Emotion and Other Minds

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2008

Prometeica - Revista de Filosofía y Ciencias

The irreducibility thesis of phenomenal consciousness can only succeed against the sceptical attack and avoid solipsism iff it can coherently establish the transition from subjective certainty to the objectivity of knowledge. The sceptical attack on the relationship between the phenomenal qualitative character of experience about the subjects own mental fact and the awareness of the qualitative properties of the phenomenal object can be avoided through establishing the immediacy of experience. The phenomenal realist become successful in establishing the subjective certainty about the knowledge of phenomenal consciousness, however, has been failed in establishing objective certainty of knowledge, which leads to several epistemological problems (i.e., scepticism about the independent existence of external world, knowledge about the external reality and the existence of other mind; popularly known as the harder problem of consciousness) in philosophy of mind. In this paper, my objectiv...

1 We focus on the visual case, leaving it to the reader to consider how the discussion generalizes to other modalities. 2 concerned how the transition from introspective beliefs to external--world beliefs could be rational. 2 In this entry, we assume without argument these positions are mistaken. We begin from the assumption that experiences (such as the one you have when you see the mustard) can justify external world beliefs about the things you see, such as beliefs that the mustard jar is in the fridge, and that the justification experience provides does not have to rely on justification for introspective beliefs. From now on, we often let it remain implicit that we are talking about external world beliefs, when we talk about the kind of beliefs that experiences justify. 3 Our main question is this: what features of experiences explain how they justify external world beliefs? The grammar of the question might suggest that experiences suffice all by themselves to provide justification for external world beliefs. But don't read this into the grammar of the phrase "experiences justify beliefs". We can distinguish between the claim that an experience can justify a belief that P, and the claim that an experience can justify a belief that P without help from other features it only contingently has. We clarify our question further in Part I, where we explain why we have chosen this point of departure, and highlight a range of theses about the role of experience in providing different types of justification. In Parts II and III, we consider the role of features of experience falling into two broad categories: constitutive features of experience, including its phenomenal character, its contents, its status as attentive or inattentive (sections 3--7); and causal features of experience such as its reliability, and the impact of other mental states on its formation (sections 8--10). Along the way, we discuss the relationships between visual experience and seeing (sections 1 and 8), and we contrast perceptual justification and perceptual knowledge (section 9).

Prometeica: Journal of Philosophy and Sciences , 2022

The irreducibility thesis of phenomenal consciousness can only succeed against the sceptical attack and avoid solipsism iff it can coherently establish the transition from subjective certainty to the objectivity of knowledge. The sceptical attack on the relationship between the phenomenal qualitative character of experience about the subjects own mental fact and the awareness of the qualitative properties of the phenomenal object can be avoided through establishing the immediacy of experience. The phenomenal realist become successful in establishing the subjective certainty about the knowledge of phenomenal consciousness, however, has been failed in establishing objective certainty of knowledge, which leads to several epistemological problems (i.e., scepticism about the independent existence of external world, knowledge about the external reality and the existence of other mind; popularly known as the harder problem of consciousness) in philosophy of mind. In this paper, my objective is to reveal the undesirable consequences of representationalism. Representationalism is not an ideal option for responding to the sceptical attack against the other minds and the reality of the external world. It always leaves an open question for us about the relation between the representation of the object of experience and consciousness. Representationalistic theories of experience violates the principles of phenomenality by rejecting the immediacy of experience and has been committing the pragmatic contradiction by reducing the phenomenal properties to representational properties. The categorization of knowledge about phenomenality as inferential knowledge by representationalist leave no room for foundational knowledge about phenomenality

Metaphilosophy, 2003

properties are standardly defined as those that involve an object's appearing thus or thus to some perceptually wellequipped observer under specified epistemic conditions. The paradigm instance is that of colour or other such Lockean ''secondary qualities'', as distinct from thoseFlike shape and sizeFthat pertain to the object itself, quite apart from anyone's perception. This idea has lately been thought to offer a promising alternative to the deadlocked dispute between hard-line 'metaphysical' realists and subjectivists, projectivists, social constructivists, or hard-line anti-realists. A chief source text is Plato's Euthyphro, where the issue is posed in ethical terms: do the gods infallibly approve virtuous acts on account of their divine moral omniscience or are virtuous acts just those the gods approve? Among the areas proposed as amenable to an RD approach are epistemology, ethics, political theory, and philosophy of mathematics. It is claimed that by making due allowance for the involvement of normalised or optimised human responses one can steer a course between the twin poles of an objectivist realism that places truth beyond our cognitive grasp and an epistemic conception that confines truth within the limits of humanly attainable proof, knowledge, or verification. Here I argueFon the contraryFthat RD approaches can be shown to offer nothing more than a variant of the same old realist versus anti-realist dilemma. That is, they work out either as a trivial (tautologous) claim that 'truth' simply equates with 'best judgement' in the ideal (quasi-objective) limit or as the claimFadvanced by anti-realists like Michael DummettFthat we cannot form any adequate conception of objective (recognition-transcendent) truths. After looking at this issue in various contexts of debate, I conclude that one useful (if pyrrhic) outcome is to demonstrate the non-availability of any middle-ground stance. We are left with the strictly unavoidable choice between a realist or objectivist approach and one that assimilates truth to the consensus of accredited best opinion. This latter amounts to a roundabout, elaborately qualified version of the anti-realist case.

2016

In section 1, I explain why a specifically Dummettian conception of realism will be relevant only in a restricted range of cases. In section 2, I suggest that Crispin Wright could be read as holding that the truth of certain judgements depends on our capacity to know it (if and) only if their being true consists in their being superassertible. In section 3, I point out that insisting on knowability, as both Dummett and Wright do, prevents one from seeing that their are other legitimate forms of realism. I argue against the claim attributed to Wright in section 2, which leads me to suggest that it is a mistake to construe the realism debates as being essentially concerned with the nature of truth. The purpose of this paper is to explain and criticize a conception of realism which is suggested by the general approach to the realism debates which Crispin Wright has developed, mainly in his Truth and Objectivity [Wright 1992]. This book largely contributed to restructuring the whole pro...

DIAL PHIL MENT NEURO SCI 2023; 16(1):1-13., 2023

Illusionism is the view that conscious experience is some sort of introspective illusion. According to illusionism, there is no conscious experience, but it merely seems like there is conscious experience. This would suggest that much phenomenological enquiry, including work on phenomenological psychopathology, rests on a mistake. Some philosophers have argued that illusionism is obviously false, because seeming is itself an experiential state, and so necessarily presupposes the reality of conscious experience. In response, the illusionist could suggest that the relevant sort of seeming here is not an experiential state, but is a cognitive state, such as a judgement or a belief, which is fully amenable to a physical or functionalist analysis. Herein, I argue that this response is unsuccessful and fails to undermine the reality of conscious experience. Nonetheless, the response does raise the problem of how a judgement or belief about the character of a conscious experience, even if it is true, can be justified if the conscious experience has no causal role in the formation of the judgement or belief. This is not a new problem, but is a reiteration of an old problem that is known in the philosophy of mind literature as the paradox of phenomenal judgement. I consider how the paradox of phenomenal judgement can be resolved and how the judgement or belief about conscious experience can be justified with appeal to the notion of acquaintance.

Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 2021

The article focuses on the unifying and explanatory power of the selective realism defended by Anjan Chakravartty. Our main aim is twofold. First, we critically analyse the purported synthesis between entity realism and structural realism offered by the author. We give reasons to think that this unification is an inconvenient marriage. In the second step, we deal with certain controversial aspects of the intended unification among three metaphysical concepts: causation, laws of nature and natural kinds. After pointing out that Chakravartty's conception of laws is a plausible view that a scientific realist might endorse, we contend, on the contrary, that the concept of natural kind is dispensable in the framework of Chakravartty's realism.

Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filosofiya. Sotsiologiya. Politologiya

1986