VOLUME 15 (2002), ISSUE 1

Manuscripts:

OLLI LAGERSPETZ
Experience and consciousness in the shadow of Descartes

• Abstract: A conscious being is characterized by its ability to cope with the environment—to perceive it, sometimes change it, and perhaps reflect on it. Surprisingly, most studies of the mind's place in nature show little interest in such interaction. It is often implicitly assumed that the main questions about consciousness just concern the status of various entities, levels, etc., within the individual. The intertwined notions of '(conscious) experience' and '(phenomenal) consciousness' are considered. The predominant use of these notions in cognitive science can be traced back to Cartesianism. What is important is the survival of the central methodological commitments despite seemingly profound changes of metaphysical outlook. The author argues (1) that cognitive scientists typically assimilate perception to sensation, hereby ignoring ways in which descriptions of perception and descriptions of the environment are logically intertwined; (2) that this involves methodological solipsism and an unacknowledged sceptical position that was originally part of Descartes' Dream argument; and (3) that it is impossible to identify the object supposedly to be studied by a science of the phenomenal consciousness. A somewhat parallel argument is included in Kant's critique of rationalist psychology.

JING ZHU & PAUL THAGARD
Emotion and action

• Abstract: The role of emotion in human action has long been neglected in the philosophy of action. Some prevalent misconceptions of the nature of emotion are responsible for this neglect: emotions are irrational; emotions are passive; and emotions have only an insignificant impact on actions. In this paper we argue that these assumptions about the nature of emotion are problematic and that the neglect of emotion's place in theories of action is untenable. More positively, we argue on the basis of recent research in cognitive neuroscience that emotions may significantly affect action generation as well as action execution and control. Moreover, emotions also play a crucial role in people's explanation of action. We conclude that the concept of emotion deserves a more distinctive and central place in philosophical theories of action.

GLENN BRADDOCK
Eliminativism and indeterminate consciousness

• Abstract: One of Daniel Dennett's most sophisticated arguments for his eliminativism about phenomenological properties centers around the color phi phenomenon. He attempts to show that there is no phenomenological fact of the matter concerning the phenomenon of apparent motion because it is impossible to decide between two competing explanations. I argue that the two explanations considered by Dennett are both based on the assumption that a realist account of the phenomenon must include a neat mapping between phenomenological time and objective time. Since this assumption is false, Dennett's argument is unsuccessful. Like most eliminativist arguments, Dennett's arguments may indicate that the subjective character of experience is different from how it is often described, but this leaves plenty of room for alternative models of consciousness.

URIAH KRIEGAL
PANIC theory and the prospects for a representational theory of phenomenal consciousness

• Abstract: Michael Tye has recently argued that the phenomenal character of conscious experiences is 'one and the same as' (1) Poised (2) Abstract (3) Non-Conceptual (4) Intentional Content (PANIC). Tye argues extensively that PANIC Theory accounts for differences in phenomenal character in representational terms. But another task of a theory of phenomenal consciousness is to account for the difference between those mental states that have phenomenal character at all and those that do not. By going through each of the four qualifiers of PANIC, we argue that PANIC Theory fails to account for this difference in genuinely representational terms. We suggest, furthermore, that the reasons it fails are likely to be endemic to all representational theories of phenomenal consciousness.

SANFORD C. GOLDBERG
Belief and its linguistic expression: Towards a belief-box account of first-person authority

• Abstract: In this paper I characterize the problem of first-person authority as it confronts the proponent of the Belief Box conception of belief, and I develop the groundwork for a Belief Box account of that authority. If acceptable, the Belief Box account calls into question (by undermining a popular motivation for) the thesis that first-person authority is not to be traced to a truth-tracking relation between first-person opinions themselves and the beliefs which they are about.

GEIR OVERSKEID
Psychological hedonism and the nature of motivation: Bertrand Russell's anhedonic desires

• Abstract: Understanding the causes of behavior is one of philosophy's oldest challenges. In analyzing human desires, Bertrand Russell's position was clearly related to that of psychological hedonism. Still, though he seems to have held quite consistently that desires and emotions govern human behavior, he claimed that they do not necessarily do so by making us want to maximize pleasure. This claim is related to several being made in today's psychology and philosophy. I point out a string of facts and arguments indicating the weakness of this position, and briefly discuss the possibility of developing a set of assumptions regarding behavioral causation common to students of thinking and behavior.

Book Reviews:

JEFFREY M. ZACKS
Review of ROBERTO CASATI & ACHILLE C. VARZI's Parts and places

DABNEY TOWNSEND
Review of BARBARA MARIA STAFFORD's Visual analogy