In The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle argued that a more sophisticated understanding of the dispositional nature of ‘intelligent capacities’ could bolster philosophical resistance to the tempting view that the human mind is possessed of metaphysically ‘occult’ powers and properties. This temptation is powerful in the context of accounting for the special qualities of responsible agency. Incompatibilists indulge the temptation; compatibilists resist it, using a variety of strategies. One recent strategy, reminiscent of Ryle’s, is to exploit a more sophisticated understanding of dispositional properties to account for these qualities. But ‘new dispositionalists’ run up against a ‘hard problem’ that threatens the approach. This paper argues that the threat may be averted by embracing a yet more radical ‘Rylean’ view of the distinctive dispositional nature of intelligent capacities.
McGeer, V., & Pettit, P. (2017). "The empowering theory of trust". In New Philosophical Perspectives on Trust (eds., Paul Faulkner & Thomas Simpson) . Oxford University Press.
This paper is divided into two parts. In Section 1, I explore and defend a “regulative" "view” of folk-psychology as against the “standard view” (encompassing both theory- theory and simulation theory, as well as hybrid variations). On the regulative view, folk-psychology is conceptualized in fundamentally interpersonal terms as a “mind- making” practice through which we come to form and regulate our minds in accordance with a rich array of socially shared and socially maintained sense-making norms. It is not, as the standard view maintains, simply an epistemic capacity for coming to know about the mental states and dispositions already there. Importantly, the regulative view can meet and beat the standard at its own epistemic game. But it also does more. In Section 2, I show how the regulative view makes progress on two other problems that remain puzzling on the standard view: (1) the problem of “first- person authority” – accounting for the special features of self-knowledge; and (2) the problem of “reactive responsiveness” – accounting for our deep concern with calling" "one another to account for normatively untoward behaviour, both generally and in the moral domain.
Reprinted in The Philosopher's Annual (2016) vol. 35
2014
McGeer, V. (2014). "PF Strawson's Consequentialism". In Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility (Vol. 2) . Oxford University Press (eds., D. Shoemaker & N. Tognazzini).
McGeer, V., & Pettit, P. (2009). "Judgmental Stickiness, Rhetorical Therapy". In Judgment: Essays in Honor of John Dunn (eds., R. Bourke & R. Geuss) . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
What do we ordinarily perceive when we see a person? This paper examines the virtuoso capacity of typical human beings to see others as minded – as possessed of a rich variety of mental states that animate their activities. The central message of the paper is that we become adept at perceiving the minds of others through developing our expertise in becoming so minded ourselves. “Normal psychological knowing” is what I call a “practice-dependent” skill or expertise. The paper shows this approach deals overcomes certain difficulties often associated with more standard explanations of our capacity for knowing other minds (simulation theory and theory-theory).
A fully satisfying account of 1st person authority should satisfy two desiderata: (1) explain the privileged relation we bear to our own intentional states sufficient to justify a default presumption of authority; (2) explain why such authority matters for our ability to function well as rational agents. The traditional epistemological approach fails on the second desideratum, suggesting the more radical alternative of analyzing first-person authority in terms of a rational and self-regulative capacity we have to author our own intentional states. In comparing different versions of this “agency” model of authoritative self-knowledge, I argue that Richard Moran’s Kantian ideal of rational autonomy is neither necessary nor sufficient for well-functioning agency; worse, the ideal is unsuitable for human beings given our moral developmental liabilities. Using examples drawn from George Eliot’s Middlemarch, I argue we become better authoritative agents through embracing a less ambitious rational ideal.
McGeer, V., & Gerrans, P. (2003). "Theory of Mind in Autsim and Schizophrenia". In Individual differences in theory of mind: Implications for typical and atypical development (eds., E. Repacholi & V. Slaughter) . Brighton: Psychology Press.
"Abstract: Two arguments are famously held to support the conclusion that consciousness cannot be explained in purely physical or functional terms – hence, that physicalism is false: the modal argument and the knowledge argument. While anti-physicalists appeal to both arguments, this paper argues there is a methodological incoherence in jointly main- taining them: the modal argument supports the possibility of zombies; but the possibility of zombies undercuts the knowledge argument. At best, this leaves anti-physicalists in a considerably weakened rhetorical position. At worst, it shows that commonsense intuitions on which anti-physicalists rely mislead us about the true nature of conscious" "experience."
This paper examines developing trust in two related senses: (1) rationally overcoming distrust, and (2) developing a mature capacity for trusting/distrusting. In focussing exclusively on the first problem, traditional philosophical discussions fail to address how an evidence-based paradigm of rationality is easily co-opted by (immature) agents in support of irrational distrust (or trust) – a manifestation of the second problem. Well-regulated trust requires developing a capacity to tolerate the uncertainties that chracterise relationships among fully autonomous self-directed agents. Early relationships lack this uncertainty since car-givers take primary responsibility for determining a child’s interests, reducing the scope (if not the intensity) of potential conflict between self and other. Once agents recognize that adulthood demands foregoing the security embedded in such relationships of dependency, they are free to embrace a more appropriate paradigm of rationality for guiding their thought and action in interactions with others.
