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50Knowing right and wrong: Is morality a natural phenomenon?Boston Review. 2007.An introduction to meta-ethics for non-philosophers
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52Our reply is in four parts. The first part addresses objections to our claim that there might be "unknowable" color facts. The second part discusses the use we make of opponent process theory. The third part examines the question of whether colors are causes. The fourth part takes up some issues concerning the content of visual experience. Our target article had three aims: (a) to explain clearly the structure of the debate about color realism; (b) to introduce an interdisciplinary audience to t…Read more
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448IntrospectionPhilosophical Topics 33 (1): 79-104. 2005.I know various contingent truths about my environment by perception. For example, by looking, I know that there is a computer before me; by hearing, I know that someone is talking in the corridor; by tasting, I know that the coffee has no sugar. I know these things because I have some built-in mechanisms specialized for detecting the state of my environment. One of these mechanisms, for instance, is presently transducing electromagnetic radiation (in a narrow band of wavelengths) coming from the…Read more
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275What phenomenal consciousness is likeIn Rocco J. Gennaro (ed.), Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness: An Anthology, John Benjamins. 2004.The terminology surrounding the dispute between higher-order and first-order theories of consciousness is piled so high that it sometimes obscures the view. When the debris is cleared away, there is a real prospect
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168Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings (edited book)MIT Press. 2009.Classic texts that define the disjunctivist theory of perception.
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144Although the proper formulation and assessment of Ludwig Wittgenstein's argument (or arguments) against the possibility of a private language continues to be disputed, the issue has lost none of its urgency. At stake is a broadly Cartesian conception of experiences that is found today in much philosophy of mind.
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1The Emergent MindDissertation, Princeton University. 1993.Emergentists such as Samuel Alexander and C. Lloyd Morgan held that the mental is causally efficacious, supervenes on the physical, but does so mysteriously. We must accept the emergent mind, in Alexander's phrase, with "natural piety". Emergentism emerged late last century and all but disappeared in the twentieth. This dissertation attempts to revive the position. ;To explain psycho-physical supervenience is to provide a proof of the mental facts from the physical facts, such that mental vocabu…Read more
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121Subjectivity is no barrierBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (6): 949-950. 1999.Palmer's subjectivity barrier seems to be erected on a popular but highly suspect conception of visual experience, and his color room argument is invalid
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704McDowell and Wright on Anti-Scepticism etc.In Dylan Dodd & Elia Zardini (eds.), Scepticism and Perceptual Justification, Oxford University Press. 2014.On the assumption that we may learn from our elders and betters, this paper approaches some fundamental questions in perceptual epistemology through a dispute between McDowell and Wright about external world scepticism.
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199Inverted qualiaStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2004.Qualia inversion thought experiments are ubiquitous in contemporary philosophy of mind. The most popular kind is one or another variant of Locke's hypothetical case of
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193Hill on mindPhilosophical Studies 173 831-39. 2016.Hill's views on visual experience are critically examined
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24Review: Semantic Values? (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (1). 2002.Lance and Hawthorne have served up a large, rich and argument-stuffed book that has much to teach us about central issues in the philosophy of language, as well as sports trivia. I shall concentrate, not surprisingly, on points I either disagreed with or found unclear; there are many acute observations, particularly in the second half of the book, that fall into neither of these categories.
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353Either / orIn Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge, Oxford University Press. pp. 57-94. 2008.This essay surveys the varieties of disjunctivism about perceptual experience. Disjunctivism comes in two main flavours, metaphysical and epistemological.
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742Qualia ain't in the headNoûs 40 (2): 241-255. 2006.Qualia internalism is the thesis that qualia are intrinsic to their subjects: the experiences of intrinsic duplicates have the same qualia. Content externalism is the thesis that mental representation is an extrinsic matter, partly depending on what happens outside the head. 1 Intentionalism comes in strong and weak forms. In its weakest formulation, it is the thesis that representationally identical experiences of subjects have the same qualia. 2
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103The primary issues concern whether objects have colours, and what sorts of properties the colours are. Some philosophers hold that nothing is coloured, others that colour are powers to affect perceivers, and others that colours are physical properties.
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346Perception and evidencePhilosophical Studies 170 101-113. 2014.Critical discussion of Susanna Schellenberg's account of hallucination and perceptual evidence.
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135Semantic values? (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (1): 201-7. 2002.Lance and Hawthorne have served up a large, rich and argument-stuffed book that has much to teach us about central issues in the philosophy of language, as well as sports trivia. I shall concentrate, not surprisingly, on points I either disagreed with or found unclear; there are many acute observations, particularly in the second half of the book, that fall into neither of these categories.
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229Consciousness and nonconceptual content (review)Philosophical Studies 113 (3): 261-274. 2003.Consciousness, Color, and Content is a significant contribution to our understanding of consciousness, among other things. I have learned a lot from it, as well as Tye’s other writings. What’s more, I actually agree with much of it – fortunately for this symposium, not all of it. The book continues the defense of the “PANIC” theory of phenomenal consciousness that Tye began in Ten Problems of Consciousness (1995). A fair chunk of it, though, is largely independent of this theory: the discussion o…Read more
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168Knowing that I am thinkingIn Anthony Hatzimoysis (ed.), Self-Knowledge, Oxford University Press. 2008.Soc. …I speak of what I scarcely understand; but the soul when thinking appears to me to be just talking—asking questions of herself and answering them, affirming and denying. And when she has arrived at a decision, either gradually or by a sudden impulse, and has at last agreed, and does not doubt, this is called her opinion. I say, then, that to form an opinion is to speak, and opinion is a word spoken,—I mean, to oneself and in silence, not aloud or to another: What think you? Theaet. I agree…Read more
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387Spin control: Comment on McDowell's Mind and WorldPhilosophical Issues 7 261-73. 1996.We have justified beliefs about the external world, and some of these are formed directly on the basis of perception. I may justifiably believe that a certain dog is in certain manger, and I may have this belief because I can see that the dog is in the manger. So far, so good
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1028BehaviourismIn S. D. Guttenplan (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. 1996.Introductory texts in the philosophy of mind often begin with a discussion of behaviourism, presented as one of the few theories of mind that have been conclusively refuted. But matters are not that simple: behaviourism, in one form or another, is still alive and kicking
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147IntroductionIn Alex Byrne & Heather Logue (eds.), Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings, Mit Press. 2009.
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107As Gert says, the basic claim of representationism is that the phenomenal character of an experience supervenes on its representational content. Restricted to color experience, representationism may be put as follows