Sean Hermanson

Concerns over the toxicity of social media have prompted philosophers to develop a new branch of epistemology focused on the epistemic evaluation of cognitive environments: Environmental Epistemology (though we will mostly use the descriptor, ‘Digital Epistemology’). Traditional epistemology is about the evaluation of persons or groups and this overlooks the evaluation of things and systems in their own right. Epistemic environments – spaces, real and digital, where people interact and communicate – are said to be governed by new specific and general epistemic norms to be philosophically investigated. This paper surveys various proposals within Environmental (or Digital) Epistemology with the aim of clarifying what exactly is being proposed, whether is it worth the attention of philosophers, and how this viewpoint might be defended and applied. Our discussion includes critiques of healthy, neutral, and toxic epistemic environments, environmental resources, epistemic health, pollution, hostility, vulnerability, and flooding. While acknowledging that epistemic environments, including digital media, can inhibit our attempts to reason and understand, we are less confident that this emerging viewpoint has been adequately developed and motivated. Current epistemological frameworks – especially Reliabilist – already have the means to address questions about how to epistemically evaluate informational environments.

This chapter examines the question of insect consciousness and argues that Descartes was correct in his view that insects lack subjective experience. Several perspectives on the problem of animal consciousness are evaluated, including “theory-heavy” approaches like the global workspace theory, “theory-neutral” approaches that focus on behavioral and other similarities, and “theory-light” approaches that seek out clusters of cognitive abilities facilitated by consciousness. It is argued that all these approaches encounter the “dilemma of demandingness,” where insect capacities fail to meet human standards, leading to weaker evidence with less confidence. Nonetheless, insect behavior differs significantly from the typical expression of pain in humans; hence, they implement the causal role of pain only superficially, resembling unconscious reflexes rather than genuine subjective experience. This chapter also critically examines Michael Tye’s concept of “centered speciesism,” which prioritizes moral consideration based on biological relatedness. This view is arbitrary and leads to disastrous results, suggesting moral consideration should be based on morally significant traits, not biological relatedness. A concluding reflection on the problem of animal suffering for theism considers the potential scale of suffering in a world teeming with insects.

Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy grew out of an interdisciplinary conference on the Upper Palaeolithic, “Digging Deeper: Archaeological and Philosophical Perspectives”, held on Miami Beach, Florida, in December 2017. The previous decade had seen increasing numbers of publications on topics of interest to both philosophers and archaeologists, so the time was ripe for a conference which served to generate constructive dialogue between researchers from both disciplines. Themes discussed included art, music, the mind, symbols, mortuary practices, and archaeological methodology. This volume draws from several contributors to that conference as well as other leading researchers at the forefront of the intersection of archaeology and philosophy. Its scope is expanded from the Upper Palaeolithic to archaeological research in general—adopting a broad conception inviting many perspectives from philosophy and interdisciplinary evolutionary studies to the table—and is organized by topics into four sections: Theory and Inference; Interdisciplinary Connections; Cognition, Language and Normativity; Ethical Issues.

This volume explores various themes at the intersection of archaeology and philosophy: inference and theory; interdisciplinary connections; cognition, language and normativity; and ethical issues. Showcasing this heterogeneity, its scope ranges from the method of analogical inference to the evolution of the human mind; from conceptual issues in assessing the health of past populations to the ethics of cultural heritage tourism. It probes the archaeological record for evidence of numeracy, curiosity and creativity, and social complexity. Its contributors comprise an interdisciplinary cluster of philosophers, archaeologists, anthropologists, and psychologists, from a variety of career stages, of whom many are leading experts in their fields. Chapter 3 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

1 Non-reductive physicalists deny that there is any explanation of mentality in purely physical terms, but do not deny that the mental is entirely determined by and constituted out of underlying physical structures. There are important issues about the stability of such a view which teeters on the edge of explanatory reductionism on the one side and dualism on the other (see Kim 1998). 2 Save perhaps for eliminative materialism (see Churchland 1981 for a classic exposition). In fact, however, while.

The famous ethological maxim known as “Morgan’s Canon” continues to be the subject of interpretive controversy. I reconsider Morgan’s canon in light of two questions: First, what did Morgan intend? Second, is this, or perhaps some re-interpretation of the canon, useful within cognitive ethology? As for the first issue, Morgan’s distinction between higher and lower faculties is suggestive of an early supervenience concept. As for the second, both the canon in its original form, and various recent re-readings, offer nothing useful to cognitive ethology.

RésuméJe me demande ici si les conceptions pragmatiques de la vérité peuvent être réconciliées avec les intuitions ordinaires quant à la portée de la bivalence. Je soutiens que les pragmatistes sont conduits à accepter une distinction du genre «type / occurrence» entre les formes d'une investigation et ses instanciations particulières, sous peine de banaliser leur vérificationnisme. Néanmoins, même la conception révisée que j'examine échoue à sauver les approches épistémiques de la vérité de certaines conséquences peu plausibles.

This thesis is about animal minds: which have them, and how we can know that. There are two phases in my approach. I first consider attitudinal states, especially beliefs, before turning to phenomenal consciousness. In my view, these topics are deeply related. Consciousness is best understood as the use of sensory information in cognition. There is nothing that it is like to be an animal which is not capable of a certain kind of belief. ;In order to keep this work manageable I decided at a very early stage to embrace "chimpophobia", for the most part setting aside consideration of the minds of higher primates. It seems to me that the primates raise issues which, while important, add a further dimension of complexity which would lead away from a discussion of simple perceptual attitudes. As such the role of communication, "theory of mind" issues, including deception, and social cognition in general, as well as disputes about primate culture, and especially the ape language controversy, are largely ignored here. ;Chapter one criticizes excessively permissive views about ascribing attitudes to animals. The second chapter explores the themes of adaptive versatility and parsimony, especially in the form of Morgan's canon. There I also address sceptical worries about the possibility of animal belief. Chapter three assesses the unique contributions of Dennett, and uses his work as a springboard into a discussion of animal consciousness. Recent sceptical arguments he offers about bats and snakes are also answered. The final chapter is exclusively devoted to a discussion of consciousness. I argue that the phenomenon of blindsight suggests a number of heretofore unnoticed, but important, revisions in our thinking about phenomenal subjectivity: Higher-order representational theories of consciousness are poorly motivated, Lower-order theories are in need of an important refinement, some, but not all, animals are a kind of natural zombie. ;1The title of this work is derived from a parody of Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women usually attributed to Thomas Taylor. It will soon become apparent to the reader that I wish to turn the tables on Taylor.

I criticize Bourget’s intuitive and empirical arguments for thinking that all possible conscious states are underived if intentional. An underived state is one of which it is not the case that it must be realized, at least in part, by intentional states distinct from itself. The intuitive argument depends upon a thought experiment about a subject who exists for only a split second while undergoing a single conscious experience. This, however, trades on an ambiguity in "split second." Meanwhile, Bourget's empirical argument is question-begging. My critique also has implications for debates about the essential temporality and unity of consciousness experience, and, phenomenal atomism.

That philosophy is an outlier in the humanities when it comes to the underrepresentation of women has been the occasion for much discussion about possible effects of subtle forms of prejudice, including implicit bias and stereotype threat. While these ideas have become familiar to the philosophical community, there has only recently been a surge of interest in acquiring field-specific data. This paper adds to quantitative findings bearing on hypotheses about the effects of unconscious prejudice on two important stages along career pathways: tenure-track hiring and early career publishing.

This paper explores the idea that many “simple minded” invertebrates are “natural zombies” in that they utilize their senses in intelligent ways, but without phenomenal awareness. The discussion considers how “first-order” representationalist theories of consciousness meet the explanatory challenge posed by blindsight. It would be an advantage of first-order representationalism, over higher-order versions, if it does not rule out consciousness in most non-human animals. However, it is argued that a first-order representationalism which adequately accounts for blindsight also implies that most non-mammals are not conscious. The example of the honey bee is used to illuminate these claims. Although there is some reason to think that bees have simple beliefs and desires, nevertheless, their visually-mediated cognizing is comparable to that of an animal with blindsight. There is also reason to think that the study of blindsight can also help determine how consciousness is distributed in the animal world.

Is cultural evolution needed to explain altruistic selfsacrifice? Some contend that cultural traits (e.g. beliefs, behaviors, and for some “memes”) replicate according to selection processes that have “floated free” from biology. One test case is the example of suicide kamikaze attacks in wartime Japan. Standard biological mechanisms—such as reciprocal altruism and kin selection—might not seem to apply here: The suicide pilots did not act on the expectation that others would reciprocate, and they were supposedly sacrificing themselves for country and emperor, not close relatives. Yet an examination of both the historical record and the demands of evolutionary theory suggest the kamikaze phenomenon does not cry out for explanation in terms of a special non-biological selection process. This weakens the case for cultural evolution, and has interesting implications for our understanding of altruistic self-sacrifice.

Stoerig and Cowey’s work is widely regarded as showing that monkeys with lesions in the primary visual cortex have blindsight. However, Mole and Kelly persuasively argue that the experimental results are compatible with an alternative hypothesis positing only a deficit in attention and perceptual working memory. I describe a revised procedure which can distinguish these hypotheses, and offer reasons for thinking that the blindsight hypothesis provides a superior explanation. The study of blindsight might contribute towards a general investigation into animal consciousness, though there is a problem when it comes to showing how a non-verbal animal can indicate whether or not it is perceiving consciously. Perhaps whether there is something that it is like to be a given animal depends on whether it exhibits the cognitive profile of conscious vision as opposed to non-conscious “natural blindsight.”

In “What is it like to be boring and myopic?” Kathleen Akins offers an interesting, empirically driven, argument for thinking that there is nothing that it is like to be a bat. She suggests that bats are “boring” in the sense that they are governed by behavioral scripts and simple, non-representational, control loops, and are best characterized as biological automatons. Her approach has been well received by philosophers sympathetic to empirically informed philosophy of mind. But, despite its influence, her work has not met with any critical appraisal. It is argued that a reconsideration of the empirical results shows that bats are not boring automatons, driven by short input-output loops, instincts, and reflexes. Grounds are provided for thinking that bats satisfy a range of philosophically and scientifically interesting elaborations of the general idea that consciousness is best understood in terms of representational functions. A more complete examination of bat sensory capabilities suggests there is something that it is like after all. The discussion of bats is also used to develop an objection to strongly neurophilosophical approaches to animal consciousness.

Extended Cognition (EC) hypothesizes that there are parts of the world outside the head serving as cognitive vehicles. One criticism of this controversial view is the problem of “cognitive bloat” which says that EC is too permissive and fails to provide an adequate necessary criterion for cognition. It cannot, for instance, distinguish genuine cognitive vehicles from mere supports (e.g. the Yellow Pages). In response, Andy Clark and Mark Rowlands have independently suggested that genuine cognitive vehicles are distinguished from supports in that the former have been “recruited,” i.e. they are either artifacts, or, products of evolution. I argue against this proposal. There are counter examples to the claim that “Teleological” EC is either necessary or sufficient for cognition. Teleological EC conflates different types of scientific projects, and inherits content externalism’s alienation from historically impartial cognitive science.