Book Reviews by Arnon Cahen
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Perception, 2020
Review of Susanna Schellenberg's 'The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence'.
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Papers by Arnon Cahen
Synthese, 2017
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Inquiry, 2016
Abstract The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we clarify the notion of immunity to error thro... more Abstract The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we clarify the notion of immunity to error through misidentification with respect to the first-person pronoun (IEM). In particular, we set out to dispel the view that for a judgment to be IEM it must contain a token of a certain class of predicates. Rather, the importance of the IEM status of certain judgments is that it teaches us about privileged ways of coming to know about ourselves. We then turn to examine how perception, as a state with nonconceptual content, can give rise to judgments that are IEM. On one view, the ‘inheritance model’ of immunity, perception gives rise to such judgments because perception itself is IEM. We argue that this model is misguided, and, instead, suggest and elucidate an alternative view: perception gives rise to judgments that are IEM by virtue of containing implicitly self-related or self-concerning information.
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Routledge eBooks, Dec 14, 2022
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Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2019
Hoerl & McCormack argue that comparative and developmental psychology teaches us that “neither an... more Hoerl & McCormack argue that comparative and developmental psychology teaches us that “neither animals nor infants can think and reason about time.” We argue that the authors neglect to take into account pivotal evidence from ethology that suggests that non-human animals do possess a capacity to represent and reason about time, namely, work done on Sumatran orangutans’ long travel calls.
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Mind, Cognition, and Neuroscience
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Peter Menzies has developed a novel version of the exclusion principle that he claims to be compa... more Peter Menzies has developed a novel version of the exclusion principle that he claims to be compatible with the possibility of mental causation. Menzies proposes to frame the exclusion principle in terms of a difference-making account of causation, understood in counterfactual terms. His new exclusion principle appears in two formulations: upwards exclusion — which is the familiar case in which a realizing event causally excludes the event that it realizes — and, more interestingly, downward exclusion, in which an event causally excludes its realizer. This paper shows that one consequence of Menzies’s proposed solution to the problem of mental causation is a ubiquitous violation of the principle of closure — a fact that forces him into a trilemma to which we see no satisfactory response.
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THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science
This paper assesses Fodor’s well-known argument from multiple realizability to nonreductive physi... more This paper assesses Fodor’s well-known argument from multiple realizability to nonreductive physicalism. Recent work has brought out that the empirical case for cross-species multiple realizability is weak at best and so we consider whether the argument can be rebooted using a “thin” notion of intra-species multiple realizability, taking individual neural firing patterns to be the realizers of mental events. We agree that there are no prospects for reducing mental events to individual neural firing patterns. But there are more plausible candidates for the neural realizers of mental events out there, namely, global neural properties such as the average firing rates of neural populations, or the local field potential. The problem for Fodor’s argument is that those global neural properties point towards reductive versions of physicalism.
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Quart Rev Biol, 2007
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Israel Affairs, 2012
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THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science
This paper assesses Fodor’s well-known argument from multiple realizability to nonreductive physi... more This paper assesses Fodor’s well-known argument from multiple realizability to nonreductive physicalism. Recent work has brought out that the empirical case for cross-species multiple realizability is weak at best and so we consider whether the argument can be rebooted using a “thin” notion of intra-species multiple realizability, taking individual neural firing patterns to be the realizers of mental events. We agree that there are no prospects for reducing mental events to individual neural firing patterns. But there are more plausible candidates for the neural realizers of mental events out there, namely, global neural properties such as the average firing rates of neural populations, or the local field potential. The problem for Fodor’s argument is that those global neural properties point towards reductive versions of physicalism.
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Theoria
ABSTRACT This paper assesses Fodor's well-known argument from multiple realizability to nonreduct... more ABSTRACT This paper assesses Fodor's well-known argument from multiple realizability to nonreductive physicalism. Recent work has brought out that the empirical case for cross-species multiple realizability is weak at best and so we consider whether the argument can be rebooted using a "thin" notion of intra-species multiple realizability, taking individual neural firing patterns to be the realizers of mental events. We agree that there are no prospects for reducing mental events to individual neural firing patterns. But there are more plausible candidates for the neural realizers of mental events out there, namely, global neural properties such as the average firing rates of neural populations, or the local field potential. The problem for Fodor's argument is that those global neural properties point towards reductive versions of physicalism.
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Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2019
Hoerl and McCormack argue that comparative and developmental psychology teaches us that
neither a... more Hoerl and McCormack argue that comparative and developmental psychology teaches us that
neither animals nor infants can think and reason about time. We argue that the authors neglect to
take into account pivotal evidence from ethology that suggests that non-human animals do possess
a capacity to represent and reason about time, namely, work done on Sumatran orangutans’ long
travel calls.
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Consciousness and the Ontology of Properties, Edited by Mihretu P. Guta (Routledge)
How are conscious mental events integrated into the causal fabric of the world? Many philosophers... more How are conscious mental events integrated into the causal fabric of the world? Many philosophers thinking about the metaphysics of consciousness have been attracted to some version of non-reductive physicalism, holding that while conscious mental events are token-identical to physical events there are no type-identities holding between the conscious mind and the physical world. As is well-known, non-reductive physicalism is in danger of making conscious mental events epiphenomenal, if certain initially plausible assumptions about causation in the physical world are accepted. These assumptions include the causal closure of the physical. Since the causal efficacy of conscious mental events seems undeniable, some philosophers committed to non-reductive physicalism have rejected the causal closure of the physical. In a series of papers Peter Menzies and Christian List have tried to motivate such a rejection through a counterfactual theory of causation. Distinguishing causation proper from causal sufficiency they argue that, in suitable circumstances, mental causes can exclude physical ones, thus preserving mental causation. Their argument rests crucially on claims about counterfactual dependence relations between mental causes and physical realizers (List and Menzies 2009, Menzies and List 2010, Menzies 2013, 2015). In this paper, we argue that these claims rest upon a mistaken view of realization in the brain. The Menzies/List argument (together with many other arguments in the metaphysics of the conscious mind) assumes that conscious mental events are directly realized by specific firing patterns of neurons, which stand in different patterns of counterfactual dependence to actions than conscious mental events. We show how their argument from counterfactual dependence fails because the most plausible neural realizers for conscious mental events are not specific firing patterns, but rather higher-level properties of populations of neurons that are themselves instantiated in specific firing patterns. Those higher-level properties stand in relations of counterfactual dependence to actions that typically mirror those of conscious mental events. These parallel relations of counterfactual dependence provide, we claim, the basis for a new argument for a version of the type-identity theory.
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Synthese (accepted)
I argue that the debate about the reason-giving character of perception, and, derivatively, the c... more I argue that the debate about the reason-giving character of perception, and, derivatively, the contemporary debate about the nature of the (non)conceptual content of perception, is best viewed as a confrontation with refined versions of the following three independently plausible, yet mutually inconsistent, propositions:
Perceptual apprehension – Some perceptions provide reasons directly
Exclusivity – Only beliefs provide reasons directly
Bifurcation – No perception is a belief
I begin with an evaluation and refinement of each proposition so as to crystallize the source of the difficulties that dominate our thinking about the reason-giving character of perception. I argue that the contemporary literature is broadly split between those denying Bifurcation and those denying Perceptual apprehension. Though Exclusivity, too, has been target to criticism, its grip on our thinking has all too often been underestimated. As a result, a proper denial or modification of Exclusivity is yet wanting. Overcoming Exclusivity involves a considerable challenge that has not been adequately acknowledged or met – to develop a substantive account of nonconceptual apprehension. Getting a clearer understanding of the nature, the source, and possible resolution of this challenge is the primary aim of this paper.
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Inquiry, 2017
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we clarify the notion of immunity to error through misi... more The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we clarify the notion of immunity to error through misidentification with respect to the first-person pronoun (IEM). In particular, we set out to dispel the view that for a judgment to be IEM it must contain a token of a certain class of predicates. Rather, the importance of the IEM status of certain judgments is that it teaches us about privileged ways of coming to know about ourselves. We then turn to examine how perception, as a state with nonconceptual content, can give rise to judgments that are IEM. On one view, the ‘inheritance model’ of immunity, perception gives rise to such judgments because perception itself is IEM. We argue that this model is misguided, and, instead, suggest and elucidate an alternative view: perception gives rise to judgments that are IEM by virtue of containing implicitly self-related or self-concerning information.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
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This is the latest revision (August 2015) of our entry on Mental Content, Nonconceptual in the St... more This is the latest revision (August 2015) of our entry on Mental Content, Nonconceptual in the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy.
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Humana Mente (special issue)
Peter Menzies has developed a novel version of the exclusion principle that he claims to be compa... more Peter Menzies has developed a novel version of the exclusion principle that he claims to be compatible with the possibility of mental causation. Menzies proposes to frame the exclusion principle in terms of an interventionist or difference-making account of causation, understood in counterfactual terms. His new exclusion principle appears in two formulations: upwards exclusion – which is the familiar case in which a realizing event causally excludes the event that it realizes – and, more interestingly, downward exclusion, in which an event causally excludes its realizer. This paper explores shows that one consequence of Menzies’s proposed solution to the problem of mental causation is a ubiquitous violation of the principle of closure – a fact that forces him into a trilemma to which we see no satisfactory response.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
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Book Reviews by Arnon Cahen
Papers by Arnon Cahen
neither animals nor infants can think and reason about time. We argue that the authors neglect to
take into account pivotal evidence from ethology that suggests that non-human animals do possess
a capacity to represent and reason about time, namely, work done on Sumatran orangutans’ long
travel calls.
Perceptual apprehension – Some perceptions provide reasons directly
Exclusivity – Only beliefs provide reasons directly
Bifurcation – No perception is a belief
I begin with an evaluation and refinement of each proposition so as to crystallize the source of the difficulties that dominate our thinking about the reason-giving character of perception. I argue that the contemporary literature is broadly split between those denying Bifurcation and those denying Perceptual apprehension. Though Exclusivity, too, has been target to criticism, its grip on our thinking has all too often been underestimated. As a result, a proper denial or modification of Exclusivity is yet wanting. Overcoming Exclusivity involves a considerable challenge that has not been adequately acknowledged or met – to develop a substantive account of nonconceptual apprehension. Getting a clearer understanding of the nature, the source, and possible resolution of this challenge is the primary aim of this paper.
neither animals nor infants can think and reason about time. We argue that the authors neglect to
take into account pivotal evidence from ethology that suggests that non-human animals do possess
a capacity to represent and reason about time, namely, work done on Sumatran orangutans’ long
travel calls.
Perceptual apprehension – Some perceptions provide reasons directly
Exclusivity – Only beliefs provide reasons directly
Bifurcation – No perception is a belief
I begin with an evaluation and refinement of each proposition so as to crystallize the source of the difficulties that dominate our thinking about the reason-giving character of perception. I argue that the contemporary literature is broadly split between those denying Bifurcation and those denying Perceptual apprehension. Though Exclusivity, too, has been target to criticism, its grip on our thinking has all too often been underestimated. As a result, a proper denial or modification of Exclusivity is yet wanting. Overcoming Exclusivity involves a considerable challenge that has not been adequately acknowledged or met – to develop a substantive account of nonconceptual apprehension. Getting a clearer understanding of the nature, the source, and possible resolution of this challenge is the primary aim of this paper.