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The concept of decadenceIn José Luis Bermúdez & Sebastian Gardner (eds.), Art and Morality, Routledge. 2002.
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58Transcendental arguments and psychology:The example of O'Shaughnessy on intentional actionMetaphilosophy 26 (4): 379-401. 1995.
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23Is the Postmodern World a Nietzschean World?International Studies in Philosophy 27 (2): 1-14. 1995.
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153Self-consciousnessIn Max Velmans & Susan Schneider (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Wiley-blackwell. 2007.Self‐consciousness is a topic located at the intersection of a range of different philosophical concerns. One set of concerns is metaphysical. Another is epistemological. When discussing the phenomenon of consciousness in general, philosophers generally think it possible to give an account of consciousness that is independent of how one understands the objects, properties, and events of which one is conscious. Self‐consciousness is important because of the role it plays in the cognitive economy.…Read more
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112Vagueness, Phenomenal Concepts and Mind-Brain IdentityAnalysis 64 (2). 2004.In Thinking about Consciousness David Papineau develops a position that combines the following four theses: A) Phenomenal properties exist. B) Any phenomenal property is identical to some material property. C) Phenomenal concepts refer to material properties that are identical to phenomenal properties. D) Phenomenal concepts are vague. The overall position is intended to do justice to materialism (in virtue of (B) and (C)), while at the same time accommodating the concerns both of those impresse…Read more
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34Ecological perception and the notion of a non-conceptual point of viewIn José Luis Bermúdez, Anthony Marcel & Naomi Eilan (eds.), The Body and the Self, Mit Press. 1995.
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106Rationality and psychological explanation without languageIn José Luis Bermúdez & Alan Millar (eds.), Reason and Nature: Essays in the Theory of Rationality, Clarendon Press. 2002.
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110The object properties model of object perception: Between the binding model and the theoretical modelJournal of Consciousness Studies 14 (9-10): 43-65. 2007.This article proposes an object properties approach to object perception. By thinking about objects as clusters of co-instantiated features that possess certain canonical higher-order object properties we can steer a middle way between two extreme views that are dominant in different areas of empirical research into object perception and the development of the object concept. Object perception should be understood in terms of perceptual sensitivity to those object properties, where that perceptu…Read more
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111Cognitive impenetrability, phenomenology, and nonconceptual contentBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (3): 367-368. 1999.This commentary discusses Pylyshyn's model of perceptual processing in the light of the philosophical distinction between the conceptual and the nonconceptual content of perception. Pylyshyn's processing distinction maps onto an important distinction in the phenomenology of visual perception.
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79Psychologism and psychologyInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 42 (3-4). 1999.This critical notice explores the distinction central to analytic philosophy between the logical study of the normative principles governing rational thought and the psychological study of the processes of thinking. Thomas Nagel maintains (1) that the fundamental principles of reasoning have normative force and make claims to universal validity; (2) that the fundamental principles of reasoning cannot be construed as the expression of contingent forms of life; and (3) that the identification of f…Read more
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55Believing Against the Evidence, by Miriam Schleifer McCormick (review)Mind 125 (499): 942-945. 2016.
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205Nonconceptual content and the nature of perceptual experienceElectronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6. 1998.[1] Recent philosophy of mind and epistemology has seen an important and influential trend towards accounting for at least some features of experiences in content-involving terms. It is a contested point whether ascribing content to experiences can account for all the intrinsic properties of experiences, but on many theories of experiences there are close links between the ascription of content and the ways in which experiences are ascribed and typed. The issues here have both epistemological an…Read more
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37Truth, indefinite extensibility, and fitch's paradoxIn Joe Salerno (ed.), New Essays on the Knowability Paradox, Oxford University Press. 2008.A number of authors have noted that the key steps in Fitch’s argument are not intuitionistically valid, and some have proposed this as a reason for an anti-realist to accept intuitionistic logic (e.g. Williamson 1982, 1988). This line of reasoning rests upon two assumptions. The first is that the premises of Fitch’s argument make sense from an anti-realist point of view – and in particular, that an anti-realist can and should maintain the principle that all truths are knowable. The second is tha…Read more
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51Action and awareness of agencyPragmatics and Cognition 18 (3): 576-588. 2010.Chris Frith’s target chapters contain a wealth of interesting experiments and striking theoretical claims. In these comments I begin by drawing out some of the key themes in his discussion of action and the sense of agency. Frith’s central claim about conscious action is that what we are primarily conscious of in acting is our own agency. I will review some of the experimental evidence that he interprets in support of this claim and then explore the following three questions about the awareness …Read more
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13The Philosophy of Psychology: Towards a Fifth Picture?SWIF Philosophy of Mind Review 5 (3). 2006.
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202Language and thinking about thoughtsIn Jose Luis Bermudez (ed.), Thinking Without Words, Oxford University Press Usa. 2003.
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63Two arguments for the language-dependence of thoughtGrazer Philosophische Studien 81 (1): 37-54. 2010.
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175Nonconceptual Content: From Perceptual Experience to Subpersonal Computational StatesMind and Language 10 (4): 333-369. 1995.Philosophers have often argued that ascriptions of content are appropriate only to the personal level states of folk psychology. Against this, this paper defends the view that the familiar propositional attitudes and states defined over them are part of a larger set of cognitive proceses that do not make constitutive reference to concept possession. It does this by showing that states with nonconceptual content exist both in perceptual experience and in subpersonal information-processing systems…Read more
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40Indistinguishable elements and mathematical structuralismAnalysis 67 (2): 112-116. 2007.The existence of structures with non-trivial authomorphisms (such as the automorphism of the field of complex numbers onto itself that swaps the two roots of – 1) has been held by Burgess and others to pose a serious difficulty for mathematical structuralism. This paper proposes a model-theoretic solution to the problem. It suggests that mathematical structuralists identify the “position” of an n-tuple in a mathematical structure with the type of that n-tuple in the expansion of the structure th…Read more
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28Review of Dominic Murphy, Michael Bishop (eds.), Stich and His Critics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (9). 2009.
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282The sources of self-consciousnessProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102 (1): 87-107. 2002.This paper explores the relation between two ways of thinking about the sources of self-consciousness. We can think about the sources of self-consciousness either in genetic terms (as the origins or precursors of self-conscious thoughts) or in epistemic terms (as the grounds of self-conscious judgements). Using Christopher Peacocke's account of self-conscious judgements in Being Known as a foil, this paper brings out some important ways in which we need to draw upon the sources of self-conscious…Read more
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74Cognitive Science : An Introduction to the Science of the MindCambridge University Press. 2010.Cognitive Science combines the interdisciplinary streams of cognitive science into a unified narrative in an all-encompassing introduction to the field. This text presents cognitive science as a discipline in its own right, and teaches students to apply the techniques and theories of the cognitive scientist's 'toolkit' - the vast range of methods and tools that cognitive scientists use to study the mind. Thematically organized, rather than by separate disciplines, Cognitive Science underscores t…Read more
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35Pitfalls for realistic decision theory: an illustration from sequential choiceSynthese 176 (1): 23-40. 2010.Decision theory is a theory of rationality, but the concept of rationality has several different dimensions. Making decision theory more realistic with respect to one dimension may well have the result of making it less realistic in another dimension. This paper illustrates this tension in the context of sequential choice. Trying to make decision theory more realistic by accommodating resoluteness and commitment brings the normative assessment dimension of rationality into conflict with the acti…Read more
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80The Mirror of the World: Subjects, Consciousness, and Self-ConsciousnessPhilosophical Quarterly 66 (264): 631-634. 2016.
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45The Domain of Folk PsychologyRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 53 25-48. 2003.My topic in this paper is social understanding. By this I mean the cognitive skills underlying social behaviour and social coordination. Normal, encultured, non-autistic and non-brain-damaged human beings are capable of an impressive degree of social coordination. We navigate the social world with a level of skill and dexterity fully comparable to that which we manifest in navigating the physical world. In neither sphere, one might think, would it be a trivial matter to identify the various comp…Read more
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115The Moral Significance of BirthEthics 106 (2). 1996.The author challenges the view that birth cannot be a morally relevant fact in the process of development from zygote to child. He reviews specific arguments against giving any moral significance to the fact of birth. Drawing on recent work in developmental psychology, he contends that the lives of neonates can have a level of self-consciousness that confers moral significance but can only be possessed after birth. He shows that the position he has argued for provides a framework within which th…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |