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888Multisensory 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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527The 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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844Against 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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314Sechzehn 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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345Ontologie 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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204Information 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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1058The 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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65Pre-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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642Unconscious 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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813Can virtue reliabilism explain the value of knowledge?Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (3): 335-354. 2006.Virtue reliabilism appears to have a major advantage over generic reliabilism: only the former has the resources to explain the intuition that knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. I argue that this appearance is illusory. It is sustained only by the misguided assumption that a principled distinction can be drawn between those belief-forming methods that are grounded in the agent’s intellectual virtues, and those that are not. A further problem for virtue reliabilism is that of expla…Read more
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478Number Words and Ontological CommitmentPhilosophical Quarterly 57 (226). 2007.With the aid of some results from current linguistic theory I examine a recent anti-Fregean line with respect to hybrid talk of numbers and ordinary things, such as ‘the number of moons of Jupiter is four’. I conclude that the anti-Fregean line with respect to these sentences is indefensible.
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272Two modal–isms: Fictionalism and ersatzismPhilosophical Perspectives 20 (1). 2006.It is sometimes said that no living philosopher is a genuine modal realist. This is no doubt an exaggeration. But at least this much is true: while we all partake of possible world talk when philosophizing, most of us regard this talk as incurring no commitment to a plurality of concrete worlds.
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182Colour Eliminativism or Colour Relativism?Philosophical Papers 41 (2). 2012.Philosophical Papers, Volume 41, Issue 2, Page 305-321, July 2012
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280Is the relativity of simultaneity a temporal illusion?Analysis 73 (4): 635-642. 2013.Tensism holds that the present moment has a special status that sets it apart from the past and the future, independently of perceivers. One of the main objections to this view has been Einstein’s argument from special relativity, which aims at showing that absolute simultaneity is a myth. We argue that the moving observer in a causal variant of Einstein’s original thought experiment is subject to a temporal illusion. Owing to the analogy of the cases, this casts doubt on the conjectures that th…Read more
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285Phenomenal Seemings and Sensible DogmatismIn Chris Tucker (ed.), Seemings and Justification: New Essays on Dogmatism and Phenomenal Conservatism, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 270. 2013.
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229Strong representationalism and centered contentPhilosophical Studies 151 (3). 2010.I argue that strong representationalism, the view that for a perceptual experience to have a certain phenomenal character just is for it to have a certain representational content (perhaps represented in the right sort of way), encounters two problems: the dual looks problem and the duplication problem. The dual looks problem is this: strong representationalism predicts that how things phenomenally look to the subject reflects the content of the experience. But some objects phenomenally look to …Read more
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473Inscrutability and ontological commitmentPhilosophical Studies 141 (1). 2008.There are two doctrines for which Quine is particularly well known: the doctrine of ontological commitment and the inscrutability thesis—the thesis that reference and quantification are inscrutable. At first glance, the two doctrines are squarely at odds. If there is no fact of the matter as to what our expressions refer to, then it would appear that no determinate commitments can be read off of our best theories. We argue here that the appearance of a clash between the two doctrines is illusory…Read more
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357Intuitions as Intellectual SeemingsAnalytic Philosophy 55 (4): 382-393. 2014.In Philosophy Without Intuitions Herman Cappelen argues that unlike what is commonly thought, contemporary analytic philosophers do not typically rely on intuitions as evidence. If they do indeed rely on intuitions, that should be evident from their written works, either explicitly in the form of ‘intuition’ talk or by means of other indicators. However, Cappelen argues, while philosophers do engage in ‘intuition’ talk, that is not a good indicator that they rely on intuitions, as ‘intuition’ an…Read more
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25I. Descriptions in Predicative Position The predicative analysis and Russell’s theory part company when it comes to the argument structure assigned to sentences like (1). (1) Washington is the greatest French soldier. On a standard Russellian analysis, (1) has the following (a) logical form and (b) truth conditions.
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