Peter Schulte

Millikan’s biosemantics is commonly characterized as a “consumer theory” of representational content. Proponents of this characterization interpret Millikan as privileging representation consumers over representation producers in her account of content determination. However, Millikan herself rejects this interpretation and claims to give producers and consumers equal weight in her theory. In this paper, I propose to resolve this issue by arguing that there are actually two Millikanian theories of content, a consumer theory that is explicitly formulated in her earlier work and a significantly different, “hybrid” theory that is implicitly presupposed in much of her later work. This result is not only of exegetical value, but also of great systematic interest, since both theories turn out to be interesting proposals in their own right that face significantly different tasks and challenges.

AI systems, like self-driving cars, healthcare robots, or Autonomous Weapon Systems, already play an increasingly important role in our lives and will do so to an even greater extent in the near future. This raises a fundamental philosophical question: who is morally responsible when such systems cause unjustified harm? In the paper, we argue for the admittedly surprising claim that some of these systems can themselves be morally responsible for their conduct in an important and everyday sense of the term—the attributability sense. More specifically, relying on work by Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder (In Praise of Desire, OUP 2014), we propose that the behavior of these systems can manifest their ‘quality of will’ and thus be regarded as something they can be blameworthy for. We develop this position in detail, justify some of its crucial presuppositions, and defend it against potential objections.

This volume features new research about the philosophy of plant intelligence and plant cognition, one of the most intriguing and complex current debates at the intersection of biology, cognitive science and philosophy. The debate about plant cognition is marked by deep disagreements. Some theorists are confident that the empirical evidence supports the ascription of cognitive capacities to plants. Others hold that such claims are overblown, and defend more traditional, non-cognitive accounts of plant behavior. Still others seek to formulate intermediate positions. This volume brings together leading researchers from across this theoretical spectrum to tackle the foundational questions that are at issue in the debate about plant cognition. The contributions focus on the philosophical questions raised by recent discoveries and controversies in the empirical sciences, such as: Can plants be said to have genuine cognitive abilities? Can they be characterized as representing or perceiving their environment, as pursuing goals, or even as having some form of conscious experience? Which data could provide evidence for such characterizations? And what are possible implications of these issues for general questions about the nature of cognition, representation, perception, and consciousness? Philosophy of Plant Cognition will be of interest to scholars and students working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of biology, cognitive science, and plant biology.

This Element provides a comprehensive introduction to contemporary theories of mental content. After clarifying central concepts and identifying the questions that dominate the current debate, it presents and discusses the principal accounts of the nature of mental content (or mental representation), which include causal, informational, teleological and structuralist approaches, alongside the phenomenal intentionality approach and the intentional stance theory. Additionally, it examines anti-representationalist accounts which question either the existence or the explanatory relevance of mental content. Finally, the Element concludes by considering some recent developments in the debate about mental content, specifically the “explanatory turn” and its implications for questions about representations in basic cognitive systems and the representational character of current empirical theories of cognition.

1. IntroductionIn What Biological Functions Are and Why They Matter, Justin Garson offers a novel theory of biological functions, the generalized selected effects (GSE) theory.1 He presents the theory in a clear and comprehensive way, defends it against various objections and applies it to different areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of psychiatry, the debate about mechanisms and the debate about teleosemantic theories of mental content.2Like other proponents of the aetiological approach to functions, Garson maintains that a trait’s biological functions are grounded in its selectional history. However, his GSE theory differs from standard versions of the aetiological approach – so-called selected effects (SE) theories – in a crucial respect: while SE theories assume that all biological functions must ultimately be grounded in phylogenetic processes of natural selection or other (closely analogous) processes of differential reproduction (Millikan 1984: 15–82, Neander 1991, Godfrey-Smith 1994), the GSE theory allows that functions may also be grounded in processes of differential retention (see §2 for details). Garson forcefully argues that this broader account is theoretically well-motivated and has significant advantages over standard SE accounts when it comes to accommodating certain important classes of ontogenetically determined functions.

Sensory perceptions represent things in the outside world. This mundane fact raises a major problem for naturalistic theories of content: the ‘distality problem’. In a previous paper for this journal, I presented a solution to this problem which makes central appeal to constancy mechanisms. Justin Garson, also in this journal, recently criticized my solution and suggested a Dretskean alternative to it. Here, I defend my proposal by arguing, first, that Garson's criticisms ultimately miss the mark, and secondly, that his Dretskean alternative is not viable, because it faces two fundamental problems: the empirical problem and the problem of changing response functions.

"Menschen glauben aus den unterschiedlichsten Gründen an Gott. Aber ist dieser Glaube rational gerechtfertigt? In diesem Band streiten führende Religionsphilosoph/-innen um die Frage, ob die besten Gründe für oder gegen den Theismus sprechen. Einige Beiträge unterziehen klassische Argumente für bzw. gegen die Existenz Gottes einer neuen Betrachtung. Andere gehen der Frage nach, welche Bedingungen eigentlich erfüllt sein müssen, damit die Überzeugung, Gott existiere, als vernünftig angesehen werden kann. Gelten hier dieselben Standards wie bei Überzeugungen über die Existenz von Quasaren? Oder haben religiöse Überzeugungen einen besonderen epistemologischen Status? Und ist es rational zulässig, religiöse Erfahrungen oder tradierte Offenbarungen als Gründe für religiöse Überzeugungen anzuführen? Mit Beiträgen von Ansgar Beckermann, Katherine Dormandy, Franz von Kutschera, Winfried Löffler, Herman Philipse, Peter Schulte, Holm Tetens und Christian Weidemann."-- Back cover.

Perceptual constancies have been studied by psychologists for decades, but in recent years, they have also become a major topic in the philosophy of mind. One reason for this surge of interest is Tyler Burge’s (2010) influential claim that constancy mechanisms mark the difference between perception and mere sensitivity, and thereby also the difference between organisms with genuine representational capacities and ‘mindless’ beings. Burge’s claim has been the subject of intense debate. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that we cannot hope to settle this debate (as well as related debates in the philosophy of mind) without a clear and substantive theoretical account of what perceptual constancies are. In the first part of this paper, I argue that the standard definitions in the literature fall short of providing such an account. Still, as I aim to show in the second part of the paper, by taking a closer look at some of the paradigm examples, it is possible to construct a plausible general account of perceptual constancies that is both clear and substantive, and that can serve as a firm foundation for settling debates like the dispute about Burge’s ‘constancy mechanism criterion’ for perception.

Liberal representationalism is the view that even some internal states of very simple organisms like plants or bacteria count as genuine representations. This view has been heavily criticized by many authors, including myself. In a recent paper, Marc Artiga attempts to defend liberal representationalism against these criticisms. One of his main targets is an argument of explanatory exclusion that he ascribes to Burge, Ramsey, Rescorla, Sterelny and me (among others). In this paper, I reply to Artiga by distinguishing the exclusion argument that he focuses on from what is, in my view, the real explanatory challenge for liberal representationalism, and I argue that none of the considerations put forward by Artiga in defense of the liberal view provide an adequate answer to this challenge.

The notion of grounding has gained increasing acceptance among metaphysicians in recent years. In this paper, I argue that this notion can be used to formulate a very attractive version of (property) nominalism, a view that I call ‘grounding nominalism’. Simplifying somewhat, this is the view that all properties are grounded in things. I argue that this view is coherent and has a decisive advantage over competing versions of nominalism: it allows us to accept properties as real, while fully accommodating nominalist intuitions. Finally, I defend grounding nominalism against several seemingly troublesome objections.

Menschen glauben aus den unterschiedlichsten Gründen an Gott. Aber ist dieser Glaube rational gerechtfertigt? In diesem Band streiten führende Religionsphilosoph/-innen um die Frage, ob die besten Gründe für oder gegen den Theismus sprechen. Einige Beiträge unterziehen klassische Argumente für bzw. gegen die Existenz Gottes einer neuen Betrachtung. Andere gehen der Frage nach, welche Bedingungen eigentlich erfüllt sein müssen, damit die Überzeugung, Gott existiere, als vernünftig angesehen werden kann. Gelten hier dieselben Standards wie bei Überzeugungen über die Existenz von Quasaren? Oder haben religiöse Überzeugungen einen besonderen epistemologischen Status? Und ist es rational zulässig, religiöse Erfahrungen oder tradierte Offenbarungen als Gründe für religiöse Überzeugungen anzuführen? Mit Beiträgen von Ansgar Beckermann, Katherine Dormandy, Franz von Kutschera, Winfried Löffler, Herman Philipse, Peter Schulte, Holm Tetens und Christian Weidemann.

According to standard teleosemantics, intentional states are selectional states. This claim is put forward not as a conceptual analysis, but as a ‘theoretical reduction’—an a posteriori hypothesis analogous to ‘water = H2O’. Critics have tried to show that this meta-theoretical conception of teleosemantics leads to unacceptable consequences. In this paper, I argue that there is indeed a fundamental problem with the water/H2O analogy, as it is usually construed, and that teleosemanticists should therefore reject it. Fortunately, there exists a viable alternative to the water/H2O model which avoids the fundamental problem, while explaining the a posteriori character of teleosemantics equally well.

Perceptual representations have distal content: they represent external objects and their properties, not light waves or retinal images. This basic fact presents a fundamental problem for ‘input-oriented’ theories of perceptual content. As I show in the first part of this paper, this even holds for what is arguably the most sophisticated input-oriented theory to date, namely Karen Neander's informational teleosemantics. In the second part of the paper, I develop a new version of informational teleosemantics, drawing partly on empirical psychology, and partly on philosophical considerations. I shall argue that this version has all the virtues of Neander's original theory, but also the further crucial advantage of being able to account for the distality of perceptual content.

Desires, or directive representations, are central components of human and animal minds. Nevertheless, desires are largely neglected in current debates about the naturalization of representational content. Most naturalists seem to assume that some version of the standard teleological approach, which identifies the content of a desire with a specific kind of effect that the desire has the function of producing, will turn out to be correct. In this paper I argue, first, that this common assumption is unjustified, since the standard approach is in fact deeply problematic. Secondly, I propose an alternative account of the content of desires which, while generating plausible and determinate content ascriptions, avoids the main problem that plagues the standard approach, and is also preferable on other grounds.

Naturalisten stehen heute vor zwei großen Herausforderungen: Sie müssen zunächst präzisieren, was sie mit dem Ausdruck „Naturalismus“ meinen, und ihre Position anschließend plausibel begründen. Gegner des Naturalismus haben in den letzten Jahren immer wieder zu zeigen versucht, dass der Naturalist diesen Herausforderungen nicht gerecht werden kann. Ich argumentiere in diesem Artikel dafür, dass traditionelle Formulierungen der Naturalismusthese tatsächlich problematisch sind, dass es aber einen Ausweg für den Naturalisten gibt: Er kann natürliche Entitäten durch ihre besondere Beziehung zu physikalischen Tatsachen charakterisieren. Als Kandidaten für diese besondere Beziehung kommen drei Relationen in Frage: Begriffliche Ableitbarkeit, Identität und Realisierung . Ich argumentiere dafür, dass man den Naturalismus am besten als These auffasst, nach der alle Tatsachen in einer dieser drei Relationen zu physikalischen Tatsachen stehen. Im letzten Teil zeige ich, dass sich diese Position durch gute Argumente stützen lässt.Naturalists today are confronted with two challenges: First, they have to give “naturalism” a precise meaning, and secondly, they have to provide a plausible justification for their position. In recent years, many opponents of naturalism have tried to show that the naturalist is not able to meet these challenges. In this article, I argue that traditional formulations of naturalism are indeed problematic, but that there is a remedy: the naturalist can characterize natural entities as entities which stand in a special relation to physical facts. There are three candidates for this ‚special relation’: conceptual entailment, identity and realization . I argue that naturalism is best understood as the thesis that all facts stand in one of these three relations to physical facts. In the last part, I show that this thesis can be supported by strong arguments

Truthmaker theorists hold that propositions about higher-level entities (e.g. the proposition that there is a heap of sand) are often made true by lower-level entities (e.g. by facts about the configuration of fundamental particles). This generates a problem: what should we say about these higher-level entities? On the one hand, they must exist (since there are true propositions about them), on the other hand, it seems that they are completely superfluous and should be banished for reasons of ontological parsimony. Some truthmaker theorists—most prominently David Armstrong—have tried to solve this puzzle by arguing that these entities are ‘an ontological free lunch’, i.e. real existents that are still ‘no addition of being’. This answer is prima facie attractive, but I argue in this paper that the standard approaches to truthmaking—modal theories and grounding theories—are unable to vindicate the doctrine of the ontological free lunch, and thus fail to solve the problem of higher-level entities. Fortunately, there is a non-standard account of truthmaking available, the reductive explanation account, which succeeds where the standard approaches fail

Teleosemantic theories of representation are often criticized as being “too liberal”, i.e. as categorizing states as representations which are not representational at all. Recently, a powerful version of this objection has been put forth by Tyler Burge. Focusing on perception, Burge defends the claim that all teleosemantic theories apply too broadly, thereby missing what is distinctive about representation. Contra Burge, I will argue in this paper that there is a teleosemantic account of perceptual states that does not fall prey to this problem, and that we can arrive at this account by combining some of Burge’s insights with a producer-oriented version of teleosemantics. The resulting theory turns out to be attractive and perfectly coherent. By contrast, the coherence of Burge’s own anti-teleosemantic approach becomes quite doubtful under closer examination—or so I will argue.