•  123
    Three Perspectives on Perspective
    In Green Mitchell & Michel Jan (eds.), William Lycan on Mind, Meaning, and Method, Palgrave Macmillan. forthcoming.
    William Lycan is a notable early proponent of representationalism, which is, roughly, the view that a mental state's phenomenal features are nothing over and above its representational features (perhaps in addition to some further ingredients). Representationalism faces a challenge in accounting for perspectival experiences, which are, roughly, experiences that arise from our occupying a particular real or perceived perspective on the world. This paper presents representationalism, situating Lyc…Read more
  •  118
    On explanationist accounts of genealogical debunking, roughly, a belief is debunked when its explanation is not suitably related to its content. We argue that explanationism cannot accommodate cases in which beliefs are explained by factors unrelated to their contents but are nonetheless independently justified. Justification-specific versions of explanationism face an iteration of the problem. The best account of debunking is a probabilistic account according to which subject S’s justification …Read more
  •  152
    Beliefs as Self-Verifying Fictions
    In Eric Schwitzgebel & Jonathan Jong (eds.), What Is Belief?, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    Abstract In slogan form, the thesis of this paper is that beliefs are self-verifying fictions: We make them up, but in so doing, they come to exist, and so the fiction of belief is in fact true. This picture of belief emerges from a combination of three independently motivated views: (1) a phenomenal intentionalist picture of intentionality, on which phenomenal consciousness is the basis of intentionality; (2) what I will call a “self-ascriptivist” picture of derived representation, on which non…Read more
  •  131
    Facing Up to the Problem of Intentionality
    Philosophical Perspectives 37 (1): 228-247. 2023.
    We distinguish between different problems of “aboutness”: the “hard” problem of explaining the everyday phenomenon of intentionality and three less challenging “easy” sets of problems concerning the posits of folk psychology, the notions of representation invoked in the mind‐brain sciences, and the intensionality (with an “s”) of mental language. The problem of intentionality is especially hard in that, as is the case with the hard problem of phenomenal consciousness, there is no clear path to a…Read more
  •  365
    This dialogue explores the question of whether intentionality—the “ofness”, “aboutness”, or “directedness” of mental states—is a relation. We explore three views: the Naive View, on which intentionality is a relation to ordinary, everyday objects, facts, and other such items; the Abstract Contents View, on which intentionality is a relation to mind-independent abstract entities that are our contents; and the Aspect View, on which intentionality is a matter of having intentional states with parti…Read more
  •  223
    Truth and Content in Sensory Experience
    In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind Volume 3, Oxford University Press. 2023.
    David Papineau’s _The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience_ is deep, insightful, refreshingly brisk, and very readable. In it, Papineau argues that sensory experiences are intrinsic and non-relational states of subjects; that they do not essentially involve relations to worldly facts, properties, or other items (though they do happen to correlate with worldly items); and that they do not have truth conditions simply in virtue of their conscious (i.e., phenomenal) features. I am in enthusiastic agr…Read more
  •  410
    Attenuated Representationalism (review)
    Analysis 83 (2). 2023.
    In The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience, David Papineau offers some metaphysical reasons for rejecting representationalism. This paper overviews these reasons, arguing that while some of his arguments against some versions of representationalism succeed, there are versions of phenomenal intentionalism that escape his criticisms. Still, once we consider some of the contents of perceptual experiences, such as their perspectival contents, it is clear that perceptual experience does not present us …Read more
  •  236
    Singular Experiences (With and Without Objects)
    In Robert French, Berit Brogaard & Otavio Bueno (eds.), The Roles of Representations in Visual Perception, Springer. forthcoming.
    Perceptual experiences seem to in some sense have singular contents. For example, a perceptual experience of a dog as fluffy seems to represent some particular dog as being fluffy. There are important phenomenological, intuitive, and semantic considerations for thinking that perceptual experiences represent singular contents, but there are also important phenomenological, epistemic, and metaphysical considerations for thinking that they do not. This paper proposes a two-tier picture of the conte…Read more
  •  434
    Is Narrow Content's "Narrow Content" Narrow Content?
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    In their monograph Narrow Content, Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne argue that all versions of internalism about mental content are either false or "pointless" (roughly, of no interest). We overview Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne's main line of argument and suggest that, while largely correct, it does not touch the core internalist claim that mental states have internally determined contents. Instead of engaging with this claim, Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne attack a variety of stronger or weaker claims. The st…Read more
  •  436
    In Brentano’s Philosophical System: Mind, Being, Value, Uriah Kriegel argues that Brentano’s work forms a “live philosophical program” (p. 14, italics omitted) that contemporary philosophy has much to learn from and that is promising and largely correct. To this end, Kriegel argues that Brentano’s notion of consciousness is the contemporary notion of phenomenal consciousness, that Brentano’s rejection of unconscious mentality is a grave mistake that can be fairly neatly excised from his overall …Read more
  •  411
    Kolors Without Colors, Representation Without Intentionality
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (2): 476-483. 2022.
    Over the past few decades, the dominant approach to explaining intentionality has been a naturalistic approach, one appealing only to non-mental ingredients condoned by the natural sciences. Karen Neander’s A Mark of the Mental (2017) is the latest installment in the naturalist project, proposing a detailed and systematic theory of intentionality that combines aspects of several naturalistic approaches, invoking causal relations, teleological functions, and relations of second-order similarity. …Read more
  •  761
    Propositional Attitudes as Self-Ascriptions
    In Luis R. G. Oliveira & Kevin Corcoran (eds.), Common Sense Metaphysics: Themes From the Philosophy of Lynne Rudder Baker, Routledge. pp. 54-74. 2020.
    According to Lynne Rudder Baker’s Practical Realism, we know that we have beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes independent of any scientific investigation. Propositional attitudes are an indispensable part of our everyday conception of the world and not in need of scientific validation. This paper asks what is the nature of the attitudes such that we may know them so well from a commonsense perspective. I argue for a self-ascriptivist view, on which we have propositional attitudes…Read more
  •  25
    Intentionalism about Moods
    Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 57 89-97. 2018.
    Moods are sometimes thought to be counter-examples to intentionalism, the view that a mental state’s phenomenal features are exhausted by its representational features. The problem is that moods are accompanied by phenomenal experiences that do not seem to be adequately accounted for by any of their plausibly represented contents. This paper develops and defends an intentionalist view of the phenomenal character of moods on which moods represent intentional objects as having sui generis affectiv…Read more
  •  315
    Reply to Philip Woodward’s Review of The Phenomenal Basis of Intentionality
    Philosophical Psychology 32 (8): 1261-1267. 2019.
    Philip Woodward's review of The Phenomenal Basis of Intentionality (PBI) raises objections to the specific version of the phenomenal intentionality theory proposed in PBI, especially to identity PIT, representationalism, the picture of derived mental representation, some tentative proposals regarding intentional structure, and the matching theory of truth and reference. In this reply, I argue that the version of PIT defended in PBI can withstand these objections.
  •  478
    Review of A Mark of the Mental (review)
    Philosophical Review 128 (3): 378-385. 2019.
    Karen Neander's A Mark of the Mental is a noteworthy and novel contribution to the long-running project of naturalizing intentionality. The aim of the book is to “solve the part of Brentano’s problem that is within reach” (3). Brentano's problem is the problem of explaining intentionality; the part of this problem that is supposedly within reach is that of explaining nonconceptual sensory-perceptual intentionality; and Neander aims to solve it via an informational teleosemantic theory. In this r…Read more
  •  919
    Immediate and Reflective Senses
    In Dena Shottenkirk, Manuel Curado & Steven Gouveia (eds.), Perception, Cognition, and Aesthetics, Routledge. pp. 187-209. 2019.
    This paper argues that there are two distinct kinds of senses, immediate senses and reflective senses. Immediate senses are what we are immediately aware of when we are in an intentional mental state, while reflective senses are what we understand of an intentional mental state's (putative) referent upon reflection. I suggest an account of immediate and reflective senses that is based on the phenomenal intentionality theory, a theory of intentionality in terms of phenomenal consciousness. My foc…Read more
  •  619
    How Reliably Misrepresenting Olfactory Experiences Justify True Beliefs
    In Berit Brogaard & Dimitria Gatzia (eds.), The Epistemology of Non-visual Perception, Oxford University Press. pp. 99-117. 2020.
    This chapter argues that olfactory experiences represent either everyday objects or ad hoc olfactory objects as having primitive olfactory properties, which happen to be uninstantiated. On this picture, olfactory experiences reliably misrepresent: they falsely represent everyday objects or ad hoc objects as having properties they do not have, and they misrepresent in the same way on multiple occasions. One might worry that this view is incompatible with the plausible claim that olfactory experie…Read more
  •  1720
    Consciousness and Intentionality
    In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness, Oxford University Press. pp. 560-585. 2020.
    Philosophers traditionally recognize two main features of mental states: intentionality and phenomenal consciousness. To a first approximation, intentionality is the aboutness of mental states, and phenomenal consciousness is the felt, experiential, qualitative, or "what it's like" aspect of mental states. In the past few decades, these features have been widely assumed to be distinct and independent. But several philosophers have recently challenged this assumption, arguing that intentionality …Read more
  •  647
    Propositionalism Without Propositions, Objectualism Without Objects
    In Alex Grzankowski & Michelle Montague (eds.), Non-Propositional Intentionality, Oxford, Uk. pp. 214-233. 2018.
    Propositionalism is the view that all intentional states are propositional states, which are states with a propositional content, while objectualism is the view that at least some intentional states are objectual states, which are states with objectual contents, such as objects, properties, and kinds. This paper argues that there are two distinct ways of understanding propositionalism and objectualism: (1) as views about the deep nature of the contents of intentional states, and (2) as views abo…Read more
  •  1607
    The most pressing worry for panpsychism is arguably the combination problem, the problem of intelligibly explaining how the experiences of microphysical entities combine to form the experiences of macrophysical entities such as ourselves. This chapter argues that the combination problem is similar in kind to other problems of mental combination that are problems for everyone: the problem of phenomenal unity, the problem of mental structure, and the problem of new quality spaces. The ubiquity of …Read more
  •  331
    The Phenomenal Basis of Intentionality
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
    Some mental states seem to be "of" or "about" things, or to "say" something. For example, a thought might represent that grass is green, and a visual experience might represent a blue cup. This is intentionality. The aim of this book is to explain this phenomenon. Once we understand intentionality as a phenomenon to be explained, rather than a posit in a theory explaining something else, we can see that there are glaring empirical and in principle difficulties with currently popular tracking and…Read more
  •  1241
    Review of Tim Bayne and Michelle Montague's Cognitive Phenomenology (review)
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (3): 601-604. 2013.
    A review of Cognitive Phenomenology by Tim Bayne and Michelle Montague, with some thoughts on the epistemology of the cognitive phenomenology debate.
  •  1845
    Pure Intentionalism About Moods and Emotions
    In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Mind, Routledge. pp. 135-157. 2013.
    Moods and emotions are sometimes thought to be counterexamples to intentionalism, the view that a mental state's phenomenal features are exhausted by its representational features. The problem is that moods and emotions are accompanied by phenomenal experiences that do not seem to be adequately accounted for by any of their plausibly represented contents. This paper develops and defends an intentionalist view of the phenomenal character of moods and emotions on which emotions and some moods repr…Read more
  •  433
    Phenomenal Intentionality
    The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2016.
    Phenomenal intentionality is a kind of intentionality, or aboutness, that is grounded in phenomenal consciousness, the subjective, experiential feature of certain mental states. The phenomenal intentionality theory (PIT), is a theory of intentionality according to which there is phenomenal intentionality, and all other kinds of intentionality at least partly derive from it. In recent years, PIT has increasingly been seen as one of the main approaches to intentionality.
  •  940
    Reliable misrepresentation is getting things wrong in the same way all the time. In Mendelovici 2013, I argue that tracking theories of mental representation cannot allow for certain kinds of reliable misrepresentation, and that this is a problem for those views. Artiga 2013 defends teleosemantics from this argument. He agrees with Mendelovici 2013 that teleosemantics cannot account for clean cases of reliable misrepresentation, but argues that this is not a problem for the views. This paper cla…Read more
  •  1938
    Reliable Misrepresentation and Tracking Theories of Mental Representation
    Philosophical Studies 165 (2): 421-443. 2013.
    It is a live possibility that certain of our experiences reliably misrepresent the world around us. I argue that tracking theories of mental representation have difficulty allowing for this possibility, and that this is a major consideration against them