Mind and Reality

How to Revise: General Tips

Revision is the process of consolidating, integrating and extending your knowledge. Enjoy revision by being selective.

Reading (optional): Philosophy Marking Criteria, https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/intranets/undergraduate/exams_essays/marking_scheme

How to Do the Assessment

Answer the question.

Reading (optional): Philosophy Marking Criteria, https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/intranets/undergraduate/exams_essays/marking_scheme

How to Revise: the Topics

This section provides brief suggestions on how to revise the individual questions for Mind & Reality.

Reading (optional):

• Sainsbury, R. M. ‘Russell on Acquaintance’. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 20 (March 1986): 219–44. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957042X00004156.
• Shoemaker, David. ‘Personal Identity and Ethics’. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2019. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2019. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/identity-ethics/.
• Martín, Andrés, Javier Chambeaud, and José Barraza. ‘The Effect of Object Familiarity on the Perception of Motion’. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 41, no. 2 (April 2015): 283–88. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000027.
• Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and Persons. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
• Buchanan, Allen. ‘Advance Directives and the Personal Identity Problem’. Philosophy & Public Affairs 17, no. 4 (1988): 277–302.

Reconstructing Arguments for Distinguishing Sense and Reference

A key part of your revision is ensuring that you understand various arguments well enough to reconstruct them. One approach to doing this involves identifying what the premises are, and which conclusions depend on which premises.

Indexicals and Demonstratives

“When you and I entertain the [thought we might each express by saying] "A bear is about to attack me," we behave similarly. We both roll up in a ball and try to be as still as possible ... When you and I both apprehend the thought that I am about to be attacked by a bear, we behave differently. I roll up in a ball, you run to get help” (Perry, 1977 p. 494).

Reading (optional):

• Russell, B. (1910). Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 11:108–128
• Campbell, J. (2002). Reference and Consciousness. Oxford: OUP
• Perry, J. (1979). The problem of the essential indexical. Nous, 13(1):3–21.
• Kaplan, D. (1989). Demonstratives. In Almog, J., Perry, J., and Wettstein, H., editors, Themes from Kaplan. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Action: Recap

We are stuck on two questions. Do spiders have intentions? And when I duck to avoid a flying object, am I acting on any intention?

Reading (optional):

• Bach, Kent. ‘A Representational Theory of Action’. Philosophical Studies 34, no. 4 (1978): 361–79. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00364703.
• Bratman, M. E. (1984). Two faces of intention. The Philosophical Review, 93(3):375–405.

When Philosophical Methods Fail

Using philosophical methods alone can provide some knowledge, but there are limits. What are philosophical methods, and why are they so limited?

Two Kinds of Motivational State

Discoveries in animal learning theory enable us to distinguish desires from aversion and other primary motivational states. Indeed, your desires can be incompatible with your aversions (and with primary motivational states) in the sense that you can desire to eat something to which you are averse. This shows that are at least two systems of motivational states in rats or humans.

Experience Is the Key

‘primary motivational states, such as hunger, do not determine the value of an instrumental goal directly; rather, animals have to learn about the value of a commodity in a particular motivational state through direct experience with it in that state’ (Dickinson & Balleine, 1994 p. 7).

Reading (optional): Dickinson, A. and Balleine, B. (1994). Motivational control of goal-directed action. Animal Learning & Behavior, 22(1):1–18.

Intention and Motivational States

We can dissociate at least two kinds of motivational state involved in causing action. These are linked to different patterns of explanation. Intentions (as well as beliefs and desires) play a role in one pattern of explanation, but not in the other. This allows us to conclude that intention is not the mark of all action even while recognising that there is more than one kind of distinction to be made between your actions and events which merely happen to you.

Conclusion on Action, Intention and Motivational States

Different marks distinguish different kinds of action. To find the marks, identify the patterns of explanation.

Recording of Whole-Class Live Question Session

The whole-class live online question session in is based on questions on the topic of this weeks’ lectures posed in advance in the teams channel. I apologise for the period of bad sound towards the end.

Reading (optional):

• Nelson, Michael. ‘Existence’. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2020. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/existence/.
• Efird, David. Is Timothy Williamson a Necessary Existent? Modality. Oxford University Press. Accessed 10 December 2020. https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199565818.001.0001/acprof-9780199565818-chapter-6.
• Williamson, Timothy. ‘Necessary Existents’. In Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, edited by A. O’Hear, 269–87. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Crane, Tim. The Objects of Thought. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Three Kinds of Inference

Inferences can be deductive, inductive or abductive. Deductive inference is distinguished from the other two kinds of inference by logical validity (there is no possible situation in which the premises of a deductive inference are true and the conclusion false). Inductive inferences ‘may be characterized as those inferences that are based purely on statistical data’ (Douven, 2017). Abductive inferences are inferences to the best explanation.

Reading (optional):

• Chapter 3 of Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
• Douven, Igor. ‘Abduction’. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2017. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/abduction/.
• Hume, D. (1739). A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

What Is a ‘Purely Formal’ Theory?

What is a purely formal theory of a kind of reasoning (deductive, abductive or inductive)? It is a theory according to which the form of an argument is what determines whether it is valid.

Reading (optional): Chapter 3 of Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Hempel’s Ravens

Hempel showed that two tempting principles lead to an apparently false theory of inductive reasoning. Here we cover the principles and why at least one of them should be rejected using informal examples. (Those who prefer a formal approach may use the next section instead.) Although often overlooked, the problem Hempel identified is in some ways deeper and more revealing than the more famous ‘New Riddle of Induction‘ about grue.

Reading (optional):

• Chapter 3 of Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
• Hempel, Carl G. ‘Studies in the Logic of Confirmation (I.)’. Mind 54, no. 213 (1945): 1–26.
• Hempel, Carl G. ‘The White Shoe: No Red Herring’. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 18, no. 3 (1967): 239–40. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/18.3.239.

Hempel’s Ravens (Fast & Formal Version)

Hempel showed that two tempting principles lead to an apparently false theory of inductive reasoning. Here we cover the principles and why at least one of them should be rejected using formal examples. (Those who prefer a less formal approach may use the previous section instead.) Although often overlooked, the problem Hempel identified is in some ways deeper and more revealing than the more famous ‘New Riddle of Induction‘ about grue.

Reading (optional):

• Chapter 3 of Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
• Hempel, Carl G. ‘Studies in the Logic of Confirmation (I.)’. Mind 54, no. 213 (1945): 1–26.
• Hempel, Carl G. ‘The White Shoe: No Red Herring’. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 18, no. 3 (1967): 239–40. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/18.3.239.

Grue: Goodman’s Riddle

Goodman showed that you can turn a better inductive argument into a much worse one by changing a predicate from, say, green to grue. This raises the question: why is the new argument worse than the original?

Reading (optional):

• Goodman, Nelson. Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. Harvard University Press, 1983. (https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=goodman+riddle)
• Israel, Rami. ‘Two Interpretations of “Grue” - or How to Misunderstand the New Riddle of Induction’. Analysis 64, no. 4 (2004): 335–39.

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Why Grue Is Relevant

Goodman’s puzzle (‘new riddle’) about grue shows that how good an inductive argument something is does not depend only on the argument’s form. Relatedly, in ‘Hempel’s Ravens’ we saw an obstacle to characterising the relation between an observation and a conclusion when the observation is evidence for the conclusion in purely formal terms. These considerations indicate that there cannot be a purely formal theory of inductive reasoning.

Reading (optional):

• Chapter 3 of Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
• Godfrey-Smith, Peter. ‘Goodman’s Problem and Scientific Methodology’. The Journal of Philosophy 100, no. 11 (2003): 573–90.
• Goodman, Nelson. Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. Harvard University Press, 1983. (https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=goodman+riddle)

Is inductive validity irreducible to deductive validity?

Does the demonstration that there is no formal theory of inductive validity allow us to conclude that inductive validity is irreductible is deductive validity? No. There is no formal theory of deductive reasoning; and there are as yet unrefuted attempts to provide such reductions.

Confounding Grue

Goodman’s ‘New Riddle’ about grue and induction has a straightforward solution. What’s interesting about it isn’t that we don’t know how to solve it; it’s what the solution tells us about the relation between an observation and a theory when the observation is evidence for the theory.

Reading (optional):

• Chapters 3 and 14 of Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
• Godfrey-Smith, Peter. ‘Goodman’s Problem and Scientific Methodology’. The Journal of Philosophy 100, no. 11 (2003): 573–90.
• Israel, Rami. ‘Two Interpretations of “Grue” - or How to Misunderstand the New Riddle of Induction’. Analysis 64, no. 4 (2004): 335–39.
• Goodman, Nelson. Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. Harvard University Press, 1983. (https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=goodman+riddle)

Proceedures and Observations

Whether an observation is evidence for a conclusion can depend on the procedure followed in making the observation.

Reading (optional):

• Chapters 3 and 14 of Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
• Hempel, Carl G. ‘Studies in the Logic of Confirmation (I.)’. Mind 54, no. 213 (1945): 1–26.
• Hempel, Carl G. ‘The White Shoe: No Red Herring’. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 18, no. 3 (1967): 239–40. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/18.3.239.

Conclusion on Induction

The relation between an observation and theory when the observation is evidence for the theory can not be characterisated in purely formal terms [from grue]; nor is it just a matter of the observation being an instance of the theory [from Hempel’s ravens/Ayesha’s traffic lights]. Instead, whether this relation obtains depends on how the observation is made: there must be no bias, and a good procedure must have been followed in making the observation.

Reading (optional): Chapters 3 and 14 of Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Recording of Whole-Class Live Question Session

The whole-class live online question session in is based on questions on the topic of this weeks’ lectures posed in advance in the teams channel.

Personal Identity: The Question

What is metaphysically necessary for your survival? Or, to put the question as Olson (2019) does, ‘If a person exists at one time and something exists at another time, under what possible circumstances is it the case that the person is the thing?’

Reading (optional): Olson, E. T. (2019). Personal Identity. In Zalta, E. N., editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, fall 2019 edition.

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Numerical Identity

What is the question of personal identity a question about? One quite natural suggestion: it is about numerical identity. The question is about the circumstances under which a person at one time is numerically identical to a person at another time. But can this be right? According to David Lewis, Numerical ‘identity is utterly simple and unproblematic.’ If Lewis is right, either there is no problem of personal identity, or, if there is a problem, it is not a problem about numerical identity.

Reading (optional): Olson, E. T. (2019). Personal Identity. In Zalta, E. N., editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, fall 2019 edition.

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Psychological Continuity

According to psychological continuity views of personal identity, necessarily, a person existing at one time is a person existing at another time if and only if the first mentioned person can, at the first time, remember an experience the second mentioned person has at the second time, or vice versa.

Reading (optional): Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and Persons. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

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Biological Continuity

According to biological continuity views of personal identity, necessarily, a person existing at one time is a thing existing at another time if and only if the first mentioned person’s biological organism is continuous with the second thing’s biological organism.

Reading (optional): Olson, E. T. (1997). The human animal: Personal identity without psychology. Oxford Uni- versity Press, Oxford.

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Does Identity Matter?

If ‘the relations of practical concerns that typically go along with our identity through time are closely connected with psychological continuity [...], then the Biological Approach does have an interesting ethical consequence, namely that those practical relations are not necessarily connected with numerical identity’ (Olson, 1997 p. 70).

Reading (optional): Olson, E. T. (1997). The human animal: Personal identity without psychology. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Psychological Continuity and Fission

If you could be psychologically continuous with two distinct future individuals (that is, if fission is possible), then psychological continuity views of personal identity cannot be correct.

Reading (optional): Shoemaker, D. (2019). Personal Identity and Ethics. In Zalta, E. N., editor, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, winter 2019 edition.

Conclusion

Lewis was right, ‘Identity is utterly simple and unproblematic’. Or so I claim. But maybe you can show this is wrong.

Reading (optional): (hard) Sider, T. (2001). Criteria of Personal Identity and the Limits of Conceptual Analysis. Nouˆs, 35(s15):189–209

Recording of Whole-Class Live Question Session

The whole-class live online question session in is based on questions on the topic of this weeks’ lectures posed in advance in the teams channel.

Reading (optional): Brand, Bethany L., Vedat Sar, Pam Stavropoulos, Christa Krüger, Marilyn Korzekwa, Alfonso Martínez-Taboas, and Warwick Middleton. ‘Separating Fact from Fiction: An Empirical Examination of Six Myths about Dissociative Identity Disorder’. Harvard Review of Psychiatry 24, no. 4 (2016): 257–70. https://doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000100.

Recap: Action

What is the mark that distinguishes actions? According to the view introduced in the last lecture, the Standard Story, it is intention.

Frankfurt’s Argument from Spiders

1. There is a contrast between actions and mere happenings in the lives of spiders. 2. The contrast in the lives of humans is the same. 3. Spiders do not have intentions, nor do they deliberate about what to do. Therefore (from 1 & 3): 4. The contrast in the case of spiders cannot be explicated by appeal to intention. Therefore (from 2 & 4): 5. The contrast in the case of humans cannot be explicated by appeal to intention.

Reading (optional): Frankfurt, Harry G. ‘The Problem of Action’. American Philosophical Quarterly 15, no. 2 (1978): 157–62.

Interim Conclusion on Spiders

Frankfurt offers an objection to the Standard Story and proposes an alternative: action is ‘behaviour whose course is under the guidance of an agent’

Reading (optional): Frankfurt, Harry G. ‘The Problem of Action’. American Philosophical Quarterly 15, no. 2 (1978): 157–62.

Are We Sure Spiders Don’t Have Intentions?

Stalking a spitting spider, [...] Portia executes a planned detour’ (Jackson & Cross, 2011).

Reading (optional):

• Jackson, Robert R., and Fiona R. Cross. ‘Spider Cognition’. In Advances in Insect Physiology, edited by Jérôme Casas, 41:115–74. Spider Physiology and Behaviour. Academic Press, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-415919-8.00003-3.
• Buehler, D. (2019). Flexible occurrent control. Philosophical Studies, 176(8):2119–2137.

Bach’s Objection

1. Ducking under a flying object is an action. 2. When you duck under a flying object, there is no intention you are acting on. Therefore: 3. Intention is not the mark that distinguishes actions.

Reading (optional):

• Bach, Kent. ‘A Representational Theory of Action’. Philosophical Studies 34, no. 4 (1978): 361–79. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00364703.
• Bratman, M. E. (1984). Two faces of intention. The Philosophical Review, 93(3):375–405.

Conclusion on Action

What is the mark that distinguishes your actions from events which merely happen to you? According to the Standard View, it is intention: those events which are appropriately guided by your intentions are actions; the other events are things that merely happen to you. We have considered two objections to the Standard View, one due to Frankfurt and the other to Bach. Because both objections depend on premises which we could not establish as truths, we should not accept either objection--at least not yet. The Standard View is therefore the best answer we have found so far.

Explanatory vs Justificatory Reasons

Explanatory reasons are considerations which explain why something happened. Justificatory reasons are considerations in the light of which an action appeared reasonable or desirable from the agent’s point of view.

Reading (optional):

• Dretske, F. (2006). Perception without awareness. In Gendler, T. S. and Hawthorne, J. O., editors, Perceptual Experience, pages 147–180. OUP, Oxford.
• Alvarez, Maria. ‘Reasons for Action: Justification, Motivation, Explanation’. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2017. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/reasons-just-vs-expl/.

Justificatory Reasons and Intentions

Consider two answers to our question, What is the mark that distinguishes actions? [A1] It is intention. [A2] Actions are events for which there are justifying reasons. Are these incompatible answers, or are they two ways of saying the same thing?

Conclusion on Action (extended version)

What is the mark that distinguishes your actions from events which merely happen to you? According to the Standard View, it is intention: those events which are appropriately guided by your intentions are actions; the other events are things that merely happen to you. We have considered two objections to the Standard View, one due to Frankfurt and the other to Bach. Because both objections depend on premises which we could not establish as truths, we should not accept either objection--at least not yet. We therefore returned to the Standard View. As we saw, there is a way to elaborate the Standard View by invoking justifying reasons. This may strengthen our confidence in the Standard View’s correctness.

Recording of Whole-Class Live Question Session

The whole-class live online question session in is based on questions on the topic of this weeks’ lectures posed in advance in the teams channel.

Propositions Individuate Contents

We distinguish mental states with different contents all the time in everyday life. But what distinguishes (or, better, to individuates) their contents?

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Propositions

We use propositions to individuate the contents of mental states. But what are propositions?

Reading (optional):

• McGrath, Matthew and Devin Frank, "Propositions", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/propositions/
• King, Jeffrey C. ‘Structured Propositions’. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2019. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2019. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/propositions-structured/

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Frege and Propositions

What distinguishes the contents of mental states? We have seen that the answer is: propositions. Propositions stand to mental states roughly as numbers stand to weights or temperatures. But what kind of propositions could we use to distinguish the contents of mental states? We already saw that Lewisian propositions (sets of possible worlds) are not so useful. Frege’s argument about sense and reference establishes that Russellian propositions are likewise not sufficient to make all the distinctions between contents that we need.

Reading (optional):

• Frege, G. (1980). Letter to jourdain. In Kaal, Hans (trans), Philosophical and mathematical correspondence, pages 78–80. (Find the letter online by searching for the terms ‘frege’, ’etna’ and ‘ateb’.)
• Section 3.1.1 and the first paragraph of Section 3.2 of Zalta, Edward N., "Gottlob Frege", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

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Why Senses Aren’t Descriptions

Senses cannot be descriptions. At least not if we are to use Fregean propositions to distinguish the contents of mental states. For if senses were descriptions, we would be forced to use the same Fregean proposition to capture the contents of two non-equivalent thoughts.

Reading (optional):

• Kripke, S. A. (1980). Naming and necessity. Library of philosophy and logic. Blackwell: Oxford, rev. and enlarged edition.
• §2.1 of Michaelson, Eliot, and Marga Reimer. ‘Reference’. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2019. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2019. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/reference/.

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Conclusion on Senses and Reference (So Far)

We have a convincing argument for postulating senses. But we also have a problem. ‘[A]ll that anyone has been able to think of is that different [senses] are [...] descriptions’ (Campbell, 2011 p. 340) And yet, as we have seen, senses cannot be descrpitions (Kripke, 1980).

Reading (optional):

• Kripke, S. A. (1980). Naming and necessity. Library of philosophy and logic. Blackwell: Oxford, rev. and enlarged edition.
• Campbell, J. (2011). Visual Attention and the Epistemic Role of Consciousness. In Mole, C., Smithies, D., and Wu, W., editors, Attention: Philosophical and Psychological Essays, page 323. Oxford University Press.

Action: The Question

‘The problem of action is to explicate the contrast between what an agent does and what merely happens to him’ (Frankfurt, 1978 p. 157).

Reading (optional):

• Frankfurt, Harry G. ‘The Problem of Action’. American Philosophical Quarterly 15, no. 2 (1978): 157–62.
• Davidson, D. (1971). Agency. In Binkley, R., Bronaugh, R., and Marras, A., editors, Agent, Action, and Reason,, pages 3–25. University of Toronto Press, Toronto. Reprinted in Davidson, D. (1980) Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Action: Three Basic Principles

Discussion about action should be informed by three basic principles. Actions have hierarchical structures. Actions are individuated by outcomes. And one action can have multiple descriptions.

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Causes of Action: Belief and Desire

In order to predict a person’s next action, what is the minimum you need to know? Plausibly this includes what the person believes about actions available to her and their consequences; and also how desirable the person finds the various consequences.

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Intention

Belief and desire alone are not sufficient for action. But beliefs and desires do shape deliberation about what to do. Deliberation characteristically results in intention. And intentions control action.

Reading (optional):

• Davidson, D. (1978 [1980]). Intending. In Essays on Actions and Events, pages 83–102. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Bratman, M. E. (1985). Davidson’s theory of intention. In Vermazen, B. and Hintikka, M., editors, Essays on Davidson: Actions and Events, pages 13–26. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Reprinted in Bratman, M. (1999) Faces of Intention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (pp. 209–224).

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Interim Conclusion on Action

What is the mark that distinguishes actions? It is intention.

Reading (optional): Frankfurt, Harry G. ‘The Problem of Action’. American Philosophical Quarterly 15, no. 2 (1978): 157–62.

Recording of Whole-Class Live Question Session

The whole-class live online question session in is based on questions on the topic of this weeks’ lectures posed in advance in the teams channel.

Reading (optional):

• Voss, Ursula, Karin Schermelleh-Engel, Jennifer Windt, Clemens Frenzel, and Allan Hobson. ‘Measuring Consciousness in Dreams: The Lucidity and Consciousness in Dreams Scale’. Consciousness and Cognition 22, no. 1 (2013): 8–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2012.11.001.
• Cote, Kimberly A. ‘Probing Awareness during Sleep with the Auditory Odd-Ball Paradigm’. International Journal of Psychophysiology, Event-related Potential Measure of Information Processing During Sleep, 46, no. 3 (2002): 227–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-8760(02)00114-9.

Dretske, Master of Distinctions

Our current question is, Can you perceive something without being perceptually aware of it? To avoid trivialising this question, we need to distinguish two ways of understanding the phrase ‘perception without awareness’. On one way of understanding the phrase, our question is trivial; on the other, it’s a deep and controverisal question.

Reading (optional): Dretske, F. (2006). Perception without awareness. In Gendler, T. S. and Hawthorne, J. O., editors, Perceptual Experience, pages 147–180. OUP, Oxford.

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Perception without Awareness?

We have already seen two cases for the claim that there is perception without awareness, one due to Sidis (1898) and one due to Weiszkranz et al (1995). But are these convincing? How can we evaluate them?

Reading (optional):

• Weiskrantz, L., Barbur, J. L., and Sahraie, A. (1995). Parameters affecting conscious versus unconscious visual discrimination with damage to the visual cortex (V1). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 92(13):6122–6126.
• Sidis, B. (1898). The psychology of suggestion. Appleton, New York.

A Test for Perception?

What does it take to perceive something? By what test could we measure whether someone has perceived a particular object? According to Dretske, it would be enough to show that they had received information about the object which is ‘available for the control and guidance of action’ and ‘extracted ... by accredited receptor systems’ (Dretske, 2006 p. 150).

Reading (optional): Dretske, F. (2006). Perception without awareness. In Gendler, T. S. and Hawthorne, J. O., editors, Perceptual Experience, pages 147–180. OUP, Oxford.

Operationalising Visual Awareness (I)

‘If psychologists can really identify something that deserves to be called perception without awareness, they must have an operational grasp on not only perceive what it takes to perceive something but on conscious what it takes to be conscious of it’ (Dretske, 2006 p. 148).

Reading (optional):

• Dretske, F. (2006). Perception without awareness. In Gendler, T. S. and Hawthorne, J. O., editors, Perceptual Experience, pages 147–180. OUP, Oxford.
• Sidis, B. (1898). The psychology of suggestion. Appleton, New York.

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Operationalising Visual Awareness (II)

Do blindsight experiments rely on verbal reports to establish awareness in such a way that they cannot provide evidence for perception without awareness? Phillips (2006) could be interpreted as suggesting that they do, but his argument rests on misunderstanding some of the experiments.

Reading (optional):

• Phillips, I. B. and Block, N. (2017). Debate on unconscious perception. In Nanay, B., editor, Current Controversies in Philosophy of Perception, chapter 11, pages 163–192. Routledge, London.
• Phillips, I. B. (2016). Consciousness and Criterion: On Block’s Case for Unconscious Seeing. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 93(2):419–451.

Dretske’s Beautiful Theory

'The challenge of measuring awareness based on behavioral measures, despite the substantial progress achieved over the years, remains essentially intact' (Timmermans & Cleeremans, 2015 p. 40)

Reading (optional):

• Dretske, F. (2006). Perception without awareness. In Gendler, T. S. and Hawthorne, J. O., editors, Perceptual Experience, pages 147–180. OUP, Oxford.
• Timmermans, B. and Cleeremans, A. (2015). How can we measure awareness? An overview of current methods. In Behavioral Methods in Consciousness Research, pages 21–46. Elsever, Amsterdam.

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Conclusion on Awareness

We have been asking two questions. [q1] ]Can you perceive something without being perceptually aware of it? If Dretske is right about how to operationalise perceptual awareness, blindsight probably provides evidence that you can. [q2] What are the functions of perceptual awareness? Perceptual awareness enables you to act for reasons.

A Process Dissociation Approach to Perception without Awareness

We noted a problem earlier: research on blindsight appears not to operationalise perceptual awareness in the way Dretske’s argument (about the functions of perceptual awareness) requires. This motivates considering a further strand of research on perception without awareness.

Reading (optional):

• Debner, J. A. and Jacoby, L. L. (1994). Unconscious perception: Attention, awareness, and control. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20(2):304– 317.
• Sandberg, K., Del Pin, S. H., Bibby, B. M., and Overgaard, M. (2014). Evidence of weak conscious experiences in the exclusion task. Frontiers in Psychology, 5.

Mental States

When you say ‘Steve desires that Clark fly, you are attributing a mental state to me. We can think of mental states as having three basic components: the subject (you or me, say), the attitude (belief or desire, say) and the content (that Clark fly, or that Superman carry Ayesha).

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Sense and Reference: The Question

Introduces the question around which the sense and reference theme is organised.

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Sense: Frege’s Story

‘An object can be determined in different ways, and every one of these ways of determining it can give rise to a special name, and these different names have different senses’ (Frege, 1892 [1993] p. 44).

Reading (optional):

• Frege, G. (1892 [1993]). On sense and reference. In Moore, A. W., editor, Meaning and Reference, pages 23–42. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Section 3.1.1 and the first paragraph of Section 3.2 of Zalta, Edward N., "Gottlob Frege", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

What Are Senses?

Sense is whatever it is that explains why the proposition Charly is Samantha can differ in informativeness from the proposition Charly is Charly.

Reading (optional):

• Evans, G. (1981 [1985]). Understanding demonstratives. In McDowell, J., editor, Collected Papers, page 411. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
• Campbell, J. (2011). Visual Attention and the Epistemic Role of Consciousness. In Mole, C., Smithies, D., and Wu, W., editors, Attention: Philosophical and Psychological Essays, page 323. Oxford University Press.

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Sense: Interim Conclusion

If you want to understand another’s point of view, it is not enough to know which things they are perceiving or thinking about; you also have to know how they are perceiving or thinking about those things. This is Frege’s brilliant insight. Following him, we are using the term ‘sense’ for a way of perceiving or thinking about a thing.

Recording of Whole-Class Live Question Session

The whole-class live online question session in is based on questions on the topic of this weeks’ lectures posed in advance in the teams channel.

Cognitive Penetration: Recap

A quick recap on: what we understand by the claim that cognition penetrates perception; why this is significant; and our next steps.

Reading (optional): Firestone, C. and Scholl, B. J. (2016). Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for “top-down” effects. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39.

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The Case Against the Cognitive Penetration of Perception

The Tunnel Effect (Burke, 1952) provides one demonstration of how your thoughts appear unable to influence your perception. A solid blue circle goes into a tunnel, and an orange square outline emerges. Despite knowing that these cannot be the same object, a single continuous movement is perceived. If what you believe or know could affect what you perceive, it’s influence should be apparent this case. The fact that it is not makes it improbable that cognition penetrates perception.

Reading (optional):

• Burke, Luke. ‘On the Tunnel Effect’. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 4, no. 3 (1952): 121–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470215208416611.
• Fodor, Jerry. ‘Observation Reconsidered’. Philosophy of Science 51, no. 1 (1984): 23–43.

The Case For the Cognitive Penetration of Perception

What evidence supports the view that cognition penetrates perception? Some early findings reported by Bruner and Goodman (1947) provide a template for later research. More recently, Levin & Banaji (2006) appear to have shown that your beliefs about race categories can influence your perception of the lightness of a face. This is among the best, most direct evidence for the view that cognition penetrates perception.

Reading (optional):

• Bruner, Jerome, and Cecile Goodman. ‘Value and Need as Organizing Factors in Perception’. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 42, no. 1 (1947): 33–44.
• Witzel, Christoph. ‘An Easy Way to Show Memory Color Effects’: I-Perception, 1 August 2016. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041669516663751.
• Witzel, C., M. Olkkonen, and K. R. Gegenfurtner. ‘Memory Colours Affect Colour Appearance.’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 39 (2016): e262. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X15002587.
• Olkkonen, Maria, Thorsten Hansen, and Karl R. Gegenfurtner. ‘Color Appearance of Familiar Objects: Effects of Object Shape, Texture, and Illumination Changes’. Journal of Vision 8, no. 5 (2008): 13–13. https://doi.org/10.1167/8.5.13.
• Levin, Daniel T., and Mahzarin R. Banaji. ‘Distortions in the Perceived Lightness of Faces: The Role of Race Categories’. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 135, no. 4 (2006): 501–12. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.135.4.501.

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Cognitive Penetration: Evaluation and Conclusion

We have seen that there is a body of evidence in favour of the view that cognition penetrates perception, and also a body of evidence in favour of the converse. How should we respond to this dilemma? By considering how well each body of evidence has stood up to further experimental scruitiny, we can reach a robust conclusion.

Reading (optional):

• Carter, Launor, and Kermit Schooler. ‘Value, Need, and Other Factors in Perception’. Psychological Review 56, no. 4 (1949): 200–207.
• Valenti, J. J., and Chaz Firestone. ‘Finding the “Odd One out”: Memory Color Effects and the Logic of Appearance’. Cognition 191 (2019): 103934. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2019.04.003.
• Firestone, Chaz, and Brian J. Scholl. ‘Can You Experience “Top-down” Effects on Perception?: The Case of Race Categories and Perceived Lightness’. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 22, no. 3 (2015): 694–700. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0711-5.
• Baker, Lewis J., and Daniel T. Levin. ‘The Face-Race Lightness Illusion Is Not Driven by Low-Level Stimulus Properties: An Empirical Reply to Firestone and Scholl (2014)’. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 23, no. 6 (2016): 1989–95. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1048-z.

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Intro to the Question about Awareness

Most central features of human life, such as disease, reproduction, cooperation, language and politics can be investigated. In each case there are basic facts that most researchers accept and broad agreement about methods of investigation. None of this holds in the case of awareness (or consciousness, as it is sometimes called). If we are ever to understand what it is, we need to by start thinking about what roles awareness plays. Why does it matter that we are sometimes perceptually aware of things?

Reading (optional): Kelber, A., Vorobyev, M., and Osorio, D. (2003). Animal colour vision – behavioural tests and physiological concepts. Biological Reviews, 78(01):81–118.

A Secondary Subwaking Self?

According to what I will call the Simple Hypothesis, Perceptual awareness enables us to identify things and report what we have identified. Sidis (1898) challenges the Simple Hypothesis with an experiment on perception without awareness.

Reading (optional): Sidis, B. (1898). The psychology of suggestion. Appleton, New York.

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Blindsight

Blindsight is ‘the ability of patients with absolute, clinically established, visual field defects caused by occipital cortical damage to detect, localize, and discriminate visual stimuli despite being phenomenally visually unaware of them’ (Cowey, 2010).

Reading (optional):

• Cowey, A. (2010). The blindsight saga. Experimental Brain Research, 200(1):3–24.
• Marcel, A. J. (1998). Blindsight and shape perception: Deficit of visual consciousness or of visual function? Brain, 121(8):1565–1588.
• Weiskrantz, L., Barbur, J. L., and Sahraie, A. (1995). Parameters affecting conscious versus unconscious visual discrimination with damage to the visual cortex (V1). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 92(13):6122–6126.
• Shea, N. and Frith, C. D. (2016). Dual-process theories and consciousness: The case for ‘Type Zero’ cognition. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2016(1).

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Awareness: First Interim Conclusion

What are the functions of perceptual awareness? The Simplest Idea is that Perceptual awareness enables control of action. But we have already seen three objections to this Idea.

Recording of Whole-Class Live Question Session

The whole-class live online question session in is based on questions on the topic of this weeks’ lectures posed in advance in the teams channel.

Reading (optional):

• Kosslyn, Stephen M., William L. Thompson, Maria F. Costantini-Ferrando, Nathaniel M. Alpert, and David Spiegel. ‘Hypnotic Visual Illusion Alters Color Processing in the Brain’. American Journal of Psychiatry 157, no. 8 (1 August 2000): 1279–84. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.157.8.1279.
• Koivisto, Mika, Svetlana Kirjanen, Antti Revonsuo, and Sakari Kallio. ‘A Preconscious Neural Mechanism of Hypnotically Altered Colors: A Double Case Study’. PLOS ONE 8, no. 8 (5 August 2013): e70900. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0070900.
• Kadosh, Roi Cohen, Avishai Henik, Andres Catena, Vincent Walsh, and Luis J. Fuentes. ‘Induced Cross-Modal Synaesthetic Experience Without Abnormal Neuronal Connections’: Psychological Science, 1 February 2009.
• Fodor, J. (1983). The Modularity of Mind: an Essay on Faculty Psychology. Bradford book. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass ; London.

The Question (recap)

Fact to be explained: of all the objects that exist, you can think about some but not others. Why? What sort of relation between a subject and an object has to obtain if the subject is able to think about the object?

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Next Steps: Acquaintance and Cognitive Penetration

In what follows, we will first consider, briefly and superficially, alternatives to the idea that acquaintance is what links your thoughts to their objects. We will then turn to the main topic of week 2: cognitive penetration and the question of there is a distinction between cognition and perception which would enable us to explain the possibility of thought about an object by appeal to acquaintance with it.

Pragmatists

A quick, superficial look at the pragmatists’ core idea about how thoughts relate to the things they are about. This is an alternative to the Acquaintance View.

Reading (optional):

• Putnam, H. (1981). Reason, truth and history. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Dewey, J. (1907). The control of ideas by facts i. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 4(8):197–203.
• James, W. (1909). The Meaning of Truth : a Sequel to ”Pragmatism”. Longmans Green, London.

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What Is Perception?

Before we can think clearly about whether there are top-down effects of perception, we need some kind of handle on the notion of perception.

Reading (optional):

• Davidson, D. (1999). Replies to critics. In Hahn, L. E., editor, The Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Open Court, Chicago.
• Davidson, D. (1997). Seeing through language. In Preston, J., editor, Thought and Language, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, vol. 42. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Dretske, F. (2000). Simple seeing. In Perception, Knowledge and Belief. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Dretske, F. (1969). Seeing and Knowing. Routledge, London.

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What Is Cognitive Penetration?

For the purposes of this course, you may assume that to say that vision is cognitively penetrated is to say that ‘our beliefs, desires, emotions, actions, and even the languages we speak can directly influence what we see’ (Firestone & Scholl, 2016 p. 5). An alternative of thinking about cognitive penetration is introduced. (Because this is a first-year course, we skip over Pylyshyn’s two attempts to characterise the notion: although these are interesting, we lack time to get into the details.)

Reading (optional):

• Fodor, Jerry. ‘Observation Reconsidered’. Philosophy of Science 51, no. 1 (1984): 23–43.
• Firestone, C. and Scholl, B. J. (2016). Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for “top-down” effects. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39.
• Dustin Stokes. ‘Cognitive Penetrability of Perception’. Philosophy Compass 8, no. 7 (2013): 646–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12043.

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The Significance of Cognitive Penetration

Why care whether cognition penetrates vision? One reason is that this issue influences how we think about the relation between theory and observation (a theme we return to later in the course).

Reading (optional):

• Fodor, Jerry. ‘Observation Reconsidered’. Philosophy of Science 51, no. 1 (1984): 23–43.
• Dustin Stokes. ‘Cognitive Penetrability of Perception’. Philosophy Compass 8, no. 7 (2013): 646–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12043.
• Peirce, C. (1877). The fixation of belief. In Hartshorne, C. and Weiss, P., editors, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, volume 5. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
• Dewey, J. (1907). Reality and the criterion for the truth of ideas. Mind, 16(63):317–342.

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The Further Significance of Cognitive Penetration

Why care whether cognition penetrates vision? Another reason is that this issue influences whether we should accept the Acquaintance View.

Reading (optional): Dustin Stokes. ‘Cognitive Penetrability of Perception’. Philosophy Compass 8, no. 7 (2013): 646–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12043.

Interim Conclusion: Cognitive Penetration

This is an interim conclusion because our work on cognitive penetration is incomplete (we still have to evaluate the evidence for and against its occurence). We have: got a fix on the notion of perception which is relevant to debates about cognitive penetration; considered how to characterise cognitive penetration; and explored why the question of whether cognition penetrates perception is significant.

Recording of Whole-Class Live Question Session

The whole-class live online question session in is based on questions on the topic of this weeks’ lectures posed in advance in the teams channel.

Points of View

Things with minds often or always have points of view on the world. But what is it to have a point of view?

Reading (optional): Crane, T. (2001). Elements of Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

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The Seven Questions

Seven questions we will investigate in this course. About the mind’s relation to the world, the influence of cognition on perception, awareness, the aspectual nature of mental states, action, personal identity and the relation between theories and the evidence which supports them.

Reading (optional):

• Russell, B. (1910). Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 11:108–128.
• Levin, Daniel T., and Mahzarin R. Banaji. ‘Distortions in the Perceived Lightness of Faces: The Role of Race Categories’. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 135, no. 4 (2006): 501–12. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.135.4.501.

How to Use the Online Lectures

Watch with a friend, and talk. Take notes. Use the 2x speed option. Skip around. Ask questions.

Components of This Course

How your assessment breaks down, and what the formative (non-assessed) work is.

Seminar Tasks (yyrama)

The most important work on this course, apart from the exams, is the weekly seminar tasks. You need to submit some work before your seminar each week. This mostly involves writing, or re-writing, a mini essay as well as peer-reviewing another student’s work. The seminars exist for you to discuss your writing.

zoxiy In-Lecture Micro-Tasks

Watch the lectures with a friend (or several) that you can talk to as they go on. Answer the questions on zoxiy together, or after debating them.

Russell’s Principle of Acquaintance

What is Russell’s Principle of Acquaintance? To which question is it supposed to be an answer?

Reading (optional): Russell, B. (1910). Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 11:108–128

Knowledge by Description

There are things you can think about and others about which you cannot think it all. What distinguishes the things you can think about? Could it be that you are acquainted with the things you can think about? No, because you can think about things that you know only by description, like Julius Caesar.

Reading (optional): Russell, B. (1910). Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 11:108–128

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Russell’s Argument on Acquaintance

‘I hold that acquaintance is wholly a relation, not demanding any such constituent of the mind as is supposed by advocates of ‘ideas’’ (Russell, 1910 p. 212).

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The Argument from Massive Reduplication

The argument from massive reduplication was not intended as an argument for Russell’s principle, although we can attempt to adapt it to that end. But what is the argument from massivie reduplication, and what does the argument aim to show? Does it succeed?

Reading (optional):

• Russell, B. (1910). Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 11:108–128
• pages 20--22 of Strawson, P. F. (1959). Individuals. Meuthen, London.

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Conclusion: Acquaintance and Massive Reduplication

Our question is, How do your thoughts connect to the things about which you think? Russell’s Principle of Acquaintance provides one possible answer. It may be possible to justify accepting the Principle of Acquaintance by appeal to the possibility of massive reduplication.

Recording of Whole-Class Live Question Session

The recording of the whole-class live online question session in Week 01. You can still ask questions in the channel for the meetings.

Reading (optional):

• Campbell, J. (2002). Reference and Consciousness. Oxford: OUP
• Perry, J. (1979). The problem of the essential indexical. Nous, 13(1):3–21.

Extra Questions

There were a lot of good questions that came too late to include in the live whole-class event. Here is a discussion of them for anyone who is interested.

Reading (optional):

• Silins, Nicholas. ‘Seeing Through the `Veil of Perception’’. Mind 120, no. 478 (2011): 329–67.
• Crane, T. (2001). Elements of Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford.