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236Immunity to error through misidentification and past-tense memory judgementsAnalysis 73 (2): 211-220. 2013.Autobiographical memories typically give rise either to memory reports (“I remember going swimming”) or to first person past-tense judgements (“I went swimming”). This article focuses on first person past-tense judgements that are (epistemically) based on autobiographical memories. Some of these judgements have the IEM property of being immune to error through misidentification. This article offers an account of when and why first person past-tense judgements have the IEM property
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100Thinking Without Words: An Overview for Animal EthicsThe Journal of Ethics 11 (3): 319-335. 2007.In Thinking without Words I develop a philosophical framework for treating some animals and human infants as genuine thinkers. This paper outlines the aspects of this account that are most relevant to those working in animal ethics. There is a range of different levels of cognitive sophistication in different animal species, in addition to limits to the types of thought available to non-linguistic creatures, and it may be important for animal ethicists to take this into account in exploring issu…Read more
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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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121The Opacity of Mind: An Integrative Theory of Self-Knowledge, by Peter CarruthersMind 122 (485): 263-266. 2013.
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92Consciousness, 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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16Nietzsche and the tradition (review)British Journal for the History of Philosophy 5 (2): 402-414. 1997.Nietzsche and Modern Times: A study of Bacon, Descartes and Nietzsche. Laurence Lampert. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Pp. xii + 475. £35.00 Nietzsche and Metaphysics. Peter Poellner. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp. xi + 320
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1211The Force-field Puzzle and Mindreading in Non-human PrimatesReview of Philosophy and Psychology 2 (3): 397-410. 2011.What is the relation between philosophical theorizing and experimental data? A modest set of naturalistic assumptions leads to what I term the force-field puzzle. The assumption that philosophy is continuous with natural science, as captured in Quine’s force-field metaphor, seems to push us simultaneously towards thinking that there have to be conceptual constraints upon how we interpret experimental data and towards thinking that there cannot be such conceptual constraints, because all theorizi…Read more
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191Bodily 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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171The cognitive neuroscience of primitive self-consciousnessPsycoloquy 11 (35). 2000.Myin, Erik (2000) Direct Self-Consciousness (2)Bermúdez, José Luis (2000) Concepts and the Priority Principle (10)Bermúdez, José Luis (2000) Circularity, "I"-Thoughts and the Linguistic Requirement for Concept Possession (11)Meeks, Roblin R. (2000) Withholding Immunity: Misidentification, Misrepresentation, and Autonomous Nonconceptual Proprioceptive First-Person Content (12)Newen, Albert (2001) Kinds of Self-Consciousness (13)Bermudez, Jose Luis (2000) Direct Self-Consciousness (4)Bermudez, Jos…Read more
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107Rationality, logic, and fast and frugal heuristicsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (5): 744-745. 2000.Gigerenzer and his co-workers make some bold and striking claims about the relation between the fast and frugal heuristics discussed in their book and the traditional norms of rationality provided by deductive logic and probability theory. We are told, for example, that fast and frugal heuristics such as “Take the Best” replace “the multiple coherence criteria stemming from the laws of logic and probability with multiple correspondence criteria relating to real-world decision performance.” This …Read more
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66Levels of scepticism in the first meditationBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 6 (2): 237-245. 1998.
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129'I'-thoughts and explanation: Reply to GarrettPhilosophical Quarterly 53 (212). 2003.Brian Garrett has criticized my diagnosis of the paradox of self-consciousness. In reply, I focus on the classification of 'I'-thoughts, and show how the notion of immunity to error through misidentification can be used to characterize 'I'-thoughts, even though an important class of 'I'-thoughts (those whose expression involves what Wittgenstein called the use of 'I' as object) are not themselves immune to error through misidentification. 'I'-thoughts which are susceptible to error through misid…Read more
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12Properties, first-order representationalism and reinforcement: Reply to CarruthersAnthropology and Philosophy 6 (1-2): 84-88. 2005.
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65The Self in Question: Memory, the Body, and Self-Consciousness, by Andy HamiltonMind 125 (499): 903-906. 2016.
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104Cartesian Skepticism: Arguments and AntecedentsIn John Greco (ed.), The Oxford handbook of skepticism, Oxford University Press. 2008.The most frequently discussed skeptical arguments in the history of philosophy are to be found in the tightly argued twelve paragraphs of Descartes’ Meditation One. There is considerable controversy about how to interpret the skeptical arguments that Descartes offers; the extent to which those arguments rest upon implicit epistemological and/or metaphysical presuppositions; their originality within the history of skepticism; and the role they play within Cartesian philosophy and natural science.…Read more
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Tiles, M. and Tiles, J.-An Introduction to Historical EpistemologyPhilosophical Books 37 124-124. 1996.
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The concept of decadenceIn José Luis Bermúdez & Sebastian Gardner (eds.), Art and Morality, Routledge. 2002.
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7Animal reasoning and proto-logicIn Susan Hurley & Matthew Nudds (eds.), Rational Animals?, Oxford University Press. pp. 127-137. 2006.
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58Memory judgments and immunity to error through misidentificationGrazer Philosophische Studien 84 (1): 123-142. 2012.First person judgments that are immune to error through misidentifi cation (IEM) are fundamental to self-conscious thought. The IEM status of many such judgments can be understood in terms of the possession conditions of the concepts they involve. However, this approach cannot be extended to first person judgments based on autobiographical memory. Th e paper develops an account of why such judgments have the IEM property and how thinkers are able to exploit this fact in inference.
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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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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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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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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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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |