The Library
Observational concepts and experience
Tools
Ivanov, Ivan V. (2016) Observational concepts and experience. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
|
PDF
WRAP_THESIS_Ivanov_2016.pdf - Submitted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (1586Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2866518~S1
Abstract
The thesis is intended to contribute to the growing understanding of the indispensable role played by phenomenal consciousness in human cognition, and specifically in making our concepts of the external world available. The focus falls on so called observational concepts, a type of rudimentary, perceptually-based objective concepts in our repertoire — picking out manifest properties such as colors and shapes. A theory of such concepts gets provided, and, consequently, the exact role that perceptual consciousness plays in making concepts of this sort available gets settled.
In the first half of the thesis, observational concepts get construed as a special type of recognitional concepts. On an analogy with perceptual demonstratives, having such concepts would involve having non-trivial knowledge of their reference. The experiential basis of such concepts would, among other things, provide for such constitutive knowledge. The theoretical background relevant to the hypothesis gets provided in the first chapter. A defence of the hypothesis follows in the second.
In the second half of the thesis, care is taken to distinguish among two ways in which the constitutive knowledge of the reference of an observational concept could be fleshed out. In the third chapter, perceptual experience is shown to provide the basis both for knowledge of observational properties by acquaintance, and for knowledge of the essence of such properties — provided that knowledge of essence gets construed in the right, modest way.
It might be natural to take knowledge by acquaintance to be the sort relevant to observational concept possession, especially given that in the case of perceptual demonstratives this is the role likely played by experience. However, this initial impression proves to be mistaken. The constitutive knowledge of the referent of an observational concept turns out to consist in the capacity to determine a priori the essence of the respective property. To show this, an argument gets provided in the penultimate fourth chapter, based on the key role played by experiences of instances of observational properties in optimal viewing conditions in enabling the possession of the respective observational concept.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BD Speculative Philosophy | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Cognition | ||||
Official Date: | March 2016 | ||||
Dates: |
|
||||
Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Philosophy | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Eilan, Naomi ; Cassam, Quassim | ||||
Extent: | vii, 227 leaves | ||||
Language: | eng |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year