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71Has content been naturalized?In Barry M. Loewer (ed.), Meaning in Mind: Fodor and His Critics, Blackwell. 1991.The Representational Theory of the Mind (RTM) has been forcefully and subtly developed by Jerry A. Fodor. According to the RTM, psychological states that explain behavior involve tokenings of mental representations. Since the RTM is distinguished from other approaches by its appeal to the meaning or "content" of mental representations, a question immediately arises: by virtue of what does a mental representation express or represent an environmental property like coto or shoe? This question asks…Read more
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382Nonreductive materialism I. introductionIn Brian P. McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind, Oxford University Press. 2007.The expression ‘nonreductive materialism’ refers to a variety of positions whose roots lie in attempts to solve the mind-body problem. Proponents of nonreductive materialism hold that the mental is ontologically part of the material world; yet, mental properties are causally efficacious without being reducible to physical properties.s After setting out a minimal schema for nonreductive materialism (NRM) as an ontological position, I’ll canvass some classical arguments in favor of (NRM).1 Then, I…Read more
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206Temporal Becoming: The Argument From PhysicsPhilosophical Forum 6 (2): 218-236. 1974.Arguments about temporal becoming often get nowhere. One reason for the impasse lies in the fact that the issue has been formulated as a choice between science on the one hand and common sense (or ordinary language) on the other as the primary source of ontological commitment.' Often' proponents of attributing temporal becoming to the physical universe look to everyday temporal concepts, find them infested with notions involving temporal becoming and conclude that becoming is a basic feature of …Read more
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79Here’s what I intend to do. First, I want to summarize the paper as I see it. Then, as a philosopher is expected to do, I’ll present some questions and disagreements—both substantive and methodological—with Open Theism. Finally, despite the fact that I am an outsider, I want to comment on the debate over Open Theism within certain evangelical circles.
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142A farewell to functionalismPhilosophical Studies 48 (July): 1-14. 1985.dilemma, a dilemma concerning the individuation of psychological states that explain behavior. Beliefs are individuated by most functionahsts in terms of that 'that'-clauses; functional states are individuated 'narrowly' (i.e.
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73Amie Thomasson and I are in agreement about artifacts, in particular about the existential dependence of artifacts on human intentions. Thomasson says, “Since the very idea of an artifact is of something mind-dependent in certain ways, accepting mindindependence as an across-the-board criterion for existence gives us no reason to deny the existence of artifacts; it merely begs the question against them.” I agree entirely
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162III. On the very idea of a form of lifeInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 27 (1-4): 277-289. 1984.Drawing on writers as diverse as Saul Kripke, Stanley Cavell, G. E. M. Anscombe, Jonathan Lear, and Bernard Williams, I offer an interpretation of Wittgenstein's key notion of a form of life that explains why Wittgenstein was so enigmatic about it. Then, I show how Hilary Putnam's criticism of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics and Richard Rorty's support of (what he takes to be) Wittgenstein's legacy in the philosophy of mind both require mistaken assumptions about Wittgenstein's idea of …Read more
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Rejoinder to ZimmermanIn Michael Peterson (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, Blackwell. 2004.
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185Review: Eric T. Olson: What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology (review)Mind 117 (468): 1120-1122. 2008.
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308Persons and the metaphysics of resurrectionReligious Studies 43 (3): 333-348. 2007.Theories of the human person differ greatly in their ability to underwrite a metaphysics of resurrection. This paper compares and contrasts a number of such views in light of the Christian doctrine of resurrection. In a Christian framework, resurrection requires that the same person who exists on earth also exists in an afterlife, that a postmortem person be embodied, and that the existence of a postmortem person is brought about by a miracle. According to my view of persons (the Constitution Vi…Read more
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203Three-Dimensionalism Rescued: A Brief Reply to Michael Della RoccaJournal of Philosophy 110 (3): 166-170. 2013.
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78Ganeri, Jonardon., The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness and the First-Person StanceReview of Metaphysics 67 (1): 160-162. 2013.
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446Metaphysics and mental causationIn John Heil & Alfred R. Mele (eds.), Mental Causation, Oxford University Press. pp. 75-96. 1993.My aim is twofold: first, to root out the metaphysical assumptions that generate the problem of mental causation and to show that they preclude its solution; second, to dissolve the problem of mental causation by motivating rejection of one of the metaphysical assumptions that give rise to it. There are three features of this metaphysical background picture that are important for our purposes. The first concerns the nature of reality: all reality depends on physical reality, where physical reali…Read more
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681The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: An Essay in Practical RealismCambridge University Press. 2007.Lynne Rudder Baker presents and defends a unique account of the material world: the Constitution View. In contrast to leading metaphysical views that take everyday things to be either non-existent or reducible to micro-objects, the Constitution View construes familiar things as irreducible parts of reality. Although they are ultimately constituted by microphysical particles, everyday objects are neither identical to, nor reducible to, the aggregates of microphysical particles that constitute the…Read more
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62Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the MindCambridge University Press. 1995.Explaining Attitudes develops a new account of propositional attitudes - practical realism.
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212Cognitive suicideIn Robert H. Grimm & Daniel Davy Merrill (eds.), Contents of Thought, Tucson. pp. 401--13. 1988.
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47Selfless Persons: Goodness in an Impersonal World?Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 76 143-159. 2015.Mark Johnston takes reality to be wholly objective or impersonal, and aims to show that the inevitability of death does not obliterate goodness in such a naturalistic world. Crucial to his argument is the claim that there are no persisting selves. After critically discussing Johnston's arguments, I set out a view of persons that shares Johnston's view that there are no selves, but disagrees about the prospects of goodness in a wholly impersonal world. On my view, a wholly objective world is onto…Read more
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125Was Leibniz Entitled to Possible Worlds?Canadian Journal of Philosophy 15 (1): 57-74. 1985.Leibniz has enjoyed a prominent place in the history of thought about possible worlds.' I shall argue that on the feading interpretation of Leibniz's account of contingency ââ¬â an ingenious interpretation with ample textual support ââ¬â possible worlds may be invoked by Leibniz only on pain of inconsistency. Leibnizian contingency, as reconstructed in detail by Robert C. Sleigh, Jr.,z will be shown to preclude propositions with different truth-values in different possible worlds.
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50Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the MindPhilosophical Review 106 (4): 614. 1997.When I started the book, I thought that if there are beliefs, then they are brain states. I still believe that. I express three caveats about the book.
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131I want to raise three questions for discussion: 1. How are a philosopher’s concerns about the human mind related to a neuroscientist’s concerns? 2. Can neuroscience explain everything that we want to understand about the human mind? 3. Does neuroscience threaten our dignity or humanity (or anything else that we cherish about ourselves)? Let’s take these questions one at a time.
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55Saving Belief: A Critique of PhysicalismPrinceton University Press. 1987."This book is a comprehensive attack on several of the views that have been most influential in the philosophy of psychology during the last two decades. Professor Baker argues that mentalistic notions should not be eliminated, and need not be explained in terms of other notions, in cognitive science.' The book is interesting and shows an honest concern for clear argumentation. It deserves a wide readership." --Tyler Burge, University of California at Los Angeles"This book is a provocative and r…Read more
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40Science and the Attitudes: A Reply to SanfordBehavior and Philosophy 24 (2): 187-189. 1996.Explaining Attitudes was not intended to be hostile to science. Its target is what I called the Standard View, a conception of the attitudes that is held almost universally. The heart of the Standard View is the thesis that beliefs (and other..
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68Brief Reply to Rosenkrantz’s Comments on my “The Ontological Status of Persons”Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2): 394-396. 2002.1. Primary-kind properties. Rosenkrantz does not see how a single primary-kind property can be had by x essentially and by y contingently . He offers a reductio ad absurdum of the view that a primary can be had accidentally or derivatively. The reductio has as a premise the following: “[S]omething has a primarykind property, F-ness, derivatively only if the primary-kind property of a nonderivative F, i.e., the property which determines what a nonderivative F most fundamentally is, is nonderivati…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Religion |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |