VOLUME 12 (1999), ISSUE 2

Manuscripts:

ALFRED R. MELE
Twisted self-deception

• Abstract: In instances of twisted self-deception, people deceive themselves into believing things that they do not want to be true. In this, twisted self-deception differs markedly from the straight variety that has dominated the philosophical and psychological literature on self-deception. Drawing partly upon empirical literature, I develop a trio of approaches to explaining twisted self-deception: a motivation-centered approach; an emotion-centered approach; and a hybrid approach featuring both motivation and emotion. My aim is to display our resources for exploring and explaining twisted self-deception and to show that promising approaches are consistent with a plausible position on straight self-deception.

DAVID PITT
In defense of definitions

• Abstract: The arguments of Fodor, Garret, Walker & Parkes (?FGWP?) (1980) are the source of widespread skepticism in cognitive science about lexical semantic structure. Whereas the thesis that lexical items, and the concepts they express, have decompositional structure (i.e., have significant constituents), was at one time "one of those ideas that hardly anybody [in the cognitive sciences] ever considers giving up" (FGWP (1980), 264), most researchers now believe that "[a]ll the evidence suggests that the classical [(decompositional)] view is wrong as a general theory of concepts" (Smith et al. 1984, p. 272), and cite FGWP as sounding the death knell for decompositional theories" (McNamara & Miller 1989, p. 360). I argue that the prevailing skepticism is unmotivated by the arguments in FGWP. FGWP misrepresent the form, function and scope of the decompositional hypothesis, and the procedures they employ to test for the psychological reality of definitions are flawed. I argue, further, that decompositional explanations of the phenomena FGWP consider are preferable to their primitivist alternatives, and, hence, that there is prima facie reason to accept them as evidence for the existence of decompositional structure. Cognitive scientists would, therefore, do well to revert to their former commitment to the decompositional hypothesis.

ERIC SCHWITZGEBEL
Representation and desire: A philosophical error with consequences for theory-of-mind research

• Abstract: This paper distinguishes two conceptions of representation at work in the philosophical literature. On the first, "contentive" conception (found, for example, in Searle and Fodor), something is a representation, roughly, if it has "propositional content." On the second, "indicative" conception (found, for example, in Dretske), representations must not only have content but also have the function of indicating something about the world. Desire is representational on the first view but not on the second. This paper argues that philosophers and psychologists have sometimes conflated these two conceptions, and it examines the consequences of this conflation for the developmental literature on the child's understanding of mind. Specifically, recent research by Gopnik and Perner on the child's understanding of desire is motivated by an argument that equivocates between the two conceptions of representation. Finally, the paper suggests that an examination of when the child understands the possibility of misrepresentation in art would be helpful in charting the child's understanding of indicative representation.

RUSSELL McBRIDE
Consciousness and the state/transitive/creature distinction

• Abstract: This essay examines the grammatical structure underlying use of the word, "conscious." Despite the existence of this grammatical structure, I reject the assumption that actual consciousness has a similar structure. Specifically, I reject the claim that consciousness consists of three sub-types: state-consciousness, transitive-consciousness, and creature-consciousness. I offer an inductive argument and a deductive argument that no such psychological entities exist. The inductive argument: given the lack of evidence or arguments for the entities and given that a tri-partite consciousness structure was proposed to account for a tripartite grammatical habit, it would be far too coincidental if the grammatical distinction mirrored a psychological distinction. The deductive argument (a reductio ad absurdem) shows that absurd conclusions follow from assuming the existence of three distinct psychological entities. Furthermore, the verbal habits that motivate the distinction are rendered more intelligible under a "Unitary Thesis," the idea that verbal distinctions involving use of the word, "conscious," are nonetheless unified in their reliance on a single ontological unit, that of conscious experience.

VIRGIL G. WHITMYER
Ecological color

• Abstract: In his book, Colour vision, Evan Thompson proposes a new approach to the ontology of color according to which it is tied to the ecological dispositions-affordances-described by J.J. Gibson and his followers. Thompson claims that a relational account of color is necessary in order to avoid the problems that go along with the dispute between subjectivists and objectivists about color, but he claims that the received view of perception does not allow a satisfactory relational account of color. Hence to avoid the problems of the subjectivist/objectivist dispute one must abandon the received view of perception. I describe an account which is similar to Thompson's, but which invokes instead the physical dispositional properties described by the received view. All of the distinguishing characteristics which Thompson claims separate his ecological dispositions from physical dispositions are in fact found in the physical dispositions appealed to by my proposed theory. Because my proposed theory is similar to subjectivism, Thompson's departure from the received view is not as radical as he claims. In a final section I describe the a posteriori manner in which a substantive departure from the received view must be carried out by describing an example of ecological experimentation.

LYNN HOLT
Rationality is still hard work: Some further notes on the disruptive effects of deliberaton

• Abstract: A brief review of recent experimental work by T.D. Wilson et al. on the disruptive effects of deliberation provides an opportunity for extending an alternative interpretation of those effects first offered in this journal (Holt 1993). I therefore propose a thought experiment in which the favored parameters of much social psychological experimentation, including the specific parameters of Wilson et al., are reversed.

Book Reviews:

JOHN BICKLE
Review of MICHAEL GAZZANIGA's Conversations in the cognitive neurosciences

GERALD VISION
Review of ARIEN MACK & IRVIN ROCK's Inattentional blindness

MATTHIAS SCHEUTZ
Review of PATRIK GRIM, GAY MAR, & PAUL ST. DENIS's The philosophical computer