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1Mathematical EntitiesIn Robrecht Vanderbeeken & Bart D'Hooghe (eds.), Worldviews, Science and Us, World Scientific. pp. 224-241. 2010.
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28Which colour space(s) is Shepard talking about?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (4): 661-662. 2001.Contra Shepard we argue, first, that his presentation of a three-dimensional representational (psychological or phenomenal) colour space is at odds with many results in colour science, and, second, that there is insufficient evidence for Shepard's stronger claim that the three-dimensionality of colour perception has resulted from natural selection, moulded by the particulars of the solar spectrum and its variations. [Shepard].
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44Qualia Change and Colour Science.In Vassilios Karakostas & Dennis Dieks (eds.), Epsa11 Perspectives and Foundational Problems in Philosophy of Science, Springer. pp. 417--428. 2013.
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15The taming of changeIn Michel Weber (ed.), After Whitehead: Rescher on process metaphysics, Ontos Verlag. pp. 95-112. 2004.
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42Trading Ontology for Ideology: The Interplay of Logic, Set Theory and Semantics in Quine's PhilosophySynthese Library. Kluwer/Springer. 2002.The Interplay of Logic, Set Theory and Semantics in Quine's Philosophy L. Decock. In philosophy of science Quine's name is linked to the so-called Quine- Duhem thesis. The discussion of this thesis still continues even after several decades.9 ...
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80What Verities May BeMind 126 (502): 386-428. 2017.Edgington has proposed a solution to the sorites paradox in terms of ‘verities’, which she defines as degrees of closeness to clear truth. Central to her solution is the assumption that verities are formally probabilities. She is silent on what verities might derive from and on why they should be probabilities. This paper places Edgington’s solution in the framework of a spatial approach to conceptualization, arguing that verities may be conceived of as deriving from how our concepts relate to e…Read more
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22Structuur en ontologie: Enkele tendensen in de hedendaagse filosofie Van de wiskundeTijdschrift Voor Filosofie 61 (1). 1999.
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69A physicalist reinterpretion of 'phenomenal' spacesPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 5 (2): 197-225. 2006.This paper argues that phenomenal or internal metrical spaces are redundant posits. It is shown that we need not posit an internal space-time frame, as the physical space-time suffices to explain geometrical perception, memory and planning. More than the internal space-time frame, the idea of a phenomenal colour space has lent credibility to the idea of internal spaces. It is argued that there is no phenomenal colour space that underlies the various psychophysical colour spaces; it is parasitic …Read more
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15Quine: Naturalized Epistemology, Perceptual Knowledge and Ontology (edited book)Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, Rodopi. 2000.Contents: Introduction. NATURALIZED EPISTEMOLOGY. Ton DERKSEN: Naturalistic Epistemology, Murder and Suicide? But what about the Promises! Christopher HOOKWAY: Naturalism and Rationality. Mia GOSSELIN: Quine's Hypothetical Theory of Language Learning. A Comparison of Different Conceptual Schemes of Their Logic. THE NATURE OF PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE. Jaap van BRAKEL: Quine and Innate Similarity Spaces. Dirk KOPPELBERG: Quine and Davidson on the Structure of Empirical Knowledge. Eva PICARDI: Empathy …Read more
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Conceptual Spaces as Philosophers’ ToolsIn Peter Gärdenfors & Frank Zenker (eds.), Applications of Conceptual Spaces : the Case for Geometric Knowledge Representation, Springer Verlag. pp. 207-221. 2015.
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80Knowledge and Approximate KnowledgeErkenntnis 79 (S6): 1129-1150. 2014.Traditionally, epistemologists have held that only truth-related factors matter in the question of whether a subject can be said to know a proposition. Various philosophers have recently departed from this doctrine by claiming that the answer to this question also depends on practical concerns. They take this move to be warranted by the fact that people’s knowledge attributions appear sensitive to contextual variation, in particular variation due to differing stakes. This paper proposes an alter…Read more
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5Quine's "Strictly Vegetarian" AnalyticityThe Monist 100 (2): 288-310. 2017.I analyze Quine’s later writings on analyticity from a linguistic point of view. In Word and Object Quine made room for a “strictly vegetarian” notion of analyticity. In later years, he developed this notion into two more precise notions, which I have coined “stimulus analyticity” and “behaviorist analyticity.” The latter characterization is in many respects similar to Carnap’s characterization of analyticity based on semantic rules and can be seamlessly incorporated in a Carnapian project of ex…Read more
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77Constraints on Colour Category FormationInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 26 (2): 171-196. 2012.This article addresses two questions related to colour categorization, to wit, the question what a colour category is, and the question how we identify colour categories. We reject both the relativist and universalist answers to these questions. Instead, we suggest that colour categories can be identified with the help of the criterion of psychological saliency, which can be operationalized by means of consistency and consensus measures. We further argue that colour categories can be defined as …Read more
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56The conceptual basis of numerical abilities: One-to-one correspondence versus the successor relationPhilosophical Psychology 21 (4). 2008.In recent years, neologicists have demonstrated that Hume's principle, based on the one-to-one correspondence relation, suffices to construct the natural numbers. This formal work is shown to be relevant for empirical research on mathematical cognition. I give a hypothetical account of how nonnumerate societies may acquire arithmetical knowledge on the basis of the one-to-one correspondence relation only, whereby the acquisition of number concepts need not rely on enumeration (the stable-order p…Read more
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182Putnam’s Internal Realism: A Radical RestatementTopoi 31 (1): 111-120. 2012.Putnam’s internal realism is aimed at reconciling realist and antirealist intuitions about truth and the nature of reality. A common complaint about internal realism is that it has never been stated with due precision. This paper attempts to render the position precise by drawing on the literature on conceptual spaces as well as on earlier work of the authors on the notion of identity
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18Attributen, verzamelingen en predikaten: Quines gevecht met universaliaTijdschrift Voor Filosofie 63 (2). 2001.The development and changes in Quine's ideas on universais are analysed, and especially the interplay of the notions of attribute, set and predicate is highlighted. In a first logico-mathematical part it is shown how Quine banned attributes as a result of extensionalism, and how set-theoretic solutions for Russell's paradox disturbed the easy view of each predicate determining a class. Quine even tried to formulate nominalistic theories without universais (sets). It is further shown how linguist…Read more
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Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
PhilPapers Editorships
Mathematical Cognition |