•  181
    On the Diversity of Auditory Objects
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (1): 63-89. 2010.
    This paper defends two theses about sensory objects. The more general thesis is that directly sensed objects are those delivered by sub-personal processes. It is shown how this thesis runs counter to perceptual atomism, the view that wholes are always sensed indirectly, through their parts. The more specific thesis is that while the direct objects of audition are all composed of sounds, these direct objects are not all sounds—here, a composite auditory object is a temporal sequence of sounds (wh…Read more
  •  590
    Greek Ontology and the 'Is' of Truth
    Phronesis 28 (2). 1983.
    The author investigates greek ontologies that apparently rely on a conflation of "binary" (x is f) and "monadic" (x is) uses of 'is'. He uses Aristotelian and other texts to support his proposal that these ontologies are explained by the Greeks using two alternative semantic analyses for 'x is F'. The first views it as asserting a relation between x and F, the second as asserting that a "predicative complex" exists, where a predicative complex is a complex consisting of x and F. The article conc…Read more
  •  45
    Review of Thomas Natsoulas, Consciousness and Perceptual Experience (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2014. 2014.
    A review of Thomas Natsoulas's "Consciousness and Perceptual Experience."
  •  68
    Review of Alva Noe, Strange Tools (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2016. 2016.
  •  12
    A main point of my article, as I see it, is that we can solve Putnam's problem, as articulated in the first paragraph of section three, without recourse to the definition of “natural-kind term” as “rigid designator of a natural kind”. I had three main objections to this definition: It makes the classification of a term as a natural-kind term dependent on one's metaphysics, i.e., on the status given to natural kinds. However, Putnam's argument seems to be independent of such metaphysical consider…Read more
  •  1381
    What is a Hand? What is a Mind?
    Revue Internationale de Philosophie (214): 653-672. 2000.
    Argues that biological organs, including mental capacities, should be identified by homology (not function).
  •  41
    Discussion. Evolution, Wisconsin style: selection and the explanation of individual traits
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50 (1): 143-150. 1999.
    natural selection may show why all (most, some) humans have an opposable thumb, but cannot show why any particular human has one, Karen Neander ([1995a], [1995b]) argues that this is false because natural selection is 'cumulative'. It is argued here, on grounds independent of its cumulativity, that selection can explain the characteristics of individual organisms subsequent to the event. The difference of opinion between Sober and his critics turns on an ontological dispute about how organisms a…Read more
  •  644
    Perception is the ultimate source of our knowledge about contingent facts. It is an extremely important philosophical development that starting in the last quarter of the twentieth century, philosophers have begun to change how they think of perception. The traditional view of perception focussed on sensory receptors; it has become clear, however, that perceptual systems radically transform the output of these receptors, yielding content concerning objects and events in the external world. Adequ…Read more
  •  384
    Two ways of thinking about fitness and natural selection
    Journal of Philosophy 99 (2): 55-83. 2002.
    How do fitness and natural selection relate to other evolutionary factors like architectural constraint, mode of reproduction, and drift? In one way of thinking, drawn from Newtonian dynamics, fitness is one force driving evolutionary change and added to other factors. In another, drawn from statistical thermodynamics, it is a statistical trend that manifests itself in natural selection histories. It is argued that the first model is incoherent, the second appropriate; a hierarchical realization…Read more
  •  25
    Biological Universals and the Nature of Fear
    Journal of Philosophy 95 (3): 105. 1998.
  •  685
    Image Content
    In Berit Brogaard (ed.), Does Perception Have Content?, Oxford University Press. pp. 265-290. 2014.
    The senses present their content in the form of images, three-dimensional arrays of located sense features. Peacocke’s “scenario content” is one attempt to capture image content; here, a richer notion is presented, sensory images include located objects and features predicated of them. It is argued that our grasp of the meaning of these images implies that they have propositional content. Two problems concerning image content are explored. The first is that even on an enriched conception, image …Read more
  •  14
    Teleology, Error, and the Human Immune System
    with Edwin Levy
    Journal of Philosophy 81 (7): 351. 1984.
  •  191
    It is argued that according to Aristotle the universe is a single substance with its own form and matter.
  •  46
    Human rationality and the unique origin constraint
    In André Ariew (ed.), Functions, Oxford University Press. pp. 341. 2002.
    This paper offers a new definition of "adaptationism". An evolutionary account is adaptationist, it is suggested, if it allows for multiple independent origins for the same function -- i.e., if it violates the "Unique Origin Constraint". While this account captures much of the position Gould and Lewontin intended to stigmatize, it leaves it open that adaptationist accounts may sometimes be appropriate. However, there are many important cases, including that of human rationality, in which it i…Read more
  •  338
    Seeing, Doing, and Knowing is an original and comprehensive philosophical treatment of sense perception as it is currently investigated by cognitive neuroscientists. Its central theme is the task-oriented specialization of sensory systems across the biological domain. Sensory systems are automatic sorting machines; they engage in a process of classification. Human vision sorts and orders external objects in terms of a specialized, proprietary scheme of categories - colours, shapes, speeds and di…Read more
  •  30
    Assembling the Emotions
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (sup1): 185-212. 2006.
    Endogenous depression is highly correlated with low levels of serotonin in the central nervous system. Does this imply or suggest that this sort of depression just is this neurochemical deficit? Scorning such an inference, Antonio Damasio writes:If feeling happy or sad … corresponds in part to the cognitive modes under which your thoughts are operating, then the explanation also requires that the chemical acts on the circuits which generate and manipulate [such thoughts]. Which means that reduci…Read more
  •  488
    Listening effort helps explain why people who are hard of hearing are prone to fatigue and social withdrawal. However, a one-factor model that cites only effort due to hardness of hearing is insufficient as there are many who lead happy lives despite their disability. This paper explores other contributory factors, in particular motivational arousal and pleasure. The theory of rational motivational arousal predicts that some people forego listening comprehension because they believe it to be im…Read more
  •  46
    This collection of 25 essays by leading researchers provides an overview of the state of the field.
  •  32
    Ethics in the supply chain
    The Philosophers' Magazine 62 (62): 23-25. 2013.
  •  48
    Origins Are Not Essences in Evolutionary Systematics
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 32 (2). 2002.
    Sound like a philosopher’s controversy? I think so. In ‘Evolution,’ I argued that Anti-Individualism was committed to a ‘highly metaphysical’ proposition at odds with the methodology of population genetics. This infelicity gave me reason for rejecting it. In his recent article, Pust takes issue with Neander and me. Until Pust wrote, Sober felt some small pressure from Individualism, and had shifted, albeit microscopically, toward it—he thought that on a very broad conception of causation, there …Read more
  •  3
    Visual Concepts
    Philosophical Topics 33 (1): 207-233. 2005.
  •  25
    Color vision: Content versus experience
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 15 (1): 46-47. 1992.
  •  3
    In Mendel’s Mirror (review)
    Journal of Philosophy 102 (4): 206-216. 2005.
  •  85
    The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Perception (edited book)
    Oxford University Press UK. 2015.
    Perception has been for philosophers in the last few decades an area of compelling interest and intense investigation. Developments in contemporary cognitive science and neuroscience has thrown up new information about the brain and new conceptions of how sensory information is processed and used. These new conceptions offer philosophers opportunities for reconceptualising the senses--what they tell us, how we use them, and the nature of the knowledge they give us. Today, the philosophy of perce…Read more
  •  36
    Biological Realism
    Philosophica 47 (n/a). 1991.
  • Preface
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 14 (n/a). 1988.
  •  116
    The Categories and Aristotle's Ontology
    Dialogue 17 (2): 228-243. 1978.
    Much recent work on Aristotle's Categories assumes that there is an ontological theory presented in that work and tries to reconstruct it on the basis of the slender evidence in the book. I claim that this is misguided. Using a distinction made by G.E.L. Owen between theory and the "phaenomena", I argue that the Categories is mainly concerned with setting out the phenomena -- the intuitions that any ontology must explain. This thesis has consequences for the interpretation of Aristotle's ontolog…Read more
  •  7
    Aristotle's Semantics and a Puzzle Concerning Change
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14 (sup1): 21-40. 1984.
    In this paper I shall examine Aristotle's treatment of a certain puzzle concerning change. In section I, I shall show that within a certain standard framework for the semantics of subject-predicate sentences a number of things that Aristotle wants to maintain do not make sense. Then, I shall outline a somewhat non-standard account of the semantics for such sentences — arguably Aristotle's — and show how the proposals concerning change fit quite naturally into this framework. The results of this …Read more
  •  34
    How (and why) Darwinian selection restricts environmental feedback
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (3): 545-545. 2001.
    Selectionist models date back to Empedocles in Ancient Greece. The novelty of Darwinian selection is that it is able to produce adaptively valuable things without being sensitive to adaptive value. Darwin achieved this result by a restriction of environmental feedback to the replicative process. Immune system selection definitely does not respect this restriction, and it is doubtful whether operant learning does.