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12The philosophical and psychological significance of ambivalence : an introductionIn Berit Brogaard & Dimitria Electra Gatzia (eds.), The Philosophy and Psychology of Ambivalence: Being of Two Minds, Routledge. 2020.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
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11Centered Worlds and the Content of PerceptionIn Steven D. Hales (ed.), A Companion to Relativism, Wiley‐blackwell. 2011.This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Relativistic Content The Argument from Primitive Colors The Argument from the Inverted Spectrum The Argument from Dual Looks The Argument from Duplication Conclusion References.
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10Synesthesia as a Challenge for RepresentationalismIn Justin Sytsma & Wesley Buckwalter (eds.), A Companion to Experimental Philosophy, Wiley. 2016.Synesthesia is a condition in which features that ordinarily are processed by distinct perceptual or cognitive streams are bound together in a single stream, yielding an aberrant perceptual, image‐like or thought‐like experience. One of the most common forms of synesthesia is grapheme‐color synesthesia. It is divided into two distinct forms: Projector synesthesia, which tends to be perception‐like, and associator synesthesia, which tends to be more like imagery or thought. There has been an ongo…Read more
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6The Status of Consciousness in NatureIn Steven Miller (ed.), The Constitution of Consciousness, Volume 2, John Benjamins. forthcoming.The most central metaphysical question about phenomenal consciousness is that of what constitutes phenomenal consciousness, whereas the most central epistemic question about consciousness is that of whether science can eventually provide an explanation of phenomenal consciousness. Many philosophers have argued that science doesn't have the means to answer the question of what consciousness is (the explanatory gap) but that consciousness nonetheless is fully determined by the physical facts under…Read more
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6SupernaturalIn Graham Oppy (ed.), A Companion to Atheism and Philosophy, Wiley. 2019.This chapter first discusses what it would be for something to be supernatural. I argue that there are good reasons not to reject supernaturalism. The essay then considers whether there is an interesting connection between atheism and the supernatural. One topic central to this question is that of whether atheistic belief can be rationally tied to the rejection of belief in anything supernatural. I argue that it cannot, because – as we will see – it is highly implausible that the world encompass…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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3Against Naturalism about TruthIn Kelly James Clark (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism, Wiley. 2016.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
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3the Central Division of the APA in Chicago, April 19-21 2007. The paper proposes an account of conditional donkey sentences, such as ‘if a farmer buys a donkey, he usually vaccinates it’, which accommodates the fact that the adverb of quantification seems to affect the interpretation of pronouns that are not within its syntactic scope. The analysis defended takes donkey pronouns to go proxy for partitive noun phrases with varying quantificational force. The variation in the interpretation of don…Read more
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2Epistemic Value Monism, or How I Learned to Stop Caring About TruthIn Adrian Haddock, Alan Millar & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), Epistemic value, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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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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1Ignorance and IncompetenceIn Rik Peels and Martijn Blaauw (ed.), Igorance, Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.On an initially plausible view of ignorance, ignorance is equivalent to the lack or absence of knowledge-that. I argue that this view is incorrect, as lack of sufficient justification for one's true belief or lack of belief doesn't necessarily amount to ignorance. My argument rests on linguistic considerations of common uses of 'ignorant' and its cognates. The phrase 'is ignorant of', I argue, functions differently grammatically and semantically from the phrase 'does not know', when the latter i…Read more
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1Psychedelics: A Window into Perceptual ProcessingIn 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
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1Virtue epistemology in the zombie apocalypse : hungry judges, heavy clipboards, and group polarizationIn Mark Alfano & Abrol Fairweather (eds.), Epistemic Situationism, Oxford University Press. 2017.
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1Seemings and Seeming Reports (in press)In Kurt Sylvan, Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Dancy & Matthias Steup (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition, Wiley Blackwell. forthcoming.
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Staying indoors: How phenomenal dogmatism solves the skeptical problem without going externalistIn Brett Coppenger & Michael Bergmann (eds.), Intellectual Assurance: Essays on Traditional Epistemic Internalism, Oxford University Press. 2016.
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Perceptual reportsIn Mohan Matthen (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Perception, Oxford University Press Uk. 2015.
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Romantic love for a reasonIn Christopher Grau & Aaron Smuts (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Love, Oxford University Press. 2017.
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Phenomenal seemings and sensible dogmatismIn Chris Tucker (ed.), Seemings and Justification: New Essays on Dogmatism and Phenomenal Conservatism, Oxford University Press Usa. 2013.
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Dogmatism (in press)In Kurt Sylvan, Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Dancy & Matthias Steup (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition, Wiley Blackwell. forthcoming.This entry does not have an abstract. The following is a summary. Dogmatism, as popularized by Jim Pryor (2000), holds that the perceptual experience or perceptual phenomenal seeming that p can confer at least some degree of immediate, prima facie propositional justification on the belief that p. This entry begins by explaining what we mean by "propositional," "immediate," and "prima facie." Propositional justification contrasts with doxastic justification. We then discuss different kinds of d…Read more
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Knowledge-How and perceptual learningIn Markos Valaris & Stephen Hetherington (eds.), Knowledge in Contemporary Philosophy, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2018.
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Phenomenal Dogmatism, Seeming Evidentialism and Inferential JustificationIn McCain Kevin (ed.), Believing in Accordance with the Evidence: New Essays on Evidentialism, Springer Verlag. 2018.
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