Rather than rehearsing the papers and arguments that were presented here, I thought it might be more useful and interesting to try to summarise some of the main themes that emerged from the workshop, many of which will form part of my own research in this area over the coming months. (I apologise in advance for the sketchiness and generality of these remarks, which are intended to give an overview rather than a detailed analysis of  these complex and difficult issues.)

‘Epistemic’ and ‘non-epistemic’ perception

First up is the relation between so-called ‘epistemic’ and ‘non-epistemic’ perception, which is something of much local interest at Warwick. I say ‘so-called’ because these terms, introduced by Warnock (1965) and popularised by Dretske (1969), more commonly refer to the relation between perception and belief, as opposed to knowledge, and so might more properly be called doxastic and non-doxastic perception, respectively. In any case, the main question at issue is whether perceptual experience per se—or what might be called ‘purely perceptual’ experience—is in some sense prior to or more basic than propositional belief and/or knowledge.

Now that’s a bit of a mouthful, so let’s break it down a little. Pretty much everyone agrees that there is a sense of ‘seeing’ (to take the most common example) that doesn’t require the subject to consciously notice or attend to what it is they see. This kind of ‘simple’ or ‘non-epistemic’ seeing is something that can be attributed to animals and infants, who can be said to ‘see’ objects and events of which they have, or are capable of having, no conception whatsoever. My pet fish, for example, is able to ‘see’ me sitting in front of the computer, in the relevant sense, despite her being unable to see that I am in front of the computer—a cognitive achievement which requires the ability to entertain propositional thought, and in particular the possession of the relevant concepts: computer, in front of, and so on.

It is a substantive question in the philosophy of perception whether such ‘non-epistemic’ seeing (in humans, at least) is in some sense conceptually prior to or more fundamental than ‘epistemic’ or propositional seeing. Some philosophers (notably John McDowell) claim that all perceptual experience is structured along conceptual lines, and potentially (in the case of McDowell’s earlier work) in propositional form. There are a host of delicate issues here, of which the relation between the epistemic and non-epistemic is just one, but there appears to be a growing consensus that there is some form of perceptually basic experience out of or upon which, and subject to the obtaining of various additional enabling conditions, belief and knowledge are constructed.

Whilst the epistemic/non-epistemic debate has a long and complex history, my sense is that these terms are too blunt to capture the range of distinctions that contemporary philosophy of perception is beginning to address. Such distinctions concern the nature (or existence) of perceptual representation, the relation between perceptual experience and practical abilities or capacities, and the cognitive architecture involved in processing perceptual experience, each of which I will consider in turn below.

Perceptual representation and content

Perhaps the main debate within contemporary philosophy of perception is between representational or ‘intentional’ theories of mind (RTM), and direct realist theories, such as Naïve Realism (NR). According to representationalism, the immediate objects of perceptual experience are not external objects, but mental representations, which stand in an external relation to external objects (i.e. the same representation may be present even in the absence of the relevant external objects). NR, on the other hand, is a disjunctive theory of perception that takes external objects to be (at least partially) constitutive of perceptual experience. On this view, the felt qualities of perceptual experience—redness, for example—are not mere by-products of the mind, but intrinsic properties of the everyday objects of experience. (This is a bit fast and loose, but you get the general idea.)

A further thesis which is often combined with NR is that perceptual experience is relational in character. Campbell and Brewer, for example, hold that such experience is a three-place relation between a subject, object and a third term whose properties (location, perspective, viewing conditions, etc.) jointly determine the phenomenal character of the experience (a circular object seen from here looks different to the same circle from here, and so on). As was brought out during the workshop, if the notion of a three-place relation is unappealing, this can instead be thought of as a two place relation with adverbial modifiers to capture the various aspects of the third term, or ‘standpoint’.

Debates between the proponents of RTM and NR tend to turn on the ability (or otherwise) of each theory to answer traditional sceptical questions concerning knowledge of the external world (i.e. the Argument from Illusion). This is, however, a notoriously thorny issue in which it is difficult to see what could count as evidence for and against each point of view, often ending up in discussions about where the burden of proof lies. A more interesting challenge, however, arises from within the philosophy of mind itself. Charles Travis (amongst others), for example, argues that perceptual experiences have no intrinsic ‘face value’ or propositional content, and that such content is supplied by the operation of recognitional and rational capacities quite separate to the basic faculty of perception. Indeed, he takes the idea that ‘pure’ perceptual content has a complex semantic structure akin to thought and language to be a mistake, claiming instead that perceptual experiences are unified wholes which only become decomposed into concepts through the operation of our recognitional, conceptual and linguistic capacities.

This in turn raises the question of how such ‘pre-conceptual’ content (if content is the right word) relates to the fully conceptual content of thought. Travis takes the fundamental issue in the philosophy of perception to be not a solution to the Argument from Illusion, but to explain how it is possible for perceptual experience to bear upon the contents of thought—his own answer being that we should think of perceptual content as being ‘Fregean’ rather than ‘Kantian’ in nature; i.e. a pre-existing whole, rather than comprised or constructed through sensory intuition. Conversely, McDowell endorses the Kantian view that experience is structured by the rational faculties of the subject in such a way that there is no need to bridge any such divide between the ‘conceptual’ and ‘non-conceptual’ realms.

Perception, action and practical abilities

It is widely accepted that at some point, perception must ‘bottom out’ into a set of practical abilities. Enactive theories of perception stress the complex relation between perception and action, traditionally conceived of as ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’, but which turn out to be much less straightforward (Hurley, for example, considers perception to be a function of the relation between input and output, rather than simply of sensory input). Even on traditional theories of perception, however, recognitional and conceptual capacities occupy an important role that may be impossible to explain at the purely personal level, and which must instead be explained in terms of the operation of certain primitive interactions or sub-personal relations to the surrounding environment.

The empirical study of these practical abilities provides considerable grist for the philosophical mill. Workshop participants cited detailed and interesting studies on the functioning of attention, including our ability to single out and attend to distinct or groups of objects and their features, and the relative ease with which we are able to track the movement of multiple objects across our visual field. One gets the sense that such empirical work is slowly chipping away at some of the philosophical mysteries of perception, such as how it is possible for us to refer to objects under different modes of presentation, or to relate the non-conceptual content of perceptual experience to conceptual modes of representation or thought.

Of course, such studies still need to be given the correct gloss in order to be of much philosophical value, since the relevant distinctions are often obscured by researchers’ interest in the mechanistic or information processing implications of the data, as opposed to their philosophical significance. Nevertheless, it is important not to underestimate the value of the empirical research in this area, if only in giving clues about the kind of structures and processes that underpin perceptual and other cognitive abilities. By itself, this kind of data may be unable to resolve many of the central philosophical debates, but it can serve to inform and guide them in a way that is beneficial to philosophical enquiry. Just as the work of Descartes, Hume and Reid was influenced by the science of their day, so should our philosophical investigations into perception and perceptual consciousness take on board and provide interpretations of scientific findings, which serve as a touchstone—though not necessarily the arbiter—of philosophical debate.

And so ends my whistle-stop tour of the philosophy of perception. The nature and existence of perceptual content, the perceptual relation, and the structure of the cognitive architecture connecting perceptual experience, thought and action: three themes that I’m sure I’ll be spending a lot of time on in the coming weeks and months. I’ll keep you posted.

I hope that some of the readers of this blog will consider submitting a paper and/or attending the conference. Having attended last year’s MindGrad, I can confirm that it’s a very enjoyable event, and there will be responses to graduate papers given by members of the Warwick faculty plus plenty of time for Q&A, so it’s a good chance to gain valuable feedback on your work, as well as experience of presenting at a graduate conference. We hope to be able to cover accommodation and transport costs of everyone whose papers are accepted, plus a few others who would not otherwise be able to attend, so it’s well worth submitting a paper. (Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to submit anything myself as I’m on the organising committee, but I guess there’s always next year!)

Further information can be found on the conference web site, or I’d be happy to answer questions via the comments section below.

Gupta’s central thesis can be simply stated as the claim that rational entitlement to knowledge is not generated solely by present experience, but by experience in conjunction with the prior metaphysical and experiential standing of the subject. It is this pre-existing ‘view’ that the subject brings to experience that yields entitlement to knowledge, thereby enabling them to make rational judgements even in cases where their ontology is radically mistaken; e.g. they are a ‘brain in a vat’ (BIV). This contrasts with views, such as Pryor’s dogmatism, that take experience itself to confer prima facie rational entitlement, and Wright’s entitlement of cognitive project, which flows from the logical structure of rational enquiry.

Gupta’s conception of experience has some novel and interesting features. Firstly, its contribution to rationality—what Gupta calls the ‘given’—is non-propositional in nature. In contrast to content or representation based views, experience is seen as analogous to a function or ‘argument schema’, such as modus ponens, which maps subjective views onto judgements. Thus experience dictates which judgements are warranted by a given view, and is in turn conditioned by past experience and beliefs, thereby creating a cycle of mutual interdependence. This logic of interdependence is described by Gupta’s work with Belnap, which is supposed to avoid the obvious problems with circularity, although not having read this work I can’t really comment on the details.

The resulting theory aims to remain entirely neutral on ontological issues whilst enabling experience to make a rational contribution to knowledge despite its non-propositional structure. Thus, a sense datum theorist, who takes experience to consist only of private sense impressions rather than public objects, and a direct realist can be having the same experience, irrespective of which ontology is correct. Indeed, Gupta considers it an advantage of his account that it does not mandate or presuppose the correctness of a common sense ontology of objects, persons, and so on, on the basis that the epistemology of experience shouldn’t constrain one’s choice of metaphysics. The sense datum theorist’s ontology may even turn out to be right, and the issue of what things are to be found in the world is taken to be a purely empirical matter.

Up to this point, I find Gupta’s view to be extremely interesting and appealing. It avoids the need to assign particular propositional content to experience—something that Travis, for example, regards as highly problematic—whilst retaining its essential role in rational enquiry. I also like the way in which it takes account of the mutual interaction between present experience and the pre-existing ‘view’ that a subject’s brings to bear upon the world in a way that respects the temporally extended nature of experience. Gupta’s logic of interdependence seems to offer a powerful way of explaining how experience both informs judgement and our overall world view, which in turn entitles us to make certain judgements, rather than presenting a purely synchronic picture of entitlement, as some other theories (e.g. dogmatism) attempt to do.

What I find less convincing, however, is Gupta’s characterisation of the nature of experience. In the first place, it seems counterintuitive to describe the solipsist or BIV as having the same—i.e. ‘subjectively identical’—experiences as the direct realist who has a radically different ontology. Experience is surely theory laden in the sense that it can be affected by the concepts that one possesses, and not just in terms of the judgements that it entitles one to make.

Gupta also differentiates between subjective identity, which is determined by the things (real and unreal) that experience makes present to the subject, and indistinguishability, which is limited by the subject’s powers of discrimination. This introduces an externalist element to experience that sits uncomfortably with the kind of empiricism that Gupta wants to defend. Gupta’s principle of ‘same phenomenology, same rational contribution’ seems clear enough, but if the phenomenology of experience is not dictated by an experience’s subjective character but by the objects which it makes present to the subject (i.e. subjective identity), then two subjectively indistinguishable experiences can still make different rational contributions to knowledge—the very point that an empiricist might want to deny.

Another worry concerns Gupta’s argument against the propositional given. He argues that the propositional given commits one to a Cartesian view of experience, which consists only of sense data, and not of objects in the world, and so is unable to yield entitlement to knowledge. However, the premises upon which this argument—and indeed, the whole book—is based seem question begging. A epistemological disjunctivist, such as McDowell, would simply reject the premise that phenomenologically identical experiences always yield the same rational contribution to knowledge, Gupta’s so-called equivalence principle. The notion that experience is always reliable and can never mislead also seems poorly motivated, not to mention counterintuitive, although in conversation Gupta attributed it to the empiricist tradition, and so worthy of defending. Furthermore, it seems that Gupta’s own account could itself be formulated in terms of a propositional given consisting of as a (potentially infinite) series of conditionals connecting views and rational entitlements to judgements without being committed to the Cartesian ontology. Although Gupta himself would no doubt eschew such a formulation, it is unclear why the notion of a propositional given is necessarily problematic, thereby undermining the motivation for Gupta’s non-propositional account.

On the whole, I find Gupta’s approach to be a refreshing and novel solution to a variety of problems in epistemology and the philosophy of perception. But his unwillingness to countenance the notion of direct acquaintance with objects (as opposed to sense data) and adherence to questionable methodological principles seem to be motivated more by a desire for logical tidiness and consistency than phenomenological accuracy. Perhaps this is no bad thing, and the resulting approach is certainly more elegant than some of the alternatives, but I find myself unconvinced as to its merits, despite being intrigued by the possibility of this kind of account of perceptual knowledge.

The conference itself is scheduled for the first weekend in December (5th–6th), and I’m happy to say that both keynote speakers have now confirmed. They are Alva Noë, who works on phenomenology, philosophy of cognitive science, embodiment, extended mind and consciousness, and Tim Crane, philosopher of mind and perception, Head of Department at UCL and soon to be Knightbridge Professor at the University of Cambridge. Both will, I’m sure, be excellent and I’m really looking forward to some fascinating discussions of graduate papers in light of their considerable experience and philosophical work.

I’m planning to send out the first call for papers out shortly. Speakers will have approximately 45 minutes speaking time (4,000–5,000 words max.), plus the same again for discussion, on any topic in or relating to the philosophy of mind, broadly construed. Further details of the programme and registration process will be posted on the web closer to the time and I intend to issue regular updates on the progress of the conference via Twitter (follow @MindGrad) and Facebook (group link to follow). Details of previous years’ conferences can be found here.

I would strongly encourage any graduate students working (or planning to work) in philosophy of mind or related areas to attend, and if possible to submit a paper as we hope to offer several bursaries to cover the travel costs of people’s whose papers didn’t quite make it, but who we would like to attend the conference nonetheless. Not only is it a great chance to get feedback on your work from other graduates, the keynote speakers and members of the faculty here at Warwick, many of whom are working in this subject area, but it’s also great fun. Look forward to seeing you there!

The brief to speakers was apparently to talk about something that Susan would have found interesting, rather responding to her work directly, although there was inevitably some crossover between the two. It was touching that many of the speakers chose to begin their talks with personal recollections or anecdotes about the time they spent with Susan, or the impression that she had made upon them. Indeed, the introductory session was given by Susan’s husband, Nick Rawlins, who, along with their son Merryn, was present throughout most of the conference. It was also a distinctly interdisciplinary gathering with many neuro- and cognitive scientists, as well as philosophers, in attendance—a mark of the nature and breadth of Susan’s work.

Rather than trying to give a comprehensive summary, I thought I’d just pick out a few talks that made a particular impression on me for one reason or another, although with so many high-profile philosophers in attendance, it is hard to be selective.

Mirror Neurons

The first and probably one of the best talks was given by Cecilia Hayes on ‘the meaning of mirror neurons’. Mirror neurons (MNs) are cells or structures in the brain that are (allegedly) activate both when the organism engages in a particular task and when it observes others doing the same. The discovery of MNs in monkeys and various other animals has provoked much speculation in the press, as well as amongst philosophers more generally, as to whether these might form the basis of phenomena as diverse as empathy, imitation, social interaction and—quite literally—mind-reading. Although the basis of these claims is somewhat dubious, what was interesting about the talk was the extent to which even the scientific evidence for the existence and role of MNs is open to question.

Firstly, there is no evidence that humans (as distinct from monkeys and apes) actually possess MNs, despite the fact that similar areas of the brain do appear to be implicated in the processing of both actions and observations of similar actions. Nevertheless, no direct evidence for the existence of MNs in humans has yet been found, partly due to the difficulties associated with conducting the relevant research.

Secondly, it seems that such neurons do not only ‘mirror’, i.e. fire when a similar action is being observed, but that some also fire when a corresponding or even the opposite action is performed; e.g. grasping and letting go, throwing and catching, etc. This suggests that mirror neurons do not ‘mirror’ at all, but are rather a form of adaptive learning mechanism that is activated in cases where the organism both observes and carries out actions at the same time. As such, there is nothing particularly special or unusual about MNs, undermining various extravagant claims as to their significance for human cognition and sociability in general.

Computational Theory of Mind

The keynote for the conference was given by none other than Daniel Dennett, and was also open to the general public in the form of a centenary lecture. Perhaps as a consequence of this, it was somewhat big on ideas and short on academic rigour, although Dennett delivered an excellent and enjoyable performance (which is, incidentally, now available online).

Dennett argued in favour of the computational theory of mind (CTM), likening words and language to a kind of ‘software’ that enables the physical ‘hardware’ of the brain to run various subroutines and processes in a way akin to how Java applets (sic) enable computers to execute programs downloaded from the web. The chief respect in which minds differ from conventional digital or analogue computers, Dennett claimed, is that they employ competitive (i.e. Darwinian) mechanisms, rather than co-operative ones. As such, those philosophers who oppose CTM are guilty of a colossal failure of imagination brought about by their prejudices as to what computation is or can achieve.

However, if consciousness is, as per Dennett’s hypothesis, a computational phenomena, then it should be possible to establish a principled distinction between the inputs and outputs to that computation—a distinction that Hurley vigorously opposed, and with good reason since it is not clear that the mind as a whole (as distinct from the individual elements from which it is comprised) can be partitioned in this way. For this reason, I did not find Dennett’s arguments persuasive, although no doubt many of the non-philosophers in the audience were impressed by his computational analogies.

Dynamic Entanglement

On the second day of the conference, Andy Clark spoke about Hurley and Alva Noë’s notion of extended consciousness (TXCM) due to the ‘dynamic entanglement’ between the brain, the body and its environment. TXCM goes beyond Clark and Chalmers thesis that objects outside of the body can be constitutive of cognition in at least some cases (e.g. Otto’s diary) to claim that the mechanisms underlying consciousness itself similarly extend into the world. Although it would take too much space to go into detail here, the general gist of his talk was that none of the arguments in favour of this view are successful, and that consciousness, unlike cognition, is all ‘in the head’.

Clark did, however, identify the move that Hurley made from discussing the causal/constitutive basis of consciousness to the explanatory role of external objects as being the most promising line of argument in favour of TXCM, even though it is, by itself, ultimately inconclusive. He finished by presenting his own admittedly sketchy account of what differentiates conscious processes from merely cognitive ones in terms of the ‘bandwidth’ and/or frequency of neural activity, which is far higher than that of the brain’s connection with the surrounding environment, resulting in a kind of ‘low-pass filter’ separating consciousness from its contents.

Although this last point was by far the least convincing aspect of his talk, I was impressed by the clarity, detail and subtlety of the arguments given, which have certainly given me plenty of food for thought for my own research into the role of external objects in perceptual experience. The whole issue as to how to differentiate causal and constitutive relations is also very interesting, although Hurley herself thought that there was no solution to this problem.

The Classical Sandwich

Jesse Prinz’s talk, despite ostensibly being about moral psychology, dealt mainly with Hurley’s rejection of what she called the ‘Classical Sandwich’ model (CSM) of the mind in favour of the dynamic-entanglement model (which Prinz gave the somewhat tongue-in-cheek title of the ‘Hurleyan Bun’).

Despite some excellent exposition, I couldn’t help feeling that Prinz gave Susan’s critique of the input–output model, not to mention her many detailed examples and thought experiments, fairly short shrift, and I would have liked to see a more in-depth discussion of these issues from within the context of theories of action and perception, rather than moral theory. Nevertheless, Prinz concluded, perhaps surprisingly, that these ideas have a natural home in the context of moral thinking, where emotion and judgement are closely intertwined—a result that would no doubt have interested Hume—much as Susan predicted in the case of perception of action.

Language without a Theory of Mind

Perhaps the most surprising talks of the conference was Ruth Millikan’s account of speech comprehension, which she characterised as a kind of direct perception. This was surprising not only in terms of its thesis, to which I am somewhat sympathetic, but because Millikan seemed to have no particular interest in either the philosophy of perception or in the way that people talk about or describe their perceptual and/or testimonial experiences (she actually said exactly that in response to a question from John Campbell, who took her to task over the idea that, in understanding another’s speech, we can literally ‘hear’ the world).

Furthermore, Millikan’s talk was entirely lacking in references to philosophers who have taken this or similar positions in the past—e.g. Thomas Reid, to name just one—which seemed a little odd, almost as if she thought herself to be the first philosopher ever to have taken this position! Millikan’s delivery was, however, quite captivating, and there was a palpable respect and affection for her amongst the audience who were in no doubt as to the value of her contributions to philosophy, most notably, although not exclusively, in the field of teleosemantics.

Honourable Mentions

Other talks that are worthy of mention include Nicholas Shea’s discussion of Hurley’s ‘shared circuits model’ of human cognition, John Campbell’s account of mental causation (more entertaining than it was enlightening—it turns out that he is something of a character, although perhaps that is only to be expected from a fellow Scot!), Thomas Metzinger’s work on the physiological basis of out of body experiences and how this can inform an account of the minimal phenomenal self, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore’s research into the development of the ‘social brain’ during childhood and adolescence (more neuroscientific than philosophical), and Mike Wheeler’s functionalist account of the (allegedly) external vehicles of consciousness.

All in all, it was an excellent conference, although it was a pity that not more speakers were arguing for something closer to Susan’s own point of view (Alva Noë unfortunately cancelled a few weeks before the event). For this reason, at times the dialectic sometimes felt a little skewed, although perhaps this inevitable at an event in which philosophers are responding, albeit indirectly, to a set of views that are not their own. In any case, it was apparent that Susan Hurley’s contribution to philosophy was substantial and that she continues to influence the discussion, although I suspect it will be some years before the extent of her philosophical talents are fully recognised.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing some of the philosophical big beasts in action, especially given that many of the talks are on topics close to my own areas of interest. As seems only fitting, I will be taking my copy (well, Warwick university library’s copy, actually) of Consciousness in Action to read on the train (6:30am at Leamington Spa station!). I started reading it some time ago and only managed until chapter 7, not because it wasn’t interesting, but because I moved onto other things and needed some time to process some of the arguments concerning the inverted spectrum thought experiments after which this blog is named. In any case, it will be good to return to these issues at the interface between philosophy and neuroscience, and upon which Hurley wrote so eloquently.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology (more specifically, the iPhone, the Internet and WordPress), I will be attempting to post a few comments and (hopefully) pictures from the conference both here on my blog and on Twitter, where I can be found at @keith_wilson. Failing that, I will hopefully have some more things to say by the time I return, and look forward to meeting any fellow grad students who are also attending the conference, which promises to be an interesting and enjoyable weekend.

Block confessed from the outset that he was relatively ignorant of the literature on disjunctivism, which is admittedly sprawling and difficult to interpret. For those who have not come across the term, disjunctivism is, to put it crudely, the view that experience or mental state types should not be individuated on the basis of their phenomenal character—i.e. ‘what it’s like’ for the subject—but also on the basis of external properties, such as their epistemic status. Thus, a veridical perceptual episode and a hallucination would be taken to be two different types of experience whose only common factor is that they are phenomenally indistinguishable from one another, and where this need not be taken to indicate any other common factor at the level of the mental.

In general, Block’s strategy was to argue from the existence of cases in which we have empirical evidence for the internal individuation of mental states to the implausibility of external individuation in general. In particular, he wished to attack a particular claim by Martin to the effect that the relevant externally individuated states (e.g. perception and hallucination) have ‘no positive mental characteristics in common’ apart from the fact that they are phenomenologically indistinguishable (something that all sides accept is possible in theory, if not necessarily in practice). Block took this to mean that the disjunctivist is committed to denying that, for example, a seen rose can be exactly the same shade of red as an imagined post box on the basis that ‘being the same shade of red’ is a positive mental characteristic. However, as was pointed out in questions afterwards, it is not clear that this is at all inconsistent with Martin’s claim. Indeed, one might think that such such equivalences are entailed by precisely the notion of phenomenological indistinguishability that the disjunctivist posits, and so do not constitute any additional mental characteristics over and above this notion. Conversely, if this is not what disjunctivism entails, then it is trivially false, not to mention inconsistent, and so this cannot be the correct reading of Martin’s claim.

A further difficulty with Block’s approach was that he took the idea that experience types are individuated by anything other than their subjective phenomenal character (i.e. ‘what it’s like’) to be manifestly false. The problem is—and this was news to him—that this is precisely what the disjunctivist is claiming, and so cannot be taken as a problem for the view per se. If there is something inherently problematic about this notion, then Block failed to show what it was, despite a fascinating discussion of several interesting case studies within the neuroscientific literature.

Furthermore, it was unclear (to me at least) why such examples should constitute a counterexample to disjunctivism. Block’s argument seemed to be that the physical states that differentiate one phenomenal character from another lie in the core regions of the brain, and not in the retina or early visual system. By extension, this means that they cannot lie in external objects, and so (Block claims) phenomenal consciousness must be purely internal. However, this argument says nothing about how experience types or mental states should be individuated or how they are realised in phenomenologically indistinguishable but functionally distinct states; e.g. dreaming. Even if such states did turn out to have a common physical basis, however, this does not appear to be inconsistent with the disjunctivist claim that they have nothing in common (with the exception of phenomenological indistinguishability) at the level of the mental. Consequently, seeing an apple and dreaming that you see one do not necessarily constitute the same mental state.

Another argument against externalism about phenomenal consciousness that was not fully spelled out, and in my view was weaker than the above, traded on the idea that we are able to ‘mesh’ visual and imaginary experiences with relative ease. In the case of two grid of dots being projected onto a screen in succession, for example, subjects are able to locate the missing dot—i.e. the one that didn’t appear in either presentation—despite the fact that one image is perceived and the other only remembered or imagined (although it is not clear that the sort of memory involved is not itself perceptual in nature). However, this only shows that such experiences have a common content—something that both sides admit—and not that they are necessarily of the same type, or are comprised of the same mental state.

Putting the above worries—which in my view are fatal to Block’s argument—to one side, it was still an extremely enjoyable and interesting talk. There was even a nice demonstration of the phenomenon of binocular rivalry in which different images are presented to the left and right eyes, causing a kind of visual flip-flopping effect, for which pairs of 3D glasses were distributed. Indeed, the spectacle (excuse the pun) of Warwick’s finest philosophers peering at a screen whilst wearing 3D glasses was worth going to the talk for in its own right. At one point Block described Warwick as a “hotbed of disjunctivism”, which caused a few chuckles, although is perhaps something of an overstatement given that relatively few of the Warwick faculty ‘self-identify’—since when did this phrase become part of the philosphical lexicon?—as disjunctivists.

In general, however, I remained unconvinced by the evidence that Block presented, most of which seemed (so far as I could tell) to cut against his own interpretation of the disjunctivist’s position, rather than disjunctivism proper. Indeed, as Block at one point came close to admitting, once these misunderstandings are cleared up then the central thesis of disjunctivism doesn’t seem that contentious after all, and in fact turns out to be rather uninteresting from a scientific point of view due to its lack of distinctive empirical claims. It is, after all, a philosophical thesis, rather than an empirical one. The broader philosophical—and in particular epistemological—benefits of the theory, however, remain a matter of intense debate—not least because the precise commitments of the view itself are often poorly articulated and/or understood.

The first of these has been recommended to me by several people and is based upon Williamson’s Brown University lectures on metaphilosophy (hence the title). As I’m still reading Williamson’s previous book, Knowledge and Its Limits, I’ll probably concentrate on finishing that one first before reading The Philosophy of Philosophy some time this summer.

The second is Cassam’s ‘multi-level’ account of how knowledge is possible—a topic that he touched upon in the last of the seminars I’ve been attending here at Warwick. Although I don’t know a great deal about it, the basic idea seems to be that we can only answer the question of how knowledge is possible by describing the means by which it may be attained; e.g. perception, self-knowledge, and so on. Throughout the seminars, Cassam spent quite a bit of time discussing Barry Stroud’s suggestion that epistemology should aim to explain how human knowledge is possible ‘all at once’, and whether such an explanation is possible or even desirable. It will be interesting to see how these ideas play out in the book and how it compares to Cassam’s recent papers on the subject.

Another book I bought a while ago and have been meaning to read for even longer is Alva Noë’s Action in Perception. I first came across Noë’s work while studying Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, from which Noë borrows a lot, and am very much looking forward to hearing him talk at the Susan Hurley Memorial Conference in Bristol later this month.

Having read Heidegger’s treatment of death in Being and Time (upon which I have blogged on a previous occasion), as well as given a seminar presentation of Thomas Nagel’s treatment of the subject in the final chapter of The View From Nowhere, I thought it might be nice to try and combine the two. Due to length restrictions (1,000 words!), I couldn’t go into any great detail, but I hope the resulting piece gives at least a flavour of the two thinkers in question as well as some of the issues—both personal and philosophical—that arise when reflecting upon the nature and inevitability of our own deaths.

From a personal point of view, it’s particularly satisfying to see York Philosophy Society and Dialectic doing so well, as I was responsible for starting both during my time as an undergraduate at the University of York. The original aim was to combine academic and non-academic aspects of philosophy in a way that would reach out to and engage students with different interests and backgrounds, as well as enriching the whole experience of studying philosophy at York. These aims are certainly reflected in both the content and presentation of the magazine, which has gone from strength to strength thanks to some excellent leadership from its editorial teams, and I’m very happy to have been able to continue to contribute to that in some small way.

In any case, I’d be interested to know what people think of the piece and whether my interpretation of Heidegger (and Nagel) manages to capture anything of interest in this vast and fascinating area of philosophical debate.