Browsing by Author "Siewert, Charles"
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Item A Theory of Well-Being(2019-12-03) Zuk, Peter David; Sher, George; Siewert, CharlesI defend the view that the value of every contribution to individual well-being is explained by affective experience, suitably defined. In Chapter 1, I set out a methodological approach centered on Rawlsian wide reflective equilibrium and offer considerations in favor of affective experience as a uniquely powerful explanation of contributions to well-being. The remaining three chapters employ affective experience as an explanation of the goodness of the goods proposed by three leading theories of wellbeing: hedonism, desired-based views, and objective list views. In Chapter 2, I offer arguments against attitudinal conceptions of pleasure and defend instead an affective conception of pleasure that provides a plausible way of unifying two major phenomenological conceptions of pleasure. In Chapter 3, I defend an affective conception of desire and offer arguments against motivational and cognitivist conceptions of desire. In Chapter 4, I provide an account of reasons for affective states and apply this account to several purportedly objective goods: love, friendship, virtue, and self-respect. The goodness of these goods for individuals, I argue, can be explained by appeal to affective experience in a way that does not depart from what is most important in subjective approaches to well-being. Having offered a deeper explanation of the goodness of the various goods proposed by these three leading theories of well-being, I conclude that my theory is preferable to them.Item Conscious Conceptual Thought(2022-04-20) Medeiros, Darren Joseph; Siewert, CharlesIn this dissertation I defend the view that the phenomenal character of some conscious experiences is constituted in part by conceptual representations, including conceptual representations which are independent of sensory representations. In Chapter 1 I present an overview of debates in cognitive phenomenology. In Chapter 2 I survey arguments throughout the history of philosophy centered on the non-imageability of certain mental states to demonstrate how purely sensory views of the mind vastly constrain what is thinkable. In Chapter 3 I survey contemporary arguments in the cognitive phenomenology debate, and I provide several arguments in support of cognitive phenomenology focused on introspection on perception, introspection on thinking, and the temporality of thought. In Chapter 4 I analyze tip-of-the-tongue experiences, drawing evidence from the psychology of language production to show that these are experiences in which a subject is conscious of a conceptual representation of the referent of the desired word independent of a phonological representation of the word. In Chapters 5 and 6 I critically analyze the positions of recent empirically informed philosophers who argue that attention and working memory are fundamentally sensory, such that we are never conscious of conceptual representations, or that we are only conscious of them in a limited way. In contrast, I provide a breadth of empirical evidence demonstrating that we can attend to conceptual representations and retain them in working memory, and that we have capacities for doing so independently of sensory representations. In total, I show that phenomenology and psychology are in a mutually confirming agreement, vindicating our introspective intuitions regarding the cognitive richness of experience.Item How Rich is Perceptual Experience?(2022-04-12) Oxtoby, Donald; Siewert, CharlesA question of recent interest in the philosophy of perception is, how rich is perceptual experience? While we can form beliefs or make judgments about almost any property, presumably the range of properties presented in perceptual experience is more limited. Are merely “thin properties” presented in perceptual experience, like simple color or shape properties, or are “rich properties” also presented in perceptual experience, like being a sunflower, or being a female voice? This dissertation argues that rich properties are not only ever accusatives of judgments we make, but are also presented in perceptual experience. Chapter 1 describes my approach to the above debate. The main challenge for rich views is to explain why one should think that perceptual recognition of rich properties cannot always be explained in terms of changes in merely thin properties presented in perceptual experience. My approach to answering this question is neutral toward content views and direct realist views of perceptual experience. In Chapter 2, I discuss how phenomenal contrast arguments should bear upon the richness debate. After perceptually learning to recognize certain rich properties, and the recognitional capacity is firmly in place, there is a phenomenal difference in perceptual experience which could not be constituted by any change in merely thin presented properties, so rich views are preferable. Chapter 3 discusses how studies on perceptual adaptation should bear upon the richness debate. I argue that rich views have an advantage over thin views in describing which properties subjects perceptually adapt to in a variety of studies cited in the literature. Supposing properties we perceptually adapt to are also presented in perceptual experience, this offers support for rich views. Chapter 4 argues that a proper understanding of perceptual learning gives reason to think that rich properties are presented in perceptual experience. No combination of merely thin presented properties is sufficient to explain what constitutes the phenomenal difference in perceptual experience in many cases where objects one has perceptually learned to recognize appear recognizable, and do not appear ambiguous with objects sharing the same thin properties.Item Perceptual Links: Attention, Experience, and Demonstrative Thought(2015-04-22) Barkasi, Michael; O'Callaghan, Casey; Siewert, Charles; Grandy, Richard; Zammito, JohnPerception is conscious: perceiving involves a first-person experience of what’s perceived. It’s widely held that these perceptual experiences are independent of what's perceived. Viewing two visually indiscriminable #2 pencils would involve the same experience, despite viewing different objects. It’s also widely held that conscious perception enables thinking about what's perceiving. When you see one of those pencils you can think, THAT is a pencil. Some philosophers, including John McDowell and John Campbell, have suggested that these two features engender a puzzle: how can perceptual experiences make perceived objects available for thought when they’re independent of those objects? This dissertation is a collection of four papers which address this question. The first (chapter 2) argues that, under two minimal assumptions, conscious perception makes objects available for thought only if experience is not object independent. The second (chapter 3) argues that conscious perception makes objects available for thought by enabling voluntarily attention to them. The third (chapter 4) integrates empirical work on multiple-object tracking and philosophical work on attention to argue that conscious perception isn’t mediated by the construction of representations within the visual system. The fourth (chapter 5) uses philosophical methods and neurophysiology to give an account of the role of experience itself in how perception makes objects available for thought. A concluding chapter combines and extends results from the previous chapters to give a naive realist (vs representationalist) account of perceptual experience. The questions about perceptual experience addressed in this dissertation (object dependent or independent? naive realist or representationalist?) are fundamental to our understanding of experience. Not only do they get at its basic nature, but their answers constrain how we might give scientifically respectable, or naturalistic, explanations of experience as well as how we might explain perceptual hallucinations and illusions.