|
Showing 1 - 9 of
9 matches in All Departments
Bill Brewer presents, motivates, and defends a bold new solution to
a fundamental problem in the philosophy of perception. What is the
correct theoretical conception of perceptual experience, and how
should we best understand the most fundamental nature of our
perceptual relation with the physical objects in the world around
us? Most theorists today analyse perception in terms of its
representational content, in large part in order to avoid fatal
problems attending the early modern conception of perception as a
relation with particular mind-dependent objects of experience.
Having set up the underlying problem and explored the lessons to be
learnt from the various difficulties faced by opposing early modern
responses to it, Bill Brewer argues that this contemporary approach
has serious problems of its own. Furthermore, the early modern
insight that perception is most fundamentally to be construed as a
relation of conscious acquaintance with certain direct objects of
experience is, he claims, perfectly consistent with the commonsense
identification of such direct objects with persisting
mind-independent physical objects themselves. Brewer here provides
a critical, historical account of the philosophy of perception, in
order to present a defensible vindication of empirical realism.
New essays on the philosophy of Ned Block, with substantive and
wide-ranging responses by Block. Perhaps more than any other
philosopher of mind, Ned Block synthesizes philosophical and
scientific approaches to the mind; he is unique in moving back and
forth across this divide, doing so with creativity and intensity.
Over the course of his career, Block has made groundbreaking
contributions to our understanding of intelligence, representation,
and consciousness. Blockheads! (the title refers to Block's
imaginary counterexample to the Turing test-and to the
Block-enthusiast contributors) offers eighteen new essays on
Block's work along with substantive and wide-ranging replies by
Block. The essays and responses not only address Block's past
contributions but are rich with new ideas and argument. They
importantly clarify many key elements of Block's work, including
his pessimism concerning such thought experiments as Commander Data
and the Nation of China; his more general pessimism about
intuitions and introspection in the philosophy of mind; the
empirical case for an antifunctionalist, biological theory of
phenomenal consciousness; the fading qualia problem for a
biological theory; the link between phenomenal consciousness and
representation (especially spatial representation); and the
reducibility of phenomenal representation. Many of the contributors
to Blockheads! are prominent philosophers themselves, including
Tyler Burge, David Chalmers, Frank Jackson, and Hilary Putnam.
Contributors Ned Block, Bill Brewer, Richard Brown, Tyler Burge,
Marisa Carrasco, David Chalmers, Frank Jackson, Hakwan Lau,
Geoffrey Lee, Janet Levin, Joseph Levine, William G. Lycan, Brian
P. McLaughlin, Adam Pautz, Hilary Putnam, Sydney Shoemaker, Susanna
Siegel, Nicholas Silins, Daniel Stoljar, Michael Tye, Sebastian
Watzl
The metaphysics of ordinary objects is an increasingly vibrant
field of study for philosophers. This volume gathers insights from
a number of leading authors, who together tackle the central issues
in contemporary debates about the subject. Their essays engage with
topics including composition, persistence, perception, categories,
images, artifacts, truthmakers, metaontology, and the relationship
between the manifest and scientific images. Exploring the nature of
everyday things, the contributors situate their arguments and the
latest research against the background of the field's development.
Moreover, many essays propose new ideas and approaches, looking
ahead to the future of the metaphysical study of ordinary objects.
Featuring numerous clearly explained examples and with thoughtful
links drawn to other, related disciplines such as pragmatism, this
wide-ranging volume fills a major gap in the literature and will be
important for scholars working in metaphysics.
Bill Brewer presents, motivates, and defends a bold new solution to
a fundamental problem in the philosophy of perception. What is the
correct theoretical conception of perceptual experience, and how
should we best understand the most fundamental nature of our
perceptual relation with the physical objects in the world around
us? Most theorists today analyse perception in terms of its
representational content, in large part in order to avoid fatal
problems attending the early modern conception of perception as a
relation with particular mind-dependent objects of experience.
Having set up the underlying problem and explored the lessons to be
learnt from the various difficulties faced by opposing early modern
responses to it, Bill Brewer argues that this contemporary approach
has serious problems of its own. Furthermore, the early modern
insight that perception is most fundamentally to be construed as a
relation of conscious acquaintance with certain direct objects of
experience is, he claims, perfectly consistent with the commonsense
identification of such direct objects with persisting
mind-independent physical objects themselves. Brewer here provides
a critical, historical account of the philosophy of perception, in
order to present a defensible vindication of empirical realism.
Bill Brewer sets out an original view of the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of knowledge. He argues that experiences must provide reasons for beliefs if there are to be any beliefs about the mind-independent world at all: experiences are essential to a person's grasping certain thoughts about the world, and simply grasping these provides him with a reason to believe that the world is as he thereby thinks it is.
|
|