VOLUME 15 (2002), ISSUE 3

Manuscripts

NEIL C. MANSON
What does language tell us about consciousness? First-person mental discourse and higher-order thought theories of consciousness

• Abstract: The fact that we can engage in first-person discourse about our own mental states seems, intuitively, to be bound up with consciousness. David Rosenthal draws upon this intuition in arguing for his higher-order thought theory of consciousness. Rosenthal's argument relies upon the assumption that the truth-conditions for 'p' and 'I think that p' differ. It is argued here that the truth-conditional schema debars 'I think' from playing one of its (expressive) roles and thus is not a good test for what is asserted when 'I think' is employed in making an assertoric utterance. The critique of Rosenthal's argument allows us to make explicit the intuitions which shape higher-order representation theories of consciousness in general. Consciousness and first-person mental discourse seem to be connected primarily because consciousness is (and was) an epistemic term, used to denote first-person knowledge of minds. Higher-order thought theories of consciousness draw upon this epistemic notion of consciousness, and because self-knowledge seems to involve higher-order representation, the higher-order theorist can deploy what is in effect an 'error theory' about conscious experience disguised as a kind of conceptual analysis of our ordinary concept of a conscious mental state. The conclusion reached is that there is unlikely to be a simple or direct path from considerations about mental discourse to conclusions about the nature of consciousness.

PETER SLEZAK
The tri-partite model of representation

• Abstract: Robert Cummins (1996, p.1) has characterized the vexed problem of mental representation as "the topic in the philosophy of mind for some time now". This remark is something of an understatement. The same topic was central to the famous controversy between Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld in the Seventeenth Century and remained central to the entire philosophical tradition of "ideas" in the writings of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid and Kant. However, the scholarly, exegetical literature has almost no overlap with that of contemporary cognitive science. I show that the recurrence of certain deep perplexities about the mind is a systematic and pervasive pattern arising, not only throughout history, but also in a number of independent domains today such as debates over visual imagery, symbolic systems and others. Such historical and contemporary convergences suggest that the fundamental issues cannot arise essentially from the theoretical guise they take in any particular case.

KATARZYNA PAPRZYCKA
False consciousness of intentional psychology

• Abstract: According to explanatory individualism, every action must be explained in terms of an agent's desire. According to explanatory nonindividualism, we sometimes act on our desires, but it is also possible for us to act on others' desires without acting on desires of our own. While explanatory nonindividualism has guided the thinking of many social scientists, it is considered to be incoherent by most philosophers of mind who insist that actions must be ultimately explained in terms of some desire of the agent. In the first part of the paper, I show that some powerful arguments designed to demonstrate the incoherence of explanatory nonindividualism fail. In the second part of the paper, I offer a nonindividualist explanation of the apparent obviousness of belief-desire psychology. I argue that there are two levels of the intelligibility of our actions. On the more fundamental (explanatory) level, the question "Why did the agent do something?" admits a variety of folk-psychological categories. But there is another (formation of self) level, at which the same question admits only of answers that ultimately appeal only to the agent's own desires. Explanatory individualism results from the confusion of the two levels.

ANDREW SNEDDON
Towards externalist psychopathology

• Abstract: The "width" of the mind is an important topic in contemporary philosophical psychology. Support for active externalism derives from theoretical, engineering, and observational perspectives. Given the history of psychology, psychopathology is notable in its absence from the list of avenues of support for the idea that some cognitive processes extend beyond the physical bounds of the organism in question. The current project is to defend the possibility, plausibility, and desirability of externalist psychopathology. Doing so both adds to the case for externalism and suggests ways of improving our study of cognitive dysfunction. I establish the possibility of externalist psychopathology through the development of models of wide cognitive processing, and, by implication, failure of such processing, from the work of S. L. Hurley and Robert Wilson. The plausibility of wide conceptualization and explanation of cognitive disorders is shown through an examination of apraxia, disorders of learned, skilled movements. The desirability of externalist psychopathology is suggested through a look a theoretical and therapeutic virtues, again drawing on Wilson's work.

KRISTIN ANDREWS
Interpreting autism: A critique of Davidson on thought and language

• Abstract: Donald Davidson's account of interpretation purports to be a priori, though I argue that the empirical facts about interpretation, theory of mind, and autism must be considered when examining the merits of Davidson's view. Developmental psychologists have made plausible claims about the existence of some people with autism who use language but who are unable to interpret the minds of others. This empirical claim undermines Davidson's theoretical claims that all speakers must be interpreters of other speakers and that one need not be a speaker in order to be a thinker. The falsity of these theses has consequences for other parts of Davidson's world view; for example it undermines his argument against animal thought.

MARCEL SCHEELE
Never mind the gap: The explanatory gap as an artifact of naive philosophical argument

• Abstract: It is argued that the explanatory gap argument, according to which it is fundamentally impos-sible to explain qualitative mental states in a physicalist theory of mind, is unsound. The main argument in favour of the explanatory gap is presented, which argues that an identity state-ment of mind and brain has no explanatory force, in contrast to 'normal' scientific identity statements. Then it is shown that 'normal' scientific identity statements also do not conform to the demands set by the proponent of the explanatory gap. Rather than accept all such gaps, it is argued that we should deny the explanatory gap in a physicalist theory of mind.

BILL WRINGE
Is folk psychology a Lakatosian research program?

• Abstract: It has often been argued, by philosophers and more recently by developmental psychologists that our common-sense conception of the mind should be regarded as a scientific theory. However those who advance this view rarely say much about what they take a scientific theory to be. In this paper, I look at one specific proposal as to how we should interpret the theory view of folk psychology—namely by seeing it as having a structure analogous to that of a Lakatosian research program. I argue that although the Lakatosian model may seem promising—particularly to those who are interested in studying the development of children's understanding of the mind—the analogy between Lakatosian research programs and folk psychology cannot be made good because folk psychology does not possess anything analogous to the positive heuristic of a Lakatosian research program. I also argue that Lakatos account of theories may not be the best one for developmental psychologists to adopt because of the emphasis which Lakatos places on the social embeddedness of scientific theorizing.

Book Reviews:

ANDREW MELNYK
Review of JOSEPH LEVINE's Purple haze: The puzzle of consciousness

LAURA SIZER
Review of AARON BEN-ZE'EV's The subtlety of emotions

ANTTI REVONSUO
Review of MICHEL JOUVET's The paradox of sleep: The story of dreaming