Mental Representation and Content

(Penultimate draft)
Invited comment on David Pitt's The Quality of Thought. I argue that in view of Pitt's commitment to phenomenal intentionality, the thesis that thought content is determined by the qualitative character of thoughts, he should embrace unconscious qualitative character, positing it as the basis of the content of unconscious thoughts and other cognitive states. I criticise his attempt at an eliminativist theory of unconscious content.

In his book Individuals P. F. Strawson writes that 'both the Cartesian and the no-ownership theorists are profoundly wrong in holding, as each must, that there are two uses of 'I', in one of which it denotes something which it does not denote in the other' (p. 98). I think, by contrast, that there is a defensible 'Cartesian materialist' sense, which Strawson need not reject, in which I (=df. the word 'I' or the concept I) can and does denote two different things, and which is nothing like the flawed Wittgensteinian distinction between the use of I 'as object' and the use of I 'as subject'. I don't argue directly for the 'two uses' view, however. Instead I do some preparatory work. First I criticize one bad (Wittgensteinian or 'Wittgensteinian') argument for the 'only one use of I' view. Then I offer a phenomenological description of our everyday experience of ourselves that leads to an attack on 'corporism'-the excessive focus on the body in present-day analytic philosophy of mind.

Intentionality is an essentially mental, essentially occurrent, and essentially experiential (conscious) phenomenon. Any attempt to characterize intentionality that detaches it from conscious experience faces two insuperable problems. First, it is obliged to concede that almost everything (if not everything) has intentionality -all the way down to subatomic particles. Second, it has the consequence that everything that has intentionality has far too much of it -perhaps an infinite amount. The key to a satisfactory and truly naturalistic theory of intentionality is (1) a realistic conception of naturalism and (2) a properly developed understanding of the phenomenon of cognitive experience.

I present a case for a rapprochement between aspects of rationalism and scientific realism, by way of a general framework employing modal epistemology and elements of 2-dimensional semantics (2DS). My overall argument strategy is meta-inductive: The bulk of ...

This paper discusses what I call the problem of evaluability for objectualism, namely the thesis that not all intentionality is propositional. The problem arises against the background of the standard understanding of the notion of representation, according to which the content of a mental state is its truth conditions. The problem of evaluability is the problem of explaining whether and how objectual representation can do away with propositions as a means of evaluating mental attitudes. The objectualist has two ways to reply to the problem of evaluability: either to hold that objectual content just is non-evaluable content; or that objectual content is evaluable, but not truth evaluable. I call the first absolute objectualism and the latter evaluative objectualism. I identify different challenges for each version and offer some reasons to support evaluative objectualism.

Self-knowledge plays a crucial role in Kant's epistemology. His innovation is to distinguish two sides of what his predecessors understood as self-knowledge: ‘inner sense’ and ‘apperception.’  This paper shows how Kant's conception of ‘apperception’ is meant to overcome Humean skepticism, and how ‘inner sense’ is meant to overcome Cartesian skepticism; I then touch upon a complication in Kant’s view of the relation between apperception and inner sense, a complication which relates directly to the problem of the ‘thing in itself.’

Many theorists working on the origins of language now argue that language is a cultural evolutionary outgrowth of the human capacity for Gricean communication. However, basically no attention has been paid by these theorists to the naturalistic standing of Grice's model of communication. The worry is that Grice's model is couched in folk psychological terms (e.g. the beliefs, desires, and intentions of agents), as opposed to neuroscientific or even cognitive psychological ones, and the question of how to locate folk psychological states and their properties within a scientific-naturalistic worldview has proven to be among the most recalcitrant in the whole of philosophy of mind and psychology. This chapter attempts to settle the theoretical debt incurred by much contemporary theorising on the origins of language by sketching how Gricean communication can be naturalised using Dennett's intentional stance theory of folk psychology. This includes a (brief) treatment of the relationship between speaker meaning and the meaning of public language items, including those we use to make explicit judgments about other agents' – and our own – mental states. The chapter concludes by flagging an important challenge to the naturalisation pathway outlined here. This challenge concerns the possibility of residual intentional or representational properties at the level of subpersonal cognitive mechanisms. I will distinguish three possible lines of response without signing on to a particular one at this time.

This article discusses the problem of mental representation from the point of view of interpreters and translators. Examples from various languages and contexts illustrate the difficulties encountered in translation and interpreting, with mental representation hidden in lexical, morphological and syntactic text components as well as in whole texts. It will be shown that, in translation, these elements have to be considered together with the roots of a text as well as in the situation the text is placed in. Finally, whether and to what extent the embodiment and objectification of ideas is possible will be questioned, along with how this affects the process of translation.

In the second instalment of the Of Rats and Men
triptych, the foundations of agency are reconstructed
as a positive follow-up to the previous
paper’s conclusions. For this task, the article
draws on pragmatic insights and interpretations
of fundamental physical principles – derived
from unorthodox contemporary theoretical
approaches such as process metaphysics, the
extended evolutionary synthesis, and frameworks
associated with ‘the pragmatic turn’ in the
cognitive sciences – namely the free-energy principle
(FEP) and its operationalisation in predictive
processing theory (PP). The aim is to defend
the thesis that agency, understood as a capacity to
act for reasons, is not a hallmark of human metaphysical
exceptionalism but rather an inherent
property of life itself, anchored in the organism’s
internally generated existential imperative to
maintain temporal homeodynamics against the
entropic tendency towards dispersal. The author
defends the use of intentional terminology in explaining animal behaviour, arguing that FEP
and PP enable such an approach. This perspective
is also consistent with the pluralistic stance of
pragmatism and the anti-reductionist direction
of processual metaphysics in the philosophy of
biology. The article lays the groundwork for further
analysis of advanced forms of agency, which
will be explored in the final part of the triptych.

The folk Psychology frames propositional attitudes as fundamen-tal theoretical entities for the construction of a model designed to predict the behavior of a subject. A trivial, such as grasping a pen and writing reveals - something complex - about the behavior. When I ...

In the early 1990s, the concept of inhibition sparked a new surge of interest in cognitive psychology, both in North America and in Europe. In the framework of that research trend, it is proposed here that cognitive development cannot be reduced to the coordination ± activation of structural units (as in Jean Piaget's structuralist theory and in the neostructuralist models), but that development also often involves inhibiting a competing structure or scheme. This approach, which views the processes of selection ± inhibition as age-and domain-specific, is illustrated by four experimental examples (from infancy to adulthood): object construction, number, categorization, and reasoning.

Representational mechanisms are responsible for processing information to modify readiness for action. While structural similarity has been proposed as foundational to neural representation, how these mechanisms systematically harness correspondence-based information remains undertheorized. This paper introduces a Correspondence Network Framework that elucidates how representational systems exploit multiple channels of structural similarity concurrently. We demonstrate that structural similarity engenders networks of infocorrespondences between informational structures, allowing representational mechanisms to evaluate information across channels, detect inconsistencies, and establish satisfaction conditions for representational content. Our framework extends beyond singlechannel accounts by explaining how multiple classification systems can operate simultaneously over the same neural vehicles, enabling content-sensitive processing. To illustrate the framework's utility, we analyze representational similarity analysis (RSA) in cognitive neuroscience as detecting correspondence networks. This analysis reveals why taxonomic organization consistently emerges in neural representational spaces and provides principled responses to anti-representationalist critiques. While RSA alone cannot fully characterize representational mechanisms, the Correspondence Network Framework delineates its interpretive constraints and provides valuable heuristics for further empirical inquiry.

Spencer et al. are intent on dismantling the nativist-empiricist debate, and they frame their arguments as follows. First, they argue that "development is often a non-obvious process that does not easily conform to our intuitions or rational expectations". Second, they argue that the fact of evolution "does not obviate the need to explain developmental process". Third, they argue that developmentalists must be held to the "highest of scientific standards" because the study of development is extraordinarily complex. They offer a wide range of empirical phenomena illustrating that development is complex and that human capacities change as a consequence of interaction between the organism and its environment. Their three points are surely correct, but they are simply orthogonal to the authors' main plea: That developmental scientists no longer engage in the nativist-empiricist debate. This debate is important precisely because it helps us frame answers to questions about development. Part of the problem is Spencer et al.'s apparent misunderstanding of the modern nativist position. First, this position does not embrace the idea that development is simple; it is the very fact of its complexity that drives the nativist to try to understand what kinds of rich structures might be capable of supporting the massive changes that occur over development. Examples abound: Modern studies of language have long sought to understand how hearing one's native language results in learning that language despite radical differences in experience . Modern studies of numerical cognition seek to understand how knowledge of number changes from a system common to many species to the one shown by humans alone . Modern studies of the development of spatial representation seek to understand how humans (and other species) represent location, how these representations are transformed over one's own movement, and how these transformed representations support inferences about one's current location . Each of these examples requires that we understand the basic building blocks of a system, and how these might change over development, as bodies grow, as minds and brains mature, as the world of interaction expands. Second, the nativist may consider the evolutionary contribution as part of the story of how these building blocks--rather than others--might have become available to the organism; but this position does not entail that development itself does not matter. Our capacity for mental rotation likely embodies abstract geometrical principles that have evolved to reflect principles of the world in which we have evolved . Still, the developmentalist wants to understand how this capacity sharpens over development. Third, surely every developmental scientist--whatever his or her theoretical persuasion--would agree that we should be held to the highest scientific standards: Our theories should be coherent and as well articulated as possible, our empirical tests should be designed to test key principles of the theories, and our interpretation of empirical results should extend and enhance those theories. Spencer et al. particularly worry about positing primitives for developmental systems. They seem to believe that because their position emphasizes change, they do not have to specify their own building blocks. But they do--every theory must start with primitives. If these are not specified, then we cannot specify the mechanisms of change, since those changes will operate on

Although primarily a philosopher, one of his main interests is theoretical psychology. In this new book, he attempts to lay the foundations for a naturalistic understanding of minds and persons. His big question is how we can arrive at an integrated understanding of the world, including minds and persons. As he puts it in the beginning of the book:

Philosophers of science in recent decades have increasingly redirected our attention from the nature and structure of scientific knowledge to scientific practices and scientific understanding in practice. In many other areas of philosophy, however, disputes about the place of humanity in the natural world among orthodox and liberal philosophical naturalists and anti-naturalists have largely ignored this shift in philosophical understanding of the sciences. Their arguments are still framed by a more traditional conception of “the Scientific Image” of nature and humanity as the correlate to an idealized conception of scientific knowledge. My talk has two aims. I first highlight some of the most significant ways in which focus on scientific practices changes our understanding of the aspirations and achievements of the sciences. I then indicate how this shift might constructively point to a more radical naturalism that changes how we should understand human ways of life within the world as it has become scientifically intelligible.

This paper deals with the cognitive relationship between a speaker and her internal grammar. In particular, it takes issue with the view that such a relationship is one of belief or knowledge (I call this view the 'Propositional Attitude View', or PAV). I first argue that PAV entails that all ordinary speakers (tacitly) possess technical concepts belonging to syntactic theory, and second, that most ordinary speakers do not in fact possess such concepts. Thus, it is concluded that speakers do not literally 'know' or 'believe' much of the contents of their grammars, and moreover, that these contents can only be attributed at a subpersonal level. How do speakers manage to be competent at speaking and understanding their native languages? How is it possible for linguists to obtain evidence from them, in the form of linguistic judgments? If we are to believe contemporary linguistics, 1 any answer to these questions must relate speakers to their grammars, where a grammar is understood as a cognitive structure instantiated by an individual speaker. 2 But how is the speaker related to such a grammar so that she can exploit it in the course of language use and linguistic judgment? The characteristics of human linguistic competence strongly suggest that speakers stand in some sort of cognitive relation R to their grammars (see Chomsky [1986]; ). The question is: how can we further characterize R? One appealing answer is that R constitutes a kind of propositional attitude, such as belief or knowledge. This seems to vindicate everyday talk of people 'knowing English (German/Tagalog, 1 Although the term 'linguistics' designates a broad range of scientific activities, in this paper I will deal exclusively with theories in syntax, which is the most representative area of the Chomskyan school of linguistics, even though (or precisely because) philosophers have traditionally paid considerable less attention to syntax than to other areas of linguistic inquiry, such as semantics and pragmatics. Also, for stylistic reasons, I will frequently use the term 'Generative Grammar', or simply 'linguistics', to designate the research program in which I am interested. In doing so (and unless otherwise noted), I will be referring to Chomskyan, Generative Transformational syntax, and, in particular, to theories within the Principles and Parameters approach (see ). 2 This mental structure is frequently referred to as 'I-language', as opposed to 'E-language', where the letter 'I' is supposed to highlight that this structure: (a) belongs to an individual, not a collective or community, (b) is internal to the subject, a part of her mind/brain, not some independent external entity that the speaker more or less imperfectly grasps, and last (c) is intensional: the grammar is intended to be the characterization in intension of a function that maps sounds and meanings, not some extensionally characterized set of sentences, utterances or inscriptions (see ch. 2). etc.)', while also providing an account of the informativeness of linguistic judgments (Graves et al, [1973]; ; Higginbotham [1987]) as well as of the distinction between linguistic competence and performance ; ). 3 Let us call this position the 'Propositional Attitude View' of linguistic competence (PAV). 4 According to PAV, speakers are able to use and reflect on their languages partly by virtue of knowing or believing the grammatical principles or rules of their grammars, such as those described (or postulated) by linguistic theory. This enabling knowledge, as PAV authors are quick to point out, is not of the typical, explicit sort, such as our knowledge that 1+2 = 3 or that Alberto Contador won the 2009 Tour de France. Rather, it is a kind of implicit or tacit knowledge, that is, knowledge that is unavailable to conscious reflection, even though it is exploited in language-related cognition. 5 PAV has intuitive appeal and is not devoid of explanatory potential. But for all its initial attractiveness it brings along perplexities that threaten its plausibility. For instance, a cursory glance at a linguistics journal, or even at a textbook in the Principles and Parameters tradition, reveals 3 For instance, one way of characterizing the distinction between competence and performance is by saying that the former is the (tacit) knowledge a speaker has of her grammar, whereas the latter is the manifestation of that knowledge in the course of language use. Linguistics, then, studies the first, not the second. Likewise, one possible strategy for justifying the use of intuitions/judgments as evidence about competence is by arguing that they are reliable manifestations of the speaker's grammatical knowledge or beliefs. 4 Dwyer and Pietroski ([1996]); Graves et al ([1973]); Higginbotham ([1987]) and Knowles ([2000]), among others, support PAV in one way or another with respect to grammar (for a similar view with respect to semantics, see Lepore ([1986]); )). For instance, Dwyer and Pietroski ([1996], p. 338, emphasis mine), propose that generalizations of linguistic theory 'serve to ascribe beliefs to humans', whereas Knowles' thesis is that 'knowledge of grammatical principles may be seen as what philosophers call a variety of propositional attitude p. 326), emphasis in the original), moreover, he attributes this view to Chomsky. George ([1990], p. 91) claims that the grammar of a speaker is 'the object of that speaker's knowledge'. The analogy with knowledge of numbers that he offers later in the text makes it quite plausible to assume that what he means by 'knowledge' is a propositional attitude. Likewise, for , p.10, italics mine) '[…] to view the subject matter of semantics as linguistic knowledge is to locate semantic theory within the general enterprise initiated by Noam Chomsky ([1965], [1975], [1986a]), for whom linguistic theory is a theory of the real knowledge of speakers'. Fodor ([1983], p. 7) quite confidently attributes to Chomsky a view that is very close to PAV, if not PAV itself: [...] when Chomsky says that there is an innately specified 'language organ' what he means is that […]there are innately specified propositional contents [... and that …] the ontogeny of linguistic capacities is the unfolding of the deductive consequences of the innate beliefs in interaction with perceptual data' , italics mine). Whether Fodor's is a faithful characterization of Chomsky's position is another issue, but it certainly is a sign of the appeal of PAV. This paper is not concerned with the particular views that each PAV author holds, but rather on what they share, which is a basic commitment to PAV. 5 The terms 'tacit' or 'implicit' are widely used in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science literature,

Speakers can use sentences to make assertions. Theorists who reflect on this truism often say that sentences have linguistic meanings, and that assertions have propositional contents. But how are meanings related to contents? Are meanings less dependent on the environment? Are contents more independent of language? These are large questions, which must be understood partly in terms of the phenomena that lead theorists to use words like 'meaning' and 'content', sometimes in nonstandard ways. Opportunities for terminological confusion thus abound when talking about the relations among semantics, pragmatics, and truth. As stresses, in Quinean fashion, it is hard to separate the task of evaluating hypotheses in these domains from the task of getting clear about what the hypotheses are. But after some stage-setting, I suggest that we

This entry explores the basic commitments of representational theories of belief--theories according to which belief states are representational states. I argue that representationalism fares better when it sheds three myths that often plague it. The first myth is that representationalism requires "sentences in a belief box." The second is that representationalism implies that belief representations map neatly to belief reports in natural language. The third is that representationalism entails that beliefs always have determinate propositional contents. Shedding these myths shores up representationalism against dispositionalist critiques and makes room for interesting methodological and empirical possibilities that should benefit future belief research.

An old paper from my third semester as an undergraduate, left more or less unedited. The class was PHIL 391: Philosophy of Language. Fall 2009. Professor Bryan Register. This version includes Professor Register's comments in red, which offer some helpful insight and clarification.

Though my philosophical interests shifted into the Continental tradition later in my academic career, a good deal of my early training was in analytic and ancient Greek philosophy, both of which I still find interesting and worthwhile.

Abstract:

There are two claims that will be attacked throughout this paper:  (1) that a person’s psychological state determines the meaning of a term (where the meaning of a term is its intension), and (2) that the intension (sense) of a term determines its extension (reference). The traditional Fregean theory of meaning relies predominately on these two assumptions. Two important implications follow from these assumptions: the first is that two terms can have separate intensions while having the same extension; the second is that two terms cannot have the same intension while having separate extensions. The purpose of this paper will be direct. In accordance with Hilary Putnam’s Twin Earth thought experiment, I will first show that assumptions (1) and (2) are incompatible. This will be accomplished, in part, through the use of examples from Putnam’s essay “The Meaning of ‘Meaning.’” I will then use this to support my argument that two terms can have separate extensions while having the same intension.

This paper explores the profound intersection between physics, neuroscience, and philosophy by examining how humans perceive color. Although light is an objective, quantifiable physical phenomenon defined by electromagnetic wavelengths, the experience of color is a subjective, qualitative mental state known as qualia. We investigate the transformation process by which colorless numerical data—wavelengths and neural signals—are converted into rich perceptual experiences. Drawing on insights from neurobiology, computational neuroscience, and theories of consciousness, we argue that color perception is not a direct reflection of external reality, but rather an emergent construct generated by neural computation. Furthermore, we compare various philosophical frameworks—including physicalism, emergentism, and dual-aspect monism—to analyze how subjective experience arises from objective processes. By bridging empirical data with philosophical inquiry, this study challenges naïve realism and advocates for a rethinking of perception as an adaptive, interpretive interface between organism and environment.

This paper offers a new interpretation of Hume's Treatise as a work written by a methodological solipsist. It argues that Hume anticipates later developments by launching a Fodorian project that is to be realised by Carnapian means. Hume develops an explanatory theory of mental operations based on an analysis conducted by way of similarity recollections in the stream of experience. The paper first presents the case for Hume's commitment to methodological solipsism and then offers a reconstruction of the methodology with which his project is to be executed. Hume proceeds by analysing perceptions and the connections between them to account for their "nature" and the "principles" underlying their interaction. His analyses reveal the solipsistic methodological credo that Hume did not make explicit.

e presented contribution has both a personal and somewhat scienti c tone. It provides a brief overview of the twenty years of collaboration with Professor Preyer, emphasizing key discussion points that have been integral to this long-standing exchange.

This paper explicates Radical Enactivism's analytic roots, revealing its clarificatory ambitions and adoption of critical philosophical methods. It demonstrates why Radical Enactivists are proud to play the time-honored role of being good gadflies. Adopting such a stance is especially needed when investigating foundational issues in cognitive science. In playing that part, Radical Enactivists have sought to motivate acceptance of core enactivist tenets by famously challenging cornerstone cognitivist assumptions-namely, representationalism and computationalism. In the same vein, they have also devoted energy to critically analyzing, testing, and sometimes rejecting the positive proposals of other enactivists. This has earned Radical Enactivism a reputation for being an inherently negative program. By reviewing illustrative cases of theorizing in contemporary cognitive science, this paper shows that Radical Enactivism's critical philosophical spadework-its 'being a good gadfly'-is essential for articulating new, more securely grounded frameworks of cognition that are valuable to the sciences of the mind.

As meaning’s claim to normativity has grown increasingly suspect the normativity thesis has shifted to mental content. In this paper, we distinguish two versions of content normativism: ‘CE normativism’, according to which it is essential to content that certain ‘oughts’ can be derived from it, and ‘CD normativism’, according to which content is determined by norms in the first place. We argue that neither type of normativism withstands scrutiny. CE normativism appeals to the fact that there is an essential connection between content and correctness conditions. But, we argue, this fact is by itself normatively innocent, and attempts to add a normative dimension via the normativity of belief ultimately fail. CD normativism, in turn, falls prey to the ‘dilemma of regress and idleness’: the appeal to rules either leads to some form of regress of rules, or the notion of rule following is reduced to an idle label. We conclude by suggesting that our arguments do not support naturalism: It...

This article examines the compatibility of Predictive Processing Theory (PPT), or the theory of anticipatory brain, with other contemporary scientific and philosophical frameworks that offer promising approaches to explaining consciousness and mind in general. It analyzes the connections between PPT and theories that include the body and the environment in structuring our concepts of reality, such as that of embodied and situated consciousness—4E cognition, as well as Cognitive Linguistics with its understanding of Conceptual Metaphor. At the same time, it investigates the metaphysical strategy of PPT, which fits into the current philosophical project of naturalization and its associated strong dependence on the natural sciences. It explores the contributions of key theorists in the field such as Carl Friston, Jacob Hohwy, Andy Clark, and Anil Seth.

The rule-following paradox represents one of the most fundamental forms of skepticism, as it suggests the impossibility of possessing any intentional content. Despite numerous solutions proposed since Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein, a definitive resolution remains elusive. This suggests that some commonsense notions regarding rules or semantic content may need to be reconsidered. Some commentators advocate abandoning the conception of absolute determinacy in meaning, which holds that every logically possible application is definitively right or wrong. There are countless possible instances of the application of rules, but as finite beings, we cannot classify every one of them as either right or wrong. Embracing this perspective, I defend a version of radical conventionalism, asserting that whenever practitioners agree on the specific steps for applying expressions, their agreement establishes both rules and semantic facts. A common objection to this idea is that it fails to account for the possibility of errors because we might agree on incorrect points or disagree on correct ones. To address this objection, I propose that semantic facts could be determined retrospectively; subsequent practices institute the semantic facts about their antecedent practices by refining and overriding the semantic facts established in the past. Semantic facts are essentially indeterminate because the application of expressions without agreement in practice is neither correct nor incorrect; however, they are historically determinable.

C. Bally and A. Sechehaye, of notes taken down by students at lectures held by Saussure at the University of Geneva between 1907 and 1911. 1 É. Benveniste, "'Structure' en linguistique", in R. Bastide (ed.), Sens et usages du terme structure dans les sciences humaines et sociales, Mouton & Co., The Hague, 1962, p. 32. 2 F. de Saussure, Course de linguistique générale, Payot & Rivages, Paris, 1995, p. 159. 3 Ibid., p. 124. 4 Ibid., p. 20. 5 R. Jakobson, "Typological Studies and Their Contribution to Historical Comparative Linguistics", in Selected Writings I. Phonological Studies, Mouton & Co., The Hague, 1962, p. 525 (italics added).

have argued that cases of aspect-switching show that visual experience represents a richer range of properties than colours, shapes, positions and sizes. I respond that cases of aspect-switching can be explained without holding that visual experience represents rich properties. I also argue that even if Searle and Siegel are right, and aspect-switching does require visual experience to represent rich properties, there is reason to think those properties do not include natural-kind properties, such as being a tomato. Philosophers have often asked what kind of information is available to vision. For instance, Berkeley argued that one cannot see depth, and Hume that one cannot see necessary connections. Recently philosophers have asked what kinds of properties visual experience 'represents'. According to sparse views, visual experience represents a sparse range of properties, for instance, just colours, shapes, positions and sizes. 1 According to rich views, visual experience represents a rich range of properties, for instance, properties such as being a tomato and being sad. 2 Siegel and Searle have used cases of 'aspect-switching' to support the view that visual experience represents a rich range of properties. Roughly, their arguments are that when one aspect-switches on an object, the object comes to look different, but looks to have the same colour and shape properties. Therefore, so the arguments go, one's visual experiences represent these objects as having a richer set of properties than simply colour and shape properties.

The idea of a synthesis was already made apparent in Kant's argument from geometry in the Aesthetic. The perception of geometry is made possible by the pre-conceptual, intuitive synthesis carried out by imagination under the condition of sensibility itself. Kant's famous note at B160-1 seems to smuggle a synthetic unity of understanding into the very unity of space and time. But the difference is that the pre-conceptual, intuitive synthesis carried out by imagination under the condition of sensibility itself is, as it implies, non-conceptual, and is carried out by the imagination with no pure concepts involved whatsoever.

In einem ersten Schritt werden in diesem Kapitel die Argumente McDowells für eine durchgängig begriffliche Konstitution der Wahrnehmung in der Auseinandersetzung mit Donald
Davidson rekonstruiert. Daraufhin werden einige klassische Gegeneinwände gegen seine Position vorgestellt und einer ersten Bewertung unterzogen. Im nächsten Schritt gehe ich auf Noës sensomotorisch begründeten Begriffspluralismus der
Wahrnehmung näher ein wie auch auf Mark Johnsons verkörperte Bildschemata und erläutere die Frage, inwiefern ihre Ansätze in der Lage sind, die Position McDowells zur Wahrnehmung weitergehend zu fundieren. Daran anschließend werden einige zentrale Argumente in der zeitgenössischen Debatte für die Existenz eines nicht-begrifflichen Wahrnehmungsgehaltes ausgeführt und erwogen, ob die genannten Konzeptionen nicht-begriffliche Gehalte der Wahrnehmung überzeugend
ausschließen.

Conventional meaning determines the “what is said” content an expression used in an appropriate situation makes available. The orthodox story is that an expression’s contribution to truth conditions exhausts the content available from its conventional meaning regardless of what linguistic competence – i.e. practical grasp of and facility with conventional meaning – may actually require. This perspective seems to assume that language is essentially functionally descriptive in some sense. Indeed, most of our familiar analytical machinery assumes, and only cleanly explicates, language’s descriptive function. Natural language, however, is deeply multi-functional, allowing us to do much more than just determine truth conditions as a function of expressions’ conventional meaning. Analytical machinery realigned around situationally correct use might provide a more complete explication of conventional meaning and open the door to layers of information beyond just the orthodox proposition. Here, I generalize some familiar analytical machinery – including Kaplan’s character and Korta & Perry’s reflexive content – to account for functions beyond the descriptive or truth conditional and to provide additional layers of cognitively impactful content following from facility with conventional meaning alone.

'The Unity of Perception is a splendid achievement. It fuses the representational, phenomenal, and epistemic dimensions of perception into a coherent whole, bound together by their common basis in the exercise of perceptual capacities. Central to the account is Schellenberg's broadly Fregean theory of perceptual content, which assigns a pivotal role to modes of presentation (MOPs). Schellenberg develops the theory in impressive detail, applying it to a wide range of cases. ' Michael Rescorla, UCLA, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 'Schellenberg's excellent book will undoubtedly have a wide audience among philosophers of mind and epistemologists. Among other virtues, it offers (i) innovative and plausible arguments for the superiority of representationalist theories of perception over disjunctivist and naive realist theories, (ii) the first systematic attempt to develop the view that the contents of perceptual states are robustly particular, with entities like Hillary Clinton and that table serving as their constituents, and (iii) a sustained defense of the idea that our concepts of perceptual evidence are externalist in character. The book is unique in the current literature in seeking accounts of the metaphysical and epistemological dimensions of perception that are mutually reinforcing. ' Christopher Hill, Brown University 'The Unity of Perception offers a grand synoptic vision of how perception, consciousness and knowledge fit together. It is a remarkable achievement . . . there is every reason for philosophers with an interest in mind or epistemology to read The Unity of Perception. ' Alex Byrne, MIT, Analysis 'Capacities are powerful predictive, explanatory tools for theorizing about subjects, minds, and performance. According to The Unity of Perception, capacities anchor a systematic, far-reaching account of perception and perceptual consciousness. ' Casey O'Callaghan, Washington University in St. Louis, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 'The Unity of Perception is an ambitious and wide-ranging book-one that presents a unified account and then uses it to address Big Questions about perception . . . Schellenberg' s proposals are important, and will play a role in future discussion of these matters. ' Jonathan Cohen, UCSD, Analysis 'Rich and rewarding. ' Matthew McGrath, Rutgers University, Analysis 'The Unity of Perception is an interesting and thought-provoking book. The central view-capacitism-and its broad implications for philosophy of perception, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science make this book a valuable contribution to anyone working on perception, and I have no doubt that it will draw a great deal of well-deserved attention. '

Austere relationalism combines two claims. First, the phenomenal character of perception is at least partially constituted by the perceived items. Second, perception doesn't consist in representing the perceived items as being a certain way. Recently, Daniel Kalpokas, Avner Baz, and Søren Overgaard have cast doubt on the ability of austere relationalism to account for the peculiar phenomenology of aspect-seeing. I show that this explanatory challenge can be met. Some of the claims made by the critics can be resisted, whereas other can be accommodated into austere relationalism. Most notably, I argue that austere relationalists should acknowledge that aspect-seeing is enabled by unconscious perceptual judgment. This not only allows them to meet the challenge, but also provides the means to reconcile the apparently belief-independent phenomenology of aspect-seeing with the arguably indispensable role that concepts and recognition play in it.

Simulation theory is a radical and yet increasingly popular view about episodic memory. It is the view that episodic memory and episodic simulation are the same natural kind. I argue that while simulation theory offers an important insight, it also makes an overreach. While episodic memory and episodic simulation likely reflect a common natural kind, they also differ in natural kind. They differ in natural kind because episodic memory is partly defined by projectible properties and memory trace mechanisms that episodic simulation lacks.

In chapter 5 of his 1992 book A Study of Concepts, Christopher Peacocke claims that his account of concepts can be reconciled with naturalism. Nonetheless, despite Peacocke's greatest efforts to convince the skeptics that the mentioned accommodation is viable if one accepts his approach to concepts, some suspicion survives. In a recent paper on this very topic, Jose Luis Bermudez raises questions about Peacocke's supposed naturalization by arguing that the approach in question is not able to make sense of the distinction between misapplying a concept one nonetheless possesses and not possessing that concept at all. What I am going to do here is, on the one hand, defend Peacocke's concept naturalization project from Bermudez's objection and, on the other hand, show that the latter's suggestion cannot save the surely crucial distinction between making a mistake in using a concept and being incapable of a mistake or a correct use because of not having the concept.

In 2013, William “Bill” C. H. Prentice died at the age of 97 (fig. 1). Known mostly as the
former president of Wheaton College, Prentice had a very important role in the
development and dissemination of Gestalt psychology in the United States. He helped
socialize it into American terms and could have been its strongest ally if he did not leave
academia for college administration. In a sense, he could have “saved” Gestalt psychology
in the hostile intellectual environment of the United States.

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that asks the question, “What do we know and how do we know it?” Given that what we know is primarily what we perceive, the question becomes, “What do we perceive and how do we perceive it?” The answer indicated by physical perceptual processes is that what an observer perceives is a neurologically fabricated isomorphic representation of their otherwise unseen body and external environment existing outside their brain. That perceived representation of the real world is produced by and entirely contained within the observer’s brain.

The title of Matthew MacKenzie's book recalls Varela, Thompson, and Rosch's now classic 1991 The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (henceforth TEM). TEM drew on aspects of Buddhist philosophy and practice, as well as the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, especially the work of Merleau-Ponty, in order to develop an alternative paradigm to the computationalism of mainstream cognitive science and philosophy of mind, an approach the authors called "enactivism." TEM played a crucial role in popularising 4Eembodied, embedded, enactive, and extendedapproaches to cognition, as well as in catalysing an ongoing pluralistic and cross-cultural philosophical conversation involving Asian philosophy, analytic philosophy of mind, pragmatism, and phenomenology. (henceforth BPEM) is a continuation and deepening of these aspects of the project undertaken in TEM (MacKenzie 2022: 1). First and foremost, it is a sustained dialogue between enactivism and Indo-Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. Like TEM, BPEM treats Buddhist philosophy neither

dir.), Etudier en liberté les mondes méditerranéens. Mélanges offerts à Robert Ilbert, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2016, 592p., p.221-229. Ce texte représente par certains aspects l'inverse d'une bonne recherche historique : absence de recours aux archives, saut d'une discipline à une autre, béances temporelles, ignorance de pans entiers de l'historiographie, hypothèses hasardeuses. Il ne se justifie que par la conjonction du décalage ironique et exploratoire permis par l'exercice de style que représente ce livre, et par des circonstances affectives particulières. Il ne correspond qu'à une série d'intuitions sur l'histoire méditerranéenne, qui chacune mériterait d'être éprouvée à l'aune d'une recherche rigoureuse. Il représente surtout la concrétisation du coeur de ma relation avec Robert Ilbert, depuis les premiers instants de notre rencontre. Nous parlâmes en effet de Pantelleria presque immédiatement, en 1993, lorsque je me rendis à Aix-en-Provencesur le conseil de Jean-Claude Hervé et deBrigitte Marin, pour finaliser mon inscription avec lui en cycle doctoral. Il fut évident très vite que le sujet que je traiterai serait Rome, en prenant le contre-pied des Lieux de mémoire, un ouvrage dont l'esprit, à mon sens, accordait trop de place à la sémiotique de la forme construite, aux dépens d'autres dimensions de l'histoire urbainequ'Ilbert précisément voulait promouvoir. Mais nos échanges sur Pantelleria, où je lui racontai passer mes vacanceset d'où je tirais une part importante des ressorts méditerranéens de ma conversation -n'en étaient pas moins intenses. Dès cet instant,l'île a constitué une sorte d'objet historique évident, évoqué de rencontre en rencontredepuis plus de vingt ans, point de départ d'élucubrations plus ou moins étayées, toujours relié à nos interrogations méditerranéennes, sans que jamais pourtant elle ne devienne pour moi le support d'un véritable investissement scientifique. Elle a toujours constitué une sorte de référent partagé que nous savions pertinent, quelque part entre l'intuition et l'évidence déployée sous mes yeux d'été en été. Mais nousla laissions au domaine de l'anecdote etjustement -de l'intuition, cette composante centrale dans le déclenchement du raisonnement historiqueet en même temps toujours susceptible de conduire sur de fausses routes.Demeure cependant la sensation que, dans nos échanges sur la Méditerranée, d'expériences d'enseignement en positionnements théoriques et de rencontres en voyages, cette île du canal de Sicilerude amer volcanique à mi-chemin entre Marsala et le Cap Bona toujours représenté bien plus qu'un lieu anecdotique. Un « point d'articulation » assurément,notion décisive pour beaucoup d'élèves d'Ilbert, en quête de configurations par lesquelles l'histoire se donne à lire d'une manière plus complexe qu'au travers des grandes narrations globalisantes. Avec l'excuse donc du présent exercice, je voudrais énoncer ici quelques pistes d'interprétation de l'histoire méditerranéenne pour lesquelles Pantelleria pourrait constituer un ancrage utile. Il va sans dire que Robert Ilbert est coresponsable des errements thématiques, documentaires, conceptuels, factuels et méthodologiques de son disciple.

Content and critical analyses of 40 speed reading books were undertaken to determine to what extent discussion and teaching reflected current research. Particular attention was given to the information provided on eye movements, span of recognition, and the upper rates of speed attainable through practice. Content analysis revealed the following: (1) 72% of the 32 books that dealt with the span of recognition encouraged readers to process phrases of three or fewer words in a single fixation, while 28% discussed expanding the field of vision to include clusters larger than three words as well as entire lines or large blocks of print; (2) 15% of the 27 books in which eye regressions were discussed indicated that they were useful in some cases, while 52% advocated the total eliminatizn of regressions; and (3) 57% of the 28 speed reading books reporting upper rates of reading proposed rates above 1,000 words per minute (WPM). However, it is concluded that research supports the following: readers have a span of recognition physiologically fixed at about two or three words, regressions are sometimes necessary an.4 useful, and rates above 1,000 wpm are not achieved with what is usually thought of as normal reading; skimming or scanning are employed instead. In an effort to improve speed reading books, collaboration between researchers and writers is recommended. (A list of all 40 speed reading books is appended, as are the references upon which the criticisms were based.) (HOD)

The debate between Millians and Fregeans over proper names has resulted in a stalemate after roughly forty years. Neither Millianism nor Fregeanism is plausible. Millianism clashes with our intuitions about cognitive value and truth-value with respect to Frege's puzzle. Millians have elaborated interesting theories aiming to show why this clash does not constitute a reductio of Millianism, but they are not plausible. Fregeanism fares no better, as it was refuted by Kripke in Naming and Necessity. Following Kripke, a viable theory of proper names must, at a minimum, respect the constraints that: (a) that names are rigid designators; and (b) if names have any descriptive or conceptual contents at all, these cannot be reference-determining. I formulate a non-Fregean, non-Millian theory of proper names that respects the abovementioned Kripkean constraints as well as our Fregean intuitions with respect to Frege's puzzle. I explain the cognitive value difference between 'Clark Kent is Clark Kent' and 'Clark Kent is Superman' by showing that they express different propositions. The propositional attitude ascription 'Lois Lane does not realize that Clark Kent is Superman' comes out as true, not false as Millians maintain. I propose solutions to both versions of Frege's puzzle, the 'Problem of Rational Inconsistency' (the question how expressing and believing inconsistent singular propositions can be compatible with an agent's rationality), and Kripke's puzzle about belief. v I argue that proper names are used as two kinds of indexicals. Sometimes a name is used indexically just to refer to its bearer. I call this a 'Millian use,' and say that a name is used 'in a Millian way.' Other times, a name is used indexically to refer to its bearer and to contribute the speaker's descriptive conception of that bearer to the proposition. I call this a 'Conceptionindicating use' and say a name is used 'in a Conception-indicating way.' Therefore, I call the theory 'The Two Indexical Uses Theory of Proper Names', or 'TIUT.' I intend this difference in use to mark a semantic, and not merely pragmatic, distinction. When used in a Millian way, a name is directly referential. Its content is just its bearer. When used in a Conception-indicating way, a name's content, which is determined by its character in the context of utterance, is not an object, but rather a meaning that mediates reference. Thus, a name used in a Conceptionindicating way falls outside of David Kaplan's (1989) paradigm of indexicality, according to which indexicals are directly referential. When used in a Conception-indicating way, 'Clark Kent' and 'Superman' designate rigidly, but they have different contents that are partially constituted by different descriptive elements. Crucially, these descriptive elements of content are referentially inert, playing no role in determining reference. Reference is instead a function of causal-historical factors following Kripke's causal-historical picture of reference. vi Acknowledgments I wish to thank my adviser, Barbara Montero, as well as my committee members, David Papineau and Heimir Geirsson. Thanks also to my mother, Susanne Shabasson, and my brother,