•  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.
  •  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.
  •  13
    The Fragments of Parmenides
    with A. H. Coxon
    Philosophical Review 100 (1): 153. 1991.
  •  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.
  •  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
  •  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
  •  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
  •  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
  •  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
  •  128
    Two Visual Systems and the Feeling of Presence
    In Nivedita Gangopadhyay, Michael Madary & Finn Spicer (eds.), Perception, Action, and Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dynamics and Two Visual Systems, Oxford University Press. pp. 107. 2010.
    Argues for a category of “cognitive feelings”, which are representationally significant, but are not part of the content of the states they accompany. The feeling of pastness in episodic memory, of familiarity (missing in Capgras syndrome), and of motivation (that accompanies desire) are examples. The feeling of presence that accompanies normal visual states is due to such a cognitive feeling; the “two visual systems” are partially responsible for this feeling.
  •  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
  •  80
    Teleology, error, and the human immune system
    with Edwin Levy
    Journal of Philosophy 81 (7): 351-372. 1984.
    The authors attempt to show that certain forms of behavior of the human immune system are illuminatingly regarded as errors in that system's operation. Since error-ascription can occur only within the context of an intentional/teleological characterization of the system, it follows that such a characterization is illuminating. It is argued that error-ascription is objective, non-anthropomorphic, irreducible to any purely causal form of explanation of the same behavior, and further that it is wro…Read more
  •  17
    Intentionality and the linguistic analogy
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31 (1): 77-94. 2000.
  •  797
    Assembling the emotions
    In Luc Faucher & Christine Tappolet (eds.), The Modularity of Emotions, University of Calgary Press. pp. 185-212. 2008.
    In this article, we discuss the modularity of the emotions. In a general methodological section, we discuss the empirical basis for the postulation of modularity. Then we discuss how certain modules -- the emotions in particular -- decompose into distinct anatomical and functional parts.
  •  776
    The Holistic Presuppositions of Aristotle's Cosmology
    Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 20 171-199. 2001.
    Argues that Aristotle regarded the universe, or Totality, as a single substance with form and matter, and that he regarded this substance together with the Prime Mover as a self-mover
  •  2233
    Aristotle's Theory of Potentiality
    In John P. Lizza (ed.), Potentiality: Metaphysical and Bioethical Dimensions, Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 29-48. 2014.
    In this paper, I examine Aristotle's notion of potentiality as it applies to the beginning of life. Aristotle’s notion of natural kinēsis implies that we should not treat the entity at the beginning of embryonic development as human, or indeed as the same as the one that is born. This leads us to ask: When does the embryo turn into a human? Aristotle’s own answer to this question is very harsh. Bracketing the views that lead to this harsh answer, his theory of kinēsis still gives us reason for s…Read more
  •  157
    Review: Action in Perception (review)
    Mind 115 (460): 1160-1166. 2006.
    This a review of Alva Noë's Action in Perception. It argues that a distinction should be made between the proposition that sensorimotor feedback is used in sensory perception and that perception is of sensorimotor features of the world. Noë fails to make this distinction.
  •  20
    R. M. Dancy, "Sense and Contradiction" (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 16 (3): 345. 1978.
  •  476
    Visual Concepts
    Philosophical Topics 33 (1): 207-233. 2005.
    Perceptual content is conceptual. In this paper, some arguments against this thesis are examined and rebutted. The Richness argument, that we could not have concepts for all the colours, is queried: Doesn't the Munsell system give us such concepts? The argument that we can perceive colours and shapes without possessing the relevant concepts is rebutted: we cannot do this, but the kind of concept-possession that is relevant here is not intellectual but perceptual