Jérôme Dokic

In this essay, I examine some aspects of the debate between a perceptual model of communication, according to which testimony is a source of knowledge about the communicated fact, and an inferential model of communication, according to which testimony requires from the hearer an inference from the used signs, the speaker’s mental states, and other features of the context. From a reflection on the nature of the capacity for metarepresentation, and its dependence on the capacities of social perception and simulation, I show that the ascription of even complex mental states to the speaker does not preclude communication from functioning on a mode in which the hearer directly inherits the information transmitted by the speaker. Understanding is grounded on the natural tendency to accept what is intelligibly presented to us as true.

The discovery of mirror neurons has given rise to a number of interpretations of their functions together with speculations on their potential role in the evolution of specifically human capacities. Thus, mirror neurons have been thought to ground many aspects of human social cognition, including the capacity to engage in cooperative collective actions and to understand them. We propose an evaluation of this latter claim. On the one hand, we will argue that mirror neurons do not by themselves provide a sufficient basis for the forms of agentive understanding and shared intentionality involved in cooperative collective actions. On the other hand, we will also argue that mirror neurons can nevertheless play an important role in an account of the production and understanding of joint action, insofar as they provide the basic constituents of implicit agent-neutral representations and are useful elements in a process of online mutual adjustment of participants' actions.

I present a novel argument against the epistemic conception of perception according to which perception either is a form of knowledge or puts the subject in a position to gain knowledge about what is perceived. ECP closes the gap between a perceptual experience that veridically presents a given state of affairs and an experience capable of yielding the knowledge that the state of affairs obtains. Against ECP, I describe a particular case of perceptual experience in which the following triad of claims is true: The experience presents a given state of affairs ; The experience is veridical; The experience cannot yield the knowledge that the state of affairs obtains. This case involves an empirically well-studied phenomenon, namely perceptual hysteresis, which involves the maintenance of a perceptual experience with a relatively stable content over progressively degrading sensory stimulations.

Three commitments guide Dennett’s approach to the study of consciousness. First, an ontological commitment to materialist monism. Second, a methodological commitment to what he calls ‘heterophenomenology.’ Third, a ‘doxological’ commitment that can be expressed as the view that there is no room for a distinction between a subject’s beliefs about how things seem to her and what things actually seem to her, or, to put it otherwise, as the view that there is no room for a reality/appearance distinction for consciousness. We investigate how Dennett’s third doxological commitment relates to his first two commitments and whether its acceptance should be seen as a mere logical consequence of acceptance of the first two. We will argue that this is not the case, that Dennett’s doxological commitment is in need of independent motivation, and that this independent motivation is not forthcoming.

This essay explores the prospects of grounding an account of pictorial experience or ‘seeing-in’ on a theory of presence in ordinary perception. Even though worldly objects can be perceptually recognized in a picture, they do not feel present as when they are perceived face to face. I defend a dual view of perceptual phenomenology according to which the sense of presence is dissociated from the contents of perception. On the one hand, the sense of presence is best conceived as a non-sensory feeling. Ordinary objects are felt but not seen to be present. On the other hand, the contents of perception are determined by the actualization of perceptual-recognitional abilities. Unlike current versions of the feeling-based account of the sense of presence, I claim that these abilities enable us to perceive worldly (partial or overall) appearances. This claim justifies the strongest interpretation of recognition theories which does not fall back on the view that pictorial experience involves a kind of perceptual illusion.

Cet article porte sur une distinction familière entre deux formes de souvenirs: les souvenirs factuels ('Je me souviens que p', où 'p' est une proposition) et les souvenirs épisodiques ('Je me souviens de x', où x est une entité particulière). Les souvenirs épisodiques ont, contrairement aux souvenirs factuels, un rapport immédiat et interne à une expérience particulière que le sujet a eue dans le passé. Les souvenirs épisodique et factuel sont des souvenirs explicites au sens de la psychologie cognitive. J'esquisse une théorie du souvenir épisodique qui rend compte de ce trait essentiel. L'une des conséquences de cette théorie est que lorsque je me souviens de quelque chose au sens épisodique, je me souviens que ce même souvenir remonte directement à l'une des mes expériences passées. Le souvenir épisodique est un souvenir factuel réflexif.

Episodic memory involves the sense that it is “first-hand”, i.e., originates directly from one’s own past experience. An account of this phenomenological dimension is offered in terms of an affective experience or feeling specific to episodic memory. On the basis of recent empirical research in the domain of metamemory, it is claimed that a recollective experience involves two separate mental components: a first-order memory about the past along with a metacognitive, episodic feeling of knowing. The proposed two-tiered account is contrasted with other, reductionist two-tiered accounts as well as with reflexive accounts of episodic memory to be found in the literature.