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2031Testimony and Other MindsErkenntnis 80 (1): 173-183. 2015.In this paper I defend the claim that testimony can serve as a basic source of knowledge of other people’s mental lives against the objection that testimonial knowledge presupposes knowledge of other people’s mental lives and therefore can’t be used to explain it
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2982Is Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories fit for purpose?Kantian Review 15 (2): 118-137. 2010.James Van Cleve has argued that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the categories shows, at most, that we must apply the categories to experience. And this falls short of Kant’s aim, which is to show that they must so apply. In this discussion I argue that once we have noted the differences between the first and second editions of the Deduction, this objection is less telling. But Van Cleve’s objection can help illuminate the structure of the B Deduction, and it suggests an interesting reason wh…Read more
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1359Kant on Perception: Naive Realism, Non-Conceptualism, and the B-DeductionPhilosophical Quarterly 64 (254): 1-19. 2014.According to non-conceptualist interpretations, Kant held that the application of concepts is not necessary for perceptual experience. Some have motivated non-conceptualism by noting the affinities between Kant's account of perception and contemporary relational theories of perception. In this paper I argue (i) that non-conceptualism cannot provide an account of the Transcendental Deduction and thus ought to be rejected; and (ii) that this has no bearing on the issue of whether Kant endorsed a …Read more
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532Nonconceptualism, Hume’s Problem, and the DeductionPhilosophical Studies 174 (7): 1687-1698. 2017.Lucy Allais seeks to provide a reading of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories which is compatible with a nonconceptualist account of Kant’s theory of intuition. According to her interpretation, the aim of the Deduction is to show that a priori concept application is required for empirical concept application. I argue that once we distinguish the application of the categories from the instantiation of the categories, we see that Allais’s reconstruction of the Deduction cannot provide a…Read more
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953Unity, Objectivity, and the Passivity of ExperienceEuropean Journal of Philosophy 24 (3): 946-969. 2016.In the section ‘Unity and Objectivity’ of The Bounds of Sense, P. F. Strawson argues for the thesis that unity of consciousness requires experience of an objective world. My aim in this essay is to evaluate this claim. In the first and second parts of the essay, I explicate Strawson's thesis, reconstruct his argument, and identify the point at which the argument fails. Strawson's discussion nevertheless raises an important question: are there ways in which we must think of our experiences if we …Read more
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1078Kant and the Explanatory Role of ExperienceKant Studien 104 (3): 277-300. 2013.We are able to think of empirical objects as capable of existing unperceived. What explains our grasp of this conception of objects? In this paper I examine the claim that experience explains our understanding of objects as capable of existing unperceived with reference to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I argue that standard accounts of experience’s explanatory role are unsatisfactory, but that an alternative account can be extracted from the first Critique – one which relies on Kant’s transcen…Read more
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686More dead than dead? Attributing mentality to vegetative state patientsPhilosophical Psychology 29 (1): 84-95. 2016.In a recent paper, Gray, Knickman, and Wegner present three experiments which they take to show that people perceive patients in a persistent vegetative state to have less mentality than the dead. Following on from Gomes and Parrott, we provide evidence to show that participants' responses in the initial experiments are an artifact of the questions posed. Results from two experiments show that, once the questions have been clarified, people do not ascribe more mental capacity to the dead than to…Read more
Oxford, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Immanuel Kant |
20th Century Analytic Philosophy |
The Problem of Other Minds |
Perception |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Immanuel Kant |
The Problem of Other Minds |
Perception |