Janet Levin

Appearance and reality : a philosophical investigation into perception and perceptual qualities

1. Appearance and Reality 2. Sensation, Perception, and Perceptual Qualities 3. Sensations, Secondary Qualities and Appearances to Normal Observers 4. Secondary Qualities, Dispositions, and Related Conundrums 5. Are Secondary Qualities Relative? 6. In Defence of Appearances.

Must Reasons Be Rational

This paper challenges some leading views about the conditions under which the ascription of beliefs and desires can make sense of, or provide reasons for, a creatures behavior. I argue that it is unnecessary for behavior to proceed from beliefs and desires according to the principles of logic and decision theory, or even from principles that generally get things right. I also deny that it is necessary for behavior to proceed from principles that, though perhaps subrational, are similar to those that we ourselves use. I then propose some conditions that are considerably weaker, and argue that they fulfill the descriptive and explanatory requirements of intentional ascription.

Imaginability, Possibility, and the Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance

It is standard practice in philosophical inquiry to test a general thesis (of the form ‘F iff G’ or ‘F only if G’) by attempting to construct a counterexample to it. If we can imagine or conceive ofan F that isn’t a G, then we have evidence that there could be an F that isn’t a G — and thus evidence against the thesis in question; if not, then the thesis is (at least temporarily) secure. Or so it is standardly claimed. But there is increasing skepticism about how seriously to take what we can imagine or conceive as evidence for (or against) a priori philo-

Armchair methodology and epistemological naturalism

In traditional armchair methodology, philosophers attempt to challenge a thesis of the form ‘F iff G’ or ‘F only if G’ by describing a scenario that elicits the intuition that what has been described is an F that isn’t G. If they succeed, then the judgment that there is, or could be, an F that is not G counts as good prima facie evidence against the target thesis. Moreover, if these intuitions remain compelling after further (good faith) reflection, then traditional armchair methodology takes the judgment to be serious (though not infallible) evidence against the target thesis—call it secunda facie evidence—that should not be discounted as long as those intuitions retain their force. Some philosophers, however, suggest that this methodology is incompatible with epistemological naturalism, the view that philosophical inquiry should be sensitive to empirical observations, and argue that traditional armchair methodology must deemphasize the role of intuitions in philosophical inquiry. In my view, however, this would be a mistake: as I will argue, the most effective way to promote philosophical progress is to treat intuitions as having the (prima and secunda) evidential status I’ve described. But I will also argue that philosophical inquiry can produce a theory that is sensitive to empirical observations and the growth of empirical knowledge, even if it gives intuitions the prima- and secunda-facie evidential status that traditional armchair methodology demands—and thus that traditional armchair methodology, if properly practiced, need not be abandoned by naturalists, or even (except for a few exceptions) be much revised.

The Myth of Jones and the Return of Subjectivity

This paper discusses a number of recent criticisms of ‘theoretical’ accounts of mental state concepts—that is, accounts which take these concepts to derive their meanings from the roles played by mental states in the explanation of behavior: in particular, I evaluate the claim that (insofar as they are ‘third-personal’ or ‘theoretical’) these concepts cannot individuate mental states that intuitively are distinct, and the claim that they cannot account for what goes on in the ascription of mental states to oneself. I argue (with reference to what may be the originating text of this approach to mental state concepts, Sellars’s ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’) that, although these criticisms may have some plausibility when directed against theoretical accounts of experiential or qualitative states, they have little plausibility when directed against theoretical accounts of intentional states. In so arguing, moreover, I try to show the shortcomings of various recent ‘first-person’ or ‘subjectivist’ views.

Once More Unto the Breach: Type B Physicalism, Phenomenal Concepts, and the Epistemic Gap

ABSTRACT Type B, or a posteriori, physicalism is the view that phenomenal-physical identity statements can be necessarily true, even though they cannot be known a priori—and that the key to understanding their status is to understand the special features of our phenomenal concepts, those concepts of our experiential states acquired through introspection. This view was once regarded as a promising response to anti-physicalist arguments that maintain that an epistemic gap between phenomenal and physical concepts entails that phenomenal and physical properties are distinct. More recently, however, many physicalists have lost confidence in the view, and have proposed less promising defences of physicalism—or have become outright sceptical about its prospects. I argue here that these physicalists have underestimated the resources of Type B physicalism and are thereby retreating too quickly—or fighting battles that have already been won.

Molyneux’s question and the amodality of spatial experience

Abstract A recent study published in Nature Neuroscience purports to have answered a question posed to Locke in 1688 by his friend William Molyneux, namely, whether ‘a man born blind and made to see’ would be able to identify, immediately and by vision alone, objects previously known only by touch. The answer, according to the researchers – and as predicted by Molyneux, as well as Locke, Berkeley, and others – is ‘likely negative. The newly sighted subjects did not exhibit an immediate transfer of their tactile shape knowledge to the visual domain’. Since then, however, many commentators have argued that the answer is still not clear. Moreover, in the contemporary literature on Molyneux’s Question, and more generally on cross-modal perception and the individuation of the senses, it is sometimes hard to determine what question is being investigated. In this paper, I distinguish a number of different questions about the relation between visual and tactual perception that can arise when considering Molyneux’s original thought experiment, and discuss what the significance of a positive or negative answer to each of them may be.

Reclaiming the Armchair

Insofar as it is concerned with the way things must be, or could possibly be, as well as the way they are in fact, it seems that philosophical inquiry must rely on methods distinct from those of the empirical sciences. Otherwise, it is hard to see how philosophers can make modal claims about things in the world, rather than restricting themselves to analyzing our concepts of those things, or discovering empirical laws about the ways we perceive, think, or construct theories about them. But are there any such methods that are legitimate tools for philosophical investigation, or can philosophy achieve legitimacy only by reflecting on the interrelations among our concepts, or by becoming a branch of psychology devoted purely to empirical investigation?