-
61Persons and the Natural OrderIn Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman (ed.), Persons: Human and Divine, Oxford University Press. 2007.We human persons have an abiding interest in understanding what kind of beings we are. However, it is not obvious how to attain such an understanding. Traditional analytic metaphysicians start with a priori accounts of the most general, abstract features of the world— e.g., accounts of properties and particulars—features that, they claim, in no way depend upon us or our activity.1 Such accounts are formulated in abstraction from what is already known about persons and other things, and are used …Read more
-
206Temporal Becoming: The Argument From PhysicsPhilosophical Forum 6 (2): 218-236. 1974.Arguments about temporal becoming often get nowhere. One reason for the impasse lies in the fact that the issue has been formulated as a choice between science on the one hand and common sense (or ordinary language) on the other as the primary source of ontological commitment.' Often' proponents of attributing temporal becoming to the physical universe look to everyday temporal concepts, find them infested with notions involving temporal becoming and conclude that becoming is a basic feature of …Read more
-
29In his neglected treatise on education, the great eighteenth-century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, mentions that Benjamin Franklin “wondered why everyone didn’t learn to swim, since swimming is so pleasant and so useful.” Franklin..
-
87Interpretation in Action: A Preliminary InquiryIn Fernando Mão de Ferro (ed.), A Explicação da Interpretação Humana (Portuguese), Edições Colibri. 2005.The term ‘human interpretation’ itself has two interpretations: interpretation by human beings and interpretation of human beings. We are all familiar with both kinds of interpretation in ordinary life. Marie interprets Sam’s remark as a sexual invitation; Joseph interprets the famous guest’s attire as an insult to the host. But as the organizers of our conference point out, we have no systematic explanation of human interpretation—either ‘of’ or ‘by’ human beings. Before embarking on a theory o…Read more
-
62My main reaction to "Intelligence without representation" is to applaud. Dreyfus's use of Merleau-Ponty is a refreshing new breeze in philosophy of psychology. About twenty or so years ago, philosophers struck an unfortunate course..
-
81On the twofold nature of artefacts: As response to Wybo Houkes and Anthonie Meijers, “The ontology of artefacts: the hard problem”Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 37 132-136. 2006.“Form follows function,” the slogan of modernist architecture, could well be a slogan of artefacts generally. Since the choice of material for a tool is guided by the function of the tool, we may be tempted to think that having a functional nature distinguishes artefacts from natural objects. But that would be a mistake. Certain natural objects—especially biological entities like mammalian hearts—have functional natures too.
-
40Science and the Attitudes: A Reply to SanfordBehavior and Philosophy 24 (2): 187-189. 1996.Explaining Attitudes was not intended to be hostile to science. Its target is what I called the Standard View, a conception of the attitudes that is held almost universally. The heart of the Standard View is the thesis that beliefs (and other..
-
1The second-person account of the problem of evilIn Kevin Timpe (ed.), Metaphysics and God: Essays in Honor of Eleonore Stump, Routledge. 2009.
-
80Saving God: Religion after idolatry (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2009.Saving God is a rich and provocative book. It aims to "save God" from idolatrous believers, who take God to be largely concerned with the welfare and destiny of human creatures. Banning idolatry, Johnston is led to a panentheistic conception of "the Highest One," who (or which) is not separable from Nature. With echoes of Spinoza and, to a lesser extent, Whitehead, Johnston argues that the natural world is all that there is, but, properly understood, can be seen as "the site of the sacred."
-
276Amie Thomasson has won well-deserved praise for her book, Ordinary Objects. She defends a commonsense world view and gives us “reason to think that there are fundamental particles, plants and animals, sticks and stones, tables and chairs, and even marriages and mortgages.” (p. 181) Ordinary objects comprise a vast array of things—natural objects both scientific and commonsensical, artifacts, organisms, abstract social objects.
-
Part IV Must Science Validate All Knowledge?In A. J. Sanford & P. N. Johnson-Laird (eds.), The nature and limits of human understanding, T & T Clark. 2003.
-
Must science validate all knowledge?In A. J. Sanford & P. N. Johnson-Laird (eds.), The nature and limits of human understanding, T & T Clark. 2003.
-
39Review of Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (8). 2006.
-
115Attitudes in action: A causal accountManuscrito 25 (3): 47-78. 2002.This article aims to vindicate the commonsensical view that what we think affects what we do. In order to show that mental properties like believing, desiring and intending are causally explanatory, I propose a nonreductive, materialistic account that identifies beliefs and desires by their content, and that shows how differences in the contents of beliefs and desires can make causal differences in what we do.
-
317The shrinking difference between artifacts and natural objectsAmerican Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers. 2008.Artifacts are objects intentionally made to serve a given purpose; natural objects come into being without human intervention. I shall argue that this difference does not signal any ontological deficiency in artifacts qua artifacts. After sketching my view of artifacts as ordinary objects, I’ll argue that ways of demarcating genuine substances do not draw a line with artifacts on one side and natural objects on the other. Finally, I’ll suggest that philosophers have downgraded artifacts because …Read more
-
120Folk psychologyIn Robert Andrew Wilson & Frank C. Keil (eds.), MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, Mit Press. 1999.In recent years, folk psychology has become a topic of debate not just among philosophers, but among development psychologists and primatologists as well
-
112Why computers can't actAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 18 (2): 157-163. 1981.To be an agent, one must be able to formulate intentions. To be able to formulate intentions, one must have a first-person perspective. Computers lack a first-person perspective. So, computers are not agents.
-
449Metaphysics and mental causationIn Pascal Engel (ed.), Mental causation, Oxford University Press. pp. 75-96. 1995.My aim is twofold: first, to root out the metaphysical assumptions that generate the problem of mental causation and to show that they preclude its solution; second, to dissolve the problem of mental causation by motivating rejection of one of the metaphysical assumptions that give rise to it. There are three features of this metaphysical background picture that are important for our purposes. The first concerns the nature of reality: all reality depends on physical reality, where physical reali…Read more
-
Rejoinder to ZimmermanIn Michael L. Peterson (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, Blackwell. 2003.
-
138Are beliefs brain states?In Anthonie Meijers (ed.), Explaining Beliefs: Lynne Rudder Baker and Her Critics, Stanford: Csli Publications. 2001.During the past couple of decades, philosophy of mind--with its siblings, philosophy of psychology and cognitive science--has been one of the most exciting areas of philosophy. Yet, in that time, I have come to think that there is a deep flaw in the basic conception of its object of study--a deep flaw in its conception of the so-called propositional attitudes, like belief, desire, and intention. Taking belief as the fundamental propositional attitude, scientifically-minded philosophers hold that…Read more
-
What beliefs are notIn Steven J. Wagner & Richard Wagner (eds.), Naturalism: A Critical Appraisal, University of Notre Dame Press. 1993.
-
3Conscious and unconscious intentionality in practical realismMeQRiMa Rivista Di Analisi Testo Letterario E Figurativo 5 130-135. 2002.1. Suppose that John and Jane are junior colleagues in an academic department of a university. John, who thinks of Jane as his competitor, has seen her flirt with the head of the department. He tells his other colleagues that Jane is trying to gain an unfair advantage over him. He comes to dislike Jane, and often in conversation with people outside the department, he enjoys saying bad things about Jane.
-
251The first-person perspective: A test for naturalismAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 35 (4): 327-348. 1998.Self-consciousness, many philosophers agree, is essential to being a person. There is not so much agreement, however, about how to understand what self-consciousness is. Philosophers in the field of cognitive science tend to write off self-consciousness as unproblematic. According to such philosophers, the real difficulty for the cognitive scientist is phenomenal consciousness--the fact that we have states that feel a certain way. If we had a grip on phenomenal consciousness, they think, self-co…Read more
-
50Review of Objects and Persons, by Trenton Merricks (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (4). 2003.Book Information Objects and Persons. Objects and Persons Trenton Merricks . Oxford: Clarendon Press , 2001 , pp. xii + 203 , £30 ( cloth ), £14.99 ( paper ) . By Trenton Merricks. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pp. xii + 203. £30 (cloth:), £14.99 (paper:).
-
Third Person UnderstandingIn A. J. Sanford & P. N. Johnson-Laird (eds.), The nature and limits of human understanding, T & T Clark. 2003.
-
4Death and the AfterlifeIn William J. Wainwright (ed.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of religion, Oxford University Press. 2005.Monotheistic conceptions of an afterlife raise a philosophical question: In virtue of what is a postmortem person the same person who lived and died? Four standard answers are surveyed and criticized: sameness of soul, sameness of body or brain, sameness of soul-body composite, sameness of memories. The discussion of these answers to the question of personal identity is followed by a development of my own view, the Constitution View. According to the Constitution View, you are a person in virtue…Read more
-
3Nonreductive MaterialsimIn Brian P. McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind, Oxford University Press. 2007.
-
383Nonreductive materialism I. introductionIn Brian P. McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind, Oxford University Press. 2007.The expression ‘nonreductive materialism’ refers to a variety of positions whose roots lie in attempts to solve the mind-body problem. Proponents of nonreductive materialism hold that the mental is ontologically part of the material world; yet, mental properties are causally efficacious without being reducible to physical properties.s After setting out a minimal schema for nonreductive materialism (NRM) as an ontological position, I’ll canvass some classical arguments in favor of (NRM).1 Then, I…Read more
-
214Cognitive suicideIn Robert H. Grimm & Daniel Davy Merrill (eds.), Contents of Thought, Tucson. pp. 401--13. 1988.
-
Saint Mary's College of CaliforniaRegular Faculty
Moraga, California, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |