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296Attention and consciousnessWiley Interdisciplinary Reviews 1 (1): 51-59. 2010.For the past three decades there has been a substantial amount of scientific evidence supporting the view that attention is necessary and sufficient for perceptual representations to become conscious (i.e., for there to be something that it is like to experience a representational perceptual state). This view, however, has been recently questioned on the basis of some alleged counterevidence. In this paper we survey some of the most important recent findings. In doing so, we have two primary goa…Read more
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144The Effect of What We Think may Happen on our Judgments of ResponsibilityReview of Philosophy and Psychology 4 (2): 259-269. 2013.Recent evidence suggests that if a deterministic description of the events leading up to a morally questionable action is couched in mechanistic, reductionistic, concrete and/or emotionally salient terms, people are more inclined toward compatibilism than when those descriptions use non-mechanistic, non-reductionistic, abstract and/or emotionally neutral terms. To explain these results, it has been suggested that descriptions of the first kind are processed by a concrete cognitive system, while …Read more
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400Is memory for remembering? Recollection as a form of episodic hypothetical thinkingSynthese 191 (2): 155-185. 2014.Misremembering is a systematic and ordinary occurrence in our daily lives. Since it is commonly assumed that the function of memory is to remember the past, misremembering is typically thought to happen because our memory system malfunctions. In this paper I argue that not all cases of misremembering are due to failures in our memory system. In particular, I argue that many ordinary cases of misremembering should not be seen as instances of memory’s malfunction, but rather as the normal result o…Read more
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141Content and Consciousness Revisited: With Replies by Daniel Dennett (edited book)Springer. 2015.What are the grounds for the distinction between the mental and the physical? What is it the relation between ascribing mental states to an organism and understanding its behavior? Are animals and complex systems vehicles of inner evolutionary environments? Is there a difference between personal and sub-personal level processes in the brain? Answers to these and other questions were developed in Daniel Dennett’s first book, Content and Consciousness (1969), where he sketched a unified theoretica…Read more
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189Responsibility and the brain sciencesEthical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (5): 511-524. 2008.Some theorists think that the more we get to know about the neural underpinnings of our behaviors, the less likely we will be to hold people responsible for their actions. This intuition has driven some to suspect that as neuroscience gains insight into the neurological causes of our actions, people will cease to view others as morally responsible for their actions, thus creating a troubling quandary for our legal system. This paper provides empirical evidence against such intuitions. Particular…Read more
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153The Nature of Memory TracesPhilosophy Compass 9 (6): 402-414. 2014.Memory trace was originally a philosophical term used to explain the phenomenon of remembering. Once debated by Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno of Citium, the notion seems more recently to have become the exclusive province of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists. Nonetheless, this modern appropriation should not deter philosophers from thinking carefully about the nature of memory traces. On the contrary, scientific research on the nature of memory traces can rekindle philosopher's interest o…Read more
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94Influence of outcome valence in the subjective experience of episodic past, future, and counterfactual thinkingConsciousness and Cognition 21 (3): 1085-1096. 2012.Recent findings suggest that our capacity to imagine the future depends on our capacity to remember the past. However, the extent to which episodic memory is involved in our capacity to think about what could have happened in our past, yet did not occur , remains largely unexplored. The current experiments investigate the phenomenological characteristics and the influence of outcome valence on the experience of past, future and counterfactual thoughts. Participants were asked to mentally simulat…Read more
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204Consciousness, Attention and CommonsenseJournal of Consciousness Studies 17 (9-10): 189-201. 2010.In a recent paper, Christopher Mole (2008) argued in favour of the view that, according to our commonsense psychology, while consciousness is necessary for attention, attention isn’t necessary for consciousness. In this paper I offer an argument against this view. More precisely, I offer an argument against the claim that, according to our commonsense psychology, consciousness is necessary for attention. However, I don’t claim it follows from this argument that commonsense has it the other way a…Read more
Durham, North Carolina, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
PhilPapers Editorships
Memory and Cognitive Science |