-
7896The role of imagination in creativityIn Elliot Samuel Paul & Scott Barry Kaufman (eds.), The Philosophy of Creativity, Oxford University Press. 2014.
-
3217Cognitive Penetrability of PerceptionPhilosophy Compass 8 (7): 646-663. 2013.Perception is typically distinguished from cognition. For example, seeing is importantly different from believing. And while what one sees clearly influences what one thinks, it is debatable whether what one believes and otherwise thinks can influence, in some direct and non-trivial way, what one sees. The latter possible relation is the cognitive penetration of perception. Cognitive penetration, if it occurs, has implications for philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cogn…Read more
-
2751The dominance of the visualIn D. Stokes, M. Matthen & S. Biggs (eds.), Perception and Its Modalities, Oxford University Press. 2014.Vision often dominates other perceptual modalities both at the level of experience and at the level of judgment. In the well-known McGurk effect, for example, one’s auditory experience is consistent with the visual stimuli but not the auditory stimuli, and naïve subjects’ judgments follow their experience. Structurally similar effects occur for other modalities (e.g. rubber hand illusions). Given the robustness of this visual dominance, one might not be surprised that visual imagery often domina…Read more
-
2507Aesthetics and cognitive sciencePhilosophy Compass 4 (5): 715-733. 2009.Experiences of art involve exercise of ordinary cognitive and perceptual capacities but in unique ways. These two features of experiences of art imply the mutual importance of aesthetics and cognitive science. Cognitive science provides empirical and theoretical analysis of the relevant cognitive capacities. Aesthetics thus does well to incorporate cognitive scientific research. Aesthetics also offers philosophical analysis of the uniqueness of the experience of art. Thus, cognitive science does…Read more
-
2467Perceiving and Desiring: A New Look at the Cognitive Penetrability of ExperiencePhilosophical Studies 158 (3): 479-92. 2012.This paper considers an orectic penetration hypothesis which says that desires and desire-like states may influence perceptual experience in a non-externally mediated way. This hypothesis is clarified with a definition, which serves further to distinguish the interesting target phenomenon from trivial and non-genuine instances of desire-influenced perception. Orectic penetration is an interesting possible case of the cognitive penetrability of perceptual experience. The orectic penetration hyp…Read more
-
1609Cognitive Penetration and the Perception of Art (Winner of 2012 Dialectica Essay Prize)Dialectica 68 (1): 1-34. 2014.There are good, even if inconclusive, reasons to think that cognitive penetration of perception occurs: that cognitive states like belief causally affect, in a relatively direct way, the contents of perceptual experience. The supposed importance of – indeed as it is suggested here, what is definitive of – this possible phenomenon is that it would result in important epistemic and scientific consequences. One interesting and intuitive consequence entirely unremarked in the extant literature conce…Read more
-
1557Minimally Creative ThoughtMetaphilosophy 42 (5): 658-681. 2011.Creativity has received, and continues to receive, comparatively little analysis in philosophy and the brain and behavioural sciences. This is in spite of the importance of creative thought and action, and the many and varied resources of theories of mind. Here an alternative approach to analyzing creativity is suggested: start from the bottom up with minimally creative thought. Minimally creative thought depends non-accidentally upon agency, is novel relative to the acting agent, and could not …Read more
-
1529Noise, uncertainty, and interest: Predictive coding and cognitive penetrationConsciousness and Cognition 47 86-98. 2017.This paper concerns how extant theorists of predictive coding conceptualize and explain possible instances of cognitive penetration. §I offers brief clarification of the predictive coding framework and relevant mechanisms, and a brief characterization of cognitive penetration and some challenges that come with defining it. §II develops more precise ways that the predictive coding framework can explain, and of course thereby allow for, genuine top-down causal effects on perceptual experience, of …Read more
-
1518Imagination and CreativityIn Amy Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Imagination, Routledge. 2016.This paper surveys historical and recent philosophical discussions of the relations between imagination and creativity. In the first two sections, it covers two insufficiently studied analyses of the creative imagination, that of Kant and Sartre, respectively. The next section discusses imagination and its role in scientific discovery, with particular emphasis on the writings of Michael Polanyi, and on thought experiments and experimental design. The final section offers a brief discussion of so…Read more
-
1479Attention and the Cognitive Penetrability of PerceptionAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (2): 303-318. 2018.One sceptical rejoinder to those who claim that sensory perception is cognitively penetrable is to appeal to the involvement of attention. So, while a phenomenon might initially look like one where, say, a perceiver’s beliefs are influencing her visual experience, another interpretation is that because the perceiver believes and desires as she does, she consequently shifts her spatial attention so as to change what she senses visually. But, the sceptic will urge, this is an entirely familiar phe…Read more
-
1462Modular architectures and informational encapsulation: A dilemmaEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 5 (3): 315-38. 2015.Amongst philosophers and cognitive scientists, modularity remains a popular choice for an architecture of the human mind, primarily because of the supposed explanatory value of this approach. Modular architectures can vary both with respect to the strength of the notion of modularity and the scope of the modularity of mind. We propose a dilemma for modular architectures, no matter how these architectures vary along these two dimensions. First, if a modular architecture commits to the information…Read more
-
1358Rich perceptual content and aesthetic propertiesIn Anna Bergqvist & Robert Cowan (eds.), Evaluative Perception, Oxford University Press. 2018.Both common sense and dominant traditions in art criticism and philosophical aesthetics have it that aesthetic features or properties are perceived. However, there is a cast of reasons to be sceptical of the thesis. This paper defends the thesis—that aesthetic properties are sometimes represented in perceptual experience—against one of those sceptical opponents. That opponent maintains that perception represents only low-level properties, and since all theorists agree that aesthetic properties a…Read more
-
1349Mental imagery and fictionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (6): 731-754. 2019.Fictions evoke imagery, and their value consists partly in that achievement. This paper offers analysis of this neglected topic. Section 2 identifies relevant philosophical background. Section 3 offers a working definition of imagery. Section 4 identifies empirical work on visual imagery. Sections 5 and 6 criticize imagery essentialism, through the lens of genuine fictional narratives. This outcome, though, is not wholly critical. The expressed spirit of imagery essentialism is to encourage phil…Read more
-
1089On perceptual expertiseMind and Language 36 (2): 241-263. 2021.Expertise is a cognitive achievement that clearly involves experience and learning, and often requires explicit, time-consuming training specific to the relevant domain. It is also intuitive that this kind of achievement is, in a rich sense, genuinely perceptual. Many experts—be they radiologists, bird watchers, or fingerprint examiners—are better perceivers in the domain(s) of their expertise. The goal of this paper is to motivate three related claims, by substantial appeal to recent empirical …Read more
-
1069Naturalistic approaches to creativityIn J. Systma W. Buckwalter (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Experimental Philosophy, . 2016.We offer a brief characterization of creativity, followed by a review of some of the reasons people have been skeptical about the possibility of explaining creativity. We then survey some of the recent work on creativity that is naturalistic in the sense that it presumes creativity is natural (as opposed to magical, occult, or supernatural) and is therefore amenable to scientific inquiry. This work is divided into two categories. The broader category is empirical philosophy, which draws on empir…Read more
-
1054A Metaphysics of CreativityIn Kathleen Stock & Katherine Thomson-Jones (eds.), New Waves in Aesthetics, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 105--124. 2008.
-
1025Towards a consequentialist understanding of cognitive penetrationIn A. Raftopoulos & J. Ziembekis (eds.), Cognitive Effects on Perception: New Philosophical Perspectives, . 2015.Philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists have recently taken renewed interest in cognitive penetration, in particular, in the cognitive penetration of perceptual experience. The question is whether cognitive states like belief influence perceptual experience in some important way. Since the possible phenomenon is an empirical one, the strategy for analysis has, predictably, proceeded as follows: define the phenomenon and then, definition in hand, interpret various psychological data. Howeve…Read more
-
981The evaluative character of imaginative resistanceBritish Journal of Aesthetics 46 (4): 287-405. 2006.A fiction may prescribe imagining that a pig can talk or tell the future. A fiction may prescribe imagining that torturing innocent persons is a good thing. We generally comply with imaginative prescriptions like the former, but not always with prescriptions like the latter: we imagine non-evaluative fictions without difficulty but sometimes resist imagining value-rich fictions. Thus arises the puzzle of imaginative resistance. Most analyses of the phenomenon focus on the content of the relevant…Read more
-
943Incubated cognition and creativityJournal of Consciousness Studies 14 (3): 83-100. 2007.Many traditional theories of creativity put heavy emphasis on an incubation stage in creative cognitive processes. The basic phenomenon is a familiar one: we are working on a task or problem, we leave it aside for some period of time, and when we return attention to the task we have some new insight that services completion of the task. This feature, combined with other ostensibly mysterious features of creativity, has discouraged naturalists from theorizing creativity. This avoidance is misguid…Read more
-
777Cognitive penetration and the perception of colourIn Derek H. Brown & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour, Routledge. 2021.This chapter concerns the cognitive penetration of the visual experience of colour. Alleged cases of cognitively penetrated colour perception are of special import since they concern an uncontroversial type of visual experience. All theorists of perception agree that colour properties figure properly in the content or presentation of visual perception, even though not all parties agree that pine trees or causes or other "high-level" properties can figure properly in visual content or presentatio…Read more
-
664Sorting the SensesIn Dustin Stokes, Mohan Matthen & Stephen Biggs (eds.), Perception and Its Modalities, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-19. 2014.We perceive in many ways. But several dubious presuppositions about the senses mask this diversity of perception. Philosophers, scientists, and engineers alike too often presuppose that the senses (vision, audition, etc.) are independent sources of information, perception being a sum of these independent contributions. We too often presuppose that we can generalize from vision to other senses. We too often presuppose that vision itself is best understood as a passive receptacle for an image thro…Read more
-
598Attributing CreativityIn Berys Nigel Gaut & Matthew Kieran (eds.), Creativity and Philosophy, Routledge. 2018.Three kinds of things may be creative: persons, processes, and products. The standard definition of creativity, used nearly by consensus in psychological research, focuses specifically on products and says that a product is creative if and only if it is new and valuable. We argue that at least one further condition is necessary for a product to be creative: it must have been produced by the right kind of process. We argue furthermore that this point has an interesting epistemological implicat…Read more
-
493Art and Modal KnowledgeIn Dominic Lopes & Matthew Kieran (eds.), Knowing Art: Essays in Epistemology and Aesthetics, Springer. 2006.
-
483Memory, Imagery, and Self-KnowledgeAvant: Special Issue-Thinking with Images 10 (2). 2019.One distinct interest in self-knowledge concerns whether one can know about one’s own mental states and processes, how much, and by what methods. One broad distinction is between accounts that centrally claim that we look inward for self-knowledge (introspective methods) and those that claim that we look outward for self-knowledge (transparency methods). It is here argued that neither method is sufficient, and that we see this as soon as we move beyond questions about knowledge of one’s beliefs,…Read more
-
401Through the eyes of the expert: Evaluating holistic processing in architects through gaze-contingent viewingPsychonomic Bulletin and Review 1 1-9. 2021.Studies in the psychology of visual expertise have tended to focus on a limited set of expert domains, such as radiology and athletics. Conclusions drawn from these data indicate that experts use parafoveal vision to process images holistically. In this study, we examined a novel, as-of-yet-unstudied class of visual experts—architects—expecting similar results. However, the results indicate that architects, though visual experts, may not employ the holistic processing strategy observed in their …Read more
-
386Thinking and Perceiving: On the malleability of the mindRoutledge. 2021.[File is the introduction to the monograph] Abstract to monograph How and whether thinking affects perceiving is a deeply important question. Of course it is of scientific interest: to understand the human mind is to understand how we best distinguish its processes, how those processes interact, and what this implies for how and what we may know about the world. And so in the philosopher’s terms, this book is one on both mental architecture and the epistemology of perception. But there is a more…Read more
-
379Review of Bence Nanay-Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 8 00. 2016.
-
357Perception and Its Modalities (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2014.This volume is about the many ways we perceive. Contributors explore the nature of the individual senses, how and what they tell us about the world, and how they interrelate. They consider how the senses extract perceptual content from receptoral information. They consider what kinds of objects we perceive and whether multiple senses ever perceive a single event. They consider how many senses we have, what makes one sense distinct from another, and whether and why distinguishing senses may be us…Read more
-
348Review of Mohan Matthen-Seeing, Doing, and Knowing: A Philosophical Theory of Sense Perception (review)British Journal of Aesthetics 46 (3): 323-325. 2006.
-
328Perceptual skillsIn Ellen Fridland & Carlotta Pavese (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise, Routledge. 2020.This chapter has four parts. I distinguishes some types of perceptual skills and highlights their importance in everyday perception. II identifies a well-studied class of perceptual skills: cases of perceptual expertise. III discusses a less studied possible instance of perceptual skill: picture perception. Finally, IV outlines some important mechanisms underlying perceptual skills, with special emphasis on attention and mental imagery.
Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Aesthetics |
Metaphysics |
General Philosophy of Science |