Tyler Burge

In this paper I argue against both neuropsychological and cognitive accounts of our grasp of numbers. I show that despite the points of divergence between these two accounts, they face analogous problems. Both presuppose too much about what they purport to explain to be informative, and also characterize our grasp of numbers in a way that is absurd in the light of what we already know from the point of view of mathematical practice. Then I offer a positive methodological proposal about the role that cognitive science should play in the philosophy of mathematics.

The aim of the paper is to present the main conceptions in the contemporary philosophy of mental (mind). The debate is narrated in two ways: The first approach concerns the ontology of mental, with the questions such as: What is the nature of mental?; What is the relation between mental and body?; Is the mental  reducible to its physical basis? The second approach has an epistemological character where especially the problem of self-knowledge in the frame of the discussion between
externalism and internalism is pointed out. The last part of the article gives an evaluation of the actual situation in the philosophy of mind which on the one hand tries to evolve in the direction of cognitive science but on the other hand stays in the frame of the traditional philosophy. The reason of it is the nature of the questions, which cannot be answered only by means of scientific disciplines.
It means that in contrast to the cognitive science the philosophical account of the mind-body problem is the preferred one.


Keywords
Philosophy of mental, (mind), mind-body problem, externalism, internalism, cognitive sciences

How are the contents of our beliefs, our intentions, and other attitudes individuated?  Just what makes our contents what they are? Content externalism,  as Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge, and others have argued, is the position that our contents depend in a constitutive manner on items in the external world, that they can be individuated by our causal interaction with the items they are about.  Content internalism, by contrast, is the position that our contents depend primarily on the properties of our bodies, such as our brains. Internalists, in other words, hold that our contents are narrow, insofar as they locally supervene on the properties of our bodies or brains. In this article surveys the arguments and problems for these contrasting positions.

When Burge uses ‘explication’ (quite often, during the period of interest to me—from the late 70s through to the early 90s, to about the time of ‘Content Preservation’) he means something relatively distinct directed at conceptual clarification and certainly distinct from explanation, he means a parallel form of representation of some material (explicandum) reformed in clarification. In explication’s doing that, as it standardly does, there is a narrowing in the answer as to which materials significantly coordinate. Burge wants to clarify that coordination according to determinations linked with meanings in the abstracted sense cannot be linked with uses coordinating with specifications subject to sorts of rote determinations conventionally applicable to them. This is an example of that limitation corresponding to access to review mentioned above, when Burge wants to guarantee inchoateness, interacting with Burge’s own thesis of common or garden determination in contexts in which hard, external constrictions operate, Burge’s anti-individualistic determinations. Explications usefully rehearse material figured there reviewed as uses but coordinating as contents, in that insulated sense contents are items constituted in that review; uses being subject to hard determinations etc.

The Twin Earth scenario assumes reference to natural kinds is unique and never changes (rigid designation), and that we can give justice to the intuition of reference-permanence and things having a deep structure only by pushing meaning outside the brain or mind (semantic externalism). This, I'll show, doesn't follow. Besides, the intuition itself is misconstrued here. To say the term “water” expressed a thought or concept or belief denoting H2O before its actual discovery around 1750, is to make a claim without real content and be guilty of after-the-fact rationalizing. If anything, Twin Earth undercuts the theory of semantic externalism and its core-notion of rigid designation. A pluralized, descriptivist model of reference, I claim, is a better fit for our scientific data and ordinary intuitions either way.

Descartes was certain that he was thinking and he was accordingly certain that he existed. Like Descartes, we seem to be more certain of our thoughts and our existence than of anything else. What is less clear is the reason why we are thus certain. Philosophers throughout history have provided different interpretations of the cogito, disagreeing both on the kind of thoughts it characterizes and on the reasons for its cogency. According to what we may call the empiricist interpretation of the cogito, I can only claim to be certain of having experiences, and this certainty, as well as that of my own existence, stems from their phenomenal and subjective character. According to rationalist interpretations, on the other hand, I am certain of having some self-reflexive propositional attitudes, and this certainty derives from their rational features. Psychiatric patients suffering from acute forms of depersonalization or of the Cotard syndrome often doubt that they think and exist, and might even believe that they don't. I argue that their study allows us to favor the empiricist interpretation of the cogito.

If you want to understand Tyler Burge's distinction between entitlement and justification, this paper is for you.  Burge first introduced his distinction between epistemic entitlement and epistemic justification in 'Content Preservation' in 1993. He has since deployed the distinction in over twenty papers, changing his formulation around 2009. His distinction and its basis, however, is not well understood in the literature. This chapter distinguishes two uses of 'entitlement' in Burge, and then focuses on his distinction between justification and entitlement, two forms of warrant, where warrants consists in the exercise of a reliable belief-forming competence. Since he draws the distinction in terms of reasons, this chapter brings his account of reasons altogether in one place. The chapter introduces a decision-procedure for classifying warrants as justifications or entitlements. The distinction between justification and entitlement is not the same as the inferential vs. non-inferential distinction. The chapter distinguishes inference from processing, thinking, reasoning, and critically reasoning. Burge's new formulation of the distinction was driven by the recognition of non-accessible modular reasons. Three kinds of access are distinguished.

Kant sometimes compares human beings with animals and angels and grants human beings a middle position. But contrary to what one might expect, his transcendental philosophy does not apply well to animals or angels. The question of whether we share perception with animals has no good answer in his system that has to be taken as a single piece and does not allow for introducing steps of empirical, real developments. Differently from Kant, McDowell does compare human beings with animals, but he is not a transcendental philosopher and his attempts to find support in Kant are problematic. Although McDowell says that concepts go "all the way out" and Kant says the categories go "all the way down," which sounds similar, Kant talks of a priori categories, not empirical concepts. Burge is definitely not a transcendental philosopher like Kant. Up front he strongly relies on empirical studies, especially animal perception. Nevertheless, his quest into mental content introduces first-person perspectives that have a metaphysical flavor, and this makes - at least to me - comparisons with Kant tempting again.

According to the Acceptance Principle, a person is entitled to accept a proposition that is presented as true (asserted) and that is intelligible to him or her, unless there are stronger reasons not to. Burge assumes this Principle and then argues that it has an apriori justification, basis or rationale. This paper expounds Burge's teleological reliability framework and the details of his a priori justification for the Principle. It then raises three significant doubts.

Pictures are 2D surfaces designed to elicit 3D-scene-representing experiences from their viewers. In this essay, I argue that philosophers have tended to underestimate the relevance of research in vision science to understanding the nature of pictorial experience or ‘seeing-in’, to use Richard Wollheim’s familiar expression. Both the deeply entrenched methodology of virtual psychophysics as well as empirical studies of pictorial space perception provide compelling support for the view that seeing-in and seeing face-to-face are experiences of the same psychological, explanatory kind. I also show that an empirically informed account of seeing-in provides resources to develop a novel, resemblance-based account of depiction. According to what I call the deep resemblance theory, pictures work by presenting virtual models of objects and scenes in phenomenally 3D, pictorial space.

Tyler Burge and Crispin Wright distinguish between justification and entitlement. For both entitlement is the new notion. For Burge, entitlement is warrant without reasons. Burge’s account of reasons is explained. For Wright, entitlement is a non-evidential right to claim knowledge of authenticity-conditions. Wright’s account is motivate by warrant transmission failure. Burge and Wright mean different things by entitlement; they do not share a common project. Burge’s use connects to mainstream epistemological inquiry into knowledge and warrant. Wright’s use connects to mainstream epistemology inquiry into skepticism and warrant transmission. Recent work from and about both is discussed. Among other results, it is shown that Burge’s distinction is not a version of the internalism vs. externalism distinction. For Burge, both justifications and entitlements are externalist.

If sense accounts for the difference in cognitive values, how is it possible that sentences that contain expressions with different cognitive values (“today is F” and “yesterday is F” said the subsequent day) express the same sense? This question challenges Burge's interpretation of sense and favours Kripke's interpretation. I think that the deep tension between a cognitive and a semantic view of sense of a sentence (discussed by Beaney 1997 onwards) lies behind the contrast between Burge and Kripke. We cannot make a coherent view but accepting the tension that Künne treated as a distinction between thoughts and ways of articulating thoughts.

[Excerpts from the penultimate draft. Includes the front matter, the first section of the preamble, and chapter 1.] *Self-Reflection for the Opaque Mind* attempts to solve a grave problem about critical self-reflection. The worry is that we critical thinkers are all in “epistemic bad faith” in light of what psychology tells us. For the research shows not merely that we are bad at detecting “ego-threatening” thoughts à la Freud. It also indicates that we are ignorant of even our ordinary thoughts—e.g., reasons for our moral judgments of others (Haidt 2001), and even mundane reasons for buying one pair of stockings over another! (Nisbett & Wilson 1977) However: Self-reflection presupposes an ability to know what one thinks in the first place. So if ignorance is the norm, why attempt self-reflection? The activity would just show naivety about psychology. Yet while respecting all the data, this book argues that, remarkably, we are infallible in a (limited) range self-discerning judgments. Even so, infallibility does not imply indubitability, and there is no Cartesian ambition to provide a “foundation” for empirical knowledge. The point is rather to explain how self-reflection as a rational activity is possible.

Contemporary orthodoxy affirms that singular terms cannot be predicates and that, therefore, ‘is’ is ambiguous as between predication and identity. Recent attempts to treat names as predicates do not challenge this orthodoxy. The orthodoxy was built into the structure of modern formal logic by Frege. It is defended by arguments which I show to be unsound. I provide a semantical account of atomic sentences which draws upon Mill’s account of predication, connotation and denotation. I show that singular terms may be predicates, that it is highly implausible that there is an ‘is’ of identity in natural languages, and that modern formal logic is deficient in that it cannot recognise propositions, including singular existentials, in which singular terms are predicates, or inferences which depend upon the logical role rather than the logical category of expressions.

This work presents two chapters on the problematic of disjunction in contemporary philosophy. His brief introduction addresses both our encounter with the issue through poststructuralist continental philosophy, as our critical building of a positive distance in relation to that perspective. The first half of our first chapter consists in a general exposure of the problem through the clue of a genealogy of disjunction including its well-known conception as the disjunction problem. The final half of this chapter takes up the problematic by way of the contemporary controversy about the disjunctivism; in particular, we conducted a detailed exposition of the most severe criticism of that perspective. The accuracy of this critical social holism leads us in our second chapter toward an investigation in the Critique of Pure Reason in a quest for the kantian origins of the problem of disjunctive perception. In the first half of this chapter we defend the hypothesis of disjunction as the clue to discover of the categories of understanding. In the last half of this final chapter we face the problem of the nature of disjunction (double sense) through its registration as an onto-phenomenological disjuntivism. Finally, our conclusion rearticulates an overview of our work in search of a future investigation.
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Este trabalho apresenta dois capítulos sobre a problemática da disjunção na filosofia contemporânea. Sua breve introdução aborda nosso encontro com a questão através da filosofia continental pós-estruturalista e, ao mesmo tempo, nossa construção de uma distância crítica em relação àquela perspectiva. A primeira metade do capítulo primeiro constitui-se numa exposição geral da problemática através do fio de uma genealogia da disjunção, inclusive, abrangendo sua concepção como problema da disjunção. A metade final deste capítulo primeiro retoma o problema por via da controvérsia contemporânea acerca do disjuntivismo e, em particular, realiza uma detalhada exposição da crítica mais severa àquela perspectiva. O rigor crítico deste holismo social nos remete, em nosso segundo capítulo, rumo à Critica da Razão Pura numa investigação sobre as origens kantianas da problemática da percepção em disjunção. Na metade primeira deste capítulo defendemos então a hipótese da disjunção como único fio condutor para a descoberta das categorias do entendimento. Na última metade deste capítulo final enfrentamos enfim o problema da natureza da disjunção (duplo sentido) pelo registro de um disjuntivismo onto-fenomenológico. Por fim, nossa conclusão rearticula uma visão geral de nossa investigação em forma de esboço para um projeto futuro.

ABSTRACT Plant predictive processing suggests that plants anticipatorily perceive their environment. This hypothesis runs up against a challenge which takes the form of two constraints on perception advanced by Tyler Burge: the veridicality constraint and the constancy constraint. This paper argues that the veridicality constraint can be satisfied by assuming a general account of predictive processing. To show how the constancy constraint may be fulfilled, an ecologically informed account of invariant pick-up is developed and given a place within plant predictive processing. It is concluded that, against our anthropocentric folk-psychological notions of perception, there is reason to believe that plants engage in minimal perception.

This paper is about three surprising claims in Tyler Burge's  paper "Content Preservation" (The Philosophical Review, 1993). This paper explains the claims, his reasons for them, and why he later retracted them.

His claims are (1): Through a special category of linguistic understanding called intellectual understanding, we can have apriori warrant to believe (and even know) that it is asserted that P (hence,someone asserted that P); we can have apriori warrant and knowledge about speech acts. Call this Burge’s apriori comprehension thesis.

(2) In such cases of apriori warranted belief that someone asserted that P, if we accept the assertion (if we transition from understanding the assertion to belief in the content of the assertion), then we enjoy an apriori warrant to believe that P. We can have apriori warrant for testimony-based beliefs. Call this Burge’s apriori testimonial warrant thesis.

(3) If in these further cases, the sender knows apriori that P, we may then learn (come to know) apriori that Pthrough acceptance ourselves. Apriori knowledge in a sender can enable apriori knowledge in a recipient. We can have apriori knowledge through testimony. Call this Burge’s apriori testimonial knowledge thesis.

"Tyler Burge's anti-individualism – the view that individuating many of a creature's mental kinds is necessarily dependent on relations that the creature bears to the physical, or in some cases social, environment – backs his theory of perceptual representation, i.e. perceptual anti-individualism. Perceptual anti-individualism articulates a framework that, according to Burge, perceptual psychology assumed without articulation. In this interview, Burge talks about the main tenets and underpinnings of perceptual anti-individualism in relation to classic representational theories of perceptual experience, reductive theories of mental content, theories of phenomenal consciousness, and other associated topics.

Sect. 1 offers some stage-setting. Pluralist views have recently attracted considerable attention in different areas of philosophy. Truth and logic are cases in hand. According to the alethic pluralist, there are several ways of being true. According to the logical pluralist, there are several ways of being valid. Sect. 2 introduces epistemic pluralism through the work of Tyler Burge, Alvin Goldman, and William Alston. In the work of these authors, we find pluralism about respectively epistemic warrant (Burge), justification (Goldman), and desiderata (Alston). Sect. 3 investigates what rationale can be given for epistemic pluralism. Drawing on the literature on truth pluralism I suggest that one rationale for adopting a pluralist view in epistemology is its wider scope. Pluralism puts one in a position to accommodate a wider range of cases of epistemic assessments. In Sect. 4 I do two things. First, I explain why the distinction between epistemic monism and epistemic pluralism is most interestingly drawn at the level of non-derivative epistemic goods. Second, I make the observation that, at a very fundamental level, the varieties of epistemic pluralism presented in Sect. 2 are not particularly pure in nature. This is because they are all combined with veritic unitarianism, i.e. the view that there are several epistemic goods but that truth is the only non-derivative one. What, other than truth, might qualify as goods of this kind? Sect. 5 offers some preliminary considerations on this question, drawing on the work of Michael DePaul and Jonathan Kvanvig. In Sect. 6 I present two kinds of collapse arguments, each meant to show that pluralism is inherently unstable. I first consider each argument in the case of truth and then transpose them to epistemology. In Sect. 7 I respond to both collapse arguments.

Several philosophers have recently appealed to predication in developing their theories of cognitive representation and propositions. One central point of difference between them is whether they take predication to be forceful or neutral and whether they take the most basic cognitive representational act to be judging or entertaining. Both views are supported by powerful reasons and both face problems. Many think that predication must be forceful if it is to explain representation. However, the standard ways of of implementing the idea give rise to the Frege-Geach problem. Others think that predication must be neutral, if we’re to avoid the Frege-Geach problem. However, it looks like nothing neutral can explain representation. In this paper I present a third view, one which respects the powerful reasons while avoiding the problems. On this view predication is forceful and can thus explain representation, but the idea is implemented in a novel way, avoiding the Frege-Geach problem. The key is to make sense of the notion of grasping a proposition as an objectual act where the object is a proposition.

According to the Disjunction Problem, teleological theories of perceptual content are unable to explain why it is that a subject represents an F when an F causes the perception and not the disjunction F v G, given that the subject has mistaken G’s for F’s in the past.  Without an adequate explanation these theories are stuck without an account of how non-veridical representation is possible, which would be an unsettling result.  In this paper I defend Burge’s teleological theory of perception against the Disjunction Problem, arguing that a perceptual state’s representing what I call an error-prohibiting disjunctive property is incompatible with the truth of perceptual anti-individualism.  And because perceptual anti-individualism is at the heart of Burge’s theory, I conclude that Burgeans need not be concerned with the Disjunction Problem.

Abstract. Having an etiological function to F is sufficient to have a competence to F. Having an etiological function to reliably F is sufficient to have a reliable competence, a competence to reliably F. Epistemic warrant consists in the normal functioning of the belief-forming process when the process has forming true beliefs reliably as an etiological function. Epistemic warrant requires reliable competence. Warrant divides into two grades. The first consists in normal functioning, when the process has forming true beliefs reliably as an etiological function, so that it reliably produces true beliefs when in normal conditions, but need not be in normal conditions. The second grade requires the first, and presence in normal conditions, so that the chance of true belief is high. Why is warrant normative? Because when reliably forming true beliefs is a function, both grades meet norms that follow from that function. The paper ends by comparing Tyler Burge’s answer to this question. It is argued that Burge’s answer implausibly presupposes that all belief-forming processes—not just those with forming reliably true beliefs as an etiological function—should form reliably true beliefs.

A major challenge to any reliability theory of epistemic warrant is the persistence of warrant outside of normal conditions, where the reliability of the competence lapses. If warrant persists but reliability lapses, why should that be so? Tyler Burge in 'Perceptual Entitlement' purports to provide an explanation. This paper critically examines Burge's answer and provides a modification in terms of two grades of warrant. The first grade consists in normal functioning, provided the competence is reliable in normal conditions. The second grade consists in reliability in normal conditions while functioning normally, provided the competence is in normal conditions. The first is explained in terms of reliability in normal conditions. The first persists in demon worlds.

Infallibilism is the view that knowledge requires conclusive grounds. Despite its intuitive appeal, most contemporary epistemology rejects Infallibilism; however, there is a strong minority tradition that embraces it. Showing that Infallibilism is viable requires showing that it is compatible with the undeniable fact that we can go wrong in pursuit of perceptual knowledge. In other words, we need an account of fallibility for Infallibilists. By critically examining John McDowell’s recent attempt at such an account, this paper articulates a very important general lesson for Infallibilists. The paper concludes by briefly discussing two ways to do justice to this lesson: first, at the level of experience; and second, at the level of judgment.

The paper critically discusses Jerry Fodor's (2015) recent criticism of Tyler Burge's _Origins of Objectivity_. It argues that Fodor's arguments rest upon two mistakes. First, a conflation concerning the notion of perception-as. And second, completely ignoring the possibility that some representational content might be nonconceptual.

Argues against the sociologism of much sociology and seeks to use cognitive science to rework the theory of ideology. Argues that ideologies are inherently variable through time and between individuals, whatever social or cultural efforts are made to stabilise them. This is because the mind is not (or is not completely) plastic to social and cultural shaping. Ideologies are like languages, since they are internalised in individuals as generative mechanisms which are not transparent to introspection or self-monitoring. The work of Göran Therborn, Stephen Stich, Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge is referenced. Slightly revised in 2005 for a website version from the original in chapter 5 of my book Language in Mind and Language in Society (1987).

Putnam (1981) has argued for two pictures of intentionality crystallizing in the tradition basically. The first, going back to Plato’s time, seeks to ground the relation between the intentional and the real in content alone. The direction-of-fit is from us to reality, with intentional content passively coping it (=‘representationalism’). The second picture was pioneered by Kant: Here you have a reality-to-intention-fit again, with our own capacities or skills actively constituting the link (=‘presentationalism’).  Putnam himself seems to think only the first picture is flawed, but I believe the argument he takes over from Berkeley, when generalized, undercuts the second picture too. It makes intentionality an ill-begotten concept, I argue; or a dark one at least.

It is argued that the doctrine of privileged self-knowledge compatible with psychosemantic externalism about mental content is considerably weaker than the Cartesian doctrine of privileged self-knowledge. Firstly, although externalism is compatible with privileged access to one's particular thought contents (P vs. Q), it is consistent with us lacking privileged access to the modes (e.g., believing doubting) in which our thought contents are realized. Secondly, externalism is inconsistent with privileged access to the fact that one's so-called thoughts really are thoughts, rather than purely physical events with no content at all.

of the criticisms made by Burge and evaluate to what degree F and P's claims stand up to critical scrutiny. In some aspects the debate between F and P and Burge is an updated and more tractable version of the Quine/Wittgenstein point that ostensive definition requires a lot of stage setting. A lot of philosophers/psychologists think that the stage setting can be provided by innate constraints on interpretation. While others think that culture sets the stage in some ways. At a more fundamental level; the level of perception F and P seem to think that FINST can pick out objects independent of any stage setting; hence they argue that FINST do the job by locking on to distal objects. This provides their foundation as they move out towards more complex conceptual capacities. They present a variety of pieces of experimental evidence to support their claim. They note the following: " One of the main characteristics of visual perception that led Pylyshyn (1989, 2001) to postulate FINSTs is that vision appears not only to pick out several individual objects automatically, but also to keep track of them as they move about unpredictably by using only spatio temporal information and ignoring visible properties of individual objects... Pylyshyn and his students demonstrated in hundreds of experiments (described in Pylyshyn 2001, 2003, 2007 and elsewhere), that observers could keep track of up to four or five moving objects without encoding any of their distinguishing properties (including their motion and the speed or direction of their movement. " ('Mind's Without Meanings pp. 100-102) They note that in these various object tracking studies some factors do somewhat effect subject performance. The first factor that affects subject performance is the distance between 1 Henceforth F and P.