Christopher Hill

Identity theory The doctrine that mental states are identical with physical states was defended in antiquity by Lucretius and in the early modern era by Hobbes. It achieved considerable prominence in the 1950s as a result of the writings of Herbert Feigl, U. T. Place, and J. J. C. Smart. (See, e.g., Smart (1959). These authors developed reasonably precise formulations of the doctrine, clarified the grounds for embracing it, and responded persuasively to a range of objections. More recently it has been defended systematically by Hill (1991) and Papineau (2002). Other contemporary advocates include Loar (1990), McLaughlin (2004), and Polger (2005). The doctrine also figures explicitly or implicitly in the writings of dualists, who are of course concerned to oppose it. Thus, for example, it plays an important role in Kripke’s influential defense of dualism (Kripke 1980)

In this paper I celebrate the virtues of Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel's path-breaking book on introspection, but I also exp-ress dissatisfaction with a few of its recurring themes. The main body of the paper consists of seven theses about the way in which the study of introspection should be conducted. Thus, to a large extent, the paper is a methodological proposal, though it also makes a number of concrete claims about the nature of introspection, and about the epistemological status of its deliverances. The methodology I endorse is quite different than the one that Hurlburt advocates, but even so, it is compatible with assigning a large role to Descriptive Experience Sampling. Equally, while I am no fan of Schwitzgebel's radical scepti-cism about introspection, he and I are of like mind on a number of spe-cific epistemological issues, and we share the sense that it would be useful to draw on other areas of cognitive science in extending Descriptive Experience Sampling and refining it

John Heil’s new book ranges over many of the major topics in metaphysics, including substance, properties, causation, space, time, parts and wholes, modality, essence, agency, and consciousness. It has interesting things to say about all of the issues it discusses, but there are three topics that are especially prominent in the book, and which help to organize the discussion. These all flow from the differences between our everyday, commonsense understanding of reality and the representations that are offered by science.

I argue for three claims. (1) The phenomenology of visual experience is exhausted by awareness of appearance properties (i.e., certain constantly changing characteristics of external objects that are relational and viewpoint‐dependent). (2) Cognition differs from perception in that it has a purely discursive or linguistic dimension, whereas perception is pervasively analog and iconic; but this does not determine a border between the two domains, for cognition also has a massive iconic dimension. And (3) certain raging debates in teleosemantics can be resolved by acknowledging that perceptual representations in more primitive organisms tend to have dual contents (e.g., both small, moving black object, and food).

The type identity theory, according to which types of mental state are identical to types of physical state, fell out of favour for some years but is now being considered with renewed interest. Many philosophers are critically re-examining the arguments which were marshalled against it, finding in the type identity theory both resources to strengthen a comprehensive, physicalistic metaphysics and a useful tool in understanding the relationship between developments in psychology and new results in neuroscience. This volume brings together leading philosophers of mind, whose essays challenge in new ways the standard objections to type identity theory, such as the multiple realizability objection and the modal argument. Other essays show how cognitive science and neuroscience are lending new support to type identity theory and still others provide, extend and improve traditional arguments concerning the theory's explanatory power.

This book presents a comprehensive theory of consciousness. The initial chapter distinguishes six main forms of consciousness and sketches an account of each one. Later chapters focus on phenomenal consciousness, consciousness of, and introspective consciousness. In discussing phenomenal consciousness, Hill develops the representational theory of mind in new directions, arguing that all awareness involves representations, even awareness of qualitative states like pain. He then uses this view to undercut dualistic accounts of qualitative states. Other topics include visual awareness, visual appearances, emotional qualia, and meta-cognitive processing. This important work will interest a wide readership of students and scholars in philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Christopher S. Hill argues that perceptual experience constitutively involves representations of worldly items, and that the relevant form of representation can be explained in broadly biological terms. He then maintains that the representational contents of perceptual experiences are perceptual appearances, interpreted as relational, viewpoint-dependent properties of external objects. There is also a complementary explanation of how the objects that possess these properties are represented. Hill maintains that perceptual phenomenology can be explained reductively in terms of the representational contents of experiences, and uses this doctrine to undercut the traditional arguments for dualism. This treatment of perceptual phenomenology is expanded to encompass cognitive phenomenology, the phenomenology of moods and emotions, and the phenomenology of pain. Hill also offers accounts of the various forms of consciousness that perceptual experiences can possess. One aim is to argue that phenomenology is metaphysically independent of these forms of consciousness, and another is to de-mystify the form known as phenomenal consciousness. The book concludes by discussing the relations of various kinds that perceptual experiences bear to higher-level cognitive states, including relations of format, content, and justification or support.

This chapter focuses on three parts of Goldman's work, beginning with his model of the processes that underlie ascriptions of mental states to others. It maintains that Goldman errs in ignoring the role that knowledge of testimony plays in those processes. The second topic will be the theory of introspection that Goldman developed in the early 1990s. The reader may be surprised to find that most of the author remarks are concerned with this topic, given that Goldman's views about introspection have changed dramatically in recent years. It is the author impression, however, that that his earlier theory has been hugely influential, and that it continues to shape research on cognitive phenomenology and self‐knowledge. The third topic will be Goldman's more recent theory of introspection ‐ the theory that he develops in Simulating Minds. The chapter sketches alternatives to the main components of Goldman's theory, together with some of the motivation for accepting them.

Jaegwon Kim relied principally on armchair methods in approaching problems in philosophy of mind. This paper is concerned with the nature of such methods and their prospects of success. Identifying the main armchair methods as introspection, modal reasoning involving conceivability tests, and conceptual analysis, the paper argues that insofar as the first two members of this trio aim to reveal the constitutive metaphysical natures of mental states, they are unable to reach their objective. In contrast, it defends conceptual analysis, arguing that Quine’s attempt to discredit it fails. More specifically, it maintains that a certain form of conceptual role semantics is immune to Quine’s strictures against meaning, and that this conception of meaning allows room for armchair discoveries about the meanings of our words (though it has no tendency to provide access to deep facts about the constitutive metaphysical natures of extralinguistic entities).