Breckan Johnston

Many works in the philosophy of language have produced varying claims to deduce the nature of linguistic signs’ capacity to reference the world. Those in the analytic tradition tend to evaluate linguistic reference via logical structures, while those in the continental tend to engage with first–person phenomenal experience. Findings from neuroscientist Roger Sperry’s ‘split–brain’ experiments provide a challenge to both philosophical perspectives. Sperry’s experiments demonstrate that, though consciously unable to recognize linguistic signs or understand themselves to be having a first–person perceptual experience, split–brain patients could determine referents of linguistic signs. Consequently, reference appears possible while conscious understanding of logical structures and phenomenal experience is inaccessible. This paper aims to show that analytic and continental viewpoints are threatened by the phenomenon of split–brain patient comprehension. A potential objection, concerned with unconscious comprehension via engrams, is then evaluated. However, by committing to unconscious comprehension, this paper demonstrates that philosophers of both traditions would weaken their perspectives’ essential commitments. To conclude, the paper argues that the findings of Roger Sperry produce an interesting fissure in popular theories of reference, and asks readers to determine which conditions are necessary for reference.

Transformative experiences are those in which you do not know what type of person you will become afterward. Laurie Ann Paul, the author of Transformative Experience, argues that because you are epistemically limited in knowing what an experience will be like, you cannot apply your subjective values to possible outcomes—the primary input of normative decision theory (NDT). She concludes that NDT cannot adequately determine rational actions for transformative experiences. I argue that NDT can determine rational outcomes for transformative experiences. Evidence, coupled with your present subjective values, provides sufficient grounds to form rational predictions of what any experience will be like for you. Through a Bayesian NDT framework, primarily concerned with evidence weighting, limited phenomenal perspectives can be brought into view. Transformative experiences, therefore, do not threaten the authority of normative decision theory.