Meaning, Mind, and Knowledge

Christopher S. Hill

A selection of influential essays by a leading contemporary thinker
Illuminates key debates in the central areas of philosophy
Presents Hill's views on a diversity of topics--some well known, and others less familiar

Meaning, Mind, and Knowledge

Christopher S. Hill

Description

In this collection of essays, most of which are of recent vintage, and seven of which appear here for the first time, Christopher S. Hill addresses a large assortment of philosophical issues.

Part I presents a deflationary theory of truth, argues that semantic properties like reference and correspondence with fact can also be characterized in deflationary terms, and offers an account of the value of these "thin" properties, tracing it to their ability to track more substantial properties that are informational or epistemic in character.

Part II defends the view that conscious experiences are type-identical with brain states. It addresses a large array of objections to this identity thesis, including objections based on the alleged multiple realizability of experiences, and objections based on Cartesian intuitions about the modeal separability of mind and matter. In the end, however, it maintains that theories of experience based on type-identity should give way to representationalist accounts.

Part III presents a representationalist solution to the mind-body problem. It argues that all awareness, including awareness of qualia, is governed by a Kantian appearance/reality distinction--a distinction between the ways objects and properties are represented as being, and the ways they are in themselves. It also presents theories of pain and visual qualia that kick them out of the mind and assign them to locations in body and the external world.

Part IV defends reliabilist theories of epistemic justification, deploys such theories in answering Cartesian skepticism, responds critically to Hawthorne's lottery problem and related proposals about the role of knowledge in conversation and practical reasoning, presents a new account of the sources of modeal knowledge, and proposes an account of logical and mathematical beliefs that represents them as immunune to empirical revision.

Meaning, Mind, and Knowledge

Christopher S. Hill

1. Introduction
Part I: Meaning
2. "gavagai" (1972)
Postscript to "gavagai" (2013)
3. Rudiments of a Theory of Reference (1987)
4. A Substitutional Theory of Truth, Reference, and Semantic Correspondence (2006)
5. How Concepts Hook onto the World (2013)
Part II: A Type Materialist Theory of Experience
6. In Defense of Type Materialism (1984)
7. Imaginability, Conceivability, Possibility, and the Mind-Body Problem (1997)
8. The Identity Theory (2013)
Part III: A Representationalist Theory of Experience
9. OW! The Paradox of Pain (2005)
10. Locating Qualia: Do They Reside in the Brain or in the Body and the World? (2012)
11. Visual Awareness and Visual Qualia (2013)
12. The Content of Visual Experience (2013)
Part IV: Knowledge
13. Process Reliabilism and Cartesian Scepticism (1996)
14. Hawthorne's Lottery Puzzle and the Nature of Belief, (written with Joshua Schechter, 2007)
15. Conceivability and Possibility (2013)
16. Concepts, Teleology, and Rational Revision (2013)

Meaning, Mind, and Knowledge

Christopher S. Hill

Author Information

Christopher S. Hill has taught at a number of institutions, including the University of Arkansas, the University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pittsburgh. He is presently Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. He has published three previous books, and was the editor of Philosophical Topics for twenty years.

Meaning, Mind, and Knowledge

Christopher S. Hill

Reviews and Awards

"The essays in this volume are the products of forty years of careful and creative philosophical thought. These wonderful essays enrich our understanding of central philosophical topics such as truth, meaning, experience, and knowledge. And they are an excellent gateway to Hill's philosophical vision."--Anil Gupta, University of Pittsburgh

"In addition to collecting deservedly influential papers by Hill on truth, reference, type materialism, imaginability, pain, skepticism, and knowledge, this book contains new papers on a range of topics, including conceptual representation, phenomenal consciousness, visual experience, modal knowledge, and the a priori.In each of these new contributions, Hill proposes fresh and well motivated solutions to large-scale philosophical problems. "--Brian McLaughlin, Rutgers University

"There is much to admire and much to be learned in the fascinating essays in this collection. Alongside his exciting new work on perception, concepts, and modality, Christopher HIll has compiled many of his major earlier essays, adding postscripts to place them in perspective. Taken together, these essays provide penetrating and insightful analyses of perception, concepts, knowledge, truth, and the mind-body problem."--Susanna Siegel, Harvard University