•  412
    Whither naive realism? - I
    Philosophical 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
  • The Philosophy of Color (edited book)
    MIT Press. 1997.
  •  683
    More on "Gender Identity"
    Archives of Sexual Behavior. 2023.
    Continuing correspondence on 'gender identity'.
  •  68
    These volumes will serve as useful resources for anyone interested in philosophy of color perception or color science.
  •  186
    Perception and causation
    with David Hilbert
    Journal of Philosophy 92 (6): 323-329. 1995.
  •  1
    B
    In Samuel Guttenplan (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. 2017.
    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.
  •  5
    Experience and Content
    In Katherine Hawley & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), The Admissible Contents of Experience, Wiley. 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
  •  470
    Color Primitivism
    Erkenntnis 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
  •  48
    Unique hues
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (2): 184-185. 1997.
    Saunders & van Brakel argue, inter alia, that there is for the claim that there are four unique hues (red, green, blue, and yellow), and that there are two corresponding opponent processes. We argue that this is quite mistaken
  •  430
    Truest blue
    Analysis 67 (1): 87-92. 2007.
    1. The “puzzle” Physical objects are coloured: roses are red, violets are blue, and so forth. In particular, physical objects have fine-grained shades of colour: a certain chip, we can suppose, is true blue (unique, or pure blue). The following sort of scenario is commonplace. The chip looks true blue to John; in the same (ordinary) viewing conditions it looks (slightly) greenish-blue to Jane. Both John and Jane are “normal” perceivers. Now, nothing can be both true blue and greenish-blue; since…Read more
  •  75
    Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness
    Philosophical Review 111 (4): 594-597. 2002.
    This much-anticipated book is a detailed elaboration and defense of Levine’s influential claim that there is an “explanatory gap” between the mental and the physical.
  •  316
    Do we see more than we can access?
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 5 (5-6): 501-502. 2007.
    Short commentary on a paper by Ned Block
  •  101
    Color realism revisited
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (6): 791-793. 2003.
    Our reply is in four parts. The first part, R1, addresses objections to our claim that there might be “unknowable” color facts. The second part, R2, discusses the use we make of opponent process theory. The third part, R3, examines the question of whether colors are causes. The fourth part, R4, takes up some issues concerning the content of visual experience.
  •  936
    Color realism and color science
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (1): 3-21. 2003.
    The target article is an attempt to make some progress on the problem of color realism. Are objects colored? And what is the nature of the color properties? We defend the view that physical objects (for instance, tomatoes, radishes, and rubies) are colored, and that colors are physical properties, specifically types of reflectance. This is probably a minority opinion, at least among color scientists. Textbooks frequently claim that physical objects are not colored, and that the colors are "subje…Read more
  •  184
    Color realism redux
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (1): 52-59. 2003.
    Our reply is in three parts. The first part concerns some foundational issues in the debate about color realism. The second part addresses the many objections to the version of physicalism about color ("productance physicalism") defended in the target article. The third part discusses the leading alternative approaches and theories endorsed by the commentators.
  •  183
    Against the PCA-analysis
    with N. Hall
    Analysis 58 (1): 38-44. 1998.
    Jonardon Ganeri, Paul Noordhof, and Murali Ramachandran (1996) have proposed a new counterfactual analysis of causation. We argue that this – the PCA-analysis – is incorrect. In section 1, we explain David Lewis’s first counterfactual analysis of causation, and a problem that led him to propose a second. In section 2 we explain the PCA-analysis, advertised as an improvement on Lewis’s later account. We then give counterexamples to the necessity (section 3) and sufficiency (section 4) of the PCA-an…Read more
  •  232
    Basic sensible qualities and the structure of appearance
    with David Hilbert
    Philosophical Issues 18 (1): 385-405. 2008.
    A sensible quality is a perceptible property, a property that physical objects (or events) perceptually appear to have. Thus smells, tastes, colors and shapes are sensible qualities. An egg, for example, may smell rotten, taste sour, and look cream and round.1,2 The sensible qualities are not a miscellanous jumble—they form complex structures. Crimson, magenta, and chartreuse are not merely three different shades of color: the first two are more similar than either is to the third. Familiar colo…Read more
  •  827
    Pronoun Problems
    Journal of Controversial Ideas 3 (1): 1-22. 2023.
    In recent years, pronouns have become a white-hot interface between language and social and political issues. “My pronouns are he/they” signals allegiance to one side in the culture wars, as does “My pronouns are whatever.” But there is surprisingly little philosophical work at this interface; this paper aims to chart the main questions and argue for some answers, with the hope of stimulating more research.
  •  172
    Papineau on Sensory Experience
    Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind 3 308-17. 2023.
    Comment on David Papineau's _The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience_
  •  1565
    Hallucination and Its Objects
    Philosophical Review 131 (3): 327-359. 2022.
    When one visually hallucinates, the object of one’s hallucination is not before one’s eyes. On the standard view, that is because the object of hallucination does not exist, and so is not anywhere. Many different defenses of the standard view are on offer; each have problems. This paper defends the view that there is always an object of hallucination—a physical object, sometimes with spatiotemporally scattered parts.
  •  120
    Perception and Probability
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (2): 343-363. 2021.
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 2, Page 343-363, March 2022.
  •  205
    Appendix to "The female of the species: reply to Heartsilver"
    Journal of Controversial Ideas 2 (1). 2022.
    More discussion of some issues raised in "The female of the species: reply to Heartsilver", Journal of Controversial Ideas 2: 1-22 (2022)
  •  451
    The female of the species: reply to Heartsilver
    Journal of Controversial Ideas 2 (1-22). 2022.
    Maggie Heartsilver’s “Deflating Byrne’s ‘Are women adult human females?’” subjects the arguments and conclusion of “Are women ...?” to a probing and comprehensive stress ­test. The present paper responds to Heartsilver’s objections, and also discusses the significance of the proposition that trans women are women.
  •  221
    Smithies’s Mentalism and E=K
    Analysis 81 (4): 774-782. 2022.
    Comment on Declan Smithies's book The Epistemic Role of Consciousness (2019).
  •  76
    Readings on Color I: The Philosophy of Color (edited book)
    with David R. Hilbert
    MIT Press. 1997.
    Edward Wilson Averill By the phrase 'anthropocentric account of color' I mean an account of color that makes an assumption of the following form: two ...
  •  194
    Knowing By Perceiving, by Alan Millar
    Mind 132 (527): 852-861. 2021.
    Millar has written a valuable monograph on perceptual knowledge. Knowing By Perceiving is careful and detailed, at times laborious, delivering many insights. Oc.
  •  722
    How do things look to the color-blind?
    In Jonathan Cohen & Mohan Matthen (eds.), Color Ontology and Color Science, Mit Press. pp. 259. 2010.
    Color-vision defects constitute a spectrum of disorders with varying degrees and types of departure from normal human color vision. One form of color-vision defect is dichromacy; by mixing together only two lights, the dichromat can match any light, unlike normal trichromatic humans, who need to mix three. In a philosophical context, our titular question may be taken in two ways. First, it can be taken at face value as a question about visible properties of external objects, and second, it may b…Read more
  •  278
    David Rosenthal couples his higher-order thought theory of consciousness with a theory of “mental qualities”, properties of mental states. The first thesis of this paper is that there are no mental qualities as Rosenthal conceives of them. The second thesis is that Rosenthal’s residual insights are significant. They naturally lead to a simple first-order theory of consciousness.