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37Foundations of UnderstandingJohn Benjamins. 1996.How can symbols have meaning for a subject? Foundations of Understanding argues that this is the key question to ask about intentionality, or meaningful thought. It thus offers an alternative to currently popular linguistic models of intentionality, whose inadequacies are examined: the goal should be to explain, not how symbols, mental or otherwise, can refer to or mean states of affairs in the external world, but how they can mean something to us, the users. The essence of intentionality is sho…Read more
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23Acting and perceiving in body and mindPhilosophy Research Archives 11 407-429. 1985.In this paper I sketch an account of (a) the origin of the terms and concepts of folk psychology, and (b) the true nature of mental states. I argue that folk psychology is built on metaphors for the functioning physical body, and that mental states are neurological traces which serve as schematic ‘mental images’ of those same functions. Special attention is paid to the folk psychology of self-consciousness. In particular, I argue that the notion of introspection is mistaken, and I criticize rece…Read more
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27Review of The Bodily Nature of Consciousness by Kathleen V. Wider, Cornell University Press, 1997, 207 pp (review)Behavior and Philosophy 25 (2). 1997.
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33The sensorimotor theory of cognitionPragmatics and Cognition 1 (2): 267-305. 1993.The sensorimotor theory of cognition holds that human cognition, along with that of other animals, is determined by sensorimotor structures rather than by uniquely human linguistic structures. The theory has been offered to explain the use of bodily terminology in nonphysical contexts, and to recognize the role of experienced embodiment in cognition. This paper defends a version of the theory which specifies that reasoning makes use of mental models constructed by means of action-planning mechan…Read more
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11Privileged Access and Merleau-PontyIn Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), The visible and the invisible in the interplay between philosophy, literature, and reality, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 71--78. 2002.
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33Humphreys solutionJournal of Consciousness Studies 7 (4): 62-66. 2000.[opening paragraph]: It is easy to conceptualize a problem in a way that prevents a solution. If the conceptualization is entrenched in one's culture or profession, it may appear unalterable. But there is so much precedent for the discovery of fruitful reconceptualizations that in the case of most philosophical and scientific puzzles it is probably irrational ever to give up trying. The notion of qualia, understood as phenomenal properties of sensations that can exist as objects of experience fo…Read more
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30Consciousness, qualia, and re-entrant signalingBehavior and Philosophy 19 (1): 21-41. 1991.There is a distinction between phenomenal properties and the "phenomenality" of those properties: e.g. between what red is like and what it is like to experience red. To date, reductive accounts explain the former, but not the latter: Nagel is right that they leave something out. This paper attempts a reductive account of what it is like to have a perceptual experience. Four features of such experience are distinguished: the externality, unity, and self-awareness belonging to the content of cons…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |