Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Jacqueline Woolley. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

Theses (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-103). Also available via the World Wide Web.

M.A. (Philosophy) / Philosophy of mind has begun to rely on input from neurobiology and neuroscience to answer questions concerning consciousness, representation and the subjective character of experience. Some philosophers believe that through studies done on the brain, neuroscience will help us answer the hard-problems of consciousness. The first chapter of this paper is concerned with the kind of contributions neurobiology can make to certain debates in philosophy of mind and proceeds to explain that even though neurobiology is mostly a positive contributor to philosophy of mind, it still fails to answer some of the more pressing issues in philosophy of mind. In the second chapter of this paper, I focus on Frank Jackson’s Knowledge Argument. Jackson’s Knowledge Argument is perhaps one of the most challenged arguments concerning experience in philosophy of mind and responses to this argument will possibly tell us more about the mind. Jackson argues that we gain a new kind of knowledge when we experience something, for example when seeing the colour red. He argues that these new learnt facts are non-physical. David Lewis argues that a person learns no new facts upon experiencing red, but rather abilities such as the ability to recognize, imagine and remember. In this chapter I also examine some of the counterarguments to Jackson’s Knowledge Argument and conclude that these philosophers have approached the Knowledge Argument incorrectly. I suggest a different physicalist response to the Knowledge Argument. In the third chapter of this paper, I propose a new physicalist account of experience I call ‘bifactualism’. The Knowledge Argument is an argument for dualism that claims that there are both physical and non-physical facts which can be learnt through experience. I reject the Knowledge Argument and suggest bifactualism. Bifactualism is a new physicalist account essentially comprising two elements. First, it distinguishes between two kinds of physical facts: general and particular. The second element is the claim that this distinction explains facts about consciousness, without resorting to dualism. I disagree with the dualist claims made in the Knowledge Argument and show that the Knowledge Argument neither supports dualist claims nor does it refute bifactualist claims. Most contributions made with regards to the Knowledge Argument focus on what Mary is able to learn once outside the black and white room. Bifactualism is interested in what she is able to learn in the black and white room which makes this a novel approach to the Knowledge Argument. In the fourth chapter of this paper I propose bifactualist responses to several issues that have been highlighted throughout this paper. In this chapter, I primarily focus on Nagel’s What it is Like to be a Bat? Nagel claims that we cannot know what it is like to be a bat subjective character of experience. This chapter argues that it is as difficult to know the feeling of what it is like, or WIL (Prinz, 2012), to be a bat which has a feeling of WIL, as it is to know the feeling of what it is like to be a book (which has no feeling of what it is like: non- WIL). I argue that this is not because of two different ways of knowing two different properties, but rather that there are two different physical facts about both WIL and non-WIL properties. I show that with a bifactualist account, there are particular physical facts that can be known about WIL and non-WIL properties alike that are not expressible in the language of physics.

It is often supposed that we can make progress understanding singular thought about objects by claiming that thinkers use ‘mental files’. However, the proposal is rarely subject to sustained critical evaluation. This thesis aims to clarify and critique the claim that thinkers use mental files. In my introductory first chapter, I motivate my subsequent discussion by introducing the claim that thinkers deploy modes of presentation in their thought about objects, and lay out some of my assumptions and terminology. In the second chapter, I introduce mental files, responding to the somewhat fragmented files literature by setting out a core account of files, and outlining different ways of implementing the claim that thinkers use mental files. I highlight pressing questions about the synchronic and diachronic individuation conditions for files. In chapters three and four, I explore whether ‘de jure coreference’ can be used to give synchronic individuation conditions on mental files. I explore existing characterisations of de jure coreference before presenting my own, but conclude that de jure coreference does not give a useful account of the synchronic individuation conditions on files. In chapter five, I consider the proposal that thinkers must sometimes trade on the coreference of their mental representations, and argue that we can give synchronic individuation conditions on files in terms of trading on coreference. In chapter six, I bring together the account of files developed so far, compare it to the most developed theory of mental files published to date, and defend my account from the objection that it is circular. In chapter seven, I explore routes for giving diachronic individuation conditions on mental files. In my concluding chapter, I distinguish the core account of files from the idea that the file metaphor should be taken seriously. I suggest that my investigation of the consequences of the core account has shown that the file metaphor is unhelpful, and I outline reasons to exercise caution when using ‘files’ terminology.

This thesis analyses the method, purpose, and results of Aristotle's treatment of a select number of Presocratic and Platonic theses about the soul within the context of De Anima 1. Contrary to a prevalent interpretation of De Anima 1 which sees Aristotle's treatment of his predecessors' psychological views as dialectical, I argue that Aristotle treats his predecessors as having offered potentially viable hypotheses about the nature of the soul, and that these hypotheses are treated as attempts to explain the soul's basic powers. I further show that, in order to test the explanatory limits of these theories, Aristotle uses a version of the scientific method of inquiry advertised in the Prior and Posterior Analytics, which consists in setting out the basic psychological phenomena which psychology should explain, and then testing the extent to which his predecessors' definitions of the soul are able to accomplish this task. This thesis argues that, by demonstrating where his predecessors' first principles fall short, Aristotle is able to make theoretical progress towards establishing his own 'hylomorphic' first principle of soul, that soul is the 'first fulfilment of a natural instrumental body', and towards the idea that soul operates in the body of living beings as a formal, final, and efficient cause.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 2000. / Bibliography : leaves 267-287.

Thesis (Revise). / Includes bibliographical references.

In this thesis I present and defend an interpretation of Kant’s theory of experience as it stands from the viewpoint of his empirical realism. My central contention is that Kant’s is a conception of everyday experience, a kind of immediate phenomenological awareness as of empirical objects, and although he takes this to be representational, it cannot itself amount to empirical knowledge because it can be non-veridical, because in such experience it is possible to misrepresent the world. I outline my view in an extended introduction. In Part I I offer a novel interpretation of Kant’s doctrine of sensibility and sensation. Utilizing a data-processor schematic as an explanatory framework, I give an account of how outer sense, as a collection of sensory capacities, is causally affected by empirical objects to produce bodily state sensations that naturally encode information about those objects. This information is then processed through inner sense to present to the understanding a manifold of mental state sensations that similarly encode information. I also give accounts of how the reproductive imagination operates in hallucination to produce sensible manifolds in lieu of current causal affection, and of the restricted role that consciousness plays at this low level of cognitive function. In Part II I turn to the role of the understanding in experience. I offer a two-stage model of conceptual synthesis and explain how Kant’s theory of experience is a unique blend of conceptualist and non-conceptualist elements. I show that it explains how our experience can provide us with reasons for belief while at the same time accounting for the fact that experience is what anchors us to the world. Finally, I return to non-veridical experience. I confront recent naïve realist readings of Kant and argue that, for Kant, the possibility of non-veridicality is built into the very nature of the human mind and the way it relates to the world.

Mainstream philosophy of action and mind construes intentional behaviour in terms of causal processes that lead from agent-involving mental states to action. Actions are construed as events, which are actions in virtue of being caused by the right mental antecedents in the right way. Opponents of this standard event-causal approach have criticised the view on various grounds; they argue that it does not account for free will and moral responsibility, that it does not account for action done in the light of reasons, or, even, that it cannot capture the very phenomenon of agency. The thesis defends the standard event-causal approach against challenges of that kind. In the first chapter I consider theories that stipulate an irreducible metaphysical relation between the agent (or the self) and the action. I argue that such theories do not add anything to our understanding of human agency, and that we have, therefore, no reason to share the metaphysically problematic assumptions on which those alternative models are based. In the second chapter I argue for the claim that reason-explanations of actions are causal explanations, and I argue against non-causal alternatives. My main point is that the causal approach is to be preferred, because it provides an integrated account of agency by providing an account of the relation between the causes of movements and reasons for actions. In the third chapter I defend non-reductive physicalism as the most plausible version of the standard event-causal theory. In the fourth and last chapter I argue against the charge that the standard approach cannot account for the agent’s role in the performance of action. Further, I propose the following stance with respect to the problem of free will: we do not have free will, but we have the related ability to govern ourselves—and the best account of self-determination presupposes causation, but not causal determinism.

In my DPhil thesis I critique a philosophical ideal of mental organization: that one’s mind ought to be integrated, that is, lack conflicts or ambivalence between mental states, because disintegration is argued to impair one’s agency and undermine one’s well-being. My argument has three parts. In part one, I describe Plato’s maximalist version of the ideal where, if ideally organized, one’s psyche lacks conflicts because one’s rational faculty, aware of what is valuable, harmonises one’s motivational and affective states. I also argue that any dispute about integration is orthogonal to the dispute between value monists and value pluralists. In part two, I contest the integration ideal by criticizing three manifestations of it in contemporary philosophy. I focus on the organization of desire, and on deliberative and affective ambivalence. My arguments have a similar structure. First, I challenge the link between the integrated mind and the purported benefits of unimpaired agency and well-being. On investigation, this apparent connection is largely contingent. Not all conflicts or ambivalence are harmful, and other social or psychological factors are relevant in case where they really are damaging. Secondly, I argue that there are contexts where integration is a form of mental rigidity or harmful impoverishment. Thirdly, I argue that being disintegrated seems morally good in some situations where one manifests fitting states of mind, particularly emotions. In part three, I ask whether integration can be reinterpreted to salvage an alternative ideal. After rejecting a promising candidate found in Kleinian psychoanalytic theory, I offer my own account of integration as a two-part capacity to tolerate difficult mental states (not necessarily bad mental states - excitement can be hard to tolerate), and to avoid being reflectively passive as one’s mental organization changes. This capacity has rational and non-rational elements. Finally, I consider how this reinterpreted capacity relates to the practice of virtue. I conclude that integration is not a virtue, and may be compatible with some viciousness, but it enables one to be virtuous in situations where there are pressures towards being insensitively singleminded.