Relational Imperativism about Affective Valence

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.

On Characterizing Metaphysical Naturalism

The disciplinary characterization (DC) is the most popular approach to defining metaphysical naturalism and physicalism. It defines metaphysical naturalism with reference to scientific theories and defines physicalism with reference to physical theories, and suggests that every entity that exists is a posited entity of these theories. DC has been criticized for its inability to solve Hempel’s dilemma and a list of problems alike. In this chapter, I propose a novel version of DC that can be called a historical paths approach. The idea is (roughly) that metaphysical naturalism can be defined with reference to the historical ideas that current scientific ideas descend from. I argue that it is not rendered implausible by the above problems, and hence that DC is more defensible and attractive than it may first appear. I then argue that the approach also provides a useful framework for the naturalization of the philosophy of mind and phenomenology.

Why I Am Not a Dualist

cI argue that dualism does not help assuage the perceived explanatory failure of physicalism. I begin with the claim that a minimally plausible dualism should only postulate a small stock of fundamental phenomenal properties and fundamental psychophysical laws: it should systematize the teeming mess of phenomenal properties and psychophysical correlations. I then argue that it is dialectically odd to think that empirical investigation could not possibly reveal a physicalist explanation of consciousness, and yet can reveal this small stock of fundamental phenomenal properties and psychophysical laws. I go on to consider a couple of different forms the dualist’s laws could take, and argue that one version makes no progress on the hard problem of consciousness, and the other replaces the hard problem with a different problem that is just as hard.

Experience is Knowledge

It seems like experience plays a positive—even essential—role in generating some knowledge. The problem is, it’s not clear what that role is. To see this, suppose that when my visual system takes in information about the world it skips the experience step and just immediately generates beliefs in me about my surroundings. A lot of philosophers think that I would still know, via perception, about the world around me. But then that raises the question: How does experience contribute to my having knowledge of my surroundings? Philosophers have given many different answers to this question. In this chapter I offer and defend a different answer that avoids the pitfalls of other answers. I argue that experience is, all by itself, a kind of knowledge—what Bertrand Russell calls “knowledge of things.” So I argue that experience helps generate knowledge simply by being knowledge.

Towards a Global Hedonism

This chapter argues that, of all alleged values of any kind, only pleasure is of ultimate axiological significance. It begins with the suggestion that absolute value—the value some item has through possessing a lower-order evaluative property that makes the world in which it is instantiated good—is foundational. Pleasantness is characterized as a basic category of phenomenal consciousness, and the charge of reductionism against hedonism based on this conception is refuted. Defences of hedonism against various forms of objection that it is counter-intuitive are modelled on an analogy with defences of consequentialism, and the general position is then applied to moral, aesthetic, and epistemic value. It is claimed that those attracted by the parsimony and elegance of welfarism (the view that the fundamental value is well-being) might find these qualities within hedonism in particular.

Consciousness

This chapter gives consciousness a central role in value. It begins by showing how we can interpret and defend the idea that many common forms of consciousness are intrinsically beneficial to us—even if we don’t embrace subjectivism about well-being. It then shows how we can rationally accord these benefits such importance that we would find our own continued existence worthless without them. Neither objective list nor desire-satisfactionist views of well-being threaten this result. Moreover, regarding subjects’ desire-satisfaction: we can see that this bears on a non-instrumental concern for them only if they are capable of subjective experience: consciousness makes desires matter morally. Finally, the moral significance of consciousness is further deepened by seeing how our self-expressive experience entitles us to a respect that is due beings who make themselves accountable to norms—and how, since we are such beings, our lives have irreplaceable value.

The Emotion of Fulfillment and Its Phenomenology

In this chapter, I identify and analyze the emotion of fulfillment and explain its evaluative phenomenology and the value thereof. I build on Susan Wolf’s account of meaning in life and argue that meaningfulness consists in correct fulfillment (Section 1). I analyze fulfillment into attraction and satisfaction, and argue that its evaluations are non-conceptual (Section 2). I argue that fulfillment has a distinctive evaluative phenomenology that is irreducible to sensory, cognitive, or agentive phenomenology (Section 3). Finally, I argue that the evaluative phenomenology of fulfillment has hedonic, epistemic, and motivational values (Section 4).

Consciousness Meets Lewisian Interpretation Theory

In “Radical Interpretation” (1974), David Lewis asked: by what constraints, and to what extent, do the non-intentional, physical facts about Karl determine the intentional facts about him? There are two popular approaches: the reductive externalist program and the phenomenal intentionality program. I argue against both approaches. I will agree with friends of phenomenal intentionality that reductive externalists neglect the role of our internally determined conscious experiences in grounding intentionality, but I will fault them for not adequately explaining intentionality. They cannot just say “conscious experience explains it” and leave it at that. However, I will sketch an alternative multistage account incorporating ideas from both camps. In particular, by appealing to Lewisian ideas, we can explain how Karl’s conscious experiences help to ground the contents of his other mental states.

Ground Functionalism

Can there be a materialist explanation for conscious experience? According to ground functionalism, there is a mind making principle such that Huma’s C-fibers firings ground her pain, and in general states playing the right role in a system ground mental states for that system. I have the bold ambition of reviving the hopeful materialist story, by adding a new chapter—ground functionalism—which integrates functionalist insights about the mind with ground-theoretic insights about explanation. The ground functionalist posits a mind making principle linking material states to mental states via functional role, such that a properly choreographed system dances out a mind. I argue that ground functionalism preserves the insights of functionalist conceptions of the mind, while enabling a materialist explanation for conscious experience. Minds are made by dancing, and even matter can dance.

The Special Value of Experience

Why think that conscious experience of reality is any more epistemically valuable than testimony? I argue that conscious experience of reality is epistemically valuable because it provides cognitive contact with reality. Cognitive contact with reality is a goal of experiential inquiry which does not reduce to the goal of getting true beliefs or propositional knowledge. Such inquiry has awareness of the truth-makers of one’s true beliefs as its proper goal. As such, one reason why conscious experience of reality is more epistemically valuable than testimony about reality is that it gives us more epistemic goods than only true belief or propositional knowledge. I defend this view from two rival accounts. First, that while conscious experience of reality has greater value than testimony, its value is only eudaimonic. Second, that while it has greater epistemic value than testimony, this value is not distinctive: for it only promotes truth better than testimony.