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797Some like it HOT: Consciousness and higher-order thoughtsPhilosophical Studies 86 (2): 103-29. 1997.Consciousness is the subject of many metaphors, and one of the most hardy perennials compares consciousness to a spotlight, illuminating certain mental goings-on, while leaving others to do their work in the dark. One way of elaborating the spotlight metaphor is this: mental events are loaded on to one end of a conveyer belt by the senses, and move with the belt
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30Belief and Meaning: The Unity and Locality of Mental ContentPhilosophical Review 103 (2): 356. 1994.
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169Intentionalism DefendedPhilosophical Review 110 (2): 199-240. 2001.Traditionally, perceptual experiences—for example, the experience of seeing a cat—were thought to have two quite distinct components. When one sees a cat, one’s experience is “about” the cat: this is the representational or intentional component of the experience. One’s experience also has phenomenal character: this is the sensational component of the experience. Although the intentional and sensational components at least typically go together, in principle they might come apart: the intentiona…Read more
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122Seeing, Doing, and Knowing: A Philosophical Theory of Sense Perception, by Mohan Matthen.: Book Reviews (review)Mind 119 (476): 1206-1210. 2010.
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308Hmm… Hill on the paradox of painPhilosophical Studies 161 489-96. 2012.Critical discussion of Chris Hill's perceptual theory of pain.
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762Recollection, perception, imaginationPhilosophical Studies 148. 2010.Remembering a cat sleeping (specifically, recollecting the way the cat looked), perceiving (specifically, seeing) a cat sleeping, and imagining (specifically, visualizing) a cat sleeping are of course importantly different. Nonetheless, from the first-person perspective they are palpably alike. The paper addresses two questions: Q1. What are these similarities (and differences)? Q2. How does one tell that one is recalling (and so not perceiving or imagining)?
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1700Rich or thin?In Bence Nanay (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Perception, Routledge. pp. 59-80. 2016.Siegel and Byrne debate whether perceptual experiences present rich properties or exclusively thin properties
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36Dennett versus GibsonBehavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (6): 751-752. 1998.Pessoa et al. misinterpret some of Dennett's discussion of filling-in. Their argument against the representational conception of vision and for a Gibsonian alternative is also flawed.
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28Problems of Vision: Rethinking the Causal Theory of PerceptionPhilosophical Review 108 (3): 415. 1999.Problems of Vision is divided into three parts. The first part argues for the “insight at [the] core” of the causal theory of perception.
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120It will not have escaped notice that the defendant in this afternoon
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80<b>1</b>. Let us say that a thought is _about an object _o just in case the truth value of the thought at any possible world W depends on how things are with _o_ in W. Thus the thought that the first Chancellor of the German Empire was an astute diplomatist is not about Bismark, because that thought is true in a world W iff, in W, whoever happens to be the first Chancellor was an astute diplomatist, and that may well not be Bismark. On Russell.
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474Perception and conceptual contentIn Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Blackwell. pp. 231--250. 2013.Perceptual experiences justify beliefs—that much seems obvious. As Brewer puts it, “sense experiential states provide reasons for empirical beliefs” (this volume, xx). In Mind and World McDowell argues that we can get from this apparent platitude to the controversial claim that perceptual experiences have conceptual content: [W]e can coherently credit experiences with rational relations to judgement and belief, but only if we take it that spontaneity is already implicated in receptivity; that is…Read more
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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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712Sensory qualities, sensible qualities, sensational qualitiesIn Brian McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, Oxford University Press. 2009.Philosophers of mind have distinguished (and sometimes conflated) various qualities. This article tries to sort things out.
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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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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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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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193Hill on mindPhilosophical Studies 173 831-39. 2016.Hill's views on visual experience are critically examined