•  350
    Ben-Zeev on the non-epistemic
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 37 (3): 351-359. 1986.
  •  286
    A defence of Sellars
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46 (September): 73-90. 1985.
  •  167
    Gestalt Switching: Hanson, Aronson, and Harre
    Philosophy 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
  •  146
    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.
  •  132
    Inspecting images: A reply to Smythies
    Philosophy 65 (252): 225-228. 1990.
  •  121
    Dennett as illusionist
    Journal 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
  •  108
    Words and Intentions
    Philosophy 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.
  •  107
    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
  •  104
    Inspecting images
    Philosophy 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
  •  103
    New representationalism
    Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 20 (1): 65-92. 1990.
  •  86
    Two more proofs of present qualia
    Theoria 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.
  •  86
    Isomorphism: Philosophical implications
    Behavioral 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.
  •  81
    In trust we reason
    The Philosophers' Magazine 37 (37): 31-34. 2007.
  •  81
    Percepts are selected from nonconceptual sensory fields
    Behavioral 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.
  •  81
    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.
  •  78
    Illusion and truth
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 39 (3): 402-432. 1979.
  •  76
    Clamping and motivation
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (5): 643-644. 2003.
    Arthur M. Glenberg omits discussion of motivation and this leads him to an underestimation of the part played by pleasure and pain and desire and fear in both the clamping and the updating of percepts. This commentary aims at rectifying this omission, showing that mutual correction plays an important role.
  •  74
    The Entity Fallacy in Epistemology
    Philosophy 67 (259). 1992.
    In order to entertain the argument to be presented here, you have to begin by casting away a presupposition. The ultimate aim will be to restore it again as a presupposition, but the immediate aim will be to test for and make clear its undoubted worth and usefulness by imagining what happens to our knowledge-system when we remove it
  •  69
    Perception: A new theory
    American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (4): 273-286. 1977.
  •  67
    Recent work in perception
    American 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
  •  66
    What it isn't like
    American Philosophical Quarterly 33 (1): 23-42. 1996.
    From an Indirect Realist point of view, the Knowledge Argument in the philosophy of perception has been misdirected by its very title. If it can be argued that sense-fields are at their basis no more than evidence, indeed, a part of existence as brute as what is usually termed the 'external', then, if 'knowing' is not essential to sensing, that argument has to be radically reconstructed. Resistance to there being an non-epistemic or 'raw feel' basis for sensing is very fashionable at the momen…Read more
  •  66
    A 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
  •  66
    A non-epistemic, non-pictorial, internal, material visual field
    Behavioral 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.
  •  64
    In 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
  •  62
    A visual registration can be coloured without being a picture
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2): 214-214. 2002.
    Zenon Pylyshyn here repeats the same error as in his original article (1973) in starting with the premiss that all cognition is a matter of perceiving entities already given in their singularity. He therefore fails to acknowledge the force of the evolutionary argument that perceiving is a motivated process working upon a non-epistemic sensory registration internal to the brain.
  •  61
    If 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 Khler (Koffka, 1935; Khler, 1940), the originators of the term 'gestalt' in the psychology of perception ( is…Read more
  •  57
    Wilcox and Katz on indirect realism
    Philosophy of the Social Sciences 16 (1): 107-113. 1986.