This book aims to offer an account of conscious experience and of concepts that help us understand empirical reasoning and empirical dialectic. The account offered possesses, it is claimed, two virtues. First, it provides great theoretical freedom. It allows the theoretician freedom to radically reconceive the world. The theoretician may, for example, begin with the conception that colors are genuine qualities of physical bodies and may, in light of empirical findings, shift to the conception that colors are not genuine qualities at all. Second, the account grants empirical reason a great power to constrain: empirical reason can force a particular conception of the self and the world on the rational inquirer. These seemingly contrary virtues are reconciled through a novel treatment of presentation and appearances in the account offered of conscious experience and a novel treatment of ostensive definitions in the account offered of concepts. The argument of the book is buttressed by a critical study of the principal approaches to experience and reason found in the philosophical literature.--.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Précis
• 1. The Problem of Conscious Experience
  • 1A. Logical and Naturalist Inquiries
  • 1B. Skepticism and Russell’s Acquaintance Model of Experience
• 2. A Coherence Theory of Perceptual Judgments
  • 2A. Sellars’s Theory of Experience
  • 2B. Sellars on the Reasonableness of Perceptual Judgments
  • 2C. Critical Observations I
  • 2D. Critical Observations II
• 3. Simple Theories of Perceptual Judgments
  • 3A. Characterization of Simple Theories
  • 3B. Simple Relational Theories
  • 3C. Simple Informational Theories
  • 3D. Simple Intentional Theories
  • 3E. Problems with the Simple Given
• 4. The Hypothetical Given
  • 4A. Rational Transitions
  • 4B. General Remarks on Logical Interdependence
  • 4C. On Convergence
  • 4D. Logical Interdependence and Holism
• 5. Presentation and the Transparency of Experience
  • 5A. Presentation without Acquaintance
  • 5B. Moore on the Transparency of Experience
  • 5C. Mind-Independence and Externality
  • 5D. Phenomenology and Introspection
• 6. Appearances
  • 6A. Subjective Identity and Appearances
  • 6B. Illusions and Hallucinations
  • 6C. Intentionalist Objections
• 7. The Role of Appearances in Cognition
  • 7A. The Equivalence Principle
  • 7B. Connotation and Denotation
  • 7C. The Skeptical Meditation
  • 7D. Summary of the Account of Experience
• 8. Experience and Concept
  • 8A. Historical Introduction
  • 8B. Ostensive Definition: Denotation
  • 8C. Ostensive Definition: Connotation, Symbol, Concept
  • 8D. Conceptual Criticism
• 9. Empirical Transformations
  • 9A. Ontology, Logical and Proper
  • 9B. Specks, Images, Clouds
  • 9C. Conceptions of Color
  • 9D. A Sketch of the Dialectical Situation
• 10. Empirical Dialectic and Empirical Proofs
  • 10A. Empirical and Mathematical Dialectic Compared
  • 10B. Some Features of Empirical Proofs
  • 10C. Compelling Empirical Proofs
• 11. The General Logic of Empirical Dialectic
  • 11A. Rationality and Dialectical Power
  • 11B. Ur-Convergence
  • 11C. Summary of the Main Features of Empirical Dialectic
• 12. Physicalism from the Logical Point of View
  • 12A. Kripke’s Argument against Mental-Physical Identity
  • 12B. Types of Physicalism
  • 12C. Physicalism within the Bounds of Reason
• References
• Index