Analytical Attention

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-56
Author(s):  
Jonardon Ganeri
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Experience Sampling ◽  
The State ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
Descriptive Experience Sampling

The second element in Pessoa’s philosophical method is that of impartial analysis. Pessoa’s technique of deliberately guiding the attention to one’s own experience, and, specifically, to the outputs of ‘dreaming’ or enactive imagination, has a modern echo in the psychological technique of descriptive experience sampling. Pessoan analysis is a sort of ongoing and self-cued application of descriptive experience sampling, directed less at the intentional content of one’s thoughts as at the phenomenal character of one’s experience. His description of an analytical attention to one’s own mental state might be held to constitute a theory of introspection. It is one which while claiming that introspection is based on attention also emphasizes the idea that introspection transforms the state of which one becomes aware, for example by intensifying, enriching, and sharpening it. I consider, and refute, two sorts of challenge to Pessoa’s analytical phenomenology, from choking and from transformative experience.

Applications of Descriptive Experience Sampling

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Jones-Forrester ◽  
Yani Dickens ◽  
Noelle L. Lefforge
Keyword(s):  
Experience Sampling ◽  
Descriptive Experience Sampling

Quality and Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Levine
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
Phenomenal Concept ◽  
Cognitive Phenomenology ◽  
Modal Argument ◽  
Demonstrative Thought ◽  
Naturalistic Theory ◽  
Phenomenal Concept Strategy ◽  
The One

The papers presented in this volume cover topics, such as the “phenomenal concept strategy,” to defend materialism from anti-materialist intuitions, the doctrine of representationalism about phenomenal character, the modal argument against materialism, the nature of demonstrative thought, and cognitive phenomenology. On the one hand, I argue that the phenomenal concept strategy cannot work and that representationalism has certain fatal flaws, at least if it’s to be joined to a materialist metaphysics. On the other, I defend materialism from the modal argument, arguing that it relies on a questionable conflation of semantic and metaphysical issues. I also provide a naturalistic theory of demonstrative thought, criticizing certain philosophical arguments involving that notion in the process. I argue as well that the peculiarly subjective nature of secondary qualities provides a window into the nature of the relation between phenomenal character and intentional content, and conclude that relation involves a robust notion of acquaintance.

The Mind and its Tenement; Their Mutual Relations

1856 ◽  
Vol 2 (18) ◽  
pp. 479-494
Author(s):  
C. Lockhart Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Law ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
The Mind

“The knowledge concerning the sympathies and concordances between the mind and the body” saith the founder† of modern science, in discoursing of human philosophy, or the knowledge of ourselves, as he terms it, is “fit to be emancipate and made a knowledge by itself. The consideration is double: either how and how far the humours and effects of the body do alter or work upon the mind; or again, how and how far the passions and apprehensions of the mind do alter or work upon the body. The former of these,” (the influence of the body on the mental state,) continues Bacon, “hath been enquired and considered as a part and appendix of medicine, but much more as a part of religion or superstition. For the physician prescribeth cures of the mind in phrensies and melancholy passions; and pretendeth also to exhibit medicines to exhilarate the mind, to confirm the courage, to clarify the wits, to corroborate the memory and the like: but the scruples and superstitions of diet and other regimen of the body in the sect of Pythagoreans, in the heresy of the Manicheans, and in the law of Mahomet do exceed. … The root and life of all which prescripts is besides the ceremony, the consideration of that dependency, which the affections of the mind are submitted unto, upon the state and disposition of the body.”

scholarly journals Relational Imperativism about Affective Valence

2021 ◽  
pp. 341-370
Author(s):  
Antti Kauppinen
Keyword(s):  
Opportunity Cost ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
Affective Valence ◽  
Affective Experiences ◽  
In Virtue Of

Affective experiences motivate and rationalize behaviour in virtue of feeling good or bad, or their valence. It has become popular to explain such phenomenal character with intentional content. Rejecting evaluativism and extending earlier imperativist accounts of pain, I argue that when experiences feel bad, they both represent things as being in a certain way and tell us to see to it that they will no longer be that way. Such commands have subjective authority by virtue of linking up with a relevant background concern. The imperative content explains but doesn’t constitute world-directed motivation. It also rationalizes action indirectly, by giving rise to an affective seeming that represents the situation as calling for the authoritatively commanded behaviour. One experience feels worse than another if its content tells us to bear a higher opportunity cost to comply with the command. Finally, experience-directed motivation is contingent on our being attitudinally (dis)pleased with the character of our experience.

scholarly journals Death: The Ultimate Transformative Experience

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Family Members ◽  
The State ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Fundamental Significance ◽  
Hospice Workers

Death is the ultimate transformative experience. “Death” here means not the state of being dead but rather the whole process of dying, culminating in the end of a person’s life. Death is “epistemically transformative” because you cannot know what it is like to die until you experience dying and this experience can enable you to understand things in a new way. Death is “personally transformative” because it changes how you experience yourself in ways that you cannot fully grasp before these changes happen. At the same time, death is unlike any other transformative experience. It is final, all encompassing, and has fundamental significance. Its power to reveal new truths about your self and your life is exceptional. It offers prospective and retrospective perspectives that differ from those of any other experience. This chapter examines death by describing its unique characteristics as the ultimate transformative experience. The practical benefit of this perspective is to suggest new philosophical resources for physicians, hospice workers, policy makers, and family members who care for dying loved ones.

Luminosity and the KK Thesis

2019 ◽  
pp. 31-48
Author(s):  
Robert C. Stalnaker
Keyword(s):  
Information Theory ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The State ◽  
Simplified Model ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Margin Of Error ◽  
The Mind

A mental state is luminous if and only if being in a state of that kind always puts one in a position to know that one is in the state. This chapter is a critique of Timothy Williamson’s margin-of-error argument that no nontrivial states are luminous in this sense. While I agree with Williamson’s rejection of a Cartesian internalist conception of the mind, I argue that an externalist conception (one based on information theory) can be reconciled with the luminosity of intentional mental states such as knowledge. My argument, which uses an artificial and simplified model of knowledge, is not a direct rebuttal to his argument, as applied to a more realistic notion of the knowledge of human beings, but I argue that it shows that a luminosity assumption is compatible with externalism about knowledge, and it suggest an intuitively plausible strategy for resisting his argument.

Death

2020 ◽  
pp. 269-288
Author(s):  
Evan Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Family Members ◽  
The State ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Fundamental Significance ◽  
Hospice Workers

Death is the ultimate transformative experience. “Death” here means not the state of being dead but rather the whole process of dying, culminating in the end of a person’s life. Death is “epistemically transformative,” because you cannot know what it is like to die until you experience dying, and this experience can enable you to understand things in a new way. Death is “personally transformative,” because it changes how you experience yourself in ways that you cannot fully grasp before these changes happen. At the same time, death is unlike any other transformative experience. It is final, all-encompassing, and has fundamental significance. Its power to reveal new truths about your self and your life is exceptional. It offers prospective and retrospective perspectives that differ from those of any other experience. This chapter examines death by describing its unique characteristics as the ultimate transformative experience. The practical benefit of this perspective is to suggest new philosophical resources for physicians, hospice workers, policy-makers, and family members who care for dying loved ones.

Unsymbolized thinking, sensory awareness, and mindreading

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell T. Hurlburt
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Experience Sampling ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Descriptive Experience Sampling ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Sensory Awareness

AbstractCarruthers views unsymbolized thinking as “purely propositional” and, therefore, as a potential threat to his mindreading-is-prior position. I argue that unsymbolized thinking may involve (non-symbolic) sensory aspects; it is therefore not purely propositional, and therefore poses no threat to mindreading-is-prior. Furthermore, Descriptive Experience Sampling lends empirical support to the view that access to our own propositional attitudes is interpretative, not introspective.

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