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189The real epistemic significance of perceptual learningInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 61 (5-6): 543-558. 2018.In "The Epistemic Significance of Perceptual Learning," Elijah Chudnoff (this issue) argues that cases from perceptual learning show that perception not only generates reasons for beliefs but also preserves those reasons over time in perceptual learning cases. In this paper, we dispute the idea that perceptual learning enables the preservation of perceptual reasons. We then argue for an alternative view, viz. the view that perceptual learning is epistemically significant insofar as it modifies o…Read more
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1109Sex By DeceptionIn Manuel Vargas & John Doris (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology, Oxford University Press. pp. 683-711. 2022.In this paper I will use sex by deception as a case study for highlighting some of the most tricky concepts around sexuality and moral psychology, including rape, consensual sex, sexual rights, sexual autonomy, sexual individuality, and disrespectful sex. I begin with a discussion of morally wrong sex as rooted in the breach of five sexual liberty rights that are derived from our fundamental human liberty rights: sexual self-possession, sexual autonomy, sexual individuality, sexual dignity and s…Read more
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901Multisensory Consciousness and SynesthesiaIn Berit Brogaard & Elijah Chudnoff (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Consciousness, Routledge. pp. 322-336. 2020.This chapter distinguishes between two kinds of ordinary multisensory experience that go beyond mere co-consciousness of features (e.g., the experience that results from concurrently hearing a sound in the hallway and seeing the cup on the table). In one case, a sensory experience in one modality creates a perceptual demonstrative to whose referent qualities are attributed in another sensory modality. For example, when you hear someone speak, auditory experience attributes audible qualities to …Read more
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548The Publicity of Meaning and the Perceptual Approach to Speech ComprehensionProtoSociology 34 144-162. 2017.The paper presents a number of empirical arguments for the perceptual view of speech comprehension. It then argues that a particular version of phenomenal dogmatism can confer immediate justification upon belief. In combination, these two views can bypass Davidsonian skepticism toward knowledge of meanings. The perceptual view alone, however, can bypass a variation on the Davidsonian argument. One reason Davidson thought meanings were not truly graspable was that he believed meanings were privat…Read more
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860Against Emotional DogmatismPhilosophical Issues 26 (1): 59-77. 2016.It may seem that when you have an emotional response to a perceived object or event that makes it seem to you that the perceived source of the emotion possesses some evaluative property, then you thereby have prima facie, immediate justification for believing that the object or event possesses the evaluative property. Call this view ‘dogmatism about emotional justification’. We defend a view of the structure of emotional awareness according to which the objects of emotional awareness are derived…Read more
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77Introduction: Epistemic ModalsTopoi 36 (1): 127-130. 2017.Theorists with otherwise radically different commitments agree that epistemic modals mark the necessity or possibility of a prejacent proposition relative to a body of evidence or knowledge. However, there is vast disagreement about the semantics of epistemic modals, which stems in part from the fact that statements of epistemic possibility or necessity make no explicit reference to a speaker or group, an audience, or an evidence set. This volume introduces new philosophical papers that mark a s…Read more
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1Temporal MereologyDissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo. 2000.This work explores the problem of the persistence of objects through change, given the assumption that objects are three-dimensional entities; and the continuation of events through time, given the assumption that events are four-dimensional entities. My main concern is to provide an informative metaphysical grounding of temporal continuation by identifying the primitive relations and properties into which this concept can be analyzed. My thesis is that entities a and b can be said to be the sam…Read more
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28Peirce on Abduction and Rational ControlTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 35 (1). 1999.
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329Sechzehn Tage: Wann beginnt ein menschliches Leben?In Guido Imaguire & Christine Schneider (eds.), Untersuchungen zur Ontologie, Philosophia. pp. 3-40. 2006.Der Abschluß der Gastrulation, der gleichzeitig auch den Anfang der Neurulation bedeutet, ist die zeitliche Grenze, die Beginn eines menschlichen Individuums markiert. Oft wird behauptet, daß jegliche natürliche Veränderung stetig ist. Wie ist es dann aber möglich, eine zeitliche Grenze auszuzeichnen, an der ein menschliches Lebewesen zu existieren beginnt? Man beachte, was geschieht, wenn wir vom Thema zeitlicher Unstetigkeit zum räumlichen übergehen. Lebewesen haben räumliche Grenzen (wie sie …Read more
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351Ontologie des Embryos: Wann beginnt menschliches LebenIn Honnefelder L. & Schmidt M. C. (eds.), Naturalismus als Paradigma - Wie weit reicht die naturwissenschaftliche Erklärung des Menschen? , 2007,, Berlin University Press. pp. 196-204. 2007.Der Abschluß der Gastrulation, der gleichzeitig auch den Anfang der Neurulation bedeutet, ist die zeitliche Grenze, die Beginn eines menschlichen Individuums markiert. Oft wird behauptet, daß jegliche natürliche Veränderung stetig ist. Wie ist es dann aber möglich, eine zeitliche Grenze auszuzeichnen, an der ein menschliches Lebewesen zu existieren beginnt? Man beachte, was geschieht, wenn wir vom Thema zeitlicher Unstetigkeit zum räumlichen übergehen. Lebewesen haben räumliche Grenzen (wie sie …Read more
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215Information may be defined as the conceptual or communicable part of the content of mental acts. The content of mental acts includes sensory data as well as concepts, particular as well as general information. An information system is an external (non-mental) system designed to store such content. Information systems afford indirect transmission of content between people, some of whom may put information into the system and others who are among those who use the system. In order for communicatio…Read more
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1072The Ontology of Fields (edited book)National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. 1998.In the specific case of geography, the real world consists on the one hand of physical geographic features (bona fide objects) and on the other hand of various fiat objects, for example legal and administrative objects, including parcels of real estate, areas of given soil types, census tracts, and so on. It contains in addition the beliefs and actions of human beings directed towards these objects (for example, the actions of those who work in land registries or in census bureaux), and the rela…Read more
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66Pre-cueing, Perceptual Learning and Cognitive PenetrationFrontiers in Psychology 8. 2017.In The Principles of Psychology, William James (1981) has long ago suggested that attending to a stimulus can make it appear more ‘vivid and clear.’ Pre-cueing, the procedure in which a cue stimulus is presented to direct a subject’s attention to the location of a test stimulus, has been used to test James’ hypothesis (Posner, 1978; Carrasco et al., 2004; Carrasco, Loula, & Ho, 2006; Yeshurun & Rashal, 2010; Carrasco, 2011). One recent debate concerns whether the effects of pre-cueing and other …Read more
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658Unconscious Imagination and the Mental Imagery DebateFrontiers in Psychology 8. 2017.Traditionally, philosophers have appealed to the phenomenological similarity between visual experience and visual imagery to support the hypothesis that there is significant overlap between the perceptual and imaginative domains. The current evidence, however, is inconclusive: while evidence from transcranial brain stimulation seems to support this conclusion, neurophysiological evidence from brain lesion studies (e.g., from patients with brain lesions resulting in a loss of mental imagery but n…Read more
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434Span OperatorsAnalysis 67 (1): 72-79. 2007.I argue that David Lewis is too quick to deny the presentist the right to employ span operators. There is no reason why the presentist could not help herself to both primitive tensed slice operators and primitive span operators. She would then have another device available to eliminate ambiguities and explain why sentences with embedded contradictions may nevertheless be true.
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439ColorIn Oxford Annotated Bibliographies Online, . 2010.The nature of the colors—what they are like, whether they are instantiated by objects or are projected by our minds, whether their nature is revealed to us in color perception, and whether there could be alien colors (e.g. reddish-green)—has been one of the central topics in philosophy for centuries. This entry focuses on the contemporary philosophical debate about the nature of the colors.
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83Is the auditory system cognitively penetrable?Frontiers in Psychology 6. 2015.According to the hierarchical model of sensory information processing, sensory inputs are transmitted to cortical areas, which are crucial for complex auditory and speech processing, only after being processed in subcortical areas (Hickok and Poeppel, 2007; Rauschecker and Scott, 2009). However, studies using electroencephalography (EEG) indicate that distinguishing simultaneous auditory inputs involves a widely distributed neural network, including the medial temporal lobe, which is essential f…Read more
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4Parental Love and the Meaning of LifeIn Leo Zaibert (ed.), The Theory and Practice of Ontology (festschrift for Barry Smith edited by Leo Zaibert, . 2016.
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481A partial defense of extended knowledgePhilosophical Issues 24 (1): 39-62. 2014.The paper starts out by distinguishing two closely related hypotheses about extended cognition. According to the strong hypothesis, there are no intrinsic representations in the brain. This is a version of the extended-mind view defended by Andy Clark and Richard Menary. On the weak hypothesis, there are intrinsic representations in the brain but some types of cognition, knowledge or memory are constituted by particular types of external devices or environmental factors that extend beyond the sk…Read more
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231Fitch's Paradox of KnowabilityThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2010.The paradox of knowability is a logical result suggesting that, necessarily, if all truths are knowable in principle then all truths are in fact known. The contrapositive of the result says, necessarily, if in fact there is an unknown truth, then there is a truth that couldn't possibly be known. More specifically, if p is a truth that is never known then it is unknowable that p is a truth that is never known. The proof has been used to argue against versions of anti-realism committed to the thes…Read more
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200Context and Content: Pragmatics in Two-Dimensional SemanticsIn Keith Allan & Kasia Jaszczolt (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics, Cambridge University Press. 2012.Context figures in the interpretation of utterances in many different ways. In the tradition of possible-worlds semantics, the seminal account of context-sensitive expressions such as indexicals and demonstratives is that of Kaplan's two-dimensional semantics (the content- character distinction), further pursued in various directions by Stalnaker, Chalmers, and others. This chapter introduces and assesses the notion of context-sensitivity presented in this group of approaches, with a specia…Read more
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149Review of Nicholas Griffin, Dale Jacquette (eds.), Russell Vs. Meinong: The Legacy of "on Denoting" (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (4). 2009.
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131Andy Clark,mindware: An introduction to the philosophy of cognitive science, oxford/new York: Oxford university press, 2001, VII + 210 pp., $18.95 (paper), ISBN 0-19-513857- (review)Minds and Machines 12 (1): 151-156. 2002.
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