-
Either/orIn Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: perception, action, knowledge, Oxford University Press. 2008.
-
Introduction to disjunctivism, contemporary ReadingsIn Alex Byrne & Heather Logue (eds.), Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings, Mit Press. 2009.
-
Colors and reflectancesIn Alex Byrne & David R. Hilbert (eds.), Readings on Color, Volume 1: The Philosophy of Color, Mit Press. 1997.When we open our eyes, the world seems full of colored opaque objects, light sources, and transparent volumes. One historically popular view, _eliminativism_, is that the world is not in this respect as it appears to be: nothing has any color. Color _realism_, the denial of eliminativism, comes in three mutually exclusive varieties, which may be taken to exhaust the space of plausible realist theories. Acccording to _dispositionalism_, colors are _psychological_ dispositions: dispositions to pro…Read more
-
IntroductionIn Alex Byrne & Heather Logue (eds.), Disjunctivism: Contemporary Readings, Mit Press. 2009.
-
57Glossary of color scienceIn Alex Byrne & David R. Hilbert (eds.), Readings on Color, Volume 2: The Science of Color, Mit Press. 1997.Anomaloscope An instrument used for detecting anomalies of color vision. The test subject adjusts the ratio of two monochromatic lights to form a match with a third monochromatic light. The most common form of this procedure involves a Rayleigh match: a match between a mixture of monochromatic green and red lights, and a monochromatic yellow light. Normal subjects will choose a matching ratio of red to green light that falls within a fairly narrow range of values. Subjects with anomalous color v…Read more
-
281Color primitivismIn Ralph Schumacher (ed.), Perception and Status of Secondary Qualities, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2007.The realist preference for reductive theories of color over the last few decades is particularly striking in light of the generally anti-reductionist mood of recent philosophy of mind. The parallels between the mind-body problem and the case of color are substantial enough that the difference in trajectory is surprising. While dualism and non-.
-
134How do things look to the color-blind?In Jonathan Cohen & Mohan Matthen (eds.), Color Ontology and Color Science, Bradford. pp. 259. 2010.forthcoming in Color Ontology and Color Science, ed. J. Cohen and M. Matthen (MIT).
-
9Either/orIn Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: perception, action, knowledge, Oxford University Press. pp. 314-19. 2008.This essay surveys the varieties of disjunctivism about perceptual experience. Disjunctivism comes in two main ?avours, metaphysical and epistemological. Metaphysical disjunctivism is the view usually associated with the disjunctivist label, and whenever
-
Are Colors Secondary Qualities?In Lawrence Nolan (ed.), Primary and secondary qualities: the historical and ongoing debate, Oxford University Press. 2011.
-
Either/Or: in A. Haddock and F. MacphersonIn Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: perception, action, knowledge, Oxford University Press. 2008.
-
1Either/orIn Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: perception, action, knowledge, Oxford University Press. 2008.This essay surveys the varieties of disjunctivism about perceptual experience. Disjunctivism comes in two main flavours, metaphysical and epistemological. Metaphysical disjunctivism is the view usually associated with the disjunctivist label, and whenever ‘disjunctivism’ occurs here unprefixed, it refers to this view. After some initial discussion of (metaphysical) disjunctivism (sections 1–3), we explain epistemological disjunctivism in section 4. The rest of the essay is solely concerned with ex…Read more
-
336Colors and reflectancesIn Alex Byrne & David R. Hilbert (eds.), Readings on Color, Volume 1: The Philosophy of Color, Mit Press. 1997.When we open our eyes, the world seems full of colored opaque objects, light sources, and transparent volumes. One historically popular view, _eliminativism_, is that the world is not in this respect as it appears to be: nothing has any color. Color _realism_, the denial of eliminativism, comes in three mutually exclusive varieties, which may be taken to exhaust the space of plausible realist theories. Acccording to _dispositionalism_, colors are _psychological_ dispositions: dispositions to pro…Read more
-
190Philosophical issues about colour visionIn L. Nagel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Macmillan. 2002.The primary issues concern whether objects have colours, and what sorts of properties the colours are. Some philosophers hold that nothing is coloured, others that colour are powers to affect perceivers, and others that colours are physical properties.
-
What phenomenal consciousness is likeIn Rocco J. Gennaro (ed.), Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness: An Anthology, John Benjamins. 2004.The terminology surrounding the dispute between higher-order and first-order theories of consciousness is piled so high that it sometimes obscures the view. When the debris is cleared away, there is a real prospect
-
Inverted qualiaIn Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Metaphysics Research Lab. 2014.
-
148Introspection and evidenceIn Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton Littlejohn (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence, Routledge. pp. 318-28. 2024.
-
196Ashley on gender identityJournal of Controversial Ideas 4 (1): 1-10. 2024.‘Gender identity’ was clearly defined sixty years ago, but the dominant conceptions of gender identity today are deeply obscure. Florence Ashley’s 2023 theory of gender identity is one of the latest attempts at demystification. Although Ashley’s paper is not fully coherent, a coherent theory of gender identity can be extracted from it. That theory, we argue, is clearly false. It is psychologically very implausible, and does not support ‘firstperson authority over gender’, as Ashley claims. We a…Read more
-
Introspection and evidenceIn Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton Littlejohn (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence, Routledge. 2024.
-
284Seeing or Saying?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (2): 528-535. 2024.Comment on Brogaard's Seeing and Saying (OUP 2018)
-
551Whither naive realism? - IPhilosophical Perspectives (1): 1-20. 2023.Different authors offer subtly different characterizations of naïve realism. We disentangle the main ones and argue that illusions provide the best proving ground for naïve realism and its main rival, representationalism. According to naïve realism, illusions never involve per- ceptual error. We assess two leading attempts to explain apparent perceptual error away, from William Fish and Bill Brewer, and conclude that they fail. Another lead- ing attempt is assessed in a companion paper, which al…Read more
-
851More on "Gender Identity"Archives of Sexual Behavior. 2023.Continuing correspondence on 'gender identity'.
-
60Readings on Color, Volume 2: The Science of Color (edited book)MIT Press. 1997.These volumes will serve as useful resources for anyone interested in philosophy of color perception or color science.
-
1BIn Samuel D. Guttenplan (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. 1994.Introductory texts in the philosophy of mind often begin with a discussion of behaviourism, presented as one of the few theories of mind that have been conclusively refuted. But matters are not that simple: behaviourism, in one form or another, is still alive and kicking.
-
5Experience and ContentIn Fiona Macpherson (ed.), The Admissible Contents of Experience, Wiley-blackwell. 2011.The ‘content view’, in slogan form, is ‘Perceptual experiences have representational content’. I explain why the content view should be reformulated to remove any reference to ‘experiences’. I then argue, against Bill Brewer, Charles Travis and others, that the content view is true. One corollary of the discussion is that the content of perception is relatively thin (confined, in the visual case, to roughly the output of ‘mid‐level’ vision). Finally, I argue (briefly) that the opponents of the c…Read more
-
3938The origin of "gender identity"Archives of Sexual Behavior. 2023.A Letter to the Editor about the origin of "gender identity" and deficiencies in its current definition
-
225Color PrimitivismErkenntnis 66 (1-2). 2006.The typical kind of color realism is reductive: the color properties are identified with properties specified in other terms (as ways of altering light, for instance). If no reductive analysis is available — if the colors are primitive sui generis properties — this is often taken to be a convincing argument for eliminativism. That is, realist primitivism is usually thought to be untenable. The realist preference for reductive theories of color over the last few decades is particularly striking i…Read more