-
274Ben-Zeev on the non-epistemicBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 37 (September): 351-359. 1986.
-
154The Case for Qualia (edited book)MIT Press. 2008.Philosophical and scientific defenses of Indirect Realism and counterarguments to the attacks of qualiaphobes.
-
97More qualia trouble for functionalism: The Smythies TV-Hood analogySynthese 97 (3): 365-82. 1993.It is the purpose of this article to explicate the logical implications of a television analogy for perception, first suggested by John R. Smythies (1956). It aims to show not only that one cannot escape the postulation of qualia that have an evolutionary purpose not accounted for within a strong functionalist theory, but also that it undermines other anti-representationalist arguments as well as some representationalist ones.
-
90Dennett as illusionistJournal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 23 (2): 157-167. 2003.Mark Crooks's article correctly draws attention to the ambiguous use of the notion of 'illusion' by Daniel Dennett in its arguments against theories that postulate the existence of qualia. The present comment extends that criticism by showing how Dennett's strictures reveal a failure to perceive an illusion in Dennett's own arguments. First, the inadequacy of his dismissal of inner registration is shown to be based in a prejudicial interpretation of the case for qualia. Second, his resistance to…Read more
-
66A sensory receptor, in any organism anywhere, is sensitive through time to some distribution - energy, motion, molecular shape - indeed, anything that can produce an effect. The sensitivity is rarely direct: for example, it may track changes in relative variation rather than the absolute change of state (as when the skin responds to colder and hotter instead of to cold and hot as such); it may track differing variations under different conditions (the eyes' dark-adaptation; adaptation to sound f…Read more
-
64In view of the excellent arguments that have been put forth recently in favour of qualia, internal sensory presentations, it would strike an impartial observer - one could imagine a future historian of philosophy - as extremely odd why so many philosophers who are opposed to qualia, that is, sensory experiences internal to the brain, have largely ignored those arguments in their own. There has been a fashionable assumption that any theory of perception which espouses qualia has long since been o…Read more
-
61Gestalt Switching: Hanson, Aronson, and HarrePhilosophy of Science 59 (3): 480-86. 1992.This discussion takes up an attack by Jerrold Aronson (seconded by Rom Harre) on the use made by Norwood R. Hanson of the Gestalt-Switch Analogy in the philosophy of science. Aronson's understanding of what is implied in a gestalt switch is shown to be flawed. In his endeavor to detach conceptual understanding from perceptual identification he cites several examples, without realizing the degree to which such gestalt switches can affect conceptualizing or how conceptualizing can affect gestalts.…Read more
-
61Two more proofs of present qualiaTheoria 56 (1-2): 3-22. 1990.Now in so far as it is recognized that the constituents of the environment are not present inside the body in the same way as they are present outside it, to that extent they are bound, the moment they are inside it, to become something essentially different from the environment.
-
60Inspecting imagesPhilosophy 58 (January): 57-72. 1983.The inspectability of after-images has been denied. A typical claim is Ilham Dilman's: ‘I cannot say my apprehension of the after-image I see has changed but not the after-image itself’, for, he says, appearance and reality are one as regards the after-image. His reason is that this is a logical consequence of the fact that other people have no possible basis for correcting what I say about the after-image I see
-
54If a sensory field exists as a pure natural sign open to all kinds of interpretation as evidence (see 'Sensing as non-epistemic'), what is it that does the interpreting? Borrowing from the old Gestalt psychologists, I have proposed a gestalt module that picks out wholes from the turmoil, it being the process of noticing or attending to , but the important difference from Koffka and Köhler (Koffka, 1935; Köhler, 1940), the originators of the term 'gestalt' in the psychology of perception ( is tha…Read more
-
37Percepts are selected from nonconceptual sensory fieldsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (4): 429-430. 2003.Steven Lehar allows too much to his direct realist opponent in using the word “subjective” of the sensory field per se. The latter retains its nonconceptual, nonmental nature even when explored by perceptual judgement. He also needs to stress the evolutionary value of perceptual differences between person and person, a move that enables one to undermine the direct realist's superstitious certainty about the singular object.
-
35A non-epistemic, non-pictorial, internal, material visual fieldBehavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5): 1010-1011. 2001.The authors O'Regan & Noë (O&N) have ignored the case for the visual field as being non-epistemic evidence internal to the brain, having no pictorial similarity to the external input, and being material in ontological status. They are also not aware of the case for the evolutionary advantage of learning as the perceptual refashioning of such non-epistemic sensory evidence via motivated feedback in sensorimotor activity.
-
35Isomorphism: Philosophical implicationsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (6): 975-976. 1999.The originator of the notion of structural isomorphism was the philosopher Roy Wood Sellars. Many modern philosophers are unaware how this notion vitiates their attacks on the concept of an internal sensory presentation. His view that this allowed for corrective feedback undercuts Palmer's belief that there is a mapping of objects. The privacy of subjective experience is also shown not to be inviolable.
-
31Perceiving socially and morally: A question of triangulationPhilosophy 80 (311): 53-75. 2005.One evolutionary advantage is that, because of sensory and perceptual relativity (acknowledged as an empirical fact), the tracking of portions of the real relevant to the living creature can be enhanced if updating from species-member to species-member can take place. In human perception, the structure is therefore in the form of a triangulation (Davidson's metaphor) in which continual mutual correction can be performed. Language, that which distinguishes human beings from other animals, capital…Read more
-
30Words and IntentionsPhilosophy 52 (199): 45-62. 1977.The relationship of word-meaning to speaker's-meaning has not been examined thoroughly enough. Some philosophical problems are solved and others made plainer if the full consequences of a proper relationship between these two is worked out.
-
29Recent work in perceptionAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1): 17-30. 1984.This is a survey of the development of the philosophy of perception over the past twelve years. There are four sections. Part I deals largely with arguments for the propositionalizing of perception and for those types of externally founded realism that eschew inner representation. Part ii is devoted to three books that put the case for sense-Data (pennycuick, Jackson, Ginet) and some of the arguments against (pitcher). Part iii outlines james j gibson's psychological theory. Part iv takes up the…Read more
-
24The title of this paper is 'The Story of the Story'. If its argument is valid, I cannot be speaking to you now, trying to change your view of something without telling a story myself, even about the Story. Over the last two decades there has been an increasing number of people in a variety of disciplines telling us that the story, narrative, is an inescapable feature of human communication. Listen to a few representative voices. from psychology - Theodore Sarbin: 'Human beings think, perceive, i…Read more
-
23A New Critical Realism: An Examination of Roy Wood Sellars' EpistemologyTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 30 (3). 1994.
-
23Words and IntentionsPhilosophy 52 (199). 1977.The relationship of word-meaning to speaker's-meaning has not been examined thoroughly enough. Some philosophical problems are solved and others made plainer if the full consequences of a proper relationship between these two is worked out.
-
23A proper faith operates with the acknowledgement of risk, and, hence, a true religion with that of sacrificeBehavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (6): 753-753. 2004.The authors are working with a limited notion of religion. They have confined themselves to a view of it as superstition, “counterintuitive,” as they put it. What they have not seen is that faith does in a real sense involve a paradox in that it projects an impossibility as a methodological device, a fictive ploy, which in the best interpretation necessarily involves a commitment to the likelihood of self-sacrifice.
-
18
-
18New Representationalisms: Essays in the Philosophy of Perception (edited book)Ashgate. 1993.These essays in the philosophy of perception cover a variety of topics, among which are included science, souls and sense-data, perception and scepticism, the causal representation theory of perception, semantic presence, the impact of contemporary neuroscience and hypothesis and illusion.