John Hyman

How Knowledge Works

The doctrine that knowledge is a species of belief has encouraged philosophers to confuse the question of what knowledge is and the question of how it can be acquired. But we can form a conception of knowledge by asking how knowledge gets expressed in our mental lives and in our conduct, instead of asking where it comes from. Accordingly, knowledge can be defined as the ability to do things, or refrain from doing things, or believe, or want, or doubt things, for reasons that are facts. I examine the nature of reasons, and the relationship between reasons, facts and beliefs; I consider the question of whether animals without language are capable of knowledge; and I briefly criticize Wittgenstein’s doctrine that I cannot be said to know that I am in pain.

Agents and their Actions

There is no consensus about what events are. But it is generally agreed that, whatever events may prove to be, actions are a species or a class of events. We believe that the received view is mistaken: actions are not events. We concede that for most purposes, the kind of categorial refinement which is involved in either affirming or denying that actions are events is frankly otiose. Our common idiom does not

Art and Neuroscience

In recent years, neuroscientists like V.S. Ramachandran and Semir Zeki have made bold claims for the capacities of their work to transform our understanding of visual art. Considering key ideas advanced by Ramachandran and Zeki, this article analyzes what the claims of these leading proponents of “neuro-aesthetics” entail and how the prospects for their projects stand.

Pains and Places

I argue that itches, tickles, aches and pains—sensations of all sorts—are generally in the places where we say they are. So, for example, if I say that I have an itch in the big toe on my left foot, then, by and large, that is the very place where the itch is. James denied this in the 1890s; Russell and Broad denied it in the 1920s; Wittgenstein and Ryle denied it in the 1940s; Lewis and Armstrong denied it in the 1960s; and since then various kinds of materialists have denied it. But if itches etc. are states of the sensitive parts of bodies, then it is true.

Desires, Dispositions and Deviant Causal Chains

Recent work on dispositions offers a new solution to the long-running dispute about whether explanations of intentional action are causal explanations. The dispute seemed intractable because of a lack of percipience about dispositions and a commitment to Humean orthodoxies about causation on both sides.

Voluntariness and Choice

Philosophers have shown little interest in the concept of voluntariness during the last fifty years, mainly because Anscombes book Intention persuaded us that it plays a relatively minor role in thought about human action, compared to the concept of acting intentionally or acting for a reason, and does not raise any interesting problems of its own, once the nature of intentional action has been explained. But this seems to be wrong. The nature of voluntariness, and its relationship with guilt, coercion, obligation, intention, knowledge and choice, merit careful analysis. This article makes a start.

What, if anything, are colours relative to?

Colours have been described as relative to observers, relative to the circumstances in which they are observed, relative to languages and even as relative to ‘the human perceptual standpoint’ or, less chauvinistically, ‘the perceptual point of view’. As this variety of relativisms suggests, the blanket claim that colours are relative and the blanket denial of this claim are equally unhelpful. We need to ask what, if anything, are colours relative to. This is the first question I shall address. The second is whether the relativity of colours, such as it is, implies that they are less real than shapes or intervals in time.