Which properties can we visually experience? Some authors hold that we can experience only low-level properties such as color, illumination, shape, spatial location, and motion. Others believe that we can also experience high-level properties, such as being a dog or being a pine tree. On the basis of her method of phenomenal contrast, Susanna Siegel has recently defended the latter view. One of her central claims is that we can best account for certain phenomenal contrasts if we assume that we can visually experience natural kind properties. In this paper, I argue that certain kinds of low-level properties, namely shape-gestalt properties, can explain these phenomenal contrasts just as well as high-level properties. If successful, this is a modest, but nevertheless significant result. Even though it does not prove the falsity of Siegel’s proposal, it nevertheless secures the existence of a plausible alternative.

Tracking representationalism is the theory that phenomenal consciousness is a matter of tracking physical properties in an appropriate way. This theory holds that phenomenal character can be explained in terms of representational content, and it also entails that there is unlikely to be a strong correlation between phenomenal character and neural states. However, the empirical evidence shows that both claims cannot be true. So, tracking representationalism is wrong. Its fault is due to ignoring the internal correlation of experience, the existence of which shows that phenomenal character is shaped by neural states to a large extent, so it cannot be wholly explained by representational content.

The traditional conception of self-deception takes it for an intrapersonal form of interpersonal deception. However, since the same subject is at the same time deceived and deceived, this means attributing the agent a pair of contradictory beliefs. In the course of defending a deflationary conception of self-deception, Mele (1997) has challenged traditionalists to present convincing evidence that there are cases of self-deception in which what he calls the dual belief-requirement is satisfied. Levy (2009) has responded to this challenge affirming that there is at least one real cases of self-deception that meets this requirement, namely, that of anosognosia. In this family of conditions, the patient apparently believes that there is nothing wrong with her while, at the same time, providing behavioral cues that indicate that the patient is somehow aware of his disease. If Levy is right, then traditionalism about self-deception could be vindicated, after having been widely abandoned due to its need to postulate exotic mental processes in order to make sense of the attribution of contradictory beliefs. In this paper, I assess whether Levy’s response to Mele’s challenge is successful by analyzing his interpretation of the empirical evidence to which he appeals. Finally, I attack the cogency of the underlying commitments about the nature of folk psychology to which one is required to defer in order to draw from conflicting evidence the attribution of contradictory beliefs.

In the quest for a new social turn in philosophy of science, exploring the prospects of a Vygotskian perspective could be of significant interest, especially due to Vugotsky ’s emphasis on the role of culture and socialisation in the development of cognitive functions. However, a philosophical reassessment of Vygotsky's ideas in general has yet to be done.As a step towards this direction, I attempt to elaborate an approach on scientific representations by drawing inspirations from Vygotsky. Specifically, I work upon Vygotsky's understanding on the nature and function of concepts, mediation and zone of proximal development.I maintain that scientific representations mediate scientific cognition in a tool-like fashion (Like Vygotsky's signs). Scientific representations are consciously acquired through deliberate inquiry in a specific context, where it turns to be part of a whole system, reflecting the social practices related to scientific inquiry, just scientific concepts do in Vygotsky's understanding. They surrogate the real processes or effects understudy, by conveying some of the features of the represented systems. Vygotsky's solution to the problem of the ontological status of concepts points to an analogous understanding for abstract models, which should be regarded neither as fictions nor as abstract objects.I elucidate these views by using the examples of the double-helix model of DNA structure and of the development of our understanding of the photoelectric effect.

The article discusses the concept of milieu in its connection with a problem of embodiment as it is today posed in the cultural studies of science. It is pointed out that if we take the embodied milieu as a precondition and result of our theoretical and practical activities, then it challenges the traditional sense of the word «social and, accordingly, the basic purposes of a social philosophy of science.

A distinction should be drawn between natural sciences and cultural studies such as psychology and history. A social philosophy of science must be based on bringing them into a fruitful relationship. What relations are possible? There is the role of natural science concepts and methods in cultural studies and the role of concepts and methods of cultural studies in natural science, determining standards of good work and particularly the choice oif domains of research with respect to human welfare. Cultural studies of natural science as an institution emphasises the importance of standards of excellence and of the role of rights and dutiesin the life of scientific institutions.