•  21229
    Are women adult human females?
    Philosophical Studies 177 (12): 3783-3803. 2020.
    Are women (simply) adult human females? Dictionaries suggest that they are. However, philosophers who have explicitly considered the question invariably answer no. This paper argues that they are wrong. The orthodox view is that the category *woman* is a social category, like the categories *widow* and *police officer*, although exactly what this social category consists in is a matter of considerable disagreement. In any event, orthodoxy has it that *woman* is definitely not a biological catego…Read more
  •  7906
    Gender muddle: reply to Dembroff
    Journal of Controversial Ideas 1 (1). 2021.
    Dembroff’s “Escaping the natural attitude about gender” replies to my “Are women adult human females?”. This paper responds to Dembroff’s many criticisms of my arguments, as well as to the charge that “Are women...” “fundamentally is an unscholarly attempt to vindicate a political slogan that is currently being used to undermine civic rights and respect for trans persons”. I argue that Dembroff’s criticisms fail without exception, and explain why the claims about my motives are baseless.
  •  2237
    Interpretivism
    European Review of Philosophy 3 (Response-Dependence): 199-223. 1998.
    In the writings of Daniel Dennett and Donald Davidson we find something like the following bold conjecture: it is an a priori truth that there is no gap between our best judgements of a subject's beliefs and desires and the truth about the subject's beliefs and desires. Under ideal conditions a subject's belief-box and desire-box become transparent.
  •  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.
  •  1310
    Perception and probability
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (2): 1-21. 2021.
    One very popular framework in contemporary epistemology is Bayesian. The central epistemic state is subjective confidence, or credence. Traditional epistemic states like belief and knowledge tend to be sidelined, or even dispensed with entirely. Credences are often introduced as familiar mental states, merely in need of a special label for the purposes of epistemology. But whether they are implicitly recognized by the folk or posits of a sophisticated scientific psychology, they do not appear to…Read more
  •  1299
    Intentionalism defended
    Philosophical Review 110 (2): 199-240. 2001.
    Traditionally, perceptual experiences—for example, the experience of seeing a cat—were thought to have two quite distinct components. When one sees a cat, one’s experience is “about” the cat: this is the representational or intentional component of the experience. One’s experience also has phenomenal character: this is the sensational component of the experience. Although the intentional and sensational components at least typically go together, in principle they might come apart: the intentiona…Read more
  •  1277
    Concepts, Belief, and Perception
    In Christoph Demmerling & Dirk Schroder (eds.), Concepts in Thought, Action, and Emotion: New Essays, Routledge. 2020.
    At least in one well-motivated sense of ‘concept’, all perception involves concepts, even perception as practiced by lizards and bees. That is because—the paper argues—all perception involves belief.
  •  1020
    Behaviourism
    In S. D. Guttenplan (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. 1996.
    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
  •  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
  •  931
    The science of color and color vision
    In Fiona Macpherson & Derek Brown (eds.), Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Colour, Routledge. 2021.
    A survey of color science and color vision.
  •  880
    Skepticism about the internal world
    In Gideon Rosen, Alex Byrne, Joshua Cohen & Seana Valentine Shiffrin (eds.), The Norton Introduction to Philosophy, W. W. Norton. 2015.
    Skepticism about the internal world is actually more troubling than skepticism about the external world.
  •  845
    What is gender identity?
    Arc Digital (jan 9). 2019.
    The often poorly explained notion of gender identity, and the attendant cisgender/transgender distinction, are critically examined.
  •  840
    The epistemic significance of experience
    Philosophical Studies 173 947-67. 2016.
    According to orthodoxy, perceptual beliefs are caused by perceptual experiences. The paper argues that this view makes it impossible to explain how experiences can be epistemically significant. A rival account, on which experiences in the “good case” are ways of knowing, is set out and defended
  •  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.
  •  825
    Experience and content
    Philosophical Quarterly 59 (236): 429-451. 2009.
    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
  •  790
    Some like it HOT: Consciousness and higher-order thoughts
    Philosophical Studies 86 (2): 103-29. 1997.
    Consciousness is the subject of many metaphors, and one of the most hardy perennials compares consciousness to a spotlight, illuminating certain mental goings-on, while leaving others to do their work in the dark. One way of elaborating the spotlight metaphor is this: mental events are loaded on to one end of a conveyer belt by the senses, and move with the belt
  •  769
    Color relationalism and relativism
    Topics in Cognitive Science 9 (1): 172-192. 2017.
    This paper critically examines color relationalism and color relativism, two theories of color that are allegedly supported by variation in normal human color vision. We mostly discuss color relationalism, defended at length in Jonathan Cohen's The Red and the Real, and argue that the theory has insuperable problems.
  •  743
    Transparency, belief, intention
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 201-21. 2011.
    This paper elaborates and defends a familiar ‘transparent’ account of knowledge of one's own beliefs, inspired by some remarks of Gareth Evans, and makes a case that the account can be extended to mental states in general, in particular to knowledge of one's intentions.
  •  733
    Qualia ain't in the head
    Noûs 40 (2): 241-255. 2006.
    Qualia internalism is the thesis that qualia are intrinsic to their subjects: the experiences of intrinsic duplicates have the same qualia. Content externalism is the thesis that mental representation is an extrinsic matter, partly depending on what happens outside the head. 1 Intentionalism comes in strong and weak forms. In its weakest formulation, it is the thesis that representationally identical experiences of subjects have the same qualia. 2
  •  733
    Recollection, perception, imagination
    Philosophical Studies 148. 2010.
    Remembering a cat sleeping (specifically, recollecting the way the cat looked), perceiving (specifically, seeing) a cat sleeping, and imagining (specifically, visualizing) a cat sleeping are of course importantly different. Nonetheless, from the first-person perspective they are palpably alike. The paper addresses two questions: Q1. What are these similarities (and differences)? Q2. How does one tell that one is recalling (and so not perceiving or imagining)?
  •  730
    Perception and ordinary objects
    In Javier Cumpa & Bill Brewer (eds.), The Nature of Ordinary Objects, Cambridge University Press. 2018.
    The paper argues -- against the standard view in metaphysics -- that the existence of ordinary objects like tomatoes is (near-enough) established by the fact that such things are apparently encountered in perception.
  •  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
  •  716
    Something about Mary
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 63 (1): 27-52. 2002.
    Jackson's black-and-white Mary teaches us that the propositional content of perception cannot be fully expressed in language.
  •  693
    Sensory qualities, sensible qualities, sensational qualities
    In Brian McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, Oxford University Press. 2009.
    Philosophers of mind have distinguished (and sometimes conflated) various qualities. This article tries to sort things out.
  •  683
    More on "Gender Identity"
    Archives of Sexual Behavior. 2023.
    Continuing correspondence on 'gender identity'.
  •  682
    McDowell and Wright on Anti-Scepticism etc.
    In Dylan Dodd & Elia Zardini (eds.), Scepticism and Perceptual Justification, Oxford University Press. 2014.
    On the assumption that we may learn from our elders and betters, this paper approaches some fundamental questions in perceptual epistemology through a dispute between McDowell and Wright about external world scepticism.
  •  677
    Objectivist reductionism
    In Fiona Macpherson & Derek Brown (eds.), Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Colour, Routledge. 2021.
    A survey of arguments for and against the view that colors are physical properties.