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…

The Phenomenal Concept Strategy is a popular strategy used to support physicalism in the realm of conscious experience. This Strategy accounts for dualist intuitions but uses the ways in which we think about our experiences to explain these intuitions in a physicalist framework, without any appeal to ontological dualism. In this paper, I will raise two issues related to the currently available versions of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. First, most of the theories belonging to the Phenomenal Concept Strategy posit that phenomenal concepts are exceptional and sui generis concepts, and…

What is the nature of the evidence provided by thinking about hypothetical cases, such as those presented in the thought experiments (TE)? Is it psychological, as those who speak about intuitions seem to think, or not? This problem is closely related to that of the nature of the subject matter of philosophy, that most philosophers tend to conceive as non-psychological. Williamson’s position on the matter (Williamson 2007) consists in rejecting the psychological view on intuitions: if we want this method—the armchair method—to provide us with evidence in favour or contra…

I extend the Higher-Order View of Undermining Defeat (HOVUD) defended in Melis (2014) to account for the defeat of propositional justification. In doing so, I also clarify the important notion of higher-order commitment, and I make some considerations concerning the defeat of externalist epistemic warrants.

Several philosophers claim that a mental state is phenomenally conscious only if it exhibits so-called for-me-ness, or subjective character, i.e., the fact that there is something it is like to be in a conscious state not just for everyone but only for the subject who undergoes it. Consequently, they stress, a proper explanation of consciousness requires to address the question of what the nature of for-me-ness is. This question forms what I call the problem of for-me-ness. Although the debate on the problem of for-me-ness has assumed a centre stage…

A phenomenological turn has occurred in contemporary philosophy of mind. Some philosophers working on the nature of intentionality and consciousness have turned away from views that construe the basic ingredients of intentionality in terms of naturalistic tracking relations that hold between thinkers and external conditions in their environment in favor of what has been called the “Phenomenal Intentionality Theory” (PIT). According to PIT, all “original” intentionality is either identical to or partly grounded in phenomenal consciousness. A central claim for PIT is the inseparatism thesis, which asserts that the phenomenal…

This paper contributes to the debate about the nature of mental content from the perspective of the neuroscience of consciousness. In particular, I consider how one of the most influential neuroscientific theories of consciousness, the integrated information theory (IIT), understands the relation between consciousness and content. I conclude that it implies a form of phenomenal intentionality theory (PIT), the view that consciousness explanatorily grounds content, and for this reason proponents of PIT could find in IIT a neuroscientific ally. My main conclusion is that a higher degree of confidence in…