Christopher Peacocke

There is a distinction between two kinds of explanation by content-involving states, a distinction that emerges most clearly when we consider explanations that involve representation by magnitudes. I illustrate the distinction, which is applicable to a wide variety of kinds of psychological states and processes, and applies also beyond the cases of representation by magnitudes. The distinction allows a new defence of the special kind of explanation by imagistic representation, and gives new reasons for rejecting Zenon Pylyshyn’s rejection thereof. Once the distinction is appreciated, we can articulate a new position on the decades-old dispute about whether perception has a nonconceptual content. A new Eirenic position emerges under which perceptions and judgements have the same kind of content. The genuine insights that motivated the postulation of nonconceptual content in perception are instead captured by noting the features of one of the two kinds of explanation. The Eirenic position is compared and contrasted with the various positions of Tyler Burge, John McDowell, and an earlier stance of Christopher Peacocke.

As a result of movements by both of us, McDowell's and my position are in agreement on one important point: that the same modes of presentation feature both in the contents of perception and the contents of judgment. I discus further an issue on which we still differ, viz. whether the states that make judgments reasonable can be the same states as those we share with non-human animals. Gupta argues that modes of presentation never feature in the contents of perceptual judgments, and gives an example to illustrate this thesis. I argue that his description of the example is correct, but that it does not undermine the claim that the modes of presentation that feature in perceptual contents can also feature in the contents of judgments. I dispute Hill's statement that I am committed to the possibility of logical concepts featuring in the content of perception. In reply to Hill's description of the notion of a mode of presentation as "deplorably vague", I argue that for perceptual modes of presentation, which are in question here, we can say that mode M is distinct from mode M′ if and only if it is possible to perceive an object in way M without perceiving it in way M′. Rubner states that perceptions have accuracy conditions but not correctness conditions. He defends a Burgean position, against which I argue that the phenomena can all be explained using only predicational content. The fact that in 'that FG' the position of F does not look predicational does not show it not to be so. The position of 'B' in the formula ‘Der Ref B’ in Quine's predicate-functor logic does not look predicational; but the semantics for such a formula shows 'B' to be predicational. I dispute Sedivy's statement that the Eirenic position implies that we can perceive things only in the ways that non-human animals can perceive things. The Eirenic position implies only that we share some perceptual contents with the non-human animals, not that we share all. I also argue that identity of an element of perceptual content, such as perception of the gravitational vertical, across the perceptions of multiple different kinds of creature, is consistent with those creatures having very different kinds of life-activity. Conor states that “modes of presentation in experience can be more determinate or finely grained than modes of presentation in thought”. I reply that anything that is determinate in perception can be thought about in correspondingly determinate ways, by suitable use of perceptual demonstratives in thought. Epstein draws a contrast between vehicle-magnitudes and what he calls “represented magnitudes” or “content-magnitudes”. I accept the distinction, but question whether it undermines my position. In the relevant examples, I do not think there is any such thing as operating on the relevant kind of content without there being a corresponding operation on a magnitude or some other subpersonal representation.

Wright takes it that Wittgenstein's main contribution to philosophical reflections on self‐knowledge is an explicit refusal to engage in the task that gives the ‘Cartesian’ conception of the mental, its captivating power: the task of explaining the distinctive features of our epistemic relation to our inner lives. Wright claims to find in Wittgenstein a two‐pronged argument to show that a ‘Cartesian’ conception cannot meet the supposed explanatory need. The picture mislocates Wittgenstein's target. As Wright presents it, the ‘Cartesian’ conception with its observational model of self‐knowledge transparently fails to address the supposedly puzzling feature of our self‐knowledge—its being not just non‐inferential but also baseless. So we need a different answer to the question ‘Why is the conception of the mental that Wittgenstein attacks so gripping?’ and ‘How can we dislodge that grip?’ Wright's picture offers no insight here. He has given us no determinate explanatory problem for the ‘Cartesian’ conception to be seen as a response to, and no determinate philosophical activity for Wittgenstein to be understood as refusing to engage in.

The openness of joint awareness between two or more subjects is a perceptual phenomenon. It involves a certain mutual awareness between the subjects, an awareness that makes reference to that very awareness itself. Properly characterized, such awareness can generate iterated awareness ‘x is aware that y is aware that x is aware...’ to whatever level the subjects can sustain. The openness should not be characterized in terms of Lewis–Schiffer common knowledge, the conditions for which are not met in many basic cases of joint attention. A range of phenomena, including linguistic communication and other interpersonal relations, that have previously been described in terms of common knowledge should rather be seen as involving open joint awareness. An Appendix to this chapter discusses the relations of this approach to Barwise's discussions, and disputes the claim that these mental phenomena require the postulation of self-involving situations.

To give a good account of deductive inference, we need to recognise two new relations, one in the realm of contents, the other in the psychological realm of mental action. When these new relations are properly coordinated, they can supply an account of what it is for a thinker to be making a deductive inference. The account endorses the condition that in deductive reasoning, a thinker must take the premises to support the conclusion. The account is distinguished from the positions of Broome, Ryle, and Wright.

This collection of newly commissioned essays, edited by NYU philosophers Paul Boghossian and Christopher Peacocke, resumes the current surge of interest in the proper explication of the notion of a priori. The authors discuss the relations of the a priori to the notions of definition, meaning, justification, and ontology, explore how the concept figured historically in the philosophies of Leibniz, Kant, Frege, and Wittgenstein, and address its role in the contemporary philosophies of logic, mathematics, mind, and science. The editors’ Introduction familiarizes the reader with the issues that are to be explored in detail in later parts of the anthology.

The question must arise whether a doctrine which is attributed to all of Quine, Putnam, Davidson, Rorty, Gadamer, and Heidegger is possibly a doctrine which comes in more than one version. Even the most ardent taxonomist is likely to draw back from classifying the various actual and possible positions which emerge from the very tangled history of recent discussions of holism. This chapter approaches the matter by addressing a series of questions, starting with those which are most likely to arise in the mind of those philosophers who regard holism with a mixture of fascination and suspicion. It shows whether the Duhem‐Quine Thesis true and it supports meaning holism if it is true. The rational revisability of statements has loomed large in discussions of holism. It is plausible that semantic values are assigned to expressions in such a way that canonical methods involving those expressions are always truth‐preserving.

Normativity is both one of the most important and ubiquitous of phenomena and, despite its historical centrality to philosophy, one of the least understood. The idea that there might be objective, attitude-independent, truths about what we ought to do (morality), what we ought to believe (rationality) or what we ought to appreciate (aesthetics), has always seemed very puzzling to philosophers, even though ordinary thought seems steeped in such judgments. Up until quite recently, the received view was that there was no good way to make sense of such a realistic, objectivist construal of normativity, that we have to make do with one or another anti-realistic alternative, principally, Expressivism, some forms of Constructivism, or Relativism. However, the well-known difficulties with these anti-realist options have motivated philosophers, most especially younger ones, to take a fresh look at Realism and to assess and develop it in new ways. Sometimes the result is that Realism is seen to be better protected against classic objections than had been previously realized; at others, the result seems to be that Realism is even harder to defend, and perhaps even harder to understand, than traditional thinking had allowed. The upshot is a vigorous and stimulating debate that is just beginning to take shape and whose outcome is far from resolved. The main impulse behind the present volume was to commission new work on Normative Realism by a mix of senior and junior scholars to give the philosophical community a useful sense of the current state of play on this central topic. ...

The notion of explanatory priority is clarified. For A to be explanatory prior to B is for the correct account of the individuation of B to mention A, but not conversely. Exploring the relations of explanatory priority between entities does not involve the impossible enterprise of explaining why individuating conditions are as they are. Use-theoretic accounts of meaning and content are consistent with the claims of The Primacy of Metaphysics if they essentially involve a reference relation; and otherwise not. In the case of thought about abstract objects, we must distinguish between the enterprise of defining an expression and individuating an entity. When we do so, Fregean complaints about the project endorsing the principle “Individuation Precedes Representation” evaporate. The treatment of subjects of mental states in The Primacy of Metaphysics does not let in Johnston’s problematic ‘personites’, proper temporal segments of genuine subjects, once we distinguish: between multiplicity over time and multiplicity at a given time; between metaphysical conditions of individuation and merely ‘conceptual connections’; between the conditions under which something comes into existence, and the nature of that thing.

The goal of this paper is to use the dual resources of the contemporary theory of intentional content and the notion of experiencing something metaphorically as something else, which I have defended in my earlier work, to explain the distinctive character of musical experience. These resources are used to explain Felix Mendelssohn’s point that emotional content in music can be more specific than anything capturable in language; to give an account of the role of metaphor in musical experience that does not generate insoluble puzzles; to formulate a Principle of Acquaintance for the content of musical experience; to give a theory of intentional subjects or ‘personae’ in music, and their significance; to explain two ways of hearing action in music; and to elaborate the significance for musical experience of the fact that perception of music is perception of agency.