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6A disjunctive theory of introspectionIn Bence Nanay (ed.), Perceiving the world, Oxford University Press. 2010.Reflection on skeptical scenarios in the philosophy of perception, made vivid in the arguments from illusion and hallucination, have led to the formulation of theories of the metaphysical and epistemological nature of perceptual experience. In recent times, the locus of the debate concerning the nature of perceptual experience has been the dispute between disjunctivists and common-kind theorists. Disjunctivists have held that there are substantial dissimilarities (either metaphysical or epistemo…Read more
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Property dualism and the merits of solutions to the mind-body problemIn Josh Weisberg (ed.), Consciousness (Key Concepts in Philosophy), Polity. 2014.Strawson (2006) claims that he is a physicalist and panpsychist. These two views are not obvious bedfellows, indeed, as typically conceived, they are incompatible. Strawson avoids holding a contradictory position only by holding a non-standard view of physicalism. I first contrast Strawson’s usage of ‘physicalism’ with the mainstream use. I then explain why I think that Strawson’s position is not a physicalist position, but ratherr, one of property dualism and substance monism. In doing this, I…Read more
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Impossible figuresIn E. B. Goldstein (ed.), Encyclopedia of Perception. 2010.No abstract available.
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8Synaesthesia, Functionalism and PhenomenologyIn Mario de Caro, Francesco Ferretti & Massimo Marraffa (eds.), Cartographies of the Mind: Philosophy and Psychology in Intersection , Series: Studies in Brain and Mind, Vol. 4, Kleuwer. 2007.“Synaesthesia” is most often characterised as a union or mixing of the senses.i Richard Cytowic describes it thus: “It denotes the rare capacity to hear colours, taste shapes or experience other equally startling sensory blendings whose quality seems difficult for most of us to imagine” ([1995] 1997, 7). One famous example is of a man who “tasted shapes”. When he experienced flavours he also experienced shapes rubbing against his face or hands.ii Such popular characterisations are rough and read…Read more
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23Is the Sense‐Data Theory a Representationalist Theory?In James Stazicker (ed.), The Structure of Perceptual Experience, Wiley-blackwell. 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 (Key Concepts in Philosophy), Polity. 2014.
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736Recently, the term ‘aphantasia’ has become current in scientific and public discourse to denote the absence of mental imagery. However, new terms for aphantasia or its subgroups have recently been proposed, e.g. ‘dysikonesia’ or ‘anauralia’, which complicates the literature, research communication and understanding for the general public. Before further terms emerge, we advocate the consistent use of the term ‘aphantasia’ as it can be used flexibly and precisely, and is already widely known in t…Read more
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241Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Memory: An OverviewIn Fiona Macpherson & Fabian Dorsch (eds.), Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Memory, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-5. 2018.This volume presents ten new essays on the nature of perceptual imagination and perceptual memory, framed by an introductory overview of these topics. 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? These are the two central questions that the contributors seek to address.
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338What Is It Like to Have Visual Imagery?In Susan Aldworth & Matthew MacKisack (eds.), Extreme Imagination: Inside the Eye's Mind. pp. 21-29. 2018.How does visual imagination differ from visual perceptual experience? And how should we describe experiences of visual imagery? Moreover how can people who have visual imagery convey what it is like to have it to those who have never had it – congenital aphantisics? This paper addresses these questions using examples of illusions and other perceptual phenomena to hone in on the answers.
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472Sensing Art and Artifacts: Explorations in Sensory MuseologyThe Senses and Society, 13 (3): 317-334. 2018.This article proposes a sensory studies methodology for the interpretation of museum objects. The proposed method unfolds in two phases: virtual encounter via an on-line catalog and actual exposure in the context of a handling workshop. In addition to exploring the écart between image and object, the “Sensing Art and Artifacts” exercise articulates a framework for arriving at a multisensory, cross-cultural, interactive understanding of aesthetic value. The case studies presented here involve fou…Read more
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483Sensory Substitution and Augmentation: An IntroductionIn Sensory Substitution and Augmentation, Proceedings of the British Academy, Oxford University Press. 2018.It is hoped that modern sensory substitution and augmentation devices will be able to replace or expand our senses. But to what extent has this been achieved to date? To what extent are the experiences created by sensory substitution devices like the sensory experiences that we are trying to replace? To what extent can we augment people’s senses providing them with new information and new experiences? The first aim of this introduction is to delve deeply into this question to discover the useful…Read more
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89Routledge 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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50Novel 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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441Introduction to the Philosophy of ColourIn Derek H. Brown & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour, Routledge. 2021.This essay is an introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour. Why has the examination of many different aspects of colour been a prominent feature in philosophy, to such an extent that the topic is worthy of a handbook? Here are two related answers. First, colours are exceedingly familiar, seemingly simple features that become enigmatic under scrutiny, and they are difficult to capture in any familiar-sounding, unsophisticated theory. Second, through colour one can confront va…Read more
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50Perceptual 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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278Is perception cognitively penetrable? A philosophically satisfying and empirically testable reframingProceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society 1 91-2. 2013.The question of whether perception can be penetrated by cognition is in the limelight again. The reason this question keeps coming up is that there is so much at stake: Is it possible to have theory-neutral observation? Is it possible to study perception without recourse to expectations, context, and beliefs? What are the boundaries between perception, memory, and inference (and do they even exist)? Are findings from neuroscience that paint a picture of perception as an inherently bidirectional …Read more
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132The 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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312The neural correlates of visual imagery: a co-ordinate-based meta-analysisCortex 105 (August 2018): 4-25. 2018.Visual imagery is a form of sensory imagination, involving subjective experiences typically described as similar to perception, but which occur in the absence of corresponding external stimuli. We used the Activation Likelihood Estimation algorithm (ALE) to identify regions consistently activated by visual imagery across 40 neuroimaging studies, the first such meta-analysis. We also employed a recently developed multi-modal parcellation of the human brain to attribute stereotactic co-ordinates t…Read more
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90Ambiguous Figures and the Content of ExperienceNoûs 40 (1): 82-117. 2006.Representationalism is the position that the phenomenal character of an experience is either identical with, or supervenes on, the content of that experience. Many representationalists hold that the relevant content of experience is nonconceptual. I propose a counterexample to this form of representationalism that arises from the phenomenon of Gestalt switching, which occurs when viewing ambiguous figures. First, I argue that one does not need to appeal to the conceptual content of experience or…Read more
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383Individuating the SensesIn The Senses: Classic and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives, Oxford University Press Usa. 2011.The senses, or sensory modalities, constitute the different ways we have of perceiving the world, such as seeing, hearing , touching, tasting, and smelling. But what makes the senses different? How many senses are there? How many could there be? Wha t interaction takes place between the senses? This introduction is a guide to thinking about these questions.
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253The Admissible Contents of Experience (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2011.Which objects and properties are represented in perceptual experience, and how are we able to determine this? The papers in this collection address these questions together with other fundamental questions about the nature of perceptual content. The book draws together papers by leading international philosophers of mind, including Alex Byrne (MIT), Alva Noë (University of California, Berkeley), Tim Bayne (St Catherine’s College, Oxford), Michael Tye (University of Texas, Austin), Richard …Read more
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109The Senses: Classic and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 2011.The senses, or sensory modalities, constitute the different ways we have of perceiving the world, such as seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. But how many senses are there? How many could there be? What makes the senses different? What interaction takes place between the senses? This book is a guide to thinking about these questions. Together with an extensive introduction to the topic, the book contains the key classic papers on this subject together with nine newly commissioned es…Read more
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67Cognitive 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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162Redefining 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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61On 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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967Impossible FiguresIn E. B. Goldstein (ed.), SAGE Encyclopedia of Perception, Sage Publications. 2010.Provides an overview and examples of what impossible figures are, and explains their interest to many different disciplines including philosophy, psychology, art and mathematics.
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133The 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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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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50Phenomenal 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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110Is 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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