Browsing by Author "Franco, Paul"

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    A Defense of Nonconceptual Contents
    (2012) Wingfield, Elizabeth; Franco, Paul; Macbeth, Danielle
    The debate over whether perceptual experience includes nonconceptual contents is not only an interesting problem in itself, but has important bearings on other questions in philosophy, especially epistemology and philosophy of mind. The contemporary debate has two sides. On one side, philosophers such as John McDowell think that all perception is necessarily conceptual. On the other side, philosophers such as Christopher Peacocke think that not only are there nonconceptual contents in our perceptions but that these contents ground our knowledge claims. In this paper I first outline the arguments and the motivations McDowell and Peacocke advance in favor of their views. I then argue that both sides, to one extent or another, get it right. I argue that McDowell is correct to insist that nonconceptual contents do not play a role in knowledge but that Peacocke is nonetheless correct in stating that nonconceptual contents are a part of our perceptual lives. I argue that while nonconceptual contents are a rich part of our sensory awareness, it would be untenable to state that they play a role in our knowledge acquisition. In the concluding section I explain why a robust characterization of the nonconceptual contents I defend is in principle an impossible task.
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    Three Types of Scientific Revolution: A Kuhnian Analysis of Evolutionary Biology
    (2011) Block, Peter; Macbeth, Danielle; Franco, Paul
    Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolution has received much criticism for being overly simplistic and unable to account for more subtle-–and often more frequent-–types of scientific change. Indeed, it is argued that modern biology has simply never experienced a ‘revolution’ in the traditional Kuhnian sense of the word. However, an overlooked aspect of Kuhn’s philosophy of science may provide the conceptual grounds to posit more nuanced types of scientific revolution that can describe more complex scientific changes. It will be argued that Kuhn’s concept of specialization provides the conceptual grounds to posit two other types of scientific revolution in his philosophy of science: divergent revolution and trans‐disciplinary revolution. The case for two new types of revolution will be situated in the field of evolutionary biology, as two events in its own historical evolution will be used to concretize divergent and trans‐disciplinary revolution.