The Mind's Construction: The Ontology of Mind and Mental Action

398 Pages·2013·1.32 MB·English

by  Matthew Soteriou

The Mind’s Construction
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The Mind’s
Construction
The Ontology of Mind and
Mental Action
Matthew Soteriou
1
3
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United Kingdom
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© Matthew Soteriou 2013
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2013
Impression: 1
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ISBN 978–0–19–967845–7
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For my parents
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Contents
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
Part I. Sensory Consciousness
1. The Manifest Image of Sensory Consciousness 9
1.1 Introspection, ‘diaphanous’ experience, and the relation
of perceptual acquaintance 12
1.2 Representational content and the properties of conscious experience 17
1.3 The re-emergence of relational views 2 3
1.4 Articulating the manifest image of sensory consciousness 25
2. Occurrence, State, Content, and Character 2 7
2.1 The temporal profi les of thought and experience 28
2.2 Geach on the discontinuous character of thought 30
2.3 The ontology of the stream of consciousness 34
2.4 Representational content and the ontology of experience 38
2.5 Representational content and phenomenal character 42
2.6 An ontological proposal: occurrence, state, and explanatory circularity 4 5
2.7 The interdependence thesis 50
3. The Phenomenology and Ontology of Bodily Sensation 5 3
3.1 The phenomenology of pain 54
3.2 A phenomenological puzzle 5 8
3.3 An ontology that fi ts the phenomenology 6 1
3.4 Bodily sensation, transparency, and intentionality 67
3.5 Mind-dependent bodily events and the biological function of pain 70
3.6 Explanatory circularity and physicalism 76
3.7 Hallucinating phenomenal events 79
4. Temporal Transparency and Perceptual Acquaintance 83
4.1 Representation and the perceptual relation: what is in dispute? 84
4.2 The temporal transparency of our experience of events 88
4.3 Representationalism and the temporal transparency of experience 9 0
4.4 The ontological challenge 92
4.5 The ontological challenge illustrated: two puzzles 95
4.6 A relationalist proposal 99
4.7 An ontological resolution 102
4.8 The problem of hallucination 107
viii contents
5. Structural Features of Perceptual Acquaintance 111
5.1 Bodily awareness, vision, and the spatial sensory fi eld 115
5.2 Hearing silence and the temporal sensory fi eld 123
5.3 Perceptual perspectives on space and time: a structural diff erence 130
6. Conscious Contact with Time and the Continuity of Consciousness 1 35
6.1 Conscious contact with time in the state of wakeful consciousness 135
6.2 ‘Occurrent’ perceptual states and experiencing the ‘passage’ of time 138
6.3 Occurrent perceptual states and Dennett’s ‘multiple drafts’ 143
6.4 The diachronic unity and continuity of consciousness 147
6.5 The ontology of the manifest image of conscious sensory experience 152
7. Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Recollection 155
7.1 Perceptual imagination and perceptual experience: the ‘same but
diff erent’ puzzle 156
7.2 The dependency thesis 159
7.3 The ontology of perceptual imagination 163
7.4 Perceptual memory and episodic recollection 169
7.5 Perceptual imagination and knowing what it’s like 178
8. Introspection and Knowing What It’s Like 181
8.1 Introspecting ‘transparent’ experience 183
8.2 Noticing, looking at, and watching 186
8.3 The introspective perspective on experience and our perceptual
perspective on the world 192
8.4 A relationalist response to the problem of hallucination 198
8.5 The ontology of knowing the phenomenology 206
Part II. Conscious Thinking
9. The Place of Mental Action in the Metaphysics of Mind 2 11
9.1 ‘Cartesian’ and ‘anti-Cartesian’ approaches 211
9.2 The place of mental action in accounts of agency 218
9.3 O’Shaughnessy on consciousness and mental action 219
9.4 Questions and issues 224
10. The Ontology of Conscious Thinking 227
10.1 The privacy of conscious thinking 228
10.2 A ‘bottom-up’ approach to conscious thinking, and the temporal
profi le of the conscious act of judging 232
10.3 Thinking out loud 238
10.4 Thinking and talking 243
10.5 The ontology of conscious judgement 2 46
10.6 Is there a stream of conscious thought? 251
contents ix
11. ‘The Mind Uses Its Own Freedom’: Suppositional Reasoning
and Self-Critical Refl ection 257
11.1 Suppositional reasoning 259
11.2 Self-critical refl ection and bracketing belief 265
11.3 Locating the agency in suppositional reasoning and self-critical refl ection 271
12. Mental Action, Autonomy, and the Perspective of Practical Reason 2 75
12.1 Agential activity, autonomous action, and mental action 2 76
12.2 Bratman and Velleman on intention 281
12.3 Decision, planning, and assumption 284
12.4 Decision and memory 289
12.5 Epistemic freedom and the perspective of practical reason 291
12.6 Decision and mental agency 2 96
12.7 Decision, practical deliberation, and autonomous agency 299
13. Intention-in-Action and the Epistemology of Mind 3 09
13.1 Intention-in-action and practical self-knowledge 309
13.2 Intention-in-action and the epistemology of mental action 316
13.3 States of consciousness, the ‘mental will’, and a hypothesis about dreams 323
14. Reconsidering the Place of Mental Action in the Metaphysics of Mind 333
14.1 The place and role of mental agency in an account of conscious thinking 333
14.2 The epistemology of mental action and scepticism directed
at conscious thinking 336
14.3 The place of mental action in the metaphysics of mind 341
15. Thinking and Belief 347
15.1 Knowing what you are thinking and knowing what you believe 348
15.2 Thinking, belief revision, and epistemic traps 355
15.3 Losing knowledge through self-critical refl ection 362
15.4 Multiplying the epistemic options: epistemic liberty and
the ethics of belief 366
References 371
Index 383