Papers by Sean Allen-Hermanson
Animal Consciousness (Routledge Handbook of Consciousness, ch.29)
Metaphysica (forthcoming)
I criticize Bourget’s intuitive and empirical arguments for thinking that all possible conscious ... more I criticize Bourget’s intuitive and empirical arguments for thinking that all possible conscious states are underived if intentional. An underived state is one of which it is not the case that it must be realized, at least in part, by intentional states distinct from itself. The intuitive argument depends upon a thought experiment about a subject who exists for only a split second while undergoing a single conscious experience. This, however, trades on an ambiguity in "split second." Meanwhile, Bourget's empirical argument is question-begging. My critique also has implications for debates about the essential temporality and unity of consciousness experience, and, phenomenal atomism.
European Journal of American Studies, 2017
The closing paragraph of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road hums with mystery. Some find it suggestive of... more The closing paragraph of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road hums with mystery. Some find it suggestive of renewal, though only vaguely. Others contend that it does little to ameliorate the novel’s pessimism. Still others find it offers both lamentation and hopefulness, while some pass it over in silence. As an admirer with a taste for puzzle solving, here I offer a new interpretation revealing a surprisingly optimistic denouement.
Animal Sentience, 2017
Contrary to Woodruff's suggestion, investigations into possible reasoning capacities of cichlid f... more Contrary to Woodruff's suggestion, investigations into possible reasoning capacities of cichlid fighting fish and trace memory in goldfish do not support claims about sentience. This is disputed by research results about learning and implicit processing, sleep, vegetative states, amnesia, semantic priming, artificial network modeling, and even insects. A novel, deflationary, interpretation of Grosenick et al.'s experiments on A. burtoni is also offered. Sean Hermanson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida International University in Miami, specializing in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His work on animals includes articles on bees, monkeys and bats, though he also has interests in the metaphysics of consciousness, introspection, human nature and implicit bias. http://philosophy.fiu.edu/faculty/sean-allen-hermanson/ Woodruff's (2017) assemblage of ideas and data from the neuroantaomy, physiology, and behavior of teleost fish is more than one short commentary can digest. Accordingly, my focus will be on some of the behavioral results he points to as evidence of sentience in sections 5.1-5.3. Grosenick et al. (2007) interpret observational learning as showing that cichlids can reason in the form of transitive inference (TI). Incidentally, this example has begun to attract notice from fish-positive philosophers such as Tye (2016, pp.99-100), who finds it "especially interesting." As for what TI has to do with sentience Woodruff argues that the connection is by way of declarative memory. Declarative memory differs from implicit memory in going beyond classical associative processes, having different anatomical dependences, especially the mammalian hippocampus, and, according to some, only occurs consciously (Smith and Squire 2005). Woodruff bolsters the behavioral evidence with a comparison of structure and function of the hippocampus to region DL in the fish pallium. Following Allen (2013), we can wonder how transportable are findings about various "fish," (even if teleost) to other species, even when somewhat closely related. For example, taking evidence of transitive inference (TI) in cichlids at face value, does this give confidence we would find TI in goldfish? Does it matter? I take it that TI is just an example of how we might establish a plausible link to consciousness via declarative memory (i.e. explicit memory of things like facts and events). So its presence isn't necessary though it is offered as one of multiple indicators sufficient for sentience on their own. Yet there are several reasons we cannot suppose an organism is sentient just because it exhibits TI-style responses, starting with uncertainty about the character of the relevant information-processing architectures (McFarland and Bösser 1993, p.27). Researchers and philosophers cannot decide between cognitive models and ones drawing only on reinforcement (Lazareva 2012; Allen 2006; Beck 2012, p.226). Even assuming a cognitive model, the step from declarative memory to sentience needs more support in light of the apparent acquisition of declarative knowledge by amnesiacs and phenomena such as semantic priming: The
This paper offers an unorthodox appraisal of empirical research bearing on the question of the lo... more This paper offers an unorthodox appraisal of empirical research bearing on the question of the low representation of women in philosophy. It contends that fashionable views in the profession concerning implicit bias and stereotype threat are weakly supported, that philosophers often fail to report the empirical work responsibly, and that the standards for evidence are set very low—so long as you take a certain viewpoint.
That philosophy is an outlier in the humanities when it comes to the underrepresentation of women... more That philosophy is an outlier in the humanities when it comes to the underrepresentation of women has been the occasion for much discussion about possible effects of subtle forms of prejudice, including implicit bias and stereotype threat. While these ideas have become familiar to the philosophical community, there has only recently been a surge of interest in acquiring field-specific data. This paper adds to quantitative findings bearing on hypotheses about the effects of unconscious prejudice on two important stages along career pathways: tenure-track hiring and early career publishing.
Development of eye morphology relevant to gaze cuing in the human infant
PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2000
Abstract: Kamikazes and Cultural Evolution
Is cultural evolution needed to explain altruistic se... more Abstract: Kamikazes and Cultural Evolution
Is cultural evolution needed to explain altruistic self-sacrifice? Some contend that cultural traits (e.g. beliefs, behaviors, and for some “memes”) replicate according to selection processes that have “floated free” from biology. One test case is the example of suicide kamikaze attacks in wartime Japan. Standard biological mechanisms—such as reciprocal altruism and kin selection—might not seem to apply here: The suicide pilots did not act on the expectation that others would reciprocate, and they were supposedly sacrificing themselves for country and emperor, not close relatives. Yet an examination of both the historical record and the demands of evolutionary theory suggest the kamikaze phenomenon does not cry out for explanation in terms of a special non-biological selection process. This weakens the case for cultural evolution, and has interesting implications for our understanding of altruistic self-sacrifice.
Many philosophers have held that we cannot say what it is like to be a bat as they present a fund... more Many philosophers have held that we cannot say what it is like to be a bat as they present a fundamentally alien form of life. Another view held by some philosophers, bat scientists, and even many laypersons is that echolocation is, somehow, at least in part, a kind of visual experience. Either way, bat echolocation is taken to be something very mysterious and exotic. I utilize empirical and intuitive considerations to support an alternative view making a much more mundane contention about bat phenomenology: echolocatory experience probably just has an auditory character. These points also call for further reflection on our intuitions about animal consciousness and standard arguments for the explanatory gap.
A key contention of Klein & Barron (2016) is that consciousness does not depend on cortical struc... more A key contention of Klein & Barron (2016) is that consciousness does not depend on cortical structures. A critical appraisal suggests they have overestimated the strength of their evidence.
Philosophers have recently argued that since there are people who are blind, but don’t know it, a... more Philosophers have recently argued that since there are people who are blind, but don’t know it, and people who echolocate, but don’t know it, conscious introspection is highly unreliable. I contend that a second look at Anton’s syndrome, human echolocation, and “facial vision” suggests otherwise. These examples do not support skepticism about the reliability of introspection.
Desgabets: Rationalist or Cartesian Empiricist?
Topics in Early Modern Philosophy of Mind, 2009
In " What is it like to be boring and myopic? " Kathleen Akins offers an interesting, empirically... more In " What is it like to be boring and myopic? " Kathleen Akins offers an interesting, empirically driven, argument for thinking that there is nothing that it is like to be a bat. She suggests that bats are " boring " in the sense that they are governed by behavioral scripts and simple, non-representational, control loops, and are best characterized as biological automatons. Her approach has been well received by philosophers sympathetic to empirically informed philosophy of mind. But, despite its influence, her work has not met with any critical appraisal. It is argued that a reconsideration of the empirical results shows that bats are not boring automatons, driven by short input-output loops, instincts, and reflexes. Grounds are provided for thinking that bats satisfy a range of philosophically and scientifically interesting elaborations of the general idea that consciousness is best understood in terms of representational functions. A more complete examination of bat sensory capabilities suggests there is something that it is like after all. The discussion of bats is also used to develop an objection to strongly neurophilosophical approaches to animal consciousness.
Morgan's Canon Revisited*
Philosophy of Science, 2005
Insects and the Problem of Simple Minds
Journal of Philosophy, 2008
The Pragmatist's Troubles with Bivalence and Counterfactuals
Dialogue, 2001
Je me demande ici si les conceptions pragmatiques de la vérité peuvent être réconciliées avec les... more Je me demande ici si les conceptions pragmatiques de la vérité peuvent être réconciliées avec les intuitions ordinaires quant à la portée de la bivalence. Je soutiens que les pragmatistes sont conduits à accepter une distinction du genre «type/ occurrence» entre les formes d'une ...
Extended Cognition (EC) hypothesizes that there are parts of the world outside the head serving a... more Extended Cognition (EC) hypothesizes that there are parts of the world outside the head serving as cognitive vehicles. One criticism of this controversial view is the problem of “cognitive bloat” which says that EC is too permissive and fails to provide an adequate necessary criterion for cognition. It cannot, for instance, distinguish genuine cognitive vehicles from mere supports (e.g. the Yellow Pages). In response, Andy Clark and Mark Rowlands have independently suggested that genuine cognitive vehicles are distinguished from supports in that the former have been “recruited,” i.e. they are either artifacts, or, products of evolution. I argue against this proposal. There are counter examples to the claim that “Teleological” EC is either necessary or sufficient for cognition. Teleological EC conflates different types of scientific projects, and inherits content externalism’s alienation from historically impartial cognitive science.
The word "synesthesia" or "synaesthesia," has its origin in the Greek roots, syn, meaning union, ... more The word "synesthesia" or "synaesthesia," has its origin in the Greek roots, syn, meaning union, and aesthesis, meaning sensation: a union of the senses. Many researchers use the term "synesthesia" to refer to a perceptual anomaly in which a sensory stimulus associated with one perceptual modality automatically triggers another insuppressible sensory experience which is usually, but not always, associated with a different perceptual modality as when musical tones elicit the visual experience of colors ("colored-hearing"). Other researchers consider additional unusual correspondences under the category of synesthesias, including the automatic associations of specific objects with genders, ascriptions of unique personalities to numbers, and the involuntary assignment of spatial locations to months or days of the week. Many synesthetes experience more than one cross-modal correspondence, and others who have unusual cross-modal sensory experiences also have some non-sensory correspondences such as those mentioned above.
Book Reviews by Sean Allen-Hermanson
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Papers by Sean Allen-Hermanson
Is cultural evolution needed to explain altruistic self-sacrifice? Some contend that cultural traits (e.g. beliefs, behaviors, and for some “memes”) replicate according to selection processes that have “floated free” from biology. One test case is the example of suicide kamikaze attacks in wartime Japan. Standard biological mechanisms—such as reciprocal altruism and kin selection—might not seem to apply here: The suicide pilots did not act on the expectation that others would reciprocate, and they were supposedly sacrificing themselves for country and emperor, not close relatives. Yet an examination of both the historical record and the demands of evolutionary theory suggest the kamikaze phenomenon does not cry out for explanation in terms of a special non-biological selection process. This weakens the case for cultural evolution, and has interesting implications for our understanding of altruistic self-sacrifice.
Book Reviews by Sean Allen-Hermanson