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Must there be brute facts?In Elly Vintiadis & Constantinos Mekios (eds.), Brute Facts, Oxford University Press. 2018.
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Properties and PowersIn Dean W. Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Volume 1, Oxford University Press. 2004.
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6Cause, Mind, and Reality: Essays Honoring C.B. Martin (edited book)Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1989.
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43The Nature of True MindsCambridge University Press. 1992.This book aims at reconciling the emerging conceptions of mind and their contents that have, in recent years, come to seem irreconcilable. Post-Cartesian philosophers face the challenge of comprehending minds as natural objects possessing apparently non-natural powers of thought. The difficulty is to understand how our mental capacities, no less than our biological or chemical characteristics, might ultimately be products of our fundamental physical constituents, and to do so in a way that prese…Read more
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87Philosophy of Mind: A Guide and Anthology (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2003.Edited by a renowned scholar in the field, this anthology provides a comprehensive and self-contained introduction to the philosophy of mind. Featuring an extensive and varied collection of fifty classical and contemporary readings, it also offers substantial section introductions--which set the extracts in context and guide readers through them--discussion questions, and guides to further reading. Ideal for undergraduate courses, the book is organized into twelve sections, providing instructors…Read more
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4Mental CausationIn Stephen Stich & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind, Wiley-blackwell. 2003.This chapter contains sections titled: The Cartesian Background Intentionality Functionalism Levels of Reality Causation and Broad States of Mind Qualia Zombies Conclusion.
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41Cognition and representationAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 58 (2): 158-168. 1980.This Article does not have an abstract
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19RelationsCambridge University Press. 2009.Historically, philosophical discussions of relations have featured chiefly as afterthoughts, loose ends to be addressed only after coming to terms with more important and pressing metaphysical issues. F. H. Bradley stands out as an exception. Understanding Bradley's views on relations and their significance today requires an appreciation of the alternatives, which in turn requires an understanding of how relations have traditionally been classified and how philosophers have struggled to capture …Read more
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19What are we talking about here?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (4): 671-672. 2001.Shepard provides an account of mechanisms underlying perceptual judgment or representation. Ought we to interpret the account as revealing principles on which those mechanisms operate or merely an account of principles to which their operation apparently conforms? The difference, invisible so long as we remain at a high level of abstraction, becomes important when we begin to consider implementation. [Shepard].
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6"The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism" by Barry Stroud (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2): 331. 1986.
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11The Propositional AttitudesProtoSociology 8 53-67. 1996.Traditionally conceived, rational action is action founded on reasons. Reasons involve the propositional attitudes — beliefs, desires, intentions, and the like. What are we to make of the propositional attitudes? One possibility, a possibility endorsed by Donald Davidson, is that an agent’s possession of propositional attitudes is a matter of that agent’s being interpretable in a particular way. Such a view accounts for the propositional content of the attitudes, but threatens to undercut their …Read more
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53The Last Word on EmergenceRes Philosophica 100 (2): 151-169. 2023.The metaphysical doctrine of emergence continues to exert a powerful pull on philosophers and metaphysically inclined scientists. This paper focuses on a recent account of emergence advanced by Jessica Wilson in Metaphysical Emergence, but the discussion has the broader aim of making explicit some of the underlying themes that inspire thoughts of emergence generally. These prove to be, not merely optional, but largely lacking in merit.
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63The epistemic route to anti-realismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 66 (2). 1988.Hilary putnam, In "reason, Truth, And history", Defends a strong version of antirealism--Roughly, The doctrine that the world is in some way mind-Dependent. Putnam's argument to this conclusion is discussed and found to depend on the unwarranted assumption that causal relations required to fix the content of states of mind must themselves be mind-Dependent. The assumption may be abandoned, But doing so amounts to the abandonment of the strong version of antirealism