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13Is Representation Rife?Ratio 16 (2): 107-123. 2003.This paper applies a teleosemantic perspective to the question of whether there is genuine representation outside the familiar realm of belief‐desire psychology. I first explain how teleosemantics accounts for the representational powers of beliefs and desires themselves. I then ask whether biological states which are simpler than beliefs and desires can also have representational powers. My conclusion is that such biologically simple states can be ascribed representational contents, but only in…Read more
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Philosophical problems of biologyIn Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford companion to philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 97. 1995.
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41Ll The poverty of conceptual analysisIIn Matthew C. Haug (ed.), Philosophical Methodology: The Armchair or the Laboratory?, Routledge. pp. 166. 2013.
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71Can we be harmed after we are dead?Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 18 (5): 1091-1094. 2012.
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Pysicalism and the human sciencesIn Chrysostomos Mantzavinos (ed.), Philosophy of the social sciences: philosophical theory and scientific practice, Cambridge University Press. 2009.
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442Mind the gapPhilosophical Perspectives 12 373-89. 1998.On the first page of The Problem of Consciousness , Colin McGinn asks "How is it possible for conscious states to depend on brain states? How can technicolour phenomenology arise from soggy grey matter?" Many philosophers feel that questions like these pose an unanswerable challenge to physicalism. They argue that there is no way of bridging the "explanatory gap" between the material brain and the lived world of conscious experience , and that physicalism about the mind can therefore provide no …Read more
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150Reply to Kirk and MelnykSWIF Philosophy of Mind 4 (1). 2003.I 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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5Introducing ConsciousnessTotem Books. 2000.This title is now available in a new format. Refer to Consciousness: A Graphic Guide 9781848311718.
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324Theories 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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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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12Who would have thought it? Poker has become a mass-audience spectator sport. Names like Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, Phil ‘Unabomber’ Laak, and Dave ‘The Devilfish’ Ulliott may not be familiar to all readers of the TLS, but on any normal night you can see these top poker professionals on the nether reaches of the satellite channels, as they bluff and bully their way to pots worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like their counterparts in tennis and golf, they tour the world, playing in lucrative to…Read more
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18X*—Is Epistemology Dead?Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 82 (1): 129-142. 1982.David Papineau; X*—Is Epistemology Dead?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 82, Issue 1, 1 June 1982, Pages 129–142, https://doi.org/10.1093/arist.
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396The poverty of analysisAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 83 (1): 1-30. 2009.I argue that philosophy is like science in three interesting and non-obvious ways. First, the claims made by philosophy are synthetic, not analytic: philosophical claims, just like scientific claims, are not guaranteed by the structure of the concepts they involve. Second, philosophical knowledge is a posteriori, not a priori: the claims established by philosophers depend on the same kind of empirical support as scientific theories. And finally, the central questions of philosophy concern actual…Read more
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50Introduction: Prospects and problems for teleosemanticsIn Graham Macdonald & David Papineau (eds.), Teleosemantics: New Philo-sophical Essays, Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 1--22. 2006.
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6Review: Correlations and Causes (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 42 (3). 1991.
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38Explanatory gaps and dualist intuitionsIn Lawrence Weiskrantz & Martin Davies (eds.), Frontiers of consciousness, Oxford University Press. pp. 2008--55. 2008.I agree with nearly everything Martin Davies says. He has written an elegant and highly informative analysis of recent philosophical debates about the mind–brain relation. I particularly enjoyed Davies’ discussion of B.A. Farrell, his precursor in the Oxford Wilde Readership (now Professorship) in Mental Philosophy. It is intriguing to see how closely Farrell anticipated many of the moves made by more recent ‘type-A’ physicalists who seek to show that, upon analysis, claims about conscious state…Read more
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3Review of T. W. HUTCHISON: Knowledge and Ignorance in Economics (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 31 (1): 98-103. 1980.
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46Why is there a cognitive gulf between other animals and humans? Current fashion favours our greater understanding of Theory of Mind as an answer, and Language is another obvious candidate. But I think that analysis of the evolution of means-end cognitive mechanisms suggests that there may be a further significant difference: where animals will only perform those means which they (or their ancestors) have previously used as a route to some end, humans can employ observation to learn that some nov…Read more
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4Methodology: The Elements of the Philosophy of ScienceIn A. C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy: a guide through the subject, Oxford University Press. 1995.
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 |