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795Some 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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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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26Problems 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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1693Rich 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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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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472Perception 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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120It will not have escaped notice that the defendant in this afternoon
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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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704Sensory 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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445IntrospectionPhilosophical 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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51Our 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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167Disjunctivism: 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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271What 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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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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196Inverted 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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120Subjectivity 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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699McDowell 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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188Hill 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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738Qualia 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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102The 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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344Perception and evidencePhilosophical Studies 170 101-113. 2014.Critical discussion of Susanna Schellenberg's account of hallucination and perceptual evidence.