scholarly journals What is it Like to See a Bat? a Critique of Dretske’s Representationalist Theory of Qualia

Disputatio ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (18) ◽  
pp. 151-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Mental Life ◽  
Veridical Perception ◽  
Fred Dretske ◽  
The Mind

Abstract This paper critiques the representationalist account of qualia, focussing on the Representational Naturalism presented by Fred Dretske in Naturalizing the Mind. After laying out Dretske’s theory of qualia and making clear its externalist consequences, I argue that Dretske’s definition is either too liberal or runs into problems defending its requirements, in particular ‘naturalness’ and ‘mentalness.’ I go on to show that Dretske’s account of qualia falls foul of the argument from misperception in such a way that Dretske must either admit that his kind of qualia have nothing at all to do with what mental life subjectively feels like, or that veridical perception involves qualia and misperception does not.

Psychology: Volume 5

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Science Volume ◽  
Western World ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Difference ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Indian Setting ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

This survey of research on psychology in five volumes is a part of a series undertaken by the ICSSR since 1969, which covers various disciplines under social science. Volume Five of this survey, Explorations into Psyche and Psychology: Some Emerging Perspectives, examines the future of psychology in India. For a very long time, intellectual investments in understanding mental life have led to varied formulations about mind and its functions across the word. However, a critical reflection of the state of the disciplinary affairs indicates the dominance of Euro-American theories and methods, which offer an understanding coloured by a Western world view, which fails to do justice with many non-Western cultural settings. The chapters in this volume expand the scope of psychology to encompass indigenous knowledge available in the Indian tradition and invite engaging with emancipatory concerns as well as broadening the disciplinary base. The contributors situate the difference between the Eastern and Western conceptions of the mind in the practice of psychology. They look at this discipline as shaped by and shaping between systems like yoga. They also analyse animal behaviour through the lens of psychology and bring out insights about evolution of individual and social behaviour. This volume offers critique the contemporary psychological practices in India and offers a new perspective called ‘public psychology’ to construe and analyse the relationship between psychologists and their objects of study. Finally, some paradigmatic, pedagogical, and substantive issues are highlighted to restructure the practice of psychology in the Indian setting.

Mind, Body and Embarrassment in Henry James’s The Awkward Age

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Attridge
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Expressive Vocabulary ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Public Behavior ◽  
Modernist Novel ◽  
The Mind

This chapter considers James’s The Awkward Age (1899) in the context of fin de siècle mental science and its preoccupation, most evident in theories of emotion, with the materiality of the mind. Contributing to recent accounts that challenge the commonplace equation between psychological depth and James’s transition to modernist novel, the chapter argues that The Awkward Age represents mental life – and in particular awkwardness – as public behavior rather than introspection, self-presence and interiority. In a similar fashion to late-Victorian mental scientists (including his brother, William), James was concerned with finding a vocabulary for representing mental life in physical terms, demonstrating the interrelation of mind and body. James’s use of a behavioural rather than expressive vocabulary for embarrassment determines the shape of the novel’s plot and forms part of its critique of a Victorian prudery that presupposes a mind-matter separation.

Negative and Positive Mind-Wandering

2021 ◽  
pp. 177-192
Author(s):  
Frederick Travis
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Negative Thoughts ◽  
The Mind

Mind-wandering is considered by many as a sign of an “unhappy mind” and associated with ill-health. Since the mind wanders half of the time, it is unlikely that mind-wandering plays no role in cognitive processing. Mind-wandering can be filled with negative thoughts ‑ negative mind-wandering associated with worry and rumination; or it can be filled with positive thoughts ‑ positive mind-wandering associated with imagination and fantasy, essential elements of a healthy, satisfying mental life. Mind-wandering with positive thoughts enables the mind to escape the constraints of the current situation and explore novel solutions.

The Non-existence of the Internal World

2020 ◽  
pp. 81-151
Author(s):  
Jan Westerhoff
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Complete Control ◽  
Limited Knowledge ◽  
Natural Place ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The Mind

A natural place of retreat once the reality of the mind-independent world has been challenged is that of the certainty of our inner world, a world which, we assume, is perfectly transparent to us and over which we have complete control, which provides a sharp contrast with an external world of which we have limited knowledge, and which frequently resists our attempts to influence it. The second chapter considers a set of reasons against the existence of this kind of internal world. I consider arguments critical of introspective certainty and query the existence of a substantial self that acts as a central unifier of our mental life. The chapter concludes that a foundation in the internal world remains elusive: our introspective capacities do not give us any more of a secure grasp of an internal world than our five senses perceiving the external world.

The Limits of Self-Knowledge

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Epistemic Authority ◽  
General View ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Mind

Hume maintained that “since all actions and sensations of the mind are known to us by consciousness, they must necessarily appear in every particular what they are, and be what they appear.” Descartes maintained a very similar doctrine, and Locke and Berkeley held at least part of the doctrine. I shall not try to set out precisely what any of these philosophers thought about self-knowledge; I cite them simply as proponents of the general view which I shall be examining in this paper: namely, that each of us has a special epistemic authority about his own mental life. This view is still widely held, particularly in the form of the thesis that one's sincere avowals of current mental states are incorrigible, i.e., such that, necessarily, no one ever has overriding reason to think them false.

Perception, Reliability, and Other Minds

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Avramides
Keyword(s):  
Other Minds ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Adequacy Condition ◽  
Fred Dretske

It has been suggested that we can come by our knowledge of what others think and feel through perception. The idea has been worked out in different ways by different philosophers. In this chapter I consider the perceptual account proposed by Fred Dretske. In section one I outline Dretske’s account, and highlight a particular feature of it. In section two I set out an adequacy condition for any account that proposes to be an account of our mental life. In section three I consider Dretske’s account in the light of this adequacy condition and argue that Dretske’s account does not meet this condition. I conclude that while Dretske holds that we get our knowledge of other minds in much the same way that we get our knowledge of bodies in the world around us, I argue that the account cannot be extended to give us knowledge of other minds because there is a crucial asymmetry here that must be acknowledged.

The Psyche-Soma and the Mind

2016 ◽  
pp. 39-42
Author(s):  
Donald W. Winnicott
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Somatic Health ◽  
The Mind

In Chapter 1, Winnicott looks at human nature from the point of view of the psyche-soma dichotomy in the child, and the beginnings of his mental life. He discusses three areas in detail: somatic health, psyche health, intellect, and health.

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