In Defense of <i>De Se</i> Content

Torre, Stephan

doi:10.1111/phpr.12364

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…The main line of thought of the current paper provides additional motivation for perspectival contents. For recent responses to de se scepticism, see for example Ninan (2016), Torre (2018) and Morgan (forthcoming). 18 For an overview and references see the introduction to García-Carpintero and Kölbel (2008), MacFarlane (2012MacFarlane ( , 2014 and Kölbel (2015a, b if there is an objective content that answers it, and a concrete belief state is an objective belief just if one of its contents is objective.…”

Section: Perspectival Contentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For a summary with useful references, seeFeit and Capone (2013) Cappelen and Dever (2013),Magidor (2015). have recently argued against the need to introduce special de se contents, they are answered byNinan (2016),Torre (2018) and Morgan forthcoming. The extensive literature on relativism versus contextualism also discusses kinds of perspectival content, see e.g Kölbel (2002Kölbel ( , 2003,MacFarlane (2003MacFarlane ( , 2007,Lasersohn (2005),Egan et al (2005),Stephenson (2007),Recanati (2007),Stojanovic (2007),.…”

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Objectivity and Perspectival Content

Kölbel

2019

Erkenn

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What is objectivity? What would it take to have objective representations and do we (humans) have what it takes? This paper aims to contribute to answering these questions. To this end, it isolates one relevant sense of objectivity and proposes a generalization of standard frameworks of representational content in order to engage with the question in a way that is rhetorically fair. Armed with a general conception of perspectival content, taken from the literature on centred or de se content, the paper articulates one necessary condition for objective representation: the possession of objective concepts and therefore objective contents. Two ways of meeting (or approximately meeting) this condition are discussed in an exploratory way.

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Section: Perspectival Contentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Objectivity and Perspectival Content

Kölbel

2019

Erkenn

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“…Mine is not the only recent attempt to revamp arguments for de se exceptionalism. One important feature of my arguments is that they are 'purely informational', and so contrast with some prominent defenses of exceptionalism (notably Ninan, 2016;Torre, 2018) that crucially draw on assumptions about the role of attitudinal content in explaining action. 4 Such assumptions are controver-…”

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De Se Exceptionalism and Frege Puzzles

Shaw¹

2019

Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy

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De se exceptionalism is the view, notably championed by Perry (1979) and Lewis (1979), that our characteristically 'first-personal' ways of thinking about ourselves present unique challenges to standard views of propositional attitudes like belief. Though the view has won many adherents, it has recently come under a barrage of deserved criticism. A key claim of detractors is that classic examples used to motivate de se exceptionalism from de se ignorance or misidentification are nothing more than familiar Frege-puzzles, which raise no issues exclusive to self-directed thought. After reviewing how this simple objection has substantial force against the classic defenses of exceptionalism, I provide new arguments based on cases of pure de se ignorance that avoid the criticism. Afterward, I revisit Lewis's defense of exceptionalism, diagnosing how he arrived at roughly the right conclusions on the basis of an argument that begged critical questions and obscured the representationally unique features of the de se. Everyone intuitively has (at least) two ways of thinking about themselves. This is clearest when someone forgets who they are. An amnesiac Trump might observe himself on television thinking the thought he would express by saying "that man is president." But he may have yet to form the seemingly distinct thought he would express by saying "I am president." Both thoughts appear to be about Trump. But only the second would be held in a characteristically first-personal way. The latter kind of cognition is sometimes termed de se thought. De se thought appears to have some unique properties. Descartes, among others, took it to be epistemically special: self-directed thought was, for him, a special source of irrefragable judgments. But philosophers of language and mind have been drawn to de se thought because it may be semantically special-special in terms of what, or how, it represents. The seminal work of Perry (1979) and Lewis (1979) made the influential case that de se thought poses a special challenge to our understanding of the representational properties of propositional attitudes like belief or desire-special in the sense that de se attitudes uniquely pose this

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“…Nothing hinges in the preferred use of the terms. For discussion of the relation between indexical thought content and Perry's belief states see Torre (2018).…”

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Conscious perception in favour of essential indexicality

Sebastián¹

2022

Belgrade Philosop Ann

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It has been widely acknowledged that indexical thought poses a problem for traditional theories of mental content. However, recent work in philosophy has defied this received view and challenged its defenders not to rely on intuitions but rather to clearly articulate what the problem is supposed to be. For example, in "The Inessential Indexical", Cappelen and Dever claim that there are no philosophically interesting or important roles played by essential indexical representations. This paper assesses the role of essential indexicality in understanding the content of perception and argues that, if the perceptual experiences of different subjects can have the same phenomenology, and thus share a representational content (phenomenal content)-assumptions shared by a well-established research project, including a wide variety of theories-, then phenomenal content exhibit a particular kind of essential indexicality (perspectival). I also discuss how the argument is immune to Cappelen and Dever's objections to the idea that the content of perceptual experiences is essentially indexical.

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In Defense of De Se Content

Cited by 12 publications

References 23 publications

Objectivity and Perspectival Content

Objectivity and Perspectival Content

De Se Exceptionalism and Frege Puzzles

Conscious perception in favour of essential indexicality

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