembering from-the-outside is provided implicitly by the mode of presentation.Less

Fregean Particularism

Susanna Schellenberg

in The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence

Chapter 4 develops Fregean particularism, thereby providing the details of my account of singular content. Fregean particularism advances a new understanding of singular modes of presentation: ... More

Chapter 4 develops Fregean particularism, thereby providing the details of my account of singular content. Fregean particularism advances a new understanding of singular modes of presentation: perceptual content is constituted by the perceptual capacities employed and the particulars (if any) thereby singled out. These modes of presentation can be individuated at the level of content types and token contents. Perceptions, hallucinations, and illusions with the same phenomenal character are constituted by employing the same perceptual capacities; they thereby share a content type. But the token content of perception, hallucination, and illusion differs at least in part. If one perceives a particular, one employs perceptual capacities that successfully single out that particular. Thereby, the token content is constituted by the particular singled out and thus is singular content. If one fails to single out a particular (perhaps because one is suffering an illusion or hallucination), the token content is gappy.Less

The Varieties of Remembering

Mark Rowlands

in Memory and the Self: Phenomenology, Science and Autobiography

Various forms of memory are surveyed, explained and distinguished. The distinct categories of memory identified include procedural, declarative, autobiographical, semantic and episodic. Episodic ... More

Various forms of memory are surveyed, explained and distinguished. The distinct categories of memory identified include procedural, declarative, autobiographical, semantic and episodic. Episodic memories have the kind of person-specificity required to provide the point of origin of Rilkean memories: they provide the raw materials out of which Rilkean memories might evolve. The notion of episodic memory is clarified. A puzzle concerning the intentional object of episodic memories is resolved. Episodic memories are not memories of simply episodes, nor are they memories of experiences. Rather, they are memories of episodes as subsumed under experiential modes of presentation of a highly specific form.Less

The Poetics and Power of Presentation at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

Marjorie Hunt

in Curatorial Conversations: Cultural Representation and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

In this chapter, the author draws upon three programs to describe the critical relationship between modes of presentation and interpretation of cultural heritage and traditional knowledge and skills ... More

In this chapter, the author draws upon three programs to describe the critical relationship between modes of presentation and interpretation of cultural heritage and traditional knowledge and skills at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. It addresses the complex interplay of many factors and strategies for presenting the skills and experience of participants at the Festival. This includes, among other processes of research and planning, the selection of participants, overall site design, visual presentation and display, the physical set-up of tent interiors, the use of interpretive materials, such as signs, photo murals, banners, and props, and the role of presenters/moderators. The programs described include Masters of the Building Arts, Carriers of Culture: Living Native Basket Traditions, and One World, Many Voices: Endangered Languages and Cultural Heritage.Less

Coreference De Jure

François Recanati

in Singular Thought and Mental Files

In the recent literature, the relation of coreference de jure (the CDJ relation, for short) is characterized roughly as follows: that relation holds between two singular terms (tokens) in a discourse ... More

In the recent literature, the relation of coreference de jure (the CDJ relation, for short) is characterized roughly as follows: that relation holds between two singular terms (tokens) in a discourse just in case whoever understands the discourse knows that the two terms corefer if they refer at all. In the mental file framework, adopted here, this is cashed out by saying that the two terms are associated with the same mental file. This chapter discusses various alleged properties of the CDJ relation: factivity, transparency, and transitivity. It is argued that (i) the CDJ relation can be both factive and transparent, while (ii) we need to distinguish between two sorts of coreference de jure, only one of which is a transitive relation.Less

Do Mental Files Obey Strawson’s Constraint?

François Recanati

in The Fragmented Mind

This chapter argues that the mental file approach makes it possible to treat so-called Frege cases as an instance of fragmentation; that is, as cases in which conflicting pieces of information are ... More

This chapter argues that the mental file approach makes it possible to treat so-called Frege cases as an instance of fragmentation; that is, as cases in which conflicting pieces of information are stored in the subject’s mind but remain insulated from each other in such a way that the inconsistency cannot be detected. The argument rests on a constraint on files which derives from Strawson’s work, to the effect that two coreferential files should be merged. The linking model, widely accepted in the mental file literature as a substitute for Strawson’s merge model, is shown to rest on the mistaken construal of recognition as a state, where in fact it is a transition between states.Less

De Re Subtleties: Response to Nathan Salmon

Stephen Schiffer

in Meanings and Other Things

An extended reply to Salmon’s contribution, itself a response to Schiffer’s 2006 paper, “A Problem For Direct Reference Theories Of Belief Reports”.

Natural Causes

Paul M. Pietroski

in Causing Actions

The proposed account of causation, in terms of explanation, does not sleight the mind‐independence of causal relations. The relevant notion of explanation is objective, even if facts are taken to be ... More

The proposed account of causation, in terms of explanation, does not sleight the mind‐independence of causal relations. The relevant notion of explanation is objective, even if facts are taken to be abstract Fregean ‘modes of presenting’ (or ‘ways of thinking about’) events. Causation remains a natural, and often perceptible relation between spatiotemporal particulars. But we must resist empiricist conceptions of causation.Less