Consciousness and CognitionOur thinking about consciousness and cognition is dominated by a certain very natural conception. This conception dictates what we take the fundamental questions about consciousness and cognition to be as well as the form that their answers must take. In this book, Michael Thau shows that, despite its naturalness, this conception begins with and depends upon a few fundamental errors. Exorcising these errors requires that we completely reconceive the nature of both consciousness and cognition as well as the fundamental problems each poses. Thau proceeds by discussing three famous and important philosophical puzzles - Spectrum Inversion, Frege's Puzzle, and Black-and-White Mary - each of which concerns some aspect of either consciousness or cognition. It has gone unnoticed that at a certain important level of generality, each of these puzzles presents the very same problem and, in bringing out this common problem, the errors in our natural conception of consciousness and cognition are also brought out. Thau's book will appeal to the casual reader interested in the proper solution of these puzzles and the nature of consciousness and cognition. The discussion of Frege's puzzle also contains important insights about the nature of linguistic communication and, hence, anyone interested in the fundamental questions in philosophy of language will also want to read the book. |
Contents
13 | |
15 | |
17 | |
21 | |
24 | |
26 | |
Phenomenology and representational content | 30 |
An alternative view of perception | 33 |
Two false assumptions | 132 |
Conclusion | 135 |
The Structure of Linguistic Communication | 137 |
The philosophical importance of implicature | 140 |
The Gricean paradox and two ways of generating it | 143 |
The accessibility of Gricean inferences | 147 |
The underdetermination of the inferences | 149 |
Dispensing with the inferences | 153 |
Generalized usemention confusion | 35 |
Pain and other sensations | 37 |
Shoemakers view | 41 |
Conclusion | 45 |
The Structure of Belief and Perceptual Representation | 49 |
Intentionality and sensedata theory | 52 |
The link to truth and falsity | 55 |
The relational nature of belief | 58 |
Instantial states vs internal states | 60 |
Against internal belief states | 62 |
The possible worlds account of propositions | 68 |
Saying and believing | 70 |
Perceptual representation | 74 |
Perception and the particularizing fallacy | 80 |
Intentionality revisited | 81 |
The FregeanMillian distinction and the whathow distinction | 83 |
Descriptive Fregeanism and nondescriptive Fregeanism | 84 |
Guise Millianism and pure Millianism | 86 |
Singular propositions | 88 |
Explaining the whathow distinction | 95 |
Conclusion | 97 |
Freges Puzzle | 98 |
Four ways of generating Freges puzzle | 99 |
The way that appeals to reasons for behavior | 104 |
Two ways the triadist can explain the differences in information conveyed Differencesinthehow and differencesaboutthehow | 107 |
Representaional content qualia and nondescriptive modes of presentation | 112 |
Against differencesaboutthehow | 117 |
Against differencesinthehow | 126 |
Semantic value as a theoretical entity | 159 |
The opacity of semantic value | 162 |
Trivial but informative sentences | 166 |
True identity statements belief ascriptions containing true identity statements etc | 168 |
A kind of conventional implicature | 172 |
Conclusion | 175 |
BlackandWhite Mary | 178 |
A first pass at the argument | 180 |
A response to the argument | 182 |
A qualification Conveying vs registering | 187 |
Reformulating the argument | 191 |
First response Mary gains only nonpropositional knowledge | 194 |
The relation between Marys new propositional and nonpropositional knowledge | 197 |
Seeing objects vs seeing properties | 198 |
Second response Mary learns about red | 200 |
Third response Mary lacks the concept red | 208 |
Toward the heart of the argument Dumbing Mary down | 214 |
Toward the heart of the argument Setting Mary free | 216 |
At the heart of the argument | 219 |
Why we cant name the properties represented in perception | 222 |
Looking some color | 226 |
The intuition that colors are represented in perception | 231 |
Perceptual representation and dispositionalism about color | 235 |
Conclusion | 236 |
Notes | 239 |
Works Cited | 271 |
277 | |
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Common terms and phrases
ability Alec Guinness appears Aristotle ascribe aware bears the belief behavior belief ascriptions belief relation believes that Clark believes that Superman Chapter claim Clark Kent flies color concept consciously constituent conversational implicature convey different information Daily Planet descriptive content descriptive Fregeanism example explain express fact false Fergie fire engines Frege's puzzle Grice guise Millian Harman hence imply important philosopher information conveyed intentional objects intrinsic surface property intuitions involves Irish pub Lex believes Lex Luthor Lex's lief maxims meaning mental modes of presentation non-descriptive Fregean non-descriptive modes Norm's perceptual experiences philosophy of mind possible worlds propositional knowledge qualia freak qualia freak's view red object red thing relevant representational content seems semantic value sense sense-data sentence Superman someone speaker spectrum inversion subjective difference Superman flies Superman is coming supposed tence tion tomato trivial true truth-value utter the sentence visual perception what's implicated ZF is incomplete