-
41Reply to Jackson, IIPhilosophical Explorations 3 (2): 196-198. 2000.Commonsense psychological explanations are an integral part of a comprehensive commonsense background that includes almost everything that we deal with everyday— from traffic jams to paychecks to cozy dinners for two. It is the comprehensive commonsense background that I think is not wholesale refutable by science. A good deal of the comprehensive commonsense background itself depends on there being beliefs, desires, intentions and other propositional attitudes. If there never have been proposit…Read more
-
203Precis of Persons and Bodies: A Constitution ViewPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research. 2001.
-
126On a causal theory of contentPhilosophical Perspectives 3 165-186. 1989.The project of explaining intentional phenomena in terms of nonintentional phenomena has become a central task in the philosophy of mind.' Since intentional phenomena like believing, desiring, intending have content essentially, the project is one of showing how semantic properties like content can be reconciled with nonsemantic properties like cause. As Jerry A. Fodor put it, The worry about representation is above all that the semantic (and/or the intentional) will prove permanently recalcitra…Read more
-
65Just what do we have in mind?Midwest Studies in Philosophy 10 (1): 25-48. 1985.Nevertheless, I believe that, as it has been construed recently, the assumption is false. At the very least, it does not deserve the largely unquestioned status it enjoys, as I hope to show by a graduated series of thought experiments. I present the thought experiments as a series to expose a shared inadequacy in a variety of individualistic views, from type-type physicalism to the most sophisticated methodological solipsism; and I present them as graduated to suggest that having accepted the fi…Read more
-
159Instrumental intentionalityPhilosophy of Science 56 (June): 303-16. 1989.Many physicalists are committed to an austere dichotomy: either beliefs, desires and intentions are scientifically respectable or attributions of such attitudes are all false. One physicalist, Daniel Dennett, offers a third alternative, which seems to permit a kind of instrumentalism concerning attitudes. I argue that Dennett's attempt to reconcile an instrumentalistic account of attributions of attitudes with a thoroughgoing physicalism founders on unresolvable conflicts between his official th…Read more
-
15Instrumentalism: Back from the Brink?In Saving Belief, Princeton University Press. pp. 149-166. 1987.
-
31Comments on Hubert L. Dreyfus âIntelligence without representationâPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 (4): 411-412. 2002.My 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 dictated by a pair of dubious assumptions: (1) that ordinary psychological attributions were at risk unless vindicated by some science; and (2) that the only possible scientific vindication required that intentional content be represented in the brain. Thus did repres…Read more
-
139A farewell to functionalismPhilosophical Studies 48 (July): 1-14. 1985.dilemma, a dilemma concerning the individuation of psychological states that explain behavior. Beliefs are individuated by most functionahsts in terms of that 'that'-clauses; functional states are individuated 'narrowly' (i.e.
-
103Attitudes as nonentitiesPhilosophical Studies 76 (2-3): 175-203. 1994.materialist that beliefs are not immaterial soul-states, I think that the conception of beliefs as brain states is badly misguided. I hope to show that "beliefs are brain states or soul states" is a false dichotomy. I am using the phrase 'beliefs as brain states' to cover several familiar theses: the token-identity thesis, according to which beliefs are identical to brain-state tokens; nonreductive materialism, according to which beliefs are constituted by brain states (as pebbles are constitute…Read more
-
50Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the MindPhilosophical Review 106 (4): 614. 1997.When I started the book, I thought that if there are beliefs, then they are brain states. I still believe that. I express three caveats about the book.
-
568The ontological argument simplifiedAnalysis 70 (2): 210-212. 2010.The ontological argument in Anselm’s Proslogion II continues to generate a remarkable store of sophisticated commentary and criticism. However, in our opinion, much of this literature ignores or misrepresents the elegant simplicity of the original argument. The dialogue below seeks to restore that simplicity, with one important modification. Like the original, it retains the form of a reductio, which we think is essential to the argument’s great genius. However, it seeks to skirt the difficult q…Read more
-
161III. On the very idea of a form of lifeInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 27 (1-4): 277-289. 1984.Drawing on writers as diverse as Saul Kripke, Stanley Cavell, G. E. M. Anscombe, Jonathan Lear, and Bernard Williams, I offer an interpretation of Wittgenstein's key notion of a form of life that explains why Wittgenstein was so enigmatic about it. Then, I show how Hilary Putnam's criticism of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics and Richard Rorty's support of (what he takes to be) Wittgenstein's legacy in the philosophy of mind both require mistaken assumptions about Wittgenstein's idea of …Read more
-
49. Where We Are NowIn Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism, Princeton University Press. pp. 167-174. 1987.
-
386What Am I?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (1): 151-159. 1999.Eric T. Olson has argued that any view of personal identity in terms of psychological continuity has a consequence that he considers untenable---namely, that he was never an early-term fetus. I have several replies. First, the psychological-continuity view of personal identity does not entail the putative consequence; the appearance to the contrary depends on not distinguishing between de re and de dicto theses. Second, the putative consequence is not untenable anyway; the appearance to the cont…Read more
-
209Why Christians should not be libertarians: An Augustinian challengeFaith and Philosophy 20 (4): 460-478. 2003.The prevailing view of Christian philosophers today seems to be that Christianity requires a libertarian conception of free will. Focusing on Augustine’s mature anti-Pelagian works, I try to show that the prevailing view is in error. Specifically, I want to show that---on Augustine’s view of grace-a libertarian account of free will is irrelevant to salvation. On Augustine’s view, the grace of God through Christ is sufficient as weIl as necessary for salvation. Salvation is entirely in the hands …Read more
-
4. Unspeakable ThoughtsIn Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism, Princeton University Press. pp. 63-84. 1987.
-
168Temporal realityIn Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & Harry Silverstein (eds.), Time and Identity, Mit Press. 2010.Nonphilosophers, if they think of philosophy at all, wonder why people work in metaphysics. After all, metaphysics, as Auden once said of poetry, makes nothing happen.1 Yet some very intelligent people are driven to spend their lives exploring metaphysical theses. Part of what motivates metaphysicians is the appeal of grizzly puzzles (like the paradox of the heap or the puzzle of the ship of Theseus). But the main reason to work in metaphysics, for me at least, is to understand the shared world …Read more
-
171Updating Anselm AgainRes Philosophica 90 (1): 23-32. 2013.I set out four general facts about things that we can refer to and talk about, whether they exist or not. Then, I set out an argument for the existence of God. Myargument, like Anselm’s original argument, is a reductio ad absurdum: It shows that the assumption that God does not exist leads to a contradiction. Theargument is short and in ordinary language. Each line of the argument, other than the reductio premise, is justified by one of the general facts. Finally, I consider some traditional obj…Read more
-
197. The Threat of Cognitive SuicideIn Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism, Princeton University Press. pp. 134-148. 1987.
-
34
-
202Three-Dimensionalism Rescued: A Brief Reply to Michael Della RoccaJournal of Philosophy 110 (3): 166-170. 2013.
-
Saint Mary's College of CaliforniaRegular Faculty
Moraga, California, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |