Central Themes in Philosophy

Preview

This module will cover six themes. [Mind] What good is your perceptual awareness of the objects around you? [Thought & Language] What’s special about having two names for one thing? [Politics] Are you responsible for the harm of world poverty? [Metaphysics] What is necessary for your personal survival? [Action] Of the events involving you, what determines which are your actions? [Ethics] Who, if anyone, has the right to determine whether you should die?

A Secondary Subwaking Self?

Blindsight

Blindsight is ‘the ability of patients with absolute, clinically established, visual field defects caused by occipital cortical damage to detect, localize, and discriminate visual stimuli despite being phenomenally visually unaware of them’ (Cowey, 2010).

Perception without Awareness?

Simple Seeing

When talking with Superman, does Lois Lane see Clark Kent? The answer depends on what seeing involves. Dretske’s notion of simple seeing (earlier: ‘nonepistemic seeing’) provides a useful clarification. The key characteristic of simple seeing is this: if X is the F, then S sees X is equivalent to S sees the F.

A Test for Perception?

What does it take to perceive something? By what test could we measure whether someone has perceived a particular object? According to Dretske, it would be enough to show that they had received information about the object which is ‘available for the control and guidance of action’ and ‘extracted ... by accredited receptor systems’ (Dretske, 2006 p. 150).

Operationalising Perception and Perceptual Awareness

‘If psychologists can really identify something that deserves to be called perception without awareness, they must have an operational grasp on not only perceive what it takes to perceive something but on conscious what it takes to be conscious of it’ (Dretske, 2006 p. 148).

Operationalising Visual Awareness

Psychologists distinguish between ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ criteria for visual awareness. Subjective criteria involve asking subjects what they are aware of. Objective criteria typically involve measuring discriminatory capacities.

Operationalising Visual Awareness

Psychologists distinguish between ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ criteria for visual awareness. Subjective criteria involve asking subjects what they are aware of. Objective criteria typically involve measuring discriminatory capacities.

A Process Dissociation Approach to Perception without Awareness

Dretske’s Criteria for Perception and Awareness

Personal Identity: The Question

Psychological Continuity

Biological Continuity

Does Identity Matter?

Psychological Continuity and Fission

Personal Identity, Buddhist Monks and Death

Pogge on Responsibility for World Poverty

‘The common assumption [...] is that reducing severe poverty abroad at the expense of our own affluence would be generous on our part, not something we owe, and that our failure to do this is thus at most a lack of generosity that does not make us morally responsible for the continued deprivation of the poor’ Pogge (2005, p. 2).

Scarry’s Two Perspectives

Against the Moral Irrelevance of Nationality

We consider two arguments for the moral relevance of nationality.

Bok and Sen on Sidgwick’s Dilemma

Pogge’s Aim: Recap

An Objection to Pogge

Bok and Sen on Sidgwick’s Dilemma

Sense and Reference: The Question

Introduces the question around which the sense and reference theme is organised.

Meaning Is Reference

Meaning Isn’t (Only) Reference

Sentences vs Utterances

Sentences are timeless and cannot (strictly speaking) be true or false outright; utterances are events in the lives of people and can be true or false.

Sense

‘Frege’s idea was that to understand an expression, one must not merely think of the reference that it is the reference, but that one must, in so thinking, think of the reference in a particular way. The way in which one must think of the reference of an expression in order to understand it is that expression’s sense’ (Evans 1981 [1985]: 294).

Sense and Descriptions

What are senses? Could they be decsriptions?

There Are No Central Themes in Philosophy

Action: Three Basic Principles

Discussion about action should be informed by three basic principles. Actions have hierarchical structures. Actions are individuated by outcomes. And one action can have multiple descriptions (the Accordion Effect).

Causes of Action: Belief and Desire

Intention

Sense and Descriptions

What are senses? Could they be decsriptions?

Frankfurt’s Argument from Spiders

Discussion about action should be informed by three basic principles. Actions have hierarchical structures. Actions are individuated by outcomes. And one action can have multiple descriptions (the Accordion Effect).

Don’t Spiders Have Intentions?

Frankfurt’s Further Objections to Causal Theories of Action

Frankfurt (1978) offers some further objections to causal theories of action. Are these objections sufficient to reject any such theory?

Are scientific discoveries relevant?

Two Kinds of Motivational State

Your preferences can be incompatible with your aversions (and with primary motivational states). This shows that there is not a single system of preferences in rats or humans.

An Inalienable Right to Life

The Argument from What Is Good for Me

Velleman on Suicide

Objections to Velleman on Suicide