Illusionism and the Epistemological Problems Facing Phenomenal Realism

Illusionism about phenomenal properties has the potential to leave us with all the benefit of taking consciousness seriously and far fewer problems than those accompanying phenomenal realism. The particular problem I explore here is an epistemological puzzle that leaves the phenomenal realist with a dilemma but causes no trouble for the illusionist: how can we account for false beliefs about our own phenomenal properties? If realism is true, facts about our phenomenal properties must hold independent of our beliefs about those properties, so mistaken phenomenal beliefs must always remain an open possibility. But there is no way to identify the phenomenal facts that make these beliefs false other than by mere stipulation. If illusionism is true, then the state of affairs regarding what a subject's experience seems like is just the illusion itself; there are no further facts of the matter about which the subject might have mistaken beliefs, so the problem does not arise

Parents' perspectives and experiences of having a child with hereditary hearing loss

Congenital hearing loss (HL) occurs in 1-2 per 1000 newborns globally. Of all the congenital diseases that occur worldwide, HL remains the most disabling, with the highest rate for age-standardised disability life years and is a significant public health concern particularly in the developing world. In South Africa, 6 in 1000 newborns, have disabling HL. Genetic aetiology accounts for half of the cases of prelingual HL and of these 70% are nonsyndromic. There is ongoing research into the genetic basis of HL in the South African setting as at present, genetic testing for HL is largely uninformative in most African populations. Previous studies have examined the psychosocial challenges experienced by parents related to their child's HL, but in South Africa there have been no studies investigating the hereditary aspects of HL and how they may be related to the experiences of parents. Furthermore, the understanding and comprehension of genetics concepts is unknown in this population and needs to be explored before appropriate genetic counselling may be provided to parents of children with hereditary HL. Therefore, the aim of this research was to examine the perspectives, experiences and understanding of parents, whose children are deaf, potentially due to a nonsyndromic genetic aetiology, in a selected setting in Cape Town. Eleven participants were recruited through the clinical genetics service at Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital and the Dominican School for Deaf Children in Cape Town. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and the transcripts analysed using the framework approach for data analysis. Through this approach, five themes were identified relating to the experience of parenting a deaf child, parents' understanding of the cause of their child's HL and the way that their child's difference or normalcy is perceived. Most parents were unable to identify the cause of their child's HL unless there were previous cases of HL in the family, but almost all were interested in pursuing genetic testing to assist them in finding answers. The time from the diagnosis had been an emotional and confusing time for many of the participants, who found means to cope and adapt to their child's HL through faith and support systems. Each of the participants had a unique experience with regards to their child's HL, some needing to make sacrifices and overcome practical challenges in order to provide for their child. Participants both rejected shame and pity with regards to their child's HL and embraced that their child was different, part of the Deaf world, but that this difference does not define them. This research could influence the genetics services provided for this population. It is imperative to understand the experiences and comprehension of this population so that improvements can be made to provide appropriate services

Alien Registration- Johnson, Amber H. (Portland, Cumberland County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/21700/thumbnail.jp

Justification internalism, self knowledge, and mental content externalism

At first blush, mental content externalism and justification internalism seem incompatible. If some of the content of my mental states supervenes on factors external to me, the content of these mental states might be unavailable to me. If the factors relevant to the justification of my beliefs are the relations between the contents of my beliefs, and I do not have access to these contents, then these beliefs cannot be justified internally. I propose to reconcile mental content externalism with justification internalism by taking the factors relevant to the justification of a belief to be the relations between how one would express one's beliefs, not between the contents of those beliefs. Though mental content externalism may somewhat restrict an agent's self knowledge, it could not restrict an agent from knowing how he would express his beliefs, and therefore would not hinder his access to the relevant justificatory factors

Inconceivable Minds

The current debate over the metaphysical nature of the mind is dominated by two major philosophical views: property dualism and physicalism. According to property dualism, mental properties are of metaphysically distinct types. There are phenomenal properties, or qualia, the properties that constitute conscious experience, and there are the cognitive or functional properties of the mind. According to physicalism, there is one metaphysical type of mental property, though there may be a deep conceptual divide between experience and cognition. I challenge both these assumptions. Focusing on two of the most popular anti-physicalist arguments- the Conceivability Argument and the Knowledge Argument- I argue that the property dualist's account of the relationship between consciousness and behavior- the explanatory irrelevance of consciousness to sufficient explanations our behavior and how we make judgment about our conscious experience- make the first argument untenable and the second irrelevant to the metaphysical debate. I also present a case against a physicalist conceptual separation between cognition and consciousness by challenging the Phenomenal Concept Strategy, the most popular argument supporting such a separation. This conceptual separation supposedly allows us to conceive of philosophical zombies, creature physically identical to human beings but who lack conscious experience. The phenomenal concept strategy aims to explain how we can conceive of zombies while maintaining a physicalist account of the metaphysics of mind. For this strategy to succeed, the physicalist must show that we share our epistemic situation regarding consciousness with our zombie-twins. Zombies make claims about their own phenomenal experience, just as we do, but by definition they have none. I examine the most common physicalist interpretation of the zombies' beliefs about their own conscious experiences and show that this leads to the creation of inconceivable minds- creatures whose mental features would be incompatible with the very interpretation of zombie phenomenal belief on which this strategy is based. My dissertation has two overarching goals. First, to undermine the plausibility of the two most popular arguments for property dualism, and second, to force physicalists to reconsider both the phenomenal concept strategy and their commitment to the genuine conceivability of zombies.Doctor of Philosoph

Mental Fictionalism: the costly combination of magic and the mind

Mental fictionalism is not the benign view that we may better understand the mind if we think of mental states as something like useful fictions, but the more radical view that mental states just are useful fictions. This paper argues that, if one were to treat mental states as a kind of fiction, the genre of fiction best suited to this purpose would be fantasy make-believe, in which magic is a central feature. After defending a promising fictionalist account of mental discourse as a kind of prop-oriented make believe against recent criticism, the paper ultimately concludes that mental fictionalism faces further, potentially insurmountable, challenges. Most significantly, there is a problematic disanalogy between folk psychology and fiction: our mental state attributions aim to track truth, and this crucial aspect of our mental discourse cannot be captured if we interpret it as a kind of fictional discourse. For this and other reasons, the cost of adopting mental fictionalism likely outweighs its benefits. Whether or not these problems can be resolved, there is still much to be gained from taking mental fictionalism seriously: in doing so we may illuminate several important features of our own folk psychology that often go unnoticed

AI and the expert; a blueprint for the ethical use of opaque AI

The increasing demand for transparency in AI has recently come under scrutiny. The question is often posted in terms of “epistemic double standards”, and whether the standards for transparency in AI ought to be higher than, or equivalent to, our standards for ordinary human reasoners. I agree that the push for increased transparency in AI deserves closer examination, and that comparing these standards to our standards of transparency for other opaque systems is an appropriate starting point. I suggest that a more fruitful exploration of this question will involve a different comparison class. We routinely treat judgments made by highly-trained experts in specialized fields as fair or well-grounded even though—by the nature of expert/layperson division of epistemic labor—an expert will not be able to provide an explanation of the reasoning behind these judgments that makes sense to most other people. Regardless, laypeople are thought to be acting reasonably—and ethically—in deferring to the judgment of experts that concern their area of specialization. I suggest that we reframe our question regarding the appropriate standards of transparency in AI as one that asks when, why, and to what degree it would be ethical to accept opacity in AI. I argue that our epistemic relation to certain opaque AI technology may be relevantly similar to the layperson’s epistemic relation to the expert, such that the successful expert/layperson division of epistemic labor can serve as a blueprint for the ethical use of opaque AI

Cortical Stimulation and Language Outcomes in Aphasia

With the increased focus on evidenced-based outcomes in Speech-Language Pathology, a trend towards inclusion of instrumentation and technology in the treatment of aphasia has emerged. One technique at the forefront of this movement is the use of cortical stimulation as an adjunct to behavioral interventions. The purposes of this brief analysis are to review articles published over the course of six years (2006-2011) that combine stimulation with language treatment and to report trends that emerge

Multisensory Perception in Philosophy

This is the editors' Introduction to a special issue of the journal, Multisensory Research. European philosophers of the modern period found multisensory perception to be impossible because they thought that perceptual ideas are defined by how they are experienced. Under this conception, the individual modalities are determinables of ideas—just as colour is a determinable that embraces red and blue, so also the visual is a determinable that embraces colour and (visually experienced) shape. Since no idea is experienced as, for example, both visual and auditory, there can be no such thing as audiovisual perception. This conception of modality is not directly contested, but a variety of perceptual phenomena are listed that could raise interesting questions if treated as multimodal in origin