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323Theories of consciousnessIn Quentin Smith & Aleksandar Jokic (eds.), Consciousness: New Philosophical Essays, Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 353. 2003.My target in this paper is "theories of consciousness". There are many theories of consciousness around, and my view is that they are all misconceived. Consciousness is not a normal scientific subject, and needs handling with special care. It is foolhardy to jump straight in and start building a theory, as if consciousness were just like electricity or chemical valency. We will do much better to reflect explicitly on our methodology first. When we do this, we will see that theories of consciousn…Read more
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1Laws and AccidentsIn Crispin Wright & Graham Frank Macdonald (eds.), Fact, Science and Morality: Essays on A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic, Blackwell. 1986.
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189The Case for MaterialismIn Brie Gertler & Lawrence A. Shapiro (eds.), Arguing About the Mind, Routledge. pp. 4--125. 2007.
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Mind, health, and biological purposeIn A. Phillips Griffiths (ed.), Philosophy, Psychology, and Psychiatry, Cambridge University Press. 1995.
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113The tyranny of common senseThe Philosophers' Magazine 34 (34): 19-25. 2006.Sometimes I despair of my philosophical colleagues. They are so conservative. I don’t mean this in a political sense. In conventional party-political terms, most professional philosophers are probably well to the left of centre. As a group, they have a strong sense of fairness and little commitment to the social status quo. But this political openmindedness doesn’t normally carry over to their day jobs. When it comes to philosophical ideas, they are congenitally suspicious of intellectual innova…Read more
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6The antipathetic fallacy and the boundaries of consciousnessIn Thomas Metzinger (ed.), Conscious Experience, Ferdinand Schoningh. 1995.
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27Materialism is the view that mental states are one and the same as physical states. (This is different from saying they are caused by physical states, or eliminated by physical states.) Dualism in the view that mental states are extra to the physical realm. Kripke’s metaphor: if materialism were true, not even God could make a world physically just like ours but with no sensations, feelings or thoughts.
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45Comments on François Recanati’s Mental Files: Doubts about IndexicalityDisputatio 5 (36): 159-175. 2013.Papineau-David_Doubts-about-indexicality
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26Social Facts and Psychological FactsIn Gregory Currie & Alan Musgrave (eds.), Popper and the human sciences, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 43-52. 1985.
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27Introduction to Thinking About ConsciousnessIn Thinking About Consciousness, Oxford University Press. 2002.
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43Consciousness has suddenly become an extremely fashionable topic in certain scientific circles. Many thinkers are now touting consciousness as the last unconquered region of science, and theorists from many different disciplines are racing to find a "theory of consciousness" which will unlock this final secret of nature. I am suspicious about all this enthusiasm. I think that much of the brouhaha is generated by philosophical confusion. In the end, I fear, there is no special secret of conscious…Read more
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150Human mindsIn Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, Cambridge University Press. pp. 159-183. 2001.Humans are part of the animal kingdom, but their minds differ from those of other animals. They are capable of many things that lie beyond the intellectual powers of the rest of the animal realm. In this paper, I want to ask what makes human minds distinctive. What accounts for the special powers that set humans aside from other animals?
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14The Paradox of InstrumentalismPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1986 269-276. 1986.Instrumentalism seems less plausible than realism, yet at the same time to be logically weaker. This paper explores the possibility of resolving this apparent paradox by switching to an anti-Humean view of laws. Although in the end this suggestion turns out to be only a part of the solution, it does help to clarify what is at issue in the debate about instrumentalism
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448Phenomenal and perceptual conceptsIn Torin Andrew Alter & Sven Walter (eds.), Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, Oxford University Press. pp. 111--144. 2006.1 Introduction 2 Perceptual Concepts 2.1 Perceptual Concepts are not Demonstrative 2.2 Perceptual Concepts as Stored Templates 2.3 Perceptual Semantics 2.4 Perceptually Derived Concepts 3 Phenomenal Concepts.
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237Against representationalismInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 24 (3): 324-347. 2016.It is very natural to suppose that conscious sensory experience is essentially representational. However this thought gives rise to any number of philosophical problems and confusions. I shall argue that it is quite mistaken. Conscious phenomena cannot be constructed out of representational materials.
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22Explanation in Psychology: Truth and TeleologyRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 27 21-43. 1990.A number of recent writers have argued that we should explain mental representation teleologically, in terms of the biological purposes of beliefs and other mental states.A rather older idea is that the truth condition of a belief is that condition which guarantees that actions based on that belief will succeed.What I want to show in this paper is that these two ideas complement each other. The teleological theory is inadequate unless it incorporates the thesis that truth is the guarantee of suc…Read more
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938 The evolution of knowledgeIn Peter Carruthers & A. Chamberlain (eds.), Evolution and the Human Mind: Modularity, Language and Meta-Cognition, Cambridge University Press. pp. 170. 2000.
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148Teleosemantics: New Philo-sophical Essays (edited book)Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2006.Teleosemantics seeks to explain meaning and other intentional phenomena in terms of their function in the life of the species. This volume of new essays from an impressive line-up of well-known contributors offers a valuable summary of the current state of the teleosemantics debate
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258Reliabilism, induction and scepticismPhilosophical Quarterly 42 (166): 1-20. 1992.Book chapter
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1The vis viva controversyIn Roger Stuart Woolhouse (ed.), Leibniz, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science, Oxford University Press. 1981.
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58Truth and TeleologyIn D. Knowles (ed.), Explanation and its Limits, Cambridge University Press. pp. 21-43. 1990.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
General Philosophy of Science |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphilosophy |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
General Philosophy of Science |