Stephane DiasRelated papers
Philosophy and the cognitive sciences. Proceedings of the 16th international Wittgenstein symposium, August 15-22, 1993, Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria
Appendix 409 423 443 459 463
The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 by Michael Starks (2016).pdf
This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and the most important and longest within the last year. Also I have edited them to bring them up to date (2016). The copyright page has the date of this first edition and new editions will be noted there as I edit old articles or add new ones. All the articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., human ecology and psychology) in school, maybe civilization would have a chance. In my view these articles and reviews have many novel and highly useful elements, in that they use my own version of the recently (ca. 1980’s) developed dual systems view of our brain and behavior to lay out a logical system of rationality (personality, psychology, mind, language, behavior, thought, reasoning, reality etc.) that is sorely lacking in the behavioral sciences (psychology, philosophy, literature, politics, anthropology, history, economics, sociology etc.). The philosophy centers around the two writers I have found the most important, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, whose ideas I combine and extend within the dual system (two systems of thought) framework that has proven so useful in recent thinking and reasoning research. As I note, there is in my view essentially complete overlap between philosophy, in the strict sense of the enduring questions that concern the academic discipline, and the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (behavior). Once one has grasped Wittgenstein’s insight that there is only the issue of how the language game is to be played, one determines the Conditions of Satisfaction (what makes a statement true or satisfied etc.) and that is the end of the discussion. Now that I think I understand how the games work I have mostly lost interest in philosophy, which of course is how Wittgenstein said it should be. But since they are the result of our innate psychology, or as Wittgenstein put, it due to the lack of perspicuity of language, the problems run throughout all human discourse, so there is endless need for philosophical analysis, not only in the ‘human sciences’ of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, history, literature, religion, etc., but in the ‘hard sciences’ of physics, mathematics, and biology. It is universal to mix the language game questions with the real scientific ones as to what the empirical facts are. Scientism is ever present and the master has laid it before us long ago, i.e., Wittgenstein (hereafter W) beginning principally with the Blue and Brown Books in the early 1930’s. "Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads the philosopher into complete darkness." (BBB p18) Nevertheless, a real understanding of Wittgenstein’s work, and hence of how our psychology functions, is only beginning to spread in the second decade of the 21st century, due especially to P.M.S. Hacker (hereafter H) and Daniele Moyal-Sharrock (hereafter DMS), but also to many others, some of the more prominent of whom I mention in the articles. When I read ‘On Certainty’ a few years ago I characterized it in an Amazon review as the Foundation Stone of Philosophy and Psychology and the most basic document for understanding behavior, and about the same time DMS was writing articles noting that it had solved the millennia old epistemological problem of how we can know anything for certain. I realized that W was the first one to grasp what is now characterized as the two systems or dual systems of thought, and I generated a dual systems (S1 and S2) terminology which I found to be very powerful in describing behavior. I took the small table that John Searle (hereafter S) had been using, expanded it greatly, and found later that it integrated perfectly with the framework being used by various current workers in thinking and reasoning research. Since they were published individually, I have tried to make the book reviews and articles stand by themselves, insofar as possible, and this accounts for the repetition of various sections, notably the table and its explanation. I start with a short article that presents the table of intentionality and briefly describes its terminology and background. Next, is by far the longest article, which attempts a survey of the work of W and S as it relates to the table and so to an understanding or description (not explanation as W insisted) of behavior. The key to everything about us is biology, and it is obliviousness to it that leads millions of smart educated people like Obama, Chomsky, Clinton and the Pope to espouse suicidal utopian ideals that inexorably lead straight to Hell On Earth. As W noted, it is what is always before our eyes that is the hardest to see. We live in the world of conscious deliberative linguistic System 2, but it is unconscious, automatic reflexive System 1 that rules. This is Searle’s The Phenomenological Illusion (TPI), Pinker’s Blank Slate and Tooby and Cosmides Standard Social Science Model. Democracy and equality are wonderful ideals, but without strict controls, selfishness and stupidity gain the upper hand and soon destroy any nation and any world that adopts them. The monkey mind steeply discounts the future, and so we sell our children’s heritage for temporary comforts. Thus I end with an essay on the great tragedy playing out in America and the world, which can be seen as a direct result of TPI. The astute may wonder why we cannot see System 1 at work, but it is clearly counterproductive for an animal to be thinking about or second guessing every action, and in any case there is no time for the slow, massively integrated System 2 to be involved in the constant stream of split second ‘decisions’ we must make. As W noted, our ‘thoughts’ (T1 or the thoughts of System 1) must lead directly to actions. It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves an heuristic for how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology but everything else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it, includes both conscious deliberative System 2 and unconscious automated System 1 actions or reflexes. Thus all the articles, like all behavior, are intimately connected if one knows how to look at them. As I note, The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same problem as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, but it’s clearly true. While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people’s time, they are wasting the earth. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019)
The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle - Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 Michael Starks 2nd Edition
The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle - Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 Michael Starks 2nd Edition, 2019
I provide a critical survey of some of the major findings of Wittgenstein and Searle on the logical structure of intentionality (mind, language, behavior), taking as my starting point Wittgenstein’s fundamental discovery –that all truly ‘philosophical’ problems are the same—confusions about how to use language in a particular context, and so all solutions are the same—looking at how language can be used in the context at issue so that its truth conditions (Conditions of Satisfaction or COS) are clear. The basic problem is that one can say anything but one cannot mean (state clear COS for) any arbitrary utterance and meaning is only possible in a very specific context. I analyze various writings by and about them from the perspective of the two systems of thought, employing a new table of intentionality and new dual systems nomenclature. It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves as an heuristic for, how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology, but everything else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it, includes both conscious deliberative System 2 and unconscious automated System 1 actions or reflexes. Thus, all the articles, like all behavior, are intimately connected if one knows how to look at them. As I note, The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same problem as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, (or that that they differ only in degree from drug and sex addicts in being motivated by stimulation of their frontal cortices by the delivery of dopamine (and over 100 other chemicals) via the ventral tegmentum and the nucleus accumbens), but it’s clearly true. While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people’s time, they are wasting the earth and their descendant’s future. Although there are countless books on Wittgenstein, in my view only a few very recent ones come close to a full appreciation of him. None make a serious attempt to relate his work to one of the other modern geniuses of behavior John Searle and nobody has applied the powerful two systems of thought framework to philosophical issues from the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology. I attempt to do this here.
The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in the Writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle (revised 2019)
The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 2nd Edition Michael Starks, 2019
I provide a critical survey of some of the major findings of Wittgenstein and Searle on the logical structure of intentionality(mind, language, behavior), taking as my starting point Wittgenstein’s fundamental discovery –that all truly ‘philosophical’ problems are the same—confusions about how to use language in a particular context, and so all solutions are the same—looking at how language can be used in the context at issue so that its truth conditions (Conditions of Satisfaction or COS) are clear. The basic problem is that one can say anything but one cannot mean (state clear COS for) any arbitrary utterance and meaning is only possible in a very specific context. I begin with ‘On Certainty’ and continue the analysis of recent writings by and about them from the perspective of the two systems of thought, employing a new table of intentionality and new dual systems nomenclature. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) ,The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019).
Program and Book of abstracts International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium ://100th anniversary of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus // 70th anniversary of the death of Ludwig Wittgenstein
The Late Wittgenstein and Late Husserl on Language and its Role in the Constitution of Reality , 2021
The Late Wittgenstein and Late Husserl on Language and its Role in the Constitution of Reality This article investigates the role of language in the constitution of reality in E. Husserl’s phenomenology and L. Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. I have discovered some resemblances and differences in their ideas and concepts on language and its role in the constitution of reality, and how their ideas complement each other in a few as- pects. We can find common features in such concepts as ‘languages-games’, ‘forms of life’, ‘picture of the world’, and the ‘community of monads’, ‘life–world’. Both philosophers are in their late periods interested in the same problems (intersubjective world, values, meanings, beliefs, culture) but from different points of view. Husserl suggested we “Return to the things themselves!” while Wittgenstein called us “Back to solid ground!”. These philosophies represent two ways to our living world: from consciousness and from language. Wittgenstein told us that to imagine a language is to imagine a form of life. It is what we do and who we are and what gives meaning to our life. The problem of intersubjectivity and understanding of others is central for both Wittgenstein and Husserl. Wittgenstein said: I cannot understand a lion’s language because I do not know what his world is like. I do fail in understanding because I cannot get in its mind. Husserl, in Logical Investigations, considers language as something purely external in relation to meaning. This understanding of language can be called instrumental. In his analysis, Husserl seeks to study the language with a predetermined goal: to completely subordinate it to the idea of ‘pure science’ and to distinguish the language of theory from language natural. It should become a suit- able expression tool without introducing any distortion. The role of language in phenomenological work, Husserl believes, should be minimal and generally be reduced to ‘pure expression’.
Review of The New Wittgenstein-- Crary & Read Eds 403p (2000)(review revised 2019)
The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 2nd Edition Michael Starks, 2019
Ludwig Wittgenstein is the most famous philosopher of modern times but very few understand his pioneering work and there has been a collective amnesia regarding him in recent decades. Most of the essays are new but some date as far back as 1979 and whether they give a new view of his ideas depends on one’s understanding of what he said. For me, the interpretations are not new and mostly just as confused as nearly all the other commentary on W and on human behavior throughout the behavioral sciences and by the general public. As usual, nobody seems to grasp that philosophy is armchair psychology, and that W was (in my view) the greatest natural psychologist of all time. He laid out the general structure of how the mind works, which is often referred to as intentionality and is roughly equivalent to cognition or personality or thinking and willing or higher order thought (HOT). He can thus be regarded as a pioneer in evolutionary psychology, although hardly anyone but me seems to realize it. W was thus nearly 50 years ahead of his time as the first to reject (though not entirely consistently) the blank slate or cultural view of human nature, though this has gone unrecognized and he has generally been interpreted as supporting a communal consensus view of psychology—exactly the opposite of his overall thrust (e.g., see Short’s comment on p 115). I provide a table of intentionality for a current frame of reference from the two systems point of view before remarking on each of the essays. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) ,The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019).
The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in the Writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle
Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization -- Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 3rd Ed 686p(2017)
I provide a critical survey of some of the major findings of Wittgenstein and Searle on the logical structure of intentionality(mind, language, behavior), taking as my starting point Wittgenstein's fundamental discovery –that all truly 'philosophical' problems are the same— confusions about how to use language in a particular context, and so all solutions are the same—looking at how language can be used in the context at issue so that its truth conditions (Conditions of Satisfaction or COS) are clear. The basic problem is that one can say anything but one cannot mean (state clear COS for) any arbitrary utterance and meaning is only possible in a very specific context. I begin with 'On Certainty' and continue the analysis of recent writings by and about them from the perspective of the two systems of thought, employing a new table of intentionality and new dual systems nomenclature. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my article The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle 59p(2016). For all my articles on Wittgenstein and Searle see my e-book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may consult my e-book Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 662p (2016). All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B. Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX Suicide by Democracy: an Obituary for America and the World (2018) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQVWV9C
Wittgenstein on Aspect-Seeing, the Nature of Discursive Consciousness, and the Experience of Agency
Seeing Wittgenstein Anew, 2009
The Logical Structure of Consciousness
The Logical Structure of Consciousness, 2019
It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves as an heuristic for, how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology, but everything else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it, includes both conscious deliberative linguistic System 2 and unconscious automated prelinguistic System 1 actions or reflexes. I provide a critical survey of some of the major findings of two of the most eminent students of behavior of modern times, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, on the logical structure of intentionality (mind, language, behavior), taking as my starting point Wittgenstein’s fundamental discovery –that all truly ‘philosophical’ problems are the same—confusions about how to use language in a particular context, and so all solutions are the same—looking at how language can be used in the context at issue so that its truth conditions (Conditions of Satisfaction or COS) are clear. The basic problem is that one can say anything but one cannot mean (state clear COS for) any arbitrary utterance and meaning is only possible in a very specific context. I analyze various writings by and about them from the modern perspective of the two systems of thought (popularized as ‘thinking fast, thinking slow’), employing a new table of intentionality and new dual systems nomenclature. I show that this is a powerful heuristic for describing behavior. Thus, all behavior is intimately connected if one takes the correct viewpoint. The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same problem as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, (or that that they differ only in degree from drug and sex addicts in being motivated by stimulation of their frontal cortices by the delivery of dopamine (and over 100 other chemicals) via the ventral tegmentum and the nucleus accumbens), but it’s clearly true. While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people’s time, they are wasting the earth and their descendant’s future.
Newton Fund Conference on the
Philosophies of
Mind, Language & Action
Book of Abstracts
19–23 September 2016
São Paulo
Brazil
4
Committees
Program Committee
André Bazzoni
Michelle Montague
Marco Ruffino
Luiz H. L. dos Santos
Galen Strawson
José Zalabardo
Organizing Committee
André Bazzoni
Thayse Ferreira
Rodrigo Silveira
Danilo de Souza
Bruna Thalenberg
José Zalabardo
Editors
André Bazzoni
Thayse Ferreira
6
Contents
Committees
5
Programme
11
Quine Lectures
17
Consciousness (John Searle) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Language (John Searle) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Society (John Searle) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Tutorials
19
Wittgenstein’s Theory of Judgment (José Zalabardo) . . . . . . . . 19
Free Will (Galen Strawson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Worlds and Attitudes (André Bazzoni ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Keynote Talks
What is the Attitude/Content Distinction? (Michelle Montague) .
Qualitative Physicalism (Osvaldo Pessoa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Superficially and Deeply Contingent A Priori Truths (Marco Ruffino)
Physicalist Panpsychism (Galen Strawson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Empiricist Pragmatism (José Zalabardo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
21
21
21
22
22
23
Abstracts
On function of phenomenal consciousness (Nicolás Alarcón) . . . .
Stoljar, Strawson and our Anti-physicalist intuitions (Uziel Awret) .
Can I Intend to Raise Your Arm? (Tomás Barrero) . . . . . . . . .
When did the Online Shopping occur? (Katja Behrens) . . . . . . .
Embodied Cognition: Hubert Dreyfus and Merleau-Ponty on the
Role of the Body in Intelligent Behaviour (Rodrigo Benevides)
Decision myopia: Do framing effects undermine agentive control?
(Juan Pablo Bermúdez ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Guiding Agency (Andrei Buckareff & Jesus Aguilar ) . . . . . . . .
25
25
26
27
28
7
29
29
30
Linguistic meaning in Self-regulated strategies: a doctoral research
into Mobile Assisted Language Learning (Artur Campos &
João Freitas) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dispositional essentialism and the regress of pure powers (Renato
Cani ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
How to talk about looks (Filipe Carijó) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Singular Thoughts and Natural Numbers (Pedro Carné) . . . . . .
Cognitive aspects of high-level abductive reasoning (Fabiana Carvalho) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Joint Action as Coordination (Thiago Chaves) . . . . . . . . . . . .
Unhidden situations: agreement mismatch in BrP and tough constructions (Luana de Conto) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Agency: types and implications (Stéphane Dias) . . . . . . . . . . .
Rethinking mental events. What can neuroscientific research on
consciousness tell us about the mental (Anna Drozdzewska) . .
Pure Experience and Panpsychism. Obsession and Flirt in the Philosophy of William James (Giacomo Foglietta) . . . . . . . . .
Presentation and Interpretation: the Case for Impure Cognitive
Phenomenology (Peter Forrest) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Indifference to Origins (Kim Frost) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘We’ — the subject of collective intentionality (Rodrigo Gouvea) . .
First-Person and Third-Person Content Ascriptions and Intentional
Irrealism (Amir Horowitz ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Harmonia Philosophica (Spyridon Kakos) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A Question of Method: Searle and the Logical Analysis of Linguistic
Intentionality (Hayden Kee) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Thought, language and compositionality (Raquel Krempel ) . . . . .
Linguistic Analysis in Philosophy of Science (Marina Legroski &
Álvaro Fujihara) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Representation without representations (David Lindeman) . . . . .
The Combination Problem and the Phenomenal Bond (Haoying Liu)
The Experience of Acting: an Empirical Question for Action Theory? (Beatriz Marques) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Singular thought, particular thought and de re thought: why they
are not the same thing (Filipe Martone) . . . . . . . . . . . .
Why some theories of language evolution may sound a little weird
(Fábio Mesquita) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Process and Mind: Exploring the Relationship Between Process
Philosophy and the Nonlinear Dynamical Systems Science of
Cognition (Larry Moralez ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mindless Accuracy (Alexander Morgan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8
31
32
33
34
34
35
36
37
37
38
39
40
41
41
42
43
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
The enactivist approach to consciousness (Laura Nascimento) . .
Dilemmas and implications of Individual cognition and Social cognition as an alternative path (Hugo Neri ) . . . . . . . . . . .
Mnemonic Externalism and the Extended Mind Hypothesis (Hugo
Neri & Veridiana Cordeiro) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Can Neuroscience Help Select the Correct Metamorality? (Thomas
Noah) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Biocommunication (Hyungrae Noh & Carrie Figdor ) . . . . . . .
Some remarks concerning Internal Realism in the Philosophy of
History (Jacinto Páez ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Eliminating Epistemic Possibilities (Meagan Phillips) . . . . . . .
How do we refer to events, facts and states of affairs? (Ana Clara
Polakof ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Abandoning the concept of causal reduction (Tárik Prata) . . . .
Do the Laws of Physics Lie? The Representational (Metaphysical)
Limitations of Science and its Implication for Interdisciplinary
Discourse (Finney Premkumar ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Why Are You Laughing? (On Humour) (Marion Renauld & Fabien
Schang) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
How the laws of semantics lie (Kevin Richardson) . . . . . . . . .
Action Theory, Causal Exclusion, and Two Concepts of Causation
(Matthias Rolffs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Shared intentionality: from dominance to equality (Alejandro Rosas
& Juan Pablo Bermúdez ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A Naturalistic Account of Morality (Derya Sakin) . . . . . . . . .
Perceptual Experiences and Aspect (Sebastián Sanhueza) . . . . .
Wittgenstein’s Criticism of Russell’s Theory of Judgment (Antonio
Segatto) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Quinean holism (Leonardo Soutello) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Externalist solutions to the intentional matter: the rise of language
in Frege, Wittgenstein and Haroldo de Campos (Vanessa Temporal & Franco Sandanello) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Different conceptions of Representations in Fodor and Searle (Rogerio Teza) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Knowledge, Storytelling, and the Fallacy of the Affective Fallacy
(Flannery Wilson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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10
Programme
Monday 19
MA
Tuesday 20
MA
Wednesday 21
MA
Thursday 22
FFLCH
Friday 23
FFLCH
Registration
09:00–09:45
Quine Lecture 2
Searle
10:30–12:00
Quine Lecture 3
Searle
10:30–12:00
Contributed 1
10:00–11:00
Contributed 4
08:30–10:00
Opening
09:45–10:30
LUNCH
12:00–13:30
LUNCH
12:00–13:00
COFFEE
11:00–11:30
COFFEE
10:00–10:30
Quine Lecture 1
Searle
10:30–12:00
Tutorial 1
Zalabardo
13:30–15:30
Tutorial 3
Bazzoni
13:00–15:00
Release
Quine, O sentido
da nova lógica
11:30–12:00
Contributed 5
10:30–12:00
LUNCH
12:00–13:30
Tutorial 2
Strawson
15:30–16:30
COFFEE
15:00–15:30
LUNCH
12:00–13:30
LUNCH
12:00–13:30
Tutorial 1
Zalabardo
13:30–15:30
COFFEE
16:30–17:00
Invited 1
Ruffino
15:30–16:30
Invited 3
Strawson
13:30–14:30
Invited 4
Zalabardo
13:30–14:30
Tutorial 2
Strawson
15:30–16:30
Tutorial 2
Strawson
17:00–18:00
Invited 2
Montague
16:30–17:30
Contributed 2
14:30–16:00
Contributed 6
14:30–16:30
COFFEE
16:30–17:00
Tutorial 3
Bazzoni
18:00–19:00
Happy Hour
Skye
18:00–21:00
COFFEE
16:00–16:30
COFFEE
16:30–17:00
Contributed 3
16:30–18:00
Invited 5
Pessoa
17:00–18:00
Tutorial 2
Strawson
17:00–18:00
Tutorial 3
Bazzoni
18:00–19:00
Dinner
Camelo
20:00
13
Contributed 1
10:00–11:00
Contributed 2
14:30–16:00
Contributed 3
16:30–18:00
Contributed 4
08:30–10:00
Contributed 5
10:30–12:00
Contributed 6
14:30-16:30
Rolffs
10:00–10:30
Buckareff &
Aguilar
14:30–15:00
Rosas &
Bermúdez
16:30–17:00
Krempel
8:30–9:00
Carvalho
10:30–11:00
Neri
14:30–15:00
Barrero
10:30–11:00
Bermúdez
15:00–15:30
Gouvea
17:00–17:30
Carné
9:00–9:30
Dias
10:30-11:00
Premkumar
15:00–15:30
Morgan
10:00–10:30
Marques
15:30–16:00
Chaves
17:30–18:00
Martone
9:30–10:00
Moralez
11:00–11:30
Legroski &
Fujihara
15:30–16:00
Nascimento
10:30–11:00
Forrest
14:30–15:00
Liu
16:30–17:00
Kakos
8:30–9:00
Benevides
11:30–12:00
Behrens
16:00–16:30
Richardson
10:00–10:30
Alarcón
15:00–15:30
Awret
17:00–17:30
Páez
9:00–9:30
Cani
10:30–11:00
Sanhueza
14:30–15:00
Soutello
10:30–11:00
Frost
15:30–16:00
Horowitz
16:30–17:00
Foglietta
9:30–10:00
Neri & Cordeiro
11:00–11:30
Carijó
15:00–15:30
Polakof
14:30–15:00
Kee
17:00–17:30
Drozdzewska
8:30–9:00
Prata
11:30–12:00
Campos & Freitas
15:30–16:00
Segatto
15:00–15:30
Phillips
17:30–18:00
Noah
9:00–9:30
Lindeman
11:00–11:30
Conto
16:00–16:30
Sakin
9:30–10:00
Teza
11:30–12:00
Noh
14:30–15:00
Temporal &
Sandanello
15:30–16:00
Mesquita
15:00–15:30
Wilson
15:30–16:00
Renauld &
Schang
16:00–16:30
14
Quine Lectures
Consciousness
John Searle
University of California, Berkeley
Lecture 1
19 Sep
10:30-12:00
Maria Antonia
More crazy things are said about consciousness than just about any other
subject in philosophy. In this lecture I want to refute the most crazy of the
crazy things and give a correct account of the basic ontology of consciousness
as part of the real biological world.
Language
John Searle
University of California, Berkeley
For most of the past century language was at the center of philosophy.
Many people even thought that philosophy consisted in the logical analysis
of language. After all that we ought to have a kind of accounting to see how
much we achieved in all of our obsession with language. My conclusion will
be that we should think of language as a biological phenomenon and that
speaking a language is engaged in a form of rule governed activity. With this
in mind we can explain the key notions of meaning, communication and the
constitutive role of language in structuring human life and civilization.
17
Lecture 2
20 Sep
10:30-12:00
Maria Antonia
Lecture 3
21 Sep
10:30-12:00
Maria Antonia
Society
John Searle
University of California, Berkeley
One of the great scandals in intellectual life is that the methods of the
natural sciences have not given us the payoff in the study of social reality that
they have in such subjects as physics and chemistry. Why have the social
sciences been so disappointing? One reason is that the social scientists lack
an adequate account of social ontology and in that respect they literally don’t
know what they’re talking about. In this lecture I explain the nature of social
ontology and discuss some of the implications that it has for explanation in
the social sciences.
18
Tutorials
Wittgenstein’s Theory of Judgment
José Zalabardo
University College London
Tutorial 1
19-20 Sep
13:30-15:30
Maria Antonia
We will discuss the origins of Wittgenstein’s pictorial theory of propositional representation in his attempt to overcome the difficulties that he found
in Russell’s theory of judgment.
Free Will
Galen Strawson
University of Texas
I propose to consider the following theses and questions.
[1] why there is a fundamental sense in which we can’t be morally responsible
[2] why we can’t help believing that we are free and radically moral responsible
[3] why the Libet results are irrelevant to the question of free will
[4] what is the nature of mental action? how does this connect with the
general question of free will?
[5] what kind of free will is worth wanting?
[6] what are the consequences of the fact that we can’t help believing in
free will?
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Tutorial 2
19 Sep
15:30-16:30
20 Sep
15:30-16:30
17:00-18:00
Maria Antonia
Tutorial 3
19-20 Sep
18:00-19:00
21 Sep
13:00-15:00
Maria Antonia
Worlds and Attitudes
André Bazzoni
University of São Paulo & University College London
This tutorial will survey the main theories of attitude reports (focusing
on the special case of belief), in connection with their standard treatment
in terms of possible worlds. We will then discuss the possibility of analysing
belief statements (and attitutes in general) from an alternative perspective
on possible-world semantics based on partial, rather than totalistic worlds.
Time permitting, we will link our discussion to the semantic analysis of socalled mixed quotation.
20
Keynote Talks
What is the Attitude/Content Distinction?
Michelle Montague
21 Sep
16:30-17:30
Maria Antonia
University of Texas, Austin
In describing the structure of conscious intentional states, philosophers
typically appeal to what I will call the attitude/content distinction. On this
view, attitudes are understood as relations relating subjects to contents, understood as propositions or something proposition-like. I will argue that the
attitude/content distinction is not a ‘real’ metaphysical distinction. Rather,
the words and concepts we use to distinguish between the attitudes (e.g.
BELIEF, THOUGHT, DESIRE) are heuristic devices for grouping together
certain classes of phenomenological properties, which themselves determine
certain kinds of intentional content. In the end, all we have, metaphysically speaking, are phenomenological properties, intentional content, and a
determination relation between them. I will focus on belief, thought, and
perception.
Qualitative Physicalism
Osvaldo Pessoa
University of São Paulo
“Qualitative physicalism” is a view about the philosophy of mind that
combines three assumptions: the reality of qualia, ontic physicalism, and
mind-brain identity theory. The identity thesis is usually associated with the
version that privileges the theoretical physicalist description of brain processes, but we formulate it by giving priority not to the theoretical physical
description, but to the qualitative experience. The redness of the tomato is
thus considered a real qualitative physical property of the brain. Since qualitative physicalism considers that a subjective sensation is identical to a real
21
23 Sep
17:00-18:00
FFLCH
Room 8
physical quality in the brain, possibly of electrical nature, similar qualities
may be extended to non-conscious matter, in what has been named “panquality-ism”, a form of “panprotopsychism”.
21 Sep
15:30-16:30
Maria Antonia
Superficially and Deeply Contingent A Priori Truths
Marco Ruffino
State University of Campinas
In this paper, I review some standard approaches to the cases of contingent a priori truths that emerge from Kripke’s (1980) discussion of proper
names and Kaplan’s (1989) theory of indexicals. In particular, I shall discuss
Evans’ (1979) distinction between superficially and deeply contingent truths.
I shall raise some doubts about Evans’ strategy in general, and also about
the roots and meaningfulness of the distinction. Finally, I’ll try to motivate
an alternative approach.
22 Sep
13:30-14:30
FFLCH
Room 8
Physicalist Panpsychism
Galen Strawson
University of Texas
Panpsychism is a plausible theory of the fundamental nature of reality.
It is fully compatible with everything in current physics, and with physicalism. It is an error to think that being physical excludes being mental or
experiential. Anyone who endorses the following three views — [i] materialism or physicalism is true, [ii], consciousness is real, [iii] there is no ‘radical
emergence’ — should at least endorse ‘micropsychism’ or psychism, the view
that [iv] mind or consciousness is a fundamental feature of concrete reality,
already present in the most basic forms of concrete reality. And given [v]
the interconvertibility (fungibility) of all fundamental forms of physical stuff,
panpsychism appears to be the most plausible form of psychism.
22
Empiricist Pragmatism
José Zalabardo
University College London
I outline an account of truth that proceeds by specifying the rules that
govern the practice of assessing certain conscious episodes as true or false, in
contrast with representationalist accounts, which seek to explicate the notion
by identifying the property that we ascribe to one of these episodes when we
assess it as true. The rules that govern the practice are formulated in terms
of the phenomenon of conviction, as a conscious, reidentifiable reaction produced by some conscious items. I compare this proposal with the rationalist
versions of pragmatism advocated by Robert Brandom and others.
23
23 Sep
13:30-14:30
FFLCH
Room 8
24
Abstracts
On function of phenomenal consciousness
Nicolás Alarcón
Universidad Alberto Hurtado
In the last decades of research in philosophy of mind and cognitive science,
the main focus has been on how the phenomenal consciousness arises and its
relationship with neuronal processes (Block, 1995; Prinz, 2003, 2012). Is the
phenomenal consciousness an epiphenomenon that supervenes on a physical
layer? Or did the qualitative states are nothing more than the neural basis?
However, there is a question of equal importance has been marginalized, or
has attempted to answer indirectly, this is what the function of consciousness
is.
This research focuses on the biological value of phenomenal consciousness,
that is, what it is the proper function exercised. In particular, I will argue
that the phenomenal consciousness has a fundamental role in changing the
behavior of the organism possessing the trait, specifically, qualitative states
play an important role in the flexible response mechanism (FRM). With
this I seek to answer, or at least show the direction to take, concerning:
i) the contribution of a complex trait as is the phenomenal consciousness,
showing that their presence is not accidental, but rather adaptive; ii) zombies
scenarios can’t be put together, while duplicates not behave identically to the
originals (Raymore, 1997).
25
22 Sep
15:00-15:30
Room 24
22 Sep
17:00-17:30
Room 24
Stoljar, Strawson and our Anti-physicalist intuitions
Uziel Awret
Trinity Washington University
In the last chapter of his recent little book, “What kind of creatures
are we?” Noam Chomsky relates his own thinking on consciousness to a
philosophical tradition beginning with Hume, Priestly and Russell and ending
with Galen Strawson and Daniel Stoljar, all who hold that when it comes to
the mind body problem it is not just that we don’t understand mind, we do
not understand ‘body’.
Chomsky concludes that: “[...] with the collapse of the traditional notion
of body (etc.), there are basically two ways to reconstitute some problem
that resembles the traditional mind-body problem: define ‘physical’, or set
the problem up in other terms, such as those that Priestly anticipated.”
The first is pursued by Strawson’s broadening of the physical defining it as
anything that possesses a spatiotemporal existence (or at least a temporal
existence) including “experiential events” and the second by Stoljar’s ‘Ignorance Hypothesis’ “[...] according to which we are ignorant of a type of
experience-relevant nonexperiential truths, so that the ‘logical problem of
experience’ [Why is it that the phenomenal seems to both supervene and not
supervene on the physical?] unravels on epistemic grounds”.
This paper will attempt to reconcile these very different approaches in a
way that preserves their respective advantages and avoids their pitfalls.
The advantage of Stoljar’s epistemic view is that it is not a positive
view and avoids some of problematic commitments of Russelian monism, its
disadvantage (Papineau) is that it is still just as difficult to conceive of nonexperiential facts that help in any way with the conceivability argument. Here
we will try to produce a positive account of Stoljar’s view ‘light on primitive
orthodoxy’ by using a version of reflexive protopsychism which is similar
to Strawson’s Reflexive Panpsychism that can neutralize the conceivability
argument without providing a full causal explanation of consciousness.
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Can I Intend to Raise Your Arm?
Tomás Barrero
Universidad de los Andes
How to restrict the objects of intention? The Own Act Condition (OAC)
imposes a prima facie reasonable option: I can only intend my own acts. OAC
entails that the proper logical form of “intend” includes an agentive or infinitival subject-less clause: I intend to raise your arm. OAC’s foes like Ferrero
(2013) have rejected that form to propose a regular propositional account.
OAC’s supporters like Thompson have endorsed it to reject propositional
accounts. The whole semantic dispute, however, is only apparent given that
both parties implicitly accept at least one of twin theses, which have shaped
the debate. The first is descriptivism concerning practical modals: when
I say I can intend that you raise your arm “can” would serve to describe
some features of reality, the relevant elements in the context of use in assessing the that-clause. This view conflates two levels of meaning, though,
informational content and semantic value. Acceptance of it easily produces
kaplanian “monsters”. Descriptivism as to practical modals, then, seems
false. The second thesis is factualism concerning practical modality: when I
say (1) I can intend to raise your arm that would be true/false given a class of
facts about what is practically possible or necessary. Thompson (2008) identifies this class with etiological structures in reality, process or event-forms,
which can[not] cause its own parts. Practical modal judgments would, then,
be grounded in processes/mereological-facts. Against this proposal one can
argue that in (1) there is no grounding process/mereological-fact involved,
but an expression of a kind of question (in)sensitivity. You don’t care why to
move your arm. This insensitivity and not some process/mereological-fact,
rules you out as a full-blooded agent. Factualism concerning practical modalities seems false, too. In any case, OAC remains true on a non-factualistexpressivist approach to practical modalities.
27
22 Sep
10:30-11:00
Room 118
23 Sep
16:00-16:30
Room 8
When did the Online Shopping occur?
Katja Behrens
Oxford Brookes University
Online action has become a conventional form of conduct in many cultural
communities, certainly in 21st century Europe. Conceptions of how an act of
shopping is understood online are altered, but not completely removed from
offline shopping. But what does it mean for an online shopping to occur?
Indeed, what does it mean for any action to occur?
Enquiries into the matters of action occurrences evolved in the philosophy
of action. Fostering conceptions of actions as discrete, ontological objects
such as events (Bennett, 2015; Davidson, 2001; Thompson, 1971); the latter
were sought out to occur in a particular spacio-temporal location. Applied
to online actions however, the whens and whereabouts present themselves as
increasingly complex matters. Whereas I might physically move my body
to click the mouse in the UK, the bank transaction might take place in
Switzerland and the product is posted from Italy. How helpful is a question
for a particular spacio-temporal occurrence of an action then? Failures in
determining the latter recurrently rendered event-views in the philosophy of
action as problematic.
When communicating about acts of shopping, issues at stake are worked
out through daily interaction. Different questions about an action then,
highlight different senses of it. I will show that it is beneficial for action
conceptions to allow for spacio-temporal imprecision. This is, one might argue the node connecting physical theories of action and their human realities.
The answer to when any given action occurred is highly depend on inquisitive
aims of the interaction, for it is possible to precisely locate e.g. my clicking,
the posting of the parcel or the reception of the goods in space and time, but
it is dubitable whether these locations are valid proxies for the shopping as
a whole.
28
Embodied Cognition: Hubert Dreyfus and
Merleau-Ponty on the Role of the Body in Intelligent
Behaviour
Rodrigo Benevides
23 Sep
11:30-12:00
Room 8
Federal University of Ceará
Our goal here is to present the argument developed by Hubert Dreyfus on
What Computers Can’t Do (1972) about the necessity of a body in order for
intelligent behaviour to be produced. Based upon the assumption that the
work of the central nervous system relies on the existence of the locomotive
and perceptual systems, Dreyfus presents the idea — heavily influenced by
the insights formulated by Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the Phenomenology of
Perception (1945) — that the so called higher or logical type of intelligent behaviour is necessarily derived from our bodily structure and its situatedness.
The embodied mind thesis — as Francisco Varela would put it — can be seen
as an alternative to orthodox cognitivism or computational/representational
theories of mind, being the main argument for this kind of enactive or situated cognition the idea that the process of apprehension of reality comes not
only from neural processes, but from a more general, prereflective involvement of the subject’s body in relation to the environment, producing what we
could call a non-representational mode of being-in-the-world. Furthermore,
we’ll present recent views on cognition developed within the fields of neuroscience and artificial intelligence that corroborate with the thesis defended
by Dreyfus and Merleau-Ponty.
Decision myopia: Do framing effects undermine
agentive control?
Juan Pablo Bermúdez
Universidad Externado de Colombia
Recent cognitive science has stressed the ubiquity of automaticity in everyday behaviour, and philosophers have argued that automaticity’s pervasiveness does not undermine our agency. This often implies constructing
intentions as synchronic, structuring causes of action that pick out relevant
cognitive inputs and map them onto behavioural outputs relevant to a higherorder goal. Such accounts can explain how reflective processes, though slow
and resource-limited, can recruit automatic processes towards the production
of intentional actions.
29
22 Sep
15:00-15:30
Room 118
These accounts, however, do not explore the origination of intentions.
How do intentions come about, and do we have some kind of control over the
intention-production process? I argue that control over intention production
is essential for agency, by pointing to the case of scopolamine victims, who
can structure their behaviour in accordance with higher-order goals, but lack
control over the goals they pursue. We would thus not call their behaviour
‘actions’, but normal agents differ from them only in degree given automatic
phenomena like framing effects: cognitive illusions that make us shift our
preferences because of irrelevant aspects of the way the options are framed.
After illustrating the control-undermining consequences of framing effects, I rely on recent accounts of the normativity of automaticity to describe
the intuitive, automatic control underlying our decision-making. The process starts with a fully automatic phase guided by norms of affective tensiondissolution, which attributes degrees of relevance to the practical situation’s
features. Framing effects influence this initial phase. Reflection can access
only what already seems relevant, so reflecting harder is unlikely to neutralize framing effects. Accordingly, evidence suggests that modifying the
choice environment is much more efficacious than thinking harder in cancelling framing effects. This suggests that agentive control over decisions is
realized partly outside of our brains and bodies, distributed throughout our
practical environment.
22 Sep
14:30-15:00
Room 118
Guiding Agency
Andrei Buckareff & Jesus Aguilar
Rochester Institute of Technology & Marist College
In this paper we offer a blueprint for a general causal theory of agency
(“CTAg”) and put it to use as an answer to one of the standard causal
theory of action’s (“CTA”) traditional problems, namely, the problem of
action guidance. We have chosen this problem as a good way of showing
the strengths and promise of CTAg’s capacity to provide a unified answer
to fundamental problems associated with the traditional CTA. Our hope
is to make a strong prima facie case in favor of what turns out to be a
general theory of agency. In this sense, the present effort should be seen as
a prolegomenon to a much larger enterprise.
We begin by briefly rehearsing the traditional way of understanding agency
embedded in the standard story of action identified with the CTA and single
out the problem of action guidance as a serious challenge to the traditional
way of understanding agency. We then introduce some of the key features
30
that distinguish CTAg. In particular we focus on those features that help
answer the challenge of action guidance. In presenting our account, we rely
on an alternative, non-Humean view of causation and an overlooked account
of employing intentions-in-action as the source of agential control in action
guidance. Finally, we support this agential model of action guidance by
drawing from resources offered by recent work on the cognitive neuroscience
of intentional action.
Linguistic meaning in Self-regulated strategies: a
doctoral research into Mobile Assisted Language
Learning
Artur Campos & João Freitas
New University of Lisbon
Throughout the development of a doctoral thesis on the use of smartphones and tablets applications to increase second language acquisition —
English; we have researched how some specific mobile learning environments
(Beatty, 2010; Kukulska-Hume, 2009, 2012; Traxler, 2009) provide language
learning potentialities to students who are in charge of their own learning
processes (Bandura, 1986; Kili-akmak, 2010). Since the purpose of MiLAct
2016 is to discuss “the role of human activity as a crucial component of
linguistic meaning” and as the man-smartphone linguistic interaction has
been a ubiquitous and inescapable reality lately; it is adequate to see papers
researching Mobile-Assisted-Language-Learning.
As an English language and Literature university professor in Brazil, I
have been using M.A.L.L. in classrooms. Mobile-Assisted-Language-Learning
(Beatty, 2010; Kukulska-Hume, 2009) requires in its ‘ethos’ the development of characteristics that basically define Self-Regulation or Self-Regulated
Learning (Zimmerman, 1990). SRL is a principle where the proper control
to execute pedagogical attainments is taken by the student in his/her discovery learning (Bruner, 1961). According to Zimmerman (1990) in Carneiro,
Lefrere, & Steffens (2007), Self-Regulated Learning shows better results when
learners are “self-regulated to the degree that they are metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviourally active participants in their own learning process”.
This paper presents a doctoral analysis of how the app design (Banga
& Weinhold, 2014) as well as the Human Computer Interface (Bastien &
Scapin, 1993; Dix, Finlay, Abowd, & Beale, 2004) of two language learning
applications — Babbel; Speak English Daily — are developed following or
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23 Sep
15:30-16:00
Room 24
not the framework of SRL in their linguistic experiences and narratives. We
also ponder on the Content Flow (Banga & Weinhold, 2014) of these apps
for considering it a vital element that enacts right strategies to a thorough
execution of each app lesson.
23 Sep
10:30-11:00
Room 24
Dispositional essentialism and the regress of pure
powers
Renato Cani
Federal University of Paraná
According to dispositional essentialism (DE), the fundamental properties
of things are pure powers (i.e. they have dispositional essences), so that
their identities supervene on relations with other properties. I will address
two versions of regress objection which intend to undermine the dispositionalist claim. (I) Epistemological Regress: according to Swinburne (1980), in
order to recognize a power, one needs to be aware of its effect. However,
since this effect is also a power, recognizing it would require the knowledge
of further effects, and so on. Thus, Swinburne concludes that (DE) makes it
impossible to recognize any property at all. In response, I will argue that it
is possible to acknowledge a certain property without knowing all its effects.
(II) Ontological Regress: if all the properties are powers — as Bird (2007)
claims —, so the identity of property P1 relies on its power to manifest P2 ,
which is also a power. So, P2 is the power to manifest P3 , and so on. Clearly,
this leads to regress or circularity, so that the dispositional essentialist is
caught in a dilemma: if the dispositionalist admits that powers are grounded
on categorical base (first horn), she will have problems to explain how categorical properties can bestow metaphysical necessity upon laws of nature;
if, conversely, she holds that all properties are ungrounded powers (second
horn), she will have to explain how to determine properties identity without
making the circularity a vicious one. Ellis (2001) addresses the first horn,
as he regards spatiotemporal properties as categorical. Still, Bird addresses
the second one, for he claims that the identities of dispositional properties
supervene on the pattern of the relations holding between them. I will argue
that Ellis’ strategy leads to major problems, which Bird’s analysis seems to
avoid.
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How to talk about looks
Filipe Carijó
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
There is a question of whether there is a noncomparative sense of “looks”,
which is roughly the question of whether it is possible to express the ways
things look to us in experience noncomparatively (as opposed to comparatively, such as in “this looks just like red things normally do”). The question
matters because philosophers have argued from looks (in the noncomparative
sense) to perceptual content, to intentionalism and to sense-data. The traditional argument from illusion itself assumes that there is a noncomparative
sense of “looks”. And even when noncomparative looks are not explicitly invoked, belief in something like them clearly seems to be a motivation for the
content view of perceptual experience. Making substantive progress in the
philosophy of perception thus requires knowing (1) what exactly it would
take for there to be a noncomparative sense of “looks”, (2) whether there
is such a sense and (3) whether an affirmative answer to (2) entails that
perception has content. I begin by stating what it takes for there to be a
noncomparative sense of “looks”, which leads me to draw a distinction between a strong noncomparative sense and a weak noncomparative sense. I
show how a tendency to conflate them has been the source of some confusion.
I then show how an argument by Travis against the noncomparative sense of
“looks” fails. Finally, I argue that there is a noncomparative sense of “looks”
by pointing out that only if there is such a sense can we account for a crucial
aspect of the gap between the manifest image and the scientific image of the
world. This, however, is not such good news for defenders of the content
view of perception as it may seem, for it does not follow that experience has
content.
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23 Sep
15:00-15:30
Room 24
23 Sep
9:00-9:30
Room 8
Singular Thoughts and Natural Numbers
Pedro Carné
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
“Singularity” is a complex phenomenon that has generated much controversy in several areas. In this talk, I am going to focus on the phenomenon
of singularity as it occurs in thought and language when directed towards
arithmetical objects. More precisely, my aim is to approach the phenomenon
by tackling the following specific issue: what are the grounds for the claim
that there are singular thoughts about natural numbers? There are many
ways of tackling it; I will take it into account by discussing Azzouni’s theory.
Azzouni’s interest in (statements about) natural numbers is prior to his
interest in singular thoughts. He defends a deflationary nominalism regarding
the metaphysical status of mathematical abstracta. On his view, if there are
singular thoughts at all, there are singular thoughts about natural numbers.
As Azzouni puts the matter, “the mere use of a public-domain numeralname suffices to activate object-directed thought even without a (genuine)
information channel.”
I intend to analyze in this talk in which way Azzouni’s theory answers
the guiding question. To do so, I will evaluate his theoretical assumptions,
particularly the relationship between his deflationary nominalism and the
phenomenon of singular thought.
23 Sep
10:30-11:00
Room 8
Cognitive aspects of high-level abductive reasoning
Fabiana Carvalho
University of São Paulo
Abduction is triggered by an anomalous or inconsistent phenomenon that
cannot be attained on the basis of the agent’s current base-knowledge. Abductive inference is a process that includes two epistemological stages. The
first is the early and creative stage of arriving at hypothesis in which there
are merely suggestions that something may be. It is at this point that new
ideas are introduced. The second abductive stage is an inductive, late stage
of selecting hypotheses to test, to see if something generated by the creative
stage is actually operative. If no satisfactory response to the doubt is obtained at the end of the process, the agent goes back to the creative stage.
Thus, abduction is a cycling process involving hypothesis generation and
testing.
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The aim of the present work is to propose three cognitive prerequisites
that would allow the agent to engage in high-level abduction and also sustain
the progressive process over time. High-level abduction engages mechanisms
of knowledge-rich cognition to deal with causes not directly observed, and
its consequence is the transformation of the agent’s epistemic space by conceptual change. We hypothesize that the first (creative) abductive stage,
when applied to high level abduction, engages processes of metacognition,
since the agent actively looks for more information by sharing and discussing
explicit representations of cognitive processes with other people, as well as
searching for extra information in sources of cumulative culture (e.g. written
language).
We hypothesize that high-level abduction (which includes the creative
and inductive stages) demands three main cognitive aspects/mechanisms,
which we call cognitive prerequisites: Linguistic (allowing high-level conceptual abstraction, both propositional and symbolic); Temporal (allowing
combination of online and offline contextual properties in a temporally extended process); and Collective Intentionality (allowing the construction of
‘collective base-knowledge’, and sharing of explicit representations of cognitive processes between agents).
Joint Action as Coordination
Thiago Chaves
Federal University of Minas Gerais & State University of Piauı́
In a near future I will ask my personal robot to help me with some tasks.
For instance, we will change the light bulb of the kitchen together. What
is necessary for this joint action to occur? Intuitively we may say that the
robot must have a capacity to act jointly. But how should we understand
this capacity? One possibility is to understand it as essentially a cognitive
capacity. The robot must have beliefs about my preferences, intentions and
about my own beliefs about its preferences, intentions and beliefs. That is to
say that agents who act jointly must reason and act on common knowledge
of agents’s preferences, intentions and beliefs. Is this cognitive approach to
joint action correct? Searle (1990) argues that it is not, since a joint action
is not the same as an aggregate of individual actions. For a joint action to
occur intentionally there must be some kind of primitive collective intention
possessed by each agent that cannot be analysed into individual intentions
plus mutual beliefs. Drawing inspiration from Lewis’s Convention (1969),
I argue that acting jointly is the same as coordinating actions which reach
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22 Sep
17:30-18:00
Room tba
a state of coordination equilibrium, and the capacity to act jointly can be
seen as essentially based on cognitive capacities. But although joint action
as coordination may not imply cooperation, the additional capacities for
cooperative activity should not be left to background capacities, as Searle
argues. I first examine Searle’s counterexamples to a reductionist approach
to collective intentions and show that the implication of cooperation from
collective intention, as Searle conceives it, is not unproblematic. Then I
present some undesirable consequences of Searle’s analysis of “we-intend” as a
distinctive kind of attitude. These consequences are presented as implications
from his commitment to internalism.
23 Sep
16:00-16:30
Room 24
Unhidden situations: agreement mismatch in BrP and
tough constructions
Luana de Conto
Federal University of Paraná
Copular sentences of Brazilian Portuguese can sometimes present agreement mismatch between the subject and the adjective. This formal peculiarity is followed by some difference in meaning: in sentences with agreement
mismatch the property of the adjective applies to a situation involving the
subject and not the subject itself — which would be the case for sentences
with regular agreement. Our proposal is to derive this situation reading from
a fact that has remained untouched in previous analyses, the fact that this
sentences are tough-constructions. We show that the adjectives that occur
in this construction have the syntactic and semantic properties of toughpredicates. Hence, the situation reading present in sentences with agreement
mismatch is a consequence of the adjective’s selection for an infinitival complement, and the referent of the infinitive object is the same referent of the
copula subject due to the syntactic configuration. One important observation about the description of this sentences is that the situation can vary
depending on the context. This is also explained by our analysis since the
conditions on infinitive deletion for tough-constructions rely on contextual
information. We are aware that a similar analysis would also be available for
sentences with regular agreement — since the predicate would still be the
same — but we suggest that when agreement works properly the structure
is different, and that can be proved with data testing adjective modification
with except-phrases, which are only compatible with regular agreemen
36
Agency: types and implications
Stéphane Dias
23 Sep
10:30-11:00
Room 118
PhD in Linguistics — CNPq/2014-2015 & Fulbright-Capes Visiting Research
Student — RuCCS (Rutgers University)
Searle (2001) makes a distinction between desire-dependent and desireindependent reasons for action. Connected to this distinction, I assume the
existence of agent-types, considering, among other things, types of reasons
that drive agents’ behavior, centrally socially driven-agency motivated by
commitment and individually driven-agency motivated by desire. In this
talk, I will point out the linguistic base of commitment relations that ground
the restricted universe of actions available inside an agency scope and how
the model has further implications for the study of collective action.
Rethinking mental events. What can neuroscientific
research on consciousness tell us about the mental
Anna Drozdzewska
Université Catholique de Louvain
John Searle famously stated that our tradition is heavily influenced by the
dualism of mind and body, which makes it difficult to think of neurobiological
processes as having conscious and conceptual properties (Searle, 2002); he
called this conceptual dualism (Searle, 2015). The, often implicit, grip of this
type of dualism is visible not only in philosophical debates but also in the
neuroscientific experiments on notions such as free will, where, frequently,
the physical basis of the mental is not accounted for. In this presentation I
will first analyze the experiments on free will, and from there I will turn to
recent discoveries in the neuroscientific research on consciousness. I hypothesize that thinking of mental events in terms of their similarity to physical
ones suggest the existence of a localized, specialized brain region solely responsible for them. However, recent experimental data suggests that complex
phenomena, such as consciousness, are the result of global synchronous processes rather than confined to a localized brain area. I will examine those
results, focusing mainly on the Global Neuronal Workspace theory. The
broad distribution of the neurons firing in synchrony suggests that they are
connected only as far as they give rise to the mental phenomenon, for example - conscious access. Thorough the synchronous firing, the physical
processes are seen as causal, giving rise to the higher cognitive functions. In
this presentation I will suggest that all mental events are potentially a result
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8:30-9:00
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of global neuronal ignition. I will then analyze how that model fits into the
concept of emergence and if mental events could potentially be seen as causal
in this set-up. I will conclude this presentation by discussing the potential
impact such an approach would have on the concept of supervenience as the
connection between the mental and the physical.
23 Sep
9:30-10:00
Room 24
Pure Experience and Panpsychism. Obsession and
Flirt in the Philosophy of William James
Giacomo Foglietta
Independent Researcher
For all his life William James has dealt with the problem of the origin of
human consciousness from elementary forms of consciousness, and with that,
closely related, of the relationship between mind and matter. The psychology
of his time was not reductionist and framed these questions in a panpsychist
frame where the psychic was an intrinsic property of the material. Although
James repeatedly get close to panpsychism, his eventual acceptance of it
remains controversial. Indeed, he considered that such a vision was suffering from some challenging problems, and in fact he developed his original
speculative proposal, known as pure experience. Today many philosophers
of the mind are returning to the adoption of a panpsychist vision borrowed
from the early twentieth century. At the same time, there is a tendency
to read, in a more or less “strong” way, the Jamesian pure experience in a
panpsychist sense, in particular through the mediation of Whitehead. It is
not clear however if this is correct, since James has always tried to characterize his monism as “neutral”, that is, as neither material nor mental.
Although panpsychism claims to go beyond this duality, I would try to show
that it maintains a transcendentalist aspect that makes it an abnormal form
of correlationism (in the sense in which Quentin Meillassoux (2012) use this
term). In fact neutral monism born precisely to move beyond correlation,
and then its panpsychist reading coincides with the loss of its own way. And
it is precisely this loss that James has always tried to avoid.
38
Presentation and Interpretation: the Case for Impure
Cognitive Phenomenology
Peter Forrest
University of New England
In this paper, I respond to a recent puzzle presented by Michelle Montague (2015). The puzzle arises for anyone who accepts that our thoughts can
be conscious but denies the existence of sui generis cognitive phenomenology (CP). It seems the options are either that thoughts are conscious for
some reason entirely independent of phenomenology, or else they are conscious in virtue of being somehow closely associated with familiar forms of
sensory phenomenology. But the problem for the first option is that standard
non-phenomenal accounts of consciousness fail to describe a genuine form of
consciousness at all. The problem for the second option is that sensory experiences cannot make a thought conscious, because sensory phenomenology
by itself does not manifest the thought’s content to the conscious subject.
So either there is CP that makes thoughts conscious by representing their
contents, or else there is no conscious thought.
I explore the possibility of solving Montague’s Puzzle by elaborating on
Joe Levine’s suggestion that sensory experience can be “cognitively inflected”
(2011). The basic idea is that thoughts are conscious in virtue of a relation
that holds between a thought’s content and some phenomenal character,
though the phenomenal character is wholly sensory. The relevant relation
that holds is that of “interpretation”: thought contents influence how a conscious subject “takes” or “interprets” what she experiences, and thus the
content is manifest in consciousness indirectly, by affecting the subject’s
grasp of the qualitative properties that are directly manifest. Montague
briefly discusses Levine’s position, but she seems to overlook the possibility
that “cognitive inflections” are changes to sensory experience that go beyond
mere changes to the arrangement of sensory phenomenal properties — because interpreting sensory character in particular ways requires the subject
to entertain certain thoughts — but without involving the addition of novel,
irreducibly non-sensory phenomenal character.
39
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14:30-15:00
Room 24
22 Sep
15:30-16:00
Room 24
Indifference to Origins
Kim Frost
Syracuse University
Davidson’s Swampman is a useful test case. We learn about the structure of views in philosophy of mind by investigating the reasons they credit
Swampman with thought or not, at the moment it emerges from the swamp.
There is a tradition in philosophy of mind, found in the work of McDowell, Sellars, Wittgenstein, Hegel and Aristotle, that treats conceptuallyarticulated intentionality as a power of thought that one acquires by being
initiated into a social practice. It is natural to think that views in this “social practice tradition” must deny that Swampman thinks at the moment
it emerges from the swamp, because Swampman was never initiated into a
relevant social practice. This verdict counts against the plausibility of such
views, either because they seem committed to some kind of parochialism
about thought, or because they do not do justice to the way our physical
constitution sustains our powers (including our powers of thought).
I argue that views in the social practice tradition need not deny that
Swampman thinks (and thinks about what he seems to think about). The
reason is that some social practices exhibit indifference to origins. A practice
exhibits indifference to origins when it explicitly or implicitly declares acts to
fall under it when the act exhibits the right spirit, regardless of the accidents
of origin that historically led up to acts of that kind exhibiting that spirit.
Practices that exhibit indifference to origins have the resources to recognize
creatures like Swampman as already a common participant in a relevant
practice despite the fact that Swampman was not brought up in such a
practice. Views in the social practice tradition that exploit the possibility
of indifference to origins are interesting in that they can credit Swampman
with thought, but need not be “internalist” about mental content.
40
‘We’ — the subject of collective intentionality
Rodrigo Gouvea
22 Sep
17:00-17:30
Room tba
Federal University of São João Del-Rei
There are good reasons to accept that collective intentionality occurs only
when members of a group share an intentional state. The talk argues in favor of this claim, and presents a condition for sharing intentional states: an
intentional state is shared (and collective intentionality occurs) iff an attribution of the state to a group is made true by the intentional states of its
members. It follows from the mentioned condition that the subject of collective intentionality is a group whose members would correctly refer to with the
word ‘we’. Thus, a we is presented as the subject of collective intentionality.
The talk indicates then two ways of determining the membership conditions
for groups that are the subject of collective intentionality. In some cases, a
determinate and fixed set of people is considered as constituting a group, but
in most of the cases we attribute intentional states to groups whose set of
members is indeterminate and can change at any time.
First-Person and Third-Person Content Ascriptions
and Intentional Irrealism
Amir Horowitz
The Open University of Israel
The purpose of this talk is to undermine intentional realism. In part I I
argue that content ascriptions that are made from the first-person point of
view are vacuous. In Part II I argue that content ascriptions that are made
from the third-person point of view have “naturalistic” truth conditions,
and that there is something basically flawed with naturalistic reductions of
intentionality. Conjoining the conclusions of both parts yields a vindication
of a version of intentional irrealism. In part III I further clarify this version
via a discussion of the claim that intentional irrealism is self-refuting.
1. Suppose that one thinks “Grass is green”. For moving from the introspectible “Grass is green” to the (“disquoted”) proposition or content
that grass is green, I have to have an independent referential access (in
a sense to be explicated) to the content in question, that is, a thirdperson rather than merely first-person access. Purely first-person based
ascriptions are vacuous.
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16:30-17:00
Room 8
2. In scientific reductions we couple macro properties and micro properties, and the latter are supposed to have explanatory power in relation
to the former. In supposed reductions of intentionality the natural relation is not matched with intentionality in its “macro” phase but rather
with ascriptions of intentionality. It follows that the reducing natural
relation need not match with anything in order to be correctly ascribable by content ascriptions, so there is no criterion that is external to
the practice of content ascriptions for the truth of such ascriptions. It
follows that there are no (practice-independent) intentional facts. 1
and 2 together vindicate intentional irrealism.
3. Intentional irrealism entails that no-one believes this very thesis. I
show that the sense in which this is true on the suggested version of
intentional irrealism is innocuous.
23 Sep
8:30-9:00
Room 24
Harmonia Philosophica
Spyridon Kakos
National Technical University of Athens
Could all philosophers be correct at the same time? Could time be an
illusion? Have we lost connection with the One? Do we over-analyze things?
Are we too logical in an illogical world? Does science progress through logic
or through “madness”? Thinking logically entails the acceptance of various
assumptions. But can thought based on assumptions be free? Thinking
irrationally could be the key to the understanding of the cosmos. Forgetting
how to think is the only way to think. And to discover again what we once
knew...
42
A Question of Method: Searle and the Logical
Analysis of Linguistic Intentionality
Hayden Kee
22 Sep
17:00-17:30
Room 8
Fordham University
Searle’s project in the philosophy of language is original for calling for increased naturalization of the philosophy of language problematic. Language,
on Searle’s view, needs to be understood as an extension of biologically more
basic capacities and intentionalities, such as those of perception and action,
belief and desire. A central question for the philosophy of language, then, is
to understand these developments and the relationships between the intentionalities in question. Though I agree with Searle that this is an excellent
guiding question for the philosophy of language, I contend that the method
of logical analysis that he uses to pursue it is inadequate to the task. The
inadequate method leads to a contortion of the problematic, and an inability
to understand the truly genetic nature of the phenomena in question and the
uniqueness of the intentionality of language. I propose a more robust method
for approaching this problem, drawing on resources from phenomenology and
the natural sciences and taking language acquisition as the locus of investigation for understanding the relationship between pre-linguistic and linguistic
intentionality.
Thought, language and compositionality
Raquel Krempel
University of São Paulo
In several books Jerry Fodor argues, based on the productivity and the
systematicity of thought, that there must be a language of thought. Thought
seems to be productive because we can entertain, in principle, an unlimited
number of different thoughts. It seems to be systematic because the ability
to have certain thoughts is intrinsically related to the ability to have certain others. Language also appears to be productive and systematic, and
these phenomena are traditionally explained by the assumption that language is compositional. Fodor’s idea is that, analogously, the assumption
that thought is compositional seems to be the best explanation for its productivity and systematicity. Since thought seems to be compositional like
language, it seems reasonable to assume that there is a language of thought.
It is therefore surprising that in “Language, thought and compositionality”, Fodor denies that language is compositional. There, Fodor investigates
43
23 Sep
8:30-9:00
Room 8
what comes first in order of explanation: the content of thought or language.
According to him, any adequate theory of content must accept that content
is compositional. He argues that the content of thought is prior to that of
language because thought is compositional. I intend to raise three issues
against his arguments. First, the idea that language is not compositional undermines the argument for the existence of a language of thought. Second,
I’ll point out that by failing to recognize that language is compositional, its
productivity and systematicity are left as a mystery. Third, I’ll argue that
the assumption that language is not compositional doesn’t even succeed in
playing the role that Fodor expects it to play in his argument. In arguing that
language is not compositional, Fodor assumes that the content of thought is
explanatorily prior to the content of language, which was precisely what he
wanted compositionality to decide.
23 Sep
15:30-16:00
Room 8
Linguistic Analysis in Philosophy of Science
Marina Legroski & Álvaro Fujihara
University of Ponta Grossa & Federal University of Paraná
Dascal (1994) identifies a crucial point of analysis to the philosophy of
science in the broad group of polemical discourses and, more specifically, in
the subgroup of the scientific controversies. He also points to a bridge between the field and that of the linguistic research, in as much as he elects
pragmatics as his tool of choice to approach the phenomena, recognizing the
fundamental role language plays in scientific progress. However, as Dascal
himself recognizes, pragmatics must refine its framework to be able to handle
the character sometimes cooperative and sometimes competitive of scientific
controversies — which can lead agents to particular forms of compliance or
no compliance to the principles of cooperation and charity. The present work
intends to analyze the implications of non-cooperation to a gricean pragmatic
model, considering the modifications necessary to one such model (as proposed by Fujihara, 2016) so as to handle the case of scientific controversies, as
well as analyzing the implcations of this particular perspective to the study
of controversies. As we will argue, only minor changes to the general gricean
framework are needed to include cases of non-cooperative types of dialogue
(a clarification on the notion of purpose of the talk and a counterfactual
interpretive device). This approach allows us to understand the rationality
of scientific evolution, even when from a traditional normative perspective it
would not seem so, and also points to some interesting directions for future
research.
44
Representation without representations
David Lindeman
Johns Hopkins University
If (i) folk psychology (FP) is successful, (ii) its success turns on the truth
of the propositional attitude (PA) ascriptions at the heart of it, and (iii)
the ascriptions ontologically commit to representations in the heads of ascribees, then — it seems likely that — (a mature) cognitive psychology, too,
will make recourse to such objects. Thus the marriage of FP and the computational theory of cognition, according to which PAs are computational
relations borne toward internal representations expressing the propositions
in question.
Building on the work of Daniel Dennett, Robert Matthews, and Robert
Stalnaker, among others, I develop an alternative view of PA ascriptions
and their (and so FP’s) relation to cognitive psychological explanation. On
this view, PA ascriptions do not ontologically commit to the existence of
representations qua objects. Beliefs that p are not realized (object-like)
logical forms with localizable positions in the heads of believers. To ascribe
the belief that p is not to posit a relation between objects — viz. a believer
and a mental representation — but, rather, to ascribe a dispositional property
to an individual.
Taken as explanations of behavior, then, such dispositional properties as
those ascribed in PA ascriptions do not go very deep. The ascriptions do not
provide a guide to the workings of the relevant underlying mechanisms —
or, the algorithmic and implementation levels. With regard to the relevant
stretches of the science, such ascriptions furnish not the explanans but mark
the explanandum. The explanation for the capacities is mechanistic (in a
sense I develop in the talk) and proceeds by functional decomposition. A
key part of such functional decompositions are semantic descriptions. But
on the view I defend, such descriptions situate mechanisms describable in
computational terms (a syntactic form of description, as I argue, capturing
the causal organization of the system) in the environments in which they
operate. Again, they do not pick out the objects — representations — over
which the computations are performed. There are no such representations.
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11:00-11:30
Room 118
22 Sep
16:30-17:00
Room 24
The Combination Problem and the Phenomenal Bond
Haoying Liu
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Panpsychism, the view that fundamental, micro-level entities have experience, has received some recent attention among philosophers, because it
seems to be the only approach which allows one to explain consciousness, and
at the same time (i) maintain a generally physicalist world view, (ii) maintain
that consciousness exists, and (iii) avoid the epistemic gap between physical
facts and phenomenal facts. However, panpsychism is threatened by the combination problem, which is the puzzle on how micro-level conscious entities
can combine to give rise to consciousness in large-scale, macro-level creatures. In this paper I will consider how to solve this problem. I will present
Phillip Goff’s proposal to understand combination of micro-level conscious
entities with phenomenal bonding relation, which is supposed to bind microlevel conscious entities into larger conscious entities1 . I will then argue for a
modified account of panpsychism (phenomenal bond panpsychism), according to which there is experience and conscious subject iff there are multiple
fundamental entities related by their mutual phenomenal bonding relation.
On this account, at the fundamental level there is phenomenal bonding relation, but the micro-level entities themselves have no intrinsic phenomenal
properties. Thus, phenomenal bond panpsychism is in contrast with standard mental ash panpsychism 2 , the view that micro-level entities instantiate
intrinsic phenomenal properties and are thus conscious. I argue that phenomenal bond panpsychism is a decent rival to mental ash panpsychism. My
hope is that phenomenal bond panpsychism is the least mysterious account
of panpsychism, if panpsychism should be taken seriously.
1
See Phillip Goff, “The phenomenal bonding solution to the combination problem”,
forthcoming in G. Bruntrop and L. Jaskolla (Eds.) Panpsychism, Oxford University Press.
2
The term “mental ash” is borrowed from Godehard Bruntrup.
See
https://www.hfph.de/forschung/netzwerke/ geiststaub-netzwerk.
46
The Experience of Acting: an Empirical Question for
Action Theory?
Beatriz Marques
Federal University of Amazonas
Well-known Agent Causation (AC) theories (Lowe 2008, O’Connor 2000,
Nida-Rumelin 2007) rely on the experience of acting that humans allegedly
have when they act to defend their claim that explanations of action that do
not involve agent-causation present an incomplete picture of human action.
This would be the case because, according to these theories, event-causation
could not explain action while also accounting for the irreducible role of
the agent in producing her action, to which the experience in question is
said to correspond. I, however, contend that claims about the experience
of acting raise questions that are in fact empirical, and cannot be settled
from the armchair. How could one claim that humans have this experience
based solely on one’s own introspection? The examination of the taxonomy
of the experience of acting (Pracherie 2008, Marce 2003, Bayne and Levy
2003) is crucial, for in itself the term may invite confusion and vagueness.
A clear definition of the experience in question is a considerable aid to its
investigation, since it will clarify what aspects are relevant to it. Furthermore,
there has been some empirical work in neuroscience on the subject of the
agents’ experience of acting that should be taken into consideration, because
they may add significant evidence of the experience, as well as of its relevance
to the production of action (Haggard and Clark 2003). Furthermore, the new
field of experimental philosophy could add to the discussion by investigating
the grounds for AC’s claim (which does not mean that it is a matter of
intuitions). Therefore, empirical investigation is a useful method for the
investigation of the experience of acting, and particularly for inspecting the
grounds for AC’s claim that humans have an experience of acting that justifies
preference for their theory in opposition to the Causal Theory of Action.
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22 Sep
15:30-16:00
Room 118
23 Sep
9:30-10:00
Room 8
Singular thought, particular thought and de re
thought: why they are not the same thing
Filipe Martone
State University of Campinas
In this presentation I will argue that the notions of singular thought, de
re thought and particular thought should not be conflated. I argue that,
albeit related, these three notions have different characteristics and explain
different aspects of our cognitive life. The structure of the presentation is as
follows. I first present my interpretation of Russell, arguing that the reason
for his distinction between singular and descriptive thought was to account
for the fundamental difference between ways of grasping objects. In other
terms, Russell’s singular/descriptive distinction has to do with the necessity
of conceptualization (or the lack of it) for making a certain object available
to cognition. I call this the Russellian Motivation. I then argue that, if we
take this characterization seriously, then only perception, memory and some
relations to abstract objects seem to warrant singular thinking. If this is
right, then many typical de re thoughts, such as thoughts through causal
and communication chains, are not singular, but descriptive. I also claim
that singular thought should not be confused with particular thought. A
particular thought is simply a thought about a particular individual, and is
the type of thought that typically causes the opening of a mental file. Since
we have good reasons to believe that we can have descriptive files and files
about non-existent individuals, then particular thought cannot be equated
with singular thought nor with de re thought. I conclude that distinguishing between these three notions helps to accommodate our intuitions about
some problematic cases much more nicely than any proposal currently on the
market.
48
Why some theories of language evolution may sound a
little weird
Fábio Mesquita
Federal University of Paraná
Modern studies of evolution of language can bring diametrically opposed
statements which may sound puzzling to different specialists. On one side,
there are claims like “language is a complex trait, so it has to be the product
of gradual evolution”. On the other side, we may hear “there is no reason to
suppose that language has evolved gradually”. In regard to function, some
people take the correlation between biological fitness of Homo sapiens and
its communicative skills almost like a pressuposition for any evolutionary
account of language, while others assume that language emerged as a better reasoning system, so this system would be co-opted for communication
only later. In order to understand these apparent contradictions, we need to
consider different conceptions of (a) a feasible scientific explanation, and (b)
language. Evolutionary studies which follow neodarwinian modern synthesis
usually look for causal relations between ecology and phenotypical traits (or
genomic, but this is still very hard to do in the case of language). The ones
who embrace this perspective tend to explain how and why language may
have evolved in terms of function and utility. Meanwhile, others disregard
evolutionary pressures because they would not contribute to a formal algorithmic theory. Concerning (b), I propose an abstract distinction between
two major conceptions of language: one externalist, the other internalist. The
first one attempts to explain “visible“ language according to a non-mentalist
account of phonology, morphology, pragmatics and so on. In this case, it is
easier to see how these things would evolve gradually. The other searches for
a computational account of the mind and treats external language as output.
Under this perspective, a system like human language would have changed
dramatically because of one single computational operation, so there is no
place for intermediate stages in the evolution of this system.
49
23 Sep
15:00-15:30
Room 118
23 Sep
11:00-11:30
Room 8
Process and Mind: Exploring the Relationship
Between Process Philosophy and the Nonlinear
Dynamical Systems Science of Cognition
Larry Moralez
University of Central Florida
This work examines the relationship between process philosophy and the
nonlinear dynamical systems framework for studying cognition. I argue that
the nonlinear dynamical systems approach to cognitive science presupposes
many key elements of process philosophy. The metaphysics of process philosophy posits events and the dynamic relations between events as the fundamental substrate of reality, as opposed to physical substances. Scientific
frameworks in fields of inquiry such as Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Sociology, have begun the transition towards process based metaphysical frameworks. I present several of the major justifications for rejecting substancebased metaphysics that have been offered by proponents of process philosophy dating back to the ancient Greeks. In following, I will present empirical
studies from cognitive scientists using the tools and methods of nonlinear
dynamical systems theory to examine, model, and explain cognition. I will
show that this framework corresponds with process philosophy in so far as it
rejects a theoretical paradigm guilty of positing discrete particulars as fundamental, while also placing greater emphasis on the inherent relational nature
of cognitive systems. To conclude, I suggest that the nonlinear dynamical
systems approach to studying cognition supplements the existing scientific
evidence confirming and validating process philosophy. Furthermore, I argue
that the process metaphysical schema can play a significant role in cognitive
science by serving as the proper metaphysical background theory to guide
inquiry.
50
Mindless Accuracy
Alexander Morgan
Rice University
Intentionality was traditionally regarded as a distinctively mentalistic
phenomenon. However, in recent years many philosophers have sought to
‘naturalize’ intentionality by characterizing it as a species of causal relation
that holds between a representational state and a distal entity, whereby the
representational state functions to carry information about, or ‘track’, the
distal entity. These ‘tracking’ theories invariably dementalize intentionality
in the sense that they encompass states of all sorts of mindless systems, such
as thermostats or plants. In his 2010 book Origins of Objectivity, Tyler Burge
seeks to articulate a rementalized, or distinctively psychological, conception
of intentionality by appealing to the results and methodology of perceptual
psychology. Burge argues that the constancy capacities of perceptual systems yield states that can be understood in terms of the conditions under
which they accurately or inaccurately represent the world. These accuracy
conditions aren’t merely adventitious, according to Burge, but rather play
a crucial role in psychological explanation. Indeed, it’s in virtue of having
explanatorily robust accuracy conditions that these states are said to be distinctively psychological. In this talk, I argue that Burge’s constancy-based
view ends up dementalizing intentionality in the same way tracking theories
do. Most importantly, I argue that there’s nothing distinctively psychological
about explanatorily robust accuracy conditions; biologists routinely ascribe
accuracy conditions to circadian clocks to explain the diurnal activities of
plants. I then trace the underlying cause of dementalization to the fact that
Burge and tracking theorists fail to provide an account of how informationbearing states are integrated into the egocentric perspective of a system, such
that they are intelligible as mental states of a psychological system. I close
by sketching such an account, by drawing from from research into the neurocomputational mechanisms by which multisensory information is integrated
into an egocentric frame of reference.
51
22 Sep
10:00-10:30
Room 24
22 Sep
10:30-11:00
Room 24
The enactivist approach to consciousness
Laura Nascimento
State University of Campinas
The aim of this paper is to investigate the advantages and disadvantages
of the enactivist approach to consciousness, especially concerning the issue
of qualia. It is widely assumed that mental phenomena can be accounted by
purely physicalist descriptions. Nevertheless, philosophers insist that even
a full comprehension of physical or material matters will not answer what
might be considered the most relevant question: why should these physical
structures and patterns in the brain give rise to the phenomenal character of experience remains unexplained. The problem is subject to a variety
of formulations, like the identification of Levine’s Explanatory Gap (1983).
Sometimes, it is assumed that dualism is true. However, it is possible to
argue, as embodied approaches propose, that the difficulties concerning consciousness derive from mistaken assumptions, such as that the brain is the
locus where consciousness is to be found. Therefore, embodied approaches
emerge as an alternative: even though they are committed to what might
be considered a materialist view, in the sense that the mind-body problem
might be accounted by natural sciences and philosophy, they propose a wider
image of what is to be considered the subject of Cognitive Science, that is, a
framework that comprises not only the brain, but also the body and environment. They claim their approach bridges the explanatory gap and, hence,
that there is no “explanatory gap” at all, even though they don’t deny the
existence of the phenomenal character of experience. However, the enactivist
approach faces a variety of difficulties such as how to articulate the nature of
sensorimotor contingencies and how to account for practical know-how in a
materialist framework So it remains unclear whether it can really bridge the
explanatory gap.
52
Dilemmas and implications of Individual cognition and
Social cognition as an alternative path
Hugo Neri
University of São Paulo
The old epistemological problems of what knowledge is and what are
its conditions of occurrence nowadays affect even applied scientific fields especially artificial intelligence. Firstly, we assume that the set of different
conceptions of mind, consciousness, intelligence and cognition directly determines the conceptions of knowledge and its change. We argue that these
conceptions are of two kinds: individual cognition and social cognition. The
former is a conception of mind preceding the social world, which would be a
product progressively built through communicative regulation of perception
and cognition of different individuals. At some point and in some way, it
gets such objectively that it would be able to impose itself on the individuals. Conversely, collectivist solutions assume that the social world precedes
individuals and minds, which they would be the product or a possibility it.
In this case, the entities that make up the social knowledge would be emergent properties. This paper puts forward two central theses: a negative and
another positive. In the negative thesis, there is an attempt to demonstrate
that the individualist option, taken by different authors in different areas
of knowledge such as Max Weber, Karl Popper, Noam Chomsky and John
Searle, is not able to solve the problem of social knowledge. This happens
due to the dilemma that individual cognition routes: either one accepts a
radical innateness, which means determinism of different types, or one falls
into infinite regress. Finally we argue that Artificial Intelligence researches
are build on the idea of individual cognition, implying that a critic over the
latter has consequences to the former.
53
23 Sep
14:30-15:00
Room 8
23 Sep
11:00-11:30
Room 24
Mnemonic Externalism and the Extended Mind
Hypothesis
Hugo Neri & Veridiana Cordeiro
Phd Candidate at Philosophy Departament — University of São Paulo
Phd Candidate at Sociology Departament — University of São Paulo
This work intend to defend the idea of a mnemonic externalism coupled
with the most recent developments of the extended mind hypothesis, especially those that handles with social epistemological problems. The first idea
derives from the theory of collective memory of the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, which considers ‘memory’ as a social phenomenon directly
dependent on collective mechanisms. Maurice Halbwachs brought this new
idea in 1925 in his book Les Cadres Sociaux de la Mémoire as part of an ambitious project to demonstrate how society remains cohesive and how society
is performed in the individual subjectivity. The main idea brought in this
book is that the mnemonic contents are shared by a group and the memory
mechanisms/procedures (the way the memory is formed) depends on the social frameworks of memory which are always suitable to present conditions.
The main propose is to consider a possible integration between the theory of
collective memory and the actual externalist approaches. In general, the externalism tries to explain phenomena subjectively experienced emphasizing
the external factors. In this way, we tried to integrated both theories. First,
we have to explain that the collective memory phenomenon is a mnemonic
process originated in the individual perception of past events. And finally,
on the one hand, filling the gap of Halbwachs’ lack the “mind”, a theory of
mind and an understanding of other mental phenomena, with the concept of
extended mind. On the other hand, filling extended mind gap of the “social”,
a theory of the social world that is robust enough to consider groups and
their representations.
54
Can Neuroscience Help Select the Correct
Metamorality?
Thomas Noah
University of Pennsylvania
Psychologist Joshua Greene thinks that neuroscience (or, more properly,
neuroscientific evidence) can held us to identify the correct metamorality.
Metamorality, according to Greene, is a global morality that rationally resolves disagreements between competing local moralities.
According to Greene, any acceptable metamorality must satisfy what I
call Possession: human beings with otherwise normal psychologies must possess the cognitive and motivational resources necessary to both understand
and care about that which the candidate system says they must understand
and care about. Greene thinks that only classical utilitarianism satisfies Possession. By contrast, rights-oriented deontology and neo-Aristotelian virtue
ethics fail as metamoral candidates because they do not satisfy Possession.
I provide a series of arguments that show that Greene is forced into a
dilemma:
D1 Either people have the cognitive and motivational resources such that
they can “get” utilitarianism and also deontology and virtue ethics,
or
D2 People do not have the cognitive and motivational resources such that
they can “get” deontology and virtue ethics and also utilitarianism.
The dilemma is true on many readings of “can.” What Greene needs
then, I argue, is a sense of “can” such that people can get utilitarianism but
not deontology or virtue ethics.
I argue that he thinks that science will provide us with the relevant sense
of “can”. There is something about the brain, he thinks, that makes utilitarianism quite attractive. However, neuroscience does not provide the right
interpretation of the modality such that classical utilitarianism is uniquely
selected as the correct metamorality.
55
23 Sep
9:00-9:30
Room 118
23 Sep
14:30-15:00
Room 118
Biocommunication
Hyungrae Noh & Carrie Figdor
University of Iowa
Communication requires some degree of redundancy of information, and
in linguistic communication such redundancy is generated not only by semantics but also by structural aspects of language. Nevertheless no philosophical
analysis of the relationship between structural aspects and semantics has
been made so far. This paper shows that in animal signaling communication
the coevolution between the producer and consumer gives rise to structural
aspects of the signal and semantics of the signal ontologically and epistemologically depends on the structural aspects.
Birds in Central America learn to interpret the dorsal coloration conspicuousness of poison frogs as the alarm. Given that there is no genotypic
relationship between frogs’ conspicuousness and toxicity, the correlation between the two traits requires phenotypic explanation like predator selection.
This implies that the coloration-signal is the result of coevolution between
the producer and consumer. The coevolutionary thesis predicts that any token of animal (or plant) signals only contingently correlates with the signed
and such contingent correlation holds to the extent where the probability
of correlation has been adjusted in accordance with the fitness of both the
producer and consumer.
Semantics of the coloration-signal underdetermines the communication
between frogs and birds because a bird cannot choose the purported message
unless the structural aspects are embedded in the use of coloration-signal.
Ontologically the correlation depends on the phylogenetic traits of the producer and consumer. For instance the correlation between luminance contrast
of frogs’ color and their toxicity score accords only with the tetrachromatic
system, namely the visual system of avian predators. Epistemologically a
bird’s ontogenetic learning of the use of the coloration-signal depends on its
perceptual biases in the use of the signal. For instance, a bird’s gustatory
apparatus is adequately biased towards the purported message — the taste
of a poison frog is bad.
56
Some remarks concerning Internal Realism in the
Philosophy of History
Jacinto Páez
Universidad Diego Portales
Echoing the developments of the philosophy of language, there is a tendency to understand that the proper object of study of historical theory is
the actual practice of historians. This practice consists, among other things,
in the research tasks of historians or the process of writing history. One
important aspect is the fact that historians accept a set of propositions that
can be arguable considered as problematic from the standpoint of contemporary epistemology. Perhaps the most striking one is the claim that they,
the historians, pursue the knowledge of what had truly happened. This can
be considered a strong realistic claim.
In view of this realist assumption, Chris Lorenz has proposed to establish
a new epistemological approach in philosophy of history. His attempt is
to offer a theory that combines both, the realist presupposition of historians
and the more sophisticated conception of knowledge reached in epistemology.
Following Putnam, he thinks that his own theory as a type of internal realism
(Lorenz 2004). One of the alleged virtues of this model is that it allows us
to gain clarity about the relation between facts and values on the inside of
historical research. To sum up, Lorenz claims that his proposal represents a
post-foundationalist paradigm.
My objective in the present paper is to assess the virtues of this extrapolation of internal realism to the field of historical theory. I will focus my
interest in the distinction between facts and values. This distinction is said
to be a relative one, while at the same time the concept of value plays a key
role in the configuration of historical perspectives. This takes me to suspect
that a stronger concept is underlying this theory or, at least, the practice of
historians.
57
23 Sep
9:00-9:30
Room 24
22 Sep
17:30-18:00
Room 8
Eliminating Epistemic Possibilities
Meagan Phillips
Northern Illinois University
In “Eliminating Epistemic Possibilities”, I develop a pragmatic account
of an epistemic possibility expression (EPEs) such as “It might be raining”.
Contextualists such as Keith DeRose and relativists such as John MacFarlane offer semantic accounts of EPEs which entail that an utterance of an
EPE is true just in case some relevant epistemic agent doesn’t know that
the embedded proposition isn’t true, or ¬KA ¬p. For example, “It might
be raining” is true just in case some relevant subject doesn’t know it isn’t
raining. The contextualist semantic account takes the epistemic agent to
be relevant at a context of use, while the relativist contends that EPEs are
sensitive to epistemic agents at a context of assessment.
Both analyses have been criticized by appealing to counterexamples which
seem to undermine the semantic analyses of both contextualists and relativists. In these cases, a relevant subject utters an EPE despite knowing
that the embedded proposition isn’t true. I contend that both accounts can
be defended by appealing to a generalized implicature that rises in tandem
with EPEs. In particular, I argue that an EPE generally implicates that a
relevant subject doesn’t know that the embedded proposition does obtain,
or ¬KA p.
Finally, I will consider exchanges in which an EPE is denied on the basis
of an interlocuter’s knowledge that an embedded proposition obtains. For
instance, in response to “It might be raining”, an interlocutor may felicitously
say: “No, it is raining”. One might consider such accounts to be reason to
take the implicature ¬KA p as part of the semantic content of an EPE. I argue
that such exchanges should be analyzed as instances of pragmatic denial, in
which the implicated contents of an assertion are targeted by a denier.
58
How do we refer to events, facts and states of affairs?
Ana Clara Polakof
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
We defend that events, facts and states of affairs are distinct ontological
categories and must be identified differently. Even though they share some
characteristics, they are different entities. For instance, events are concrete,
while facts and states of affairs are abstract; events and facts are contingent,
while states of affairs are necessary; facts and states of affairs depend on
instantiated properties, while events do not; and the list goes on. These differences are sufficient to defend that they are different ontological categories.
We argue that this must be reflected by the phrases we use to refer to them.
Even though there are controversies regarding which phrases refer to events,
it is commonly accepted that at least some deverbal nominalizations (as talk )
and common nouns (as hurricane) are used to refer to them. But, what happens with facts and states of affairs? Since they are both abstract, they may
be referred to with similar constructions. They may involve the combination
of the gerundive of the copula plus the adjective that describes the property being instantiated (being + red, or being + different), or deadjectival
nominalizations (redness or difference).
However, things are not as simple as they seem. Since facts appear at all
levels from level 1, many logical properties may involve facts. This implies
that in some cases the same derived noun (as difference) may be used to form
a definite determinate phrase that refers to a fact (the difference between
Ana and Martin) or to a state of affairs (the difference between identity and
transitivity). Something else needs to be said, then, concerning how we refer
to them. In this presentation, we will define in what aspects the definite
phrases that refer to these entities differ.
59
22 Sep
14:30-15:00
Room 8
23 Sep
11:30-12:00
Room 24
Abandoning the concept of causal reduction
Tárik Prata
Federal University of Pernambuco
With his “Biological Naturalism” John R. Searle claims to have overcome both dualism and physicalism, maintaining the true part of each view.
However, the problem lies in the fact that, at the same time he asserts the
ontological irreducibility of consciousness, his view about the supposed causal
reduction of conscious states seems to commit him with some kind of reductionist physicalism. The causal reduction of consciousness is Searle’s means
to avoid property dualism. When the author formulates such reduction, he
affirms that the causal powers of consciousness and of brain processes are
exactly the same, or that consciousness has no causal powers beyond those
of brain processes. The claim that the causal powers are the same suggests
an identity of powers that could be understood as implying an ontological
reduction of consciousness and the claim that consciousness has no causal
powers sounds as epiphenomenalism (two views refused by Searle). Such
similarities with (a) ontological reductionism and (b) epiphenomenalism are
evidence that the concept of causal reduction is not helpful for someone that
wants overcome physicalism. Instead of using this concept, it is more productive for the treatment of the mind-body problem to conceive the causal
powers of consciousness in a more flexible way. The present paper aims to
show that the concept of constitution of causal powers is more fruitful to
the explanation of mind-body relationships. In the case of conscious mental states, it is better to explain the causal powers of a token mental state
in terms of its constitution by the powers of the token brain process that
underlies it. Such view explains the causal efficacy of consciousness without
falling back on ontological reductionism and avoiding the problem of causal
overdetermination.
60
Do the Laws of Physics Lie? The Representational
(Metaphysical) Limitations of Science and its
Implication for Interdisciplinary Discourse
Finney Premkumar
Azusa Pacific University
What does science and especially the laws of physics tell us about the
cosmos we inhabit? Can the purposed access or representational and metaphysical reach of science which has been historically assumed be sustained?
In other words, can ‘empirical claims’ lead to ‘existence claims’ or Truth
such that science can be shown to have the requisite representational power
that has customarily been attributed to it? This paper will, first and foremost, briefly discuss the nature of science (especially physics) and its rigorous
methodology in an effort to show that it is not necessarily truth-conferring
or metaphysical in nature. I will discuss the ‘no miracles’ argument put forth
by Hilary Putnam for scientific realism and present the case that it conflates
methodology and truth. Secondly, I will discuss the underdetermination of
theory by evidence arguing that it is not only relevant to the immediate context but also for the future direction of scientific research. I will examine the
availability of relevant alternatives and include a novel argument regarding
unconceived alternatives and consider how that casts further doubt on theory selection. Thirdly, I’ll briefly discuss the pessimistic meta-induction in
an effort to show that the history of science does not seem to converge on
what Richard Rorty would call a ‘final vocabulary’. I will concluded that
we should approach the various disciplines, including science, as historically
contingent narratives engaged in an internal dialogue within the constraints
of terms and definitions that are systemic in scope. This will dictate a more
interdisciplinary scheme where science and the various disciplines within the
academy can undertake mutually enriching dialogues without any metaphysical privileging of one over the other.
61
23 Sep
15:00-15:30
Room 8
23 Sep
16:00-16:30
Room 118
Why Are You Laughing? (On Humour)
Marion Renauld & Fabien Schang
Université de Lorraine & National Research University Higher School of
Economics
Against cognitivist or psychological theories of humour, we rather start
with a definition relying analogically upon the Socratic definition of knowledge. A given sentence p is humoristic if and only if: (i) p is funny; (ii) p
is understood to be funny (i.e. brings about good humor by its incongruous
content); (iii) p creates some connivance (from speaker to hearer). But our
main argument is that humour is better viewed as a speech-act endowed with
peculiar success conditions.
Borrowing from Searle and Vanderveken’s illocutionary logic, we argue
that laughative acts can be depicted as statements of the form Lp, where
L is an illocutionary force attached to a sentential content p and fulfilling
a number of requirements to be successful. We claim that L is a proper
statement, although it infringes on two main features of speech-acts: being
literal, and serious. But, even so, L doesn’t belong to the class of assertives,
because laughative acts are both hybrid and self-contradictory speech-acts
that violate fundamental rules of illocutionary logic: by performing Lp, the
speaker performs both Fp and ¬Fp — where F includes every aspects of
speech-acts at once. Nevertheless, we argue that four main success conditions
of Searle’s speech-act theory need to be amended: the non-iterativity of
illocutionary forces, the sincerity condition, the direction of fit, and the degree
of force.
Finally, through an ontologically non-committing reading of laughative
acts and unlike Searle’s realist account of fictional discourse, we argue that
Lp is one-and-a-half degree speech-act: neither completely right (first degree
of discourse) nor completely wrong (second degree of discourse), due to its
virtuous ability to reveal general truths in a funny way. So we defend a value
theoretical approach to humour as conveying moral statements through joyful
passions, highlighting the prescriptive character of laughative acts.
62
How the laws of semantics lie
Kevin Richardson
22 Sep
10:00-10:30
Room 8
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Radical contextualists believe that language is radically context-sensitive.
One major criticism of contextualism is that it contradicts the dominant
formal approach to semantic theorizing. Formal semanticists make lawful
generalizations about meaning, but contextualists appear to rule out those
kinds of generalizations. I argue that there is no contradiction here. We can
coherently make lawful generalizations about the meanings of expressions
while rejecting the existence of semantic laws. The key to coherence is to
accept the utility of semantic laws while rejecting their reality. I argue that
contextualists should be fictionalists about formal semantics, and I briefly
sketch a fictionalist account.
Action Theory, Causal Exclusion, and Two Concepts
of Causation
Matthias Rolffs
University of Bonn
The biggest challenge for non-reductive physicalism is certainly Jaegwon
Kim’s Argument from Causal Exclusion (ACE). Kim (1998, 2005) argues that
non-reductive physicalism inevitably leads to epiphenomenalism. Epiphenomenalism, however, is tantamount to ‘the end of the world’, as Jerry Fodor
(1989) puts it. So non-reductive physicalism must be abandoned.
Ned Hall (2004) distinguishes two concepts of causation: production and
dependence. Kim (2005, 2007) concedes that the ACE’s plausibility rests
on a production-account of causation. Non- reductive physicalists typically
try to defend themselves against the ACE by putting forth some kind of
dependence-account of causation (cf. Loewer (2007), Woodward (2008)). I
take it that both Kim and his non-reductive opponents are perfectly right:
Given non-reductive physicalism, mental properties really do not produce
physical properties. But still, even given non-reductive physicalism, physical
properties causally depend on mental properties. Therefore, the decisive
question is: What kind of mental causation is worth wanting?
In my talk, I will argue that (i) the main source for the felt importance
of mental causation is causal action theory and that (ii) causal action theory
does not require the existence of mental production but only the existence
of mental dependence. The upshot of this reasoning is that non-reductive
63
22 Sep
10:00-10:30
Room 118
physicalists do not need to worry about the reductionists’ ACE: There is no
mental production, but there is no reason to think that mental production
is important anyway. There are, however, good reasons to think that mental
dependence is important. But mental dependence does not fall prey to the
ACE.
22 Sep
16:30-17:00
Room tba
Shared intentionality: from dominance to equality
Alejandro Rosas & Juan Pablo Bermúdez
Universidad Nacional de Colombia & Universidad Externado de Colombia
Shared intentionality refers to the ability to form beliefs and intentions
shared with other individuals such that the state of being shared is known to
all, and that the participants can predicate these mental states of a collective
subject: “we think”, “we intend”, etc. It is a crucial cognitive ability that
underlies the human capacity to engage in collaborative action (Bratman
1992), follow and enforce norms and create social institutions (Tomasello
& Carpenter 2007). In this paper we argue in favor of two theses: 1) the
ability to form higher-order intentions is necessary, but insufficient, for shared
intentionality; and 2) the extra condition required for shared intentionality
is the ability to attribute an equal status to oneself and others.
We argue for the first thesis on the basis of experimental results from
comparative primatology. These have shown that subordinate chimpanzees
understand when a dominant currently sees or has recently seen a given
piece of food subject to competition. But experiments from Tomasello’s
lab comparing children and chimpanzees also suggest the latter do not, and
probably cannot, think in terms of “we”.
These experimental results suggest that shared intentionality is not achieved
by a recursive iteration of intentions that refer to intentions that refer to intentions..., and so forth. We make this argument by means of a thought
experiment that we call “the game of spies”. Spies can laboriously climb to
higher-order intentions, i.e., in knowing that the other does not know that I
know, etc., but they never reach a state of shared intentionality. Our second
thesis is that the missing element is a sense of equality. It seems that meeting
others as equals is a constitutive condition of shared intentionality. Thus,
in evolutionary terms, shared intentionality must co-evolve with a sense of
mutual equality.
64
A Naturalistic Account of Morality
Derya Sakin
Middle East Technical University
Organisms have different kinds of behaviors. Altruistic or selfish behaviors can be observed in organisms. Although altruistic behavior may not
appear reasonable at first sight such as a worker bee sacrificing itself for
the benefit of the hive, it can be said that there is a logical ground behind
this behavior. As behaviors have been evolving in the process of evolution,
altruistic or selfish behaviors have been seen as the product of the evolutionary process. When morality is counted as an evolutionary product, morality
can be given an adaptive explanation. Thus, morality is an outcome of the
evolutionary process just as our hands or eyes.
There is no consensus whether animals are moral, two opposite views are
argued about that. One view is that animals lack moral concepts because
they lack self-awareness, conscious intentions and regrets for their past actions. They cannot separate the judgment of “What is good?” or “What
is bad?”. They do not have these concepts because of the lack of language.
They also cannot be moral due to the fact that having some component of
morality does not imply that animals are moral. In addition to that, human nature is basically evil and morality is a human product to restrain
selfish inclination. However, it can be opposed that animals are devoid of
moral formation when compared to humans. The basic social behaviors such
as reciprocity, conflict resolution and community concern are observed especially among chimpanzees which we consider as common ancestors. We
presumably have common capacities inherited from the common ancestor. It
can be verified that morality which is seen both in humans and non-humans
to survive in the world by exhibiting exactly the same moral behaviors such
as empathy, fairness, reciprocity, cooperation, and compassion.
65
23 Sep
9:30-10:00
Room 118
23 Sep
14:30-15:00
Room 24
Perceptual Experiences and Aspect
Sebastián Sanhueza
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
A number of contemporary philosophers of mind have brought considerations from the study of aspect — that is, the study of the ’different ways
of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation’ (Comrie 1976,
3) — to bear on the ontological question how perceptual experiences persist over time (cf. O’Shaughnessy 2000; Soteriou 2007, 2011, 2013; Crowther
2009). This approach is initially appealing insofar as it bypasses controversial
questions concerning the way our mental lives conceptually and ontologically
relate to their physiological underpinnings. However, it also faces problems.
While the relevant philosophical debate is primarily ontological, it borrows
concepts and distinctions linguists elaborate when discussing aspect — a pervasive but widely varying feature from natural language to natural language.
Apart from rare exceptions, relatively little attention has been devoted to
assess whether the way we talk about perceptual ocurrences can thus be applied to discussions of ontological matters in general, let alone discussions
about the ontological nature of perception. The goal of this piece is to argue
that a number of grammatical tests developed in the aspect literature and
then tailored for the ontological classification of occurrence-types are by and
large silent on how we should conceive our perceptual experiences.
22 Sep
15:00-15:30
Room 8
Wittgenstein’s Criticism of Russell’s Theory of
Judgment
Antonio Segatto
State University of São Paulo
This paper consists of a commentary on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logicophilosophicus 5.54-5.5423. My aim is to answer the following questions: 1)
what is Wittgenstein’s criticism of Russell’s theory of judgment?, and 2) why
is this criticism related to Wittgenstein’s denial of the theory of knowledge?
The connection between these two questions is the following: given that
Russell’s theory of judgment was inseparable from a theory of knowledge, the
denial of the former means, according to Wittgenstein, the divorce between
logical investigations and any kind of epistemological investigations. The
purpose of this paper is to show that this is the background against which
one must understand the claim in 4.1121, in which we read that the theory
of knowledge is the philosophy of psychology.
66
Quinean holism
Leonardo Soutello
22 Sep
10:30-11:00
Room 8
State University of Campinas
Quine’s holist theory is often understood as an epistemic doctrine and not
as a semantic doctrine, sometimes it is understood as an epistemic doctrine
with semantic implications, an also, not seldom, it is also understood as
meaning holism (semantic holism). We can find textual support for all these
interpretations in several writings by Quine, for he is not crystal clear when
he writes about this theme. I intend to present these interpretations — and
the passages that support them — for the consideration of their rightness.
Thus, I hope to show that they are inconsistent with Quine’s aims and with
his writings taken as a whole. Nonetheless, my main concern is to show
that Quinean holism can only be correctly understood as an epistemic and
semantic single doctrine. Confirmation holism and meaning holism are two
— bonded and inseparable — sides of the same coin, i.e. they must be
considered one doctrine in a Quinean framework. For, to consider them
as two separate doctrines, that a reader can have one and not the other
depending on his interpretation of Quine would be inconsistent with the
nature of the doctrines themselves and with Quine’s aims.
Externalist solutions to the intentional matter: the
rise of language in Frege, Wittgenstein and Haroldo de
Campos
Vanessa Temporal & Franco Sandanello
Federal University of São Carlos/University of Lyon 3 & State University of São
Paulo/University of Paris 3
Based on “Brentano’s problem” — which characterizes consciousness as
an intentional opening to the world that enables the production of mental
images —, the present work discusses how Frege, Wittgenstein and Haroldo
de Campos’ theories present alternatives to internalism, as they eliminate,
via a reflection on language, the need for the objects’ duplication in an internal image. We rely on the observation that, in order to relate the spirit to
the world in terms of intentionality, we are necessarily changing categories.
That’s the requirement for an intentional lexicon. Even if we don’t comprehend spirit as a thing, as Brentano, we are still obliged to refer to subjectivity
using categories we use for material objects — id est, using a substantialist
67
22 Sep
15:30-16:00
Room 8
lexicon. We are obliged to deal with the nature of spirit using the same categories used for material objects. This is a difficulty that intentionality sets
forth: how is it possible to say psychic objects? Is this an ontological or a
grammatical problem? Therefore, we sustain that the perspectivist language
game present in Frege and Wittgenstein, as well as the reflection on language’s materiality in Haroldo de Campos, are valuable resources to revalue
the problem of intentionality and to reexamine Brentano’s problem of manworld correlation, without simplifying it in terms of an interiority-exteriority
relationship.
23 Sep
11:30-12:00
Room 118
Different conceptions of Representations in Fodor and
Searle
Rogerio Teza
University of São Paulo
It is not hard to see that the concept of representation plays a central role
in many theories of mind. Specially Fodor and Searle are well acknowledged
for using it. Both considered that the physicalist reduction is not possible,
although they acquainted with the existence of the mind due to a material substratum and causality. The resemblance is also reinforced by their
approaches in terms of linguistic features.
In spite of many similarities, there are also huge differences. In short,
Fodor explores the syntactic structure; on the other hand, Searle is concerned
about semantics. It follows they have diametrically opposed understanding
of what a representation indeed is. Based on papers written by them in
Eighties (that said, popular Science papers rather than technical), I seek in
this presentation to draw a distinction between them.
Moreover, I have a further aim: to show that misconceptions related to
representation have misguided the scientific approaches to the brain. The
cause is not the unclearness related to the conceptualization of representation, though. That still constitutes a problem because the objectivety of
Science is not able to embrace the subjectivity of propositional attitudes and
intentionality.
68
Knowledge, Storytelling, and the Fallacy of the
Affective Fallacy
Flannery Wilson
University of California Riverside
In his essay “Stories and the Meaning of Life”, John Martin Fischer argues
that we value free will because it “renders us artists”; in virtue of acting
freely, we are able to shape our lives into stories with narrative value (12).
Literary theorist Gérard Genette proposed that narratives require both a
narrator and an audience. In writing the stories of our lives, surely we act
as narrators. But are narrators and audience members mutually exclusive?
Can narrators also be audience members? If not, we should conclude that
our lives contain narrative value for someone other than for ourselves. Per
Genette’s definition, our lives cannot contain narrative value unless we are
both the narrator and audience of our own stories.
Genette and Fischer do not carry their analogy far enough. We can
invert their lines of reasoning by reconsidering the paradox of fiction. Just as
it seems strange to imagine ourselves being entertained by our own stories,
it seems equally strange to imagine ourselves being entertained by fictional
characters. After all, not only do we not know these people — we know them
to be non-existent.
How can we feel as if we know people that do not exist? Bertrand Russell observed that there are concepts, like the color red, that we begin to
recognize in virtue of having seen many examples of red objects. These
are universals; things that can be divided into those known by acquaintance,
those known only by description and those not known either by acquaintance
or by description.
Memories, according to Russell, are similar to objects that we perceive in
the present, but in the past. We understand the concept of “past” because
we know what a memory is: an image of an object in our minds. And
yet, Russell notes, this image cannot be what actually constitutes memory
because the image appears in the present while what is remembered remains
in the past. If this is so, how can we separate true memories from false ones?
Russell concludes that there are certain “self-evident” propositions, known
by acquaintance, that cannot be described in terms of truth or falsity.
Building on this idea, I argue that we can be acquainted with propositions
— that is, we can “know” them without having to “know” whether or not
they are true or false. Moreover, it may be a mistake to think of this type of
acquaintance knowledge in terms of truth and falsity in the first place.
69
23 Sep
15:30-16:00
Room 118
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