Defending cognitive illusions, individualism, and a two-factor theory of content

This dissertation discusses several topics in the philosophy of mind. The first chapter is an investigation of illusions about the contents of one's own mind, or “cognitive illusions.” Initially, I discuss a particular alleged illusion, that we visually experience the entire visual field at once, known as the “Grand Illusion Hypothesis.” Although the standard argument for this hypothesis fails, it succeeds in illustrating how one might establish the existence of a cognitive illusion. I then address the idea that all conscious experience is illusory. Arguments for this idea are typically not persuasive, since they do not address our apparent familiarity with conscious experience. I suggest that the notion of a cognitive illusion is useful here, and formulate a schematic argument for eliminativism based on the standard argument for the Grand Illusion Hypothesis.; In the second chapter, I defend individualism. According to this theory, scientific psychology should individuate mental states so that they supervene on the internal, current physical properties of a person. I defend a restricted form of individualism by claiming that the most reasonable explanation for the truth of non-individualistic psychological generalizations is that they poach on the truth of some individualistic generalizations. This makes the former kind of generalization superfluous, and therefore scientifically uninteresting.; If one accepts the conclusion of the second chapter, and in addition that the contents of propositional attitudes do not supervene on the individualistic properties of the bearer, the notion of content appears to lose its value. According to revisionism, we should stop using the notion of content altogether. In the third chapter, I reject revisionism by claiming that the ordinary notion of content has a value not captured by any individualistic notion. In particular, the notion of content can be used to exploit others as sources of information.; Furthermore, I argue that paying attention to this second use of our notion of content sheds light on the theory of content. I advocate a two-factor theory, according to which the content of a propositional attitude depends both on the internal properties of an associated mental representation, which are the properties relevant to the prediction and explanation of behavior, and on its information-carrying properties, which are relevant to the use of believers as sources of information.