Papers by Johannes Roessler
The Philosophy of Perception
Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a pu... more Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a published version is known of, the repository item page linked to above, will contain details on accessing it.
A traditional tenet of virtue ethics is that a proper moral assessment of an action needs to be i... more A traditional tenet of virtue ethics is that a proper moral assessment of an action needs to be informed by a view of the agent; in particular, a view of their virtues or vices, as exhibited in their action. This picture has been challenged on the grounds that it is revisionary and ill-motivated. The key claim is that we are ordinarily disposed to judge the moral merits of particular actions independently of any view of the character of the agent, and that there is nothing wrong with that practice. In this paper, we identify and criticize a certain view of the nature of character that (we argue) underpins the challenge. We call this a monolithic conception of character. We sketch an alternative, non-monolithic conception, and suggest that when combined with a non-monolithic conception, the traditional tenet can be seen to be neither revisionary nor ill-motivated.
Perception, Causation, and Objectivity
Perceptual experience, that paradigm of subjectivity, constitutes our most immediate and fundamen... more Perceptual experience, that paradigm of subjectivity, constitutes our most immediate and fundamental access to the objective world. At least, this would seem to be so if
On one view, an adequate account of causal understanding may focus exclusively on what is involve... more On one view, an adequate account of causal understanding may focus exclusively on what is involved in mastering general causal concepts (concepts such as ‘x causes y’ or ‘p causally explains q’). An alternative view is that causal understanding is, partly but irreducibly, a matter of grasping what Anscombe called special causal concepts, concepts such as ‘push’, ‘flatten’, or ‘knock over’. We can label these views generalist vs particularist approaches to causal understanding. It is worth emphasizing that the contrast here is not between two kinds of theories of the metaphysics of causation, but two views of the nature and perhaps source of ordinary causal understanding. One aim of this paper is to argue that it would be a mistake to dismiss particularism because of its putative metaphysical commitments. I begin by formulating an intuitively attractive version of particularism due to P.F. Strawson, a central element of which is what I will call naı̈ve realism concerning mechanical t...
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 2018
We argue for teleology as a description of the way in which we ordinarily understand others' inte... more We argue for teleology as a description of the way in which we ordinarily understand others' intentional actions. Teleology starts from the close resemblance between the reasoning involved in understanding others' actions and one's own practical reasoning involved in deciding what to do. We carve out teleology's distinctive features more sharply by comparing it to its three main competitors: theory theory, simulation theory, and rationality theory. The plausibility of teleology as our way of understanding others is underlined by developmental data in its favour.
Philosophical Explorations, 2014
The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wi... more The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the 'permanent WRAP url' above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2015
There is converging evidence that over the course of the second year children become good at vari... more There is converging evidence that over the course of the second year children become good at various fairly sophisticated forms of pro-social activities, such as helping, informing and comforting. Not only are toddlers able to do these things, they appear to do them routinely and almost reliably. A striking feature of these interventions, emphasized in the recent literature, is that they show precocious abilities in two different domains: they reflect complex 'theory of mind' abilities as well as 'altruistic motivation'. Our aim in this paper is to present a theoretical hypothesis that bears on both kinds of developments. The suggestion is that children's 'instrumental helping' reflects their budding understanding of practical reasons (in the standard sense of 'considerations that count in favour of' someone's acting in a certain way). We can put the basic idea in the familiar terminology of common coding: toddlers conceive of the goals of others' actions in the same format as the goals of their own actions: in terms of features of their situation that provide us with reasons to act. Keywords Normative reasons. Theory of mind. Intentional action. Teleology There is converging evidence that over the course of the second year children become good at various fairly sophisticated forms of pro-social activities, such as helping, informing and comforting. Not only are toddlers able to do these things, they appear to do them routinely and almost reliably. As Warneken and Tomasello write, 'drop an object accidentally on the floor and try to reach for it (..), and infants as young as 14-18 months of age will toddle over, pick it up and return it to you.' (2009, 397) A striking feature of these interventions,
Philosophical Explorations, 2015
First-person present-tense self-ascriptions of belief are often used to tell others what one beli... more First-person present-tense self-ascriptions of belief are often used to tell others what one believes. But they are also naturally taken to express the belief they ostensibly report. I argue that this second aspect of self-ascriptions of belief holds the key to making the speaker's knowledge of her belief, and so the authority of her act of telling, intelligible. For a basic way to know one's beliefs is to be aware of what one is doing in expressing them. This account suggests that we need to reconsider the terms of the standard alternative between “epistemic” and “non-epistemic” explanations of first-person authority. In particular, the natural view that the authority we accord to self-ascriptions reflects a distinctive way we have of knowing our own beliefs should not be conflated with the traditional epistemological thesis that such knowledge reflects a private “mode of access”.
Causing Human Actions, 2010
The causal theory of action (CTA) is widely recognized in the literature of the philosophy of act... more The causal theory of action (CTA) is widely recognized in the literature of the philosophy of action as the "standard story" of human action and agency--the nearest approximation in the field to a theoretical orthodoxy. This volume brings together leading figures working in action theory today to discuss issues relating to the CTA and its applications, which range from experimental philosophy to moral psychology. Some of the contributors defend the theory while others criticize it; some draw from historical sources while others focus on recent developments; some rely on the tools of analytic philosophy while others cite the latest empirical research on human action. All agree, however, on the centrality of the CTA in the philosophy of action. The contributors first consider metaphysical issues, then reasons-explanations of action, and, finally, new directions for thinking about the CTA. They discuss such topics as the tenability of some alternatives to the CTA; basic causal deviance; the etiology of action; teleologism and anticausalism; and the compatibility of the CTA with theories of embodied cognition. Two contributors engage in an exchange of views on intentional omissions that stretches over four essays, directly responding to each other in their follow-up essays. As the action-oriented perspective becomes more influential in philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science, this volume offers a long-needed debate over foundational issues. Contributors: Fred Adams, Jesus H. Aguilar, John Bishop, Andrei A. Buckareff, Randolph Clarke, Jennifer Hornsby, Alicia Juarrero, Alfred R. Mele, Michael S. Moore, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Josef Perner, Johannes Roessler, David-Hillel Ruben, Carolina Sartorio, Michael Smith, Rowland Stout
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2015
This paper has two themes. One is the question of how to understand the relation between inner sp... more This paper has two themes. One is the question of how to understand the relation between inner speech and knowledge of one's own thoughts. My aim here is to probe and challenge the popular neo-Rylean suggestion that we know our own thoughts by 'overhearing our own silent monologues', and to sketch an alternative suggestion, inspired by Ryle's lesser-known discussion of thinking as a 'serial operation'. The second theme is the question whether, as Ryle apparently thought, we need two different accounts of the epistemology of thinking, corresponding to the distinction between thoughts with respect to which we are active vs passive. I suggest we should be skeptical about the assumption that there is a single distinction here. There are a number of interesting ways in which thinking can involve passivity, but they provide no support for a 'bifurcationist' approach to the epistemology of thinking. A number of authors have recently advocated what might be called a neo-Rylean account of the way we know our own thoughts. 1 The suggestion they elaborate and defend is that we know what we think by 'overhearing', or 'eavesdropping on', 'our own (..) silent monologues.' (Ryle 1949: 176). Yet Ryle left us not one but two accounts of the way we know our thoughts. The passages that have provided the inspiration for neo-Rylean work are to be found in section 5 of chapter VI of The Concept of Mind, entitled 'Disclosure by Unstudied Talk'. Ryle pursues an apparently quite different suggestion in the preceding section, entitled 'Self-knowledge without privileged access'. The idea here is that there is a distinctive sense in which a person engaged in a 'serial operation' is 'alive to', and knows, what he is doing, and that a person can be said to know, in that sense, what he is 'at this moment (..) thinking'. (1949: 166, 171) We know our thoughts, on this account (which I'll call Ryle's first account), insofar as thinking can be an example of a 'serial operation'. We know our thoughts, on the second, more familiar account, by 'overhearing' our own inner speech.
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2013
This chapter argues that recent attempts to make sense of the delusion of thought insertion in te... more This chapter argues that recent attempts to make sense of the delusion of thought insertion in terms of a distinction between two notions of thought ownership have been unsuccessful. It also proposes an alternative account, in which the delusion is to be interpreted in the light of its prehistory.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2012
Evidence is accumulating that infants are sensitive to people's false beliefs, whereas children p... more Evidence is accumulating that infants are sensitive to people's false beliefs, whereas children pass the standard false belief test at around 4 years of age. Debate currently centres on the nature of early and late understanding. We defend the view that early sensitivity to false beliefs shown in 'online tasks' (where engagement with ongoing events reflects an expectation of what will happen without a judgement that it will happen) reflects implicit/unconscious social knowledge of lawful regularities. The traditional false belief task requires explicit consideration of the agent's subjective perspective on his reasons for action. This requires an intentional switch of perspectives not possible before 4 years of age as evidenced by correlations between the false belief task and many different perspective-taking tasks.
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Hardback), 2013
According to David Velleman, it is part of the 'commonsense psychology' of intentional agency tha... more According to David Velleman, it is part of the 'commonsense psychology' of intentional agency that an agent can know what she will do without relying on evidence, in virtue of intending to do it. My question is how this claim is to be interpreted and defended. I argue that the answer turns on the commonsense conception of calculative practical reasoning, and the link between such reasoning and warranted claims to knowledge. I also consider the implications of this argument for Velleman's project of vindicating the commonsense view by showing it to be consistent with an 'evidentialist' epistemology.
Philosophical Explorations, 2013
Gareth Evans famously affirmed an explanatory connection between answering the question whether p... more Gareth Evans famously affirmed an explanatory connection between answering the question whether p and knowing whether one believes that p. This is commonly interpreted in terms of the idea that judging that p constitutes an adequate basis for the belief that one believes that p. This paper formulates and defends an alternative, more modest interpretation, which develops from the suggestion that one can know that one believes that p in judging that p.
Mind, 2009
Commonsense epistemology regards perceptual experience as a distinctive source of knowledge of th... more Commonsense epistemology regards perceptual experience as a distinctive source of knowledge of the world around us, unavailable in 'blindsight'. This is often interpreted in terms of the idea that perceptual experience, through its representational content, provides us with justifying reasons for beliefs about the world around us. I argue that this analysis distorts the explanatory link between perceptual experience and knowledge, as we ordinarily conceive it. I propose an alternative analysis, on which representational content plays no explanatory role: we make perceptual knowledge intelligible by appeal to experienced objects and features. I also present an account of how the commonsense scheme, thus interpreted, is to be defended: not by tracing the role of experience to its contribution in meeting some general condition on propositional knowledge (such as justification); but by subverting the assumption that it has to be possible to make the role of experience intelligible in terms of some such contribution.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2013
Understanding rational actions requires perspective taking both with respect to means and with re... more Understanding rational actions requires perspective taking both with respect to means and with respect to objectives. This study addresses the question of whether the two kinds of perspective taking develop simultaneously or in sequence. It is argued that evidence from competitive behavior is best suited for settling this issue. A total of 71 kindergarten children between 3 and 5 years of age participated in a competitive game of dice and were tested on two traditional false belief stories as well as on several control tasks (verbal intelligence, inhibitory control, and working memory). The frequency of competitive poaching moves in the game correlated with correct predictions of mistaken actions in the false belief task. Hierarchical linear regression after controlling for age and control variables showed that false belief understanding significantly predicted the amount of poaching moves. The results speak for an interrelated development of the capacity for ''instrumental'' and ''telic'' perspective taking. They are discussed in the light of teleology as opposed to theory use and simulation.
Action, Emotion, and the Development of Self-Awareness
European Review of Philosophy, 2002
Attention: Philosophical and Psychological Essays, 2011
12 Perceptual Attention and the Space of Reasons Johannes Roessler It is sometimes said that the ... more 12 Perceptual Attention and the Space of Reasons Johannes Roessler It is sometimes said that the source of direct perceptual knowledge of the world around us is peculiarly transparent. In Michael Ayers's words, such knowledge is perspicuous in that one who has it knows how ...
Agency and Self-Awareness
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Papers by Johannes Roessler