I've recently been looking through back issues of journals in updating the philosophy of mind bibliography (more on this shortly). One finds all sorts of fascinating things this way (e.g. there's a huge philosophical literature on consciousness circa 1900, especially sophisticated on issues such as spatial and temporal consciousness, the unity of consciousness, and its relational structure). But perhaps the most unexpectedly wonderful piece I've come across was a paper from Mind in 1966, by one Fred I. Dretske, entitled "Ziring Ziderata". (Here's an Oxford link in addition to the JSTOR link; both have restricted access.) Apart from the aesthetic appeal of its title, there's also a fine aesthetic appeal in its content.
The paper is in effect an adaptation/parody of A.J. Ayer's arguments for a sense-datum-based analysis of the ordinary notion of 'perceiving', whereby perceiving an external-world object is a matter of sensing a sense-datum with an appropriate relation to that object. On Dretske's account, desiring an external-world object is a matter of "ziring" a "zideratum" of the appropriate sort. He establishes the existence of ziderata via an analog of the argument from illusion, and goes on to draw out consequences. One pleasant consequence is that one's zires are always satisfied, as one always has the corresponding zideratum. Of course there are tricky questions about unzired ziderilia, about the indeterminacy of ziderata, and so on. The article is sufficiently straight-faced that if one didn't know more about the author, one might take it at face value, at least until encountering the footnote "See my unpublishable paper 'Are Specklish Ziderata Really Speckled?'".
Oddly, I had never heard of this article. The only Google hits for the title are links to the original publication, and a citation index reveals exactly one citation of it (in a 1970 review article on perception). Very strange, given that it's by a major philosopher (albeit early in his career), in a major journal, with a striking title and wonderful content! Anyway, it strikes me that this article ought to be a classic.
Nice paper!
Strange that nearly nobody mentions this paper.
When you search with Google Scholar you get one catch in a book
from 1998. It's just a short note on Dretske, I think.
Posted by: P. Spät | October 31, 2006 at 02:17 AM
Nice footnote: "The form "to sire", the natural candidate for this technical notion, was avoided because of its possibly misleading implications".
Posted by: Brad Weslake | December 01, 2006 at 06:14 AM