Harold Langsam

The theory of appearing defended

LA. defend une certaine theorie de la nature ontologique des experiences, appelee theorie de lapparaitre, selon laquelle les experiences sont des relations entre les objets materiels et les esprits. Rejetant largument de lhallucination, largument causal et largument de labime du temps qui consitituent les principales objections a la theorie de lapparaitre, lA. montre que celle-ci, definie comme une forme du realisme naif, les images manifeste et scientifique de lexperience, cest-a-dire la vision commune du monde avec sa vision scientifique

Experiences, Thoughts, and Qualia

Au-dela de considerations metaphysiques controversees, lA. defend lexistence des qualias en invoquant les caracteristiques evidentes de certaines experiences perceptives.

Pain, Personal Identity, And The Deep Further Fact

Dans le cadre du debat reductionniste et non-reductionniste sur lidentite personnelle, lA. sinterroge sur linteret particulier que suscite la prevision de la souffrance dans lavenir, qui determine un fait profond ulterieur pour lindividu.

Why Colours Do Look Like Dispositions

In recent years philosophers such as Paul Boghossian, David Velleman and Colin McGinn have argued against the view that colours are dispositional properties, on the grounds that they do not look like dispositional properties, and in particular that they are not represented in visual experience as dispositions to present certain kinds of appearances. Rather colours are represented as being these appearances, i.e., simple, non-dispositional properties. I argue that a proper understanding of how visual experiences represent physical objects as being coloured shows that colours do look like dispositions. In particular, I argue that if visual experiences are to represent properties as properties of physical objects, they must distinguish between these properties and their appearances, and thus cannot represent such properties as colours as being identical with their corresponding appearances.

The Wonder of Consciousness: Understanding the Mind through Philosophical Reflection

Consciousness is a wonderful thing. But if we are fully to appreciate the wonder of consciousness, we need to articulate what it is about consciousness that makes it such an interesting and important phenomenon to us. In this book, Harold Langsam argues that consciousness is intelligible -- that there are substantive facts about consciousness that can be known a priori -- and that it is the intelligibility of consciousness that is the source of its wonder. Langsam first examines the way certain features of some of our conscious states intelligibly relate us to features of the world of which we are conscious. Consciousness is radically different from everything else in the world, and yet it brings us into intimate connection with the things of the world. Langsam then examines the causal powers of some of our conscious states. Some of these causal powers are determined in an intelligible way by the categorical natures of their conscious states: if you know what consciousness is, then you can also know (by the mere exercise of your intelligence) some of what consciousness does. Langsams intent is to get the philosophy of mind away from the endless and distracting debates about whether consciousness is physical or not. He shows that there are substantive things that we can discover about consciousness merely through philosophical reflection. The philosopher who takes this approach is not ignoring the empirical facts; he is reflecting on these facts to discover further, nonempirical facts.

Kant, Hume, and Our Ordinary Concept of Causation

1. The recent philosophical literature bears ample testimony to the current popularity of regularity analyses of causation.1 In this paper, I offer no opinion as to the philosophical worth of these analyses. In fact, such an opinion would be extremely difficult to render, for the worth of an analysis can only be evaluated with respect to the philosophical problems it is supposed to solve, and, unfortunately, much of the philosophical literature on causation is silent with respect to what the philosophical problems are in this area. A related observation is that philosophers who present regularity analyses of causation often fail to say whether their analysis is supposed to constitute a faithful description of the concept of causation we all actually employ in ordinary, everyday (i.e., nonphilosophical) contexts, or whether it is supposed to constitute a modification, or explication, of the ordinary concept, which need not be synonymous with it.2 The point I wish to make here is that regardless of whether regularity analyses of causation provide satisfactory analyses of causation in the latter sense of the term, they clearly do not pro-

Consciousness, Experience, and Justification

Etude du role justificatif de lexperience pour la croyance. Rejetant les theories coherentistes et fiabilistes, ainsi que largument fondationnaliste et negatif du processus delimination, lA. se propose de remotiver une approche traditionnelle de lexperience qui sinspire de la distinction acte-objet chez Locke.

Externalism, Self-Knowledge, and Inner Observation

There is a continuing debate as to whether externalism about mental content is compatible with certain commonsense views about a subject’s knowledge of his mental contents. Although I side with those who hold that externalism is compatible with these commonsense views about self-knowledge, I nevertheless find myself in disagreement with participants on both sides of this debate. For almost everybody in this debate seems to agree that if externalism is true, then self-knowledge cannot be obtained by means of inner observation. The incompatibilists, those who hold that externalism is incompatible with (our commonsense views about) self-knowledge, in effect argue that inner observation is the only possible explanation for our self-knowledge, and that therefore if externalism implies that inner observation cannot provide us with self-knowledge, then externalism must be incompatible with self-knowledge. The compatibilists agree that externalism implies that inner observation cannot provide us with self-knowledge, but argue that we have no reason to think that inner observation is the only possible explanation for our selfknowledge, and consequently we have no reason to think that externalism is incompatible with self-knowledge. In opposition to both sides, I argue in this paper that externalism is compatible with the view that self-knowledge is obtained by means of inner observation. I also argue that we have reason to think that the kind of self-knowledge at issue here is in fact obtained through inner observation. So whereas I agree with compatibilists that

Kant’s Compatibilism and His Two Conceptions of Truth

Kant is a compatibilist, in that he holds that the truth of determinism is compatible with the existence of free will, but he is also a conditional incompatibilist, in that he holds that if appearances were things in themselves, then both determinism and incompatibilism would be true. and therefore freedom would not obtain. The problem for Kant interpreters has been to reconcile Kants compatibilism and conditional incompatibilism; in particular, the challenge is to show how Kants transcendental idealism (his view that appearances are not things in themselves) makes compatibilism true. In this paper, 1 explain how Kants views can be reconciled, and I argue that the relevance of transcendental idealism here is that it shows that determinism is known to be true, not in accordance with the familiar correspondence notion of truth, but only in accordance with a weaker notion of truth, Kants empirical notion of truth, which is a kind of coherence notion of truth.

The intuitive case for naïve realism

Naïve realism, the view that perceptual experiences are irreducible relations between subjects and external objects, has intuitive appeal, but this intuitive appeal is sometimes thought to be undermined by the possibility of certain kinds of hallucinations. In this paper, I present the intuitive case for naïve realism, and explain why this intuitive case is not undermined by the possibility of such hallucinations. Specifically, I present the intuitive case for naïve realism as arguing that the only way to make sense of the phenomenal character associated with perceptual experiences is by means of a naïve realist ontology. I then explain why this intuitive argument is not undermined by the possibility of hallucinatory experiences that possess the phenomenal character associated with perceptual experiences but, being hallucinations, do not have the ontological nature specified by naïve realism.