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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66584329963742519072016-09-09T15:46:55.900+01:00In the Space of ReasonsTim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-38466851517174782422016-07-01T10:53:00.001+01:002016-07-01T10:53:52.682+01:00Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences

"Dear Colleague,

I'm pleased to inform you that the new issue of the international online journal Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences has been published, it is freely readable at :
www.crossingdialogues.com/current_issue.htm

The issue contains:
Volume 9, Issue 1, June 2016

ORIGINAL ARTICLES
O. Doerr-Zegers & H. Pelegrina-Cetrán
Phenomenology of emotions with special reference to dysphoria

R. Henman
Implementing Generalized Empirical Method in Neuroscience by Functionally Ordering Tasks

S. Valente
The hysterical anorexia epidemic in the French nineteenth-century

HISTORY OF MENTAL CONCEPTS
C. Laségue
On hysterical Anorexia

DIALOGUES
H. H. Maung
In Defence of Chalmers: A Comment on Korf

P. De Rossi
Present and future trajectories towards a possible valid and useful diagnosis of ADHD

Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences proposes and includes Original Papers, Negative Experimental Results, History of Mental Concepts, New Ideas and Dialogues, as described in the guidelines for the authors.

Would you like to write a Dialogue? It is a short article (up to 600 words) freely published and without any deadline commenting another article already published on the previous issues of our Journal.

If you have any question about this Journal then please feel free to contact me at your convenience. I hope you find at least some of our publications of interest and value.

If you think someone of your friends or colleagues could be interested in our Journal please forward them this email. Anybody can register himself at our service of email-alert which will inform about new issues or other news about the Journal through an email. The service is completely free at

www.crossingdialogues.com/alert.htm

Kind regards
Daniela Cardillo
Editorial Office
firstname.lastname@example.com"Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-6797320413749770602016-06-23T14:39:00.000+01:002016-06-23T14:39:54.757+01:00Dysphagia: getting it right for the patient #ADP_2016I have spent the day (at the generous invitation of Hazel Roddam) at Advancing Dysphagia Practice conference at UCLan, this year focusing on the theme of getting it right for the patient and hence on the application of person centred care. Three papers this morning addressed overlapping aspects of this general theme.

Heulwen Sheldrick asked "how, why, how?" for staying person centred. Using the difficult example of a relative of hers who had recently died and had refused to accept the agreed pessimistic clinical view of her prognosis, she asked how person centred care should address such apparent denial. Should one collude or deny such patient views? Her suggestions were, by her own view, familiar. We should practice empathy (whilst avoiding maudlin sympathy) and sitting alongside. Services should be co-designed, co-produced and co-commissioned wherever possible. And clinicians needed to reconcile their personal with their professional values in order to be authentic.

Hannah Crawford described her own small scale qualitative study of the lived experience of mealtimes and food for people with PIMD and dysphagia from the perspective of the family and carers, looking in depth at three families. Her research had examined meanings, roles, relationships and challenges. For me the key conclusion was that food played a very important role in mother (the primary carer in these cases) child relationships. (The mothers responded to the food-related wishes communicated by their non-verbal children.) Hence 'messing about' – as she put it – with food via clinical recommendations came at the potential cost of messing with crucial relationships. These should thus be weighed and understood alongside more narrowly clinical factors.

David Hamilton addressed the challenges of involving patients in complex team decisions using head and neck cancer as an example. Three aspects of his talk stood out. First there is evidence that patients and clinicians place different values on states of health and ill-health (eg living with a full laryngectomy or the consequences of chemo therapy) but further that there is widespread variation within both groups. Second, that typically patients are involved in a clinical decision only after a view / recommendation has been decided without them in a MDT. Often the suggestions / options are then presented to the patient framed in particular ways to elicit the clinically preferred outcome. There is even dispute among honourable clinicians about whether all options should be presented (because it reveals a lack of medical certainty). Third, he presented an example of a patient who had made a decision based on only partially relevant and partially understood prior experience of his patients' deaths.

That third talk suggested to me a general worry: what is informed decision making? What is the difference between an 'unwise decision' based on good though divergent from clinical reasons and, on the other hand, making an ill-informed decision because based on bad reasons? Can reasons and outcomes be sufficiently independent to allow this distinction? This question seems to me particularly pregnant on a day in which the UK is voting in a referendum on whether to exit the EU.

Tim Thorntonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-62610142459664014692016-06-15T13:30:00.001+01:002016-06-15T13:30:12.271+01:00Crowdfunding for maternity research

One of my PhD student tutees is attempting to crowdfund an aspect of her research.

Her page is here.

"Who am I? ¿Quién soy yo?
My name is Lucia and my ambition is to help women achieve healthier and happier births. I am a midwife and full time self-funding PhD student at the University of Central Lancashire under the supervision of Professor Soo Downe. I am raising funds to be able to carry out this research project, which is a pilot clinical trial looking at the management of pregnant women whose waters have broken when labour haven't started yet" Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-33895534676129176262016-05-20T11:41:00.001+01:002016-05-20T11:43:46.870+01:00Philosophy and Psychiatry: Mind, Value and Mental Health

Two linked events for philosophers, scientists, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, and service users.

3rd Oxford Summer School in Philosophy and Psychiatry: 13-14 July 2017

A two-day summer school delivered by renowned experts in the field through guest lectures and seminars, providing opportunities for substantial dialogue between philosophers, clinicians, scientists and others.

Provisional themes for 2017 include:

Philosophical psychopathology today
Empathy
Trauma
Positive aspects of abnormal cognition
Depression/Bipolar disorder
Epistemic injustice and psychiatry

Further details will be announced soon - details of 2015 Summer School.

2nd International Conference in Philosophy and Psychiatry: 15 July 2017

A one-day conference featuring international keynote speakers and short presentations from graduate students and recent post-doctoral researchers. Programme in development - details of 2015 conference.

These events follow on from the highly successful events in 2013 and 2015 and will be led by members of Oxford's Faculty of Philosophy.

Course directors:

Dr Anita Avramides (Reader in Philosophy of Mind, University of Oxford, and Southover Manor Trust Fellow in Philosophy, St. Hilda's College)
Professor Martin Davies (Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy, Corpus Christi College)
Professor Bill Fulford (Fellow of St Catherine's College and Member of the Philosophy Faculty, University of Oxford, and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Mental Health, University of Warwick)
Dr Edward Harcourt (University Lecturer (CUF) in Philosophy, Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, Keble College)

Please register your interest to receive updates about these events.Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-18641756223266706602016-05-12T16:55:00.000+01:002016-05-12T16:55:02.767+01:00MMU Workshop: Radical EthnomethodologyWorkshop: Radical Ethnomethodology
23 June 2016
Location: Manchester Metropolitan University, New Business School, Floor 3, room # 3.14 (M16 6BH)
10:00 AM until 6:00 PM

On 23 June 2016, there will be a meeting at MMU on the topic of "Radical Ethnomethodology." This meeting will include presentations and discussions on the topic of radical ethnomethodology. Just what is (and/or was) radical about ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (CA) will be open to discussion and debate at the meeting, but our initial aim will be to explicate what was radical about the commitments expressed in the writings and lectures of Harold Garfinkel and Harvey Sacks. The purpose of the meeting is to consider the current state of ethnomethodology and CA in light of those commitments.

More than a half-century ago, Garfinkel and Sacks in different ways set out to investigate the production of social actions without privileging the theories, models, and methods of the contemporary social sciences. Along with their contemporaries and successors, Garfinkel, Sacks, and many others produced several interesting lines of work, but recent trends have obscured and diminished their radical initiatives. These trends include treatments of ethnomethodology/CA as: (1) a precursor of more recent programs and "turns" toward culture, discourse, linguistics, and cognitive science; (2) a continuation of one or another line of classical theory; and (3) a method to be integrated with other qualitative and quantitative social science approaches. This meeting will be devoted to critical discussion of these trends, and suggestions of how to sustain ethnomethodology and CA as radical approaches social phenomena.

The meeting will consist of four panel presentations and discussions. Presenters and discussion leaders will include Dusan Bjelic, Graham Button, Jeff Coulter, Michael Lynch, Doug Macbeth, and Wes Sharrock. Among the questions they shall address are:

Just what is radical about ethnomethodology's programme?
How does ethnomethodology relate to "classic" social theory?
How does ethnomethodology relate to methods of "constructive analysis" in the social sciences?
In light of the way conversation analysis has developed in recent decades, what might a radical ethnomethodological CA look like?

Meeting Organizers: Michael Lynch (Cornell University), Wes Sharrock (University of Manchester), Phil Hutchinson & Marie Chollier (MMU)

Free of charge - Mandatory registration before 15th June
Information & registration: email@example.com Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-83858413183996335452016-04-28T09:57:00.002+01:002016-04-28T10:16:18.961+01:00The balance of description and criticism in philosophy essays

Another case of putting something on my blog because I often rehash the same broad idea and so should keep a copy.

Teaching on a Philosophy and Mental Health distance learning programme, Gloria and I are often asked by our mainly non-philosopher students about the nature and balance of criticism and description in philosophy writing. For some students, this may be the result of being familiar with the more descriptive style of literature review in the social sciences (though even here, such reviews must have an argumentative purpose). But it is hard to answer directly at the level of a given paragraph because all depends what that paragraph is for.

So here is a top down answer based on an analogy. Sadly this is an analogy that does nothing to explain how fascinating and mind blowing philosophy can be. Sorry.

A philosophy essay is like a report written by a civil servant making a recommendation to a minister or to a committee. The essay as a whole has a purpose: to persuade the reader of the case for something (thinking that something is true or something is right). And hence a critical style of writing is there for that purpose.

(So the analogy gives a 'top down' account of why philosophical writing is both critical and descriptive because this follows from the point or purpose of the essay as a whole which shapes the need for individual bits of critical writing.)

Here is an example. Near where I live, there is a proposal to build new, higher capacity connection using very tall electricity pylons to link Sellafield nuclear power station (actually a new power station nearby called Moorside) to centres of population more efficiently. The proposal is contested because the pylons will be visually intrusive and they will be very close to and thus visible from with the Lake District National Park.

In the main, the protesters don't, however, say that there is no need for the new power connection. They generally accept the force of the arguments for one. (Some, of course, disagree to this whole way of getting power but that opens up a whole new argument so I will stick to those who accept the need but not the means.) So the protesters argue that
a) all or some of it could be underground;
b) it could take a longer route further from the Park
c) it could be submerged under Morecambe Bay
d) the pylons could be smaller.

Each of these counter-proposals (to the original idea) is opposed by counter-counter arguments. Burying is expensive. Longer routes cost more. In some countries the bigger pylons are regarded as works of sculptural art and hence are not visually intrusive anyway. Etc etc.

So imagine that you were writing a report for the minister or a planning committee, what would you do?

First, I suggest, you need to understand all the arguments, counter-arguments, counter-counter-arguments etc. as their proposers understand them. To describe the lie of the land, you have to have a descriptive understanding of the arguments put forward.

Next, you will need to think about how the various 'battles' between opposing views stack up. For example, defenders of using pylons argue that burying the cable instead would cost too much money: 20 miles of buried lines would cost about £450m more than using pylons. (http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/22/lake-district-villagers-ravenglass-fume-plans-electricity-pylons) But assessing this point will also involve seeing what one side makes of the argument. Eg., with respect to the cost of burying the cable, opponents of pylons have argued that this would add only about 40p a year to the average electricity bill in England and Wales. As you do this, you yourself will begin to assess what you think of these arguments. That is an exercise of critical assessment. Some reasons will turn out to be stronger than other reasons when you think them through in context. Some will probably be irrelevant, rhetorical red herrings.

Once you have this global view of – descriptively – what everyone says for and against the main position and supporting arguments and – critically – your own assessment of which arguments work out which way, which reasons are stronger, you will have taken some view of the overall issue.

In a committee paper, there are then various possible outcomes:

One view may be obviously the best. Still, to show why it is the best, you will need to show why the arguments in favour of the other view fail. And that requires saying – descriptively – what those arguments or reasons or factors are and – critically – how strong they are.

That one view is better than another may depend on a tricky issue to resolve. For example, one reason for not building the pylons is economic: it will undermine tourism. But another is aesthetic: it will spoil the beauty of the country. Weighing the financial cost of burying the cable against the aesthetic loss of beauty isn't straightforward and a civil servant might try to describe both cases and then leave this up to the minister / planning committee to judge.

The opposing views may both be flawed because of other factors (the sudden discovery that one cannot, after all, build the power-station that needs all the pylons). So both sides may have made assumptions that frame their case but both turn out to be wrong.

Once one has taken a view about what can be rationally concluded, there is need to be imaginative in working out a rational way to present the arguments to the minister/committee. One good way to do this might be to start by saying what the recommendation is ("This report will argue for limited burying of cables across some of the distance of the power line") and then saying how that conclusion will be arrived at ("The report will describe the facts for and against including the relative costs. The argument that tall pylons are actually beautiful will be considered and rejected." Etc etc)

The analogy may be plodding but a philosophy essay works in the same argumentative way. It needs a balance of descriptive and critical writing because it needs to present and to assess competing arguments to arrive at some sort of conclusion (even if that is that there is no clear answer). That isn't a feature of the style of philosophy in the way that poetry may have a particular metre or rhyming structure. Rather it stems from what philosophy is for. And that is deciding what is true and what is good.

Philosophers are God's civil servants!Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-1381301163226282622016-04-26T09:20:00.001+01:002016-04-26T09:20:51.154+01:00Values-Based Practice Theory Network Spring Conference, Oxford 3-4 May 2016

The second meeting of the Values-Based Practice Theory Network will be a two-day conference held at St Catherine's College Oxford on 3rd and 4th May 2016. The conference is run in partnership with the Collaborating Centre for Values-Practice in Health and Social Care (http://valuesbasedpractice.org) and Anna Bergqvist's established Particularism in Bioethics, Professional Ethics and Medicine Network at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Venue: The Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice, St Catherine's College Oxford.

Theme: Value, Context and Narrative in Medical Epistemology and Health Care Practice.

The theme of this interdisciplinary conference is focused on the theoretical underpinnings of values-based practice, and explores the implications of illness narrative and contextualism for debates about objectivity and value in philosophy of medicine and medical epistemology more generally. It builds on our first conference on Values-Based Practice and Moral Particularism in October 2015, with special attention to philosophy of psychiatry, clinical practice and scientific methodology. By bringing together theorists and practitioners from the disciplines of Philosophy and Psychology our aim is to explore the ways in which normative critical perspectives challenge the implicit or assumed reductive theoretical paradigm of many current models and measures of 'value' in health care contexts in developing new integrative and holistic approaches. We hope that the event will open up a dialogue about the ways we might think and argue differently about the benefit of conceptual and evaluative thought in these contexts.

Schedule

Tuesday 3rd May
09:00 – 09:15. Registration and Welcome
09:15 – 09:45. Benedict Smith (Durham University), 'Values Based Practice and Context'.
09:45 – 10:30. Ulrik Kihlbom (Uppsala University), 'Narrative Understanding in Clinical Decision Making and Serious Games Interventions'.
10:30 – 11:00. Tea & Coffee.
11:30 – 12:15. Lubomira Radoilska (University of Kent), 'Ignorance of What One is Doing'.
12:15 – 13:00. Ian J. Kidd (University of Nottingham), 'Illness, Ethics and Exemplarism'.
13:00 – 14:00. Lunch
14:00 – 14:45. Richard Gipps (University of Oxford), 'Psychotherapy as Moral Practice'.
14:45 – 15:30. Anna Bergqvist (MMU), 'Value, Perspective and Integration: Reassessing Narrative Selfhood in Borderline Personality Disorder'.
15:30 – 16:00. Tea & Coffee
16:00 – 16:45. Mark Haydon-Laurelut (University of Portsmouth/NHS). 'Systemic Psychotherapy, Narrative and Autistic Spectrum Conditions'.
16:45 – 17:00. Concluding Remarks.
18:00 – Dinner (at own expense).

Wednesday 4th May
09:00 – 09:45. Anna Zielinska (Sorbonne), 'The Normativity of Empirical Enquires: The Case of Genetics'.
09:45 – 09:45. Dieneke Hubbeling (Royal College of Psychiatrists, Philosophy Special Interest Group), 'Outcome Bias, Values, and Moral Luck'.
10:30 – 11:00. Tea & Coffee
11:30 – 12:15. Alan Thomas (Tilburg University), 'Particularism and Group Agency'.
12:15 – 13:00. Tim Thornton (University of Central Lancashire), 'Who Are We? Subjectivity in Objective Values-Based Practice'.
13:00 – 14:00. Lunch
14:00 – 14:45. Caroline Vass (University of Manchester/Uppsala University), 'What is Health Economics? Problematising Value in Stratified Medicine'.
14:45 – 15:30 Jens Erik Paulsen (Norwegian Police College University), 'Policing as a Values-Based Practice: Challenges and Prospects'.
15:30 – 16:00 Tea & Coffee
16:00 – 17:00 Roundtable Discussion
17:00 Close

Registration
The event is free and open to all but places are limited, for which reason registration is necessary. To register, please send an email to the conference organiser and director of the VBP Theory Network Anna Bergqvist at email@example.com no later than Thursday 28 April 2016.
Please state any dietary or disability restrictions as appropriate, all of which will be fully catered for.

Welcome!Tim Thorntonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-37266607290532310242016-04-25T16:58:00.001+01:002016-04-25T17:39:17.749+01:00The subjectivity that is supposed to be a correlative of moral objectivism

I've been mulling over a train of thought in Travis' paper 'Frege's target' which I've summarised before on this blog. The line starts with crediting McDowell a frequent appeal to the idea that judgement in a particular area may call for a subject to have a 'special design' in some way. The obvious area is in making value judgements, where McDowell stresses the importance of education in acquiring a second nature.

McDowell himself makes frequent appeal to ways in which we, or relevant thinkers, are thinkers of a special sort. Our special design opens our eyes, as he puts it, to particular tracts of reality. That our eyes may be thus opened shows where, and how, there may be facts that it takes special capacities, not enjoyed by just any thinker, to see. [Travis 2002: 305]

But this prompts the question.

Can mind-design select which tract of reality we deal with... without also deciding, of the selected tract, how things there are—without shaping the world along with our responsiveness to it? [ibid: 333]

The worry is that McDowell's reliance on the idea that education and induction into the space of reasons opens a subject's eyes to aspects of the world commits him (McDowell) to a form of idealism. This problem is brought into focus because McDowell rejects what he calls a 'deductive paradigm that leads us to suppose that the operations of any specific conception of rationality in a particular area - any specific conception of what counts as doing the same thing - must be deductively explicable; that is, that there must be a formulable universal principle suited to serve as major premiss in syllogistic explanations' [McDowell 1979: 339-40]. Special capacities are needed precisely because the demands of reason are not in general accessible to just any rational subject because, in turn, they are not codifiable in principles graspable by just any subject. But now the worry is that the role the special capacities have is to constitute the aspect of reality supposedly revealed.

Travis offers McDowell a way out of this potential worry based on his own philosophical signature dish which he draws from an interpretation of Wittgenstein: occasionalism. The key idea is that this allows Travis (and hence potentially McDowell) to distinguish between two different contributions that the mindedness of a subject – our nature – might make.

Let P be a way a statement might thus represent things. Then, accepting that idea, we may still innocently allow that the way given thinkers think decides whether some one of their statements stated that P, or, say, that Q, where that is another such way for a statement to represent things. But one cannot, accepting this idea, allow that, where a statement spoke of things as being P, whether it thus stated truth depends on how a particular (sort of) thinker thinks. [Travis 2002: 338]

The latter would be a form of idealism which undermines the autonomy of our rules and normativity. But the former locates the contribution of subjectivity to selecting the way we represent the world to be. This is the role of occasionalism. What is said in using a sentence depends on the occasion of its use. Hence, also, whether what is said is true or false depends on the occasion, which in turn depends, among other things, on the nature of the speaker.

Travis gives an everyday example

Sid buys a DIY chair kit. On bringing it home he discovers that it is much more difficult to assemble than he had imagined. It remains a neatly stacked pile of chair parts in his spare room. One day, someone, pointing at the pile, asks, 'What's that?' 'It's a chair', Sid replies, 'I just haven't got around to assembling it yet.' On a later occasion, Sid and Pia, with guests, find themselves a chair short for dinner. 'There's a chair in the spare room', Sid says helpfully. But there is still only the pile. [ibid: 336]

The idea is that Sid's first answer is true. On that occasion it is correct to say that the pile is a chair. But on the second occasion, his comment is false. The pile of parts is not a chair in the context of the dinner party. The same word 'chair' can be used correctly and falsely of the pile of parts because different things are said to be so with it on both occasions. This suggests a role for our psychological design, not in shaping the aspect of the world judged, but in shaping the nature of what we say with our words.

It seems to me that this doesn't scratch the right itch, however. For one thing, occasion sensitivity is supposed to be a quite general feature of meaning rather than something tied to a specific aspect of the space of reasons. It doesn't relate to the specific character of moral judgements, for example. Being sensitive to the demands of meanings is a akin to being sensitive to the demands of values in a McDowellian enriched conception of nature but occasion sensitivity seems to privilege meanings and reach out to values only via meanings.

Travis' account does however, head off the worry about idealism. It is innocent to think of aspects of special design affecting what subjects mean, in making a judgement, and hence affecting what would make it true or false without letting the mind affect whether a given judgement, understood in a specific way, is true or false given how the world is. So another possibility to head off idealism would be a transcendental rather than empirical reading of the connection between meaning and subject-hood. There's an often quoted passage in Cavell which may help illustrate this idea:

We learn and teach words in certain contexts, and then we are expected, and expect others, to be able to project them into further contexts. Nothing insures that this projection will take place (in particular, not the grasping of universals nor the grasping of book of rules), just as nothing insures that we will make, and understand, the same projections. That on the whole we do is a matter of our sharing routes of interest and feeling, senses of humour and of significance and of fulfilment, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to what else, what a rebuke, what forgiveness, of when an utterance is an assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation – all the whirl of organism Wittgenstein calls 'forms of life'. Human speech and activity, sanity and community, rest upon nothing more, but nothing less, than this. It is a vision as simple as it is difficult, and as difficult as it is (and because it is) terrifying. [Cavell 1969: 52]

So one might think that it's a condition of possibility of projecting words into new contexts in the same way, and hence as counting as using them correctly, that one is a certain sort of subject with shared routes of interest and feeling, senses of humour and of significance and of fulfilment etc etc: all the whirl of organism. But here the problem is that in some cases – for example continuing mathematical series – other ways of going on seem mere misses of the point, failures of understanding rather than promising to illustrate other possibilities. In other cases, different practices do seem possible but not as different versions of say strictly moral evaluation. Perhaps they are practices of face saving or bravado which block the possibility of playing the moral valuing game.

Filling out the nature of the subject that transcendentally underpins our practices of responding to meanings or values looks to collapse into what McDowell calls a 'locus of pure thought'. One needs to be a subject who can follow moral, or meaningful, or logical demands.

Playing the 'games' we play sincerely and wholeheartedly seems to rule out being able to flesh out an interesting link between objectivism in a domain and the necessity of a certain kind of subject-hood. Perhaps thinking that objectivity requires a correlative subjectivity is more trouble than its worth.Tim Thorntonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-71047511226248907452016-04-19T18:19:00.002+01:002016-04-19T21:32:14.142+01:00Lancaster workshop on impactVery embarrassingly, I've been asked to contribute to a workshop on impact at Lancaster University. Embarrassing, since I have no impact case study and have never achieved impact as understood by the Act. But I believe that I am to talk at the start of the day, perhaps presenting a problem to be solved by those with brighter ideas as the day goes by. At the very least, I'll learn something in return for my uneasy self-consciousness.

The difficulty of Wittgensteinian philosophy

The goal or target of achieving impact is more difficult for some subjects than it is for others. In general, the humanities do not have a technology. Equally, there isn't an industrial setting for researchers in the humanities who do not wish to be based in higher education. Philosophy inherits these difficulties. Why?

I think that there are two characteristic claims made by philosophy.

This is how things are because this is how they must be. (The modal status goes some way to explain the lack of need for empirical justification.)

This is how things ought to be.

The latter seems the more likely source of impact - a normative claim aims to change the world - but is sadly unavailable to the philosophy of thought and language / metaphysics / epistemology etc. all of which are restricted to the former. Further, it is worse in some sub-disciplines of philosophical method, such as mine.

Wittgenstein argued that there were no such things as substantive philosophical problems calling for substantive explanation or theorising. Rather, apparent problems should be dissolved. By contrast with Marx' claim that 'The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it' Wittgenstein says: 'Philosophy must not interfere in any way… It leaves everything as it is.' [Wittgenstein 1953 §124]. How then is impact so much as possible?

An autobiographical note

Having written my first book on Wittgenstein and a second on the Wittgensteinian philosopher John McDowell, I was approached in 1994, at Warwick University, by Bill Fulford to teach on his new Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health masters programme. I knew nothing about the philosophy of psychiatry but Bill optimistically suggested that there would be connections between what I did know about and conceptual issues lying behind mental healthcare and these would come to light in conversation with clinicians. That much was right.

The promise for impact of the new philosophy of / and psychiatry

Although a Wittgensteinian approach to the nature of philosophy raises challenges for achieving impact, the sub-disciplinary subject area of philosophy of psychiatry pulls the other way.

Whilst, in mainland Europe, philosophy carried out in the phenomenological tradition retained a close connection to psychiatry throughout the 20th century, Anglo-American or broadly analytic philosophy largely lost touch. Analytic philosophy of psychiatry has been reborn in large part as a response to the rise of the anti-psychiatry movement in the 1960's. This was because, whatever its broader political underpinnings, the disagreement between anti-psychiatry and biologically-minded defences of psychiatry was a philosophical rather, than an empirical, disagreement. It thus prompted a fresh philosophical examination of the nature and conceptual underpinnings of psychiatry.

This new 'philosophy and psychiatry' (where 'and' means both 'and' and 'of') is a joint enterprise of philosophers and psychiatrists with co-editorships of key books and journals. The international network (the International Network of Philosophy and Psychiatry) holds conferences attended by both academics and practitioners. The issues and problems that interest clinicians reflect conceptual as much as empirical issues:

the nature of illness or disease and of recovery;

the objectivity of psychiatric taxonomy;

issues about the mind-brain relation;

capacity;

the justification for coercion.

These all look philosophical (and I've published on all of them). So surely philosophical analysis of these issues provide a route to impact?

Further, there are examples of impact (though whether or not strictly REF-able impact, I'm less sure, because I am not sure how the explicit paper trail works). For example, Fulford's analysis of the concept of mental illness draws not on Wittgensteinian philosophy but on a related equally descriptive movement: Oxford ordinary language philosophy. He argues on the basis of analysis that the concepts of mental illness and physical illness are both value laden (and hence both sides in the major 1970s debates are wrong) but that only mental illness looks value-laden because there is widespread disagreement about the relevant values by contrast with agreement on the values pertaining to physical health and illness. If so, however, then the influential stress on evidence based medicine is incomplete without a worked out form of values based practice which Fulford then articulated (though contentiously cashed out in merely subjective terms). Since then he has been assiduous in promoting this in clinical training with some successes. He has now set up Collaborating Centre for Values Based Practice at St Catz, Oxford to act as a focus for interested clinicians and academics.

That looks like a flow of ideas from the analysis of concepts to some practical consequences for how mental healthcare should be carried out, though the grounds for impact depend on moving from the first to the second key philosophical claim (from how they are to how they should be).

But despite that rationale, it has proved surprisingly difficult for me.

Here are two possible leads but so far unfulfilled. The first seems a kind near miss; the second needs thought as to practical application.

Idiographic understanding

Attending a World Psychiatric Association conference, at Bill Fulford's suggestion I attended a session organised by its president Juan Mezzich on person centred medicine and heard presentations on the role of a more comprehensive approach to psychiatric diagnosis called an idiographic formulation. It seemed to me that there was some confusion in what they – clinicians – meant by 'idiographic' and its connection to narrative.

Charged by my university to invite Mezzich and some of his colleagues to a workshop with a European service user movement at UCLan, I presented a critique of 'idiographic' understanding there and later at a workshop in London funded by the Department of Health. I wrote four overlapping papers, one for a humanities journal and two for psychiatry journals and one for a general medical journal. I was invited to present this at the main German annual psychiatry conference and more recently as the first non-Italian plenary speaker at the Italian national clinical psychology conference from which two further publications will emerge.

But, whilst the papers have a thesis, the general issue of how to devise a broader diagnosis was of interest to the WPA and remains part of the Person Centred Medicine movement and is also of concern to mental health service users, pushing a model of what is involved hasn't connected to non-academic impact.

Tacit knowledge and clinical judgement

The academic itch draws on the problem of understanding individuals: the intuition that clinical skill involves something other than codified knowledge. Further, a role for clinical expertise in addition to research evidence was set out in one of the founding books on evidence based medicine. One possibility is that this extra element is tacit knowledge. I have written four papers, two chapters and a book on this issue, one of which is my most cited paper and has been cited across a range of disciplines and linked to a number of different areas.

At conferences, the idea of there being a distinct and intellectually respectable form of knowledge which, nevertheless resists codification, finds favour with clinicians for whom it seems to have 'face validity'. But how to connect gentle interest to impact?

(My first thought: a network on the epistemology of values based practice on a version which is not cashed out in subjective terms and to connect to the Collaborating Centre for Values Based Practice.)

A few tentative conclusions

Impact is harder to achieve if one's discipline is constitutionally averse to changing anything!

In philosophy, normative claims – about how things should be – look easier ways to draw out practical import than descriptive claims about how they are.

But given a partner discipline with its own practical problems, even philosophically therapeutic work could, at one remove, have practical consequences.

That, however, doesn't make the connection easier and, in my own case, I suspect that a psychological resistance probably plays a role in defaulting to relatively pure philosophy instead. I can always return to writing a paper / chapter with relatively certain chance of publication.

Coda

Some years ago I worked as an administrator at the LSE within the space planning and facilities management division. It was the time of the LSE's attempt to buy County Hall for a peppercorn as a way once and for it to solve its space shortage. In the meantime, it needed a large auditorium and considered buying a neighbouring theatre. Sadly for the LSE, the theatre was governed by planning laws which did not allow it to be 'dark' for more than a certain fraction of the year. Thus if the LSE bought it, this could not stop it continuing to be run as a theatre. I arrived at work one morning to discover my then boss pouring over self-help books describing the role of the theatre impresario. Although by training and career he was a university administrator, if solving the space problem that was his responsibility required that he learn how to commission plays and assemble a company of actors, that consequence would not stop him. That attitude, I suspect, is needed to milk impact out of a descriptive humanity.Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-2218845155420587052016-04-08T14:57:00.002+01:002016-04-08T14:57:57.118+01:00Dialogue with Peter Lucas on experience, concepts, judgement and the world

Over the last few weeks, I have been having an email conversation with my colleague Peter Lucas about the philosophical role and nature of experience and its place, or not, in accounting for what Wittgenstein describes as the 'harmony of thought and reality'. We began with a discussion of aspect perception which might or might not be a point of agreement between Heidegger, Wittgenstein and McDowell. But what prompted the conversation was looking at Charles Travis' chapter Travis, C. (2015) 'Suffering intentionally?' in Campbell, M. & O'Sullivan, M. (eds.) Wittgenstein and Perception, London: Routledge. Later I also sent Peter my draft chapter 'Wittgenstein and Davidson versus McDowell on the harmony of thought and reality'.<o:p></o:p>

I have put this - warts and all - on 'In the space of reasons' for two reasons. First, at the risk that neither of us will ever get other academic jobs having displayed our less than polished first reactions to arguments, I think it helps show the way in which the ship gets put in the bottle. If I ever do publish my book on Travis, for example, it will be the result of such thinking through. <o:p></o:p>

Second, Peter and I belong to opposing sides of the main schism in Western philosophy. I'm a kind of Wittgensteinian-McDowellian therapeutic version of an analytic philosopher. Peter's work is situated in the phenomenological tradition of Husserl and Heidegger. And hence our discussions typically reflect both the clarity and blind-spots of our opposing traditions. Looking back, it is possible to get a bit of critical distance on how options are picked up or ignored.<o:p></o:p>

If there is a single underlying issue here it is how to reconcile experience and conceptual judgement and the hunch that there is more to experience than can be put into words. At its most extreme, I take a Travisian line in which this latter thought is simply false and Peter locates the resources for saying it is true initially in Husserl though he moves quickly on to Heidegger. A middle ground is John McDowell's 1994 book Mind and World according to which experience has content, the content is conceptually structured, but the content can be formed from demonstrative thoughts picking up on, eg., particular shades of colour. (In a couple of emails I call this McDowell's 'trick' though that isn't meant critically.)<o:p></o:p>

If nothing else, the dialogue shows moves both attempted within, and at the same time attempting to analyse (an aspect of), the space of reasons.<o:p></o:p>

From: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 10 March 2016 22:17<o:p></o:p>

To: Peter Lucas

Subject: Travis on seeing-as<o:p></o:p>

Peter,<o:p></o:p>

Here's the pdf of the Travis chapter I was describing today on aspect perception. Travis, C. (2015) 'Suffering intentionally?' in Campbell, M. & O'Sullivan, M. (eds.) Wittgenstein and Perception, London: Routledge<o:p></o:p>

With respect to your worry voiced earlier about Travis helping himself to the intentionality of pictures in an account of seeing-as, I guess he feels the right to assume that just as one assumes the intentionality of signposts although against a further assumed background of practices.<o:p></o:p>

T<o:p></o:p>

From: Peter Lucas<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 14 March 2016 15:11<o:p></o:p>

To: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Subject: RE: Travis on seeing-as<o:p></o:p>

Tim,<o:p></o:p>

Had a quick read of Travis – will try to read it again more carefully. An initial reaction, for what it's worth: <o:p></o:p>

I am struggling to see how mere seeing could be any kind of "success". If I am successfullyto see x it must be the case that there is something akin to an act of judgement involved in the seeing.<o:p></o:p>

There is no success involved in seeing Sid drink lager unless the context is such that (e.g.) recognising that it is indeed lager that Sid is drinking (or Sid that is drinking lager) counts as a success. Inferring that he is drinking lager might be another way of succeeding. But absent everything akin to an implicit or explicit judgement, how can we speak of success? (Merely to watch Sid drinking lager is no sort of success.) If someone should respond that it can be a success to see the ship on the horizon whether or not I happen to be looking for ships I would reply that it can count as a success only in relation to the activity of scanning the horizon for ships and the like.<o:p></o:p>

So, in short, if seeing can be a success seeing must be (broadly) intentional.<o:p></o:p>

The underlying mistake, it seems to me, is that of construing success terms as if the relevant sort of success did not depend upon something akin to judgement. It is assumed that if it makes any sense to construe "see" as a success term then it must follow that seeing what is not simply there to be seen is not seeing but hallucinating. But even "knowing" doesn't behave like that. When I know that oranges are not the only fruit I don't simply know what is there to be known. When I find that a student has committed plagiarism I don't simply find what is there to be found. And when I see that there is a coal tit on the bird table I don't simply see what is there to be seen. In all of these cases, success depends on seeing, grasping, finding what is not simply there. They all involve something akin to an act of judgment; and in the sense in which a judgement can be a success (i.e. we judge correctly) the judgement reflects (and must reflect) more than is simply "there".<o:p></o:p>

Peter<o:p></o:p>

From: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 14 March 2016 16:20<o:p></o:p>

To: Peter Lucas

Subject: RE: Travis on seeing-as<o:p></o:p>

If I get time, I'll see whether there's a clear account of Travis' official position of what seeing is / amounts to. I should know so I feel stupid. But he thinks that seeing affords subjects with things to think by putting them in direct contact with their surroundings. So seeing seems to involve a relation between the subject and the environment. Further, he doesn't think that there is any conceptual content in the experiences one enjoys in seeing: the closest there is to that is actual worldly looks, the way say the Muller Lyer lines look different lengths, or the way Pia looks like her father, shares his looks. Content enters the picture in the judgements the subject makes. Where I am being dense today is that I don't know whether someone seeing something is relation plus uptake or not. My problem is that if I saw the murderer but didn't realise I had, the uptake / judgement I make isn't how someone else would report my seeing and not recognising. So I'm not sure what limits there would have to be on a relation plus uptake / judgement model. (Too much uptake slips out of seeing and into the judgement of seeing-that.)<o:p></o:p>

I suspect that 'success' was an unfortunate word for Travis. Factivity would have been better. He seems to gloss 'success' as factive: one cannot see what wasn't there. That goes for me and the case of the murderer even if I don't judge her to be a murderer. So 'success' seems wrong.<o:p></o:p>

I'm not sure I follow your intuitions in the final para. It seems to me that what one knows was there to be known. (That's the basis for Bernard Williams' 'absolute conception'.) Either simply seeing the coal tit (whether or not one knows what it is) or knowing that it's a coal tit implies that it is a coal tit and hence that was a fact there to be known. I don't think that that implies it's easy. (If we now know there was a Higgs Boson at Cern...) My worry is that the opposite may be making things up.<o:p></o:p>

T<o:p></o:p>

From: Peter Lucas<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 16 March 2016 15:42<o:p></o:p>

To: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Subject: For what they are worth...<o:p></o:p>

…some musings on Philosophical Investigations paragraph 429:<o:p></o:p>

Wittgenstein seems to be saying:<o:p></o:p>

Talk of a harmony between thought and world comes to this: a belief (expectation etc.) may represent or misrepresent a state of affairs. Misrepresentation may be the more instructive case, since we are then not tempted to think that some individual element of the belief (etc.) must successfully represent some element of the state of affairs.<o:p></o:p>

I see nothing to dispute in that, but what does it really tell us? Granting that misrepresentation does not depend (paradoxically) upon some kind of successful representation, let's agree that:<o:p></o:p>

Successful representation/misrepresentation depends on (1) successful reference and (2a) correct characterisation (in the case of truth) or (2b) incorrect characterisation (in the case of falsity).<o:p></o:p>

Successful reference does not depend on any sort of representation (with a nod to Kripke).<o:p></o:p>

Successful reference depends on the existence of the right sort of historical link between belief and object. The noun phrase "the red door" may successfully refer to the red door. The noun phrase "the blue door" may also successfully refer to the same red door (since the fact that the door in question has recently been repainted may be irrelevant provided the historical link is not thereby upset).<o:p></o:p>

By contrast, correct characterisation depends on faithfully representing the object to which we have (successfully) referred. "The blue door is unlocked" is true just in case the item in question is unlocked. The item need not be a door and need not be blue. The elements of the noun phrase pick out but do not characterise the item in question in any significant way. It follows that successful characterisation is not a matter of simply picking out a simple or complex item as we might pick it out using a more or less complicated name or noun phrase. It matters that the door really is unlocked in a way that it does not matter whether it really is a door.<o:p></o:p>

It also seems to me to follow that if we are to know that a state of affairs is successfully represented by a belief the state of affairs must be articulate in a manner that the referent of a noun phrase need not be. Of course, no weird metaphysical process takes place in the door when we switch from asserting that "the broken blue door is unlocked" to asserting that "the unlocked blue door is broken". The door does not go from having an offhand relationship with its brokenness to having a studied relationship with its brokenness. Nevertheless the unlockedness of the door (first case) or the brokenness of the door (second case) must be evident in a manner that the blueness of the door need never be. Evidence in the relevant sense involves more than simply seeing (feeling etc.) the door and its properties. Simply seeing the blue door may be sufficient to establish a historical link for purposes of reference, but for it to be evident that the statement "the door is blue" is true we must be in a position to see that the door is indeed blue. (Merely noticing the blueness of the door will not do because it is quite compatible with failing to notice that the door is blue.)<o:p></o:p>

Talking as if the state of affairs were itself a complicated sort of object would take us back to square one, so best avoided. But those who are committed to saying that we perceive/intuit states of affairs do not seem to me to be committed to saying that. Rather, their point is that the world does not consist primarily of objects but of states of affairs.<o:p></o:p>

Peter<o:p></o:p>

From: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 16 March 2016 16:19<o:p></o:p>

To: Peter Lucas

Subject: RE: For what they are worth...<o:p></o:p>

In passing...<o:p></o:p>

I'm not sure that 'The blue door is unlocked' is true just in case the item in question is unlocked. The item need not be a door and need not be blue. I don't know whether you are familiar with it (given your different philosophical tradition) but there's a flow of papers from Russell's account of definite descriptions, to Strawson, to Donnellan to Kripke. Donnellan says of a similar example that the speaker says something truebut doesn't say that the sentence itself is true. Kripke distinguishes what the speaker means by the phase and what the words mean. Without some further qualification, I think one would misinform someone if one simply said that Jones' utterance of your sentence was true, if the door isn't blue. The best is that they said of a particular object that it is unlocked where in the retelling, a different noun phrase has to be employed to pick out said object.<o:p></o:p>

When it comes to seeing that (and the notion of evidence you begin to outline), I think we on safer ground if we say that every seeing-that is a judging. That's why the state of affairs corresponding to the seeing-that has the right articulacy. It is as articulated as the judgement. It's intensional. Seeing isn't. (My cat sees Clark Kent if she sees Superman. She sees-that almost nothing.) Seeing-as is where we can then have a disagreement!<o:p></o:p>

T<o:p></o:p>

From: Peter Lucas<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 17 March 2016 12:24<o:p></o:p>

To: Tim Thornton

Subject: RE: For what they are worth...<o:p></o:p>

Back at yer…<o:p></o:p>

Not sure we need worry too much about the first point. I would probably still try to argue it as a limit case but it can also serve to illustrate ways in which a statement can be true but potentially misleading. <o:p></o:p>

On the second point: I guess I want to say that experiences can have the articulacy of a judgment. Not all seeing is intensional in the relevant way, evidently. However, some seeing is seeing-as, and seeing-as can be, in effect, seeing-that. Seeing-that is not judgement so much as evidence (in the relevant sense). An invitation to judgment?<o:p></o:p>

Peter<o:p></o:p>

From: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 17 March 2016 12:52<o:p></o:p>

To: Peter Lucas <plucas1 uclan.ac.uk=""><o:p></o:p></plucas1>

Subject: RE: For what they are worth...<o:p></o:p>

On experience: you'll face some of the problems of the McDowell of Mind and World. If the content of experience has the articulacy of judgement and if judgement is the active exercise of concepts, presumably concepts are passively drawn on in experience (this is what McDowell says). But if so, which concepts? On the basis of an experience there seems to be a very great number of conceptual judgements I could make. Are all those concepts 'in' the experience? Or just a subset? If the latter, which? And is it the experience construed as a representation which is conceptually structured? Or the world so experienced?<o:p></o:p>

The advantage of saying that seeing-that isn't a perceptual verb but is a judgement (and so just names a judgement made on the basis of non-intensional seeing) is that one can answer the question of which concepts: the concepts actively selected for any particular judgement: all the judgements one takes oneself to be making. That move just seems safe to me. (Take the Muller Lyer lines: although one seems longer than the other I do not see-that one line is longer than the other. Perhaps I see one line as longer than the other. I'm happy to debate seeing-as.)<o:p></o:p>

T<o:p></o:p>

From: Peter Lucas<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 17 March 2016 14:24<o:p></o:p>

To: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Subject: RE: For what they are worth...<o:p></o:p>

I hoped you are not tired of running over and over this? I sometimes feel pretty dense. But then that also seems to happen to you.<o:p></o:p>

I just re-read sections 32 and 33 of Being and Time. I guess I want to provisionally dig my heels in on the basis of what Heidegger says there – particularly in section 33. He portrays judgement as a derivative mode of understanding that fails to capture the richness of the experience that understands (in practice, various forms of experiencing-as and experiencing-that). The relative poverty of judgement is due to the fact that it is forced to operate with concepts. It would thus be no good (from his point of view) to 'discover' those concepts already in experience – the effect would be to impoverish experience to the same level. Of course it is only the concepts we deploy in judgement that we can explicitly list. But none of that shows that he is not right when he says that experience itself embodies primary understanding. (And, naturally, he does not think of such understanding as a matter of mental representation.) So, I will tactically shelter behind the big H and ask: what reasons do we have for thinking he is wrong? (Not purely a rhetorical question. I am genuinely concerned that he might be wrong. It is just that at the moment it seems more useful to say that I take myself to be hazarding – for better or worse - the kind of view that he sets out in the above.) <o:p></o:p>

For Heidegger (though not of course for Wittgenstein) we see the table as a table, the door as a door. Seeing-as thus seems to be pervasive, and seems to go hand in hand with seeing-that. The standard Wittgensteinian cases would then be untypical: cases in which we see-as, but do not see-that (I see the duck-rabbit as a duck, but don't see that it is a duck). Perhaps Heidegger would say that these are the sorts of cases in which we fall back on present-at-hand modes of understanding: our usual easy commerce with the world fails us and we have to employ the cumbersome procedures associated with judging that (which, as a derivative mode, must themselves have their foundation in non-atypical experiences of seeing-as – when e.g. we see the ruler as a ruler in preparing to measure the lines).<o:p></o:p>

Peter<o:p></o:p>

From: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 17 March 2016 14:51<o:p></o:p>

To: Peter Lucas <firstname.lastname@example.com><o:p></o:p>

Subject: RE: For what they are worth...<o:p></o:p>

No I never find trying to understand the basics again and again dull. Perhaps one day I will succeed.<o:p></o:p>

I hear your comments about MH [Martin Heidegger] on the richness of experience through the lens of those who claim - like Peacocke - that experience has a content but a non-conceptual one. So there is a sizeable number of philosophers who hold this. I don't know how they would answer the question I want to address to you and MH: if experience isn't carved up into concepts on the model of a sentence / judgement, in what sense is it articulated? What do we mean by articulation outside something quasi-linguistic? ((The modern analytic philosophers would hold, unlike MH that experience is a representation. I don't think that that changes much.))<o:p></o:p>

It seems to me that the hunch about richness and the hunch about articulation pull in different directions. One might hold that experience is rich but not articul*ated* and then that judgement articulates it into poorer conceptual chunks.<o:p></o:p>

You also connect seeing-as and seeing-that. So what of the Muller-Lyer case (I realise that hard cases make bad laws but...)? I would here say that we don't see 'that' one line is longer than the other (we cannot because seeing that is factive) but I can imagine we might say we see it 'as' that.<o:p></o:p>

T<o:p></o:p>

From: Peter Lucas<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 17 March 2016 16:11<o:p></o:p>

To: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Subject: RE: For what they are worth...<o:p></o:p>

Well, MH would say that experience is articulated by the "existential-hermeneutical 'as'" of circumspection (as opposed to the "apophantical 'as'" of judgement). If attention then moves to what lies either side of this 'as', the richness comes from the fact that the existential-hermeneutical as reflects a totality of involvements which the apophantical as cannot capture. Admittedly, saying that (existential-hermeneutically) we see the hammer as a hammer doesn't sound very rich or informative. But that's because expressing it in that way reduces it to something indistinguishable from a judgement. The 'as' accounts for the articulacy, the totality of involvements accounts for the relative richness; thus, in practice, seeing the hammer as a hammer manages to be articulate, rich and informative.<o:p></o:p>

(I suspect H's point is closely related to the point he makes about "essence" in "On the Essence of Truth": if we try to capture the essence of something by relating it to others of the same type we end up with something relatively impoverished (what all hammers have in common). Whereas if we capture it by reference to the (in the broadest sense) historical context (which includes but is not limited to its relations to others of the same type) we grasp something much richer.<o:p></o:p>

I tried to deal with the Muller-Lyer case in the second paragraph of my last: perhaps in these untypical (for MH) cases of seeing-as, seeing-as and seeing-that do come apart (we see the duck-rabbit as a duck, but do not see that it is a duck). But then we must rely on seeing-as to arrive at our judgement-that (we need to see the ruler as a ruler if we are to measure the lines). Ordinarily seeing-as and seeing-that don't come part.<o:p></o:p>

P<o:p></o:p>

From: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 17 March 2016 17:34<o:p></o:p>

To: Peter Lucas <plucas1 uclan.ac.uk=""><o:p></o:p></plucas1>

Subject: Re: For what they are worth...<o:p></o:p>

Hmm. I think I would need to suspend quite a lot of my own disbelief to buy into this. Two different sorts of articulacy with the crucial one being ineffable though in some sense related to an object's history, but not the history as articulated in language or judgements. I take the point that there is always more to say or that could be said about a hammer but why isn't that there waiting in the world for all my subsequent judgments. (The totality of the hammer's relationships doesn't have to be presented to me all at once.) Why does it have to be built into my non linguistically 'articulated' take on the world?<o:p></o:p>

You say that that we need to see things as things to arrive at the judgment but I am not sure that the excursion into Heidegger has yet made that more than a shared assertion (of him and you). So, at present, I prefer the idea that what we mean by articulacy is what we can explain that word to mean clearly on the model of the conceptual articulacy of a sentence or judgement. For the other notion, if there is one, let's use a different word so as not to get confused. I promise not to deny that experience is []{}#%^*.<o:p></o:p>

T<o:p></o:p>

From: Peter Lucas<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 18 March 2016 09:55<o:p></o:p>

To: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Subject: RE: For what they are worth...<o:p></o:p>

Well, as I say, that's what Heidegger says…<o:p></o:p>

Most of it follows directly from the idea (which is characteristic of the phenomenological tradition as a whole) that experience has its own proper articulacy, which language can only reflect in a partial and haphazard way. The point is not that there is always more to say, but that what is articulated in experience can only be roughly translated into language. What might be thus translated into language is, in a sense, all there "waiting in the world" – but of course what Heidegger means by world is the articulate world, not the inarticulate world of modern physicalism.<o:p></o:p>

I think it would be more faithful to the text to say that Heidegger thinks that linguistic articulateness is in fact dependent on pre-linguistic articulateness. He is more interested in explaining how articulateness occurs than in asking how it is possible – the latter would be too Kantian for him, I think.<o:p></o:p>

I suspect that the stand-off between us is likely to centre on the fact that you feel there is no meaningful philosophical work to be done in getting from the inarticulate world of physicalism to the articulacy of judgements about that world, whereas Heidegger (and, to the extent that I am interested in exploring his claims, I) think(s) that there is – that's where the problem of being resides.<o:p></o:p>

Peter<o:p></o:p>

From: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 18 March 2016 10:34<o:p></o:p>

To: Peter Lucas <plucas1 uclan.ac.uk=""><o:p></o:p></plucas1>

Subject: Re: For what they are worth...<o:p></o:p>

Well I see that if we could grant that experience has its own form of non-linguistic articulacy other aspects of the story would follow. But that is my sticking point. I don't know what to do with that idea. For that reason, I want simply to invert your sentence:<o:p></o:p>

"The point is not that there is always more to say, but that what is articulated in experience can only be roughly translated into language."<o:p></o:p>

The points isn't the gnomic second half. All that is correct is captured by the first part.<o:p></o:p>

But I want to cry "Steady on old chap!" about the next thought:<o:p></o:p>

"What might be thus translated into language is, in a sense, all there "waiting in the world" – but of course what Heidegger means by world is the articulate world, not the inarticulate world of modern physicalism."<o:p></o:p>

Is that you accusing me of subscribing to physicalism!?! I have just the same qualms about gnomic articulacy and just the same confidence in conceptual articulacy in aesthetics or morals as physics. My qualms aren't about a prior metaphysical or scientistic assumption being made or not made. Rather they concern the idea that there is any sense of articulacy outside the conceptual or judgement. But the conceptual or judgement ranges much wider than physics (obviously!).<o:p></o:p>

I suspect it's hard to put what the standoff depends on. In one sense I do want to say that in any particular case of judgement linguistic articulateness is dependent on pre-linguistic articulateness in the sense that my cat was in the airing cupboard where I found her before I got home. My judgement answers to her prior location. The words in the utterance reflect the objects in the situation. But the way I describe that bit of worldly articulation is always going to be linguistic. (Pointing at the cat in the airing cupboard isn't going to do it.) Where I differ is in a kind of transcendental view that the one sort of (conceptual) articulacy in general can be explained at all by anything extra-conceptual. Conceptual articulacy is where we start and finish.<o:p></o:p>

"there is no meaningful philosophical work to be done in getting from the inarticulate world <s>of physicalism</s> to the articulacy of judgements about that world."<o:p></o:p>

Well that's what the rule following considerations are about. There's no good explanation. It's again a primitive. But it does seem to call for philosophical reflection to get this right.<o:p></o:p>

T<o:p></o:p>

From: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 18 March 2016 13:42<o:p></o:p>

To: Peter Lucas <plucas1 uclan.ac.uk=""><o:p></o:p></plucas1>

Subject: The harmony of thought and reality<o:p></o:p>

Attachment: The harmony of thought and reality: Wittgenstein and Davidson versus McDowell<o:p></o:p>

Peter,<o:p></o:p>

Further to recent conversations, this is the chapter I've been working on. It doesn't have an ending yet (among other faults), but I thought you might be amused by its minimalism. Thought makes contact with reality only in language.<o:p></o:p>

T<o:p></o:p>

From: Peter Lucas<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 23 March 2016 16:40<o:p></o:p>

To: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Subject: RE: The harmony of thought and reality<o:p></o:p>

Thanks. I feel I am groping my way with a lot of this (my unfamiliarity with the material rather than your way of presenting it). It looks to me as if there are two types of harmony at issue here:<o:p></o:p>

1. The particular harmony that might be said to obtain when on a disjunctivist view our beliefs manage to hit their target<o:p></o:p>

2. The general harmony that obtains on a Davidsonian view as an inevitable consequence of the application of the principle of charity: we could not successfully individuate and attribute beliefs if we assumed that the believer was systematically out of touch with reality. (W's view seems compatible with this.)<o:p></o:p>

But I now think that issues with disjunctivism don't have much to do with Heidegger. If I have understood correctly, disjunctivism models "harmony" on successful reference. It then seems a struggle to say what disharmony amounts to (what would a "false" belief refer to?). On the Davidson-inspired view the absence of general harmony seems unimaginable.<o:p></o:p>

If I have read him right, Heidegger is much more interested in how objects are interpreted in experience. Successful interpretation of an object grasps it in its practical and historical context. (Seeing the bridge as a bridge.) We might also misinterpret the bridge by contextualising it wrongly (seeing it as wall, perhaps?) In both cases (successful interpretation, and misinterpretation) we succeed in seeing the bridge (so, this isn't a disjunctivist view), and we have the "harmony" of successful reference. In the case of successful interpretation there is also the "harmony" of correctly understanding the relevant bit of the world (being in touch with reality). When we misunderstand there is a kind of disharmony (which nevertheless is compatible with still seeing the bridge.) Judgement is not required for experiential interpretation/misinterpretation. It comes on the scene later and endorses an interpretation (or misinterpretation) quasi-linguistically – though in doing so allowing much of the original content of the interpretation to slip through the net.<o:p></o:p>

Though it seems to make your hair stand on end I am struggling to see what's not to like in that. I can see that one might object to disjunctivism, and consequently object to the doctrine that experience itself is interpretive to the extent that it seems to entail disjunctivism. But if interpretive experience is modelled on seeing-as the problem doesn't arise: one experiences the bridge, and either experiences it as it is or as it is not. When we experience the bridge as it is not we don't fail to experience the bridge.<o:p></o:p>

Peter<o:p></o:p>

From: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 23 March 2016 17:10<o:p></o:p>

To: Peter Lucas <plucas1 uclan.ac.uk=""><o:p></o:p></plucas1>

Subject: RE: The harmony of thought and reality<o:p></o:p>

I'll read and reply properly tomorrow (writing teaching slides now). Disjunctivism may have something to do with Heidegger. On McDowell's view of it, in the good disjunct one takes in how things are. Not just successful reference but a successful glimpse of the facts. A direct relation to the things themselves.<o:p></o:p>

(McDowell is criticised for not being a good enough disjunctivist because he thinks that experience has a representational content and this makes it seem to have the same content in good and bad disjunct and hence isn't direct Heideggerian openness. I think these are good criticisms and recently McDowell has made things even worse by accepting that the contentof the experience is the same in good and bad disjunct: what differs is the way it is had, its epistemic significance. But before he changed, he used to argue that having a content and being directly open to the world were consistent.)<o:p></o:p>

In general, disjunctivism is taken to oppose a view that because experience is the same in veridical and non-veridical illusory cases, experience is never more than what is shared between the good and bad case. And hence - and McDowell used to be good on this - experience could never be sufficient for knowledge. So if the idea that experience is limited to what can be conceptually articulated seems a limitation (it doesn't to McDowell but it does to you), I think one could be a non-McDowellian, disjunctivist where in the good disjunct, one is in direct perceptual contact with the world.<o:p></o:p>

Finally summarised Travis though I'll have to return to it when I've looked again at some other stuff.<o:p></o:p>

http://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/travis-on-seeing-aspects.html<o:p></o:p>

T<o:p></o:p>

From: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 24 March 2016 14:45<o:p></o:p>

To: Peter Lucas <plucas1 uclan.ac.uk=""><o:p></o:p></plucas1>

Subject: RE: The harmony of thought and reality<o:p></o:p>

Further….<o:p></o:p>

I think that my qualm concerns the fact that I cannot grasp what the nature of the state is which you take for granted. If I follow at all, an experience is an interpretation in practical and historical 'terms' but at the same time it isn't a judgement, which is an intellectual act downstream and one which loses lots of detail because it is cashed out in, say, linguistic conceptual terms. But the first use of 'terms' in that sentence (which of course is mine not yours) isn't the right word because it would imply modelling on linguistic conceptual terms like the second, which is just what you resist. So what on earth is it? What is both an 'interpretation' but not a judgement?<o:p></o:p>

I can see that there could be other things going on. A violinist might pick up bow and violin and make music in a way I couldn't no matter how much I could judge that there was a bow and violin present. I can also imagine a claim that a kind of spectator judgement of the world might depend on prior practical interventions in it (there's a reading of Wittgenstein's private language argument which claims this). But neither of those seem ripe/right for the word 'interpretation'.<o:p></o:p>

One wouldn't want to fall back on just gesturing at one's surroundings and saying "well all this is an interpretation". (Cf PI: 261: What reason have we for calling "S" the sign for a sensation? For "sensation" is a word of our common language. not of one intelligible to me alone. So the use of this word stands in need of a justification which everybody understands. -- And it would not help either to say that it need not be a sensation; that when he writes "S", he has something -- and that is all that can be said. "Has" and "something" also belong to our common language. -- So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound. -- But such a sound is an expression only as it occurs in a particular language-game, which should now be described.)<o:p></o:p>

T<o:p></o:p>

From: Peter Lucas<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 24 March 2016 17:04<o:p></o:p>

To: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Subject: RE: The harmony of thought and reality<o:p></o:p>

I should probably just put my cards on the table then and say that, for me, Wittgenstein's position only seems to make sense if there can be no such thing as private "seeming" (an experience in which something privately seems to one to be thus and so). But there are private "seemings", and the dawning of an aspect exemplifies this very straightforwardly. If I suddenly see a face differently because I see its likeness to another face there is something that I see (there is some content to my experience) even though someone who (in a sense) sees exactly what I see (the face) might not see what I see (have an experience with the same content).<o:p></o:p>

It might be that I can express what I see linguistically (e.g. the face now seems to me Churchillian). Or it may be that I can't (I can say no more than that I see the likeness to another face, though I cannot put a name to it). Either way though, I see the face "interpretively"; and either way there is (it seems to me) no way of fully capturing what I see in language. <o:p></o:p>

I suppose someone could say that what can't find its way completely into language could not function as a reason for anything (e.g. describing the face as Churchillian). I would say that that flies in the face of everyday experience: we just do experience the world interpretively (aspects colour our experience, and dawn on us), such experiences provide reasons for judgements ("this face is Churchillian"), and language can capture the content of such experiences only incompletely (the experience would be different for a member of Churchill's immediate family, though they might describe it in exactly the same way as I would). One of Heidegger's best thoughts is that consciousness is not closed in on itself but amounts to openness to an (intelligible) world. I like to think that language is similar – "experience" is not restricted within the closed circuit of language, rather language enables us to express experiences that are originally articulated extra-linguistically.<o:p></o:p>

Peter <o:p></o:p>

From: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 24 March 2016 17:39<o:p></o:p>

To: Peter Lucas <plucas1 uclan.ac.uk=""><o:p></o:p></plucas1>

Subject: RE: The harmony of thought and reality<o:p></o:p>

Can you just give me a little bit more?<o:p></o:p>

I can see a face which looks in some sense like Churchill's, even if it is say that of a baby. So that's fine. I see a likeness and subsume it under a concept. Seeing that = judging. Other faces, too, can look like him. Perhaps I see a face which only suddenly looks like Churchill in a particular orientation. Or perhaps I only suddenly notice the likeness. It is a baby after all. If so, at first I lack that interpretation of the scene but then I have it and can make that judgement. This is all fine and connects seeing to judgement. But only see-that. Non-perceptual seeing. (Of course, often I see-that as a result of seeing. But I needn't look in the same place. Travis suggests I can see that meat has fallen on the rug by seeing the horror in Pia's face, not seeing the meat at all.)<o:p></o:p>

(There may be a sense of the word 'Churchillian' which doesn't mean looking like Churchill? I assume you don't mean figurative uses.)<o:p></o:p>

But suppose I see a likeness of one face to some other face which I cannot name. You say I still see the face interpretively. Perhaps I could say: I have seen a face like this before. Perhaps I can say that it is likely that I will get the name later, it is on the tip of my tongue. Suppose that never happens. Is that still seeing that face under some specific interpretation? I incline to say not. One thought there was a past generality but it turns out not. One thought one had such an interpretation but one didn't. Of course, I may now baptise that face a particular type: 5:35pm Thursday type, say. But whether that baptism has content depends on the way I am then able to compare and contrast it with others. (One way might be: faces which might be genetically related to it. Another: faces equally stern.) This would be like baptising a colour sample. Not so much seeing this sample interpretively but rather using this sample to set up future interpretations of found colours.<o:p></o:p>

Perhaps what matters more to you isn't the reasons and judgements that seem fine by me in the above examples but something more primitively experiential. Even when I see the duck aspect of the duck-rabbit I see that it is a picture of a rabbit too. I am able to make that judgement, on the basis of what I see, ie. visually. I think you think that seeing-as is ubiquitous but I don't know whether you think that that visual experience is. (I think it makes no sense to say that an essentially contrastive experience is ubiquitous.) You say: we just do experience the world interpretively (aspects colour our experience, and dawn on us). But it isn't obvious to me that that happens aside from the fact that we can make judgements that a picture looks like sheep, or a face like Churchill. And, to repeat, that is still within the conceptual. Churchill's family may be able to make finer discriminations than us. But if so they are not restricted to just using the word Churchillian. They have other words too they can use on the basis of what they see. And they can coin concepts by saying "a nose shaped like that!". Still that's all conceptual.<o:p></o:p>

The good bit in your final thought - as far as I'm concerned - is: consciousness is not closed in on itself but amounts to openness to an (intelligible) world. The bad bit is suggesting that you can say what is 'intelligible' brutely, extra-linguistically. By contrast I think that in, eg., seeing-as, it's the 'as' that expresses what is intelligible. The 'as' is followed by a concept not an inarticulate grunt.<o:p></o:p>

Tim<o:p></o:p>

From: Peter Lucas <o:p></o:p>

Date: 24 March 2016 at 18:49:58 GMT<o:p></o:p>

To: Tim Thornton <o:p></o:p>

Subject: RE: The harmony of thought and reality<o:p></o:p>

Somewhat hastily…<o:p></o:p>

If we say that all seeing-as involves subsumption under a concept I would say that concepts are not narrowly linguistic (the concept under which the family member sees the face is not the concept under which I see it, though we both use the same word). I'd be happier though conceding that concepts are essentially linguistic and saying that the interpretation that occurs in the dawning of an aspect is pre-conceptual: the concept imperfectly (and linguistically) expresses what experience grasps.<o:p></o:p>

(Husserl gives the example of seeing a tool as a drill. One might not be able to put what one sees into words (the word will not come, or perhaps is not known), but that need not impede our seeing it as a drill.) Of course one would usually expect that someone who can successfully interpret what they see could perform the usual tricks with samples, paradigms etc. But on my account those tricks supervene on the basic ability to see and interpret, rather than making it possible. (What licences the attribution of the interpretation to someone else is another matter – but why fixate on that?)<o:p></o:p>

On my view seeing-as is more or less ubiquitous. But that doesn't rule out contrasts. When an aspect dawns it is usually the dawning of a new aspect – rather than the appearance of an aspect for the first time. Having said that, much of what Heidegger says about the present-at-hand is suggestive of the idea that what is merely present-at-hand is simply seen and not (or no longer) seen as anything. (The broken hammer is just a dumb bit of world-stuff) – untypical, but not impossible.<o:p></o:p>

Of course, the "as" is usually followed by a concept rather than an inarticulate grunt, when we put it into words! But why assume that what cannot be put (completely) into words cannot be? LW notwithstanding, it just seems daft to me to say I cannot see something "as…" what I do not have a concept for – though naturally I won't (usually) confidently attribute the ability to someone who doesn't have the relevant concept. (That said, if they can pick the drill up and use it to make accurate holes I won't really worry that they don't know its name).<o:p></o:p>

Will have to sign off now – might get back to it over the weekend or next week, but can't be sure.<o:p></o:p>

Peter <o:p></o:p>

From: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 1 April 13:02<o:p></o:p>

To: Peter Lucas <plucas1 uclan.ac.uk=""><o:p></o:p></plucas1>

Subject: RE: The harmony of thought and reality<o:p></o:p>

I think my qualms in all this are as follows: a tension between 1 and 2.<o:p></o:p>

1) The intuition that one 'grasps' more in experience than one can (hence imperfectly) put into words is something for which some therapy is needed. One cannot just dismiss it. McDowell's suggestion is that one can create concepts via demonstratives to say: "that shade! is ..." This still seems a good idea to me (even if one thinks that they only play a role in active judgement). But in any case, there seems something right about the idea that experience is rich in some way that might create problems for those who think nothing is missed by sticking to what can be described. Pushing this thought is an emphasis on the passivity of experience. I cannot help but drink in a richness to experience (which *may* go beyond my language without, say, McD's suggested trick). What I 'grasp' *may* be more than I can understand (again unless we're happy with the trick). ((These days, as the Travisian I've become, I'd avoid all this talk. But I want to record a sympathy to it. Travis owes an account of richness and he does it by outsourcing it to the experienced world, not the experiencing.))<o:p></o:p>

2) But, the idea that one sees something *as* something seems to me to pull the other way. This isn't just passive but already some sort of making of sense of the scene. Two takes on this:<o:p></o:p>

i) On McD's trick I gain a concept by saying "this shade of colour" and hence I can express a fully conceptual judgement or thought: "I'll paint my house this! shade (of red)". But now, what do I achieve when I see the shade as something? The best is that I see this shade *as* this shade. I'm not sure that this does any work. Perhaps the first this picks out the particular and the second is a general concept extracted from the particular? I'm ill at ease in calling this a seeing-as, though, because the concept is defined by the particular.<o:p></o:p>

ii) But I'm assuming that you'd prefer to think of my grasp as non-conceptual though still some sort of 'grasp'. In that case whatever stands in for the thought 'this shade' is more like the shade itself, not my conceptual articulation of the shade. So now I passively stare at the shade and take it in as this! (Not even this shade.) And that seems even worse because there's no chance of conceptual generality in play in the second 'this'.<o:p></o:p>

I could see the point of being Hanson and thinking that all seeing is seeing-as where what follows the 'as' is a concept. Or rejecting that and thinking that seeing is an experientially richer notion than concepts allow but thus reject the idea that seeing is seeing-as. But I'm baffled by trying to have it both ways.<o:p></o:p>

T<o:p></o:p>

From: Peter Lucas<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 04 April 2016 12:24<o:p></o:p>

To: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Subject: Harmony etc.: having it both ways<o:p></o:p>

Tim,<o:p></o:p>

I think what looks to you like trying to have it both ways stems from viewing all of this ultimately from a phenomenological standpoint.* For phenomenologists, the "object" of perception is never a simple particular. Whereas for Travis "seeing that" can only ever be a type of judgement (I "see that" I was mistaken, but do not literally see my mistake), for Husserl etc. I (literally) see that such and such is the case because what I see are not objects but states of affairs. For Husserl such states of affairs are not particulars but ineliminably involve universals: if I see that the door is red I do not simply see the door along with the particular shade that the door happens to be, I see the door (and a fortiori the shade) as being a shade of red. For Husserl, I could not possibly have this experience unless redness itself (the universal) featured in it directly.<o:p></o:p>

Heidegger replaced Husserl's notion that the states of affairs we see are articulated in terms of universals with the idea that they are articulated temporally or historically. To see that a hammer is a hammer is not so much to see it in terms of a universal "being-a-hammer" as to see it in terms of its history and possibilities (which include but are not limited to its relationships to other hammers). One might say then that whereas for Husserl we never simply see the particular but see the particular in terms of the universal, for Heidegger it is seeing the particular in terms of its history that gives the experience its articulacy and (restricted) universality. "Seeing" can still for Heidegger be a success term because the hammer really is a hammer. For the Heidegger of Being and Time, all of this is going on pre-linguistically. Informed linguistically-articulated judgements are only possible because experience itself is already articulate. <o:p></o:p>

*Heidegger is still in key respects a phenomenologist, even in his critique of what Derrida terms the "metaphysics of presence". Unlike Husserl, Heidegger regards presence as fundamentally historical (thus presence is always crucially dependent on what is not yet or no longer present).<o:p></o:p>

Peter<o:p></o:p>

From: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 05 April 2016 09:27<o:p></o:p>

To: Peter Lucas <plucas1 uclan.ac.uk=""><o:p></o:p></plucas1>

Subject: RE: Harmony etc.: having it both ways<o:p></o:p>

Interesting. It sounds to me as though Husserl subscribes to a view which Travis finds significant in a criticism of it in Wittgenstein's Blue Book.<o:p></o:p>

(a) The tendency to look for something in common to all the entities which we commonly subsume under a general term. . . . The idea of a general concept being a common property of its particular instances connects up with other primitive, too simple, ideas of the structure of language. It is comparable to the idea that properties are ingredients of things which have the properties; e.g., that beauty is an ingredient of all beautiful things as alcohol is of beer and wine. (Wittgenstein 1958: 17)<o:p></o:p>

Travis stresses a difference between recognition meaning re-cognising the same individual and recognition as a kind of active judgement that something should count as something (like a court recognizing someone as having particular rights). Suddenly as I type this I'm less sure that I'm getting him right but let me try this. Whilst one can recognise in the first sense an individual or thing (that one has seen before), one can only recognise properties in the second sense. So, eg., if the property is being green, knowing the meaning of the word 'green' is not enough to know whether it would be correct to call leaves painted green 'green', or an object green on the outside but not the inside etc. One also needs to know the context and what it would be reasonable to say and think in that context. This is his occasion sensitivity (of the truth of judgements). Since in different contexts leaves painted green would and would not count as green (contrast film sets and biology class), there's no property to be recognised in the first sense, no property as an ingredient of things.<o:p></o:p>

Of course, that's not to say Travis is right to claim this!<o:p></o:p>

Still, if I follow, you've told me this as a way of reconciling what seem to me to be two contrasting intuitions: that experience is more fine grained or richer than (conceptual) judgement but that we see things as things. So I suppose that the universals are what dissolves the tension. If seeing the red door were a matter of just seeing that object and that particular instance of the shade, that wouldn't be seeing it as something because there would be no hint of generality in the particular experience (?). But seeing the universals <door> and <specific of="" red="" shade=""> in the experience counts as a form of seeing-as, as a variant on the Hanson / younger McDowell picture where the seeing-as is in linguistic concepts. So I assume that the universals are like the ontological shadows of concepts given to us by the world itself.<o:p></o:p></specific></door>

If so, I have two qualms. First, it seems hard to know what to make of the idea that the world divides itself up for us into generalities. How do its divisions relate to our linguistic conceptual divisions? How does a red door signpost all the other shades of red as the same universal? Or does it not? Does it only signpost that precise shade? If so, does the world take a view on whether shades are relative to lighting conditions or surface properties of things? Second, I know you don't believe this because of your comments about taxonomy after my session on truth the other day. So I cannot have followed your intent here. (Ie invoking Husserl to shed light on dissolving my felt tension. If so, it should at least make sense.)<o:p></o:p>

T<o:p></o:p>

From: Peter Lucas<o:p></o:p>

Sent: 05 April 2016 18:17<o:p></o:p>

To: Tim Thornton<o:p></o:p>

Subject: RE: Harmony etc.: having it both ways<o:p></o:p>

Re. occasion sensitivity: I have to say that Travis's point seems correct but fairly trivial – what one is looking for experience to confirm in a biology class and a film set will no doubt be different, but that does not seem to entail that on each occasion there is no specific universal feature that is looked for (nothing that counts as "being-green" in that context). It will not be an "ingredient" in the sense of a part though. The idea that beauty is an ingredient of beautiful things as alcohol is of beer and wine would be rejected by a Platonist, let alone Wittgenstein.<o:p></o:p>

My suggestion is indeed that making universals objects of experience (rather than simply features of judgements) would dissolve the tension (between the idea that experience is richer in content than judgement, and the idea that seeing-as is ubiquitous). However, given where (on my view) the richness lies, it might be more accurate to say that concepts are the shadows of universals.<o:p></o:p>

I agree that the above makes it sound as if the world itself divides itself up into generalities – and that is (a) incompatible with what I said about taxonomy, and (b) pretty implausible (some of Husserl's remarks about essences seem hair-raisingly implausible). But that's why I recommended progressing via Husserl to Heidegger. Husserl establishes the idea that universals are directly present in experience (and it is the task of phenomenology to isolate and map them). Heidegger develops the idea by insisting that the "essences" Husserl claims to identify are historical through and through – the world does not divide itself up into generalities, but nor are "essences" the nominal essences of empiricism (the effects rather than the bases of judgement). The essences we experience grow out of our historical commerce with the bearers of those universals - out of a variety of forms of life. There will no doubt be some dialectical interplay between language / judgement and experience (since our commerce with the bearers of essences will be partly linguistic). But the centre of gravity of Heidegger's attempt to read knowledge and truth back into forms of life ultimately lies in an appeal to experience and historical activity rather than to a set of linguistic practices.<o:p></o:p>

Peter<o:p></o:p>

Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-36469705317893904322016-04-07T13:54:00.001+01:002016-04-07T17:13:57.947+01:00There's always a lump somewhere under the rug

Here is a stab at summarising a thought I seem to return to often.

At the MMU workshop on placebo, Phil Hutchinson sketched an account of a form of intentionality (in the philosophical sense of aboutness) which could be shared by linguistic humans and non-linguistic animals. Subjects have an intentional directedness towards the world if they take in features of the world in experience under an aspect and conceptually, but not necessarily propositionally, structured, he claimed. In response to my question about what sort of entities such concepts were, Michael Loughlin - spotting an implication - spoke forcefully in defence of (Phil and) animals and against my apparent slight. It is merely a philosophical absurdity, he argued, to deny that a dog knows where its bone is eg., left behind the sofa, or is afraid of thunder. Hence I re-summarised what seems to be a problem for everyone in the debate: whatever one can plausibly smooth over always leaves a lump somewhere under the philosophical rug.

If one adopts a full blown Davidsonian views that thought and language are co-dependent, then Lois' cat Snufkin is a thoughtless brute. But this leaves the intellectual 'lump' that Michael was stressing: it certainly seems that he knows some things and not others. He knows where I sleep and hence where is warm once the stove has gone cold at 3am, for example. He knows that he needs to get to the kitchen to be fed.

But if one takes these examples as the starting place and grants them the obvious interpretation, smoothing over the worry of denying animal thought, then a lump springs up elsewhere. If Snufkin can think then he can think thoughts. But if so, what thoughts does he think? He knows hence thinks that he is fed in a particular room: the kitchen, I might say. But does he know he is fed in the kitchen, ie. the room in which we, his owners, cook? Or does he think of it as, say, the most northerly room in the house? Or (demonstratively) that! room? But if so, what is his understanding of 'room'? And if not room then place? If so what is the geometry of places he grasps? In general, under what aspects or concepts or Fregean senses does he think any of this? There seems to be no principled way to ascribe intensional distinctions to Snufkin (hence distinguishing between thinking of the room as the kitchen and as the most northerly one) because he cannot help out linguistically. But then the transition from his thinking to his thinking specific thoughts breaks down. He thinks, but we cannot begin to say what he thinks.

A third possibility is to try to outline a primitive form of telic directedness, short of full blown thought (eg the aim of full blown teleosemantics) but richer than mere cause and effect (Dan Hutto pressed this idea on me once.) Such a position might be an explanatory stepping stone to full blown conceptually structured thoughts. One might argue that there must have been some such stage in evolutionary history. But that doesn't solve the problem of now describing the states of telic directedness. Use of 'concept' for example is illicit given its original home in articulating propositional form.

Hence whatever justification there is for irritation towards philosophers denying that animals have thoughts, that doesn't solve the problem of saying what they have if they do have thoughts.

(My own preference is to think that the ascription of thoughts has its primary application with linguistic creatures whose thoughts have propositional structure for the reason hinted at in Philosophical Investigations §445 and Davidson's roughly parallel account in his paper 'What is present to the mind?'and hence are, of necessity, conceptually articulated. It is a contingent fact that we can self ascribe such states but not that they have the satisfaction conditions they do. This is our vocabulary for discussing intentional states. It is also of some use with some animals. To deny that animals have thoughts would thus be to deny that it had the use it does have. But the usual distinctions that comprise the whole framework do not apply well to animals. We should not, however, boggle over what they are really thinking.)Tim Thorntonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-21696557872070000722016-04-05T11:44:00.002+01:002016-04-06T12:17:18.529+01:00Placebo Workshop MMU

I have spent the day at a workshop on placebo organised at MMU by Phil Hutchinson and Michael Loughlin. I came to the workshop because it is an area about which I know nothing but obviously ought to.

Dan Moerman kicked off and pushed a particular minimal line. Placebos are inert substances. So although they seem sometimes to have effects, it isn't because of the placebo because they are, by definition, inert. So why? He suggested that this might be a matter of regression to the mean because of homeostatic mechanisms. Or natural history: the resolution of viral colds in about a week. But these are some cases which do not reduce to those. Since in his phrase 'there is never nothing going on' in such cases he suggests that there is a 'meaning reaction'.

He then proceeded to outline his favourite dozen or so published studies of meaning responses. These included cases where cases where patients were given doses of pain killers, some knowing and some not. In such a case, there was no placebo and hence could be no placebo effect. But there was a meaning response. In other cases, a drug that blocks opiates also blocked meaning-response reductions in pain, too. Perhaps most helpful for me was a study in which stomach ulcers were cured through a meaning response. In other words meaning responses (or placebo effects if one speaks that way) need not be merely mental.

Catherine Blease extracted some ideas of what placebos and placebo effects might be from the recent philosophy of science literature. She favoured an idea based, I think, on an expectation response and then outlined an evolutionary theoretical account of why there might be such a response based on the idea that an evolutionarily selected mechanism connected to status detection and requests for help. I wasn't sure whether this second element of the talk was supposed to be an independent explanation of an assumed concept or whether, additionally, it served as a condition of adequacy of any definition of placebo that such an account must be possible: an expression of a prior metaphysical commitment. Perhaps it didn't matter.

David Teira asked whether the relevant contributions of different elements of the placebo effect could be measured, contrasting merely being on a waiting list, receiving a sham treatment, and receiving such a treatment with additional interpersonal factors. The gist of the presentation was that this could only be researched by a RCT in which social factors could be standardised. But from any perspective on meaning, there are reasons to hold this cannot be done. I was left with a kind of confusion about how surprising this should seem. It seemed to me that it relied on an implicit comparison between placebos and drugs and hence deploying the methods for assessing the latter to the former. But one might think of placebo effects merely negatively: as what disrupts the drug treatment RCT not as a something with a general pattern to be tracked. (I don't think that there could be a RCT about the reasons why relationships break up. No talk of 'the reasons' would imply that they should generalise.)

Phil Hutchinson gave a paper which connected the placebo response to emotions. Both of which were meaning responses (he cited Moerman) pitched at a level higher than merely brute causation but lower than fully propositionally thought. One motivation was to avoid the worry that that latter position ruled out animal emotion. His positive suggestion was that there could be a middle ground in which humans or animals 'take in' the world but short of propositional thought. This had conceptual structure and involved taking it in under aspects. I had all the usual worries. What kind of concepts are involved given that various intensional differences won't be available? And what is the aspect under which animals and people see the world if not ordinary concepts? All of this was more puzzling because Phil denied that thoughts have propositional structure. So I was less clear as to what analytic role talk of 'concepts' played.

An enjoyable day wrapped up with pleasant conversation over a beer in a micro pub, sadly a sweaty dash from the station afterwards.

Tim Thorntonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-86435322723520292782016-04-01T12:10:00.001+01:002016-04-01T12:10:39.541+01:00Conference Announcement - Montgomery and Me"Dear Colleague,

We are delighted to announce the attached conference hosted by the Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice and the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Oxford

Confirmed Keynote speakers are

· Baroness Hale, Deputy President of the Supreme Court and one of the Montgomery judges · Professor Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine, Oxford University · Professor Jonathan Herring, Professor of Law, Oxford University

The conference aims to raise awareness of the importance of the Supreme Court Montgomery ruling on consent in healthcare and medicine

We would be very grateful if you would circulate the announcement through your own networks and forward this email to any of your colleagues to whom it may be of interest

Many thanks Jenette Sefton VBP Website Manager

Professor Bill Fulford Director of The Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice, St Catherine's College, Oxford; Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Mental Health, University of Warwick

Professor Ashok Handa Director of Surgical Education, University of Oxford; Co-Director of The Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice, St Catherine's College, Oxford."Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-57951937803448244252016-03-23T12:21:00.000+00:002016-04-05T14:34:14.067+01:00Travis on seeing aspects

Two months of not being able to think or write (and making very slow progress on a chapter about the differences between McDowell and Wittgenstein on the harmony of thought and reality) may be coming to an end in some conversations with Peter Lucas initially inspired by a paper on aspect perception by Charles Travis called 'Suffering intentionally?'.

Here's a naïve way of thinking why Travis' take on aspect perception might be interesting. The duck-rabbit is an ambiguous figure and one can see it as a duck or as a rabbit (and as a duck-rabbit, a Jastrow figure etc etc). One can see that it is all these things too. But it is also possible to experience changes in the aspect seen, perhaps best expressed by the spontaneous exclamation "Now it's a duck!". Given that, obviously (in two senses of that word), the figure does not itself change, it seems that the perceptual experience must change in some other way. Whilst Wittgenstein criticises the explanatory resources of any shifting inner image with differing 'organisation', it is tempting to think that there is an innocent account of the organisation of experience in which different elements of one's conceptual repertoire are drawn on in the structure of experience itself when one takes in the differing aspects.

In the philosophy of science, NR Hanson concludes that all seeing is conceptually-articulated seeing-as. Stephen Mulhall claims that the point of the discussion of cases of changes in aspect is to illustrate the general nature of continuous aspect perception where the latter characterises our normal immediate response to words and to the world. I've never liked this because it seems to me that Wittgenstein makes it clear that the experience of aspect perception is contingent. It would be possible to be aspect-blind – ie not see shifting aspects even whilst able to judge that there is a duck and rabbit image in the picture – and hence changing aspects do not highlight the general nature of thought's bearing on the world. Still, it is tempting to think that whatever is going on in aspect changes is a matter of the nature of the content of the visual experience. And hence it seems necessary to think that visual experience has some representational content to accommodate aspect changes. Travis famously rejects that claim, however, so what can he say about this?

Having sketched Wittgenstein's rejection of an inner image to explain things, with the thought: 'The inner image offers no better candidate for what a shift in looks consists in than the Necker does itself. It makes no progress.' He gives part of his own positive view.

On my understanding of the Necker (perhaps not Wittgenstein's) what changes in a shift is what is seen, 'see' here a straightforward perceptual verb, its object thus something there for one to see. For what I see to change here would then be for there to be a change in uptake – in what, there anyway to be seen, impressed me, was registered – under those special conditions the Necker poses, in which taking in one thing precludes taking in another. If this view of the Necker is correct, then I may say, 'I see the A-cube', if that is what I am doing, using 'see' as a straightforward perceptual verb. [ibid 51]

The first element of this is that Travis offloads the two aspects onto a feature of the world: the ambiguity of the picture. This stems from something I have often forgotten:

The thing to remember is that the rabbit, the duck, the tiger or the yacht difficult to pick out among the mass of dots, are, first of all, images in pictures, and, second, things which are there to be seen. [ibid: 48]

We are not talking about seeing actual ducks and rabbits. In this context it may seem illicit to appeal to the intentional properties of pictures but I don't think it is. Pictures only depict on the basis of background practices – as Wittgenstein stresses using examples of signposts – but assuming those practices, then there are looks or appearances there to be noticed (for those with eyes to see).

So the first clue to an account of aspect perception which denies that perceptual experiences have content is that there is ambiguity in what is there in the world to be seen. The pattern of lines making up the Necker cube or the duck rabbit is there to be seen but so is the image / picture of a cube, duck or rabbit. The duck-rabbit really does look like a duck and look like a rabbit. Both of those looks or appearances are there in the cunningly constructed figure and so both are there to be seen.

Two (related) things are distinctive about the Necker (and the duck–rabbit, the black/white cross, etc.). First, while it provides us two different things to see, it does this while occupying a given location, and providing us the same thing at that location to be seen (or missed) no matter which of the two options we take up. At that location is a pattern of lines. It remains the same where we see the A-cube and where we see the B-cube. And (unless we miss it, hence see neither cube) that occupant of the location is something we do see throughout. [ibid: 52]

But that is only part of the solution because it has yet to accommodate the fact that, at any particular instant, the visual experience of looking at such figures is not ambiguous. The figure is experienced as a duck (not that Travis deploys the word 'as' to mark this). The passage continues:

Second, in this case, seeing the one thing (the A-cube, say) excludes seeing the other. The exclusion lies in the seeing: what is there to be seen leaves either option open. So the question is how seeing can impose a choice between these two. Here, clearly, uptake is all. Our responses to what we are presented with visually must choose what kind of visual experience we have, or what it is of. Without varying what we are presented with, our responses, or uptake, might make what we see either of two things. [ibid: 52]

Given that the worldly object does not change, the change has to lie on the side of the subject or agent in their 'uptake', or in what they 'register'. But this idea is also put under tension in Travis' account because he stresses here, as in a number of other papers, a distinction between seeing construed as a perceptual verb and seeing-that as an expression of thought or judgement.

But, as Frege noted (1897: 149; 1918: 61), 'see' has non-perceptual uses. When we say, for example, 'He sees that that flower has five petals' (one of Frege's examples), 'see' is not used to report perceptual awareness. One way to see this is to note that, while the petals are on the flower in the garden, and from thence form images on retinas – they are that sort of thing – that the flower has five petals is not in the garden. Nor is it on the kitchen table. It is not the sort of thing to be located, a fortiori, to form images on retinas. Rather, it is the sort of thing one recognises by exercising capacities of thought. In thought, one can represent the flower as falling under a certain generality; as being a certain way there is for a flower to be – five-petalled. [ibid: 46]

Elsewhere, he suggests that 'recognition' is ambiguous between two senses. One is to re-cognise the same individual. The other is to make a judgement that an item is sufficiently alike others to count as an instance of a generality. Again, these divide between perceptual and non-perceptual seeing.

The distinction between perceptual seeing and thought or judgement seems threatened by cases of aspect perception.

As I read Wittgenstein, he is developing reasons for caution in how we appeal to responses here, or in just what in responses might do that selecting which, patently, is done. Where 'see as', read non-perceptually, adds something to what would be said here in the simple 'see', prima facie, at least, that something is not something appeal to which would do the needed selecting. So, for example, I may see how it could be a diagram of an A-cube, or see it to be, or see it as one (as Sid may see Vic as a rival). But that sort of uptake, if it belongs to what is added in seeing-as – an addition purely in thought, on a par with recognising what I see as the cube on the exam yesterday – cannot be what distinguishes seeing an A-cube from seeing a B-cube in looking at a Necker. If uptake does the choosing, then I see the A-cube just where I am responsive in a given way to what I see. For me, things are, visually, just as they would be in seeing the A-cube. Such is an attitude on my part. But it is not the same as seeing that such-and-such, nor seeing the Necker as such-and-such, where 'see-as' does not speak of perceptual awareness. [ibid: 52]

The most obvious ideas for an uptake, for what is made of a visual experience, is a form of judgement or thought (and hence the second form of recognition). But that cannot be the distinction between the two aspects as one can judge that the duck-rabbit can be seen as a duck even whilst having the rabbit aspect. Subsequent judgement of that sort cannot explain how the aspect is fixed at any given moment. In aspect perception it seems that the experience is a matter of object perception not of judgement.

In fact, contrary to popular usage, Travis doesn't use 'seeing-as' to signal aspect perception. He suggests instead (aside from some cases of illusion) that seeing-as denotes the judgement or thought made on the basis of a properly visual experience.

Obviously, though, Wittgenstein is not thinking of such uses [ie. cases of illusion] of 'see as' (whether he allows them or not). The particular case he mentions is seeing the rabbit–duck as a rabbit. This is not to be a matter of seeing the rabbit-likeness. It is not a matter of visual awareness. So it is not to be classed with seeing convex as concave; nor with the sort of Necker-like switch one experiences when he finally gets what he knows ought to be a rabbit–duck to look like the rabbit, and not the duck. So, presumably, it is something which may occur or not no matter which way the picture looks to the viewer at the moment. Someone might say, for example, 'The funny thing about this rabbit picture is that, sometimes, if you screw your eyes up right, it looks just like a duck-picture.' Someone who said that would be one who took the picture for, classified it as, a rabbit picture. This, of course, is a way of thinking of it, and not a form of visual awareness. [ibid: 57]

Given that neither seeing that nor seeing as will do to mark the nature of the uptake that transforms a properly visual experience, it is hard to know how that notion can be characterised. But if I follow the line of thought, this is part of the point.

It is thus, I think, that the Necker and its kin serve as a stepping stone to a range of further cases. Of some of these, at least, Wittgenstein makes the following remark:
Here one must guard against thinking in traditional psychological categories – say, decomposing experience into seeing and thought; or things of that sort. (LW I 542)
This 'here' refers to a particular kind of case (or several). It is not as though, for Wittgenstein, Frege was wrong to distinguish between seeing and thinking as he did. An ordinary case of seeing is just that, seeing. It is not thinking. Its objects are fundamentally different: in one case, a pig chewing turnips (an episode taking place at a particular location in history); in the other that the pig is chewing turnips, something without location, either temporal or spatial (though what it represents as some given way is the way things are at a time, and, perhaps, a place). But there are special cases of the use of 'see' such that something speaks in favour of regarding them as perceptual uses, something in favour of regarding them as not perceptual; and in such cases, Wittgenstein suggests, the urge to choose should sometimes be resisted. [ibid: 52-3]

One such example is seeing a similarity between two faces which Travis suggests is a matter of seeing a look which a face can have, something there to be seen. Is the difference between seeing and not seeing that look a difference in visual experience? Travis suggests that there are reasons for answering both yes and no. He suggests that to represent what is seen may involve a kind of distortion, not just sketching again the two faces in question. It will involve a representation that has to be understood a particular way: a mark of judgement or thought. Such seeing not only registers what is visually there but also brings conceptual generalities to bear. And yet it seems as though the look itself is directly visually present as an object. It distorts Frege's distinction.

Still I am confused by the nature of the uptake needed since any attempt to fill it out seems destined to tip it into non-perceptual seeing that. There is one further example: staring at a kitchen counter and not seeing some keys there and then suddenly noticing them. Although this thus allows subsequent judgements or thoughts, Travis comments that 'my new awareness is just of what it is that history furnishes to do the instancing'. This makes this a case of perceptually seeing. But what is the difference between not seeing and then seeing the keys in this case? What is the uptake captured in the 'new awareness' given that it is not framing judgements?

It now seems to me that Mulhall and Hanson offer an explanation of aspect-seeing which overly domesticates the phenomenon. Indeed, a feature of their accounts is that it is ubiquitous. Travis, correctly in my view, suggests that it is a special case and also offers a kind of explanation of why it is, pre-philosophically, an odd experience. The sense that there has been both a change and no change. But it is less clear what his account of the phenomenon itself is.

Travis, C. (2015) 'Suffering intentionally?' in Campbell, M. & O'Sullivan, M. (eds.) Wittgenstein and Perception, London: RoutledgeTim Thorntonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-63205160238366664162016-01-12T15:23:00.001+00:002016-01-12T15:23:35.944+00:0018th INPP conference: Psychopathology of the Present: theory and practice. São Paulo (Brazil), November 3rd to 5th, 2016

Here is a link to this year's International Conference on Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology. Its theme/ title is Psychopathology of the Present: theory and practice.

São Paulo (Brazil), November 3rd to 5th, 2016.Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-18332603129328826002016-01-12T11:33:00.001+00:002016-01-12T11:37:42.802+00:00International Graduate Conference in Philosophy 2016: Madness, Disorder, and Society, University of EssexAnother conference announcement, this time sent by Robert Chapman at Essex. The website is here.

International Graduate Conference in Philosophy 2016: Madness, Disorder, and Society

We are pleased to announce that the theme for this year's Essex International Graduate Conference in Philosophy will be 'Madness, Disorder and Society'. The conference seeks to bring together different philosophical perspectives on madness and disorder, especially when considered in their social contexts. It will be held on 7 May 2016, and keynote addresses will be given by Derek Bolton (Kings College London) and Lorna Finlayson (University of Essex).
Location: University of Essex, Colchester
Date: 7 May 2016

Keynote speakers
Professor Derek Bolton (Kings College London)
Dr Lorna Finlayson (University of Essex)

Call for papers

The mad have always challenged society. Beginning in the 1960s, however, the anti-psychiatry movement began to systematically confront psychiatric institutions and their wider social contexts by raising what were essentially philosophical questions. This movement challenged the validity of psychiatric diagnosis, the purported boundaries between the sane and the insane, and the very idea of mental illness.
In turn, psychiatry hit back, adopting a biomedical, evidence-based approach and an ever-increasing standardisation of psychiatric classifications. This has given rise to a new paradigm regarding how we understand the mad and the disordered, and today there are now more psychiatric classifications than ever before.
Nonetheless, in more recent years the neurodiversity movement has called for a full affirmation of a wide array of natural variance in human functioning. This more radical move challenges deeper assumptions regarding both what it means to be human, and in turn to function or flourish as such, in a way that may undermine even the biomedical approach designed to avoid these very issues.
From a more top-down perspective, further questions arise. Most notably, if we are mistaken in some way, about the pathological status of the mad and disordered, this further calls into question the status of those considered normal. From Nietzsche to critical theory, thinkers have suggested that it may in fact be that society is sick, and that at least some of those who fall outside its norms may have good reason to do so.
Lastly, on the ground level, an ever-increasing number of dangerous designer drugs and bizarre therapies are now produced and sold in order to restore those on the outskirts back to the realm of normalcy. This raises yet further ethical questions regarding both the treatment of those considered mad or disordered, and in turn the institutions that profit from them.
We seek high quality abstracts (200-500 words) which speak to the conference themes. Topics could include, but are not limited to:

Topics in the analytic philosophy of psychiatry

Foucaultian perspectives on madness

Neurological difference in Classical and non-Western philosophy

Psychiatric models for understanding society and/or social critique

Social Pathologies

The rise of neurodiversity

Phenomenological approaches to madness and disorder

Relevant topics in medical ethics (e.g. regarding anti-depressants, etc.)

Autonomy, responsibility, and mental disorder

Feminist perspectives on mental disorder

Freud and Nietzsche on civilisation and its discontents

We will accept papers from current or recently completed graduate students working in philosophy. Interdisciplinary work is encouraged, although theses must, ultimately, be of a philosophical nature. Abstracts and questions should be sent email@example.com by 12:00pm on 10 February 2016.
Location and accessibility
The conference takes place at our University's Colchester Campus. Colchester is an hour away from London by train.
Deadline for applications: 12.00pm, 10 February 2016
Contact: firstname.lastname@example.com

Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-23284784440320797082016-01-06T12:42:00.002+00:002016-01-06T12:44:21.981+00:00Conference - Does the philosophy of psychiatry need a metaphysics? 3rd June, University of Lancaster

Here is notice from Dr Rachel Cooper of a conference at the University of Lancaster and also, for those in the neighbourhood, a preliminary reading group.

Conference - Does the philosophy of psychiatry need a metaphysics? 3rd June

Much recent work in the philosophy of psychiatry has presupposed some metaphysical framework or other (eg pragmatism, realism, a McDowellian or Wittgensteinian approach). This conference brings together the authors of a number of influential recent books to consider the extent to which work in the philosophy of psychiatry requires the assumption of a metaphysical framework. Speakers will speak from Wittgensteinian, McDowellian, Realist and Pragmatist perspectives. The following speakers have agreed to participate:

Prof Derek Bolton (KCL) (author of Mind, Meaning and Mental Disorder, 1996)
Dr Rachel Cooper (Lancaster) (author of Classifying Madness, 2005)
Prof Tim Thornton (UCLAN) (author of Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry, 2007)
Prof Peter Zachar (Auburn) (author of A Metaphysics for Psychopathology, 2014).

The aim of the conference is to consider whether the key claims of each writer could have been made without the controversial metaphysical assumptions that they in fact employ.
Work in the philosophy of psychiatry is perhaps marked more by metaphysical disagreements than is work in the philosophy of many other special sciences. However, similar issues have also arisen in other areas. Professor John O'Neill (Manchester) will act as a commentator and speak about the ways in which disagreements regarding basic metaphysics have impacted on the areas in which they work (environmental philosophy).

Reading group

The associated reading group will read the books that will be discussed (having read the books won't be essential for understanding the conference, but will make it better). To get through the books we need to get going! This term we will be reading Peter Zachar's book A Metaphysics of Psychopathology, and Tim Thornton's book Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry. We'll meet on Fridays at 3pm in County South B35 (starting 15th Jan). For Friday 15th Jan we'll be reading the introduction, and Ch 1 and Ch 2 of Zachar's book. (you can get these chapters from Google books)

Rachel Cooper
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
email@example.com Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-47129924774702736072015-12-15T08:49:00.001+00:002015-12-15T09:01:09.743+00:00The cost of the 'Question concerning technology'

At a phenomenology reading group yesterday there was a surprisingly positive reception for Martin Heidegger's Question concerning technology. Within a community of health researchers, one reason for this seemed to be a kind of anti-scientistic suspicion of the overuse of an impersonal technological approach to patients. Heidegger's suspicion of modern technology's view of the world as merely a kind of resource resonated with worries about modern medicine. The mood that resonated is expressed in the snide final sentence of the description of the role of the Rhine in contemporary thinking.

What the river is now, namely, a water power supplier, derives from out of the essence of the power station. In order that we may even remotely consider the monstrousness that reigns here, let us ponder for a moment the contrast that speaks out of the two titles, "The Rhine" as dammed up into the power works, and "The Rhine" as uttered out of the art work, in Holderlin's hymn by that name. But, it will be replied, the Rhine is still a river in the landscape, is it not? Perhaps. But how? In no other way than as an object on call for inspection by a tour group ordered there by the vacation industry. [Heidegger 1977: 5]

But it seemed to me that that the cost of this reassurance was high: his suspicion not, I think, of scientism but of science itself. It is suggested here:

It remains true, nonetheless, that man in the technological age is, in a particularly striking way, challenged forth into revealing. That revealing concerns nature, above all, as the chief storehouse of the standing energy reserve. Accordingly, man's ordering attitude and behavior display themselves first in the rise of modern physics as an exact science. Modern science's way of representing pursues and entraps nature as a calculable coherence of forces. Modern physics is not experimental physics because it applies apparatus to the questioning of nature. Rather the reverse is true. Because physics, indeed already as pure theory, sets nature up to exhibit itself as a coherence of forces calculable in advance, it therefore orders its experiments precisely for the purpose of asking whether and how nature reports itself when set up in this way. ... The modern physical theory of nature prepares the way first not simply for technology but for the essence of modern technology. [ibid: 21]

(There is also a lovely distinction between history and chronology:

But after all, mathematical physics arose almost two centuries . before technology. How, then, could it have already been set upon by modern technology and placed in its service? The facts testify to the contrary. Surely technology got under way only when it could be supported by exact physical science. Reckoned chronologically, this is correct. Thought historically, it does not hit upon the truth. [ibid: 21-2] )

If I follow the broad picture, the way in which the world reveals itself to us in the modern era, the era of both modern science and industrial production, manifests the essence of technology. That essence is the form that the world takes for us. Further, although Heidegger thinks that there is something wrong with this way, what is wrong is not a matter of falsity. Truths are revealed to us through the technological gaze. One thing wrong seems to be that this way of understanding the world excludes all others. From within it, it seems that this is the only way to latch onto the world. It takes a Heidegger to spot, because of clues still present and hinted at in a line from Holderlin, that this is not so. A poetic revealing of the world, by contrast, permits the idea that still other ways may be available.

The logic of the passage about science seems to be that what is wrong in the way the world is revealed to us through the conceptual spectacles of the essence of technology is already present in the way that natural science takes the world to fit the realm of mathematicised natural law. So if there were a way to step aside from a technological gaze it would involve rejecting the rise of scientific accounts of nature. Heidegger does not seem to reject merely a philosophical addition to science: the scientistic assumption that there is no more to nature than natural science reveals. It seems that with the sentence "Modern science's way of representing pursues and entraps nature as a calculable coherence of forces" that science itself is already at fault.

This may all be my misunderstanding but if not it seems that the cost of the framework that Heidegger offers to my colleagues is too high. As well as rejecting a scientific assumption that the world is merely the disenchanted realm science describes, we have also to reject its disenchanted descriptions of the disenchanted bits of the world described despite the truth that seems to inhere in them. So scientific medicine would have to be thrown out wholesale rather than merely put to the service of person centred care.

I also wonder what the marks of someone who had achieved the view Heidegger points towards would be. It was, apparently, there in the poetic response to the world of the ancient Greeks and their wholehearted embrace of art not as a mere cultural industry. For them, a life of silver chalice making perhaps. But what would it be now?

Heidegger, M. (1977) 'The question concerning technology' in Heidegger, M. The question concerning technology, and other essays. New York: Harper & RowTim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-63982196108223389802015-12-09T08:34:00.000+00:002016-04-18T16:05:23.919+01:00Missed link to RDoCMy Frontiers paper (2015) 'Against explanatoryminimalism in psychiatry' Frontiers of Psychiatry 6: 171 is now out in proper format. But I realise that I missed a trick by not connecting it to issues raised in particular by Steve Hyman's Oxford lectures last month: the rise and rise of RDoC. This was suggested to me in an email over the weekend by a psychiatrist:

"Hi Tim,

I came across a copy of your recent paper "Against explanatory minimalism in psychiatry." As I am not trained in philosophy, parts of it definitely "went over my head." But, it seems to be quite relevant to a contemporary problem in American mental health research. That is, the National Institute of Mental Health is very focused on a neuroscientific model of mental health, and more specifically the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework:

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-priorities/rdoc/index.shtml

This is controversial because it is impacting the types of projects that are and are not funded by NIMH, independent of scientific merit as determined by the review panels. Although not explicitly mentioned in your paper, the topic of your paper seems quite timely and relates to very pragmatic issues that is already having a profound long-term effect on psychiatric research. The RDoC framework is shaping the types of questions people are training to answer – with a huge emphasis on the "lower" levels of analysis, such as genetics/genomics, biomarkers, and at best, neural circuits, and much less on the actual lived-experience of people with mental illnesses."Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-70831908597435169882015-12-01T08:33:00.000+00:002015-12-01T12:18:34.671+00:00VivasI have a couple of PhD vivas this week (and a third where my role is merely chair) and getting home after the first, which had a happy outcome and went well by all the usual standards, I was as bad tempered as, on reflection, I always am. Given that they simply comprise a friendly questioning conversation, why should that be? Perhaps it's because they are a disturbing parody of an academic conversation.

A fellow philosopher reported on Facebook last year that she had been asked a question at a conference which began: "I want to re-ask an earlier question but more aggressively…" What possible role could aggression have in academia, she wondered. Clearly it shouldn't have any but I think I can see why it might seem to have one.

On the assumption that asking philosophical questions is a matter of weighing reasons for beliefs, and assuming that we don't have a general theory of good and bad reasons (logic only goes so far), then one must accord them weight them 'from within' for which process a characteristic experience is an inner exclamation of 'But that's a terrible reason!'. In polite conversation and said of someone else's commitment – rather than the abstract possibility of a reason – saying that would sound, and possibly be, aggressive. In academia, between equals it wouldn't be or even sound so. (There really is no need for aggression in academia.) But because of the power imbalance in a viva such an expression is something to be avoided with a potentially nervous PhD candidate. So part of the stress of the viva is that a commitment to exploring reasons brings with it characteristic experiences of bad reasons (as well as good, but they are easy) which have then constantly to be masked. For two hours.

Second, I take my role in a viva to be primarily exploring the student's reasons for saying and doing what he or she has in the thesis not simply imposing my views of what he/she ought. It is often a matter of exploring the costs of adopting particular views. Sometimes this leads to agreement on a matter. In other cases, not and the prospect of suggested corrections to the thesis. But in a number of cases, even after some iterations, one doesn't ground out the issue and, practically in the circumstances, the only thing to do is let the matter drop. A PhD is, after all, merely an academic apprenticeship. But as part of a conversation aimed at getting at the truth, such lacunae are hugely frustrating. So as well as letting the particular issue drop, one has also to hide the frustration of doing this.

On reflection, though, that's not the best way to describe things. If the conversation were simply 'aimed at getting at the truth' then one would usually also offer solutions. That's what I'd do at a conference or in the pub. Although I sometimes do this in vivas in order to ask a further question, as an end in itself, it is not very helpful as part of an exam. So again there's an internal tension in this case between the apparent regulative ideal of the conversation – seeking out the truth – and its role as an exam.

I noticed yesterday that my fellow examiner referred in media res to the 'interesting conversation' we were all 'having together'. But it is a weird parody of a conversation leaving no one satisfied.Tim Thorntonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-28041178367639077402015-11-25T15:15:00.001+00:002015-11-25T15:19:22.949+00:00Against explanatory minimalism in psychiatryMy anti-John Campbell paper is out in a very preliminary form with Frontiers of Psychiatry, just a couple of days after being accepted.

Interesting (and worth bearing in mind in the future) that one gets to see who reviewed it.

So thanks to:

Daniel D. Hutto, University of Wollongong, Australia
Dawa Ometto, Utrecht University, Netherlands Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-29113060806541584502015-11-18T16:51:00.002+00:002015-11-19T17:19:33.550+00:00Kendler's 'Toward a limited realism for psychiatric nosology based on the coherence theory of truth'

Some of our philosophy and mental health students have been looking at Kenneth Kendler's paper 'Toward a limited realism for psychiatric nosology based on the coherence theory of truth' prompting me to look at it. It is odd. I think my confusion is more psychological than philosophical, however.

The paper unleashes the meta-induction. Most past theories have proved to be false and most theoretical terms did not successfully refer. Thus, by induction, most of our current theories will prove to be false and have non-referring theoretical terms. What makes this a particularly poignant argument is that it deploys a form of inference widely assumed to play a key role in science against science. Kendler summarises this thus:

In discussions for and against scientific realism, strong support for the instrumentalist position has come from what has been called the 'pessimistic induction' (PI) argument (Psillos, 1996). Considering the history of scientific theories in any particular discipline (e.g. astronomy, genetics, physics, psychology), over time, older theories have continuously been replaced by newer ones. This in fact often defines scientific progress. Thus, sitting in the present, we can look back at earlier theories, since replaced, and see entities and processes referred to by these theories that are no longer considered to be real. For example, planets do not travel in epicycles as they circle the earth, ether does not exist and inheritance is not (typically) Lamarckian in nature. [Kendler 2015: 1115]

He then goes on to list a number of non-referring theoretical terms from the history of science originally set out by Larry Laudan. This then motivates an application of the meta-induction to psychiatry. Kendler comments:

Anyone with a smattering of knowledge of psychiatric history would have little problem in creating a list of 12 abandoned psychiatric disorders that at one time were widely used and considered true but are no longer considered useful and would perhaps be judged to be 'false'. One such list would be: (i) paraphrenia; (ii) neurasthenia; (iii) phrenzy; (iv) periodic hallucinatory insanity; (v) drapetomania (Cartwright, 2004); (vi) monomania (Esquirol, 1845); (vii) lypemania (Esquirol, 1845); (viii) demonomania (Esquirol, 1845); (ix) anxiety-happiness psychosis (Leonhard, 1979); (x) cataphasia, (Leonhard, 1979); (xi) confabulatory euphoria (Leonhard, 1979); and (xii) hysteria. The PI argument applied to current psychiatric disorders argues strongly against what might be called a 'hard' realism model for psychiatric disorders. [ibid: 1116]

In the face of this Kendler makes two suggestions. The first is that whilst particular diagnostic categories may prove mistaken, the idea that there are some real psychiatric illnesses looks more secure. 'we can be much more confident about the existence of the liquid than the particular bottles in which it is now residing'. Strangely there does not seem to be much of an argument for this and to defuse the meta-induction. I am sure he is right but I think we need to be told why the inductive inference can rationally be expected to fail on this point. Earlier, in an apparent spirit of fairness, Kendler mentions Putnam's no miracles argument for scientific realism. But he does not mention it again nor does he investigate whether it could apply to some areas of science but not others nor how it intersects with the meta-induction.

Second, he suggests that we should adopt a particular view of truth with respect to psychiatric theory.

The standard approach to truth is the 'correspondence theory', which assumes that a statement (or theory) is true if it corresponds to a stable, mind-independent reality. This is a plausible way to think about the elements of the periodic table, but it is poor way to think about psychiatric disorders. [ibid: 1117]

Again, there is no diagnostic move to explain why the Periodic Table is exempt from the meta-induction and hence merits a correspondence approach. But:

For psychiatric disorders, we need a less ambitious version of reality. A humbler approach can be found in the coherence theory of truth. This theory postulates that something is true when it fits well with the other things we know confidently about the world. [ibid: 1117]

And then a little later we have the application of this to psychiatry:

What do we mean in this metaphorical space when we want to say that a diagnosis is 'real'? Before answering that, let's consider the simpler question: 'What do we mean in this metaphorical space when we want to say that one diagnostic concept is more real than another?' Here, the answer is simple. To be more real means to be connected to more already existing pieces and/or to be connected by stronger strings. So what then do we mean to say a diagnosis is real? We might say it is 'pretty well' connected with the other pieces, that it is 'pretty well' integrated into our accumulating scientific data base. In other words, a diagnosis is real to the degree that it 'coheres' well with what we already know empirically and feel confident about. [ibid: 1117]

The idea seems to be that some areas of reality and some claims as to truth are governed by one kind of truth and others governed by another. Note that this isn't saying that the kinds of facts vary – which one might think for, say, the facts expressed in moral claims by contrast with natural scientific claims – so much as that the kind of truth varies. A redundancy theorist of truth, for example, might, also for example, think that understanding or grasping moral facts requires a special design of mind whilst grasping physical facts does not. Different ontologies, same conception of truth. This is not Kendler's way. The benchmark for psychiatry is just lower/humbler than for chemistry. What it is for something to be true in psychiatry is not just differently constituted (for example in a mind-dependent way) but actually easier. To call something true for psychiatry should involve less than for chemistry.

But the reason my confusion is more psychological than philosophical is that I cannot believe that Kendler really believes any of this. That is, that saying that schizophrenia exists is somehow making a quite different kind of linguistic move (disciplined differently as a move) than saying plutonium exists ie measured against the world differently. Surely he doesn't think that one can just pick theories of truth willy nilly? In reply to a suggestion (by PZ) that this worry presupposes a hostility (by me) to a coherence theory of truth, I do not think so. I would be happy to take a coherence theory seriously - I used to be a Davidsonian, after all - but not a pick and mix attitude to theories of truth. Surely if one thinks a coherence theory is true then it sets the standard for truth, punkt. It doesn't set what one concedes is a lesser standard.

And against what standard could a theory of truth be 'humbler'? Is the truth of the coherence theory of truth itself a matter of correspondence or coherence? My hunch is that talk of 'humbler' implies that Kendler thinks that the truth of this meta-question is really truth as correspondence. But that in turn suggests that truth generally is really correspondence and the local adoption of coherence isn't serious. It's just a way of speaking.

If so, I don't understand why anyone would think that serious worries about the validity of disease categories could be lanced by playing with theories of truth. So at the psychological level, I cannot believe that Kendler really believes in a mere coherence theory of truth and hence I cannot see how that could thus provide genuine solace for real worries about psychiatric taxonomy. That all seems too easy. So why did he write it?

Kendler, K. (2015)'Toward a limited realism for psychiatric nosology based on the coherence theory of truth' Psychological Medicine (2015), 45, 1115–1118Tim Thorntonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-44921672899827890242015-11-06T11:20:00.001+00:002015-11-09T14:34:07.560+00:00Steve Hyman's Loebel Lectures
At the end of the third Loebel lecture by Steve Hyman, the motivation for some of the more radical sounding claims from the second lecture became clearer. The more radical claims included the idea that because decision making processes are subserved by unconscious processes, our sense of agency for such decisions is misleading. (At the workshop I glossed his 'not veridical' as simply false. He flirted instead with incomplete. But I think that 'false' captured the intuition.)

One slide from the second lecture went as follows:

The eliminativist view (self, minds agency as illusion) misses important facts.

Evolution seems to have invested a great deal in our capacity-limited serial processor (consciousness) that serves as an important connector with parallel processing unconscious systems.

Impairment in sense of agency: a toxins stressor

Sense of being controlled: psychosis

Impairment in recognition of minds: autism spectrum

Yet from a neuroscience view, intuitions of eg. of agency, are not veridical. Rather they are proxies for unconscious processes.

Now this starts with a softening move in the comment about evolution. Further, in three cases, a lack of a sense of autonomy or sensitivity to others' agency is pathological. But there is that robust final comment that intuitions are not veridical but proxies for something else.

And this suggests a different reading of the earlier comment about evolution as having provided us with a useful fiction rather than a truthful awareness. Steve suggested I had him right on this.

One example he gave, again before today, was that of unconscious grasp of grammatical rules. He reamarked: "When I am talking, I am not thinking 'now I need a verb'. These systems are not accessible by introspection."

But in my own talk earlier, I argued that the was no problem with high level intentional actions and context coming together to guide lower level basic actions and these being underpinned by motor capacities whose working is not available to consciousness. To take the industry standard example, crossing the road may lead to ironwork-avoiding action but also draw on unconscious adaptation of footfall to cope with slippery leaves. Or to use Steve's own example, in giving a talk about agency I may need to say something about crossing the road. But expressing / exercising that thought can simply draw on unconscious knowledge of grammar. I don't see any threat to agency here.

(It would be revisionary of an understanding of agency that did require that no part of an action was not available to consciousness. But surely there is no reason to think that that is widely held?)

However, today's lecture concerned addiction and offered a kind of Pavlovian story of how dopamine plays a role in training the brain to attend to the scene at hand, as marking that something in the scene is better than expected. This role is then usurped by drugs that mimic that function. The thought as then that because the biochemical explanation explained how it could be that plant extract chemicals could overcome human free choice, this was the correct causal story of what happened. But it is typically not a story that is available to, or even consistent with the rationalising stories told by addicts.

So that was the real context for the rest of the worry that agency is a myth sold to us for evolutionary advantage but not for truth. But it leaves open a much more modest almost disjunctivist possibility. Agency goes wrong in the case of addiction, to be sure, and knowledge of the predicament also goes wrong. That's the bad disjunct. But in the good, there is no inference from the presence of something unconscious to agency's myth.
Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-40875601715194350982015-11-04T17:48:00.002+00:002015-11-19T14:34:36.464+00:00Commentary as pre-prepared anticipation or incoherent ad lib?I am about to go and listen to the second of the 2015 Loebel lectures in Oxford for which I am one of a happy handful of commentators. After the lecture there will be a dinner with my fellows, the distinguished speaker Prof Steve Hyman and the organisers. After that, I doubt that my philosophical brain will be at the height of its powers. (My numbskulls pack up early these days.)

So this prompts the question: should I have guessed what will be said this evening and pre-prepared my commentary due tomorrow (even then, in advance of the final concluding lecture)? Or should I wing it on the morning?

The third option - the Caol Isla option (see 1:55mins-) - is not to be repeated.

I guess, as I sip a pint of Oakham Citra, I have already implicitly made my choice. But I fear that neither option escapes a charge of rudeness.Tim Thorntonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-38039057620265410382015-11-02T15:22:00.001+00:002015-11-09T10:31:18.252+00:00The harmony of thought and reality in McDowell and Wittgenstein

I gave a talk in Utrecht last week and revisited an old interest. How different are McDowell's and Wittgenstein's accounts the 'harmony of thought and reality', in Wittgenstein's phrase? I now think them utterly different and hardly attempting to answer the same question at all, to scratch the same itch. Perhaps the following sketch is now too unfair to McDowell.<o:p></o:p>

We can set the scene with some passages from the middle of the Philosophical Investigations. (In my experience, this is a good way into thinking there is a problem here, needing some sort of response.)<o:p></o:p>

I see someone pointing a gun and say "I expect a report". The shot is fired. - Well, that was what you expected; so did that report somehow already exist in your expectation? [Wittgenstein 1953 §442]<o:p></o:p>

Or is it just that there is some other kind of agreement between your expectation and what occurred; that the noise was not contained in your expectation, and merely supervened when the expectation was being fulfilled? - But no, if the noise had not occurred, my expectation would not have been fulfilled; the noise fulfilled it; it was not an accompaniment like a second guest accompanying the one I expected. [§442].<o:p></o:p>

Was the thing about the event that was not in the expectation too an accident, an extra provided by fate? - But then what was not an extra? Did something of the shot already occur in my expectation? - Then what was extra? for wasn't I expecting the whole shot? [§442]<o:p></o:p>

"The report was not so loud as I had expected." - "Then was there a louder bang in your expectation?" [§442]<o:p></o:p>

"The red which you imagine is surely not the same (the same thing) as the red which you see in front of you; so how can you say that it is what you imagined?" [§443]<o:p></o:p>

Now I don't want to speak for the details of these thoughts, but they suggest to me at least the following problem. How can we account for the connection between the expectation and what fulfilled it given both that we don't want to say that everything in the shot was 'in' the expectation and it seems that if what is in the expectation isn't the very shot then the expectation cannot actually be about the shot that fulfils it? For any content-laden/intentional mental state, what is the connection between it, something mental, and what it is about, something which may be part of the history of actual happenings but then again may not come about?<o:p></o:p>

Generalising from expecting and imagining to thoughts (for convenience) there is, I think, a dilemma. <o:p></o:p>

If the content of true thoughts are constituted the very facts they are about or by some sort of direct and possibly spooky relations to worldly facts, what are the contents of false thoughts? (Such direct relations seem fine for experiences, if we assume experiences have contents and are about things, or for perceptually mediated beliefs but what about future directed thoughts such as expectations?)

If the contents of false thoughts are free-standing internal states (pictures?), how does (true) thought ever bear on / connect to worldly facts? (Cf if understanding a rule is an inner state, how does it connect to later correct moves?) Free standing mental items seem to be no better candidates for carrying thoughts than the ten black suits hanging in my wardrobe. Suits are not about anything.)

McDowell highlights a debt from Mind and World to a Wittgensteinian trusim which, despite being a trusim, prompts the above dilemma.

I find it helpful… to reflect on a remark of Wittgenstein's. 'When we say, and mean, that such-and-such is the case, we - and our meaning - do not stop anywhere short of the fact; but we mean: this - is - so.' [Wittgenstein 1953 §95] Wittgenstein calls this a paradox. That is because, especially in conjunction with the fact that "thought can be of what is not the case", it can prompt a reaction in which our minds boggle over what seems a miraculous power of thinking in the most general sense, in this case meaning what one says, to "catch reality in its net". But Wittgenstein also says, rightly, that the remark "has the form of a truism". We can formulate the point in a style Wittgenstein would have been uncomfortable with: there is no ontological gap between the sort of thing one can mean, or generally the sort of thing one can think, and the sort of thing that can be the case. When one thinks truly, what one thinks is what is the case. So since the world is everything that is the case (as he himself once wrote), there is no gap between thought, as such, and the world. Of course thought can be distanced from the world by being false, but there is no distance from the world implicit in the very idea of thought. [McDowell 1994: 27 italics added]

This sets up the solution that McDowell develops in Mind and World. But I think that it is guided by a number of other prior assumptions.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>

A denial of the 'master thesis': 'that whatever a person has in her mind, it is only by virtue of being interpreted in one of various possible ways that it can impose a sorting of extra-mental items into those that accord with it and those that do not.' [McDowell 1998: 270]

Disjunctivism: perceptual experience is not limited to a highest common factor between veridical and illusory experience. Developed as an interpretation of Wittgenstein's criteria. 'To paraphrase Wittgenstein, when we see that such-and-such is the case, we, and our seeing, do not stop anywhere short of the fact. What we see is: that such-and-such is the case.' [McDowell 1994: 29]

The rational constraint constraint: intentionality is only possible if there is a rational constraint between world and thought.

Theory building a la Sellars' Myth of Jones. Just as Jones theorises about mental states on the basis of utterances, so McDowell is happy to theorise about experiences on the same model. I realise that the word 'theory' here may seem unkind.

This gives an argument for the Mind and World picture which runs as follows:<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>

The very idea of mental states having content requires their rational friction (not merely causal contact) with the world.

Our only understanding of rational relations requires both relata have conceptual structure.

Since experience provides the friction it must have conceptual structure (passively drawn in).

And since experience is – because of the rejection of the master thesis - a kind of direct openness to the world (by contrast, a self-standing configuration in the inner realm) then the world itself must have conceptual structure.

In sum:<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>

In a particular experience in which one is not misled, what one takes in is that things are thus and so. That things are thus and so is the content of the experience, and it can also be the content of a judgement: it becomes the content of a judgement if the subject decides to take the experience at face value. So it is conceptual content. But that things are thus and so is also, if one is not misled, an aspect of the layout of the world: it is how things are. Thus the idea of conceptually structured operations of receptivity puts us in a position to speak of experience as openness to the layout of reality. Experience enables the layout of reality itself to exert a rational influence on what a subject thinks. [McDowell 1994: 26]<o:p></o:p>

There are a number of objections raised to this. I'll list some:<o:p></o:p>

Which concepts passively structure experience? All of them? (Contrast the question for active judgement.)

How can representationalism be combined with disjunctivism? If one thinks that experience has a representational content akin to a kind of unendorsed belief-content then it is tempting to think that both true and false experiences have the same content. But then how can that be reconciled with disjnuctivism which holds that veridical experiences are of a different nature to non-veridical experiences. In recent writing McDowell seems to concede this for the content of the experience but instead distinguish between two ways in which that content is had by the experience. If so, however, the having of the content must be available to the subject otherwise the position falls prey to the very same objections McDowell directs against highest common factor accounts of experience (and 1970s Wittgensteinian accounts of criteria and Brandom).

Is this idealistic? The world = set of true Thoughts. ('my exploitation of Wittgenstein's truism... can indeed be reformulated by saying thought and reality meet in the realm of sense.' [McDowell 1994: 180]) We could grant McDowell his wish to call the world this, or this the world - some men when they hear the bagpipes wail... - but what of the world of things rather than facts?

Unpacking the content of experience as either looking like, or looking as if both fail. (Travis himself locates content only in responses to experience.)

McDowell has retreated from the Mind and World picture in papers such as 'Avoiding the Myth of the Given'. Now the same content is no longer mirrored from thought to experience to world. Thought and world may be the same but they are mediated by a different form of content (intuitional rather than propositional) with only a subset of the concepts available to judgement. But the resulting picture is far from the truism and seems instead aimed at explaining it.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p></o:p>

When one thinks truly, what one thinks is what is the case. So since the world is everything that is the case (as he himself once wrote), there is no gap between thought, as such, and the world. Of course thought can be distanced from the world by being false, but there is no distance from the world implicit in the very idea of thought. But to say there is no gap between thought, as such, and the world is just to dress up a truism in high-flown language. All the point comes to is that one can think, for instance, that spring has begun, and that very same thing, that spring has begun, can be the case. That is truistic… [McDowell 1994: 27]<o:p></o:p>

The truism is explained by the idea that a harmony of thought and language can itself be explained by the idea that the world has the same conceptual structure as thought. German Idealism explains the harmony. Idealism is the price for the explanation.<o:p></o:p>

To repeat, I think that I am now overstating. I'm sure he would say that it doesn't aim to explain the harmony but rather to restate it. Still it is hard to read the conceptual structure of the world as mere truism. (Or rather, one can if one reads the world to be just the set of true thoughts. But that then raises the conncetion between that world and the world of things. And yes, I know, that the later stages of Mind and World citing Evans on non-descriptive senses claim to have solved this. But I don't see it.) So let's look back at Wittgenstein, continuing from where I left off.<o:p></o:p>

"The red which you imagine is surely not the same (the same thing) as the red which you see in front of you; so how can you say that it is what you imagined?" [§443]<o:p></o:p>

But haven't we an analogous case with the propositions "Here is a red patch" and "Here there isn't a red patch"? The word "red" occurs in both; so this word cannot indicate the presence of something red. [§443]<o:p></o:p>

And this harks back to an earlier comment which introduces the phrase 'the harmony of thought and reality':<o:p></o:p>

The agreement, the harmony, of thought and reality consists in this: if I say falsely that something is red, then, for all that, it isn't red. And if I want to explain "red" to someone, in the sentence "That is not red", I do it by pointing to something red. [§429 underline added]<o:p></o:p>

The most obvious difference between McDowell and Wittgenstein here is that McDowell uses truth and agreement to discuss harmony relegating – in accord with disjunctivism – falsity to a subsidiary role where thought can be distanced from reality. By contrast, Wittgenstein takes the harmony to consist in something present in the case of falsity. This leads up to the positive account.<o:p></o:p>

One may have the feeling that in the sentence "I expect he is coming" one is using the words "he is coming" in a different sense from the one they have in the assertion "He is coming". But if it were so how could I say that my expectation had been fulfilled? If I wanted to explain the words "he" and "is coming", say by means of ostensive definitions, the same definitions of these words would go for both sentences. [§444]<o:p></o:p>

But it might now be asked: what's it like for him to come? - The door opens, someone walks in, and so on. - What's it like for me to expect him to come? - I walk up and down the room, look at the clock now and then, and so on. - But the one set of events has not the smallest similarity to the other! So how can one use the same words in describing them? - But perhaps I say as I walk up and down: "I expect he'll come in." - Now there is a similarity somewhere. But of what kind?! [§444]<o:p></o:p>

It is in language that an expectation and its fulfilment make contact. [§445]<o:p></o:p>

What looked like a substantial question about connections is answered by reminders about individuation. We reuse the same language to ascribe propositional attitudes and the facts that satisfy them. Nothing 'makes possible' the normative connection between thought and world. There really isn't any harmony or agreement between thought and reality given that thought is possible at all. I can only conclude that Wittgenstein and McDowell have quite different assumptions about what needs to be solved here. For McDowell, a prior misleading assumption about empiricism and - in this context - disjunctivism queers the pitch.
Tim Thorntonhttp://email@example.com