Skip to main content

Seemings

Jonathan Farrell
My name is Jonathan Farrell, and I am a post-doc at the University of Manchester on Tim Bayne’s Architecture of Consciousness project. I am interested in providing a taxonomy of seemings— the states we are in when things seem some way to us.

In this post I will try to explain why a taxonomy would be useful. In brief: there are different kinds of seemings, and we have different, non-equivalent, ways of ascribing seemings to subjects. Thus philosophers need to be careful when and how they use ‘seem’ to make sure that their arguments do not equivocate and that they do not talk past each other. Providing a taxonomy of seemings can help us to avoid these problems.

In everyday speech it is common to talk about some of our mental states by using ‘seem’: the stick half in water, for example, seems bent to me, and it seems that this winter will be colder than last winter. Philosophers also talk about seemings. Indrek Reiland (2014) appeals to seemings to resolve the debate over whether we perceptually experience 'high-level' properties (e.g. tigerness, friendliness) as well as 'low-level' properties (redness, squareness). George Bealer (1998) appeals to seemings to explain what intuitions are: they are intellectual seemings. And the papers in Chris Tucker's collection (2013) consider whether appealing to seemings can give us (defeasible) justification for some of our beliefs. It is tempting, then, to think that there is one kind of mental state—seeming—which is relevant to intuitions, justification, and perception.

Seemings, however, do not form a unified kind. As Roderick Chisholm (1957) pointed out epistemic seemings concern how we take the world to be (whether on the basis of perception or not). Thus, if I read in the paper that Hilary Clinton has been involved in some terrible scandal, it might seem to me that she will not be the Democratic presidential candidate in the next election. When it comes to epistemic seemings, it cannot be that it seems to me that p, but I do not believe that p (at least not if I am rational). With non-epistemic uses of seems, however, it can seem to me that p even though I know that not-p. For example, there are perceptual non-epistemic seemings: when I look at the Müller-Lyer illusion, it seems to me that the lines are of different lengths, even though I know they are not. And there are intellectual non-epistemic seemings: it can seem to me that a certain proof is valid—the truth of each statement seems guaranteed by that of those which precede it—even though I know that last month I was able to show that the proof was not valid (but now I cannot remember how).
 
The way we ascribe seemings complicates matters. Usually, ‘O seems F to S’ is true just when ‘it seems to S that O is F’. But this is not always so. Imagine that I have never heard of the British actress Keira Knightley. I see her being interviewed on TV and I mistakenly think I am seeing the American-Israeli actress Natalie Portman being interviewed (the actresses look similar). As I watch, it seems to me that Portman has a British accent. But it is not true that Portman seems to me to have a British accent—it is Knightley who seems to me to have a British accent (although I do not realise this).

So it seems (!) that there are different kinds of seemings, and different ways we can ascribe seemings to subjects. Establishing how these kinds are related, and what connects the methods of ascription, should shed light on what seemings are, and how they are relevant to perception, justification, and intuitions.

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Delusions in the DSM 5

This post is by Lisa Bortolotti. How has the definition of delusions changed in the DSM 5? Here are some first impressions. In the DSM-IV (Glossary) delusions were defined as follows: Delusion. A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility.
Read more

Rationalization: Why your intelligence, vigilance and expertise probably don't protect you

Today's post is by Jonathan Ellis , Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Public Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Eric Schwitzgebel , Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. This is the first in a two-part contribution on their paper "Rationalization in Moral and Philosophical thought" in Moral Inferences , eds. J. F. Bonnefon and B. Trémolière (Psychology Press, 2017). We’ve all been there. You’re arguing with someone – about politics, or a policy at work, or about whose turn it is to do the dishes – and they keep finding all kinds of self-serving justifications for their view. When one of their arguments is defeated, rather than rethinking their position they just leap to another argument, then maybe another. They’re rationalizing –coming up with convenient defenses for what they want to believe, rather than responding even-handedly to the points you're making. Yo...
Read more

Models of Madness

In today's post John Read  (in the picture above) presents the recent book he co-authored with Jacqui Dillon , titled Models of Madness: Psychological, Social and Biological Approaches to Psychosis. My name is John Read. After 20 years working as a Clinical Psychologist and manager of mental health services in the UK and the USA, mostly with people experiencing psychosis, I joined the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1994. There I published over 100 papers in research journals, primarily on the relationship between adverse life events (e.g., child abuse/neglect, poverty etc.) and psychosis. I also research the negative effects of bio-genetic causal explanations on prejudice, and the role of the pharmaceutical industry in mental health. In February I moved to Melbourne and I now work at Swinburne University of Technology.  I am on the on the Executive Committee of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis and am the Editor...
Read more