•  58
    What Dennett can't imagine and why
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 36 (1-2): 93-112. 1993.
    Woven into Dennett's account of consciousness is his belief that certain possibilities are not conceivable. This is manifested in his view that we are not conscious in any sense in which we can imagine that philosophers? ?zombies? might not be conscious, and also in his claims about ?Hindsight?, and what possibilities this can coherently suggest to us. If the possibilities Dennett denies none the less seem conceivable to us, then if he does not give us reason to think they are actually incoheren…Read more
  •  49
    First-Person Reflection and Hidden Physical Features: A Reply to Witmer
    PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 9. 2003.
    My response to Witmer comes in three sections: In the first I address concerns about my book's blindsight thought-experiment, remarking specifically on the role imagination plays in it, and my grounds for thinking that a first-person approach is valuable here. In Section Two I consider the relation of the thought-experiment to theses regarding possibility and necessity, and Witmer's discussion of ways of arguing for the impossibility of "Belinda-style" blindsight, despite its apparent conceivabi…Read more
  •  96
  •  195
    Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First‐Person Perspective (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (3): 840-843. 2008.
    No Abstract
  •  668
    Is the appearance of shape protean?
    PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 12 1-16. 2006.
    </b>This commentary focuses on shape constancy in vision and its relation to sensorimotor knowledge. I contrast “Protean” and “Constancian” views about how to describe perspectival changes in the appearance of an object’s shape. For the Protean, these amount to changes in apparent shape; for Constance, things are not merely judged, but literally appear constant in shape. I give reasons in favor of the latter view, and argue that Noë’s attempt to combine aspects of both views in a “dual aspect” a…Read more
  •  154
    Consciousness and Intentionality
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006.
  •  10
    Spontaneous Blindsight and Immediate Availability: A Reply to Carruthers
    PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 7. 2001.
    Carruthers' "immediate availability" theory of consciousness is criticized on the grounds that it offers no reasonable alternative to asserting the metaphysical impossibility of spontaneous blindsight. In defense, Carruthers says he can admit a spontaneous blindsight that relies on unconscious behavioral cues, and deny only its possibility without such mechanisms. I argue: This involves him in an unwarranted denial of the possibility that conscious visual discrimination could depend on behaviora…Read more