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281Levels of explanation and the individuation of events: A difficulty for the token identity theoryActa Analytica 13 7-24. 1998.We make how a person acts intelligible by revealing it as rational in the light of what she perceives, thinks, wants and so on. For example, we might explain that she reached out and picked up a glass because she was thirsty and saw that it contained water. In doing this, we are giving a causal explanation of her behaviour in terms of her antecedent beliefs, desires and other attitudes. Her wanting a drink and realizing that the glass contained one caused her reaching out and grasping for it. Th…Read more
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226Mental causation: Compulsion by reasonAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 69 237-253. 1995.The standard paradigm for mental causation is a person’s acting for a reason. Something happens - she intentionally φ’s - the occurrence of which we explain by citing a relevant belief or desire. In the present context, I simply take for granted the following two conditions on the appropriateness of this explanation. First, the agent φ’s _because_ she believes/desires what we say she does, where this is expressive of a _causal_ dependence.1 Second, her believing/desiring this gives her a _reason…Read more
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273Bodily awareness and the selfIn José Luis Bermúdez, Anthony Marcel & Naomi Eilan (eds.), The Body and the Self, Mit Press. 1995.In The Varieties of Reference (1982), Gareth Evans claims that considerations having to do with certain basic ways we have of gaining knowledge of our own physical states and properties provide "the most powerful antidote to a Cartesian conception of the self" (220). In this chapter, I start with a discussion and evaluation of Evans' own argument, which is, I think, in the end unconvincing. Then I raise the possibility of a more direct application of similar considerations in defence of common s…Read more
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Thoughts about objects, places and timesIn Objectivity, Simulation and the Unity of Consciousness, Oxford University Press. 1994.
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81Spatial representation: problems in philosophy and psychology (edited book)Blackwell. 1993.Spatial Representation presents original, specially written essays by leading psychologists and philosophers on a fascinating set of topics at the intersection of these two disciplines. They address such questions as these: Do the extraordinary navigational abilities of birds mean that these birds have the same kind of grip on the idea of a spatial world as we do? Is there a difference between the way sighted and blind subjects represent the world 'out there'? Does the study of brain-injured sub…Read more
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4The integration of spatial vision and actionIn Naomi Eilan, Rosaleen A. McCarthy & Bill Brewer (eds.), Spatial representation: problems in philosophy and psychology, Blackwell. 1993.
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111Unilateral neglect and the objectivity of spatial representationMind and Language 7 (3): 222-39. 1992.Patients may show a more-or-less complete deviation of the head and eyes towards the right (ipsilesional) side [that is, to the same side of egocentric space as the brain lesion responsible for their disorder]. If addressed by the examiner from the left (contralesional) side [the opposite side to their lesion], patients with severe extrapersonal neglect may fail to respond or may look for the speaker in the right side of the room, turning head and eyes more and more to the right. Frequently thes…Read more
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267Perception and Its ObjectsOxford University Press. 2011.Early modern empiricists thought that the nature of perceptual experience is given by citing the object presented to the mind in that experience. Hallucination and illusion suggest that this requires untenable mind-dependent objects. Current orthodoxy replaces the appeal to direct objects with the claim that perceptual experience is characterized instead by its representational content. This paper argues that the move to content is problematic, and reclaims the early modern empiricist insight as…Read more
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240Perception and ReasonOxford University Press. 1999.Bill Brewer presents an original view of the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge. He argues that perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs if there are to be any determinate beliefs at all about particular objects in the world. This fresh approach to epistemology turns away from the search for necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge and works instead from a theory of understanding in a particular area.
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166Self-location and agencyMind 101 (401): 17-34. 1992.We perceive things in the external world as spatially located both with respect to each other and to ourselves, such that they are in principle accessible from where we seem to be. I hear the door bang behind me; I feel the pen on the desk over to my right; and I see you walking beneath the line of pictures, from left to right in front of me. By displaying these spatial relations between its objects and us, the perceivers, perception places us in the perceived world: our world and the world we p…Read more
London, London, City of, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
17th/18th Century Philosophy |