•  3
    Against Naturalism about Truth
    In Kelly James Clark (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism, Wiley-blackwell. 2015.
    I distinguish in this chapter between a weak and a strong form of ontological naturalism. Strong ontological naturalism is the view that all truths can be deduced, at least in principle, from truths about physical entities at the lowest level of organization, for example, truths about the elementary particles and forces. Weak ontological naturalism is the view that only physical properties can be causally efficacious. Strong ontological naturalism entails weak ontological naturalism, but not vic…Read more
  •  272
    On Luck, Responsibility and the Meaning of Life
    Philosophical Papers 34 (3): 443-458. 2005.
    A meaningful life, we shall argue, is a life upon which a certain sort of valuable pattern has been imposed by the person in question - a pattern which involves in serious ways the person having an effect upon the world. Meaningfulness is thus a special kind of value which a human life can bear. Two interrelated difficulties face ths proposal. One concerns responsiblity: how are we to account for the fact that a life that satisfies the above criteria can have more meaning than a life with the sa…Read more
  •  19
    There has been a recent surge in interest in two questions concerning the nature of perceptual experience; viz. the question of whether perceptual experience is sometimes cognitively penetrated and that of whether high-level properties are presented in perceptual experience. Only rarely have thinkers been concerned with the question of whether the two phenomena are interestingly related. Here we argue that the two phenomena are not related in any interesting way. We argue further that this lack …Read more
  •  14
    Crazy About You
    The Philosophers' Magazine 70 (3rd Quarter): 66-71. 2015.
  •  453
    Love in Contemporary Psychology and Neuroscience
    In Adrienne M. Martin (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Love in Philosophy, Routledge Handbooks in Philoso. pp. 465-478. 2018.
    The three most central questions in recent psychological and neuroscientific approaches to love are: (1) the question of why people fall in love, (2) the question of what love is, and (3) the question of what causes unhealthy love to develop. This chapter provides an overview and discussion of the main answers to these questions in psychology and neuroscience.
  • Perceptual reports
    In Mohan Matthen (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Perception, Oxford University Press Uk. 2015.
  • Knowledge-How and perceptual learning
    In Markos Valaris & Stephen Hetherington (eds.), Knowledge in Contemporary Philosophy, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2018.
  •  140
    There is no abstract for this chapter. The following is a summary. We distinguish between, explicit, inadvertent, and habitual racist actions. We argue that while inadvertent bigots and habitual racists are inclined to (sincerely) deny that they committed a racially motivated action, they have different reasons for their denial. Inadvertent bigots are denying it because, however deeply they search, they are not going to find any such motive. Habitual racists, by contrast, may hold explicit egali…Read more
  •  15
    There is no abstract for this chapter, which introduces the reader to the papers in the book. The following is only a sample of the chapter: It is quite common for people not to be able to make up their minds. One of the most famous literary examples comes from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, in which the protagonist Hamlet poses the well-known question “To be or not to be, that is the question,” while contemplating suicide. In the play, Hamlet is expressing discontent about life, as he thinks of the…Read more
  •  733
    Against and for Ethical Naturalism Or: How Not To "Naturalize" Ethics
    American Philosophical Quarterly 59 (4): 327-352. 2022.
    Moral realism and ethical naturalism are both highly attractive ethical positions but historically they have often been thought to be irreconcilable. Since the late 1980s defenders of Cornell Realism have argued that the two positions can consistently be combined. They make three constitutive claims: (i) Moral properties are natural kind properties that (ii) are identical to (or supervene) on descriptive functional properties, which (iii) causally regulate our use of moral terms. We offer new ar…Read more
  •  55
    Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion
    Oxford University Press. 2020.
    Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion The first in-depth philosophical analysis of personal hate and group hate, Hate: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion explores how personal hatred can foster domestic violence and emotional abuse, how hate-proneness is a main contributor to the aggressive tendencies of borderlines, narcissists and psychopaths, how seemingly ordinary people embark on some of history's worst hate crimes, and how cohesive groups, subjected to spontaneous forces o…Read more
  •  314
    Dogmatism and Ampliative Inference
    Veritas – Revista de Filosofia da Pucrs 66 (1). 2021.
    The evidential role of experience in justifying beliefs has been at the center of debate in philosophy in recent years. One view is that experience, or seeming, can confer immediate justification on belief in virtue of its representational phenomenology. Call this view “representational dogmatism.” Another view is that experience confers immediate justification on belief in virtue of its relational phenomenology. Call this view “relational dogmatism.” The goal of this paper is to pit these two v…Read more
  •  1
    Psychedelics: A Window into Perceptual Processing
    with Dimitria Gatzia Electra
    In Chris Letheby & Philip Gerrans (eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on Psychedelic Psychiatry, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    In this chapter, we first present findings indicating that psilocybin-induced visual distortions and impaired executive functioning originate in temporary disruptions of bottom-up and top-down attentional mechanisms. We then revisit a recent predictive processing account of psychedelic experiences and argue that it lacks the resources to provide an adequate account of psychedelic experiences. Lastly, we propose an alternative theory of perceptual processing that can explain how the psilocybin-in…Read more
  •  422
  •  190
    Vices of Friendship
    with Arina Pismenny
    In Arina Pismenny & Berit Brogaard (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Love, Rowman and Littlefield. pp. 231-253. 2022.
    In this paper, we argue that the neo-Aristotelian conception of “friendships of character” appears to misrepresent the essential nature of "genuine", or "true", friendship. We question the neo-Aristotelian imperative that true friendship entails disinterested love of the other “for their own sake” and strives at enhancing moral virtue. We propose an alternative conception of true friendship as involving affective and motivational features which we call closeness, intimacy, identity, and trust. E…Read more
  •  121
    Time and Tense
    In Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 765-786. 1997.
    Two of the main debates in philosophy of language concerning time and tense are the debate about the semantics of the tenses in the English language and the debate over whether propositions can be transiently true or false as opposed to always being eternally true or false. The latter quarrel is also known as the "temporalism–eternalism debate." Given standard semantics, the two debates are not logically independent, as we will see. Those who believe propositions are eternally true or false need…Read more
  •  29
    This book collects original essays by top scholars that address questions about the nature, origins, and effects of ambivalence. While the nature of agency has received an enormous amount of attention, relatively little has been written about ambivalence or how it relates to topics such as agency, rationality, justification, knowledge, autonomy, self-governance, well-being, social cognition, and various other topics. Ambivalence presents unique questions related to many major philosophical debat…Read more
  •  13
    The Moral Psychology of Love (edited book)
    Rowman and Littlefield. 2022.
    This book will explore the moral dimensions of love from the standpoint of political philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience.
  •  192
    Practical Identity and Duties of Love
    Disputatio 13 (60): 27-50. 2021.
    This paper defends the view that we have special relationship duties that do not derive from our moral duties. Our special relationship duties, I argue, are grounded in what I call close relationships. Sharing a close relationship with another person, I suggest, requires that both people conceive of themselves as being motivated to promote the other’s interests. So, staying true to oneself demands being committed to promoting the interests of those with whom we share a close relationship. Finall…Read more
  •  174
    Seeing and Hearing Meanings. A Non-Inferential Approach to Utterance Comprehension
    In Anders Nes & Timothy Hoo Wai Chan (eds.), Inference and Consciousness, Routledge. pp. 99-124. 2019.
    In this paper I provide empirical and theoretical considerations in favor of a non-inferential view of speech comprehension. On the view defended, we typically comprehend speech by perceiving or grasping apparently conveyed meanings directly rather than by inferring them from, say, linguistic principles and perceived phonemes. “Speech” is here used in the broad sense to refer not only to verbal expression, but also written messages, including Braille, and conventional signs and symbols, like emo…Read more
  •  162
    Living High and Letting Die
    with Nicola Bourbaki and Barry Smith
    Philosophy 76 (297). 2001.
    Imagine that your body has become attached, without your permission, to that of a sick violinist. The violinist is a human being. He will die if you detach him. Such detachment seems, nonetheless, to be morally permissible. Thomson argues that an unwantedly pregnant woman is in an analogous situation. Her argument is considered by many to have established the moral permissibility of abortion even under the assumption that the foetus is a human being. Another popular argument is that presented by…Read more
  •  60
    Living high and letting die
    Philosophy 76 (3): 435-442. 2001.
    Imagine that your body has become attached, without your permission, to that of a sick violinist. The violinist is a human being. He will die if you detach him. Such detachment seems, nonetheless, to be morally permissible. Thomson argues that an unwantedly pregnant woman is in an analogous situation. Her argument is considered by many to have established the moral permissibility of abortion even under the assumption that the foetus is a human being. Another popular argument is that presented by…Read more
  •  25
    Female Misogyny
    The Philosophers' Magazine 91 53-59. 2020.
    Misogyny is a particular kind of unjustified hatred or contempt for women in a man’s world. By “a man’s world,” I mean a society where men have more power and privileges than women. The United States is a man’s world, or “patriarchal society,” as it’s also called. A few pieces of evidence: In 2019, 127 women held seats in the United States Congress, comprising only 23.7 percent of the 535 members. We, the American people, have never elected a female president. Although some women are legally ent…Read more
  •  114
    Sixteen days
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28 (1). 2003.
    When does a human being begin to exist? We argue that it is possible, through a combination of biological fact and philosophical analysis, to provide a definitive answer to this question. We lay down a set of conditions for being a human being, and we determine when, in the course of normal fetal development, these conditions are first satisfied. Issues dealt with along the way include: modes of substance-formation, twinning, the nature of the intra-uterine environment, and the nature of the rel…Read more
  •  81
    Foundationalism
    In Sven Bernecker & Kourken Michaelian (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory, Routledge. pp. 296-309. 2017.
    Memory has eluded a unified philosophical analysis for millennia because memory isn’t a single type of mental state. On a standard classification, procedural memory is memory of how to do things, semantic memory is memory of facts or fact-like propositions and episodic memory is memory of events in which you partook. Autobiographical memory is memory of what happened in your past in real-life cases. Empirical studies suggest that autobiographical memory is a construction of pieces of past experi…Read more
  •  318
    Cognitive Dissonance and the Logic of Racism
    with Dimitria Electra Gatzia
    In Berit Brogaard & Dimitria Electra Gatzia (eds.), The Philosophy and Psychology of Ambivalence: Being of Two Minds, Routledge. pp. 219-243. 2021.
    Cognitive dissonance is a kind of ambivalence in which your apprehension of the fact that you performed or want to perform an action of which you disapprove gives rise to psychological distress. This, in turn, causes you to solicit unconscious processes that can help you reduce the distress. Here we look at the role that cognitive dissonance plays in explaining the inner workings of racism. We distinguish between three types of racist acts: inadvertent bigotry, habitual racism, and explicit raci…Read more
  •  157
    Implicit biases in visually guided action
    Synthese 198 (Suppl 17). 2021.
    For almost half a century dual-stream advocates have vigorously defended the view that there are two functionally specialized cortical streams of visual processing originating in the primary visual cortex: a ventral, perception-related ‘conscious’ stream and a dorsal, action-related ‘unconscious’ stream. They furthermore maintain that the perceptual and memory systems in the ventral stream are relatively shielded from the action system in the dorsal stream. In recent years, this view has come un…Read more
  •  139
    Molyneux’s Question and the Semantics of Seeing
    In Brian Glenney & Gabriele Ferretti (eds.), Molyneux’s Question and the History of Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 195-215. 2020.
    The aim of this chapter is to shed new light on the question of what newly sighted subjects are capable of seeing on the basis of previous experience with mind- independent, external objects and their properties through touch alone. This question is also known as "Molyneux’s question." Much of the empirically driven debate surrounding this question has been centered on the nature of the representational content of the subjects' visual experiences. It has generally been assumed that the meaning o…Read more