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204Nonconceptual content and the nature of perceptual experienceElectronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6. 1998.[1] Recent philosophy of mind and epistemology has seen an important and influential trend towards accounting for at least some features of experiences in content-involving terms. It is a contested point whether ascribing content to experiences can account for all the intrinsic properties of experiences, but on many theories of experiences there are close links between the ascription of content and the ways in which experiences are ascribed and typed. The issues here have both epistemological an…Read more
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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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237Perfect Pitch and the Content of ExperienceAnthropology and Philosophy 3 (2): 89-101. 1999.This paper examines the representationalist view of experiences in the light of the phenomena of perfect and relative pitch. Two main kinds of representationalism are identified - environment-based and cognitive role-based. It is argued that to explain the relationship between the two theories a distinction should be drawn between various types of implicit and explicit content. When investigated, this distinction sheds some light on the difference between the phenomenology of perfect and relativ…Read more
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397Introduction: Varieties of disjunctivismIn Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: perception, action, knowledge, Oxford University Press. 2008.Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?
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1015XV—Cross‐Modal ExperiencesProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 111 (3pt3): 429-468. 2011.This paper provides a categorization of cross-modal experiences. There are myriad forms. Doing so allows us to think clearly about the nature of different cross-modal experiences and allows us to clearly formulate competing hypotheses about the kind of experiences involved in different cross-modal phenomena
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211The Philosophy and Psychology of Hallucination: An IntroductionIn Fiona Macpherson & Dimitris Platchias (eds.), Hallucination: Philosophy and Psychology, Mit Press. pp. 1-38. 2013.An overview of the philosophy and psychology of hallucination and its relevance to the philosophy of perception.
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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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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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135Review of The Problem of Perception By A.D. Smith (review)Philosophical Books 45 (3): 255-257. 2004.
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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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287Disjunctivism: perception, action, knowledge (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2008.This volume will be an essential resource for anyone working in the central areas of philosophy, and the starting point for future research in this fascinating ...
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667Cognitive Penetration and Predictive Coding: A Commentary on LupyanReview of Philosophy and Psychology 6 (4): 571-584. 2015.The main aim of Lupyan’s paper is to claim that perception is cognitively penetrated and that this is consistent with the idea of perception as predictive coding. In these remarks I will focus on what Lupyan says about whether perception is cognitively penetrated, and set aside his remarks about epistemology. I have argued (2012) that perception can be cognitively penetrated and so I am sympathetic to Lupyan’s overall aim of showing that perception is cognitively penetrable. However, I will be …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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702Perception, Philosophical PerspectivesIn Tim Bayne, Axel Cleeremans & P. Wilken (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Consciousness, Oxford University Press. 2009.This paper provides an introduction to, and overview of, the Philosophy of Perception.
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280Novel colours and the content of experiencePacific Philosophical Quarterly 84 (1): 43-66. 2003.I propose a counterexample to naturalistic representational theories of phenomenal character. The counterexample is generated by experiences of novel colours reported by Crane and Piantanida. I consider various replies that a representationalist might make, including whether novel colours could be possible colours of objects and whether one can account for novel colours as one would account for binary colours or colour mixtures. I argue that none of these strategies is successful and therefore t…Read more
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227Colour inversion problems for representationalismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (1): 127-152. 2005.In this paper I examine whether representationalism can account for various thought experiments about colour inversions. Representationalism is, at minimum, the view that, necessarily, if two experiences have the same representational content then they have the same phenomenal character. I argue that representationalism ought to be rejected if one holds externalist views about experiential content and one holds traditional exter- nalist views about the nature of the content of propositional atti…Read more
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186The Space of Sensory ModalitiesIn Dustin Stokes, Mohan Matthen & Stephen Biggs (eds.), Perception and Its Modalities, Oxford University Press. 2014.Is there a space of the sensory modalities? Such a space would be one in which we can represent all the actual, and at least some of the possible, sensory modalities. The relative position of the senses in this space would indicate how similar and how different the senses were from each other. The construction of such a space might reveal unconsidered features of the actual and possible senses, help us to define what a sense is, and provide grounds that we might use to decide what is one token s…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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432SynaesthesiaIn Mario de Caro, Francesco Ferretti & Massimo Marraffa (eds.), Cartography of the Mind: Philosophy and Psychology in Intersection, 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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378Individuating the SensesIn The Senses: Classic and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives, Oxford University Press. 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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333The 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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