When someone is in a conscious state, must they be aware of it? The Buddhist philosopher Dignāga ... more When someone is in a conscious state, must they be aware of it? The Buddhist philosopher Dignāga offers a brilliant route to answering this question by leveraging the role awareness might play as a constraint on memory. I begin by clarifying his strategy and what conclusions it might be used to establish, and then turn to explain why it fails. The first main problem is that, contrary to his contemporary defenders, there is no good way to use it to reach a conclusion about all conscious states. The second main problem is that the proposed awareness constraint on memory is highly problematic, in tension both with ancient objections as well as current psychology.
The massive debate in philosophy and psychology and neuroscience about higher-order theories of c... more The massive debate in philosophy and psychology and neuroscience about higher-order theories of consciousness has not adequately distinguished between the following two claims:
(Necessary Awareness): For any conscious mental state M and subject S, if S is in M, then S is aware of M.
(The Higher-Order Theory): For any conscious mental state M and subject S, if S is in M, then M is conscious because S is aware of M.
While I will assume that the first claim is true, I will argue that we should reject higher-order theories of consciousness. We should turn them on their head to go with the following theory:
(The Ascending Road): For any conscious mental state M and subject S, if S is in M, then S is aware of M because M is conscious.
In this paper I develop the idea that, by answering the question whether p, you can answer the qu... more In this paper I develop the idea that, by answering the question whether p, you can answer the question whether you believe that p. In particular, I argue that judging that p is a fallible yet basic guide to whether one believes that p. I go on to defend my view from an important skeptical challenge, according to which my view would make it too easy to reject skeptical hypotheses about our access to our minds. I close by responding to the opposing view on which our beliefs themselves constitute our only source of first-person access to our beliefs.
I set out the standard view about alleged examples of failure of transmission of warrant, respond... more I set out the standard view about alleged examples of failure of transmission of warrant, respond to two cases for the view, and argue that the view is false. The first argument for the view neglects the distinction between believing a proposition on the basis of a justification, and merely having a justification to believe a proposition. The second argument for the view neglects the position that one's justification for believing a conclusion can be one's premise for the conclusion, rather than simply one's justification for the premise. Finally, the view is false since it is inconsistent with the closure of knowledge as closure is properly understood.
this paper examines how new evil demon problems could arise for our access to the internal world ... more this paper examines how new evil demon problems could arise for our access to the internal world of our own minds. I start by arguing that the internalist/externalist debate in epistemology has been widely misconstrued-we need to reconfigure the debate in order to see how it can arise about our access to the internal world. I then argue for the coherence of scenarios of radical deception about our own minds, and I use them to defend a properly formulated internalist view about our access to our minds. The overarching lesson is that general epistemology and the specialized epistemology of introspection need to talk-each has much to learn from each other. Suppose you're not radically deceived by an evil demon, and consider your counterpart who is. Things seem just the same way to your twin as they do to you, and your twin has the same beliefs about how things are as you, but your twin is in general not reliable about how things around them are. Are their beliefs about the external world still just as justified as yours? If your answer is "yes," you are an internalist in epistemology. If your answer is "no," you are an externalist in epistemology. (If your answer is "maybe," it is time to pick a side.) The case I have just described poses the "new evil demon" problem in epistemology, introduced by Cohen and Lehrer (1983). The problem arises for * For their help with this paper, I'd like to thank
If our experiences are cognitively penetrable, they can be inf luenced by our antecedent expectat... more If our experiences are cognitively penetrable, they can be inf luenced by our antecedent expectations, beliefs, or other cognitive states. Theorists such as Churchland, Fodor, Macpherson, and Siegel have debated whether and how our cognitive states might inf luence our perceptual experiences, as well as how any such inf luences might affect the ability of our experiences to justify our beliefs about the external world. This article surveys views about the nature of cognitive penetration, the epistemological consequences of denying cognitive penetration, and the epistemological consequences of affirming cognitive penetration.
Zardini, and an anonymous referee. 1 One might protest that there are further differences between... more Zardini, and an anonymous referee. 1 One might protest that there are further differences between the sighted subject and the blindsighted subject which explain the epistemic difference between them. For example, one might resist the idea that there is such a thing as unconscious perception, and explain the epistemic privilege of the sighted subject simply in terms of the fact that she sees a ball (for discussion of whether there is unconscious perception, see Merikle 2001 and Dretske 2006). To respond to this suggestion, we may compare the blindsighted subject with someone who has a perfect hallucination that a ball is present, with no indication that anything is amiss. Provided that such a subject has more justification than a blindsighted sighted subject to believe that a ball is present, consciousness without seeing does have an epistemic role to play after all. 2 The crucial point is not just that they have some phenomenal character or the other, instead different experiences will justify different propositions in part in virtue of differences between their phenomenal characters. The point isn't merely that the "lights must be on" in the subject.
There has been much debate about whether visual experiences have high-level contents, such as the... more There has been much debate about whether visual experiences have high-level contents, such as the content that something is a lemon, or that one event is a cause of another, or that someone is in pain. (For our purposes, I will simplify and say that a high-level content of an experience is any content of an experience that concerns more than color, shape, and location.) If visual experiences have high-level contents-my focus will be on the visual-then there are more ways for them to misrepresent than one might have thought. If someone is merely pretending to be in pain, or the plastic juice container is not a lemon, then your experience of them could be inaccurate even if your experience is entirely accurate with respect to color, shape, and location. Although there is much more to be said to clarify and to adjudicate the debate (see e.g. Siegel 2006, the papers collected in MacPherson and Hawley 2009, and Masrour 2011), my aim in this paper is to survey its wider significance. As a counterfactual historian might ask, "what if Germany had won the second world war?", I will ask-less momentously-"what if experiences had high-level content?" The debate is of great significance concerning the nature of perception. Consider classic sense-data views which accept
Suppose our visual experiences immediately justify some of our beliefs about the external world, ... more Suppose our visual experiences immediately justify some of our beliefs about the external world, that is, justify them in a way that does not rely on our having independent reason to hold any background belief. A key question now arises: which of our beliefs about the external world can be immediately justified by experiences? I address this question in epistemology by doing some philosophy of mind. In particular, I evaluate the proposal that, if your experience E immediately justifies you in believing that P, then (i) E has the content that P, and (ii) E's having the content that P is fixed by what it's like to have E. I start by clarifying this proposal and showing how it can be defended. I then argue against the proposal and develop an alternative. The discussion shows what role visual consciousness plays (and doesn't play) in the justification of perceptual beliefs.
This paper evaluates the prospects of harnessing "anti-individualism" about the contents of perce... more This paper evaluates the prospects of harnessing "anti-individualism" about the contents of perceptual states to give an account of the epistemology of perception, making special reference to Tyler Burge's 2003 paper, "Perceptual Entitlement". I start by clarifying what kind of warrant is provided by perceptual experience, and I go on to survey different ways one might explain the warrant provided by perceptual experience in terms of anti-individualist views about the individuation of perceptual states. I close by motivating accounts which instead give a more prominent role to consciousness.
The evil demon in the lab: skepticism, introspection, and introspection of introspection, 2020
In part one, I clarify the crucial notion of "introspection", and give novel cases for the cohere... more In part one, I clarify the crucial notion of "introspection", and give novel cases for the coherence of scenarios of local and global deception about how we access our own minds, drawing on empirical work. In part two, I evaluate a series of skeptical arguments based on such scenarios of error, and in each case explain why the skeptical argument fails. The first main upshot is that we should not overestimate what it takes to introspect: introspection need not be accurate, or non-inferential, or exclusive of perception, or even exclusive of confabulation. The second main upshot is that, while skeptical challenges by figures such as Carruthers, Doris, and Schwitzgebel are rich and empirically informed, these skeptical challenges founder on how they are epistemologically under-informed.
Suppose that, having concluded that there’s an external world, Moore forges on, and reasons along... more Suppose that, having concluded that there’s an external world, Moore forges on, and reasons along the following lines:
This paper examines how new evil demon problems could arise for our access to the internal world ... more This paper examines how new evil demon problems could arise for our access to the internal world of our own minds. I start by arguing that the internalist/externalist debate in epistemology has been widely misconstrued---we need to reconfigure the debate in order to see how it can arise about our access to the internal world. I then argue for the coherence of scenarios of radical deception about our own minds, and I use them to defend a properly formulated internalist view about our access to our minds. The overarching lesson is that general epistemology and the specialized epistemology of introspection need to talk---each has much to learn from each other.
In cases of cognitive penetration, the way you see the world is shaped by your prior expectations... more In cases of cognitive penetration, the way you see the world is shaped by your prior expectations or other cognitive states. But what is cognitive penetration exactly? What are the consequences for epistemology if it sometimes happens? What are the consequences for epistemology if it never happens?
This paper surveys answers to these questions and argues that cognitive penetration has implications for epistemology whether it ever happens or not.
This Stanford Encyclopedia entry surveys interactions between the epistemology of perception and ... more This Stanford Encyclopedia entry surveys interactions between the epistemology of perception and the philosophy of mind.
1 We focus on the visual case, leaving it to the reader to consider how the discussion generalize... more 1 We focus on the visual case, leaving it to the reader to consider how the discussion generalizes to other modalities. 2 concerned how the transition from introspective beliefs to external--world beliefs could be rational. 2 In this entry, we assume without argument these positions are mistaken. We begin from the assumption that experiences (such as the one you have when you see the mustard) can justify external world beliefs about the things you see, such as beliefs that the mustard jar is in the fridge, and that the justification experience provides does not have to rely on justification for introspective beliefs. From now on, we often let it remain implicit that we are talking about external world beliefs, when we talk about the kind of beliefs that experiences justify. 3 Our main question is this: what features of experiences explain how they justify external world beliefs? The grammar of the question might suggest that experiences suffice all by themselves to provide justification for external world beliefs. But don't read this into the grammar of the phrase "experiences justify beliefs". We can distinguish between the claim that an experience can justify a belief that P, and the claim that an experience can justify a belief that P without help from other features it only contingently has. We clarify our question further in Part I, where we explain why we have chosen this point of departure, and highlight a range of theses about the role of experience in providing different types of justification. In Parts II and III, we consider the role of features of experience falling into two broad categories: constitutive features of experience, including its phenomenal character, its contents, its status as attentive or inattentive (sections 3--7); and causal features of experience such as its reliability, and the impact of other mental states on its formation (sections 8--10). Along the way, we discuss the relationships between visual experience and seeing (sections 1 and 8), and we contrast perceptual justification and perceptual knowledge (section 9).
Suppose our visual experiences immediately justify some of our beliefs about the external world, ... more Suppose our visual experiences immediately justify some of our beliefs about the external world, that is, justify them in a way that does not rely on our having independent reason to hold any background belief. A key question now arises: which of our beliefs about the external world can be immediately justified by experiences? I address this question in epistemology by doing some philosophy of mind. In particular, I evaluate the proposal that, if your experience E immediately justifies you in believing that P, then (i) E has the content that P, and (ii) E's having the content that P is fixed by what it's like to have E. I start by clarifying this proposal and showing how it can be defended. I then argue against the proposal and develop an alternative. The discussion shows what role visual consciousness plays (and doesn't play) in the justification of perceptual beliefs.
When someone is in a conscious state, must they be aware of it? The Buddhist philosopher Dignāga ... more When someone is in a conscious state, must they be aware of it? The Buddhist philosopher Dignāga offers a brilliant route to answering this question by leveraging the role awareness might play as a constraint on memory. I begin by clarifying his strategy and what conclusions it might be used to establish, and then turn to explain why it fails. The first main problem is that, contrary to his contemporary defenders, there is no good way to use it to reach a conclusion about all conscious states. The second main problem is that the proposed awareness constraint on memory is highly problematic, in tension both with ancient objections as well as current psychology.
The massive debate in philosophy and psychology and neuroscience about higher-order theories of c... more The massive debate in philosophy and psychology and neuroscience about higher-order theories of consciousness has not adequately distinguished between the following two claims:
(Necessary Awareness): For any conscious mental state M and subject S, if S is in M, then S is aware of M.
(The Higher-Order Theory): For any conscious mental state M and subject S, if S is in M, then M is conscious because S is aware of M.
While I will assume that the first claim is true, I will argue that we should reject higher-order theories of consciousness. We should turn them on their head to go with the following theory:
(The Ascending Road): For any conscious mental state M and subject S, if S is in M, then S is aware of M because M is conscious.
In this paper I develop the idea that, by answering the question whether p, you can answer the qu... more In this paper I develop the idea that, by answering the question whether p, you can answer the question whether you believe that p. In particular, I argue that judging that p is a fallible yet basic guide to whether one believes that p. I go on to defend my view from an important skeptical challenge, according to which my view would make it too easy to reject skeptical hypotheses about our access to our minds. I close by responding to the opposing view on which our beliefs themselves constitute our only source of first-person access to our beliefs.
I set out the standard view about alleged examples of failure of transmission of warrant, respond... more I set out the standard view about alleged examples of failure of transmission of warrant, respond to two cases for the view, and argue that the view is false. The first argument for the view neglects the distinction between believing a proposition on the basis of a justification, and merely having a justification to believe a proposition. The second argument for the view neglects the position that one's justification for believing a conclusion can be one's premise for the conclusion, rather than simply one's justification for the premise. Finally, the view is false since it is inconsistent with the closure of knowledge as closure is properly understood.
this paper examines how new evil demon problems could arise for our access to the internal world ... more this paper examines how new evil demon problems could arise for our access to the internal world of our own minds. I start by arguing that the internalist/externalist debate in epistemology has been widely misconstrued-we need to reconfigure the debate in order to see how it can arise about our access to the internal world. I then argue for the coherence of scenarios of radical deception about our own minds, and I use them to defend a properly formulated internalist view about our access to our minds. The overarching lesson is that general epistemology and the specialized epistemology of introspection need to talk-each has much to learn from each other. Suppose you're not radically deceived by an evil demon, and consider your counterpart who is. Things seem just the same way to your twin as they do to you, and your twin has the same beliefs about how things are as you, but your twin is in general not reliable about how things around them are. Are their beliefs about the external world still just as justified as yours? If your answer is "yes," you are an internalist in epistemology. If your answer is "no," you are an externalist in epistemology. (If your answer is "maybe," it is time to pick a side.) The case I have just described poses the "new evil demon" problem in epistemology, introduced by Cohen and Lehrer (1983). The problem arises for * For their help with this paper, I'd like to thank
If our experiences are cognitively penetrable, they can be inf luenced by our antecedent expectat... more If our experiences are cognitively penetrable, they can be inf luenced by our antecedent expectations, beliefs, or other cognitive states. Theorists such as Churchland, Fodor, Macpherson, and Siegel have debated whether and how our cognitive states might inf luence our perceptual experiences, as well as how any such inf luences might affect the ability of our experiences to justify our beliefs about the external world. This article surveys views about the nature of cognitive penetration, the epistemological consequences of denying cognitive penetration, and the epistemological consequences of affirming cognitive penetration.
Zardini, and an anonymous referee. 1 One might protest that there are further differences between... more Zardini, and an anonymous referee. 1 One might protest that there are further differences between the sighted subject and the blindsighted subject which explain the epistemic difference between them. For example, one might resist the idea that there is such a thing as unconscious perception, and explain the epistemic privilege of the sighted subject simply in terms of the fact that she sees a ball (for discussion of whether there is unconscious perception, see Merikle 2001 and Dretske 2006). To respond to this suggestion, we may compare the blindsighted subject with someone who has a perfect hallucination that a ball is present, with no indication that anything is amiss. Provided that such a subject has more justification than a blindsighted sighted subject to believe that a ball is present, consciousness without seeing does have an epistemic role to play after all. 2 The crucial point is not just that they have some phenomenal character or the other, instead different experiences will justify different propositions in part in virtue of differences between their phenomenal characters. The point isn't merely that the "lights must be on" in the subject.
There has been much debate about whether visual experiences have high-level contents, such as the... more There has been much debate about whether visual experiences have high-level contents, such as the content that something is a lemon, or that one event is a cause of another, or that someone is in pain. (For our purposes, I will simplify and say that a high-level content of an experience is any content of an experience that concerns more than color, shape, and location.) If visual experiences have high-level contents-my focus will be on the visual-then there are more ways for them to misrepresent than one might have thought. If someone is merely pretending to be in pain, or the plastic juice container is not a lemon, then your experience of them could be inaccurate even if your experience is entirely accurate with respect to color, shape, and location. Although there is much more to be said to clarify and to adjudicate the debate (see e.g. Siegel 2006, the papers collected in MacPherson and Hawley 2009, and Masrour 2011), my aim in this paper is to survey its wider significance. As a counterfactual historian might ask, "what if Germany had won the second world war?", I will ask-less momentously-"what if experiences had high-level content?" The debate is of great significance concerning the nature of perception. Consider classic sense-data views which accept
Suppose our visual experiences immediately justify some of our beliefs about the external world, ... more Suppose our visual experiences immediately justify some of our beliefs about the external world, that is, justify them in a way that does not rely on our having independent reason to hold any background belief. A key question now arises: which of our beliefs about the external world can be immediately justified by experiences? I address this question in epistemology by doing some philosophy of mind. In particular, I evaluate the proposal that, if your experience E immediately justifies you in believing that P, then (i) E has the content that P, and (ii) E's having the content that P is fixed by what it's like to have E. I start by clarifying this proposal and showing how it can be defended. I then argue against the proposal and develop an alternative. The discussion shows what role visual consciousness plays (and doesn't play) in the justification of perceptual beliefs.
This paper evaluates the prospects of harnessing "anti-individualism" about the contents of perce... more This paper evaluates the prospects of harnessing "anti-individualism" about the contents of perceptual states to give an account of the epistemology of perception, making special reference to Tyler Burge's 2003 paper, "Perceptual Entitlement". I start by clarifying what kind of warrant is provided by perceptual experience, and I go on to survey different ways one might explain the warrant provided by perceptual experience in terms of anti-individualist views about the individuation of perceptual states. I close by motivating accounts which instead give a more prominent role to consciousness.
The evil demon in the lab: skepticism, introspection, and introspection of introspection, 2020
In part one, I clarify the crucial notion of "introspection", and give novel cases for the cohere... more In part one, I clarify the crucial notion of "introspection", and give novel cases for the coherence of scenarios of local and global deception about how we access our own minds, drawing on empirical work. In part two, I evaluate a series of skeptical arguments based on such scenarios of error, and in each case explain why the skeptical argument fails. The first main upshot is that we should not overestimate what it takes to introspect: introspection need not be accurate, or non-inferential, or exclusive of perception, or even exclusive of confabulation. The second main upshot is that, while skeptical challenges by figures such as Carruthers, Doris, and Schwitzgebel are rich and empirically informed, these skeptical challenges founder on how they are epistemologically under-informed.
Suppose that, having concluded that there’s an external world, Moore forges on, and reasons along... more Suppose that, having concluded that there’s an external world, Moore forges on, and reasons along the following lines:
This paper examines how new evil demon problems could arise for our access to the internal world ... more This paper examines how new evil demon problems could arise for our access to the internal world of our own minds. I start by arguing that the internalist/externalist debate in epistemology has been widely misconstrued---we need to reconfigure the debate in order to see how it can arise about our access to the internal world. I then argue for the coherence of scenarios of radical deception about our own minds, and I use them to defend a properly formulated internalist view about our access to our minds. The overarching lesson is that general epistemology and the specialized epistemology of introspection need to talk---each has much to learn from each other.
In cases of cognitive penetration, the way you see the world is shaped by your prior expectations... more In cases of cognitive penetration, the way you see the world is shaped by your prior expectations or other cognitive states. But what is cognitive penetration exactly? What are the consequences for epistemology if it sometimes happens? What are the consequences for epistemology if it never happens?
This paper surveys answers to these questions and argues that cognitive penetration has implications for epistemology whether it ever happens or not.
This Stanford Encyclopedia entry surveys interactions between the epistemology of perception and ... more This Stanford Encyclopedia entry surveys interactions between the epistemology of perception and the philosophy of mind.
1 We focus on the visual case, leaving it to the reader to consider how the discussion generalize... more 1 We focus on the visual case, leaving it to the reader to consider how the discussion generalizes to other modalities. 2 concerned how the transition from introspective beliefs to external--world beliefs could be rational. 2 In this entry, we assume without argument these positions are mistaken. We begin from the assumption that experiences (such as the one you have when you see the mustard) can justify external world beliefs about the things you see, such as beliefs that the mustard jar is in the fridge, and that the justification experience provides does not have to rely on justification for introspective beliefs. From now on, we often let it remain implicit that we are talking about external world beliefs, when we talk about the kind of beliefs that experiences justify. 3 Our main question is this: what features of experiences explain how they justify external world beliefs? The grammar of the question might suggest that experiences suffice all by themselves to provide justification for external world beliefs. But don't read this into the grammar of the phrase "experiences justify beliefs". We can distinguish between the claim that an experience can justify a belief that P, and the claim that an experience can justify a belief that P without help from other features it only contingently has. We clarify our question further in Part I, where we explain why we have chosen this point of departure, and highlight a range of theses about the role of experience in providing different types of justification. In Parts II and III, we consider the role of features of experience falling into two broad categories: constitutive features of experience, including its phenomenal character, its contents, its status as attentive or inattentive (sections 3--7); and causal features of experience such as its reliability, and the impact of other mental states on its formation (sections 8--10). Along the way, we discuss the relationships between visual experience and seeing (sections 1 and 8), and we contrast perceptual justification and perceptual knowledge (section 9).
Suppose our visual experiences immediately justify some of our beliefs about the external world, ... more Suppose our visual experiences immediately justify some of our beliefs about the external world, that is, justify them in a way that does not rely on our having independent reason to hold any background belief. A key question now arises: which of our beliefs about the external world can be immediately justified by experiences? I address this question in epistemology by doing some philosophy of mind. In particular, I evaluate the proposal that, if your experience E immediately justifies you in believing that P, then (i) E has the content that P, and (ii) E's having the content that P is fixed by what it's like to have E. I start by clarifying this proposal and showing how it can be defended. I then argue against the proposal and develop an alternative. The discussion shows what role visual consciousness plays (and doesn't play) in the justification of perceptual beliefs.
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Papers by Nico Silins
(Necessary Awareness): For any conscious mental state M and subject S, if S is in M, then S is aware of M.
(The Higher-Order Theory): For any conscious mental state M and subject S, if S is in M, then M is conscious because S is aware of M.
While I will assume that the first claim is true, I will argue that we should reject higher-order theories of consciousness. We should turn them on their head to go with the following theory:
(The Ascending Road): For any conscious mental state M and subject S, if S is in M, then S is aware of M because M is conscious.
This paper surveys answers to these questions and argues that cognitive penetration has implications for epistemology whether it ever happens or not.
(Necessary Awareness): For any conscious mental state M and subject S, if S is in M, then S is aware of M.
(The Higher-Order Theory): For any conscious mental state M and subject S, if S is in M, then M is conscious because S is aware of M.
While I will assume that the first claim is true, I will argue that we should reject higher-order theories of consciousness. We should turn them on their head to go with the following theory:
(The Ascending Road): For any conscious mental state M and subject S, if S is in M, then S is aware of M because M is conscious.
This paper surveys answers to these questions and argues that cognitive penetration has implications for epistemology whether it ever happens or not.