Hilla Jacobson

This chapter argues that attitudinal-representational theory (ART) better accommodates the phenomenon of valence variance. It purposes to lend further support to ART as a theory of unpleasant pain, and, to make some headway toward vindicating ART as a general theory of valenced perceptual experiences. The postulated desire-like attitude is a “negative desire” in that it is directed against a particular condition or state of affairs that is represented as obtaining. Due to the fact that the valenced aspect of pain is often so pronounced, and given the significance of pain in the life, it is quite natural, when attempting to account for valenced perceptual experiences, to begin with the apparently paradigmatic case of pain. The gist of the argument from the variability of g-valenced experiences in favor of ART may be clear.

The question of the cognitive penetrability (CP) of experience is, roughly, the question whether cognitive states can influence, in some direct and non-trivial manner, one’s experiences. Whereas the CP of perception has recently been widely discussed by philosophers, the parallel question regarding pain has been utterly neglected. This chapter introduces the general notion of CP, as well as its epistemic import, focusing on visual experiences. It explains the notion of CP to pains, presenting some initial reasons to think that pains are cognitively penetrable. CP is standardly understood as requiring an influence of cognitive states on both phenomenal character and representational content: it should be manifest in the way things appear to us both sensuously and representationally. The penetrating cognitive states influence cognitive states downstream of the perceptual experiences – notably, they affect judgments made on the basis of these experiences.

This paper suggests a new way for defending semantic externalism from what we take to be the most serious attack against it in the context of the discussion of the a priori nature of self-knowledge. We shall argue that the resolution of our a priori knowledge of our beliefs on the assumption that their contents are externally determined is identical to the resolution that it makes sense to attribute to our knowledge of our beliefs independently of any assumption about content-determination. We shall also suggest what might be the source of the conviction that supposedly externally-determined beliefs violate some general epistemological principle.

We contrast two theoretical positions on the relation between phenomenal and access consciousness. First, we discuss previous data supporting a mild Overflow position, according to which transient visual awareness can overflow report. These data are open to two interpretations: (i) observers transiently experience specific visual elements outside attentional focus without encoding them into working memory; (ii) no specific visual elements but only statistical summaries are experienced in such conditions. We present new data showing that under data-limited conditions observers cannot discriminate a simple relation (same versus different) without discriminating the elements themselves and, based on additional computational considerations, we argue that this supports the first interpretation: summary statistics (same/different) are grounded on the transient experience of elements. Second, we examine recent data from a variant of ‘inattention blindness’ and argue that contrary to widespread assumptions, it provides further support for Overflow by highlighting another factor, ‘task relevance’, which affects the ability to conceptualize and report (but not experience) visual element

In this paper, we revisit the debate surrounding the Unfolding Argument (UA) against causal structure theories of consciousness (as well as the hard-criteria research program it prescribes), using it as a platform for discussing theoretical and methodological issues in consciousness research. Causal structure theories assert that consciousness depends on a particular causal structure of the brain. Our claim is that some of the assumptions fueling the UA are not warranted, and therefore we should reject the methodology for consciousness science that the UA prescribes. First, we briefly survey the most popular philosophical positions in consciousness science, namely physicalism and functionalism. We discuss the relations between these positions and the behaviorist methodology that the UA assumptions express, despite the contrary claim of its proponents. Second, we argue that the same reasoning that the UA applies against causal structure theories can be applied to functionalist approaches, thus proving too much and deeming as unscientific a whole range of (non-causal structure) theories. Since this is overly restrictive and fits poorly with common practice in cognitive neuroscience, we suggest that the reasoning of the UA must be flawed. Third, we assess its philosophical assumptions, which express a restrictive methodology, and conclude that there are reasons to reject them. Finally, we propose a more inclusive methodology for consciousness science, that includes neural, behavioral, and phenomenological evidence (provided by the first-person perspective) without which consciousness science could not even start. Then, we extend this discussion to the scope of consciousness science, and conclude that theories of consciousness should be tested and evaluated on humans, and not on systems considerably different from us. Rather than restricting the methodology of consciousness science, we should, at this point, restrict the range of systems upon which it is supposed to be built.

Tradition contrasts “cold,” motivationally-inert, “standard” perception with “hot,” motivationally-potent, emotion and affect. Against this backdrop, it has recently been argued that perceptual experiences have another fundamental phenomenal aspect, beyond their sensory aspects–perception in all sense-modalities is (at least often) Intrinsically valenced. Roughly, its phenomenal character is inherently pleasant or unpleasant, feeling good or bad to some degree. Yet, the revolutionary notion of Intrinsically Valenced Perception (IVP) requires elucidation and is fraught with theoretical difficulties. The paper aims to explicate and address some foundational questions regarding the very notion of IVP: What is required for perception to be intrinsically valenced? Specifically, if perception itself is valenced, what should be the relations between its valenced aspects and sensory aspects? The paper identifies the relevant notion of IVP by uncovering various principles that express constraints and desiderata that IVP must meet. It further offers a Determination-Dimension Model of the relations between sensory and valenced aspects that aims to resolve the previously identified theoretical difficulties.

According to the thesis of transparency, subjects can attend only to the representational content of perceptual experience, never to the intrinsic properties of experience that carry this representational content, i.e., to “mental paint.” So far, arguments for and against transparency were conducted from the armchair, relying mainly on introspective observations. In this paper, we argue in favor of transparency, relying on the cognitive neuroscience of attention. We present a trilemma to those who hold that attention can be directed to mental paint. Such attention is either first-order sensory, higher-order cognitive, or higher-order sensory attention. We argue that the notion of first-order sensory attention to mental paint is incompatible with the neuroscience of sensory attention; that higher-order cognitive attention to mental paint is irrelevant to transparency; and that the notion of higher-order sensory attention to mental paint has an apparently incoherent prediction. Via elimination, these considerations support the thesis of transparency.

Attempts to account for the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences have so far largely focused on their sensory aspects. The first aim of this article is to support the claim that phenomenal character has another, significant, aspect—the phenomenal realm is suffused with valence. What it’s like to undergo perceptual experiences—from pains to supposedly “neutral” visual experiences—standardly feels good or bad to some degree. The second aim is to argue, by appealing to theoretical and empirical considerations pertaining to the phenomenon of valence-variance, that perceptual valence cannot be accounted for by extending the prevalent representationalist account of phenomenal character. Thus, a revision in the understanding of phenomenal character is called for. Finally, the phenomenon of valence-variance serves to make some headway toward defending a new Attitudinal-Representational Theory of perceptual valence, according to which perceptual valence is constituted by first-order conative attitudes directed toward the representational objects of experiences.

The question of whether conscious experience is restricted by cognitive access and exhausted by report, or whether it overflows it—comprising more information than can be reported—is hotly debated. Recently, we provided evidence in favor of Overflow, showing that observers discriminated the color‐diversity (CD) of letters in an array, while their working‐memory and attention were dedicated to encoding and reporting a set of cued letters. An alternative interpretation is that CD‐discriminations do not entail conscious experience of the underlying colors. Here we argue, based on conceptual considerations and consistency with neuroscience and phenomenology, in favor of the Overflow interpretation.

The main goal of this paper is to present a theory of the most salient aspect of the phenomenal character of pain – namely, the painfulness of pain or its negative affective quality. This task involves developing an account of the evaluative structure of pain, according to which painfulness is constituted by a frustrated conative attitude that is directed towards the bodily condition the obtaining of which the pain represents. The argument for the proposed Attitudinal-Representational Theory of Pain proceeds by presenting an explanatory challenge that concerns crucial aspects of the reason-giving force of pain, and showing that, unlike extant theories of pain, it successfully accounts for them.

Current theories of phenomenal consciousness---theories, that is, of the felt or qualitative aspect of mental states---are often accused of leaving out the essential features of this phenomenon. Moreover, the opponents of these theories typically hold that their failure is not accidental. They argue either that the problem of phenomenal consciousness is unsolvable, or that we still lack even the conceptual resources needed for its solution. My dissertation challenges both the adequacy of current theories and the skeptical stance of their rivals. I think that current approaches are indeed in principle incapable of capturing phenomenal consciousness, but that an account that does capture this phenomenon is within our reach. The reason for the failure of these theories, I argue, is the underlying assumption that phenomenality consists in various strictly cognitive and representational features of mental systems. ;The main purpose of my dissertation is to lay the foundations for an alternative account of phenomenal consciousness, according to which "the missing element of consciousness"---the one needed for capturing the allegedly intractable features of this phenomenon---is the conative-evaluative aspect of our minds. Conative-evaluative attitudes like desires, interests and preferences play an essential role in constituting phenomenality. I argue that phenomenality arises from an interplay between our cognitive nature, and, in particular, the representational aspect of our minds, and our conative-evaluative nature. There can be no phenomenality---nothing "it is like" to be sensitive to various conditions---if all there is is neutral-unevaluated information. Rather, what gives rise to phenomenality is the subject's being non-indifferent towards information---her adopting conative-evaluative attitudes towards, and thereby conferring significance upon, items represented by her states. In the phenomenal mode information is "evaluatively loaded"---it is "colored" by the subject's evaluative outlook; and what creates the evaluative outlook is conative attitudes of various sorts. The "subjective point of view", which is widely taken to be the mark of the phenomenal, is actually an evaluative point of view

The view (held, e.g., by Davidson) that the having of beliefs and desires presupposes the having of reflective capacities is sometimes supported by appealing to the idea that the concept of belief is a concept of a mental state which involves a normative aspect: beliefs can be “successful” or “unsuccessful” from the perspective of their possessors, and sometimes discarded in light of their “failure.” This naturally invites the idea that believers must be capable of reflecting on their beliefs. Desires presuppose reflectivity if only in virtue of their essential linkage with beliefs. This paper suggests a sense in which mental states—including those of non-reflective creatures—can have such a normative aspect. On this suggestion, the intelligible relations that obtain between cognitive states and conative states open the door for the possibility of normativity without reflectivity. Due to these relations, a creature's beliefs can be successful or unsuccessful from its own perspective even without its conceiving of them

The distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness is a subject of intensive debate. According to one view, visual experience overflows the capacity of the attentional and working memory system: We see more than we can report. According to the opposed view, this perceived richness is an illusion—we are aware only of information that we can subsequently report. This debate remains unresolved because of the inevitable reliance on report, which is limited in capacity. To bypass this limitation, this study utilized color diversity—a unique summary statistic—which is sensitive to detailed visual information. Participants were shown a Sperling-like array of colored letters, one row of which was precued. After reporting a letter from the cued row, participants estimated the color diversity of the noncued rows. Results showed that people could estimate the color diversity of the noncued array without a cost to letter report, which suggests that color diversity is registered automatically, outside focal attention, and without consuming additional working memory resources.

Although adverbialism is not given much attention in current discussions of phenomenal states, it remains of interest to philosophers who reject the representationalist view of such states, in suggesting an alternative to a problematic ‘act-property’ conception. We discuss adverbialism and the formalization Tye once offered for it, and criticize the semantics he proposed for this formalization. Our central claim is that Tye’s ontological purposes could have been met by a more minimal view, which we dub “attributeism”. We then show that there is no incompatibility between the ontology of attributeism and the postulation of pictorial representations in the brain

Kripke has argued that names are rigid designators, and that a name's reference is determined by a causal chain of a certain kind that connects an object with the name's use, thus making the name this object's name. He has not shown that there is a logical connection between these two theses of him. The purpose of the paper is to establish such a connection. It argues that on the assumption that names refer to objects in possible worlds other than the ones in which they are used, the causal theory of names entails the thesis that names are rigid designators.

According to the view we may term “strong cognitivism”, all reasons for action are rooted in normative features that the motivated subject takes objects to have independently of her attitudes towards these objects. The main concern of this paper is to argue against strong cognitivism, that is, to establish the view that conative attitudes do provide subjects with reasons for action. The central argument to this effect is a top-down argument: it proceeds by an analysis of the complex phenomenon of love and derives a conclusion regarding the nature of more basic mental phenomena—particular desires. More specifically, its starting point is the crude intuition that the significance conferred by love upon its objects is of a distinctively personal kind—an intuition that is expressed by the apparent non-substitutability of two similar subjects only one of whom is loved with respect to their importance for the lover. I argue that the initial notion of non-substitutability can be refined and modified so as to form a real challenge to all versions of strong cognitivism and to establish the existence of attitude-dependent reasons.

Two debates loom large in current discussions on phenomenal consciousness. One debate concerns the relation between phenomenal character and representational content. Representationalism affirms, whereas “content separatism” denies, that phenomenal character is exhausted by representational content. Another debate concerns the relation between phenomenal consciousness and cognitive access. “Access separatism” affirms, whereas, e.g., the global workspace model denies, that there are phenomenally conscious states that are not cognitively accessed. I will argue that the two separatist views are related. Access separatism supports content separatism by undermining the most prominent sort of arguments in favor of representationalism, namely ones that appeal to the phenomenology of perceptual experiences

The paper argues that Jackson's knowledge argument fails to undermine physicalist ontology. First, it is argued that, as this argument stands, it begs the question. Second, it is suggested that by supplementing the argument , this flaw can be remedied insofar as the argument is taken to be an argument against type-physicalism; however, this flaw cannot be remedied insofar as the argument is taken to be an argument against token-physicalism. The argument cannot be supplemented so as to show that experiences have properties which are illegitimate from a physicalist perspective

It is a common conviction among philosophers who hold that phenomenal properties, qualia, are distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional properties, that it is possible to trace the neural correlates of these properties. The main purpose of this paper is to present a challenge to this view, and to show that if “non-cognitive” phenomenal properties exist at all, they lie beyond the reach of neuroscience. In the final section it will be suggested that they also lie beyond the reach of psychology, so that they may be said to lie beyond the reach of science.

According to strong representationalism it is in virtue of having a particular representational content that an experience has the specific phenomenal character that it has. This paper argues that representationalism does not have the resources to explain the most salient aspect of the phenomenal character of pain – it is bound to leave out the painfulness of pain or its negative affect. Its central argument proceeds by analysing the rationalising role of pains. According to it, representationalism is committed to a false picture on which a subject who knowingly acts so as to get rid of her pain without thereby getting rid of the bodily condition it represents always behaves irrationally – in so acting she is shooting the messenger. Thus, there can be no viable representationalist account of the phenomenal character of pain

Various objections have been raised against the thesis of semantic innateness – the view that all (or most) of our concepts are innate – and the arguments in its favor. Its main contemporary advocate, Jerry Fodor, no longer adheres to this radical view. Yet the issue is still alive. The objections have not been very persuasive, and Fodor's own response to his argument is both controversial and involves a high price. This paper first explicates this view, exposes its radical nature, and presents Fodor's argument in its favor. Some aspects of the view of syntactic innateness are also discussed, mainly in order to highlight some features of semantic innateness. Then new objections against both the view and the argument are presented.

This paper is concerned with the question of whether mature human experience is thoroughly conceptual, or whether it involves non-conceptual elements or layers. It has two central goals. The first goal is methodological. It aims to establish that that question is, to a large extent, an empirical question. The question cannot be answered by appealing to purely a priori and transcendental considerations. The second goal is to argue, inter alia by relying on empirical findings, that the view known as ‘state-conceptualism’ is false. We will argue that our experiences do involve non-conceptual elements. That is, a subject may enjoy an experience with a particular phenomenal aspect, without possessing the concept needed for the specification of the content of that aspect, and moreover, without being able to acquire that concept upon having that experience

An important argument for the belief-desire thesis is based on the idea that an agent can be motivated to act only if her mental states include one which aims at changing the world, that is, one with a “world-to-mind”, or “telic”, direction of fit. Some cognitivists accept this claim, but argue that some beliefs, notably moral ones, have not only a “mind-to-world”, or “thetic”, direction of fit, but also a telic one. The paper first argues that this cognitivist reply is deficient, for only the “dominant” direction of fit of an attitude is responsible for its character and function. Further, it seems that the dominant direction of fit of an attitude is determined by its psychological mode, and so all beliefs seem to have a dominant thetic direction of fit, and to be motivationally inert. The main part of this paper, however, is devoted to explaining how it is that attitudes, like moral attitudes, can truly have two directions of fit in a way which enables them to be both cognitive and motivational. Reflection on the nature of beliefs suggests that the claim that the dominant direction of fit of an attitude is determined by its psychological mode should be qualified. The reasons beliefs provide draw their authority for the agent – their demanding nature – from the objects represented by these beliefs, and so, it is the beliefs’ content which determine their dominant direction of fit, as far as their role in practical reasoning is concerned. Thus, in the sense relevant to practical reasoning a belief with a normative content does have a dominant telic direction of fit. At the same time, in the sense relevant to its satisfaction conditions a moral belief has a dominant thetic direction of fit, which underlies its classification as a cognitive attitude. Cognitivists, then, can have it both ways.