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46Mental Causation and Exclusion: Why the Difference-making Account of Causation is No HelpHumana Mente 8 (29). 2015.Peter Menzies has developed a novel version of the exclusion principle that he claims to be compatible with the possibility of mental causation. Menzies proposes to frame the exclusion principle in terms of a difference-making account of causation, understood in counterfactual terms. His new exclusion principle appears in two formulations: upwards exclusion — which is the familiar case in which a realizing event causally excludes the event that it realizes — and, more interestingly, downward exc…Read more
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14Self-Control, Decision Theory, and Rationality: New Essays (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1900.Thinking about self-control takes us to the heart of practical decision-making, human agency, motivation, and rational choice. Psychologists, philosophers, and decision theorists have all brought valuable insights and perspectives on how to model self-control, on different mechanisms for achieving and strengthening self-control, and on how self-control fits into the overall cognitive and affective economy. Yet these different literatures have remained relatively insulated from each other. Self-C…Read more
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111Yes, essential indexicals really are essentialAnalysis 77 (4): 690-694. 2017.In their recent book The Inessential Indexical Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever take issue with what has become close to philosophical orthodoxy – the view, most often associated with John Perry and David Lewis, that psychological explanations are essentially indexical. Cappelen and Dever claim that claims of essential indexicality are typically driven by intuitions rather than supported by arguments. They issue a challenge to supporters of essential indexicality: Produce an argument to back up th…Read more
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38Fenomenologia cielesnej percepcjiAvant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 2 (T): 25-36. 2011.[Phenomenology of Bodily Perception] Since this is colloquium on phenomenological and experimental approaches to cognition I’d like to set up te problem I want to address in terms of two of the different strands that we find in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking about the phenomenology of the body. One of these strands is profoundly insightful. The other one, however, seems to me to be lacking in plausibility – or rather, to put it less confrontationally and more in keeping with the spirit of the colloqui…Read more
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20Nonconceptual Self-Consciousness And Cognitive ScienceSynthese 129 (1): 129-149. 2001.This paper explores some of the areaswhere neuroscientific and philosophical issuesintersect in the study of self-consciousness. Taking aspoint of departure a paradox (the paradox ofself-consciousness) that appears to blockphilosophical elucidation of self-consciousness, thepaper illustrates how the highly conceptual forms ofself-consciousness emerge from a rich foundation ofnonconceptual forms of self-awareness. Attention ispaid in particular to the primitive forms ofnonconceptual self-consciou…Read more
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3Rational Decisions, Ken Binmore. Princeton University Press, 2009, x + 200 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 26 (1): 95-101. 2010.
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214Thinking Without WordsOxford University Press USA. 2003.Thinking without Words provides a challenging new theory of the nature of non-linguistic thought. Many scientific disciplines treat non-linguistic creatures as thinkers, explaining their behavior in terms of their thoughts about themselves and about the environment. But this theorizing has proceeded without any clear account of the types of thinking available to non-linguistic creatures. One consequence of this is that ascriptions of thoughts to non-linguistic creatures have frequently been held…Read more
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16Thought, Reference, and Experience: Themes From the Philosophy of Gareth Evans (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2005.Thought, Reference, and Experience is a collection of important new essays on topics at the intersection of philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and philosophical logic. The starting-point for the papers is the brilliant work of the British philosopher Gareth Evans before his untimely death in 1980 at the age of 34. Evans's work on reference and singular thought transformed the Fregean approach to the philosophy of thought and language, showing how seemingly technical issues in philosophi…Read more
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16Rational Decisions, Binmore Ken. Princeton University Press, 2009, x + 200 pages. (review)Economics and Philosophy 26 (1): 95-101. 2010.
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177Nonconceptual Self-Consciousness And Cognitive ScienceSynthese 129 (1): 129-149. 2001.This paper explores some of the areas where neuroscientific and philosophical issues intersect in the study of self-consciousness. Taking as point of departure a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) that appears to block philosophical elucidation of self-consciousness, the paper illustrates how the highly conceptual forms of self-consciousness emerge from a rich foundation of nonconceptual forms of self-awareness. Attention is paid in particular to the primitive forms of nonconceptual sel…Read more
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The domain of folk psychologyIn Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Minds and Persons, Cambridge University Press. 2001.
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38Review of Mary Margaret McCabe, mark Textor (eds.), Perspectives on Perception (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (4). 2008.
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120Peacocke's Argument Against the Autonomy of Nonconceptual Representational ContentMind and Language 9 (4): 402-418. 1994.
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8Do non-linguistic creatures possess second-order propositional attitudes? Reply to ShantonSWIF Philosophy of Mind Review 5 (3). 2006.
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Phenomenology of Bodily PerceptionAvant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 2 (T): 25-36. 2011.Since this is colloquium on phenomenological and experimental approaches tocognition I’d like to set up te problem I want to address in terms of two of the differentstrands that we find in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking about the phenomenology of thebody. One of these strands is profoundly insightful. The other one, however, seemsto me to be lacking in plausibility – or rather, to put it less confrontationally and morein keeping with the spirit of the colloquium, the second strand seems to stand in th…Read more
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60The Originality of Cartesian Skepticism: Did It Have Ancient or Mediaeval Antecedents?History of Philosophy Quarterly 17 (4). 2000.
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88Consciousness, higher-order thought, and stimulus reinforcementBehavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (2): 194-195. 2000.Rolls defends a higher-order thought theory of phenomenal consciousness, mapping the distinction between conscious and non-conscious states onto a distinction between two types of action and corresponding neural pathways. Only one type of action involves higher-order thought and consequently consciousness. This account of consciousness has implausible consequences for the nature of stimulus-reinforcement learning.
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Nonconceptual self-awareness and the paradox of self-consciousnessIn Albert Newen & Kai Vogeley (eds.), Selbst und Gehirn. Menschliches Selbstbewusstsein und seine Neurobiologischen Grundlagen, Mentis. 2000.
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186Bodily awareness and self-consciousnessIn Shaun Gallagher (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Self, Oxford University Press. 2011.This article argues that bodily awareness is a basic form of self-consciousness through which perceiving agents are directly conscious of the bodily self. It clarifies the nature of bodily awareness, categorises the different types of body-relative information, and rejects the claim that we can have a sense of ownership of our own bodies. It explores how bodily awareness functions as a form of self-consciousness and highlights the importance of certain forms of bodily awareness that share an imp…Read more
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243Normativity and rationality in delusional psychiatric disordersMind and Language 16 (5): 457-493. 2001.Psychiatric treatment and diagnosis rests upon a richer conception of normativity than, for example, cognitive neuropsychology. This paper explores the role that considerations of rationality can play in defining this richer conception of normativity. It distinguishes two types of rationality and considers how each type can break down in different ways in delusional psychiatric disorders
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474Self-deception, intentions and contradictory beliefsAnalysis 60 (4): 309-319. 2000.Philosophical accounts of self-deception can be divided into two broad groups – the intentionalist and the anti-intentionalist. On intentionalist models what happens in the central cases of self-deception is parallel to what happens when one person intentionally deceives another, except that deceiver and deceived are the same person. This paper offers a positive argument for intentionalism about self-deception and defends the view against standard objections.
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118The Unity of Apperception in the Critique of Pure ReasonEuropean Journal of Philosophy 2 (3): 213-240. 1994.
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132Knowledge, Naturalism, and Cognitive Ethology: Kornblith’s Knowledge and its Place in NaturePhilosophical Studies 127 (2): 299-316. 2006.This paper explores Kornblith's proposal in "Knowledge and its Place in Nature" that knowledge is a natural kind that can be elucidated and understood in scientific terms. Central to Kornblith's development of this proposal is the claim that there is a single category of unreflective knowledge that is studied by cognitive ethologists and is the proper province of epistemology. This claim is challenged on the grounds that even unreflective knowledge in language-using humans reflects forms of logi…Read more
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103Rational decisions , Ken Binmore. Princeton university press, 2009, X + 200 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 26 (1): 95-101. 2010.
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |