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150QualiaStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 1997.Feelings and experiences vary widely. For example, I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspect…Read more
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86The Metaphysics of MindCambridge University Press. 1989.In this provocative book, Michael Tye presents his unique account of the metaphysical foundations of psychological discourse. In place of token identity theory or eliminative materialism, he advocates a generalisation of the adverbial approach to sensory experience, the 'operator theory'. He applies this to the analysis of prepositional attitudes, arguing that mental statements cannot involve reference to mental events or objects and that therefore causal statements about the mental cannot be re…Read more
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49Externalism, twin earth, and self-knowledgeIn C. Macdonald, Peter K. Smith & C. Wright (eds.), Knowing Our Own Minds: Essays in Self-Knowledge, Oxford University Press. pp. 285--320. 1998.
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53Tense Bees and Shell-Shocked Crabs: Are Animals Conscious?Oxford University Press USA. 2016.A consideration of some of the most common questions about animal minds.Do birds have feelings? Can fish feel pain? Could a honeybee be anxious? For centuries, the question of whether or not animals are conscious like humans has prompted debates among philosophers and scientists. While most people gladly accept that complex mammals - such as dogs - share emotions and experiences with us, the matter of simpler creatures is much less clear. Meanwhile, the advent of the digital age and artificial i…Read more
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118Does Conscious Seeing Have A Finer Grain Than Attention?Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 3 (2): 154-158. 2014.Ned Block says ‘yes’ (, ). His position is based on the phenomenon of identity-crowding. According to Block, in cases of identity-crowding, something is consciously seen even though one cannot attend to it. In taking this view, Block is opposing a position I have taken in recent work (Tye 2009a, 2009b, 2010). He is also contributing to a vigorous recent debate in the philosophy of mind over the relation, if any, between consciousness and attention. Who is right? Not surprisingly, I think I am
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175Consciousness and Persons: Unity and IdentityMIT Press. 2003.In Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity, Michael Tye takes on the thorny issue of the unity of consciousness and answers these important questions: What exactly is the unity of consciousness? Can a single person have a divided consciousness? What is a single person? Tye argues that unity is a fundamental part of human consciousness -- something so basic to everyday experience that it is easy to overlook. For example, when we hear the sound of waves crashing on a beach and at the same ti…Read more
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367Why the vague need not be higher-order vagueMind 103 (409): 43-45. 1994.Is higher-order vagueness a real phenomenon? Dominic Hyde (1994) claims that it is, and that it is part and parcel of vagueness itself. According to Hyde, any genuinely vague predicate must also be higher-order vague. His argument for this view is unsound, however. The purpose of this note is to expose the fallacy, and to make some related observations on the vague, the higher-order vague, and the vaguely vague.
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4Reply to Block, Jackson, and Shoemaker on Ten Problems of ConsciousnessPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (3). 1998.
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14Blurry images, double vision, and other oddities: New problems for representationalismIn Aleksandar Jokic & Quentin Smith (eds.), Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives, Oxford University Press. 2002.
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909Representationalism and the transparency of experienceNoûs 36 (1): 137-51. 2002.Representationalism is a thesis about the phenomenal character of experiences, about their immediate subjective ‘feel’.1 At a minimum, the thesis is one of supervenience: necessarily, experiences that are alike in their representational contents are alike in their phenomenal character. So understood, the thesis is silent on the nature of phenomenal character. Strong or pure representationalism goes further. It aims to tell us what phenomenal character is. According to the theory developed in Tye…Read more
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1Image indeterminacyIn Naomi M. Eilan (ed.), Spatial Representation, Blackwell. pp. 356--372. 1993.
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312I—R. M. Sainsbury and Michael Tye: An Originalist Theory of ConceptsAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1): 101-124. 2011.We argue that thoughts are structures of concepts, and that concepts should be individuated by their origins, rather than in terms of their semantic or epistemic properties. Many features of cognition turn on the vehicles of content, thoughts, rather than on the nature of the contents they express. Originalism makes concepts available to explain, with no threat of circularity, puzzling cases concerning thought. In this paper, we mention Hesperus/Phosphorus puzzles, the Evans-Perry example of the…Read more
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215The Experience of Emotion: An Intentionalist TheoryRevue Internationale de Philosophie 62 (1): 25--50. 2008.The experience of emotion is a fundamental part of human consciousness. Think, for example, of how different our conscious lives would be without such experiences as joy, anger, fear, disgust, pity, anxiety, and embarrassment. It is uncontroversial that these experiences typically have an intentional content. Anger, for example, is normally directed at someone or something. One may feel angry at one=s stock broker for provid- ing bad advice or angry with the cleaning lady for dropping the vase. …Read more
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66On the virtue of being poised: Reply to Seager (review)Philosophical Studies 113 (3): 275-280. 2003.
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326Tracking representationalism and the painfulness of painPhilosophical Issues 21 (1): 90-109. 2011.
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202Yes, Phenomenal Character Really Is Out There In The WorldPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (2): 483-488. 2015.
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30Supervenience, materialism, and functionalism: Comments on HorganSouthern Journal of Philosophy 22 (S1): 39-43. 1984.