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6302MisrepresentationIn Radu J. Bogdan (ed.), Belief: Form, Content, and Function, Oxford University Press. pp. 17--36. 1986.
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40Comments on Shapere and HessePSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1976 299-303. 1976.
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374Perception, Knowledge and Belief: Selected EssaysCambridge University Press. 2000.This collection of essays by eminent philosopher Fred Dretske brings together work on the theory of knowledge and philosophy of mind spanning thirty years. The two areas combine to lay the groundwork for a naturalistic philosophy of mind. The fifteen essays focus on perception, knowledge, and consciousness. Together, they show the interconnectedness of Dretske's work in epistemology and his more contemporary ideas on philosophy of mind, shedding light on the links which can be made between the t…Read more
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313The epistemology of beliefSynthese 55 (1): 3-19. 1983.By examining the general conditions in which a structure could come to represent another state of affairs, it is argued that beliefs, a special class of representations, have their contents limited by the sort of information the system in which they occur can pick up and process. If a system — measuring instrument, animal or human being — cannot process information to the effect that something is Q, it cannot represent something as Q. From this it follows (for simple, ostensively acquired concep…Read more
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543Perception and other mindsNoûs 7 (1): 34-44. 1973.We ordinarily speak of being able to see that there are people on the bus, Students in the class, And children playing in the street. If human beings are understood to be conscious entities, Then one of our ways of knowing that there are other conscious entities in the world besides ourselves is by seeing that there are. We also speak of seeing that he is angry, She is depressed, And so on. It is argued that this is, Indeed, One way of knowing that there are other minds (and, Hence, That the pro…Read more
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659How do you know you are not a zombieIn Brie Gertler (ed.), Privileged Access: Philosophical Accounts of Self-Knowledge, Ashgate. pp. 1--14. 2003.
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537What good is consciousness?Canadian Journal of Philosophy 27 (1): 1-15. 1997.If consciousness is good for something, conscious things must differ in some causally relevant way from unconscious things. If they do not, then, as Davies and Humphreys conclude, too bad for consciousness: ‘psychological theory need not be concerned with this topic.’Davies and Humphreys are applying a respectable metaphysical idea — the idea, namely, that if an object's having a property does not make a difference to what that object does, if the object's causal powers are in no way enhanced by…Read more
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Modes of perceptual representationIn Christopher Hookway (ed.), Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge University Press. pp. 147--157. 1993.
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111Reply to NiiniluotoPhilosophy of Science 45 (3): 440-444. 1978.In “Laws of Nature” [1] I argued that natural laws are not universal truths. Laws have properties that enable them to function in a special way. Since universal truths do not have these properties, they cannot be promoted to the status of laws by assigning them this function, by using them in the way laws are typically used. To suppose that we could effect this transformation by the way we used a generalization is like supposing that we could make thumb tacks into garden hoses by using them to w…Read more
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228Reasons, knowledge, and probabilityPhilosophy of Science 38 (2): 216-220. 1971.Though one believes that P is true, one can have reasons for thinking it false. Yet, it seems that one cannot know that P is true and (still) have reasons for thinking it false. Why is this so? What feature of knowledge (or of reasons) precludes having reasons or evidence to believe (true) what you know to be false? If the connection between reasons (evidence) and what one believes is expressible as a probability relation, it would seem that the only satisfactory explanation of this fact is that…Read more
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5The need to knowIn Marjorie Clay & Keith Lehrer (eds.), Knowledge and skepticism, Westview Press. 1989.
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1Knowledge: Sanford and CohenIn Brian P. McLaughlin (ed.), Dretske and his critics, Blackwell. pp. 185--96. 1991.
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272Psychological vs. biological explanations of behaviorBehavior and Philosophy 32 (1): 167-177. 2004.Causal explanations of behavior must distinguish two kinds of cause. There are triggering causes, the events or conditions that come before the effect and are followed regularly by the effect, and structuring causes, events that cause a triggering cause to produce its effect. Moving the mouse is the triggering cause of cursor movement; hardware and programming conditions are the structuring causes of cursor movement. I use this distinction to show how representational facts can be structuring ca…Read more
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1182Chris Hill’s consciousness (review)Philosophical Studies 161 (3): 497-502. 2012.Chris Hill’s consciousness Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9812-4 Authors Fred Dretske, 212 Selkirk, Durham, NC 27707, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.
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682Phenomenal externalism, or if meanings ain't in the head, where are qualia?Philosophical Issues 7 143-158. 1996.
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Burge on mentalistic explanations, or why I am still epiphobicIn Martin Hahn & Björn T. Ramberg (eds.), Reflections and Replies: Essays on the Philosophy of Tyler Burge, Mit Press. 2003.
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22The Case Against ClosureIn Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 13--25. 2013.