Minds and Morals

Knowledge, Rationality, and Morality, 1978-2010, 2012

Philosophy, 2008

I develop an account of moral perception which is able to deal well with familiar naturalistic non-realist complaints about ontological extravagance and 'queerness'. I show how this account can also ground a cogent response to familiar objections presented by Simon Blackburn (about supervenience) and J.L.Mackie (about motivation). The familiar realist's problem about relativism, however, remains.

Mind, Language and Action

Purpose – The complexity of the modern world calls for the increasingly complex (i.e., containing more concepts) and systemic (i.e., containing more causal connections between the concepts) conceptual systems, such as theories and mental models which may exist at varying levels of complexity and systemicity. Yet, these systems are often found to be impervious to data and counter-arguments. Examples of such disputes are found in arguments over global warming and in the many debates between political groups. The present paper reviews the reasons behind this imperviance and identifies ways to move forward. Design/methodology/approach – The paper brings together the insights from the burgeoning science of conceptual systems as well as selected ideas from the moral philosophies of Niklas Luhmann and Jürgen Habermas. The science of conceptual systems is utilized to unearth the cognitive reasons for the imperviance of conceptual systems, while the work of Luhmann and Habermas is brought to bear on the moral reasons. Findings – The most salient cognitive reasons for this imperviance are shown to be related to the questionable validity of data, the situational inappropriateness of conceptual systems, as well as their low complexity and systemicity. The effect of the moral content of conceptual systems on their imperviance is ambivalent. For Luhmann, moral communication may enhance imperviance and induce conflicts. In contrast, the Habermasian discourse ethics may counteract imperviance by stimulating the rational moral argumentation. Originality/value – The science of conceptual systems is uniquely positioned to analyze the pervasive problem of their imperviance, especially if this problem is aggravated by moral reasons. Key words: conceptual systems, complexity, systemicity, imperviance, integrative propositional analysis, morality

Recent scientific studies of consciousness reveal the challenges involved in striking the proper balance between concrete fact and abstract theory. Christof Koch believes he is on the road to a scientific understanding of consciousness because he has a research paradigm which appears to create solvable puzzles. Unfortunately, work in other areas of neuroscience reveal that these puzzles rely too heavily on Aristotelian common sense to account for the unique nature of connectionist processing. William Ramsey claims that biological versions of traditional theories of representation, of the sort embraced by Koch, Fodor, and others, are so inadequate that we should give up all attempts to create high level abstract theories about human cognition. I argue, however, that what is needed is more abstract theorizing, not less. The intelligible entities described by Dynamic Systems Theory should be seen as embodiments of mental representations. These embodiments are physical in the sense that they are comprehensible in terms of modern physics, even if they are not material items that can be directly perceived.

Abstract This paper tries to meet the three basic constraints in the metaphysics of perception—that, following Schellenberg (Philos Stud 149:19–48, 2010), I call here the particularity constraint, the indistinguishable constraint, and the phenomeno- logical constraint—by putting forward a new combination of the two well-known contradictory views in this field: the relational view and the content view. Following other compatibilists (such as Schellenberg in Philos Stud 149:19–48, 2010), I do think that it is possible to reconcile the two views, recognizing that experience has both a relational and a representational dimension. However, in opposition to the current ways of combining these two views, I reject the idea of gappy contents. Instead, my proposal is builds on Lewis’s famous semantic (Philosophy and grammar, Riedel, Dordrecht, 1980b), according to which the content of sentences is best modeled as complex functions from context-index pairs to truth-values. In conformity with the content view, I want to suggest that perceptual experiences do represent complex properties or complex functions (e.g., being a yellow-cube- straight-ahead) that are either veridical or falsidical of particulars in contexts and indexes. In this relativist framework, I can also accommodate the relational claim that our experience of particulars must be understood as a fundamental cognitive relation rather than as a representation. In this way, particulars also play a key role in individuating perceptual experiences. Two token experiences, e and e0, are dif- ferent when one of the following conditions is met: first, if two different particulars, a and a0, are causally responsible for the token experiences e and e0, respectively, regardless of the time and location in which the perceptual experiences take place; second, if the same particular a, which is causally responsible for both e and e0, is either located in a different place or is in the same location but at a different time.

Principia

Philosophers have always tried to explain what concepts are. Currently, most neo-Fregean philosophers identify concepts with abilities peculiar to cognitive agents. Philosophers who defend a psychological view, in contrast, identify concepts with representations located in the mind. In this paper, I argue that concepts should be understood neither in terms of mental representations nor in terms of abilities. Concepts, I argue, are rules for sorting an inferring. To support this, I follow Ginsborg's Kantian conception of concepts. Nevertheless, unlike Ginsborg, I provide an explanation of the cognitive relationship between concepts and thinkers that presupposes no linguistic awareness of any normative concept. In doing so, a dispositional approach to the normativity of concepts is proposed.

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

In this paper, I defend the view that we can literally perceive the morally right and wrong, or something near enough. In defending this claim, I will try to meet three primary objectives: 1) to clarify how an investigation into moral phenomenology should proceed, 2) to respond to a number of misconceptions and objections that are most frequently raised against the very idea of moral perception, and 3) to provide a model for how some moral perception can be seen as literal perception. Because I take ‘moral perception’ to pick out a family of different experiences, I will limit myself (for the most part) to a discussion of the moral relevance of the emotions.

2014

Recently, the thesis that experience is fundamentally a matter of representing the world as being a certain way has been questioned by austere relationalists. I defend this thesis by developing a view of perceptual content that avoids their objections. I will argue that on a relational understanding of perceptual content, the fundamental insights of austere relationalism do not compete with perceptual experience being representational. As it will show that most objections to the thesis that experience has content apply only to accounts of perceptual content on which perceptual relations to the world play no explanatory role. With austere relationalists, I will argue that perceptual experience is fundamentally relational. But against austere relationalists, I will argue that it is fundamentally both relational and representational. It used to be common ground that perceptual experience represents the world as being one way rather than another. The thesis that perceptual experience is...