Volume 14 (2022): Issue 66 (December 2022) Special Issue: Varieties of Context-Sensitivity in a Pluri-Propositionalist Reflexive Semantic Framework
Volume 14 (2022): Issue 65 (November 2022)
Volume 14 (2022): Issue 64 (May 2022)
Volume 13 (2021): Issue 63 (December 2021) Special Issue on Nothing to Come by Correia & Rosenkranz
Volume 13 (2021): Issue 62 (December 2021) Ethics and Aesthetics: Issues at Their Intersection
Volume 13 (2021): Issue 61 (November 2021)
Volume 13 (2021): Issue 60 (May 2021)
Volume 12 (2020): Issue 59 (December 2020)
Volume 12 (2020): Issue 58 (December 2020) SPECIAL ISSUE: ON THE VERY IDEA OF LOGICAL FORM
Volume 12 (2020): Issue 57 (November 2020)
Volume 12 (2020): Issue 56 (May 2020)
Volume 11 (2019): Issue 55 (December 2019) Special Issue: Chalmers on Virtual Reality
Volume 11 (2019): Issue 54 (December 2019) Special Issue: III Blasco Disputatio, Singular terms in fiction. Fictional and “real” names
Volume 11 (2019): Issue 53 (November 2019)
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Volume 10 (2018): Issue 51 (December 2018) SYMPOSIUM ON JASON STANLEY’S “HOW PROPAGANDA WORKS”
Volume 10 (2018): Issue 50 (December 2018)
Volume 10 (2018): Issue 49 (November 2018)
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Volume 9 (2017): Issue 47 (December 2017)
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Volume 8 (2016): Issue 43 (November 2016)
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Volume 7 (2015): Issue 41 (November 2015)
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Volume 6 (2014): Issue 39 (November 2014)
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Volume 5 (2013): Issue 37 (November 2013)
Volume 5 (2013): Issue 36 (October 2013) Book symposium on François Recanati’s Mental Files
Volume 5 (2013): Issue 35 (May 2013)
Volume 4 (2012): Issue 34 (December 2012)
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Volume 4 (2012): Issue 32 (May 2012) New Perspectives on Quine’s “Word and Object”
Volume 4 (2011): Issue 31 (November 2011)
Volume 4 (2011): Issue 30 (May 2011) XII Taller d'Investigació en Filosofia
Volume 4 (2010): Issue 29 (November 2010) Petrus Hispanus 2009
Volume 3 (2010): Issue 28 (May 2010)
Volume 3 (2009): Issue 27 (November 2009) Homage to M. S. Lourenço
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Volume 1 (2006): Issue 20 (May 2006)
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Volume 1 (2001): Issue 11 (November 2001)
Volume 1 (2002): Issue 11-12 (May 2002)
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Volume 1 (2000): Issue 9 (November 2000)
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Volume 1 (1998): Issue 5-2 (November 1998) Special Issue: Petrus Hispanus Lectures 1998: o Mental e o Físico, Guest Editors: Joao Branquinho; M. S. Lourenço
Volume 1 (1998): Issue 5-1 (June 1998) Special Issue: Language, Logic and Mind Forum, Guest Editors: Joao Branquinho; M. S. Lourenço
Published Online: 31 Dec 2018 Page range: 91 - 100
Abstract
Abstract
The claim that zombies are conceivable is a premise of one of the most important anti-physicalist arguments. Eric Marcus (2004) challenges that premise in two novel ways. He observes that conceiving of zombies would require imagining total subjective absence. And this, he argues, we cannot do. However, his argument turns on the assumption that absence is imaginable only against a background of presence and, I argue, that assumption is dubious. Second, he proposes that the premise’s intuitive plausibility derives from a scope confusion. However, I argue, on reflection that proposal is untenable.
Published Online: 31 Dec 2018 Page range: 101 - 113
Abstract
Abstract
Qualia realists hold that experience’s phenomenal character is a non-representational property of experience, what they call qualia. Representationalists hold that phenomenal character is a representational property of experience — there are no qualia (in this particular sense of the word). The transparency of qualia to introspection would seem to count as reason for rejecting qualia realism and favouring representationalism. Sydney Shoemaker defends a middle ground, call it moderate qualia realism, which seems to provide a response to the problem of transparency that in consistent with qualia realism. According to this view, while phenomenal character is a representational property of experience, it is determined by certain non-representational properties of experience, namely qualia. Shoemaker explains the apparent transparency of qualia by claiming that, while qualia are not directly introspectible, they are indirectly introspectible. I argue that neither Shoemaker’s moderate qualia realism nor his account of indirect introspection provide the qualia realist with a plausible solution to the problem of transparency.
Published Online: 31 Dec 2018 Page range: 115 - 130
Abstract
Abstract
Direct Doxastic Voluntarism — the notion that we have direct (un-mediated) voluntary control over our beliefs — has widely been held to be false. There are, however, two ways to interpret the impossibility of our having doxastic control: as either a conceptual/ logical/metaphysical impossibility or as a psychological impossibility. In this paper I analyse the arguments for (Williams 1973; Scott-Kakures 1993; Adler 2002) and against (Bennett 1990;Radcliffe 1997) both types of claim and, in particular, evaluate the bearing that putative cases of self-deception have on the arguments in defence of voluntarism about belief. For it would seem that if it is the case that self-induced cases of self-deception are indeed possible, then voluntarism about belief could be true after all. Bennett claims that Williams’ argument for the impossibility case proves too much in that if it is successful in ruling out direct doxastic voluntarism, it is also successful in ruling out cases of indirect doxastic voluntarism. If cases of self-deception can also be cases of indirect doxastic voluntarism, then such cases support the argument against the impossibility case. I argue that Bennett is right in claiming that Williams’ argument proves too much, that cases of self-deception are indeed also sometimes cases of indirect self-deception and so that they cause genuine trouble for the conceptual impossibility case. However, I also argue that this is the only genuine worry for Williams’ argument. I end, while considering whether cases of self-deception can tell us anything about the psychological possibility of direct doxastic control, by suggesting a way of establishing the conceptual impossibility of direct doxastic control that circumvents Bennett’s counter-argument.
Published Online: 31 Dec 2018 Page range: 131 - 137
Abstract
Abstract
I argue that the solution to the Red Hat Problem, a puzzle derived from interactive epistemic logic, requires S5. Interactive epistemic logic is set out in formal terms, and an attempt to solve the red hat puzzle is made in Kτσ, Kρτ, and Kρσ, each of which fails, showing that a stronger system, Kτσρ is required.
The claim that zombies are conceivable is a premise of one of the most important anti-physicalist arguments. Eric Marcus (2004) challenges that premise in two novel ways. He observes that conceiving of zombies would require imagining total subjective absence. And this, he argues, we cannot do. However, his argument turns on the assumption that absence is imaginable only against a background of presence and, I argue, that assumption is dubious. Second, he proposes that the premise’s intuitive plausibility derives from a scope confusion. However, I argue, on reflection that proposal is untenable.
Qualia realists hold that experience’s phenomenal character is a non-representational property of experience, what they call qualia. Representationalists hold that phenomenal character is a representational property of experience — there are no qualia (in this particular sense of the word). The transparency of qualia to introspection would seem to count as reason for rejecting qualia realism and favouring representationalism. Sydney Shoemaker defends a middle ground, call it moderate qualia realism, which seems to provide a response to the problem of transparency that in consistent with qualia realism. According to this view, while phenomenal character is a representational property of experience, it is determined by certain non-representational properties of experience, namely qualia. Shoemaker explains the apparent transparency of qualia by claiming that, while qualia are not directly introspectible, they are indirectly introspectible. I argue that neither Shoemaker’s moderate qualia realism nor his account of indirect introspection provide the qualia realist with a plausible solution to the problem of transparency.
Direct Doxastic Voluntarism — the notion that we have direct (un-mediated) voluntary control over our beliefs — has widely been held to be false. There are, however, two ways to interpret the impossibility of our having doxastic control: as either a conceptual/ logical/metaphysical impossibility or as a psychological impossibility. In this paper I analyse the arguments for (Williams 1973; Scott-Kakures 1993; Adler 2002) and against (Bennett 1990;Radcliffe 1997) both types of claim and, in particular, evaluate the bearing that putative cases of self-deception have on the arguments in defence of voluntarism about belief. For it would seem that if it is the case that self-induced cases of self-deception are indeed possible, then voluntarism about belief could be true after all. Bennett claims that Williams’ argument for the impossibility case proves too much in that if it is successful in ruling out direct doxastic voluntarism, it is also successful in ruling out cases of indirect doxastic voluntarism. If cases of self-deception can also be cases of indirect doxastic voluntarism, then such cases support the argument against the impossibility case. I argue that Bennett is right in claiming that Williams’ argument proves too much, that cases of self-deception are indeed also sometimes cases of indirect self-deception and so that they cause genuine trouble for the conceptual impossibility case. However, I also argue that this is the only genuine worry for Williams’ argument. I end, while considering whether cases of self-deception can tell us anything about the psychological possibility of direct doxastic control, by suggesting a way of establishing the conceptual impossibility of direct doxastic control that circumvents Bennett’s counter-argument.
I argue that the solution to the Red Hat Problem, a puzzle derived from interactive epistemic logic, requires S5. Interactive epistemic logic is set out in formal terms, and an attempt to solve the red hat puzzle is made in Kτσ, Kρτ, and Kρσ, each of which fails, showing that a stronger system, Kτσρ is required.