Torrance Fung

Rationalists like Bealer (1999), BonJour (1998), and Plantinga (1993) hold there are conscious intuitions that supply a priori justification. Peacocke (2021) and Marasoiu (2020) point out that this raises a Problem of Arbitrariness: Why are beliefs justified by rational intuitions a priori, if rational intuitions are phenomenally conscious experiences, when other beliefs justified by experience are not a priori? I point out that the real issue for rationalists isn’t whether intuitions supply ‘a priori’ knowledge or justification, but whether they supply knowledge or justification for necessary synthetic propositions. Such knowledge is what rationalists, but traditionally not empiricists, are really after. In answering the Problem of Arbitrariness by highlighting the necessary synthetic, these rationalists should commit to non-sensory or irreducibly cognitive phenomenology. For conscious intuitions that have merely sensory phenomenology cannot (re)present and justify the necessary synthetic propositions that rationalists are after. But these rationalists say such intuitions have some phenomenology. So their only recourse is to believe in non-sensory, cognitive phenomenology. I then offer reasons for such rationalists to prefer an acquaintance model of rational intuition: it explains why cognitive phenomenology must be present in experiential justification of the necessary synthetic, and differentiates phenomenal rationalism from recent versions of empiricism, which also accept justification of the necessary synthetic.

Not much attention has been paid to Malebranche’s philosophy of time. Scholars who have written on it have typically written about it only in passing, and by and large discuss it only in relation to his philosophy of religion. This is appropriate insofar as Malebranche doesn’t discuss his views of time in isolation from his religious metaphysics. I argue that Malebranche’s conception of how created beings have their properties commits him to saying that God is omnitemporal rather than atemporal. For just as bodies get their spatiality by participating in God’s omnipresence, so all creatures get their temporality by participating in God’s omnitemporality. Moreover, Malebranche is a substantivalist about space and time: infinite space and time are one and the same divinely simple substance, God (partially considered), who contains the world. My exploration of Malebranche’s metaphysics sheds light on his views of eminent containment, participation, and causation.

Traditionally, phenomenal consciousness has been restricted to the realm of perceptual and otherwise sensory experiences. If there is a kind of phenomenology altogether unlike sensory phenomenology, then this was a mistake, and requires an accounting. I argue such cognitive phenomenology exists by appealing to a phenomenal contrast case that relies on meaningful and relatively meaningless dialogue. I explain why previous phenomenal contrast arguments are less likely to be effective on even neutral parties to the debate: these arguments rely on a ‘hard-to understand’ sentence, which may elicit sensory crutches that one focuses on, thereby obscuring cognitive phenomenology. I also argue for a positive characterization of the phenomenal contrast in terms of seeming to be aware of abstract relations that obtain between different contributions in a dialogue. This paves the way for arguing that what it’s like to entertain a cognitive content that p differs from that of q in their cognitive phenomenology.