Do Mental Files Obey Strawson’s Constraint?

This chapter argues that the mental file approach makes it possible to treat so-called Frege cases as an instance of fragmentation; that is, as cases in which conflicting pieces of information are stored in the subject’s mind but remain insulated from each other in such a way that the inconsistency cannot be detected. The argument rests on a constraint on files which derives from Strawson’s work, to the effect that two coreferential files should be merged. The linking model, widely accepted in the mental file literature as a substitute for Strawson’s merge model, is shown to rest on the mistaken construal of recognition as a state, where in fact it is a transition between states.

Frege Cases and Bad Psychological Laws

We draw attention to a series of implicit assumptions that have structured the debate about Frege’s Puzzle. Once these assumptions are made explicit, we rely on them to show that if one focuses exclusively on the issues raised by Frege cases, then one obtains a powerful consideration against a fine-grained conception of propositional-attitude content. In light of this consideration, a form of Russellianism about content becomes viable.

Knowing What It’s Like

This paper deals with self-knowledge as it applies to the contents of phenomenally conscious states. I argue that a plausible view of our epistemic situation with respect to the phenomenal character of our conscious states rules out various kinds of proposals for identifying phenomenal character with external properties. This paper comes at the issue of representationalism about phenomenal character from the angle of what is involved in self-knowledge of phenomenal character. The main problem, as developed here, is that externalist theories of phenomenal character are inherently vulnerable to “Frege cases,” in which we can internally distinguish our representational states even though they pick out the same external property. By pinning our experience on the identity of the referent of our perceptual states, the theory undermines our intimate self-knowledge of experience.

Misrepresentation, Redundancy, Equivocity, Emptiness (and Swampman)

Over the long run, failures of function are the rule rather than the exception for biological systems, being mostly due not to malfunction but to external conditions not historically “Normal” for performance of a function. Most cognitive failures occur because outside conditions are not Normal for the particular cognitive functions attempted. When unitrackers with well-focused targets fail, the result is misperception or false belief. Failures can also occur in the operation of prior mechanisms whose jobs are to prime unitrackers, to send them after clear targets and to keep them on target as they develop. Redundant unitrackers may be maintained side by side, collecting information about the same thing by different means—so called Frege cases. Equivocal unitrackers may develop, aimed incompatibly toward two or more targets at once. False priming can result in empty unitrackers that are not aimed at anything real at all.