Sascha Benjamin Fink

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
  •  6
    Book Symposium: Thinking and Perceiving
    Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 4. 2023.
    This symposium focuses on Thinking and Perceiving by Dustin Stokes (2021), published by Routledge. In his précis, Stokes (2023a) provides an overview of the key arguments of his book, which lead to a new descriptive and normative account of the relationship between cognition and perception. Four commentaries examine the scope and implications of this account. Zoe Drayson (2023) and Christopher Mole (2023) examine the epistemological force of Stokes’s claims about the organisation of the human mi…Read more
  •  16
    When seeing is not believing: A mechanistic basis for predictive divergence
    with Chiara Caporuscio, Philipp Sterzer, and Joshua M. Martin
    Consciousness and Cognition 102 103334. 2022.
  •  31
    Book Symposium: Philosophy of Psychedelics
    with Chiara Caporuscio
    Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 3. 2022.
    This special issue focuses on the Philosophy of Psychedelics by Chris Letheby in the form of a book symposium. Introduced by Matthew Johnson, Letheby presents the main claims of this book that explores the apparent conflict between psychedelic therapy and naturalism in a préci​s.​​ Seven contributions criticize, expand or comment on Letheby's arguments, focusing either on his proposed mechanism for psychedelic therapy or on the epistemic implications. The symposium concludes with Letheby’s repli…Read more
  •  44
    Psychedelics Favour Understanding Rather Than Knowledge
    Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 3. 2022.
    Chris Letheby argues in Philosophy of Psychedelics that psychedelics and knowledge are compatible. Psychedelics may cause new mental states, some of which can be states of knowledge. But the influence of psychedelics is largely psychological, and not all psychological processes are epistemic. So I want to build on the distinction between processes of discovery and processes of justification to criticise some aspects of Letheby’s epistemology of psychedelics. Unarguably, psychedelics can elicit p…Read more
  •  240
    Unter einigenWissenschaftlern ist die Vorstellung verbreitet, dass Paradoxien Anzeichen von Fortschritt sein können. Es ist jedoch unklar, wie dies zu deuten ist. Dieser Essay stellt ein subjekt-relatives Verständnis von Paradoxikalität vor, das Paradoxien als »Dissonanzen der Zustimmung« (Rescher 2001) charakterisiert und dadurch erlaubt, sie als Katalysator wissenschaftlichen Fortschritts zu rekonstruieren: Durch ihre Struktur haben Problemstellungen in Form von Paradoxien wenigstens fünf for…Read more
  •  3
    At least two distinct modeling frameworks contribute to the view that mind and brain are Bayesian: Bayesian Rational Analysis (BRA) and Hierarchical Predictive Coding (HPC). What is the relative contribution of each, and how exactly do they relate? In order to answer this question, we compare the way in which these two modeling frameworks address different levels of analysis within Marr’s tripartite conception of explanation in cognitive science. Whereas BRA answers questions at the computationa…Read more
  •  56
    So called “shapes of opposition”—like the classical square of opposition and its extensions—can be seen as graphical representations of the ways in which types of statements constrain each other in their possible truth values. As such, they can be used as a novel way of analysing the subject matter of disputes. While there have been great refinements and extensions of this logico-topological tool in the last years, the broad range of shapes of opposition are not widely known outside of a circle …Read more
  •  38
    Look who's talking! Varieties of ego-dissolution without paradox
    Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 1 (I): 1-36. 2020.
    How to model non-egoic experiences – mental events with phenomenal aspects that lack a felt self – has become an interesting research question. The main source of evidence for the existence of such non-egoic experiences are self-ascriptions of non-egoic experiences. In these, a person says about herself that she underwent an episode where she was conscious but lacked a feeling of self. Some interpret these as accurate reports, but this is questionable. Thomas Metzinger, Rocco Gennaro, and Charle…Read more
  •  35
    Commentary: The Concept of a Bewusstseinskultur
    Frontiers in Psychology 9. 2018.
    Thomas Metzinger has diagnosed the need for a Bewusstseinskultur, a ‘consciousness culture’: a culturally implemented way in which a society as a whole engages with the dawning natural science of consciousness, with phenomenal experiences themselves, and with our increasing capability to manipulate them. A Bewusstseinskultur is an achievement, built by a society-wide orientation on empirical evidence, thorough scientific theorizing and rational deliberation. It affects a broad range of issues fr…Read more
  •  72
    Introspective disputes deflated: The case for phenomenal variation
    Philosophical Studies 175 (12): 3165-3194. 2018.
    Sceptics vis-à-vis introspection often base their scepticism on ‘phenomenological disputes’, ‘introspective disagreement’, or ‘introspective disputes’ (Kriegel, 2007; Bayne and Spener, 2010; Schwitzgebel, 2011): introspectors massively diverge in their opinions about experiences, and there seems to be no method to resolve these issues. Sceptics take this to show that introspection lacks any epistemic merit. Here, I provide a list of paradigmatic examples, distill necessary and sufficient condit…Read more
  •  203
    The Ambiguity of "Pain"
    In Jane Fernandez-Goldborough (ed.), Making Sense Of: Pain, Inter-disciplinary Net. 2010.
    I argue that the understanding of "pain" as presented in the official medical definition by the IASP is ambiguous and likely a cluster concept.
  •  954
    Independence and Connections of Pain and Suffering
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 18 (9-10): 46-66. 2011.
    Is a phenomenal pain a conscious primitive or composed of more primitive phenomenal states? Are pain experiences necessarily or only contingently unpleasant? Here, I sketch how to answer such questions concerning intra-phenomenal metaphysics using the example of pain and unpleasantness. Arguments for a symmetrical metaphysical independence of phenomenal pain and unpleasant affect are presented, rejecting a composite view like the IASP definition and dimensional views. The motivating intuition of…Read more
  •  404
    A main goal of the neuroscience of consciousness is: find the neural correlate to conscious experiences (NCC). When have we achieved this goal? The answer depends on our operationalization of “NCC.” Chalmers (2000) shaped the widely accepted operationalization according to which an NCC is a neural system with a state which is minimally sufficient (but not necessary) for an experience. A deeper look at this operationalization reveals why it might be unsatisfactory: (i) it is not an operationaliza…Read more
  •  63
    Knowing Pain
    In Esther Cohen (ed.), Knowledge and Pain, Rodopi. pp. 84--1. 2012.
    In this article, I focus on what is we know when we know pain or that someone is in pain. I argue that claims of knowledge about pains are problematic because of the complex nature of the phenomenon and because of "pain" is a cluster concept.
  •  221
    Pain: A Natural State without a Nature? Dealing with the Ambiguity of „Pain“ in Science and Ethics
    In Heather McKenzie, John Quintner & Gillian Bendelow (eds.), At the Edge of Being: The Aporia of Pain, Inter-disciplinary Press. 2010.
    Can we find necessary and sufficient conditions for a mental state to be a pain state? That is, does pain have a nature? Or is the term ‘pain’ ambiguous? I argue here that our expression ‘pain’ lacks necessary use conditions if one considers a range of contexts. As use conditions constrain the reference class, I argue that ‘pain’ does not refer to a natural category, but binds together a bunch of loosely resembling phenomena. This leads to problems for scientific and clinical discourse. To solve…Read more
  •  37
    Ground Representationism is the position that for each phenomenal feature there is a representational feature that accounts for it. Against this thesis, Ned Block (The Puzzle of Phenomenal Precision, 2015) has provided an intricate argument that rests on the notion of “phenomenal precision”: the phenomenal precision of a percept may change at a different rate from its representational counterpart. If so, there is then no representational feature that accounts for a specific change of this phenom…Read more