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Third Person UnderstandingIn A. J. Sanford & P. N. Johnson-Laird (eds.), The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding, T & T Clark. 2003.
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287First-personal aspects of agencyMetaphilosophy 42 (1-2): 1-16. 2011.Abstract: On standard accounts, actions are caused by reasons (Davidson), and reasons are taken to be neural phenomena. Since neural phenomena are wholly understandable from a third-person perspective, standard views have no room for any ineliminable first-personal elements in an account of the causation of action. This article aims to show that first-person perspectives play essential roles in both human and nonhuman agency. Nonhuman agents have rudimentary first-person perspectives, whereas hu…Read more
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158Instrumental intentionalityPhilosophy of Science 56 (June): 303-16. 1989.Many physicalists are committed to an austere dichotomy: either beliefs, desires and intentions are scientifically respectable or attributions of such attitudes are all false. One physicalist, Daniel Dennett, offers a third alternative, which seems to permit a kind of instrumentalism concerning attitudes. I argue that Dennett's attempt to reconcile an instrumentalistic account of attributions of attitudes with a thoroughgoing physicalism founders on unresolvable conflicts between his official th…Read more
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123Why computers can't actAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 18 (2): 157-163. 1981.To be an agent, one must be able to formulate intentions. To be able to formulate intentions, one must have a first-person perspective. Computers lack a first-person perspective. So, computers are not agents.
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80Saving God: Religion after idolatry (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2009.Saving God is a rich and provocative book. It aims to "save God" from idolatrous believers, who take God to be largely concerned with the welfare and destiny of human creatures. Banning idolatry, Johnston is led to a panentheistic conception of "the Highest One," who (or which) is not separable from Nature. With echoes of Spinoza and, to a lesser extent, Whitehead, Johnston argues that the natural world is all that there is, but, properly understood, can be seen as "the site of the sacred."
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39Consciousness Explained (review)Review of Metaphysics 46 (2): 398-399. 1992.Dennett aims to develop an empirical, scientifically respectable theory of human consciousness--one that demystifies the mind by showing how the various phenomena that compose consciousness "are all physical effects of the brain's activities".
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109Reply to Oppy's foolAnalysis 71 (2): 303-303. 2011.Anselm: I agreed that Pegasus is a flying horse according to the stories people tell, the paintings painters paint and so on . That is, Pegasus is a flying horse in the understanding of storytellers, their readers and the artists who depict Pegasus. You asked whether flying is not an unmediated causal power . Well, it could be an unmediated causal power if you or I had it, but not if a being with only mediated powers had it. And so poor Pegasus, a being whose powers are only those given him by s…Read more
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257'Need a Christian Be a Mind/Body Dualist' ?Faith and Philosophy 12 (4): 489-504. 1995.Although prominent Christian theologians and philosophers have assumed the truth of mind/body dualism, I want to raise the question of whether the Christian ought to be a mind/body dualist. First, I sketch a picture of mind, and of human persons, that is not a form of mind/body dualism. Then, I argue that the nondualistic picture is compatible with a major traditional Christian doctrine, the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. Finally, I suggest that if a Christian need not be a mind/body …Read more
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50Review of Objects and Persons, by Trenton Merricks (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (4). 2003.Book Information Objects and Persons. Objects and Persons Trenton Merricks . Oxford: Clarendon Press , 2001 , pp. xii + 203 , £30 ( cloth ), £14.99 ( paper ) . By Trenton Merricks. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pp. xii + 203. £30 (cloth:), £14.99 (paper:).
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209Why Christians should not be libertarians: An Augustinian challengeFaith and Philosophy 20 (4): 460-478. 2003.The prevailing view of Christian philosophers today seems to be that Christianity requires a libertarian conception of free will. Focusing on Augustine’s mature anti-Pelagian works, I try to show that the prevailing view is in error. Specifically, I want to show that---on Augustine’s view of grace-a libertarian account of free will is irrelevant to salvation. On Augustine’s view, the grace of God through Christ is sufficient as weIl as necessary for salvation. Salvation is entirely in the hands …Read more
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42L7 The first-person perspective and its relation to natural scienceIn Matthew C. Haug (ed.), Philosophical Methodology: The Armchair or the Laboratory?, Routledge. 2013.
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Part IV Must Science Validate All Knowledge?In A. J. Sanford & P. N. Johnson-Laird (eds.), The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding, T & T Clark. 2003.
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140“Tätigsein und die Erste-Person-Perspektive” (Agency and the first-person perspective)In Bruno Niederbacher & Edmund Runggaldier (eds.), Was Sind Menschliche Personen?: Ein Akttheoretischer Zugang, Onto Verlag. 2008.It is no news that you and I are agents as well as persons. Agency and personhood are surely connected, but it is not obvious just how they are connected. I believe that being a person and being an agent are intimately linked by what I call a ‘first-person perspective’: All persons and all agents have first-person perspectives. Even so, the connection between personhood and agency is not altogether straightforward. There are different kinds of agents, and there are different kinds of first-perso…Read more
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314The shrinking difference between artifacts and natural objectsAmerican Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers. 2008.Artifacts are objects intentionally made to serve a given purpose; natural objects come into being without human intervention. I shall argue that this difference does not signal any ontological deficiency in artifacts qua artifacts. After sketching my view of artifacts as ordinary objects, I’ll argue that ways of demarcating genuine substances do not draw a line with artifacts on one side and natural objects on the other. Finally, I’ll suggest that philosophers have downgraded artifacts because …Read more
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131Self-directed and self-evaluative attitudes are often connected to one’s social position. Before investigating the dependence relations between individual self-evaluation and social positioning, however, there is a prior question to answer: What are the conditions under which an individual can have any self-directed attitudes at all? In order to be the subject of self-directed or selfevaluative attitudes, I shall argue, an individual must have linguistic and social relations. I’ll discuss the fi…Read more
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75On being one's own personIn M. Sie, Marc Slors & B. van den Brink (eds.), Reasons of One's Own, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. 2004.
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41On the twofold nature of artefactsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 37 (1): 132-136. 2006.
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23The Nature of True Minds (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (2): 475-478. 1995.
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Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the MindBehavior and Philosophy 24 (2): 181-186. 1996.
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120Folk psychologyIn Rob Wilson & Frank Keil (eds.), MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Mit Press. 1999.In recent years, folk psychology has become a topic of debate not just among philosophers, but among development psychologists and primatologists as well
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10"Thought and Object: Essays on Intentionality" edited by Andrew Woodfield (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45 (1): 137. 1984.
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63Comments on Hubert L. Dreyfus “intelligence without representation”Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 (4): 411-412. 2002.
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137Are beliefs brain states?In Anthonie W. M. Meijers (ed.), Explaining Beliefs: Lynne Rudder Baker and Her Critics, Csli Publications (stanford). 2001.During the past couple of decades, philosophy of mind--with its siblings, philosophy of psychology and cognitive science--has been one of the most exciting areas of philosophy. Yet, in that time, I have come to think that there is a deep flaw in the basic conception of its object of study--a deep flaw in its conception of the so-called propositional attitudes, like belief, desire, and intention. Taking belief as the fundamental propositional attitude, scientifically-minded philosophers hold that…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Religion |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |