Brie Gertler

Commonwealth Professor of Philosophy

Vice Provost for Academic Affairs

Acquaintance, parsimony, and epiphenomenalism

Gertler B. Acquaintance, parsimony, and epiphenomenalism. The Knowledge Argument. 2019:62–86.

Abstract

Some physicalists (Balog 2012, Howell 2013), and most dualists, endorse the acquaintance response to the Knowledge Argument. This is the claim that Mary gains substantial new knowledge, upon leaving the room, because phenomenal knowledge requires direct acquaintance with phenomenal properties. The acquaintance response is an especially promising way to make sense of the Mary case. I argue that it casts doubt on two claims often made on behalf of physicalism, regarding parsimony and mental causation. I show that those who endorse the acquaintance response face special obstacles to invoking parsimony in an argument for physicalism. And I show how acknowledging the phenomenon of acquaintance can ease the dualist’s problems with mental causation, by dispelling three key objections to epiphenomenalism. The most challenging of these objections is that epiphenomenalism blocks an evolutionary explanation of the so-called “hedonic/utility match”. I propose that pleasures and pains, while themselves epiphenomenal, can nonetheless explain positive and negative associations with stimuli, associations that can contribute to fitness.

Last updated on 09/28/2021

Recent Publications

Gertler B. Agency and Self-Knowledge. In: Ferrero L, editor. Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Agency. Routledge; 2022.
Gertler B. Smithies on Self-Knowledge of Beliefs. Analysis. 2022.

In The Epistemic Role of Consciousness, Declan Smithies develops a systematic, cohesive account of beliefs, phenomenal consciousness, epistemic justification, and rationality. The arguments for the various elements of the account are extremely rigorous, and the account is impressively broad in scope. This commentary will focus on Smithies’ views about self-knowledge. Specifically, I will examine his case for the striking thesis that rational thinkers will know all their beliefs. I call this the ubiquity of self-knowledge thesis. Smithies’ case for this thesis is an important pillar of his larger project, as it bears on the nature of justification and our ability to fulfill the requirements of rationality.

Gertler B. Rational Agency and the Struggle to Believe What Your Reasons Dictate. In: The Fragmented Mind. Oxford University Press; 2021. pp. pp. 325–349. https://philpapers.org/rec/GERRAA

According to an influential view that I call agentialism, our capacity to believe and intend directly on the basis of reasons—our rational agency—has a normative significance that distinguishes it from other kinds of agency (Bilgrami 2006, Boyle 2011, Burge 1996, Korsgaard 1996, Moran 2001). Agentialists maintain that insofar as we exercise rational agency, we bear a special kind of responsibility for our beliefs and intentions; and it is only those attitudes that represent the exercise of rational agency that are truly our own. In this paper I challenge these agentialist claims. My argument centers on a case in which a thinker struggles to align her belief to her reasons, and succeeds only by resorting to non-rational methods. Because she relies on non-rational methods, this revision of her belief does not express her rational agency, in the agentialist sense. I argue that this process nevertheless expresses her capacities for rationality and agency; that she is responsible for the belief shaped through this process; and that the revised belief is truly her own. So rational agency is not distinctive in the ways that agentialists contend.

Gertler B. Dualism: How Epistemic Issues Drive Debates About the Ontology of Consciousness.. The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness. 2020.

A primary goal of this chapter is to correct a widespread misunderstanding about how epistemic issues shape the debate between dualists and physicalists. According to a familiar picture, dualism is motivated by armchair reflection, and dualists accord special significance to our ways of conceptualizing consciousness and the physical. In contrast, physicalists favor empirical data over armchair reflection, and physicalism is a relatively straightforward extension of scientific theorizing. This familiar picture is inaccurate. Both dualist and physicalist arguments employ a combination of empirical data and armchair reflection; both rely on considerations stemming from how we conceptualize certain phenomena; and both aim to establish views that are compatible with scientific results but go well beyond the deliverances of empirical science. My discussion highlights these neglected epistemic parallels between dualism and physicalism, and reveals the fine-grained epistemic commitments that motivate dualism and physicalism, respectively.
Gertler B. Acquaintance, parsimony, and epiphenomenalism. The Knowledge Argument. 2019:62–86.

Some physicalists (Balog 2012, Howell 2013), and most dualists, endorse the acquaintance response to the Knowledge Argument. This is the claim that Mary gains substantial new knowledge, upon leaving the room, because phenomenal knowledge requires direct acquaintance with phenomenal properties. The acquaintance response is an especially promising way to make sense of the Mary case. I argue that it casts doubt on two claims often made on behalf of physicalism, regarding parsimony and mental causation. I show that those who endorse the acquaintance response face special obstacles to invoking parsimony in an argument for physicalism. And I show how acknowledging the phenomenon of acquaintance can ease the dualist’s problems with mental causation, by dispelling three key objections to epiphenomenalism. The most challenging of these objections is that epiphenomenalism blocks an evolutionary explanation of the so-called “hedonic/utility match”. I propose that pleasures and pains, while themselves epiphenomenal, can nonetheless explain positive and negative associations with stimuli, associations that can contribute to fitness.
Gertler B. Self-Knowledge and Rational Agency: A Defense of Empiricism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 2018;96(1):91–109.

How do we know our own beliefs, intentions, and other attitudes? According to empiricism, such self-knowledge is based in empirical justification or warrant. Agentialists charge that empiricism portrays us as mere observers of a passing cognitive show, and thereby neglects the fact that believing and intending are things we do, for reasons. They maintain that our capacity for self-knowledge derives from our rational agency—our ability to conform our attitudes to our reasons, and to commit ourselves to those attitudes through avowals (Burge 1996; Moran 2001; Bilgrami 2006; Boyle 2009). This paper has two goals. The first is clarificatory: to identify agentialism’s defining thesis and precisely formulate the agentialist challenge to empiricism. The second goal is to defend empiricism from the agentialist challenge. I propose that the phenomena the agentialist associates with believing and intending are, in fact, features of agency more generally. These features are present when a subject’s reasons for acting can issue in action directly. My proposal is compatible with empiricism about self-knowledge. So empiricism can do justice to the idea that believing and intending are exercises of rational agency.