Naturalism and the Metaphysics of Perception

This paper focuses on two debates: the Metaphysical debate over intentionalism and naïve realism, and the Psychological debate over constructivist and ecological theories. While these two debates are generally assumed to be orthogonal, it is difficult to specify the grounds for this assumption. The chapter considers the usual strategies for distinguishing between philosophical and scientific theories—such as appeals to modal strength, methodology, or explanatory features—and suggests that they do not apply in this case. It argues that both debates rely on inference to the best explanation to draw contingent conclusions about the constitutive nature of perceptual experience. The chapter also claims that the distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations will not separate the two debates unless we are already committed to the idea that the metaphysics of mind must be conducted at one particular level of explanation. It concludes that the two debates are engaged in the same general project concerning the nature of perception, and that the Psychological theories are no less metaphysical than the Metaphysical theories.

Modest Dualism and Individuation of Mind

A persistent tradition in metaphysics of mind insists that there is a substantial difference between mind and body. Avicenna’s numerous arguments, for a millennium, have encouraged the view that minds are essentially immaterial substances. In the first part, I redesign and offer five versions of such arguments and then I criticize them. First argument (indivisibility) would be vulnerable in terms of two counterexamples. Second argument (universals) confuses existence with location. Third argument (bodily tools) is less problematic than the first two, though I will say a few words about why it may also not be convincing. Fourth argument (infinity) may not support substance dualism, because, I think, abundance is very different from infinity. Fifth argument (senescence) depends on empirically incorrect premises. Hence, it seems that no Avicennian argument can reasonably save substance dualism.

A metaphysics for practical knowledge

Is Anscombean practical knowledge independent of what the agent actually does on an occasion? Failure to understand Anscombe’s answer to this question is a major obstacle to appreciating the subtlety and plausibility of her view. I argue that Anscombe’s answer is negative, and turns on the nature of mistakes in performance, and reveals a distinctive implicit metaphysics of mind and knowledge, structured by related capacities and exercises of capacities. If my interpretation is correct, then practical knowledge shares features with knowledge-how and knowledge-that, but deserves its own epistemic category.

Introduction

This volume illustrates how the methodology of metaphysics can be enriched with the help of cognitive science. Few philosophers nowadays would dispute the relevance of cognitive science to the metaphysics of mind, but this volume mainly concerns the relevance of cognitive science to phenomena that are not themselves mental. The volume is thus a departure from standard analytical metaphysics. Among the issues on which results from cognitive science are brought to bear are the metaphysics of time, of morality, of meaning, of modality, of objects, and of natural kinds, as well as whether God exists. Some chapters point out how results from cognitive science can be deployed to debunk certain intuitions, and some point out how results can be deployed to help vindicate certain intuitions.

Free Will and Mental Powers

In this paper, we investigate how contemporary metaphysics of powers can further an understanding of agent-causal theories of free will. The recent upsurge of such ontologies of powers and the understanding of causation it affords promises to demystify the notion of an agent-causal power. However, as we argue pace (Mumford and Anjum in Analysis 74:20–25, 2013; Am Philos Q 52:1–12, 2015a), the very ubiquity of powers also poses a challenge to understanding in what sense exercises of an agent’s power to act could still be free—neither determined by external circumstances, nor random, but self-determined. To overcome this challenge, we must understand what distinguishes the power to act from ordinary powers. We suggest this difference lies in its rational nature, and argue that existing agent-causal accounts (e.g., O’Connor in Libertarian views: dualist and agent-causal theories, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002; Lowe in Personal agency: the metaphysics of mind and action, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) fail to capture the sense in which the power to act is rational. A proper understanding, we argue, requires us to combine the recent idea that the power to act is a ‘two-way power’ (e.g., Steward in A metaphysics for freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012b; Lowe (in: Groff, Greco (eds) Powers and capacities in philosophy: the new aristotelianism, Routledge, New York, 2013) with the idea that it is intrinsically rational. We sketch the outlines of an original account that promises to do this. On this picture, what distinguishes the power to act is its special generality—the power to act, unlike ordinary powers, does not come with any one typical manifestation. We argue that this special generality can be understood to be a feature of the capacity to reason. Thus, we argue, an account of agent-causation that can further our understanding of free will requires us to recognize a specifically rational or mental variety of power.

Extended Circularity: A New Puzzle for Extended Cognition

Mainstream epistemology has typically presumed a traditional picture of the metaphysics of mind, whereby cognitive processes (e.g., memory storage and retrieval) play out within the bounds of skull and skin. Contemporary thinking in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science decreasingly favors this simple “intracranial” picture. Likewise, proponents of active externalist approaches to the mind—e.g., the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC)—have largely proceeded without asking what epistemological ramifications should arise once cognition is understood as criss-crossing between brain and world. This chapter aims to motivate a puzzle that arises once these thought strands are juxtaposed, and highlights a condition of epistemological adequacy that should be accepted by proponents of extended cognition. Once this condition is motivated, the chapter demonstrates how attempts to satisfy it apparently inevitably devolve into a novel epistemic circularity. Eventually, proponents of extended cognition have a novel epistemological puzzle on their hands.