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405The argument from diaphanousnessCanadian Journal of Philosophy 30 (Supplement): 341--90. 2004.1. Introduction In ‘The Refutation of Idealism’, G.E.Moore observed that, "when we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue: the other element is as if it were diaphanous" (1922; p.25). Many philosophers, but Gilbert Harman (1990, 1996) in particular, have suggested that this observation forms the basis of an argument against qualia, usually called the argument from diaphanousness or transparency.1 But even its friends concede that it is none too clear what the argumen…Read more
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148Four Kinds of Russellian MonismIn Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Mind, Routledge. pp. 17. 2013.“Russellian Monism” is a name given to a family of views in philosophy of mind. The family is exciting because it seems to present an alternative both to materialism and to dualism. After briefly setting out the need for this alternative, I distinguish four different kinds of Russellian Monism (RM), and assess their pros and cons. My own feeling, as will emerge in the final section of the paper, is that only the fourth of these represents a viable version of the view. But my main aim is less t…Read more
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219The deflationary theory of truthStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.According to the deflationary theory of truth, to assert that a statement is true is just to assert the statement itself. For example, to say that ‘snow is white’ is true, or that it is true that snow is white, is equivalent to saying simply that snow is white, and this, according to the deflationary theory, is all that can be said significantly about the truth of ‘snow is white’.
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78Actors and zombiesIn Judith Jarvis Thomson & Alex Byrne (eds.), Content and modality: themes from the philosophy of Robert Stalnaker, Oxford University Press. pp. 1. 2006.Much of contemporary philosophy of mind is dominated by the intersection of three topics: physicalism, the conceivability argument, and the necessary a posteriori. I will be concerned here to describe the consensus view of these topics; to explain why I think this account is mistaken; and to briefly sketch an alternative.
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146Strawson's realistic monismJournal of Consciousness Studies. forthcoming.There is at least one element in Strawson
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68Physicalism plus intentionalism equals error theoryBehavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (6): 790-791. 2003.Byrne & Hilbert (B&H) combine physicalism about color with intentionalism about color experience. I argue that this combination leads to an “error theory” about color experience, that is, the doctrine that color experience is systematically illusory. But this conflicts with another aspect of B&H's position, namely, the denial of error theory.
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175On the self-locating response to the knowledge argumentPhilosophical Studies 155 (3): 437-443. 2011.On the self-locating response to the knowledge argument Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11098-010-9612-2 Authors Daniel Stoljar, Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT, 0200 Australia Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.
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380Introspection and Consciousness: An OverviewIn Declan Smithies & Daniel Stoljar (eds.), Introspection and Consciousness, Oxford University Press. 2012.Introspection stands at the interface between two major currents in philosophy and related areas of science: on the one hand, there are metaphysical and scientific questions about the nature of consciousness; and on the other hand, there are normative and epistemological questions about the nature of self-knowledge. Introspection seems tied up with consciousness, to the point that some writers define consciousness in terms of introspection; and it is also tied up with self-knowledge, since intro…Read more
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688Does the exclusion argument put any pressure on dualismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (1): 96-108. 2017.The exclusion argument is widely thought to put considerable pressure on dualism if not to refute it outright. We argue to the contrary that, whether or not their position is ultimately true, dualists have a plausible response. The response focuses on the notion of ‘distinctness’ as it occurs in the argument: if 'distinctness' is understood one way, the exclusion principle on which the argument is founded can be denied by the dualist; if it is understood another way, the argument is not persuasi…Read more
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131Chomsky, London and LewisAnalysis 75 (1): 16-22. 2015.This article suggests that Chomsky’s notorious ‘London’ argument against semantics looks much more plausible that it is usually interpreted as being when seen in the light of something apparently remote from its concerns, viz., David Lewis’s distinction between natural and non-natural properties
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319The conceivability argument and two conceptions of the physicalPhilosophical Perspectives 15 393-413. 2001.The conceivability argument against physicalism1 starts from the prem- ises that: It is conceivable that I have a zombie-twin, i.e., that there is someone who is physically identical to me and yet who lacks phenomenal con- sciousness; and If it is conceivable that I have a zombie-twin, then it is possible that I have a zombie-twin. These premises entail that physicalism is false, for physicalism is the claim—or can be assumed for our purposes to be the claim2—that
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1180Blockheads! Essays on Ned Block’s Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness (edited book)MIT Press. 2019.Perhaps more than any other philosopher of mind, Ned Block synthesizes philosophical and scientific approaches to the mind; he is unique in moving back and forth across this divide, doing so with creativity and intensity. Over the course of his career, Block has made groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of intelligence, representation, and consciousness. Blockheads! (the title refers to Block's imaginary counterexample to the Turing test—and to the Block-enthusiast contributors) off…Read more
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22Review of Perry's Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness (review)Philosophical Quarterly 53 (213): 616-618. 2003.Review of Perrys *Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness*.
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640Physicalism and phenomenal conceptsMind and Language 20 (2): 296-302. 2005.A phenomenal concept is the concept of a particular type of sensory or perceptual experience, where the notion of experience is understood phenomenologically. A recent and increasingly influential idea in philosophy of mind suggests that reflection on these concepts will play a major role in the debate about conscious experience, and in particular in the defense of physicalism, the thesis that psychological truths supervene on physical truths. According to this idea—I call it the phenomenal conc…Read more
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187Introduction to There's Something About MaryIn Peter Ludlow, Yujin Nagasawa & Daniel Stoljar (eds.), There's Something About Mary: Essays on Phenomenal Consciousness and Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument, Mit Press. 2004.Mary is confined to a black-and-white room, is educated through black-and-white books and through lectures relayed on black-and white television. In this way she learns everything there is to know about the physical nature of the world. She knows all the physical facts about us and our environment, in a wide sense of 'physical' which includes everything in completed physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology, and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, i…Read more
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18Judith Jarvis Thomson: The Dictionary of American PhilosophersIn John R. Shook & Richard T. Hull (eds.), The dictionary of modern American philosophers, Thoemmes Continuum. 2005.THOMSON, Judith Jarvis (1929– ) Judith Jarvis Thomson received her BA from Barnard College in 1950, her MA from Cambridge University in 1956, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1959. Her first teaching position was at Barnard where she was a lecturer from 1955–9, an instructor from 1959–60, and then Assistant Professor from 1960–2. In 1963, she moved to Boston, first as an Assistant Professor at Boston University (1963–4), and then to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she has…Read more
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104The Ontology of Mind: Events, States and Processes (review)Philosophical Review 108 (3): 418. 1999.The aim of this book is to argue that issues in metaphysics—in particular issues about the nature of states and causation—will have a significant impact in philosophy of mind. As Steward puts it: “the category of state has been so grossly misunderstood that some theories of mind which are supposed to encompass entities traditionally regarded as falling under the category, e.g., beliefs and desires, cannot so much as be sensibly formulated, once we are clearer about the nature of states”. Accordi…Read more
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230A neuron doctrine in the philosophy of neuroscienceBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (5): 809-830. 1999.It is widely held that a successful theory of the mind will be neuroscientific. In this paper we ask, first, what this claim means, and, secondly, whether it is true. In answer to the first question, we argue that the claim is ambiguous between two views--one plausible but unsubstantive, and one substantive but highly controversial. In answer to the second question, we argue that neither the evidence from neuroscience itself nor from other scientific and philosophical considerations supports the…Read more
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2Shoemaker, S.-The First Person Perspective and Other Essays (review)Philosophical Books 39 105-108. 1998.This is a review essay of Sydney Shoemaker's The First-person Perspective and Other Essays
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82Interpreting neuroscience and explaining the mindBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (5): 856-866. 1999.Although a wide variety of questions were raised about different aspects of the target article, most of them fall into one of five categories each of which deals with a general question. These questions are Is the radical neuron doctrine really radical? Is the trivial neuron doctrine really trivial? Were we sufficiently critical of the radical neuron doctrine? Is there a distinction to be drawn at all between the two doctrines? and How does our argument bear on related issues in the ontology of …Read more
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71Qualitative Inaccuracy and Unconceived AlternativesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (3): 745-752. 2013.Pereboom (2011) is an extremely rich investigation of some of the central questions in contemporary philosophy of mind. In the foreground are the usual suspects from the current scene, but Kant and Russell loom in the background, and footnotes elaborate connections to people as apparently remote from the normal run of things as Dilthey and Derrida. With so much covered one is inevitably forced to focus on some things, setting aside others. Here I will concentrate on two ideas contained in the fi…Read more
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511PhysicalismStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2015.Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and every…Read more
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94Ignorance and Imagination: The Epistemic Origin of the Problem of ConsciousnessOxford University Press USA. 2006.Ignorance and Imagination advances a novel way to resolve the central philosophical problem about the mind: how it is that consciousness or experience fits into a larger naturalistic picture of the world. The correct response to the problem, Stoljar argues, is not to posit a realm of experience distinct from the physical, nor to deny the reality of phenomenal experience, nor even to rethink our understanding of consciousness and the language we use to talk about it. Instead, we should view the p…Read more
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190Comments on Galen Strawson - 'realistic monism: Why physicalism entails panpsychismJournal of Consciousness Studies 13 (10-11): 170-176. 2006.
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The Content of PhysicalismDissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995.Many philosophers of mind are concerned to defend the thesis called physicalism ; many others are concerned to refute it. Nevertheless, there is no generally agreed on idea of what physicalism is, and why it should matter whether the mental is physical. My thesis consists of four essays whose concern is with what physicalism is in its most plausible version, and what the importance of the thesis might be for the philosophy of mind. ;I begin with the question of whether it is possible to hold phy…Read more
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305Introspection and Consciousness (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2012.The topic of introspection stands at the interface between questions in epistemology about the nature of self-knowledge and questions in the philosophy of mind about the nature of consciousness. What is the nature of introspection such that it provides us with a distinctive way of knowing about our own conscious mental states? And what is the nature of consciousness such that we can know about our own conscious mental states by introspection? How should we understand the relationship between con…Read more
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43Response to Alter and BennettPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (3): 775-784. 2009.The paper responds to criticisms of *Ignorance and Imagination* offered by Torin Alter and Karen Bennett
Acton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Metaphilosophy |
Areas of Interest
Metaphilosophy |
Philosophy of Mind |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |