Pierre Steiner

This paper is a discussion of Claire Petitmengin and Michel Bitbol's article 'The validity of first-person descriptions as authenticity and coherence' . In section I, I present what I take as being the main points they defend in that article, and put them in relation with the global purpose of the special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies in which their article is included. In section II, I start discussing the paper by comparing the conception of description they defend with a constructivist/pragmatist account of description and knowledge. This leads me, in section III, to introduce very briefly the pragmatist conception of experience that underlies that latter account. As that pragmatist conception of experience insists on the fact that lived experience goes beyond the subjective/objective duality, and as it therefore calls for a redefinition of what lived experience is, I naturally wonder whether B&P might endorse that pragmatist conception of experience, somehow standing in tension with the importance of subjectivity in the definition of what lived experience is for many first-person approaches to lived experience

Based on an endorsement of the hypothesis of extended cognition , this paper proposes a criticism of the representationalist assumptions that still pertain to these contemporary models of cognition. I first rehearse some basic problems akin to any representationalist model of cognition, before proposing some more specific arguments directed against the necessity, the plausibility, and the coherence of the marriage between extended cognition and contemporary representationalism . Extended and distributed models of cognition have the resources to get rid of representationalism, and they should better do it. Their adherence to representationalism might be an by-product of the extended character of the scientific study of cognition

This paper tackles the problem of the nature of the space of perception. Based both on philosophical arguments and on results obtained from original experimental situations, it attempts to show how space is constituted concretely, before any distinction between the “inner” and the “outer” can be made. It thus sheds light on the presuppositions of the well-known debate between internalism and externalism in the philosophy of mind; it argues in favor of the latter position, but with arguments that are foundationally antecedent to this debate. We call the position we defend enactive externalism. It is based on experimental settings which, in virtue of their minimalism, make it possible both to defend a sensori-motor/enactive theory of perception; and, especially, to inquire into the origin of the space of perception, showing how it is concretely enacted before the controversy between internalism and externalism can even take place

I present and defend here a thesis named vehicleless externalism for conceptual mental episodes. According to it, the constitutive relations there are between the production of conceptual mental episodes by an individual and the inclusion of this individual in social discursive practices make it non-necessary to equate, even partially, conceptual mental episodes with the occurrence of physical events inside of that individual. Conceptual mental episodes do not have subpersonal vehicles; they have owners: persons in interpretational practices. That thesis is grounded on inferentialism and on the endorsement of the idea that "meaning is normative". After having recapitulated this heritage and after having presented that thesis, the paper especially attempts to articulate how, in that framework, we may then positively conceive the relations there are between conceptual mental episodes, intracranial events and inferential behaviour.

RÉSUMÉ: J’analyse dans cet article la notion d’Arrière-plan teile qu’elle a été développée par John Searle en philosophie de I’esprit depuis une vingtaine d’années. Cette notion désigne, largement, I’ensemble des capacités mentales non-représentationnelles au moyen desquelles les représentations mentales peuvent avoir un contenu sémantique déterminé et être appliquées. Je tente de montrer que, bienqu’originale et pertinente, cette notion, telle qu’elle est caractérisée par Searle, est tout à fait insuffisante pour remplir ses desseins descriptifs et explicatifs. Je m’efforce alors de penser I’Arrière-plan dans une perspective externaliste et à partir d’un point de vue (minimalement) représentationnaliste.ABSTRACT: This article analyzes the notion ofbackground capacities as developed by John Searle during the last twenty years in philosophy of mind. Broadly construed, this notion designates non-representational mental capacities as the means by which mental representations are given a precise semantic content and thus are able to be expressed. Though novel and relevant, I intend to show that, according to Searle’s description, this notion proves inadequate to attain its descriptive and explicative goals. I go on to regard background capacities in aperspective both externalist and (minimally) representationalist.