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241Many Minds are No Worse than OneBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (2): 233-241. 1996.
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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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233In the ZoneRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 73 175-196. 2013.On the Friday afternoon of the 3 rd test at Trent Bridge in 2001, the series was in the balance. The Australians had won the first two tests easily, but England now found themselves in a position of some strength. They had restricted Australia to a first-innings lead of just 5 runs, and had built a lead of 120 with six wickets in hand. Mark Ramprakash was in and had been batting steadily for well over an hour. Even though this Australian side was as strong as any in cricket history, England had …Read more
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228Kripke's proof is ad hominem not two-dimensionalPhilosophical Perspectives 21 (1). 2007.Identity theorists make claims like ‘pain = C-fibre stimulation’. These claims must be necessary if true, given that terms like ‘pain’ and ‘C-fibre stimulation’ are rigid. Yet there is no doubt that such claims appear contingent. It certainly seems that there could have been C-fibre stimulation without pains or vice versa. So identity theorists owe us an explanation of why such claims should appear contingent if they are in fact necessary.
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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
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224Why 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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208Representation and explanationPhilosophy of Science 51 (December): 550-72. 1984.Functionalism faces a problem in accounting for the semantic powers of beliefs and other mental states. Simple causal considerations will not solve this problem, nor will any appeal to the social utility of semantic interpretations. The correct analysis of semantic representation is a teleological one, in terms of the biological purposes of mental states: whereas functionalism focuses, so to speak, only on the structure of the cognitive mechanism, the semantic perspective requires in addition th…Read more
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206Physicalism, consciousness and the antipathetic fallacyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 71 (2): 169-83. 1993.This Article does not have an abstract
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203Theory-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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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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189The Case for MaterialismIn Brie Gertler & Lawrence A. Shapiro (eds.), Arguing About the Mind, Routledge. pp. 4--125. 2007.
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180I—The Presidential Address: Sensory Experience and Representational PropertiesProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 114 (1pt1): 1-33. 2014.This paper is about the nature of conscious sensory properties. My initial thesis is that these properties should not be equated with representational properties. I argue that any such representationalist view is in danger of implying that conscious sensory properties are constituted by relations to propositions or other abstract objects outside space and time; and I add that, even if this implication can be avoided, the broadness of representational properties in any case renders them unsuitabl…Read more
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173The disvalue of knowledgeSynthese 198 (6): 5311-5332. 2019.I argue that the concept of knowledge is a relic of a bygone age, erroneously supposed to do no harm. I illustrate this claim by showing how a concern with knowledge distorts the use of statistical evidence in criminal courts, and then generalize the point to show that this concern hampers our enterprises across the board and not only in legal contexts.
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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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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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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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146Philosophical 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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132The new nativism: a commentary on Gary Marcus’s The birth of the mind (review)Biology and Philosophy 21 (4): 559-573. 2006.Gary Marcus has written a very interesting book about mental development from a nativist perspective. For the general readership at which the book is largely aimed, it will be interesting because of its many informative examples of the development of cognitive structures and because of its illuminating explanations of ways in which genes can contribute to these developmental processes. However, the book is also interesting from a theoretical point of view. Marcus tries to make nativism compatibl…Read more
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130Can any sciences be special?In Graham Macdonald & Cynthia Macdonald (eds.), Emergence in Mind, Oxford University Press. pp. 179--197. 2010.
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124Realism, Ramsey sentences and the pessimistic meta-inductionStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 41 (4): 375-385. 2010.This paper defends scientific realism from the pessimistic meta-induction from past reference failure. It allows that a descriptive theory of reference implies that scientific terms characteristically fail of determinate reference. But it argues that a descriptive theory of reference also implies an equivalence between scientific theories and quantificational claims in the style of Ramsey. Since these quantificational claims do not use any of the referentially suspect scientific terms, they can …Read more
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123Probabilities and the many minds interpretation of quantum mechanicsAnalysis 55 (4): 239-246. 1995.
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123Can We Really See A Million ColoursIn Paul Coates & Sam Coleman (eds.), The Nature of Phenomenal Qualities, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
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123Many philosophers take the distinguishing mark of their subject to be its a priori status. In their view, where empirical science is based on the data of experience, philosophy is founded on a priori intuitions. In this paper I shall argue that there is no good sense in which philosophical knowledge is informed by a priori intuitions. Philosophical results have just the same a posteriori status as scientific theories. My strategy will be to pose a familiar dilemma for the friends of a priori phi…Read more
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Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
General Philosophy of Science |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Areas of Interest
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Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
General Philosophy of Science |