•  454
    Varieties of Interpretationism about Belief and Desire
    Analysis 21 (3): 512-524. 2021.
    In his superb book, The Metaphysics of Representation, Williams sketches biconditional reductive definitions of representational states in non-representational terms. The central idea is an extremely innovative variety of interpretationism about belief and desire. Williams is inspired by David Lewis but departs significantly from him. I am sympathetic to interpretationism for some basic beliefs and desires. However, I will raise three worries for Williams’s version (§2–4). It neglects the role o…Read more
  •  438
    Colour, philosophical perspectives
    In Axel Cleeremans, Patrick Wilken & Tim Bayne (eds.), Oxford Companion to Consciousness, Oxford University Press. pp. 144-149. 2009.
    An overview of the main positions on colour.
  •  379
    I raise some objections to the theory presented in *Outside Color*.
  •  378
    What are the contents of experiences
    Philosophical 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.
  •  356
    Do theories of consciousness rest on a mistake?
    Philosophical Issues 20 (1): 333-367. 2010.
    Using empirical research on pain, sound and taste, I argue against the combination of intentionalism about consciousness and a broadly ‘tracking’ psychosemantics of the kind defended by Fodor, Dretske, Hill, Neander, Stalnaker, Tye and others. Then I develop problems with Kriegel and Prinz's attempt to combine a Dretskean psychosemantics with the view that sensible properties are Shoemakerian response-dependent properties. Finally, I develop in detail my own 'primitivist' view of sensory intenti…Read more
  •  340
    These are some responses to an early version of Johnston's paper "The Personite Problem" (now published in Nous).
  •  324
    This is a chapter from my book Perception (Routledge). I explain the physical state view of sensory experience (Papineau, McLaughlin, others). I criticize an argument against it based on the "transparency observation". Then I develop two alternative arguments against it. The first is a Leibniz's Law argument based on the essentially externally directed character of some experiences. The second concerns "brains in vats". Finally I consider a recent response due to David Papineau, which involves r…Read more
  •  310
    Can the physicalist explain colour structure in terms of colour experience?1
    Australasian 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
  •  299
    Identity Physicalism vs Ground Physicalism about Consciousness
    In G. Rabin (ed.), Grounding and Consciousness, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    Unlike identity physicalism, ground physicalism does not achieve the physicalist dream. It faces the T-shirt problem for ground physicalism (Pautz 2014; Schaffer this volume; Rubenstein ms). In the case of insentient nature, it may be able to get by with small handful of very general ground laws to explain the emergence of nonfundamental objects and properties – for example, a few “principle of plenitude”. But I argue that for the case consciousness it will require a separate huge raft of specia…Read more
  •  292
    Jane Friedman proposes DBI: One ought not to believe an (complete) answer to a question & at the same time inquire into that question – that’d be irrational. I raise some counterexamples. Then I propose an alternative principle which avoids the counterexamples and which has the further advantage of following from more general platitudes about knowledge.
  •  279
    Does it matter whether we perceptually represent tomato-hood?
  •  274
    An argument against Fregean that-clause semantics
    Philosophical Studies 138 (3). 2008.
    I develop a problem for the Fregean Reference Shift analysis of that-clause reference. The problem is discussed by Stephen Schiffer in his recent book The Things We Mean (2003). Either the defender of the Fregean Reference Shift analysis must count certain counterintuitive inferences as valid, or else he must reject a plausible Exportation rule. I consider several responses. I find that the best response relies on a Kaplan-inspired analysis of quantified belief reports. But I argue that this res…Read more
  •  269
    One of Jerry Fodor’s many seminal contributions to philosophy of mind was his inner sentence theory of belief and desire. To believe that p is to have a subpersonal inner sentence in one’s “belief-box” that means that p, and to desire that q is to have a subpersonal inner sentence in one’s “desire-box” that means that q. I will distinguish between two accounts of box-inclusion that exhaust the options: liberal and restrictive. I will show that both accounts have the mistaken implication that in …Read more
  •  258
    In previous work (Nanay ed. 2017, Phil Issues 2020), I developed "the problem of the laws of appearance" for representationalism. There are metaphysically necessary constraints appearance and representationalists have difficulty explaining them. Here I develop the problem in a somewhat different way. Then I address the question of whether naive realist might be better placed than representationalists to answer the problem. Perhaps they can derive constraints on appearance from constraints on re…Read more
  •  213
    Comments on an early version of Johnston's "The Problem with the Content View" (in Berit Brogaard ed. *Does Perception Have Content?*, 2014) delivered at a workshop on perception at NYU in 2010.
  •  206
    We take it that conscious acquaintance has great epistemic value. I develop a new problem for reductive physicalism concerning the epistemic value of acquaintance. The problem concerns "multiple candidate cases". (This develops a theme of my paper *The Significance Argument for the Irreducibility of Consciousness", Philosophical Perspectives 2017.)
  •  204
    Review of Langsam The Wonder of Consciousness (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 3. 2014.
  •  197
    This is a chapter from my introductory book *Perception* covering the representational view of experience. I use the Ramsey-Lewis method to define the theoretical term "experiential representation". I clarify and discuss various questions for representationalists, for instance, "how rich is the content of experience?" and "is the content of visual experience singular or general?" Finally, I address some objections to representationalism - in particular, that it cannot explain perceptual presence…Read more
  •  157
    What is my evidence that here is a cup? Comments on Susanna Schellenberg
    Philosophical Studies 173 (4): 915-927. 2016.
    This paper is about Susanna Schellenberg's view on the explanatory role of perceptual experience. I raise a basic question about what the argument for her view might be. Then I develop two new problem cases: one involving “seamless transitions” between perception and hallucination and another involving the graded character of perceptual evidence and justification
  •  152
    Have Byrne & Hilbert answered Hardin's challenge?
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (1): 44-45. 2003.
    I argue that Byrne & Hilbert (B&H) have not answered Hardin's objection to physicalism about color concerning the unitary-binary structure of the colors for two reasons. First, their account of unitary-binary structure seems unsatisfactory. Second, pace B&H, there are no physicalistically acceptable candidates to be the hue-magnitudes. I conclude with a question about the justification of physicalism about color.
  •  141
    What is the role of conscious experience in the epistemology of perceptual knowledge: how should we characterise what is going on in seeing that o is F in order to illuminate the contribution of seeing o to their status as cases of knowing that o is F? My proposal is that seeing o involves conscious acquaintance with o itself, the concrete worldly source of the truth that o is F, in a way that may make it evident to the subject that o is an instance of ‘x is F’ as she understands this, and hence…Read more
  •  105
    Consciousness * by Christopher hill
    Analysis 71 (2): 393-397. 2011.
    (No abstract is available for this citation).
  •  83
    Review of Jonathan Cohen, The Red and the Real: An Essay on Color Ontology (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (3). 2010.
    A review of Cohen's *The Red and the Real*
  •  81
    Perception
    Routledge. 2021.
    Perception is one of the most pervasive and puzzling problems in philosophy, generating a great deal of attention and controversy in philosophy of mind, psychology and metaphysics. If perceptual illusion and hallucination are possible, how can perception be what it intuitively seems to be, a direct and immediate access to reality? How can perception be both internally dependent and externally directed? Perception is an outstanding introduction to this fundamental topic, covering both the p…Read more
  •  68
    Outside Color
    Philosophical Review 127 (4): 558-561. 2018.
  •  66
    An argument against Armstrong's analysis of the resemblance of universals
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (1). 1997.
    This Article does not have an abstract
  •  58
    The Perceptual Representation of Objects and Natural Kinds: Comments on Speaks
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95 (2): 470-477. 2017.