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552Imagery, the imagination and experiencePhilosophical Quarterly 60 (241): 735-753. 2010.Visualizings, the simplest imaginings which employ visual imagery, have certain characteristic features; they are perspectival, for instance. Also, it seems that some but not all of our visualizings are imaginings of seeings. But it has been forcefully argued, for example by M.G.F. Martin and Christopher Peacocke, that all visualizings are imaginings of visual sensations. I block these arguments by providing an account of visualizings which allows for their perspectival nature and other features…Read more
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526Counterfactual reasoning and knowledge of possibilitiesPhilosophical Studies 174 (4): 821-835. 2017.Williamson has argued against scepticism concerning our metaphysically modal knowledge, by arguing that standard patterns of suppositional reasoning to counterfactual conclusions provide reliable sources of correct ascriptions of possibility and necessity. The paper argues that, while Williamson’s claims relating to necessity may well be right, he has not provided adequate reasons for thinking that the familiar modes of counterfactual reasoning to which he points generalise to provide a decent r…Read more
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448Imagining possibilitiesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (2). 2004.Kripkean examples of necessary a posteriori truths clearly provide a challenge to attempts to connect facts about possibility to facts about what people can conceive. The paper argues for a general principle connecting imaginability under certain special circumstances to possibility; it also discusses some of the issues raised by the resulting position.
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419Pictures, Propositions, and PredicatesAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 57 (2): 155-170. 2020.Do representational pictures have propositional contents? The current paper argues that the characteristic contents of pictures are predicative rather than propositional: pictures characterise things as looking certain ways, and they thereby express properties of visual perspectives. The paper argues that the characteristic predicative contents of pictures are nonetheless able to feature in fully-fledged propositional contents once they are combined with contents of other suitable sorts. Various…Read more
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359Imagination and mental imageryIn Amy Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Imagination, Routledge. pp. 97-110. 2016.The paper examines the relationships between the contents of imaginative episodes and the mental images that often play a central role within them. It considers, for example, whether the presence of mental imagery is required for a mental episode to count as an imagining.
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344Visual Imagery: Visual Format or Visual Content?Mind and Language 25 (4): 394-417. 2010.It is clear that visual imagery is somehow significantly visual. Some theorists, like Kosslyn, claim that the visual nature of visualisations derives from features of the neural processes which underlie those episodes. Pylyshyn claims, however, that it may merely reflect special features of the contents which we grasp when we visualise things. This paper discusses and rejects Pylyshyn's own attempts to identify the respects in which the contents of visualisations are notably visual. It then offe…Read more
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322Pictures, pictorial contents and visionBritish Journal of Aesthetics 50 (1): 15-32. 2010.Certain simple thoughts about pictures suggest that the contents of pictures are closely bound to vision. But how far can the striking features of depiction be accounted for merely in terms of the especially visual contents which belong to pictures, without considering, for example, any issues concerning the nature of the visual experiences with which pictures provide us? This article addresses that question by providing an account of the distinctively visual contents belonging to pictures, and …Read more
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321Iterated Modalities, Meaning and A Priori KnowledgePhilosophers' Imprint 11. 2011.Recent work on the philosophy of modality has tended to pass over questions about iterated modalities in favour of constructing ambitious metaphysical theories of possibility and necessity, despite the central importance of iterated modalities to modal logic. Yet there are numerous unresolved but fundamental issues involving iterated modalities: Chandler and Salmon have provided forceful arguments against the widespread assumption that all necessary truths are necessarily necessary, for example.…Read more
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306Imagery and PossibilityNoûs 54 (4): 755-773. 2019.We often ascribe possibility to the scenes that are displayed by mental or nonmental sensory images. The paper presents a novel argument for thinking that we are prima facie justified in ascribing metaphysical possibility to what is displayed by suitable visual images, and it argues that many of our imagery‐based ascriptions of metaphysical possibility are therefore prima facie justified. Some potential objections to the arguments are discussed, and some potential extensions of them, to cover no…Read more
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272Visual expectations and visual imaginationPhilosophical Perspectives 31 (1): 187-206. 2017.(Open Access article, freely available to download from publisher's site.) Our visual experiences of objects as located in external space, and as having definite three-dimensional shapes, are closely linked to our implicit expectations about what things will look like from alternative viewpoints. What sorts of contents do these expectations involve? One standard answer is that they relate to what things will look like to us upon changing our positions. And what sorts of mental representations do…Read more
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267Fictional domainsNoûs 58 (1): 126-140. 2024.(Open Access.) Quantifiers frequently figure in works of fiction. But occurrences of quantificational expressions within fictions seem no more inevitably to be associated with real domains than uses of names within fictions seem inevitably to be associated with existing referents. The paper outlines some philosophical puzzles resulting from this apparent lack of associated domains, puzzles that are broadly analogous to more familiar ones raised by the apparently nonreferential nature of many fic…Read more
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258Functionalism about possible worldsAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (1). 2006.Various writers have proposed that the notion of a possible world is a functional concept, yet very little has been done to develop that proposal. This paper explores a particular functionalist account of possible worlds, according to which pluralities of possible worlds are the bases for structures which provide occupants for the roles which analyse our ordinary modal concepts. It argues that the resulting position meets some of the stringent constraints which philosophers have placed upon acco…Read more
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214B is innocentAnalysis 61 (3): 225-229. 2001.The paper replies to an earlier paper by Yannis Stephanou, who presented an argument purportedly showing the falsity of certain instances of the characteristic axiom of the modal logic B. The paper argues that the B axiom was not to blame for the unsoundness of Stephanou's argument.
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211Perception, force, and contentEuropean Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.[Open Access.] Perceptual experiences have presentational phenomenology: we seem to encounter real situations in the course of visual experiences, for instance. The current paper articulates and defends the claim that the contents of at least some perceptual experiences are inherently presentational. On this view, perceptual contents are not always forceless in the way that, say, the propositional content that 2 + 2 = 4 is generally taken to be, as a content that may be asserted or denied or mer…Read more
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208Image, Image-Making, and ImaginationIn Ananta Ch Sukla & Keith Moser (eds.), Imagination and Art: Explorations in Contemporary Theory, . pp. 535-558. 2020.[Pre-peer review draft available to download.] Our imaginative capacities shape the making of images, while the making of images has the ability to shape our imaginative capacities. What are the connections between vision and mental visual images that allow for this traffic between the contents of our minds and external images? And how are image-makers able to exploit the distinctive powers of imagery, to extend the modes of representation that are available to us, and hence also to extend the r…Read more
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196Smith on truthmakersAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (3). 2001.This Article does not have an abstract
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177Visual Content, Expectations, and the Outside WorldProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 115 (2pt2): 109-130. 2015.Some philosophers—for example, Husserl, Alva Noë and Susanna Siegel—have claimed that the contents of visual sensations standardly include references to the later visual episodes that one would have under certain conditions. The current paper claims that there are no good reasons for accepting that view. Instead, it is argued that the conscious phenomena which have been cited as manifesting the presence within visual contents of references to ways that things would look in the course of later vi…Read more
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166Sensory Memories and Recollective ImagesIn Fiona Macpherson & Fabian Dorsch (eds.), Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Memory, Oxford University Press. pp. 28-45. 2018.[Late draft.] The paper examines the roles that may be played by sensory images in relation to the contents of sensory memories. It argues that the images may serve either simply to characterise putative past states of the world or to capture putative past sensory experiences of the subject. It uses the resulting account to shed light on various phenomena involving sensory memories, such as the status of 'observer memories'.
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160Conceivability and Apparent PossibilityIn Bob Hale & Aviv Hoffmann (eds.), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology, Oxford University Press. 2009.Why do we tend to ascribe possibility to what we can imagine? One strategy for answering that question involves the thought that, just as sensory episodes often involve its seeming to us as though the world is certain ways, so imaginings involve its seeming to us that what we have imagined is possible. This chapter argues that while some imaginings do feature appearances of possibility, very many others do not; and it explores the broader relevance of its conclusions for modal epistemology.
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151Completeness and decidability results for some propositional modal logics containing “actually” operatorsJournal of Philosophical Logic 30 (1): 57-78. 2001.The addition of "actually" operators to modal languages allows us to capture important inferential behaviours which cannot be adequately captured in logics formulated in simpler languages. Previous work on modal logics containing "actually" operators has concentrated entirely upon extensions of KT5 and has employed a particular modeltheoretic treatment of them. This paper proves completeness and decidability results for a range of normal and nonnormal but quasi-normal propositional modal logics …Read more
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147Keeping semantics pureNoûs 39 (3). 2005.There are numerous contexts in which philosophers and others use model-theoretic methods in assessing the validity of ordinary arguments; consider, for example, the use of models built upon 'possible worlds' in examinations of modal arguments. But the relevant uses of model-theoretic techniques may seem to assume controversial semantic or metaphysical accounts of ordinary concepts. So, numerous philosophers have suggested that standard uses of model-theoretic methods in assessing the validity of…Read more
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116The Worlds of Possibility: Modal Realism and the Semantics of Modal Logic (review)Mind 110 (439): 736-740. 2001.
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78Showing, Sensing, and Seeming: Distinctively Sensory Representations and Their ContentsOxford University Press UK. 2013.Certain representations are bound in special ways to our sensory capacities; consider, for instance, pictures, sound recordings, and the various forms of mental sensory imagery. What do these representations have in common, and what makes them different from representations of other kinds? Dominic Gregory employs novel ideas on perceptual states and sensory perspectives to explain the special nature of the contents of distinctively sensory representations. The book contains extensive discussions…Read more
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58The epistemology of a priori knowledge - by Tamara Horowitz (review)Philosophical Books 49 (2): 167-168. 2008.
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