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35NORMATIVITY AND JUDGEMENT I–David PapineauAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 73 (1): 17-43. 1999.
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65The Roots of Reason: Philosophical Essays on Rationality, Evolution, and ProbabilityOxford University Press. 2003.David Papineau presents a controversial view of human reason, portraying it as a normal part of the natural world, and drawing on the empirical sciences to illuminate its workings. In these six interconnected essays he discusses both theoretical and practical rationality, and shows how evolutionary theory, decision theory, and quantum mechanics offer fresh approaches to some long-standing problems
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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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199Phenomenal Concepts and the Private Language ArgumentAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 48 (2): 175. 2011.In this paper I want to consider whether the 'phenomenal concepts' posited by many recent philosophers of mind are consistent with Wittgenstein’s private language argument. The paper will have three sections. In the first I shall explain the rationale for positing phenomenal concepts. In the second I shall argue that phenomenal concepts are indeed inconsistent with the private language argument. In the last I shall ask whether this is bad for phenomenal concepts or bad for Wittgenstein.
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16An unnatural anti-realismStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 20 (1): 133-138. 1989.
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4I am lucky to have two such penetrating commentators as Robert Kirk and Andrew Melnyk. It is also fortunate that they come at me from different directions, and so cover different aspects of my book. Robert Kirk has doubts about the overall structure of my enterprise, and in particular about my central commitment to a distinctive species of phenomenal concepts. Andrew Melnyk, by contrast, offers no objections to my general brand of materialism. Instead he focuses specifically on my discussion of …Read more
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Theories ofIn Barry C. Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. pp. 175. 2006.
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77Review of Daniel Stoljar, Ignorance and Imagination: The Epistemic Origin of the Problem of Consciousness (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (4). 2007.
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190The 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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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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1The vis viva controversyIn Roger Stuart Woolhouse (ed.), Leibniz, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science, Oxford University Press. 1981.
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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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224The status of teleosemantics, or how to stop worrying about swampmanAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (2): 279-89. 2001.This Article does not have an abstract
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 |