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9Theories of consciousnessIn Quentin Smith & Aleksandar Jokić (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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5Introducing ConsciousnessTotem Books. 2000.This title is now available in a new format. Refer to Consciousness: A Graphic Guide 9781848311718.
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1Laws and AccidentsIn Graham Macdonald & Crispin Wright (eds.), Fact, Science and Morality: Essays on A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic, Blackwell. 1987.
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4The Baldwin Effect and Genetic AssimilationIn Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 2--102. 2005.
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337Thinking About ConsciousnessOxford University Press UK. 2002.The relation between subjective consciousness and the physical brain is widely regarded as the last mystery facing science. David Papineau argues that there is no real puzzle here. Consciousness seems mysterious, not because of any hidden essence, but only because we think about it in a special way. Papineau exposes the confusion, and dispels the mystery: we see consciousness in its place in the material world, and we are on the way to a proper understanding of the mind.
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5Kim Sterelny, thought in a hostile world: The evolution of human cognition , oxford: Blackwell, 2003, pp. XI 262, £50 (cloth), £16.95 (paper). Friendly thoughts on the evolution of cognition (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (3). 2004.This Article does not have an abstract
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127Can We Really See A Million ColoursIn Paul Coates & Sam Coleman (eds.), The Nature of Phenomenal Qualities, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
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18Why you don’t want to get in the box with schrödinger's catAnalysis 63 (1). 2003.By way of an example, Lewis imagines your being invited to join Schrödinger’s cat in its box for an hour. This box will either fill up with deadly poison fumes or not, depending on whether or not some radioactive atom decays, the probability of decay within an hour being 50%. The invitation is accompanied with some further incentive to comply (Lewis sets it up so there is a significant chance of some pretty bad but not life-threatening punishment if you don’t get in the box). Lewis argues that t…Read more
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67Choking and The YipsPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14 (2): 295-308. 2015.IntroductionSporting skills divide contemporary theorists into two camps. Let us call them the habitualists and the intellectualists. The habitualists hold that thought is the enemy of sporting excellence. In their view, skilled performers need to let their bodies take over; cognitive effort only interferes with skill. The intellectualists retort that sporting performance depends crucially on mental control. As they see it, the exercise of skill is a matter of agency, not brute reflex; the tailo…Read more
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107Uncertain Decisions and the Many-Minds Interpretation of Quantum MechanicsThe Monist 80 (1): 97-117. 1997.Imagine you are faced with a quantum mechanical device which will display either H or T when it is operated. You know that the single-case probability, or chance, of H is 0.8, and the chance of T is 0.2.
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147Philosophical devices: proofs, probabilities, possibilities, and setsOxford University Press. 2012.This book is designed to explain the technical ideas that are taken for granted in much contemporary philosophical writing. Notions like "denumerability," "modal scope distinction," "Bayesian conditionalization," and "logical completeness" are usually only elucidated deep within difficult specialist texts. By offering simple explanations that by-pass much irrelevant and boring detail, Philosophical Devices is able to cover a wealth of material that is normally only available to specialists. The …Read more
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18The empirical evidence often justifies belief in scientific theories. For instance, the great wealth of chemical and other relevant data leaves us with no real alternative to believing that matter is made of atoms. Similarly, the natural history of past and present organisms makes it irrational to deny that life on earth has evolved from a common ancestry. Again, the character and epidemiology of infectious diseases effectively establishes that they are caused by microbes. Peter Lipton did much …Read more
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2Friendly thoughts on the evolution of cognition (critical discussion of Kim Sterelny, Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition, 2003)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (3): 491-502. 2004.
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8The philosophy of science (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1996.The newest addition to the successful Oxford Readings in Philosophy series, this collection contains the most important contributions to the recent debate on the philosophy of science. The contributors crystallize the often heated arguments of the last two decades, assessing the skeptical attitudes within philosophy of science and the counter-challenges of the scientific realists. Contributors include Nancy Cartwright, Brian Ellis, Arthur Fine, Clark Glymour, Larry Laudan, Peter Lipton, Alan Mus…Read more
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19Theory-dependent termsPhilosophy of Science 63 (1): 1-20. 1996.The main puzzle about theoretical definitions is that nothing seems to decide which assumptions contribute to such definitions and which do not. I argue that theoretical definitions are indeed imprecise, but that this does not normally matter, since the definitional imprecision does not normally produce indeterminacy of referential value. Sometimes, however, the definitional imprecision is less benign, and does generate referential indeterminacy. In these special cases, but not otherwise, it is …Read more
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1Arguments for supervenience and physical realizationIn Elias E. Savellos & Ümit D. Yalçin (eds.), Supervenience: New Essays, Cambridge University Press. 1995.
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31Reuniting (scene) phenomenology with (scene) accessBehavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (5-6): 521-521. 2007.Block shows that we can consciously see a scene without being able to identify all the individual items in it. But in itself this fails to drive a wedge between phenomenology and access. Once we distinguish scene phenomenology from item phenomenology, the link between phenomenology and access is restored
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25A reduction of causation to probabilities would be a great achievement, if it were possible.  In this paper I want to defend this reductionist ambition against some recent criticisms from Gurol Irzik (1996) and Dan Hausman (1998). In particular, I want to show that the reductionist programme can be absolved of a vice which is widely thought to disable it--the vice of infidelity
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 |