University of Oxford
Faculty of Philosophy
DPhil, 1973
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Other Academic Areas
Areas of Interest
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  •  46
    Kant and the Mind
    Philosophical Review 104 (4): 590. 1995.
    Consciousness, self-consciousness, mental unity, and the necessary conditions for cognition are issues of paramount importance for two prima facie distinct intellectual endeavors: contemporary cognitive science and interpretations of Kant. The goal of Andrew Brook’s timely and useful book is to contribute to both of these projects by showing how a better understanding of Kant’s views can also illuminate current controversies about how to model the mind.
  •  45
    Judgments and drafts eight years later
    In Andrew Brook, Don Ross & David L. Thompson (eds.), Dennett's Philosophy: A Comprehensive Assessment, Mit Press. 2000.
    Now that some years have passed, how does this picture of consciousness look? On the one hand, Dennett's work has vastly expanded the range of options for thinking about conscious experiences and conscious subjects. On the other hand, I suspect that the implications of his picture have been oversold (perhaps more by others than by Dennett himself). The rhetoric of _CE_ is radical in places but I do not sure that the actual implications for commonsense views of Seemings and Subjects are nearly as…Read more
  •  41
    Kant's A Priori Methods for Recognizing Necessary Truths
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (sup1): 215-252. 1992.
  •  38
    Critical Notice of Bernard Williams, Problems of the Self (review)
    with J. W. Leyden
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 5 (4): 627-639. 1975.
  •  35
    Further routes to psychological constructionism
    with Courtney Humeny and Deirdre Kelly
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35 (3): 153-154. 2012.
    In this commentary, we do two things. First, we sketch two further routes to psychological constructionism. They are complementary to Lindquist et al.'s meta-analyses and have potential to add new evidence. Second, we look at a challenging kind of case for constructionism, namely, emotional anomalies where there are correlated, and probably relevant, brain anomalies. Psychopaths are our example
  •  32
    The Thread of Life (review)
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (4): 895-917. 1987.
  •  30
    Realism in the Refutation of Idealism
    Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress 2 313-320. 1995.
  •  29
    Baumard et al. make a good case that a sense of fairness evolved and that showing this requires reciprocity games with choice of partner. However, they oversimplify both morality and the evolution of morality. Where fairness is involved in morality, other things are, too, and fairness is often not involved. In the evolution of morality, other things played a role. Plus, the motive for being fair originally was self-interest, not anything moral
  •  28
    Fodor's New Theory of Content and Computation
    Mind and Language 12 (3-4): 459-474. 1997.
    In his recent book, The Elm and the Expert, Fodor attempts to reconcile the computational model of human cognition with information‐theoretic semantics, the view that semantic, and mental, content consists of nothing more than causal or nomic relationships, between words and the world, or (roughly) brain states and the world. In this paper, we do not challenge the project. Nor do we show that Fodor has failed to carry it out. instead, we urge that his analysis, when made explicit, turns out rath…Read more
  •  28
    Kant’s Attack on the Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection
    The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 45 41-46. 1998.
    In the neglected 'Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection,' Kant introduces a new transcendental activity, Transcendental Deliberation. It aims to determine to which faculty a representation belongs and does so by examining the representation's relationships to other representations. This enterprise yields some powerful ideas. Some of the relationships studied have great interest, numerical identity in particular. Indeed, seeing Kant discuss it here, one wonders why he did not include it in the …Read more
  •  26
    Acknowledgement of external reviewers for 2002
    with Sven Arvidson, John Barresi, Tim Bayne, Pierre Bovet, Andy Clark, Lester Embree, William Friedman, Peter Goldie, and David Hunter
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2 (95): 151-152. 2003.
  •  24
    Imagination, Possibility, and Personal Identity
    American Philosophical Quarterly 12 (3). 1975.
  •  22
    Critical Notice (review)
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 28 (2): 247-268. 1998.
  •  22
    Critical notice
    with J. W. Leyden
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 5 (4): 627-639. 1975.
  •  20
    Kant on Mind, Action, and Ethics (review)
    Philosophical Review 125 (2): 302-306. 2016.
  •  19
    O problema do livre-arbítrio
    with R. Stainton
    Critica -. 2005.
  •  18
    Jackendoff on consciousness
    Pragmatics and Cognition 4 (1): 81-92. 1995.
    In "How language helps us think", Jackendoff explores some of the relationships between language, consciousness, and thought, with a foray into attention and focus. In this paper, we will concentrate on his treatment of consciousness. We will examine three aspects of it: I. the method he uses to arrive at his views; 2. the extent to which he offers us a theory of consciousness adequate to assess his views; and 3. some of the things that we might need to add to what he offers to achieve an adequa…Read more
  •  17
    Kant and the Mind
    Synthese 115 (3): 375-393. 1998.
  •  16
    Kant's A Priori Methods For Recognizing Necessary Truths
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (sup1): 215-252. 1992.
  •  15
    Critical Notice
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (4): 895-917. 1987.
  •  14
    In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/7), Kant laid out a deep-running and largely original picture of the apperceptive mind, including a claim that in consciousness of self, one does not appear to oneself as an object and that consciousness of self is presupposed by consciousness of other things. As a result, consciousness of oneself does not provide knowledge of oneself and the referential apparatus of consciousness of self is radically different from other kinds of referential apparatus. The m…Read more
  •  14
    Reconciling the Two Images
    In S. O'Nuillain, Paul McKevitt & E. MacAogain (eds.), Two Sciences of Mind, John Benjamins. pp. 9--299. 1997.
  •  13
    Kant and the Mind
    Philosophical Quarterly 45 (181): 531-534. 1995.
  •  8
    Jackendoff on consciousness
    Pragmatics and Cognition 4 (1): 81-92. 1996.
    In "How language helps us think", Jackendoff explores some of the relationships between language, consciousness, and thought, with a foray into attention and focus. In this paper, we will concentrate on his treatment of consciousness. We will examine three aspects of it: I. the method he uses to arrive at his views; 2. the extent to which he offers us a theory of consciousness adequate to assess his views; and 3. some of the things that we might need to add to what he offers to achieve an adequa…Read more
  •  6
    Kant and Time‐Order Idealism
    In Heather Dyke & Adrian Bardon (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Time, Wiley. 2013.
    Kant was a transcendental idealist even about the time‐order of representations. For Kant, idealism meant two things: We are aware only of the contents of our own mind and what we are aware of is largely a result of the activities of the mind. His constructivism is the central issue in this chapter. The first part of the chapter is devoted to demonstrating preliminary existence proof. The middle sections of the chapter take up the localization problem. The final section of the paper identifies a…Read more