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36Retreat from non-beingAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (4). 2006.This Article does not have an abstract
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19Conceptually Grounded Necessary TruthsIn Albert Casullo & Joshua C. Thurow (eds.), The a Priori in Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 111. 2013.
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94From agentive phenomenology to cognitive phenomenology: A guide for the perplexedIn Tim Bayne and Michelle Montague (ed.), Cognitive Phenomenology, Oxford University Press. pp. 57. 2011.
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269Copping out on moral twin earthSynthese 124 (1-2): 139-152. 2000.In "Milk, Honey, and the Good Life on Moral Twin Earth", David Copp explores some ways in which a defender of synthetic moral naturalism might attempt to get around our Moral Twin Earth argument. Copp nicely brings out the force of our argument, not only through his exposition of it, but through his attempt to defeat it, since his efforts, we think, only help to make manifest the deep difficulties the Moral Twin Earth argument poses for the synthetic moral naturalist.
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191Mental causation and the agent-exclusion problemErkenntnis 67 (2): 183-200. 2007.The hypothesis of the mental state-causation of behavior asserts that the behaviors we classify as actions are caused by certain mental states. A principal reason often given for trying to secure the truth of the MSC hypothesis is that doing so is allegedly required to vindicate our belief in our own agency. I argue that the project of vindicating agency needs to be seriously reconceived, as does the relation between this project and the MSC hypothesis. Vindication requires addressing what I cal…Read more
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4Themes in my philosophical workGrazer Philosophische Studien 63 (1): 1-26. 2002.This paper is an overview of my philosophical work. It follows closely the structure of the handout I used as the basis for a talk on this topic at the 2000 meeting of the Austro-Slovene Philosophical Association. The section-headings mention major themes, and various key concepts are indicated by boldface terms in the text
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Some ins and outs of transglobal reliabilismIn Sanford Goldberg (ed.), Internalism and externalism in semantics and epistemology, Oxford University Press. pp. 100. 2007.
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46Generalized Conditionalization and the Sleeping Beauty Problem, IIErkenntnis 80 (4): 811-839. 2015.In “Generalized Conditionalization and the Sleeping Beauty Problem,” Anna Mahtani and I offer a new argument for thirdism that relies on what we call “generalized conditionalization.” Generalized conditionalization goes beyond conventional conditionalization in two respects: first, by sometimes deploying a space of synchronic, essentially temporal, candidate-possibilities that are not “prior” possibilities; and second, by allowing for the use of preliminary probabilities that arise by first brac…Read more
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201Prolegomena to a future phenomenology of moralsPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (1): 115-131. 2008.Moral phenomenology is (roughly) the study of those features of occurrent mental states with moral significance which are accessible through direct introspection, whether or not such states possess phenomenal character – a what-it-is-likeness. In this paper, as the title indicates, we introduce and make prefatory remarks about moral phenomenology and its significance for ethics. After providing a brief taxonomy of types of moral experience, we proceed to consider questions about the commonality …Read more
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151A Solution to the Paradox of AnalysisAnalysis 76 (1): 3-7. 2016.The paradox of analysis asks how a putative conceptual analysis can be both true and informative. If it is true then isn’t it analytic? And if it is analytic then how can it be informative? Our proposed solution rests on a distinction between explicit knowledge of meaning and implicit knowledge of meaning and on a correlative distinction between two kinds of conceptual competence. If one initially possesses only implicit knowledge of the meaning of a given concept and the associated linguistic e…Read more
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11Existence monism trumps priority monismIn Philip Goff (ed.), Spinoza on Monism, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 51--76. 2012.Existence monism is defended against priority monism. Schaffer's arguments for priority monism and against pluralism are reviewed, such as the argument from gunk. The whole does not require parts. Ontological vagueness is impossible. If ordinary objects are in the right ontology then they are vague. So ordinary objects are not included in the right ontology; and hence thought and talk about them cannot be accommodated via fully ontological vindication. Partially ontological vindication is not vi…Read more
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192What Does the Frame Problem Tell us About Moral Normativity?Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (1): 25-51. 2009.Within cognitive science, mental processing is often construed as computation over mental representations—i.e., as the manipulation and transformation of mental representations in accordance with rules of the kind expressible in the form of a computer program. This foundational approach has encountered a long-standing, persistently recalcitrant, problem often called the frame problem; it is sometimes called the relevance problem. In this paper we describe the frame problem and certain of its app…Read more
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720Analytic moral functionalism meets moral twin earthIn Ian Ravenscroft (ed.), Minds, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank Jackson, Oxford University Press. pp. 221. 2009.In Chapters 4 and 5 of his 1998 book From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis, Frank Jackson propounds and defends a form of moral realism that he calls both ‘moral functionalism’ and ‘analytical descriptivism’. Here we argue that this metaethical position, which we will henceforth call ‘analytical moral functionalism’, is untenable. We do so by applying a generic thought-experimental deconstructive recipe that we have used before against other views that posit moral properti…Read more
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176For the last 20 years or so, philosophers of mind have been using the term ‘qualia’, which is frequently glossed as standing for the “what-it-is-like” of experience. The examples of what-it-is-like that are typically given are feelings of pain or itches, and color and sound sensations. This suggests an identification of the experiential what-it-islike with such states. More recently, philosophers have begun speaking of the “phenomenology“ of experience, which they have also glossed as “what-it-i…Read more
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Brute Supervenience, Deep Ignorance, and the Problem of the ManyPhilosophical Issues 8 229-236. 1997.
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131Editor's IntroductionSouthern Journal of Philosophy 33 (S1). 1995.I advocate a two part view concerning vagueness. On one hand I claim that vagueness is logically incoherent; but on the other hand I claim that vagueness is also a benign, beneficial, and indeed essential feature of human language and thought. I will call this view transvaluationism, a name which seems to me appropriate for several reasons. First, the term suggests that we should move beyond the idea that the successive statements in a sorites sequence can be assigned differing truth values in s…Read more
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23What does it take to be a true believer?In Christina E. Erneling (ed.), The Mind As a Scientific Object: Between Brain and Culture, Oxford University Press. pp. 211. 2004.Eliminative materialism, as William Lycan (this volume) tells us, is materialism plus the claim that no creature has ever had a belief, desire, intention, hope, wish, or other “folk-psychological” state. Some contemporary philosophers claim that eliminative materialism is very likely true. They sketch certain potential scenarios, for the way theory might develop in cognitive science and neuroscience, that they claim are fairly likely; and they maintain that if such.
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42Review of Amie L. Thomasson, Ordinary Objects (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (5). 2008.
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185Phenomenal intentionality and the evidential role of perceptual experience: comments on Jack Lyons, Perception and Basic Beliefs (review)Philosophical Studies 153 (3). 2011.Phenomenal intentionality and the evidential role of perceptual experience: comments on Jack Lyons, Perception and Basic Beliefs Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11098-010-9604-2 Authors Terry Horgan, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.
Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Meta-Ethics |