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42Colour Physicalism, Naïve Realism, and the Argument from StructureMinds and Machines 25 (2): 193-212. 2015.Colours appear to instantiate a number of structural properties: for instance, they stand in distinctive relations of similarity and difference, and admit of a fundamental distinction into unique and binary. Accounting for these structural properties is often taken to present a serious problem for physicalist theories of colour. This paper argues that a prominent attempt by Byrne and Hilbert to account for the structural properties of the colours, consistent with the claim that colours are types…Read more
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111Reflectance realism and colour constancy: What would count as scientific evidence for Hilbert's ontology of colour?Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (4). 2008.Reflectance realism is an important position in the philosophy of colour. This paper is an examination of David R. Hilbert’s case for there being scientific support for the theory. The specific point in question is whether colour science has shown that reflectance is recovered by the human visual system. Following a discussion of possible counter-evidence in the recent scientific literature, I make the argument that conflicting interpretations of the data on reflectance recovery are informed by …Read more
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48Editorial for Minds and Machines Special Issue on Philosophy of ColourMinds and Machines 25 (2): 123-132. 2015.
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80The Uses of Colour Vision: Ornamental, Practical, and TheoreticalMinds and Machines 25 (2): 213-229. 2015.What is colour vision for? In the popular imagination colour vision is for “seeing the colours” — adding hue to the achromatic world of shape, depth and motion. On this view colour vision plays little more than an ornamental role, lending glamour to an otherwise monochrome world. This idea has guided much theorising about colour within vision science and philosophy. However, we argue that a broader approach is needed. Recent research in the psychology of colour demonstrates that colour vision is…Read more
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155Psychophysical Methods and the Evasion of IntrospectionPhilosophy of Science 81 (5): 914-926. 2014.While introspective methods went out of favour with the decline of Titchener’s analytic school, many important questions concern the rehabilitation of introspection in contemporary psychology. Hatfield rightly points out that introspective methods should not be confused with analytic ones, and goes on to describe their “ineliminable role” in perceptual psychology. Here I argue that certain methodological conventions within psychophysics reflect a continued uncertainty over appropriate use of sub…Read more
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1450The Embedded Neuron, the Enactive Field?In John Bickle (ed.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy and neuroscience, Oxford University Press. 2009.The concept of the receptive field, first articulated by Hartline, is central to visual neuroscience. The receptive field of a neuron encompasses the spatial and temporal properties of stimuli that activate the neuron, and, as Hubel and Wiesel conceived of it, a neuron’s receptive field is static. This makes it possible to build models of neural circuits and to build up more complex receptive fields out of simpler ones. Recent work in visual neurophysiology is providing evidence that the classic…Read more
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238Explanation in Computational Neuroscience: Causal and Non-causalBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (3): 849-880. 2018.This article examines three candidate cases of non-causal explanation in computational neuroscience. I argue that there are instances of efficient coding explanation that are strongly analogous to examples of non-causal explanation in physics and biology, as presented by Batterman, Woodward, and Lange. By integrating Lange’s and Woodward’s accounts, I offer a new way to elucidate the distinction between causal and non-causal explanation, and to address concerns about the explanatory sufficiency …Read more
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |