Perceptual Experience

This book offers an account of perceptual experience—its intrinsic nature, its engagement with the world, its relations to mental states of other kinds, and its role in epistemic norms. One of the book’s main claims is that perceptual experience constitutively involves representations of worldly items. A second claim is that the relevant form of representation can be explained in broadly biological terms. After defending these foundational doctrines, the book proceeds to give an account of perceptual appearances and how they are related to the objective world. Appearances turn out to be relational, viewpoint dependent properties of external objects. There is also a complementary account of how the objects that possess these properties are represented. Another major concern is the phenomenological dimension of perception. The book maintains that perceptual phenomenology can be explained reductively in terms of the representational contents of experiences, and it uses this doctrine to undercut the traditional arguments for dualism. This treatment of perceptual phenomenology is then expanded to encompass cognitive phenomenology, the phenomenology of moods and emotions, and the phenomenology of pain. The next topic is the various forms of consciousness that perceptual experience can possess. A principal aim is to show that phenomenology is metaphysically independent of these forms of consciousness, and another is to de-mystify the form known as phenomenal consciousness. The book concludes by discussing the relations of various kinds that perceptual experiences bear to higher level cognitive states, including relations of format, content, and justification or support

Analyzing oppositions in the concept of visuality between aesthetics and visual culture in art and education using John R. Searle's realist account of consciousness

In art and education, theorists dispute the concept of visuality, or how meaning occurs from what we see. This study examines two opposed and acrimoniously entrenched theoretical perspectives adopted internationally: visual culture and aesthetics. In visual culture, visual experience, including perception is mediated by background cultural discourses. On this approach, subjectivity is explained as conventional, the role of the senses in making meaning is strongly diminished or rejected and from this, accounting for visuality precludes indeterminate and intuitive aspects. Differently, aesthetic perspectives approach visual meaning as obtaining through direct perceptual and felt aspects of aesthetic experience. Here, subjectivity remains discrete from language and the role of cultural discourse in making meaning diminishes or is excluded. Each description is important to the explanation of visuality in art and education, but problematic. To start, the study outlines the central explanatory commitments of both visual culture and aesthetics. The study identifies problems in each with their explanations of subjectivity or self. Both positions maintain from earlier explanations of cognition that separate theoretically and practically the senses, cognitive processes, and context. The study looks at approaches to mind and representation in accounts of visuality and provides some background from the cognitive sciences to understand the problem further. Contemporary explanation from science and philosophy is revising the separation. However, some approaches from science are reductive of mind and both aesthetics and visual culture theorists are understandably reluctant to adopt scientistic or behaviourist approaches for the explanation of visual arts practices. The aim of the study is to provide a non-reductive realist account of visuality in visual arts and education. To accomplish this aim, the study employs philosopher John R. Searle's explanation of consciousness because it explores subjectivity as qualitative, unified, and intrinsically social in experience. By doing this, the study addresses a gap in the theoretical understanding of the two dominant approaches to visuality. The key to relations between subjectivity and the world in reasoning is the capacity for mental representation. From this capacity and the rational agency of a self, practical reasoning is central to the creation, understanding, and appreciation of art and imagery. This account of consciousness, its aspects, and how it works includes description of the Background, as capacities enabling the uptake and structuring of sociocultural influence in mind. Crucially, the study shows how the capacity for reasoned action can be represented without dualism or reduction to the explanatory constraints of behavioural or physical sciences, an important commitment in the arts and education. In this explanation, the study identifies epistemic constraints on the representation of mental states, including unconscious states, in accounting for practices as reasoned activities. Centrally, the study looks at how, from the capacities of consciousness and the self's freedom of will, visuality is unified as qualitative, cognitive, and social. In exploring Searle's explanation of consciousness, some account of current work on cognition extends discussion of a reconciliation of visuality on these terms

Gerald Heard's natural theology in relation to the philosophy of Henri Bergson

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityThe purpose of this dissertation is to expound and evaluate the natural theology of Gerald Heard in relation to the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and to determine the reason for the relative neglect of Heard's thought in theological and philosophical circles. Gerald Heard is a contemporary thinker who has written widely on the relations among science, philosophy and religion. He has not, however, gained the recognition which the range and number of his books might lead one to expect. The procedure consists in (1) a characterization of the basic philosophy of Henri Bergson as a point of reference for consideration of Heard, (2) a systematic analysis of Heard's thought, noting similarities and differences with regard to Bergson, (3) an evaluation of Heard's thought, and conclusions. [TRUNCATED

Seeing and Believing: Philosophical Issues in Theory of Mind Development

All human beings understand the behaviors of others as causal results of their mental states. Philosophers call this ability folk psychology and developmental researchers call it theory of mind (ToM). My dissertation concerns how this reasoning works and how it is acquired. First, I develop and expand a theory of how folk psychology develops in childhood. This is the Perceptual Access Reasoning, or PAR theory of the Fabricius lab. Contrary to the two views dominant in the field, I argue that ToM (belief reasoning or BR) is acquired around 6 years of age after undergoing two preliminary cognitive stages, reality reasoning (RR) and perceptual access reasoning (PAR). Neither of the first two satges of ToM development involve an understanding of mental representation. Evidence for the PAR hypothesis comes from the failure of 4- and 5-year-olds on a false belief task which includes a third, irrelevant, alternative; their failure on true belief tasks; and their failure on no belief tasks. Only the PAR hypothesis can account for all the data. Chapter 2 explains the PAR hypothesis and children’s understanding of believing. Chapter 3 extends the PAR theory to children’s understanding of perception, and demonstrates that the data (mostly tasks testing Flavell’s classic 4 levels model of perception understanding and his appearance/reality distinction) support the PAR hypothesis. Second, I demonstrate how this theory can be usefully applied to solve problems in cognitive science. In Chapter 4 I explore dual systems theories of cognition (and ToM in particular). In Chapter 5 I solve the Perner-Povinelli Problem—the claim that no empirical test can decide whether subjects are using mentalist rules to pass ToM tasks, or merely using behavioral rules which require no understanding of mental representation. In Chapter 6 I use the PAR hypothesis to argue that a limited theory-theory of concepts is plausible. The PAR stage concept of KNOWING and the adult (BR) concept of KNOWING are fundamentally different because the former is non-representational. Evidence for this is that children in the PAR stage do not distinguish between knowing and guessing correctly, nor between lying and being mistakenly incorrect. The PAR child’s concept of KNOWING is inextricably linked with perceptual access and correct behavior; in other words, with the inferential rules of the PAR theory. I then defend this hypothesis against Fodor’s shareability objection. Finally, in Chapter 7, I make some specific suggestions for continuing my folk psychology research program by expanding the PAR theory and applying it to other problems in philosophy