Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

A turn is taking place in analytic philosophy of mind. This article attempts to flesh out this claim by providing an overview of what may be called ‘analytic phenomenology’. The first section gives some reasons why this overview may be useful. The overview itself takes up the second section, which is divided into five sub-sections that address some of the central themes of analytic phenomenology. The third section draws a ‘family portrait’ of the movement, and assesses its general cultural significance. A brief appendix distinguishes analytic phenomenology from ‘4E-phenomenology’.

In my paper I focus on psychologism in the theory of mental content and critically consider a variety of it—“intentional psychologism” (Pitt 2009)—that has recently entered the stage in the philosophy of mind literature. My aim is twofold. First, I want to provide a critical evaluation of this new variety of psychologism, considering in particular whether it is immune from (some of) the most famous classical criticisms. Secondly, I want to provide a diagnosis of what ultimately motivates the current revival of the “psychologistic attitude”. My aim in so doing…

This dialogue explores the question of whether intentionality––the “ofness”, “aboutness”, or “directedness” of mental states––is a relation. We explore three views: the Naive View, on which intentionality is a relation to ordinary, everyday objects, facts, and other such items; the Abstract Contents View, on which intentionality is a relation to mind-independent abstract entities; and the Aspect View, on which intentionality is a matter of having intentional states with particular (non-relational) aspects that are our contents. We consider the challenges facing these views, which include empirical challenges in accounting for all…

Abstract: It is often assumed that a commitment to scientific realism naturally, if not necessarily, accompanies a commitment to naturalizing metaphysics. If one denies that our scientific theories are approximately true, it would be unclear why one should index metaphysics to them. My aim is to show that the project of naturalizing metaphysics does not require realist assumptions. I will identify two success conditions for the project of disentangling naturalized metaphysics from realism: 1) the narrow success condition, which requires the antirealist to explain why naturalized metaphysics is preferable to…

Analytic metaphysics has been criticized for its dubious epistemological status. Today, anti-metaphysical sentiments often promote naturalized metaphysics as the only viable way to metaphysical theorizing. In this paper, I argue that analytic metaphysics (or at least a significant portion of it) has the same kind of legitimacy that naturalized metaphysics exhibits. I first point out that naturalized metaphysics is secured by the de facto legitimacy of natural science and its continuity with it. Then, I argue that analytic metaphysics can pursue a similar strategy by relying on the de facto…

This article sketches a pragmatist method for metaphysics. Bottom-up or descriptive metaphysics describes the domains of quantification, essences and the categories of a linguistic activity by describing the linguistic activities of encountering reality and seeking and finding objects and relationships. Constructive or top-down metaphysics constructs alternative conceptual schemes, which can be used as world-view backgrounds to construct scientific paradigms and theories. Metaphysical theories are then assessed by comparing the research traditions that arise when the theories are used as conceptual schemes. The pragmatic circle can be generalized into a world-view…

A recent methodological approach at the interface of metaphysics and philosophy of science suggests that just like causal laws govern causation, there needs to be something in metaphysics that governs metaphysical relations. Such laws of metaphysics would be counterfactual-supporting general principles that account for the explanatory force of metaphysical explanations. There are various suggestions about how such principles could be understood. They could be based on what Kelly Trogdon calls grounding-mechanical explanations, where the role that grounding mechanisms play in certain metaphysical explanations mirrors the role that causal mechanisms play…

According to a recent proposal, the epistemic aim of metaphysics as a discipline is to chart the different viable theories of metaphysical objects of inquiry (e.g. causation, persistence). This paper elaborates on and seeks to improve on that proposal in two related ways. First, drawing on an analogy with how-possibly explanation in science, I argue that we can usefully understand this aim of metaphysics as the charting of epistemically possible answers to metaphysical questions. Second, I argue that in order to account for the epistemic goodness of this aim, one…

The thesis of experiential revelation—Rev for brevity—in the philosophy of mind claims that to have an experience—i.e., to be acquainted with it—is to know its nature. It is widely agreed that although at least moderate versions of Rev might strike one as plausible and perhaps even appealing, at least up to a certain extent, most of them are nonetheless inconsistent with almost any coherent form of physicalism about the mind. Thus far, the issue of the alleged tension between Rev and physicalism has mostly been put in the relevant literature…