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Fred Dretske
(1932 - 2013)

Last affiliation: Duke University
  •  Home
  •  Publications
    194
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    • Topics
  •  Events
    2
  •  News and Updates
    129

 More details
  • Duke University
    Department of Philosophy
    Researcher
Durham, North Carolina, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Epistemology
Philosophy of Mind
  • All publications (194)
  •  107
    Mental events as structuring causes of behavior
    In Pascal Engel (ed.), Mental causation, Oxford University Press. 1995.
    1. Causal explanations depend on our interests, our purposes, and our prior knowledge. ⇒ No uniquely real causal explanation.
    Reasons and CausesExplanatory Role of ContentMental Causation, Misc
  • Replies to Critics
    In Brian P. McLaughlin (ed.), Dretske and his critics, Blackwell. 1991.
  •  1
    Dretske's replies
    In Dretske and His Critics, Blackwell. 1991.
    Information-Based Accounts of Mental Content
  •  87
    The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (review)
    International Studies in Philosophy 21 (3): 101-102. 1989.
    CoherentismTheories of Knowledge, Misc
  • Misinterpretation
    In Stephen P. Stich & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), Mental Representation: A Reader, Blackwell. pp. 157--173. 1994.
    Intentionality
  •  193
    Reasons and Consequences
    Analysis 28 (5): 166-168. 1968.
    Ethics
  •  584
    Contrastive statements
    Philosophical Review 81 (4): 411-437. 1972.
    Epistemic Contrastivism
  •  167
    The Metaphysics of Freedom
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (1): 1-13. 1992.
    I offer Jimmy a dollar to wiggle his ears. He wiggles them because he wants the dollar and, as a result of my offer, thinks he will earn it by wiggling his ears. So I cause him to believe something that explains, or helps to explain, why he wiggles his ears. If I push a button, and a bell, wired to the button, rings because the button is depressed, I cause the bell to ring. I make it ring. Indeed, I ring it. So why don’t I, by offering him a dollar, make Jimmy wiggle his ears? Why, indeed, don’t…Read more
    I offer Jimmy a dollar to wiggle his ears. He wiggles them because he wants the dollar and, as a result of my offer, thinks he will earn it by wiggling his ears. So I cause him to believe something that explains, or helps to explain, why he wiggles his ears. If I push a button, and a bell, wired to the button, rings because the button is depressed, I cause the bell to ring. I make it ring. Indeed, I ring it. So why don’t I, by offering him a dollar, make Jimmy wiggle his ears? Why, indeed, don’t I wiggle them? If I ring a bell by pushing a button, why don’t I wiggle Jimmy’s ears by offering him a dollar?That is a question that has always vexed a compatibilist’s vision of human freedom. If an intentional act–say, wiggling one’s ears in order to earn a dollar–is caused by one’s beliefs and desires, then, by the transitivity of the causal relation, it appears to follow that it is caused by whatever causes one to have those beliefs and desires. But the causes of belief and desire are often factors over which one has no control. So intentional behavior is often something one is made to do by factors over which one has no control. This, however, robs intentional behaviorand, presumably, also voluntary action–of its autonomy. Deliberate acts–Jimmy wiggling his ears to earn a dollar–have the same causal structure as does a bell that rings because a button is pushed. The only difference is the switch.
    CompatibilismControl and Responsibility
  •  47
    Perception, Learning and the Self (review)
    International Studies in Philosophy 19 (1): 82-83. 1987.
    Philosophy of ConsciousnessAspects of Consciousness
  •  347
    Change blindness
    Philosophical Studies 120 (1-3): 1-18. 2004.
    Change/Inattentional Blindness
  •  4
    The explanatory role of content
    In Robert H. Grimm & Daniel Davy Merrill (eds.), Contents of Thought, Tucson. 1988.
    Explanatory Role of Content
  •  1962
    Knowledge and the Flow of Information
    MIT Press. 1981.
    This book presents an attempt to develop a theory of knowledge and a philosophy of mind using ideas derived from the mathematical theory of communication developed by Claude Shannon. Information is seen as an objective commodity defined by the dependency relations between distinct events. Knowledge is then analyzed as information caused belief. Perception is the delivery of information in analog form for conceptual utilization by cognitive mechanisms. The final chapters attempt to develop a theo…Read more
    This book presents an attempt to develop a theory of knowledge and a philosophy of mind using ideas derived from the mathematical theory of communication developed by Claude Shannon. Information is seen as an objective commodity defined by the dependency relations between distinct events. Knowledge is then analyzed as information caused belief. Perception is the delivery of information in analog form for conceptual utilization by cognitive mechanisms. The final chapters attempt to develop a theory of meaning by viewing meaning as a certain kind of information-carrying role.
    Information-Based Accounts of Mental ContentReliabilismEpistemology of TestimonyPerception and Knowl…Read more
    Information-Based Accounts of Mental ContentReliabilismEpistemology of TestimonyPerception and Knowledge, MiscConceptions of Information
  •  146
    Naturalizing the Mind
    with David Sosa
    Philosophical Review 106 (3): 429. 1997.
    Aware that the representational thesis is more plausible for the attitudinal than for the phenomenal, Dretske courageously focuses on sensory experience, where progress in our philosophical understanding of the mental has lagged. His view, essentially, is that what makes any mental state what it is is not so much what it's like as what it's about.
    Metaphysics of Mind
  •  125
    Perception (review)
    International Studies in Philosophy 10 199-201. 1978.
    Aspects of Consciousness
  •  486
    A Recipe for Thought
    In David J. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, Oxford University Press Usa. 2002.
    PhysicalismIntentionality
  •  93
    Stalking intentionality
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 9 (1): 142-143. 1986.
    Philosophy of Cognitive Science
  •  131
    How reasons explain behaviour: Reply to Melnyk and Noordhof
    Mind and Language 11 (2): 223-229. 1996.
    Melnyk complains that my account of the way reasons explain behaviour cannot be extended to cover novel behaviours. I admit that I did not extend it, but deny that it is not extendible. This, indeed, is what Chapter 6 of Dretske (1988) was all about. Noordhof finds faults with my account and claims there is another account (partial supervenience) that does a better job. I acknowledge one of the defects—a defect I was aware of when I wrote the book‐but deny that the partial supervenience of conte…Read more
    Melnyk complains that my account of the way reasons explain behaviour cannot be extended to cover novel behaviours. I admit that I did not extend it, but deny that it is not extendible. This, indeed, is what Chapter 6 of Dretske (1988) was all about. Noordhof finds faults with my account and claims there is another account (partial supervenience) that does a better job. I acknowledge one of the defects—a defect I was aware of when I wrote the book‐but deny that the partial supervenience of content on intrinsic properties represents a better theory of the explanatory role of content.
    Explanatory Role of Content
  •  275
    Machines, plants and animals: The origins of agency (review)
    Erkenntnis 51 (1): 523-535. 1999.
    Philosophy of Linguistics
  •  120
    Awareness and Authority: Skeptical Doubts about Self-Knowledge
    In Declan Smithies & Daniel Stoljar (eds.), Introspection and Consciousness, Oxford University Press. pp. 49. 2012.
    Self-Knowledge
  •  188
    Reply to Reviewers
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (4): 819-839. 1990.
    Causal Theory of ActionExplanatory Role of Content
  •  248
    Externalism and self-knowledge
    In Susana Nuccetelli (ed.), New Essays on Semantic Externalism and Self-Knowledge, Mit Press. 2003.
    Externalism and Slow Switching
  •  184
    Where is the mind?
    In Anthonie Meijers (ed.), Explaining Beliefs: Lynne Rudder Baker and Her Critics, Stanford: Csli Publications. 2001.
    Externalism and Psychological Explanation
  •  283
    Mental causation
    In The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Volume 2: Metaphysics, Bowling Green: Philosophy Doc Ctr. pp. 81-88. 1999.
    Materialist explanations of cause and effect tend to embrace epiphenomenalism. Those who try to avoid epiphenomenalism tend to deny either the extrinsicness of meaning or the intrinsicness of causality. I argue that to deny one or the other is equally implausible. Rather, I prefer a different strategy: accept both premises, but deny that epiphenomenalism is necessarily the conclusion. This strategy is available because the premises do not imply the conclusion without the help of an additional pr…Read more
    Materialist explanations of cause and effect tend to embrace epiphenomenalism. Those who try to avoid epiphenomenalism tend to deny either the extrinsicness of meaning or the intrinsicness of causality. I argue that to deny one or the other is equally implausible. Rather, I prefer a different strategy: accept both premises, but deny that epiphenomenalism is necessarily the conclusion. This strategy is available because the premises do not imply the conclusion without the help of an additional premise—namely, that behavior explained by reasons is caused by the reasons that explain it—and this premise is false.
    The Exclusion ProblemEpiphenomenalismReasons and CausesExplanatory Role of Content
  •  140
    Review of Mohan Matthen, Seeing, Doing, and Knowing: A Philosophical Theory of Sense Perception (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (9). 2005.
    PerceptionThe Nature of Perceptual Experience
  •  111
    Doubts About
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 84 (1): 1-17. 2012.
    René Descartes
  •  601
    The pragmatic dimension of knowledge
    Philosophical Studies 40 (3): 363--378. 1981.
    Pragmatic and Moral Encroachment
  •  770
    Perception without awareness
    In Tamar Szabo Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual experience, Oxford University Press. pp. 147--180. 2006.
    Unconscious PerceptionPerceptionUnconscious States
  •  147
    Causal irregularity
    with Aaron Snyder
    Philosophy of Science 39 (1): 69-71. 1972.
    Causation, Miscellaneous
  •  2
    The intentionality of perception
    In Barry Smith (ed.), John Searle, Cambridge University Press. pp. 154-168. 2003.
    Intentionalist Theories of Perception
  •  296
    Knowing what you think vs. knowing that you think it
    In Richard Schantz (ed.), The Externalist Challenge, De Gruyter. pp. 389-400. 2004.
    Externalism and Slow SwitchingKnowledge-Wh
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