-
Campos, JJ, 152 Carpendale, JLM, 132nl7 Carpenter, M., 51, 52, 138 Carruthers, P., 19n4, 25, 128, 131nl5, 132n21, 133n23, 241n2 (review)In Daniel D. Hutto & Matthew Ratcliffe (eds.), Folk Psychology Re-Assessed, Kluwer/springer Press. pp. 245. 2007.
-
5The bodily self: selected essays on self-consciousnessMIT Press. 2018.Essays on the role of the body in self-consciousness, showing that full-fledged, linguistic self-consciousness is built on a rich foundation of primitive, nonconceptual self-consciousness. These essays explore how the rich and sophisticated forms of self-consciousness with which we are most familiar—as philosophers, psychologists, and as ordinary, reflective individuals—depend on a complex underpinning that has been largely invisible to students of the self and self-consciousness. José Luis Berm…Read more
-
468The Distinction between Conceptual and Nonconceptual ContentIn Brian P. McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind, Oxford University Press. 2007.1 Domains of application 2 Formulating the conceptual/nonconceptual distinction 3 Is there such a thing as nonconceptual content? 4 Developing the account of nonconceptual content
-
65Reason and nature: essays in the theory of rationality (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2002.The essays in this volume investigate the norms of reason--the standards which contribute to determining whether beliefs, inferences, and actions are rational. Nine philosophers and two psychologists discuss what kinds of things these norms are, how they can be situated within the natural world, and what role they play in the psychological explanation of belief and action. Current work in the theory of rationality is subject to very diverse influences ranging from experimental and theoretical ps…Read more
-
82Self-deception and Selectivity: Reply to JurjakoCroatian Journal of Philosophy 17 (1): 91-95. 2017.Marko Jurjako’s article “Self-deception and the selectivity problem” (Jurjako 2013) offers a very interesting discussion of intentionalist approaches to self-deception and in particular the selectivity objection to anti-intentionalism raised in Bermúdez 1997 and 2000. This note responds to Jurjako’s claim that intentionalist models of self-deception face their own version of the selectivity problem, offering an account of how intentions are formed that can explain the selectivity of self-decepti…Read more
-
29Practical Understanding vs Reflective UnderstandingPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (3): 635-641. 1997.
-
17Scepticism and Science in DescartesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (4): 743-772. 1997.Recent Descartes scholarship has revised the traditional view of the Cartesian project as one of strictly deductive rationalism. This revision has particularly stressed the role of science in Descartes’ thought. The revisionist conception of Descartes also downplays the significance of the sceptical arguments offered in the First Meditation, seeing them as tools for ‘turning the mind away from the senses’ in the interest of Cartesian science, rather than as reflecting genuinely epistemological c…Read more
-
232The domain of folk psychologyIn Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, Cambridge University Press. 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
-
111Scepticism and science in DescartesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (4): 743-772. 1997.Recent work on Descartes has drastically revised the traditional conception of Descartes as a paradigmatic rationalist and foundationalist. The traditional picture, familar from histories of philosophy and introductory lectures, is of a solitary meditator dedicated to the pursuit of certainty in a unified science via a rigourous process of logical deduction from indubitable first principles. But the Descartes that has emerged from recent studies strikes a more subtle balance between metaphysics,…Read more
-
16John Campbell's "Past, Space and Self"Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 38 (n/a): 489. 1995.
-
20Frames and rationality: Response to commentatorsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 45. 2022.The thoughtful and rewarding peer commentaries on my target article come from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives. I engage with the commentaries in three groups. First, I discuss the commentaries that apply my basic approach to new cases not considered in the target article. Second, I explore those that helpfully extend and refine my arguments. Finally, I offer replies to those that object either to the overall framework or to specific arguments.
-
68Rational framing effects: A multidisciplinary caseBehavioral and Brain Sciences 45. 2022.Frames and framing make one dimension of a decision problem particularly salient. In the simplest case, framesprimeresponses (as in, e.g., the Asian disease paradigm, where the gain frame primes risk-aversion and the loss frame primes risk-seeking). But in more complicated situations frames can function reflectively, by making salient particular reason-giving aspects of a thing, outcome, or action. For Shakespeare's Macbeth, for example, his feudal commitments are salient in one frame, while dow…Read more
-
79Decision Theory and RationalityOxford University Press. 2009.Decision Theory and Rationality offers a challenging new interpretation of a key theoretical tool in the human and social sciences. This accessible book argues, contrary to orthodoxy in politics, economics, and management science, that decision theory cannot provide a theory of rationality
-
15The number sense does not represent numbers, but cardinality comparisonsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 44. 2021.Against Clarke and Beck's proposal that the approximate number system represents natural and rational numbers, I suggest that the experimental evidence is better accommodated by the thesis that the ANS represents cardinality comparisons. Cardinality comparisons do not stand in arithmetical relations and being able to apply them does not involve basic arithmetical concepts and operations.
-
53Fodor on multiple realizability and nonreductive physicalism: Why the argument does not workTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 35 (1): 59-74. 2020.This paper assesses Fodor’s well-known argument from multiple realizability to nonreductive physicalism. Recent work has brought out that the empirical case for cross-species multiple realizability is weak at best and so we consider whether the argument can be rebooted using a “thin” notion of intraspecies multiple realizability, taking individual neural firing patterns to be the realizers of mental events. We agree that there are no prospects for reducing mental events to individual neural firi…Read more
-
17Frege on Thoughts and Their StructureHistory of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 4 (1): 87-105. 2001.
-
89Bodily Ownership, Psychological Ownership, and PsychopathologyReview of Philosophy and Psychology 10 (2): 263-280. 2019.Debates about bodily ownership and psychological ownership have typically proceeded independently of each other. This paper explores the relation between them, with particular reference to how each is illuminated by psychopathology. I propose a general framework for studying ownership that is applicable both to bodily ownership and psychological ownership. The framework proposes studying ownership by starting with explicit judgments of ownership and then exploring the bases for those judgments. …Read more
-
62Strategic vs. Parametric choice in Newcomb’s Problem and the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Reply to WalkerPhilosophia 43 (3): 787-794. 2015.In Bermúdez 2013 I argued against David Lewis’s well-known and widely accepted claim that Newcomb’s problem and the prisoner’s dilemma are really notational variants of a single problem. Mark Walker’s paper in this journal takes issue with my argument. In this note I show how Walker’s criticisms are misplaced. The problems with Walker’s argument point to more general and independently interesting conclusions about, first, the relation between deliberation and decision and, second, the difference…Read more
-
55Four Theses about Self-Consciousness and Bodily Experience: Descartes, Kant, Locke, and Merleau-PontyJournal of the American Philosophical Association 6 (1): 96-116. 2020.This article evaluates the following four theses about bodily experience and self-consciousness: Descartes's thesis ; Kant's thesis ; Locke's thesis ; and Merleau-Ponty's thesis. I argue that they are all true.
-
25First Person Thoughts: Shareability and SymmetryGrazer Philosophische Studien 96 (4): 629-638. 2019.Victor Verdejo’s paper ‘On Having the Same First Person Thoughts’ introduces an interesting and fruitful framework for applying the type-token distinction to first person thoughts. He draws a three-way distinction between types, instantiable types, and instantiated types, and uses that distinction to open up a conceptual space for the possibility of shareable first person thoughts. This note distinguishes two types of interpersonal shareability and argues that Verdejo’s suggestions about instant…Read more
-
104Defending intentionalist accounts of self-deceptionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (1): 107-108. 1997.This commentary defends intentionalist accounts of self-deception against Mele by arguing that: (1) viewing self-deception on the model of other-deception is not as paradoxical as Mele makes out; (2) the paradoxes are not entailed by the view that self-deception is intentional; and (3) there are two problems for Mele's theory that only an intentionalist theory can solve.
-
1Self-control, decision theory and rationality (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2018.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
-
44Selves, Bodies, and Self-Reference: Reflections on Jonathan Lowe's Non-Cartesian DualismJournal of Consciousness Studies 22 (11-12): 20-42. 2015.This paper critically evaluates Jonathan Lowe's arguments for his non-Cartesian substance dualism. Sections 1 and 2 set out the principal claims of NCSD. The unity argument proposed in Lowe is discussed in Section 3. Throughout his career Lowe offered spirited attacks on reductionism about the self. Section 4 evaluates the anti-reductionist argument that Lowe offers in Subjects of Experience, an argument based on the individuation of mental events. Lowe offers an inventive proposal that the sema…Read more
-
254Naturalized Sense DataPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2): 353-374. 2000.This paper examines and defends the view that the immediate objects of visual perception, or what are often called sense data, are parts of the facing surfaces of physical objects-the naturalized sense data (NSD) theory. Occasionally defended in the literature on the philosophy of perception, most famously by G. E. Moore (1918-1919), it has not proved popular and indeed was abandoned by Moore himself. The contemporary situation in the philosophy of perception seems ripe for a revaluation of the …Read more
-
37The Subject of Experience by Galen Strawson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, 336pp. ISBN: 9780198777885 Hbk. £35.00 (review)European Journal of Philosophy 27 (1): 275-278. 2019.
College Station, Texas, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |