The Philosophical Survey

David Chalmers and David Bourget are conducting a philosophical survey on people's views on philosophical issues. You can read about the survey here. Note that the closing time for the survey is November 23 at 7 AM New York time. So today is your last chance to complete it.

Video from Jack Smart Dinner

Tribute to Ned Block, who gave the Jack Smart Lecture at the ANU on June 30, 2009.

Phenomenal Red and The Phenomenal Intentionality Research Program

A lot has been going on the last couple of weeks. Last week we had the Introspection and Consciousness workshop, which was organized by Declan Smithies and Daniel Stoljar, and last Friday Mike Titelbaum hosted a mini-workshop on Sleeping Beauty, with talks by Kenny "Knows About Everything" Easwaran, Terry "Feigning Indifference" Horgan, Wo "The Last Lewisian Halfer" Schwartz, and Mike "Our Ever So Funny Organizer" Titelbaum (the middle names are for the most part due to Mike).

Last Thursday Terry Horgan gave a talk entitled "The Phenomenal Intentionality Research Program", which was based on a larger research project done in cooperation with Uriah Kriegel, and I want to say a bit about this project.

The main thesis of the phenomenal intentionality research program is that intentionality (or representation) has its source in phenomenal character (the what-it's-likeness of experience). Phenomenal intentionality has its source directly in phenomenal character, whereas other forms of intentionality derive from phenomenal intentionality. The main thesis is not new (Terry, Searle and others have defended versions of this view), but it certainly is no less controversial than it used to be. The main thesis can admittedly be spelled out as a relatively uncontroversial supervenience thesis, viz. the thesis that phenomenal intentionality supervenes on phenomenal character. But Terry wants to defend a stronger view, viz the view that all (phenomenal) intentional properties are identical to phenomenal properties.

Now, this latter claim is consistent with the thesis that not all phenomenal properties are intentional properties. This is good news, because it is not hard to imagine phenomenal properties which do not represent. Consider, for instance, a red afterimage. Plausibly the redness of some red afterimages does not represent or aim at representing anything. Or maybe it does represent but then plausibly it doesn't represent in the same way as the redness of, say, a visual experience as of a ripe tomato.

But now a problem seems to arise for the phenomenal intentionality thesis. Consider a red afterimage and a visual experience as of a ripe tomato. It's plausible that the rednesses of the two experiences are phenomenally indiscernible. Moreover, it is plausible that the redness of the tomato experience represents, whereas the redness of the afterimage does not represent (or at least does not represent in the same way). But we then need to distinguish between two kinds of phenomenal red, one corresponding to the phenomenal redness of the red afterimage and one corresponding to the phenomenal redness of the tomato experience -- call them 'phenomenal-red-1' and 'phenomenal-red-2'. But we just agreed that the perceiver needn't be in a position to distinguish between phenomenal-red-1 and phenomenal-red-2 on phenomenal grounds. So, the fact that there are two kinds of phenomenal red isn't grounded in phenomenology. Worse: the fact that one of the phenomenal redness properties represents whereas the other doesn't isn't grounded in phenomenology either. So, there are facts about intentionality that are not grounded in phenomenology. There is no direct tension between this latter claim and the claim that all (phenomenal) intentional properties are phenomenal properties, but it seems a bit odd to defend the thesis that all intentionality has its source in phenomenology and then admit that some facts about intentionality are not grounded in phenomenology.

Terry has subsequently responded to my objection by saying that phenomenal properties acquire their intentionality in context. On this view, whether or not a phenomenal property is an intentional property will depend in part on the overall phenomenal character of the experience. This line seems initially promising. It certainly can explain why the redness of my red tomato experience represents whereas the redness that flows before my eyes after starring at a flashlight does not represent (or does not represent in the same way).

However, I wonder whether one could strengthen the objection in the following way. Suppose one has a red afterimage that fills all of one's visual field and (at a slightly later time) one has a visual experience as of a part of a very large red wall (s.t. the redness fills all of one's visual field). The two experiences could in principle be phenomenally indistinguishable, yet plausibly the two redness properties represent in different ways. But if this is so, then the fact that the two redness properties represent in different ways is not grounded in phenomenology; hence, not all facts about intentionality are grounded in phenomenology. And in this case, it doesn't seem feasible to claim that the phenomenal redness properties acquire their intentionality in context. After all, the only property appearing in the visual field is the property red. So, arguably, there is no context for phenomenal red-1 and phenomenal-red-2 to acquire their intentionality in.

Random Beach Pictures

Holly Lawford-Smith and Wolfgang Schwartz

Susanna Schellenberg and David Chalmers

Beach gang

Joe Salerno and Rebecca Britney Brogaard Salerno

J.C. Bjerring

Aisling Crean and Yuri Cath

Declan Smithies and audience

Audience and a well-deserved beer

Me rehearsing something plainly obvious

Daniel Star, Jonathan Schaffer and Becky at the camp fire

A historic moment: Fiona MacPherson convincing Holly and me to become vegans.

Dave in one of his thoughtful moments

David "Mystery" Bourget

Dave and yours truly

Kangaroos: "Will you play with us?"

Summaries of Beach Talks

Here and here.

Epistemology at the Beach

Our pics are now up

Back in Town

Just got back from the Epistemology at the Beach Conference. That was one great conference. Lots of fun talks and philosophical discussion, swimming, beach soccer, camp fires, stargazing on the beach, too much to drink. Am currently in the process of recovering. Hopefully I will be able to say something more substantial about the talks later and maybe upload some pictures.

UPDATE: Susanna posted some pics from the conference on her facebook page but I think you have to be on facebook to see them.

Going to the Beach

So, I am going to the beach tomorrow to participate in the Epistemology at the Beach Conference at ANU's Kioloa Coastal Campus, which Declan Smithies is organizing. Looks like a fantastic conference. Great talks, and plenty of time for swimming and sunbathing.

Chairing Principles

There are many different theories about how best to chair a session. Disagreement arises in particular when it comes to the principles for determining the order in which people get to speak. Some will simply put people on the list in the order that they see them raise their hand---but remember, seeing is theory-laden. Others will invoke more sophisticated principles, for instance, pick people in the back before picking people in the front or pick people to the left before picking people to the right, and so on. In Arizona Agustin Rayo (aka 'Augustin Reyo') would punish people who raised their hands one second too late (the slow ones didn't get to ask follow-ups, etc.), and Ned Markosian put people whom he thought had already spoken too much in earlier sessions at the end of his list. Both Agustin and Ned were punished for these practices. Here is a picture of Agustin being punished.

And then there is the whole hand vs. hand + finger debate. In Arizona the hand + finger fans were out-voted by the hand fans. Why be a hand + finger fan? Because sometimes people are just dying to jump in in the middle of a discussion. So the hand + finger procedure could save lives. Why be a hand fan? Because the finger procedure can lead to finger-abuse, finger-nails and finger-f ...ing. Finger-abuse is the process of using your finger to ask your real (and completely unrelated) question because you are too impatient to wait your turn. A finger-nail (an expression invented by Dave Chalmers) is a follow-up on a follow-up and is bound to be irrelevant to the original question. And finger-f...ing (a term of art invented by Jonathan Schaffer) is finger-abuse of the most severe kind. Finger-f...ers use their finger so much that it causes others to be pushed off the list because the session runs out of time. We then say that he or she has been finger-f...ed.

Inside a Zombie's Brow

Song by V. Alan White, inspired by the work of David Chalmers (via Leiter).

ANU Offers to Schellenberg and Southwood

ANU has permanent offers out to Susanna Schellenberg and Nic Southwood. Joe has the details.

Relevant Consequence

Since my talk here at ANU last Thursday I have been thinking a lot about how to define 'relevant consequence'. There are various reasons why one might want a notion of relevant consequence (in addition to the standand notion of necessary consequence). For example, various attitudes are closed under some consequence relation. But they are not closed under necessary consequence. For example, 'I believe that snow is white' does not entail 'I believe that Goldbach's conjecture is true'. There is a lot of literature on how to define 'relevance'. One notion which I believe is due to (or at least inspired by) Graham Priest goes like this. q is a relevant consequence p iff q is a consequence of p, and q does not introduce any new non-logical constants (of course, it may be that new non-logical constants are introduced in the derivation of q from p, e.g. if existential elimination is applied). I like this way of defining 'relevant consequence'. But it is too strict for my purposes. I want 'I own a car' to be a relevant consequence of 'I own a Porsche', but 'car' is a new non-logical constant. So, I was thinking the following might do as a definition of 'relevant consequence'. q is a relevant consequence of p iff q is a consequence of p, and if q introduces a new non-logical constant P2, then P2 is a minimal predicate, and for some minimal predicate P1 in P, necessarily, all P1 are P2. Given this notion, 'I own a car' is a relevant consequence of 'I own a Porsche', because it is true that necessarily, all Porsches are cars. I can't think of any obvious counterexamples to this way of defining 'relevant consequence', though I am sure there are some.

Pics and Pubs

Some pics from Declan Smithies' party last Friday

And some forthcoming pubs by ANU grads:

Ben Blumson: "Images, Intentionality and Inexistence", forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Jacek Brzozowski: "On Locating Composite Objects", forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics.

Yuri Cath: "The Ability Hypothesis and the New Knowledge-how", forthcoming in Noûs.

Ole Koksvik: "Conservation of Energy is Relevant to Physicalism", forthcoming in Dialectica.

Dan Marshall: "Can 'Intrinsic' Be Defined Using Only Broadly Logical Notions?", forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Greetings from the Southern Hemisphere

We arrived safely in Canberra and are almost done unpacking. This place is amazingly active, talks every day, zombie wars and tea chats. I like it lots.

Gotta Catch a Flight

We are getting ready to leave St. Louis to join these guys.