•  1314
    Is memory preservation?
    Philosophical Studies 148 (1): 3-14. 2010.
    Memory seems intuitively to consist in the preservation of some proposition (in the case of semantic memory) or sensory image (in the case of episodic memory). However, this intuition faces fatal difficulties. Semantic memory has to be updated to reflect the passage of time: it is not just preservation. And episodic memory can occur in a format (the observer perspective) in which the remembered image is different from the original sensory image. These difficulties indicate that memory cannot …Read more
  •  2473
    Color Experience: A Semantic Theory
    In Jonathan Cohen & Mohan Matthen (eds.), Color Ontology and Color Science, Mit Press. pp. 67--90. 2010.
    What is the relationship between color experience and color? Here, I defend the view that it is semantic: color experience denotes color in a code innately known by the perceiver. This semantic theory contrasts with a variety of theories according to which color is defined as the cause of color experience (in a special set of circumstances). It also contrasts with primary quality theories of color, which treat color as a physical quantity. I argue that the semantic theory better accounts for…Read more
  •  700
    The capacity to engage with art is a human universal present in all cultures and just about every individual human. This indicates that this capacity is evolved. In this Critical Notice of Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct, I discuss various evolutionary scenarios and their consequences. Dutton and I both reject the "spandrel" approach that originates from the work of Gould and Lewontin. Dutton proposes, following work of Geoffrey Miller, that art is sexually selected--that art-production is a sig…Read more
  •  195
    The disunity of color
    Philosophical Review 108 (1): 47-84. 1999.
    What is color? What is color vision? Most philosophers answer by reference to humans: to human color qualia, or to the environmental properties or "quality spaces" perceived by humans. It is argued, with reference to empirical findings concerning comparative color vision and the evolution of color vision, that all such attempts are mistaken. An adequate definition of color vision must eschew reference to its outputs in the human cognition and refer only to inputs: color vision consists in the us…Read more
  •  22
    How Do We Know How Sensory Properties Appear? A Reply to Νenad Miščević
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 12 (3): 509-518. 2012.
    The paper is a reply to Miščević (same volume). His objections are discussed and answered, in particular objections concerning Cartesian certainty in our knowledge of color.
  •  421
    Selection and causation
    Philosophy of Science 76 (2): 201-224. 2009.
    We have argued elsewhere that: (A) Natural selection is not a cause of evolution. (B) A resolution-of-forces (or vector addition) model does not provide us with a proper understanding of how natural selection combines with other evolutionary influences. These propositions have come in for criticism recently, and here we clarify and defend them. We do so within the broad framework of our own “hierarchical realization model” of how evolutionary influences combine.
  •  160
    How to understand casual relations in natural selection: Reply to Rosenberg and Bouchard (review)
    with André Ariew
    Biology and Philosophy 20 (2-3): 355-364. 2005.
    In “Two Ways of Thinking About Fitness and Natural Selection” (Matthen and Ariew [2002]; henceforth “Two Ways”), we asked how one should think of the relationship between the various factors invoked to explain evolutionary change – selection, drift, genetic constraints, and so on. We suggested that these factors are not related to one another as “forces” are in classical mechanics. We think it incoherent, for instance, to think of natural selection and drift as separate and opposed “forces” in e…Read more
  •  18
    What Sort of Science Is Evolutionary Biology?
    Dialogue 30 (1-2): 129-. 1991.
    A review of Paul Thompson's semantic interpretation of evolutionary theory.
  •  213
    Defining vision: What homology thinking contributes
    Biology and Philosophy 22 (5): 675-689. 2007.
    The specialization of visual function within biological function is reason for introducing “homology thinking” into explanations of the visual system. It is argued that such specialization arises when organisms evolve by differentiation from their predecessors. Thus, it is essentially historical, and visual function should be regarded as a lineage property. The colour vision of birds and mammals do not function the same way as one another, on this account, because each is an adaptation to specia…Read more
  •  373
    This is a comment on Frances Egan's paper, "How to Think About Mental Content." Egan distinguishes mathematical and cognitive content; she accepts the former and rejects the latter. In this comment, which was delivered at the Oberlin Colloquium in 2012, I defend cognitive content.
  •  910
    Active Perception and the Representation of Space
    In Dustin Stokes, Mohan Matthen & Stephen Biggs (eds.), Perception and Its Modalities, Oxford University Press. pp. 44-72. 2014.
    Kant argued that the perceptual representations of space and time were templates for the perceived spatiotemporal ordering of objects, and common to all modalities. His idea is that these perceptual representations were specific to no modality, but prior to all—they are pre-modal, so to speak. In this paper, it is argued that active perception—purposeful interactive exploration of the environment by the senses—demands premodal representations of time and space.
  •  566
    Unique Hues and Colour Experience
    In Fiona Macpherson & Derek Brown (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour, Routledge. 2021.
    In this Handbook entry, I review how colour similarity spaces are constructed, first for physical sources of colour and secondly for colour as it is perceptually experienced. The unique hues are features of one of the latter constructions, due initially to Hering and formalized in the Swedish Natural Colour System. I review the evidence for a physiological basis for the unique hues. Finally, I argue that Tye's realist approach to the unique hues is a mistake.
  •  43
    Color nominalism, pluralistic realism, and color science
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (1): 39-40. 2003.
    Byrne & Hilbert are right that it might be an objective fact that a particular tomato is unique red, but wrong that it cannot simultaneously be yellowish-red (not only objectively, but from somebody else's point of view). Sensory categorization varies among organisms, slightly among conspecifics, and sharply across taxa. There is no question of truth or falsity concerning choice of categories, only of utility and disutility. The appropriate framework for color categories is Nominalism and Plural…Read more
  • J.L. Ackrill, Aristotle The Philosopher (review)
    Philosophy in Review 4 47-49. 1984.
  •  172
    Biological functions and perceptual content
    Journal of Philosophy 85 (January): 5-27. 1988.
    Perceptions "present" objects as red, as round, etc.-- in general as possessing some property. This is the "perceptual content" of the title, And the article attempts to answer the following question: what is a materialistically adequate basis for assigning content to what are, after all, neurophysiological states of biological organisms? The thesis is that a state is a perception that presents its object as "F" if the "biological function" of the state is to detect the presence of objects that …Read more
  • In Mendel’s Mirror (review)
    Journal of Philosophy 102 (4): 206-216. 2005.
  •  13
    The Fragments of Parmenides
    with A. H. Coxon
    Philosophical Review 100 (1): 153. 1991.
  •  57
    A Note on Parmenides' Denial of Past and Future
    Dialogue 25 (3): 553-. 1986.
    Does Parmenides really use the non-existence argument to deny the past?
  •  1248
    How to Be Sure: Sensory Exploration and Empirical Certainty
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (1): 38-69. 2012.
    I can be wrong about things I seem to perceive; the conditions might lead me to be mistaken about them. Since I can't rule out the possibility that the conditions are misleading, I can't be sure that I am perceiving this thing in my hand correctly. But suppose that I am able to examine it actively—handling it, looking closer, shining a light on it, and so on. Then, my level of uncertainty goes down; in the limit it is eliminated entirely. Of course, I might be mistaken because I am a brain in a …Read more
  •  91
    It commonly occurs that one person sees a particular colour chip B as saturated blue with no admixture of red or green (i.e., as “uniquely blue”), while another sees it as a somewhat greenish blue. Such a difference is often accompanied by agreement with respect to colour matching – the two persons may mostly agree when asked whether two chips are of the same colour, and this may be so across the whole range of colours. Asked whether B is the same or different from other chips, they mostly agree…Read more
  •  142
    Features, places, and things: Reflections on Austen Clark's theory of sentience
    Philosophical Psychology 17 (4): 497-518. 2004.
    The paper argues that material objects are the primary referents of visual states -- not places, as Austen Clark would have it in his A Theory of Sentience.
  •  64
    Review of Tyler Burge,, Foundations of Mind: Philosophical Essays, Volume 2 (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (3). 2008.
    Review of collected papers on philosophy of mind by Tyler Burge
  •  744
    Play, Skill, and the Origins of Perceptual Art
    British Journal of Aesthetics 55 (2): 173-197. 2015.
    Art is universal across cultures. Yet, it is biologically expensive because of the energy expended and reduced vigilance. Why do humans make and contemplate it? This paper advances a thesis about the psychological origins of perceptual art. First, it delineates the aspects of art that need explaining: not just why it is attractive, but why fine execution and form—which have to do with how the attraction is achieved—matter over and above attractiveness. Second, it states certain constraints: we n…Read more
  •  656
    How, and why, does Earth (the element) move to the centre of Aristotle's Universe? In this paper, I argue that we cannot understand why it does so by reference merely to the nature of Earth, or the attractive force of the Centre. Rather, we have to understand the role that Earth plays in the cosmic order. Thus, in Aristotle, the behaviour of the elements is explained as one explains the function of organisms in a living organism.
  •  974
    Debunking enactivism: a critical notice of Hutto and Myin’s Radicalizing Enactivism (review)
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (1): 118-128. 2014.
    In this review of Hutto and Myin's Radicalizing Enactivism, I question the adequacy of a non-representational theory of mind. I argue first that such a theory cannot differentiate cognition from other bodily engagements such as wrestling with an opponent. Second, I question whether the simple robots constructed by Rodney Brooks are adequate as models of multimodal organisms. Last, I argue that Hutto and Myin pay very little attention to how semantically interacting representations are needed to …Read more
  •  80
    Ostension, Names and Natural Kind Terms
    Dialogue 23 (1): 44-58. 1984.
    It has been suggested that the theory of reference advanced by Kripke and Putnam implies, or presupposes, an aristotelian vision of natural kinds and essences. I argue that what is in fact established is that there are degrees of naturalness among kinds. A parallel argument shows that there are degrees of naturalness among individuals. A subsidiary theme of the paper is that the definition of "natural kind term" as "rigid designator of a natural kind" is mistaken. Names and natural kind terms ar…Read more
  •  127
    Biological universals and the nature of fear
    Journal of Philosophy 95 (3): 105-132. 1998.
    Cognitive definitions cannot accommodate fear as it occurs in species incapable of sophisticated cognition. Some think that fear must, therefore, be noncognitive. This paper explores another option, arguably more in line with evolutionary theory: that like other "biological universals" fear admits of variation across and within species. A paradigm case of such universals is species: it is argued that they can be defined by ostension in the manner of Putnam and Kripke without implying that they m…Read more
  •  63
    Is sex really necessary? And other questions for Lewens
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 54 (2): 297-308. 2003.
    It has been claimed that certain forms of individual essentialism render the Theory of Natural Selection unable to explain why any given individual has the traits it does. Here, three reasons are offered why the Theory ought to ignore these forms of essentialism. First, the trait-distributions explained by population genetics supervene on individual-level causal links, and thus selection must have individual-level effects. Second, even if there are individuals that possess thick essences, they l…Read more