06/27/2008
The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, Vol 38 No 145 July 1963
This is a relatively short paper that reviews Austin's lectures about performatives and constatives, and his attempt to establish a new tri-fold system of categorization between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts.
First, author summarizes Austin's discussion of performative speech-acts like 'I promise x'. These are ideal cases of 'PerformativeA', which is: 'doing something other than, or more than, saying something true or false' (pg219). The problem here is that the analysis is too weak. It lets in things like 'I say the bridge is out!'. This is more than a true/false utterance-- it is an assertion and a warning. Hence 'PerformativeB' is a performative if it has the form 'I [present tense singular verb] X' if the circumstances are such that the person in question is actually doing that verb. (warn, reprimand, state) Author considers PerfomativeB's to be 'self-labeling utterances' and rather uninteresting, preferring the other to be performatives proper (pg220-1).
In trying to get more specific, Author points out the 'ceremonial' or 'conventional' aspects of performatives. They usually are:
i. rule governed (as to the way the act is supposed to happen)
ii. self-validating (doing them makes them valid)
iii. public and 'claim generating'
iv. part of a cultural understanding or ceremonially significant
(pg 222)
The problem here is that it seems just speaking any old sentence (even one with a truth-value) can conform to all these specifications.
Author believes it was the continual vagueness that led Austin to try the three-fold distinction:
Locutionary: the sense & reference of an utterance-- the speaker's meaning
Illocutionary: the intent (or intended effect) with which the utterance was made
Perlocutionary: the actual effect on the hearers ('was that a promise?')
(pg 223-4)
Author throws doubt over whether Loc. and Illoc. are truly distinct, even though Austin seemed more focused on whether Illoc. and Perloc. were truly distinct. Author suggests that to truly understand an Loc. act, you should know it also as an Illoc. act, which collapses the two into one: Loc. act. If this is so, the new re-working looks a lot like the old one, and again a systematic approach to natural language seems to falter.
6/20/08
Schwitzgebel, Eric - The Unreliability of Naive Introspection
06/20/2008
Philosophical Review, Vol 117 No 2 2008
This is a prolonged skeptical discussion about introspection and the notion of the infallibility of current conscious experience. The paper has more of a conversational style rather than present any logical arguments in an explicit format. Author first points out that most of the skeptics up until now have not questioned current conscious experience, leaving it instead as the last refuge. Author tries to show that introspection is unreliable in two ways (pg265):
1- it often goes wrong or yields the wrong results
2- it often fails to do anything or yield any result at all
Author says that we fail at 'assessing the causes of our mental states' for 'even the most basic features of our currently ongoing conscious experience'. (pg247) The only places in the philosophical/psychological communities where the author has seen arguments like this is possibly in the behaviorists (who reject the importance of introspection) or perhaps with 'Eastern meditative traditions'. (pg246-7)
Introspection is considered 'a species of attention to currently ongoing conscious experience'. Even though infallibilism is out of favor, most hold that in favorable circumstances introspection can 'reliably reveal at least the broad outlines of one's currently ongoing experience' (pg248).
iii. Author first discusses emotion, asking whether it is partially constituted by cognitive elements, or not? Are emotional states always felt phenomenally? Do emotional states like 'joy' have the same feel most of the time? (pg249-50) Author suggests that this is not just a matter of how we describe our CCE (current conscious experience) but that the qualia aren't entirely evident.
iv. Author then discusses introspection of particular instances of emotional experience (pg251-2), like the one you're having right now. Does introspection reveal it as clearly as your eyes reveal the place you're in? Consider another person pointing out that you're angry-- which you honestly deny because you don't feel anything.
v. Author next turns to introspection of CCE when it comes to perception. Author grants that CCE of vision perception is difficult to get wrong. (pg 252-3) Yet in dreams we do get CCE wrong; we make judgments that are 'baldly incoherent' about what our CCE is. For instance, author doubts that there is color in dreams, yet we judge there to be. So was our CCE of color, or not? This argument turns on our making the judgment that we experienced red when we didn't in fact experience red.
vi. Author asks us to consider visual perception-- we have a good handle on the visual worlds, especially within certain limits of focus, yet we mostly get wrong how narrow our focus is. We think it is a few feet wide, but in fact it is just a few inches. (pg254-6) If this is so, our CCE of our visual field is not as clear as we think it is. We're 'wrong about an absolutely fundamental and pervasive aspect of [our] sensory consciousness'. (pg256)
vii. Does thought have a distinctive phenomenal character, aside from imagery? After a seminar in 2002, philosophers disagreed 17-8, the majority saying yes, the minority saying that either 'imagery exhausts it' or 'no phenomenal character'. (pg257-8) Author suggests this is because there is no answer-- introspection fails.
viii. Author considers pain and paradigm cases of 'foveal colors'. But these are easy cases and using these 'rigs the game' (pg259-60) Can't we generate the belief we're in pain without the there being a pain in CCE? Why then do people think they're infallible? Because no one ever corrects us on these inner episodes.
ix. Sometimes I can say 'I'm thinking' and it is true. But this infallibility is 'cheap', since it is self-referentially supplying the conditions for truth. (pg260-1) This doesn't work as well when you say: 'I'm thinking of the entire Taj Mahal in full detail'. Author also suggests that many ways out of this doubt is to 'change the topic': is 'I'm thinking about x' really a judgment about CCE?
x. Author discusses an objection to his view: introspection shows how things appear to us; maybe we can be wrong about what those things actually are, but not how they appear. Author draws a distinction between epistemic 'appears' and 'phenomenal' appears. It might be possible that sometimes an epistemic report on CCE is infallible if the existence conditions equal the truth conditions. Yet a phenomenal report of 'appears' might be tainted by judgment or belief, like believing there's an optical illusion when there isn't one. (pg262-3)
x. Author casts doubt that CCE is so grossly different to allow for all these problems with divergence but also to be infallible. (pg264-5)
xi. Author considers the charge that he is pushing the limits of introspection, but thinks that if it moves from CCE, it is changing the topic. (pg266)
Lastly, author suggests that visual experience of the external world is much more stable than introspection of CCE.
Philosophical Review, Vol 117 No 2 2008
This is a prolonged skeptical discussion about introspection and the notion of the infallibility of current conscious experience. The paper has more of a conversational style rather than present any logical arguments in an explicit format. Author first points out that most of the skeptics up until now have not questioned current conscious experience, leaving it instead as the last refuge. Author tries to show that introspection is unreliable in two ways (pg265):
1- it often goes wrong or yields the wrong results
2- it often fails to do anything or yield any result at all
Author says that we fail at 'assessing the causes of our mental states' for 'even the most basic features of our currently ongoing conscious experience'. (pg247) The only places in the philosophical/psychological communities where the author has seen arguments like this is possibly in the behaviorists (who reject the importance of introspection) or perhaps with 'Eastern meditative traditions'. (pg246-7)
Introspection is considered 'a species of attention to currently ongoing conscious experience'. Even though infallibilism is out of favor, most hold that in favorable circumstances introspection can 'reliably reveal at least the broad outlines of one's currently ongoing experience' (pg248).
iii. Author first discusses emotion, asking whether it is partially constituted by cognitive elements, or not? Are emotional states always felt phenomenally? Do emotional states like 'joy' have the same feel most of the time? (pg249-50) Author suggests that this is not just a matter of how we describe our CCE (current conscious experience) but that the qualia aren't entirely evident.
iv. Author then discusses introspection of particular instances of emotional experience (pg251-2), like the one you're having right now. Does introspection reveal it as clearly as your eyes reveal the place you're in? Consider another person pointing out that you're angry-- which you honestly deny because you don't feel anything.
v. Author next turns to introspection of CCE when it comes to perception. Author grants that CCE of vision perception is difficult to get wrong. (pg 252-3) Yet in dreams we do get CCE wrong; we make judgments that are 'baldly incoherent' about what our CCE is. For instance, author doubts that there is color in dreams, yet we judge there to be. So was our CCE of color, or not? This argument turns on our making the judgment that we experienced red when we didn't in fact experience red.
vi. Author asks us to consider visual perception-- we have a good handle on the visual worlds, especially within certain limits of focus, yet we mostly get wrong how narrow our focus is. We think it is a few feet wide, but in fact it is just a few inches. (pg254-6) If this is so, our CCE of our visual field is not as clear as we think it is. We're 'wrong about an absolutely fundamental and pervasive aspect of [our] sensory consciousness'. (pg256)
vii. Does thought have a distinctive phenomenal character, aside from imagery? After a seminar in 2002, philosophers disagreed 17-8, the majority saying yes, the minority saying that either 'imagery exhausts it' or 'no phenomenal character'. (pg257-8) Author suggests this is because there is no answer-- introspection fails.
viii. Author considers pain and paradigm cases of 'foveal colors'. But these are easy cases and using these 'rigs the game' (pg259-60) Can't we generate the belief we're in pain without the there being a pain in CCE? Why then do people think they're infallible? Because no one ever corrects us on these inner episodes.
ix. Sometimes I can say 'I'm thinking' and it is true. But this infallibility is 'cheap', since it is self-referentially supplying the conditions for truth. (pg260-1) This doesn't work as well when you say: 'I'm thinking of the entire Taj Mahal in full detail'. Author also suggests that many ways out of this doubt is to 'change the topic': is 'I'm thinking about x' really a judgment about CCE?
x. Author discusses an objection to his view: introspection shows how things appear to us; maybe we can be wrong about what those things actually are, but not how they appear. Author draws a distinction between epistemic 'appears' and 'phenomenal' appears. It might be possible that sometimes an epistemic report on CCE is infallible if the existence conditions equal the truth conditions. Yet a phenomenal report of 'appears' might be tainted by judgment or belief, like believing there's an optical illusion when there isn't one. (pg262-3)
x. Author casts doubt that CCE is so grossly different to allow for all these problems with divergence but also to be infallible. (pg264-5)
xi. Author considers the charge that he is pushing the limits of introspection, but thinks that if it moves from CCE, it is changing the topic. (pg266)
Lastly, author suggests that visual experience of the external world is much more stable than introspection of CCE.
6/13/08
Kiteley, Murray - Verbs of Speech & Danto, Arthur - A Note on Expressions of the Referring Sort
06/13/2008
Kiteley, Murray - Verbs of Speech
This is a short discussion on Austin's How To Do Things With Words, where he introduces the category of 'performatives'. Also mentioned was the fact that once a present-tense verb performative is made into a past-tense verb, it can have a truth value and thus wouldn't be a performative.
Danto, Arthur - A Note on Expressions of the Referring Sort
Author writes a response paper to Strawson's 'On Referring' and and Earl Russell's discussion as well. Author takes a stance against a certain type of logic of ordinary language that takes a sentence that refers to nothing as neither true nor false. For instance: 'The building on south-west corner of 116th st is beautiful'. If there is no building there, the argument goes, then the sentence is neither true nor false. Author points out that if this is allowed to stand, then the speaker of such a sentence couldn't be considered lying, since lying is saying something false (pg405). But if this was a business context where purchasing the 'building' was involved, such a sentence might easily constitute fraud-- untrue statements being an integral part of fraud. Author suggests that ordinary language stretches over too many different contexts and cases to allow for one strict logic. (pg407)
Kiteley, Murray - Verbs of Speech
This is a short discussion on Austin's How To Do Things With Words, where he introduces the category of 'performatives'. Also mentioned was the fact that once a present-tense verb performative is made into a past-tense verb, it can have a truth value and thus wouldn't be a performative.
Danto, Arthur - A Note on Expressions of the Referring Sort
Author writes a response paper to Strawson's 'On Referring' and and Earl Russell's discussion as well. Author takes a stance against a certain type of logic of ordinary language that takes a sentence that refers to nothing as neither true nor false. For instance: 'The building on south-west corner of 116th st is beautiful'. If there is no building there, the argument goes, then the sentence is neither true nor false. Author points out that if this is allowed to stand, then the speaker of such a sentence couldn't be considered lying, since lying is saying something false (pg405). But if this was a business context where purchasing the 'building' was involved, such a sentence might easily constitute fraud-- untrue statements being an integral part of fraud. Author suggests that ordinary language stretches over too many different contexts and cases to allow for one strict logic. (pg407)
6/6/08
Ryle, Gilbert - The Will
06/06/2008
The Concept of Mind Ch 3, Penguin Books 1966
This is the third chapter in a famous book where author's main concern is arguing that the use of 'mind' as opposed to 'matter' is a category-mistake, similar to thinking that 'a pair of gloves' is something extra one also buys when one buys 'one left-handed glove and one right-handed glove'. In previous chapters, author takes care to lay out a crucial distinction and style of argumentation that will serve him in this one: the knowing how vs. knowing that distinction and the ad infinitum reductio. Author establishes early on that there can be abilities and performances to which we naturally and rightly apply predicates such as 'intelligently' 'shrewdly' 'prudently' where there is not plausibly some activity of considering rules, maxims, or other that-propositions performed by the subject. It isn't that the mind is thinking what rules to apply 'shrewdly' and then doing so, instead, we are doing something shrewdly. If the mind was, then we'd have a reductio ad infinitum, since we would also have to antecedently shrewdly consider whether to apply these rules or those rules, this set of that-propositions or an other set.
In chapter 3, author first claims that the term 'volition' and 'the will' are technical terms that ordinary language almost never uses, and certainly not in the way that philosophers do. Author later points out that it seems ordinary usage of the word 'voluntary' is almost exclusively reserved for discussing actions that were contrary to good expectations (pg67), though philosophers also want to use this term to describe actions in line with expectations as well. Thus the oddity: 'could you have helped being kind fo that child?'. (pg68)
Author dislikes talk of the will or volitions for many reasons:
1) It postulates a third entity or power that is needed to give the mind efficacy on the body, but it is a theoretical result, not an empirical finding.
2) Since volitions cannot be witnessed, we have no grounds for inferring what they are in a person. Further, a person himself might not even know which volition effected which action. (pg64-5)
3) The connection between the mind's volition and the body's movements is a mystery, yes, but of the insoluble type, not like 'the cause of cancer'.
4) Some solely mental activities merit will-like predicates being applied to them, so now we will require to know about how mind volitions are formed-- is there an antecedently formed mind-volition volition? Author gives a reductio. (pg65-6)
Author is careful to distinguish between what common thought processes won't do when looking for 'the will' or volitions (examine pg66-7). What is a more fruitful discussion is to look at what we're talking about when we talk about 'voluntary' and 'could not have helped' and so on. Author describes a boy charged with tying a reef-knot, but instead ties a granny-knot. In order to find out whether it was voluntary or not, we can use a variety of potentially publically available information: did the boy know and practice the proper knot? etc (pg69). We also talk of volitions when contrasting them with things done under complusion or by outside forces, like being carried out to sea while on your yacht (pg71-2).
The discussion of purposive vs mechanistic explanations eventually brings out the reason, author contends, why philosophers are so intent on keeping the will; the 'bogy of mechanism'. (pg73) This launches the last part of the chapter, an extended discussion of how two different sets of predicates can apply to the same action-- perhaps moving a piece in chess or shooting a billiard ball-- one that describes the movements mechanistically, the other as 'wisely-moved' or 'expertly-hit'. (pg75-78) This is arguing for the irreducibility of mental descriptions, even if they supervene on physical descriptions.
Kiteley, Murray - Verbs of Speech
This is a short discussion on Austin's How To Do Things With Words, where he introduces the category of 'performatives', or speech-acts. Also mentioned was the fact that once a speech-act is made into a past-tense verb, it can have a truth value instead of a speech-act.
The Concept of Mind Ch 3, Penguin Books 1966
This is the third chapter in a famous book where author's main concern is arguing that the use of 'mind' as opposed to 'matter' is a category-mistake, similar to thinking that 'a pair of gloves' is something extra one also buys when one buys 'one left-handed glove and one right-handed glove'. In previous chapters, author takes care to lay out a crucial distinction and style of argumentation that will serve him in this one: the knowing how vs. knowing that distinction and the ad infinitum reductio. Author establishes early on that there can be abilities and performances to which we naturally and rightly apply predicates such as 'intelligently' 'shrewdly' 'prudently' where there is not plausibly some activity of considering rules, maxims, or other that-propositions performed by the subject. It isn't that the mind is thinking what rules to apply 'shrewdly' and then doing so, instead, we are doing something shrewdly. If the mind was, then we'd have a reductio ad infinitum, since we would also have to antecedently shrewdly consider whether to apply these rules or those rules, this set of that-propositions or an other set.
In chapter 3, author first claims that the term 'volition' and 'the will' are technical terms that ordinary language almost never uses, and certainly not in the way that philosophers do. Author later points out that it seems ordinary usage of the word 'voluntary' is almost exclusively reserved for discussing actions that were contrary to good expectations (pg67), though philosophers also want to use this term to describe actions in line with expectations as well. Thus the oddity: 'could you have helped being kind fo that child?'. (pg68)
Author dislikes talk of the will or volitions for many reasons:
1) It postulates a third entity or power that is needed to give the mind efficacy on the body, but it is a theoretical result, not an empirical finding.
2) Since volitions cannot be witnessed, we have no grounds for inferring what they are in a person. Further, a person himself might not even know which volition effected which action. (pg64-5)
3) The connection between the mind's volition and the body's movements is a mystery, yes, but of the insoluble type, not like 'the cause of cancer'.
4) Some solely mental activities merit will-like predicates being applied to them, so now we will require to know about how mind volitions are formed-- is there an antecedently formed mind-volition volition? Author gives a reductio. (pg65-6)
Author is careful to distinguish between what common thought processes won't do when looking for 'the will' or volitions (examine pg66-7). What is a more fruitful discussion is to look at what we're talking about when we talk about 'voluntary' and 'could not have helped' and so on. Author describes a boy charged with tying a reef-knot, but instead ties a granny-knot. In order to find out whether it was voluntary or not, we can use a variety of potentially publically available information: did the boy know and practice the proper knot? etc (pg69). We also talk of volitions when contrasting them with things done under complusion or by outside forces, like being carried out to sea while on your yacht (pg71-2).
The discussion of purposive vs mechanistic explanations eventually brings out the reason, author contends, why philosophers are so intent on keeping the will; the 'bogy of mechanism'. (pg73) This launches the last part of the chapter, an extended discussion of how two different sets of predicates can apply to the same action-- perhaps moving a piece in chess or shooting a billiard ball-- one that describes the movements mechanistically, the other as 'wisely-moved' or 'expertly-hit'. (pg75-78) This is arguing for the irreducibility of mental descriptions, even if they supervene on physical descriptions.
Kiteley, Murray - Verbs of Speech
This is a short discussion on Austin's How To Do Things With Words, where he introduces the category of 'performatives', or speech-acts. Also mentioned was the fact that once a speech-act is made into a past-tense verb, it can have a truth value instead of a speech-act.
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