Diversity Reading List

Abstract: I argue that there are phenomenological constraints on what it is to see an object, and that these are overlooked by some theories that offer allegedly sufficient causal and counterfactual conditions on object-seeing.

Abstract: This paper contrasts two enactive theories of visual experience: the sensorimotor theory (O’Regan and Noë, Behav Brain Sci 24(5):939–1031, 2001; Noë and O’Regan, Vision and mind, 2002; Noë, Action in perception, 2004) and Susan Hurley’s (Consciousness in action, 1998, Synthese 129:3–40, 2001) theory of active perception. We criticise the sensorimotor theory for its commitment to a distinction between mere sensorimotor behaviour and cognition. This is a distinction that is firmly rejected by Hurley. Hurley argues that personal level cognitive abilities emerge out of a complex dynamic feedback system at the subpersonal level. Moreover reflection on the role of eye movements in visual perception establishes a further sense in which a distinction between sensorimotor behaviour and cognition cannot be sustained. The sensorimotor theory has recently come under critical fire (see e.g. Block, J Philos CII(5):259–272, 2005; Prinz, Psyche, 12(1):1–19, 2006; Aizawa, J Philos CIV(1), 2007) for mistaking a merely causal contribution of action to perception for a constitutive contribution. We further argue that the sensorimotor theory is particularly vulnerable to this objection in a way that Hurley’s active perception theory is not. This presents an additional reason for preferring Hurley’s theory as providing a conceptual framework for the enactive programme.

Abstract: A recent study published in Nature Neuroscience purports to have answered a question posed to Locke in 1688 by his friend William Molyneux, namely, whether ‘a man born blind and made to see’ would be able to identify, immediately and by vision alone, objects previously known only by touch. The answer, according to the researchers – and as predicted by Molyneux, as well as Locke, Berkeley, and others – is ‘likely negative. The newly sighted subjects did not exhibit an immediate transfer of their tactile shape knowledge to the visual domain’. Since then, however, many commentators have argued that the answer is still not clear. Moreover, in the contemporary literature on Molyneux’s Question, and more generally on cross-modal perception and the individuation of the senses, it is sometimes hard to determine what question is being investigated. In this paper, I distinguish a number of different questions about the relation between visual and tactual perception that can arise when considering Molyneux’s problem.

Abstract: The view that physical objects do not, in fact, possess colour properties is certainly the dominant position amongst scientists working on colour vision. It is also a reasonably popular view amongst philosophers. However, the recent philosophical debate about the metaphysical status of colour properties seems to have taken a more realist turn. In this article, I review the main philosophical views – eliminativism, physicalism, dispositionalism and primitivism – and describe the problems they face. I also examine how these views have been classified and suggest that there may be less disparity between some of these positions than previously thought

Abstract: The paper reviews the empirical evidence for highly significant variation across perceivers in hue perception and argues that color physicalism cannot accommodate this variability. Two views that can accommodate the individual differences in hue perception are considered: the self-locating property theory, according to which colors are self-locating properties, and color relationalism, according to which colors are relations to perceivers and viewing conditions. It is subsequently argued that on a plausible rendition of the two views, the self-locating theory has a slight advantage over color relationalism in being truer to the phenomenology of our color experiences

Abstract: What distinguishes a conscious occurrent thought from a non-conscious occurrent thought? I argue that the notion of 'access-consciousness' cannot provide a satisfactory answer and that we must appeal to phenomenological properties. If this is right, a further question arises about what kind of phenomenological features are required. Can we give a satisfactory account of what makes an occurrent thought a conscious thought solely by reference to sensory phenomenology - including both verbal and non-verbal imagery? I argue that we cannot, and that we must appeal to 'cognitive phenomenology' in order to be able to say what distinguishes conscious occurrent thought from non-conscious occurrent thought.

Abstract: It is argued that it is important for cognitive scientists to understand both the precise nature of RTM, and the challenges to it. The biggest foundational challenge is to develop an adequate naturalistic theory of how representational content is determined. Philosophers have proposed several ingenious theory-sketches of content determination but none accounts for the full range of semantic features mental representations arguably have. Another major challenge is the existence of non-representational competitor research programs. A likely future scenario is that we will be able to explain certain 'low-level' aspects of cognition without resort to representations but that representational hypotheses will still be needed to account for the intentionality-based features of cognition and 'representation hungry' higher-level processes.

Abstract: Representationalist solutions to the qualia problem are motivated by two fundamental ideas: first, that having an experience consists in tokening a mental representation; second, that all one is aware of in having an experience is the intentional content of that representation. In particular, one is not aware of any intrinsic features of the representational vehicle itself. For example, when you visually experience a red object, you are aware only of the redness of the object, not any redness or red quale of your experience. You are aware of outer red without being aware of inner red. According to the representationalist, the phenomenal character of your experience is just (an element of) the intentional content of your representation. In effect, inner red just is outer red. For her part, the defender of qualia, or anyway the defender of qualia who will figure in the present discussion, grants that experiencing a red object involves mentally representing it, and that when you have such an experience you are aware of its intentional content. But she denies that that intentional content exhausts your awareness. The defender of qualia (call her 'Quale') contends that your mental vehicle is itself mentally or phenomenally red, and that in addition to the outer redness of the object, you are aware of this inner redness, the intrinsic phenomenal character of your representational vehicle. Thus, contra the representationalist (call him 'Rep'), you are not aware of the content of your representation without being aware of its intrinsic features

Abstract: Dretske has recently offered a representational theory of perceptual experience - considered as paradigmatic of the qualitative and phenomenal aspects of our mental life. This theory belongs, as do his previous works, to a naturalistic approach to mental representation

Abstract: When I look at a colored object I have an experience of a specific phenomenal kind. Let us suppose I have an experience of pure blue. The blueness I see appears to be instantiated on the surface of the object. When I focus upon the specific phenomenal kind of visual experience I am having (on my having an experience of pure blue) I continue to carefully attend to the property the object appears to have and I do not direct my attention into some inner space. I do not get aware - by attending to my own experience - of the instantiation of any property I was not already aware of before I focused attention upon my own experience. These insights have been associated with the idea that perceptual experience is 'transparent' or 'diaphanous' and they have been taken to support a number of substantial philosophical claims about the nature of phenomenal states and about our capacity to attend to these states. It has been argued that these phenomenological insights support the claim that the phenomenal character of experiences consists in their representing objects as having specific properties (where representation is understood in a naturalistic manner). It also has appeared obvious to some philosophers that the so?called transparency of experience supports the following claim: either our experiences do not have an intrinsic phenomenal character or we are unable to attend to these intrinsic features. I will argue in this paper that the phenomenological insights associated with the term 'transparency of experience' do not support the philosophical consequences just mentioned. I will try to show that the contrary impression is a cognitive illusion that can be explained by reference to what one may call the perceptual model of phenomenal awareness and phenomenological reflection. This model is just a bad and misleading metaphor as everybody will agree when consciously considering the issue. Nonetheless, or so I claim, the metaphor is at work in the background of people's mind. If we assume that a philosopher is either him? or herself in the grip of that metaphor or implicitly interprets the view he wishes to attack along the lines of that metaphor, then we can see how it may appear obvious to him that the phenomenological insights associated with 'transparency' lead quite naturally to the strong philosophical claims they have been taken to support.1