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390What are the contents of experiencesPhilosophical Quarterly 59 (236): 483-507. 2009.I address three interrelated issues concerning the contents of experiences. First, I address the preliminary issue of what it means to say that experiences have contents. Then I address the issue of why we should believe that experiences have contents. Finally, I address the issue of what the contents of experiences are.
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524Intentionalism and perceptual presencePhilosophical Perspectives 21 (1): 495-541. 2007.H. H. Price (1932) held that experience is essentially presentational. According to Price, when one has an experience of a tomato, nothing can be more certain than that there is something of which one is aware. Price claimed that the same applies to hallucination. In general, whenever one has a visual experience, there is something of which one is aware, according to Price. Call this thesis Item-Awareness
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1302A Simple View of ConsciousnessIn Robert C. Koons & George Bealer (eds.), The Waning of Materialism, Oxford University Press. pp. 25--66. 2009.Phenomenal intentionality is irreducible. Empirical investigation shows it is internally-dependent. So our usual externalist (causal, etc.) theories do not apply here. Internalist views of phenomenal intentionality (e. g. interpretationism) also fail. The resulting primitivist view avoids Papineau's worry that terms for consciousness are highly indeterminate: since conscious properties are extremely natural (despite having unnatural supervenience bases) they are 'reference magnets'.
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765Sensory awareness is not a wide physical relation: An empirical argument against externalist intentionalismNoûs 40 (2): 205-240. 2006.Phenomenal intentionality is a singular form of intentionality. Science shows it is internally-determined. So standard externalist models for reducing intentionality don't apply to it.
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327Can the physicalist explain colour structure in terms of colour experience?1Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (4). 2006.Physicalism about colour is the thesis that colours are identical with response-independent, physical properties of objects. I endorse the Argument from Structure against Physicalism about colour. The argument states that Physicalism cannot accommodate certain obvious facts about colour structure: for instance, that red is a unitary colour while purple is a binary colour, and that blue resembles purple more than green. I provide a detailed formulation of the argument. According to the most popul…Read more
Areas of Specialization
| Metaphysics |
| Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
| Epistemology |
| Metaphysics |
| Philosophy of Language |
| Philosophy of Mind |