•  1147
    The physics of extended simples
    with K. Miller
    Analysis 66 (3): 222-226. 2006.
    The idea that there could be spatially extended mereological simples has recently been defended by a number of metaphysicians (Markosian 1998, 2004; Simons 2004; Parsons (2000) also takes the idea seriously). Peter Simons (2004) goes further, arguing not only that spatially extended mereological simples (henceforth just extended simples) are possible, but that it is more plausible that our world is composed of such simples, than that it is composed of either point-sized simples, or of atomless …Read more
  •  30
    On Explaining Temporally Asymmetric Experiences
    Australasian Philosophical Review. forthcoming.
    Ismael aims for an understanding of the nature of an embedded perspective of agents in a world. If successful, this would explain a cluster of ways in which from an embedded perspective, we experience the world in an array of temporally asymmetric ways. Moreover, these are ways that have led many philosophers to rather metaphysically inflationary views about the nature of time, according to which time itself really is dynamical, and is characterized by the movement of an objectively (i.e., non-p…Read more
  •  8
    On Metaphysical Analysis
    In Barry Loewer & Jonathan Schaffer (eds.), A companion to David Lewis, Wiley-blackwell. 2015.
    Metaphysics is largely an a priori business, albeit a business that is sensitive to the findings of the physical sciences. This chapter has two aims. The first is to defend a particular conception of the methodology of a priori metaphysics by, in part, exemplifying that methodology and revealing its results. The second is to present a new account of holes. These two aims dovetail nicely. The chapter provides a better analysis of the concept ′hole′ that yields a more plausible metaphysical story …Read more
  •  27
    Weasels and the A Priori
    In Dan Ryder, Justine Kingsbury & Kenneth Williford (eds.), Millikan and Her Critics, Wiley. 2012.
    This chapter contains section titles: The Proliferation of Handles Why the Two‐Dimensionalist Needs Millikan's Positive Story Nodding Along to the Positive Story So What is There to Disagree About? When is a Term a Natural Kind Term? What Role Does the Deference to Naturalness Play in Natural Kind Terms and Concepts? The Commonality between Narrowly Similar Agents Some Arguments and Some Diagnoses Two Projects.
  •  6
    Nature's capacities and their measurement
    Philosophical Books 32 (4): 201-209. 1991.
  •  11
    Validity and Practical Reasoning
    Philosophy 65 (254). 1990.
    It has been argued by several writers that practical reasoning is capable of a kind of validity that is unlike the validity which theoretical reasoning can possess. One can gain an initial impression of this view's appeal, as well as of its content, by seeing how it could issue from analytical reflection upon the idea that actions, decisions and intentions all can be, and frequently are, reasonable . An inviting first step in such reflection is to say that for a certain intention, say, to be rea…Read more
  •  285
    The teleological theory of content
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (4): 474-89. 1997.
    This Article does not have an abstract
  •  166
    Explanation and the language of thought
    with J. Fitzpatrick
    Synthese 83 (1): 3-29. 1990.
    In this paper we argue that the insistence by Fodor et. al. that the Language of Thought hypothesis must be true rests on mistakes about the kinds of explanations that must be provided of cognitive phenomena. After examining the canonical arguments for the LOT, we identify a weak version of the LOT hypothesis which we think accounts for some of the intuitions that there must be a LOT. We then consider what kinds of explanation cognitive phenomena require, and conclude that three main confusions …Read more
  •  116
    A pyrrhic victory for teleonomy
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (3): 372-77. 2002.
    This Article does not have an abstract
  •  186
    Future-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for negatively valenced events be located in the past rather than the future, and positively valenced ones to be located in the future rather than the past. Strong risk aversion is the preference to pay some cost to mitigate the badness of the worst outcome. People who are both strongly risk averse and future-biased can face a series of choices that will guarantee them more pain, for no compensating benefit: they will be pain pumped. Thus, com…Read more
  •  482
    The philosophy of mind and cognition has been transformed by recent advances in what is loosely called cognitive science. This book is a thoroughly up-to-date introduction to and account of that transformation, in which the many strands in contemporary cognitive science are brought together into a coherent philosophical picture of the mind. The book begins with discussions of the pre-history of contemporary philosophy of mind - dualism, behaviourism, and early versions of the identity theory of …Read more
  •  114
    David Braddon-Mitchell and Frank Jackson’s popular introduction to philosophy of mind and cognition is now available in a fully revised and updated edition. Ensures that the most recent developments in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science are brought together into a coherent, accessible whole. Revisions respond to feedback from students and teachers and make the volume even more useful for courses. New material includes: a section on Descartes’ famous objection to materialism; extended t…Read more
  •  1
    Archivists of the future
    with Paul Harris and Katie Paterson
    In Carlos Montemayor & Robert R. Daniel (eds.), Time's urgency, Brill. 2019.
  •  520
    The Validation of Consciousness Meters: The Idiosyncratic and Intransitive Sequence of Conscious Levels
    with Andrew J. Latham, Cameron Ellis, and Lok-Chi Chan
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 24 (3-4): 103-111. 2017.
    In this paper we describe a few interrelated issues for validating theories that posit levels of consciousness. First, validating levels of consciousness requires consensus about the ordering of conscious states, which cannot be easily achieved. This problem is particularly severe if we believe conscious states can be irreducibly smeared over time. Second, the relationship between conscious states is probably sometimes intransitive, which means levels of consciousness will not be amenable to a s…Read more
  •  655
    Monism is our name for a range of views according to which the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is intimate and necessary, or on which there are no categorical bases at all. In contrast, Dualist views hold that the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is distant and contingent. This paper is a defence of Monism against an influential conceivability argument in favour of Dualism. The argument suggests that the apparent possibility of causal behavi…Read more
  •  306
    Preston Greene (2020) argues that we should not conduct simulation investigations because of the risk that we might be terminated if our world is a simulation designed to research various counterfactuals about the world of the simulators. In response, we propose a sequence of arguments, most of which have the form of an "even if” response to anyone unmoved by our previous arguments. It runs thus: (i) if simulation is possible, then simulators are as likely to care about simulating simulatio…Read more
  •  466
    The loneliness of stages
    with Kristie Miller
    Analysis 64 (3): 235-242. 2004.
    Harold Noonan has recently argued (2003) that one of Lewis’s (1983: 76– 77) arguments for the view that objects persist by perduring is flawed. Lewis’s argument can be divided into two main sections, the first of which attempts to show that it is possible that there exists a world of temporal parts or stages, and the second, which attempts to show that our world is such a world. Noonan claims that there is a flaw in each of these two stages.We argue to the contrary.
  •  37
    Armstrong's Materialist Theory of Mind (edited book)
    with Peter R. Anstey
    Oxford University Press. 2022.
    Armstrong's Materialist Theory of Mind is one of a handful of texts that began the physicalist revolution in the philosophy of mind. In this collection, distinguished philosophers examine what we still owe to it, how to expand it, as well as looking back on how it came about.
  •  65
    We argue that a certain variety of presentist time travel ends up significantly undermining the motivational foundations which lead some, but not all, presentists to their view. We suggest that if presentism is motivated by phenomenology, and part of that phenomenology is that it’s an experiential datum that we experience temporal passage, then the basis for believing presentism is less secure than we might have thought.
  •  226
    This paper proffers an account of why interdisciplinary research on, inter alia, the nature of time can be fruitful even if the disciplines in question have different explanatory projects. We suggest that the special sciences perform a subject setting role for lower-level disciplines such as physics. In essence, they tell us where, amongst a theory of the physical world, we should expect to locate phenomena such as temporality; they tell us what it would take for there to be time. Physical theo…Read more
  •  405
    Surviving, to some degree
    Philosophical Studies 177 (12): 3805-3831. 2020.
    In this paper we argue that reflection on the patterns of practical concern that agents like us exhibit strongly suggests that the same person relation comes in continuous degrees rather than being an all or nothing matter. We call this the SP-degree thesis. Though the SP-degree thesis is consistent with a range of views about personal-identity, we argue that combining desire-first approaches to personal-identity with the SP-degree thesis better explains our patterns of practical concern, and he…Read more
  •  437
    Electrocortical components of anticipation and consumption in a monetary incentive delay task
    with Douglas J. Angus, Andrew J. Latham, Eddie Harmon‐Jones, Matthias Deliano, and Bernard Balleine
    Psychophysiology 54 (11): 1686-1705. 2017.
    In order to improve our understanding of the components that reflect functionally important processes during reward anticipation and consumption, we used principle components analyses (PCA) to separate and quantify averaged ERP data obtained from each stage of a modified monetary incentive delay (MID) task. Although a small number of recent ERP studies have reported that reward and loss cues potentiate ERPs during anticipation, action preparation, and consummatory stages of reward processing, th…Read more
  •  576
    This paper aims to provide an overview of the conceptual terrain of what we call conative accounts of personal identity. These are views according to which the same-person relation in some sense depends on a range of broadly conative phenomena, especially desires, behaviours and conventions. We distinguish views along three dimensions: what role the conations play, what kinds of conations play that role, and whether the conations that play that role are public or private. We then offer a more de…Read more
  •  260
    Temporal phase pluralism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (1). 2001.
    Some theories of personal identity allow some variation in what it takes for a person to survive from context to context; and sometimes this is determined by the desires of person-stages or the practices of communities.This leads to problems for decision making in contexts where what is chosen will affect personal identity.‘Temporal Phase Pluralism’ solves such problems by allowing that there can be a plurality of persons constituted by a sequence of person stages. This illuminates difficult dec…Read more
  •  754
    Quantum gravity, timelessness, and the contents of thought
    Philosophical Studies 176 (7): 1807-1829. 2019.
    A number of recent theories of quantum gravity lack a one-dimensional structure of ordered temporal instants. Instead, according to many of these views, our world is either best represented as a single three-dimensional object, or as a configuration space composed of such three-dimensional objects, none of which bear temporal relations to one another. Such theories will be empirically self-refuting unless they can accommodate the existence of conscious beings capable of representation. For if re…Read more
  •  1
    Naturalistic analysis and the a priori
    In David Braddon-Mitchell & Robert Nola (eds.), Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism, Mit Press. 2009.