Harold Langsam

The sensory colors that figure in visual perceptual experience are either properties of the object of consciousness (naïve realism, sense-data theory), or properties of the subject of consciousness (adverbialism) (Section 1). I consider an argument suggested by the work of A. D. Smith that the existence of certain kinds of perceptual constancies shows that adverbialism is correct, for only adverbialism can account for such constancies (Section 3). I respond on behalf of the naïve realist that naïve realism is compatible with the existence of such constancies, so long as naïve realism adopts the view that sensory colors are relational properties of physical objects, not intrinsic properties (Section 4). In other words, the naïve realist should adopt the theory of appearing (Section 5).

John Bengson holds that an intellectual seeming is sufficient for a priori justification, whereas Elijah Chudnoff disagrees and holds that a priori justification also requires an intuitive awareness of the abstract entities that are the subject matter of the proposition to be justified. I distinguish between substantive and non-substantive a priori claims about the world, and argue that Chudnoff is correct about the justification required for the former kind of claim, and Bengson is correct about the justification required for the latter. In brief, substantive a priori claims about the world require for justification a process of reflection that takes as input states of awareness of the abstract entities in the world that are the subject matter of the claim, and yields as output an intellectual seeming that the claim is true. Whereas non-substantive a priori claims about the world (merely conceptual claims) can be justified merely by an intellectual seeming that the claim is true, so long as the seeming is a manifestation of conceptual competence.

The apparent consensus among Nietzsche interpreters is that Nietzsche accepts Schopenhauer’s “description of the ubiquity of suffering” (Gemes 2008, p. 463). In this paper, I argue against this consensus. Specifically, Nietzsche holds that life is not as painful as Schopenhauer makes it out to be, for Nietzsche recognizes two kinds of pleasures that Schopenhauer fails to acknowledge. The only kind of pleasure that Schopenhauer acknowledges is the experience of the cessation of pain that occurs upon the satisfaction of a desire. Nietzsche explicitly rejects Schopenhauer’s view of pleasure; instead, he recognizes pleasurable feelings of power that one can experience when one is trying to satisfy desires, and pleasurable feelings of value that one can experience when one satisfies a desire for something one takes to be valuable.

Responses to skeptical arguments need to be serious: they need to explain not only why some premise of the argument is false, but also why the premise is plausible, despite being false. Moorean responses to skeptical arguments are inadequate because they are not serious: they do not explain the plausibility of false skeptical premises. Skeptical arguments presuppose the truth of the following two claims: the requirements for epistemic justification are internalist, and these internalist requirements are never satisfied. In this paper, I provide a serious response to the skeptic on behalf of the internalist: I explain why the claim that internalist requirements are never satisfied is plausible but false. First, I argue that the claim is plausible, but only insofar as one lacks an account of how perceptual experiences make it rational to hold beliefs about the external world. Second, I provide such an account of experiential rationality, and I argue that in light of this account John McDowell can be understood as persuasively arguing that the claim that internalist requirements are never satisfied is false.

According to John McDowell’s version of disjunctivism, a perceptual experience has both a property that it shares with a subjectively indistinguishable illusory experience as well as a property that it does not share with a subjectively indistinguishable illusory experience. McDowell is also an infallibilist about justification; accordingly, he holds that a perceptual experience justifies a belief in virtue of the latter property. In this paper, I defend McDowell against an argument that purports to show that perceptual experiences justify beliefs only in virtue of the former property, the property that they share with illusory experiences. The argument is a version of Michael Huemer’s self-defeat argument for phenomenal conservatism; in Sect. 2 I show how the argument seemingly applies to show that McDowell’s infallibilism is false. I respond on behalf of McDowell to Huemer’s argument by developing McDowell’s idea of knowledge as cognitive purchase on a fact: I explain both why this idea requires infallibilism about justification and how this idea allows a response to Huemer’s argument.

Materialism does not function in philosophy simply as a popular metaphysical thesis about the nature of the world; it is also often put forward as a solution to some alleged problem involving the relation between mind and body. Galen Strawson is a professed materialist, but it is a defining theme of his book that materialism, as presently understood, cannot serve in this latter function: not only does it not solve the mind-body problem, it exacerbates it. Not that Strawson’s purpose is to offer some alternative solution to the problem; rather, much of his book is best seen as an example of how a traditional philosopher of mind might practice his trade once the mind-body problem is set aside because of its difficulty.

I argue that intentionalist theories of perceptual experience are unable to explain the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. I begin by describing what is involved in explaining phenomenal character, and why it is a task of philosophical theories of perceptual experience to explain it. I argue that reductionist versions of intentionalism are unable to explain the phenomenal character of perceptual experience because they mischaracterize its nature; in particular, they fail to recognize the sensory nature of experience’s phenomenal character. I argue that nonreductionist versions of intentionalism are unable to explain the phenomenal character of perceptual experience because, although they recognize its sensory nature, they mislocate it.

For Nietzsche, the creation of value is of such great importance because it is the only means by which value can come to exist in the world. In this paper, I examine Nietzsche’s views about how value is created. For Nietzsche, value is created through valuing, and in section ‘Valuing’, I provide a Nietzschean account of valuing. Specifically, I argue that those who share Nietzsche’s view that there are no objective values can value things by representing them to have relative value. In section ‘Self-expression and individuality’, I explore Nietzsche’s view that the creation of value occurs through the self-expression of unique individuals. In section ‘Strength’, I discuss the reasons why, according to Nietzsche, strength is required for value creation. In brief, strength is energy, and I explain the various reasons why energy is required to create new values.

Dualists need to change their argumentative strategies if they wish to make a plausible case for dualism. In particular, dualists should not merely react and respond to physicalist views and arguments; they need to develop their own positive agenda. But neither should they focus their energies on constructing a priori arguments for dualism. Rather, dualists should acknowledge that what supports their view that consciousness exists and is a nonphysical phenomenon is observation, not argumentation. What is needed is a positive account of the nature of consciousness and the indispensable role that it plays in our lives, for it is only by showing the explanatory utility of the nonphysical that dualists can begin to discredit those who would deny its existence. In this paper, I try to give some idea of what such a positive theory of consciousness would look like. In particular, I argue for a theory of consciousness that contains a priori synthetic truths about the ontological nature and causal powers of consciousness.

Thoughts have content; for instance, the content of the thought that Plato is a great philosopher is that a certain person, Plato, has a certain property, the property of being a great philosopher. In thinking this thought, I become related in a certain manner to this person, Plato, and to the property of being a great philosopher. In this dissertation, I begin to develop a theory of how such relations come to obtain. ;In chapter 1, I examine and ultimately reject the two approaches to intentionality most popular today: eliminativism and reductionistic physicalism. In chapter 2, I begin to present my own theory of intentionality, the starting point of which is the familiar idea that experience is a necessary condition for thought. In motivating this familiar idea, I explain the sense in which experience can be said to have a qualitative character, and I describe those specific aspects of qualitative character that figure in my subsequent account of how we succeed in forming concepts of material objects. Finally, I end the chapter by presenting the principal challenge for my theory: given that experience is a necessary condition for concept formation, how do we succeed in forming concepts of things other than our experiences? ;In chapter 3 I begin to meet this challenge. I oppose empiricism by arguing that the content of our concepts derives from two sources: experience, and the syntactic features of our thought. In chapter 4 I explain how by referring to phenomenal features with two-place rather than one-place predicates, we can form concepts of objects that exist independently of experience . In chapter 5 I defend naive realism. The account of demonstrative thought I present in chapter 4 presupposes a kind of naive realist theory of perception, and in chapter 5 I defend this theory against such familiar arguments as the argument from hallucination, the causal argument, and the time-gap argument

I think it is important to try to make sense of these thoughts concerning the justificatory role of experiences, for I suspect that we are losing the ability to see why philosophers have traditionally been attracted to such thoughts. Coherentism and reliabilism, perhaps the two most currently popular theories of epistemic justification, appear simply to reject the idea that experiences can justify beliefs. Thus according to coherentism, the view that ‘a belief is justified by its coherence with other beliefs one holds,’ it is only other beliefs, not experiences, that can justify beliefs. Although there is little consensus as to how the notion of coherence should be explicated, it is generally agreed that experiences are not the sort of thing that can cohere with beliefs. Reliabilism, by contrast, holds that ‘a belief is justified if and only if it is “well-formed,” i.e., it has an ancestry of reliable and/or conditionally reliable cognitive operations.’ In other words, according to reliabilism beliefs are justified, not by experiences, but by being caused by reliable belief-forming processes. Experiences may be formed in the course of such processes, but they need not be, and even when they are, they make no contribution to the justification of the beliefs that are formed as the result of those processes. What makes a belief-forming process justification-conferring, according to reliabilism, is simply that it is reliable, not that it gives rise to experiences. So neither coherentism nor reliabilism seems to allow any room for the traditional thought that experiences justify beliefs.

Crispin Wright argues that John McDowell’s use of disjunctivism to respond to the sceptic misses the point of the sceptic’s argument, for disjunctivism is a thesis about the differing metaphysical natures of veridical and nonveridical experiences, whereas the sceptic’s point is that our beliefs are unjustified because veridical and nonveridical experiences can be phenomenally indistinguishable. In this paper, I argue that McDowell is responsive to the sceptic’s focus on phenomenology, for the point of McDowell’s response is that it is the phenomenal character of experience that makes the belief in disjunctivism rational, and thereby also makes rational the anti-sceptical belief that, other things being equal, the world is the way it appears

Naïve realism, the view that perceptual experiences are irreducible relations between subjects and external objects, has intuitive appeal, but this intuitive appeal is sometimes thought to be undermined by the possibility of certain kinds of hallucinations. In this paper, I present the intuitive case for naïve realism, and explain why this intuitive case is not undermined by the possibility of such hallucinations. Specifically, I present the intuitive case for naïve realism as arguing that the only way to make sense of the phenomenal character associated with perceptual experiences is by means of a naïve realist ontology. I then explain why this intuitive argument is not undermined by the possibility of hallucinatory experiences that possess the phenomenal character associated with perceptual experiences but, being hallucinations, do not have the ontological nature specified by naïve realism.

A belief must have justification if it is to count as knowledge. And it is a commonplace thought that in certain circumstances experiences can serve as justifications for beliefs. Moreover, many have thought that there is something distinctive about the wayin which experiences justify beliefs, and that there is something distinctive about experiences which accounts for the distinctive way in which they justify beliefs. In this paper, I seek to elucidate views about experience and justification that can make sense of these thoughts and that can show us why so many have been attracted to them.I think it is important to try to make sense of these thoughts concerning the justificatory role of experiences, for I suspect that we are losing the ability to see why philosophers have traditionally been attracted to such thoughts. Coherentism and reliabilism, perhaps the two most currently popular theories of epistemic justification, appear simply to reject the idea that experiences can justify beliefs.