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156Redefining Illusion and Hallucination in Light of New CasesPhilosophical Issues 26 (1): 263-296. 2016.In this paper, we present new cases of illusion and hallucination that have not heretofore been identified. We argue that such cases show that the traditional accounts of illusion and hallucination are incorrect because they do not identify all of the cases of non-veridical experience that they need to and they elide important differences between cases. In light of this, we present new and exhaustive definitions of illusion and hallucination. First, we explicate the traditional accounts of illu…Read more
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153The relationship between cognitive penetration and predictive codingConsciousness and Cognition 47 6-16. 2017.If beliefs and desires affect perception—at least in certain specified ways—then cognitive penetration occurs. Whether it occurs is a matter of controversy. Recently, some proponents of the predictive coding account of perception have claimed that the account entails that cognitive penetrations occurs. I argue that the relationship between the predictive coding account and cognitive penetration is dependent on both the specific form of the predictive coding account and the specific form of cogni…Read more
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143Symposium on Louise Richardson’s “Flavour, Taste and Smell”Mind and Language Symposia at the Brains Blog. 2013.
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140The power of natural selectionJournal of Consciousness Studies 9 (8): 30-35. 2002.Some naturalistic theories of consciousness give an essential role to teleology.1 This teleology is said to arise due to natural selection. Thus it is claimed that only certain states, namely, those that have been selected for by evolutionary pro- cesses because they contribute to (or once contributed to) an organism’s fitness, are conscious states. These theories look as if they are assigning a creative role to natural selection. If a state is conscious only if it has been selected for, then se…Read more
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135Review of The Problem of Perception By A.D. Smith (review)Philosophical Books 45 (3): 255-257. 2004.
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134Hallucination: Philosophy and Psychology (edited book)MIT Press. 2013.Scientific and philosophical perspectives on hallucination: essays that draw on empirical evidence from psychology, neuroscience, and cutting-edge philosophical theory.
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129The SensesOxford Bibliographies in Philosophy. 2018.Philosophers and scientists have studied sensory perception and, in particular, vision for many years. Increasingly, however, they have become interested in the nonvisual senses in greater detail and the problem of individuating the senses in a more general way. The Aristotelian view is that there are only five external senses—smell, taste, hearing, touch, and vision. This has, by many counts, been extended to include internal senses, such as balance, proprioception, and kinesthesis; pain; and p…Read more
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125The Structure of Experience, the Nature of the Visual, and Type 2 BlindsightConsciousness and Cognition 32. 2014.Unlike those with type 1 blindsight, people who have type 2 blindsight have some sort of consciousness of the stimuli in their blind field. What is the nature of that consciousness? Is it visual experience? I address these questions by considering whether we can establish the existence of any structural—necessary—features of visual experience. I argue that it is very difficult to establish the existence of any such features. In particular, I investigate whether it is possible to visually, or mor…Read more
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109Is the Sense‐Data Theory a Representationalist Theory?Ratio 27 (4): 369-392. 2014.Is the sense-data theory, otherwise known as indirect realism, a form of representationalism? This question has been underexplored in the extant literature, and to the extent that there is discussion, contemporary authors disagree. There are many different variants of representationalism, and differences between these variants that some people have taken to be inconsequential turn out to be key factors in whether the sense-data theory is a form of representationalism. Chief among these are wheth…Read more
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88Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour (edited book)Routledge. 2021.From David Hume's famous puzzle about 'the missing shade of blue' to current research into the science of colour, the topic of colour is an incredibly fertile region of study and debate, cutting across philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics and aesthetics as well as psychology. Debates about the nature of our experience of colour and the nature of colour itself are central to contemporary discussion and argument in philosophy of mind and psychology, and philosophy of perception. This outs…Read more
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71Introduction: The Admissible Contents of ExperienceIn Katherine Hawley & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), The Admissible Contents of Experience, Wiley. 2011.Forthcoming (2011) in K. Hawley and F. Macpherson (eds.) The Admissible Contents of Experience, Wiley‐Blackwell. The Admissible Contents of Experience Fiona Macpherson This essay provides an overview of the debate concerning the admissible contents of experience, together with an introduction to the papers in this volume. The debate is one that takes place among advocates of a certain way of thinking of perceptual experiences: that they are states that represent the world. For to say that…Read more
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66Cognitive Penetration and Nonconceptual ContentIn John Zeimbekis & Athanassios Raftopoulos (eds.), The Cognitive Penetrability of Perception: New Philosophical Perspectives, Oxford University Press. 2015.Abstract: This paper seeks to establish whether the cognitive penetration of experience is compatible with experience having nonconceptual content. Cognitive penetration occurs when one’s beliefs or desires affect one’s perceptual experience in a particular way. I examine two different models of cognitive penetration and four different accounts of the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content. I argue that one model of cognitive penetration—“classic” cognitive penetration—is compa…Read more
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59On Picturing a Candle: The Prehistory of Imagery ScienceFrontiers in Psychology 7. 2016.The past 25 years have seen a rapid growth of knowledge about brain mechanisms involved in visual mental imagery. These advances have largely been made independently of the long history of philosophical – and even psychological – reckoning with imagery and its parent concept ‘imagination’. We suggest that the view from these empirical findings can be widened by an appreciation of imagination’s intellectual history, and we seek to show how that history both created the conditions for – and presen…Read more
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48Novel Colour Experiences and Their ImplicationsIn Derek H. Brown & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour, Routledge. 2021.This chapter explores the evidence for the existence of such new colour experiences and what their philosophical ramifications would be. I first define the notion of ‘novel colours’ and discuss why I think that this is the best name for such colours, rather than the numerous other names that they have sometimes been given in the literature. I then introduce the evidence and arguments for thinking that experiences as of novel colours exist, along with objections that people have had to that evide…Read more
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48Phenomenal Presence (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2018.What kinds of features of the world figure consciously in our perceptual experience? Colours and shapes are uncontroversial; but what about volumes, natural kinds, reasons for belief, existences, relations? Eleven new essays investigate different kinds of phenomenal presence.
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48Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Memory (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2018.This volume presents ten new essays on the nature of perceptual imagination and perceptual memory. The central questions are: How do perceptual imagination and memory resemble and differ from each other and from other kinds of sensory experience? And what role does each play in perception and in the acquisition of knowledge?
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42Review of P. Jacob What Minds Can Do: Intentionality in a Non-Intentional World (review)Philosophical Books 40 (3): 184-185. 1999.
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41Review of M. Tye 'Consciousness, Color and Content' (review)Philosophical Quarterly 53 (213): 619-621. 2003.
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27Sensory Substitution and Augmentation (edited book)Proceedings of the British Academy, Oxford University Press. 2018.Sensory substitution and augmentation devices are used to replace or enhance one sense by using another. Fiona Macpherson brings together neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers to focus on the nature of the perceptual experiences, the sensory interactions, and the changes that occur in the mind and brain while using these technologies.
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16Is the Sense‐Data Theory a Representationalist Theory?In James Stazicker (ed.), The Structure of Perceptual Experience, Wiley. 2015.Is the sense‐data theory, otherwise known as indirect realism, a form of representationalism? This question has been under‐explored in the extant literature, and to the extent that there is discussion, contemporary authors disagree. There are many different variants of representationalism, and differences between these variants that some people have taken to be inconsequential turn out to be key factors in whether the sense‐data theory is a form of representationalism. Chief among these are whet…Read more
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Property dualism and the merits of solutions to the mind-body problemIn Josh Weisberg (ed.), Consciousness, Polity. 2014.
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