D. Chalmers and J. Perry on Zombie Problem and the Content of Phenomenal Concepts

David Chalmers and John Perry both construe phenomenal concepts as irreducible to descriptive concepts of physical properties or properties, which logically supervene on them. But they draw different conclusions from this point. D. Chalmers in The Conscious Mind argues that the epistemic gap between phenomenal and physical properties shows that the former cannot be ontologically identified with the latter. J. Perry in Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness claims that we can identify phenomenal properties with physical ones without being committed to reductionism. In this paper I am going to examine Chalmers and Perrys views on meaning and necessity, especially with respect to identity statements, in order to find where exactly their ways of thinking about the content of phenomenal concepts.

TECHNOLOGICAL SOVEREIGNTY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTION OF FREE SOFTWARE AND INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE

Questions of independence and sovereignty have long been present with regards to the Internet. In 1996, for instance, John Perry Barlow published his now well-known “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”. Twenty-five years later, notions like “digital sovereignty”, “data sovereignty” and “technological sovereignty” are increasingly used in public debates. This presentation will explore “technological sovereignty” but through the lens of Indigenous perspectives as well as those of social movements inspired by free software activism. These two perspectives seem to share what can be called an anti-hegemonic perspective on technological sovereignty. While they may reinforce each other, they also differ on many perspectives. It is noted for instance that the philosophy of information sharing in free and open-source software might foster the usage and misappropriation of knowledge held by Indigenous communities (Christen, 2012; Gida, 2019). This analysis will prolong a previous study by the authors which identified different discursive trends around sovereignty (anonymous reference). Methodologically, our approach is grounded in discourse analysis and reviews of academic and activist literature that has mobilized metaphors of digital sovereignty. What is the role of the metaphor of “sovereignty” in reconfiguring Indigenous and social justice activism, in relation to the Internet? What are the commonalities between these perspectives? How are they reinforcing or contradicting each other? We intend to contribute to the theme of this year’s AOIR conference – Independence – by looking at the critical discourses of Indigenous people and social activists through the lens of the metaphor of digital (technological/data) sovereignty.

NOT-AT-ISSUE CONTENT IN THE REFLEXIVE-REFERENTIAL THEORY

ABSTRACT The Reflexive-Referential Theory is a multi-content approach to utterance interpretation. Its main proponent, John Perry, assumes that utterances of sentences with singular terms express several contents, depending on how their utterers and interpreters harness information from the situations in which they are produced. However, the theory says little to nothing about implied content, like presuppositions. Here, I discuss the possibility of including presuppositions, defined in terms of the concept of not-at-issue content, in this view. I begin with a brief characterization of the Reflexive-Referential theory in what regards its theoretical motivations and main thesis, followed by a study case of presuppositional not-at-issue content associated to a specific class of singular terms, proper names. To conclude, I ponder over a few consequences of this overall project of theoretical expansion.

From experimental to theoretical geometry in new pedagogical movements at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (1872-1906)

There exist many historical works on the new pedagogical movements in the beginning of the 20th century, at the level of one country and at the international level also. Our purpose is to focus on teaching of geometry with comparing situations in four countries: United Kingdom, France, Germany and United States. We show that, behind the agreements, there are deep differences in relation with questions posed by geometrical teaching. We use two kinds of materials, discussions and textbooks, and we specially examine the questions on parallels definitions and their introduction in teaching. Keywords: laboratory method, concrete geometry, experimental geometry, intuitive geometry, practical geometry, rational geometry, Émile Borel, Carlo Bourlet, John Dewey, George Halsted, Julius Henrici, Adelia Hornbrook, Jules Houël, Charles Méray, Eliakim Moore, John Perry, Peter Treutlein.

Personal identity

This chapter analyzes Locke’s seminal treatment of personal identity and examines objections to it and replies to them. It (1) discusses his sharp divorce between a person’s identity and the identity of any substance, (2) formulates in analytical style his definition of personal identity in terms of memory, and (3) explains his view that personal identity is a “forensic” notion. Regarding (1), it argues that although Locke’s same substance/different person scenario makes sense, his same person/different substance scenario crosses the bounds of sense. Regarding (2), it shows how a definition of personal identity in terms of memory can be refined so as to avoid counterexamples proposed by Berkeley, Thomas Reid, and John Perry. Regarding (3), it argues that such a refined definition is incompatible with Locke’s forensic view of personhood, unless one appeals to Christian doctrine about the afterlife and about Judgement Day—as indeed Locke was prepared to do.

Locke on Knowledge and Reality

This book is essentially a commentary on John Locke’s masterwork, his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which is the foundational work of classical Empiricism. It aims to be accessible to students who are reading Locke for the first time, to be a useful research tool for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, and to make a contribution to Locke scholarship. It is designed to be read alongside the Essay, but does not presuppose familiarity with it. It expounds and critically discusses the main theses and arguments of each of the Essay’s four books, on the innatism that Locke opposes, the origin and classification of ideas, language and meaning, and knowledge, respectively. It analyzes Locke’s influential explorations of related topics, including primary and secondary qualities, substance, identity, personal identity, free will, nominal and real essence, and external-world skepticism, among others. It is written in an analytical style that strives for clarity and that offers step-by-step reconstructions of Locke’s arguments. It references and engages with relevant work of other major philosophers and Locke commentators, including, among others, Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Thomas Reid, John Yolton, James Gibson, R. M. Chisholm, Michael Ayers, John Perry, John Mackie, Roger Woolhouse, Saul Kripke, Jonathan Bennett, E. J. Lowe, Vere Chappell, Samuel Rickless, Galen Strawson, Gideon Yaffe, and Matthew Stuart.

4. Regulating the information society

This chapter examines whether the actions of individuals in the digital environment could be regulated. It first considers John Perry Barlow’s 1996 publication of his Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace, in which he asserts that cyberspace was a separate sovereign space where real-world laws and real-world governments were of little or no effect. Barlow’s forceful challenge to lawmakers and law enforcement bodies gave rise to a school of thought known as cyberlibertarianism. The chapter compares cyberlibertarianism with another school of thought called cyberpaternalism, which rejected the notion that cyberspace was immune from regulatory intervention by real-world regulators. It also explains Lawrence Lessig’s modalities of internet regulation, network communitarianism, private regulators of cyberspace, and states’ supranational regulation of cyberspace. The chapter goes on to examine contemporary theories of internet governance and regulation including libertarian paternalism, platform and intermediary regulation, and algorithmic regulation.

Meaning, reasoning, and common knowledge

Abstract“Pragmatics involves perception augmented by some species of ‘ampliative‘ inference—induction, inference to the best explanation, Bayesian reasoning, or perhaps some special application of general principles special to communication, as conceived by Grice … —but in any case a sort of reasoning” (Korta, Kepa & John Perry. 2015. Pragmatics. In The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Metaphysics research lab, Stanford, CA: Stanford University:1). Pragmatics assumes that one’s competence as speaker is sufficient to allow one to construct, in range of significant cases, plausible accounts of how speakers and audiences reason. The question is that are those who attribute reasoning to speakers and audiences suffering a “curious mental derangement” that prevents them from seeing that reasoning is rare? I consider four responses. (1) Speakers and audiences do reason to the extent pragmatic explanations require; they just typically do not do so consciously. (2) The second reply concedes that speakers and audiences often do not reason even unconsciously in any relevant detail, but it insists that attributions of reasoning can nonetheless be, and often are, explanatory. (3) The third reply is a response to objections to the second. It identifies reasoning with information processing steps. (4) The fourth view is that a speaker’s utterance provides an audience evidence for what the speaker means, but the audience typically does not reason to a conclusion about what the speaker means. I reject the first three replies and embrace the fourth, but I argue that attributions of reasoning in pragmatics can still play a significant explanatory role.