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566Tropes and Other ThingsIn Stephen Laurence & Cynthia Macdonald (eds.), Contemporary Readings in the Foundations of Metaphysics, Wiley-blackwell. 1998.Our day-to-day experience of the world regularly brings us into contact with middlesized objects such as apples, dogs, and other human beings. These objects possess observable properties, properties that are available or accessible to the unaided senses, such as redness and roundness, as well as properties that are not so available, such as chemical ones. Both of these kinds of properties serve as valuable sources of information about our familiar middle-sized objects at least to the extent that…Read more
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308Real metaphysics and the descriptive/revisionary distinctionIn Cornelis De Waal (ed.), Susan Haack: a lady of distinctions: the philosopher responds to critics, Prometheus Books. 2007.
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419What is Colour? A Defence of Colour PrimitivismIn Robert Johnson Michael Smith (ed.), Passions and Projections: Themes from the Philosophy of Simon Blackburn, Oxford University Press. pp. 116-133. 2015.
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31Perception and reasonAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (1). 2002.Book Information Perception and Reason. By Bill Brewer. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1999. Pp. xviii + 281.
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142Externalism and First-Person AuthoritySynthese 104 (1): 99-122. 1995.Externalism in the philosophy of mind is threatened by the view that subjects are authoritative with regard to the contents of their own intentional states. If externalism is to be reconciled with first-person authority, two issues need to be addressed: (a) how the non-evidence-based character of knowledge of one's own intentional states is compatible with ignorance of the empirical factors that individuate the contents of those states, and (b) how, given externalism, the non-evidence-based char…Read more
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63Theories of mind and 'the commonsense view'Mind and Language 17 (5): 467-488. 2002.It is widely believed that people are sometimes directly aware of their own psychological states and consequently better placed than others to know what the contents of those states are. This (‘commonsense’) view has been challenged by Alison Gopnik. She claims that experimental evidence from the behaviour of 3– and 4–year–old children both supports the theory theory and shows that the belief in direct and privileged knowledge of one’s own intentional states is an illusion. I argue (1) that the …Read more
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Supervenient causationIn Cynthia MacDonald & Graham MacDonald (eds.), Philosophy of Psychology: Debates on Psychological Explanation, Blackwell. pp. 4-28. 1994.
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40Psychological type-type reduction via disjunctionSouthern Journal of Philosophy 30 (1): 65-69. 1992.
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829‘‘In My ‘Mind’s Eye’: Introspectionism, Detectivism, and the Basis of Authoritative Self-KnowledgeSynthese 191 (15). 2014.It is widely accepted that knowledge of certain of one’s own mental states is authoritative in being epistemically more secure than knowledge of the mental states of others, and theories of self-knowledge have largely appealed to one or the other of two sources to explain this special epistemic status. The first, ‘detectivist’, position, appeals to an inner perception-like basis, whereas the second, ‘constitutivist’, one, appeals to the view that the special security awarded to certain self-know…Read more
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447How to be Psychologically RelevantIn Cynthia MacDonald & Graham MacDonald (eds.), Philosophy of Psychology: Debates on Psychological Explanation, Blackwell. 1994.How did I raise my arm? The simple answer is that I raised it as a consequence of intending to raise it. A slightly more complicated response would mention the absence of any factors which would inhibit the execution of the intention- and a more complicated one still would specify the intention in terms of a goal (say, drinking a beer) which requires arm-raising as a means towards that end. Whatever the complications, the simple answer appears to be on the right track
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2Classicism vs. connectionismIn Cynthia MacDonald & Graham MacDonald (eds.), Connectionism: Debates on Psychological Explanation, Blackwell. 1991.
Manchester, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |