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10Intentional ObjectsRatio 14 (4): 336-349. 2002.The idea of an intentional object, or an object of thought, gives rise to a dilemma for theories of intentionality. Either intentional objects are existing objects, in which case it is impossible, contrary to appearances, to think about something which does not exist. Or some intentional objects are non‐existent real objects. But this requires an obscure and implausible metaphysics. I argue that the way out of this dilemma is to deny that being an intentional object is being an entity of any kin…Read more
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1Brentano's concept of intentional inexistenceIn Markus Textor (ed.), The Austrian contribution to analytic philosophy, Routledge. 2006.
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5Causes and Coincidences, by David Owen (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (1): 146-148. 1996.
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606Mental fact and mental fictionIn Tamás Demeter, T. Parent & Adam Toon (eds.), Mental Fictionalism: Philosophical Explorations, Routledge. pp. 303-319. 2022.It is common to distinguish between conscious mental episodes and standing mental states — those mental features like beliefs, desires or intentions, which a subject can have even if she is not conscious, or when her consciousness is occupied with something else. This paper presents a view of standing mental states according to which these states are less real than episodes of consciousness. It starts from the usual view that states like beliefs and desires are not directly present to the mind, …Read more
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339The Problem of PerceptionStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2021.The Problem of Perception is a pervasive and traditional problem about our ordinary conception of perceptual experience. The problem is created by the phenomena of perceptual illusion and hallucination: if these kinds of error are possible, how can perceptual experience be what we ordinarily understand it to be: something that enables direct perception of the world? These possibilities of error challenge the intelligibility of our ordinary conception of perceptual experience; the major theories …Read more
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796The Limits of the DoxasticIn Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind, Vol. 1, Oup. pp. 36-57. 2021.It is usual to distinguish between two kinds of doxastic attitude: standing or dispositional states, which govern our actions and persist throughout changes in consciousness; and conscious episodes of acknowledging the truth of a proposition. What is the relationship between these two kinds of attitude? Normally, the conscious episodes are in harmony with the underlying dispositions, but sometimes they come apart and we act in a way that is contrary to our explicit conscious judgements. Philosop…Read more
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884The Significance of the Many Property ProblemPhenomenology and Mind 22 (22): 170. 2022.One of the most influential traditional objections to Adverbialism about perceptual experience is that posed by Frank Jackson’s ‘many property problem’. Perhaps largely because of this objection, few philosophers now defend Adverbialism. We argue, however, that the essence of the many property problem arises for all of the leading metaphysical theories of experience: all leading theories must simply take for granted certain facts about experience, and no theory looks well positioned to explain t…Read more
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12In Defense of Pure Reason: A Rationalist Account of A Priori JustificationMind 112 (447): 502-506. 2003.
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347Leibniz on ConsciousnessIn Stephen D. Leach & James Tartaglia (eds.), Consciousness and the Great Philosophers: What Would They Have Said About Our Mind-Body Problem?, Routledge. 2016.What would Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz have said about today’s problem of consciousness? Some philosophers claim that Leibniz was one of the first to argue that there is an ‘explanatory gap’ between our knowledge of matter and our knowledge of consciousness, and that he thought this posed a problem for materialism (see for example Churchland 1995: 191-2; Kriegel 2015: 49; Seager 1991; Searle 1983: 267-8). This is supposed to be the point of the famous passage in the Monadology (1714), in which Lei…Read more
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1583The Knowledge Argument is an Argument about KnowledgeIn Sam Coleman (ed.), The Knowledge Argument, Cambridge University Press. 2019.The knowledge argument is something that is both an ideal for philosophy and yet surprisingly rare: a simple, valid argument for an interesting and important conclusion, with plausible premises. From a compelling thought-experiment and a few apparently innocuous assumptions, the argument seems to give us the conclusion, a priori, that physicalism is false. Given the apparent power of this apparently simple argument, it is not surprising that philosophers have worried over the argument and its pr…Read more
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682Brentano on IntentionalityIn Uriah Kriegel (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, Routledge. pp. 41-48. 2017.Brentano’s account of what he called intentionale Inexistenz — what we now call intentionality — is without question one of the most important parts of his philosophy, and one of the most influential ideas in late 19th-century philosophy. Here I will explain how this idea figures in Brentano’s central text, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (Brentano 1995a). I will then briefly explain how Brentano’s ideas about intentionality evolved after the first publication of this work in 1874, and h…Read more
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59The Contents of Experience: Essays on PerceptionCambridge University Press. 1992.The nature of perception has long been a central question in philosophy. It is of crucial importance not just in the philosophy of mind, but also in epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of science. The essays in this 1992 volume not only offer fresh answers to some of the traditional problems of perception, but also examine the subject in light of contemporary research on mental content. A substantial introduction locates the essays within the recent history of the subject, …Read more
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125Aspects of PsychologismHarvard University Press. 2014.Aspects of Psychologism is a penetrating look into fundamental philosophical questions of consciousness, perception, and the experience we have of our mental lives. Psychologism, in Tim Crane’s formulation, presents the mind as a single subject-matter to be investigated not only empirically and conceptually but also phenomenologically: through the systematic examination of consciousness and thought from the subject’s point of view.
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159The Objects of ThoughtOxford University Press. 2013.Tim Crane addresses the ancient question of how it is possible to think about what does not exist. He argues that the representation of the non-existent is a pervasive feature of our thought about the world, and that to understand thought's representational power ('intentionality') we need to understand the representation of the non-existent
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17Dispositions: A DebateRoutledge. 1996.Dispositions are essential to our understanding of the world. Dispositions: A Debate is an extended dialogue between three distinguished philosophers - D.M. Armstrong, C.B. Martin and U.T. Place - on the many problems associated with dispositions, which reveals their own distinctive accounts of the nature of dispositions. These are then linked to other issues such as the nature of mind, matter, universals, existence, laws of nature and causation
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303Reply to NesAnalysis 68 (3). 2008.Brentano (1874) described intentionality in a number of different ways: as ‘the intentional inexistence of an object’, ‘reference to a content’, ‘direction towards an object’, and ‘immanent objectivity’. All these phrases were intended to mean the same thing, but such elegant variation can give rise to confusion. In my Elements of Mind (2001) I tried to give a simpler description: intentional states all involve directedness upon an object and what I call (following Searle 1992) aspectual shape. …Read more
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411This edition has been fully revised and updated, and includes a new chapter on consciousness and a new section on modularity. There are also guides for further reading, and a new glossary of terms such as mentalese, connectionism, and the homunculus fallacy
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125Elements of Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of MindOxford University Press. 2001.Elements of Mind provides a unique introduction to the main problems and debates in contemporary philosophy of mind. Author Tim Crane opposes those currently popular conceptions of the mind that divide mental phenomena into two very different kinds (the intentional and the qualitative) and proposes instead a challenging and unified theory of all the phenomena of mind. In light of this theory, Crane engages students with the central problems of the philosophy of mind--the mind-body problem, the p…Read more
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214Reply to ChildProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 97 (1): 103-108. 1997.In ‘The Mental Causation Debate’ (1995), I pointed out the parallel between the premises in some traditional arguments for physicalism and the assumptions which give rise to the problem of mental causation. I argued that the dominant contemporary version of physicalism finds mental causation problematic because it accepts the main premises of the traditional arguments, but rejects their conclusion: the identification of mental with physical causes. Moreover, the orthodox way of responding to thi…Read more
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1072Mental Causation and Mental RealityProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 92 185-202. 1992.The Problems of Mental Causation. Functionalism in the philosophy of mind identifies mental states with their dispositional connections with other mental states, perceptions and actions. Many theories of the mind have sailed under the Functionalist flag. But what I take to be essential to Functionalism is that mental states are individuated causally: the reality of mental states depends essentially on their causal efficacy.
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Bana Bashour is an assistant professor of philosophy at the American Uni-versity of Beirut. Ray Brassier is an associate professor of philosophy at the American Uni-versity of BeirutIn Bana Bashour Hans Muller (ed.), Contemporary Philosophical Naturalism and Its Implications, Routledge. pp. 13--195. 2013.
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2Cuneo, Terence 278, 288 Dancy, Jonathan 230, 246 Daniels, Norman 75, 87 David, Marian 152 Dehaene, Stanislas 283, 288In Chris Tucker (ed.), Seemings and Justification: New Essays on Dogmatism and Phenomenal Conservatism, Oxford University Press Usa. 2013.
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62The Meaning of Belief: Religion from an Atheist’s Point of ViewHarvard University Press. 2017.Contemporary debate about religion seems to be going nowhere. Atheists persist with their arguments, many plausible and some unanswerable, but these make no impact on religious believers. Defenders of religion find atheists equally unwilling to cede ground. The Meaning of Belief offers a way out of this stalemate.
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343There is no Question of PhysicalismIn Paul K. Moser & J. D. Trout (eds.), Contemporary Materialism: A Reader, Routledge. pp. 65. 1995.Many philosophers are impressed by the progress achieved by physical sciences. This has had an especially deep effect on their ontological views: it has made many of them physicalists. Physicalists believe that everything is physical: more precisely, that all entities, properties, relations and facts are those which are studied by physics or other physical sciences...
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1327Brentano's Concept of Intentional InexistenceIn Markus Textor (ed.), The Austrian contribution to analytic philosophy, Routledge. pp. 1--20. 2006.Franz Brentano’s attempt to distinguish mental from physical phenomena by employing the scholastic concept of intentional inexistence is often cited as reintroducing the concept of intentionality into mainstream philosophical discussion. But Brentano’s own claims about intentional inexistence are much misunderstood. In the second half of the 20th century, analytical philosophers in particular have misread Brentano’s views in misleading ways.1 It is important to correct these misunderstandings if…Read more
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Postscript to "There is No Question of Physicalism"In Paul K. Moser & J. D. Trout (eds.), Contemporary Materialism: A Reader, Routledge. pp. 85-89. 1995.
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251"Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness" by Joseph Levine, "Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory" by Peter Carruthers, and "The Nature of Consciousness" by Mark Rowlands (review)Times Literary Supplement 5176 9-10. 2002.The Vienna Circle was a group of scientifically-minded philosophers, many physicists by training, who in the 1920s and 30s developed the cluster of philosophical doctrines known as Logical Positivism. Among the Circle’s most distinguished members were Rudolf Carnap and Herbert Feigl, each of whom emigrated to America during the Nazi era. It is said that Feigl, the author of an important 1958 monograph defending a materialist approach to the mind-body problem, once gave a visiting lecture on the …Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |