Diversity Reading List

Abstract: Many philosophers are skeptical about disjunctivism—a theory of perceptual experience which holds roughly that a situation in which I see a banana that is as it appears to me to be (the good case) and one in which I have a hallucination as of a banana (a certain kind of bad case) are mentally completely different. Often this skepticism is rooted in the suspicion that such a view cannot adequately account for the bad case—in particular, (i) that such a view cannot explain why what it’s like to have a hallucination can be exactly like what it’s like to have a veridical experience, (ii) that it cannot explain why the hallucination I have in the bad case is subjectively indistinguishable from the kind of experience I have in the good case, and (iii) that it cannot offer a viable account of the nature of hallucination. In this paper, I argue that a proper formulation of disjunctivism can avoid these objections. Disjunctivism should be formulated as the weakest claim required to preserve its primary motivation, viz., Naïve Realism—the view that veridical experience fundamentally consists in the subject perceiving entities in her environment. And the weakest claim required to preserve Naïve Realism allows for many sorts of commonalities across the good and hallucinatory cases, commonalities that can be marshaled in responding to the objections. Most importantly, disjunctivism properly formulated is compatible with “positive” accounts of the nature of hallucination (as against M.G.F. Martin’s widely accepted argument to the contrary).

Abstract: Disjunctivist theories of perceptual experience claim that veridical and non-veridical experiences are radically unalike in some respect (other than the obvious difference in their causal histories). This chapter outlines four ways of elaborating this basic claim, each motivated by a different concern. The first is disjunctivism about the objects of experience, motivated by Direct Realism. The second is disjunctivism about the content of experience, motivated by the view that some experiences have object-dependent content. The third is disjunctivism about perceptual evidence (also known as epistemological disjunctivism), which is a strategy for responding to a particular sort of argument for scepticism about the external world. The fourth is disjunctivism about the metaphysical structure of experience (also known as metaphysical disjunctivism), which is motivated by Naïve Realism (a species of Direct Realism).

Abstract:

For the ancient Mexicas, the composition of the human body was similar to that of the cosmos, with both being composed of dense and light substances. The light substance of the human body was divine in nature and formed the different souls of each human being. Some souls were indispensable for human existence while others were unnecessary and often harmful. The dense part of the human body functioned through its union with the souls. Like the different souls, the dense parts of the human body also had specific functions dedicated to different activities. For example, human thought derived primarily from the heart. Souls could be damaged, which could cause them to malfunction and lead to illness and possibly death in the human being. As the souls were divine, each was a conscious being with its own personality; thus there could be disagreements between them. Disharmony could also lead to illness.

Abstract:
This paper considers the ontological implications of encountering varying levels of intelligibility when one traverses social structures, such as when one immigrates to a new culture or works in a place with people of a different economic class than one's own. This paper terms this phenomenon "world-travelling," which the paper understands as the shift in self-experience that occurs when an oppressed person moves from an environment where she is readily perceived as an active subject to one where she is perceived as a passive instrument of others' wills and desires. Such a situation opens on an ontological paradox because it seems that the same person is capable of possessing two contradictory attributes at the same time. The chapter explains how this paradoxical situation could obtain by arguing that attributes of consciousness are world-dependent. It concludes that the self is actually "a plurality of selves" and that the structure of subjectivity is neither unitary, universal, nor ahistorical.

Abstract: Representationalism is the position that the phenomenal character of an experience is either identical with, or supervenes on, the content of that experience. Many representationalists hold that the relevant content of experience is nonconceptual. I propose a counterexample to this form of representationalism that arises from the phenomenon of Gestalt switching, which occurs when viewing ambiguous figures. First, I argue that one does not need to appeal to the conceptual content of experience or to judgements to account for Gestalt switching. I then argue that experiences of certain ambiguous figures are problematic because they have different phenomenal characters but that no difference in the nonconceptual content of these experiences can be identified. I consider three solutions to this problem that have been proposed by both philosophers and psychologists and conclude that none can account for all the ambiguous figures that pose the problem. I conclude that the onus is on representationalists to specify the relevant difference in content or to abandon their position.

Abstract: I propose a counterexample to naturalistic representational theories of phenomenal character. The counterexample is generated by experiences of novel colours reported by Crane and Piantanida. I consider various replies that a representationalist might make, including whether novel colours could be possible colours of objects and whether one can account for novel colours as one would account for binary colours or colour mixtures. I argue that none of these strategies is successful and therefore that one cannot fully explain the nature of the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences using a naturalistic conception of representation

Abstract: I argue that we should reject the sparse view that there are or could be only a small number of rather distinct senses. When one appreciates this then one can see that there is no need to choose between the standard criteria that have been proposed as ways of individuating the senses—representation, phenomenal character, proximal stimulus and sense organ—or any other criteria that one may deem important. Rather, one can use these criteria in conjunction to form a fine-grained taxonomy of the senses. We can think of these criteria as defining a multidimensional space within which we can locate each of the senses that we are familiar with and which also defines the space of possible senses there could be.

Abstract: I examine a range of popular solutions to the puzzle of imaginative resistance. According to each solution in this range, imaginative resistance occurs only when we are asked to imagine something that conflicts with what we believe. I show that imaginative resistance can occur without this sort of conflict, and so that every solution in the range under consideration fails. I end by suggesting a new explanation for imaginative resistance - the Import Solution - which succeeds where the other solutions considered fail

Abstract:

In this article, Maitra explores the intersection of feminist theory and philosophy of mind, aiming to develop a feminist theory of mental content. She examines how traditional theories of mental content in the philosophy of mind have not properly captured the experiences and mental states of marginalised groups. These theories, according to Maitra, have overlooked the role of historical and sociocultural forces and how they shape the content of many social constructs. The article advocates for a more inclusive and context-sensitive approach to mental content, one that acknowledges the impact of social and cultural factors on individual cognition and experiences. To that aim, Maitra offers a feminist modification of Millikan's Teleosemantic View by articulating a notion of "function", the content of representational content, as resulting from cultural and social contexts. She ends the article by showing an application of this modified Teleosemantic View for understanding how certain oppressive terms (i.e. 'whiteness', 'immigrant') come to have the content they do, by drawing into José Jorge Mendoza's article "Illegal: White Supremacy and Immigration Status".

Abstract: Recently, a research program has emerged that aims to show that animals have a memory capacity that is similar to the human episodic memory capacity. Researchers within this program argue that nonhuman animals have episodic-like memory of personally experienced past events. In this paper, I specify and evaluate the goals of this research program and the progress it has made in achieving them. I will examine some of the data that the research program has produced, as well as the operational definitions and assumptions that have gone into producing that data, in order to call into question the ultimate value of the episodic-like memory research program. I argue that there is a gap between the claims that the research program makes and the data it uses to support these claims, and that bridging this gap is essential if we want to claim that human episodic memory has a meaningful analog in animals. I end with some suggestions of how to potentially fix these problems.