-
Phenomenal presence : an introduction to the debateIn Fiona Macpherson & Fabian Dorsch (eds.), Phenomenal Presence, Oxford University Press. 2018.
-
10Editorial - Aesthetic Reasons and Aesthetic ObligationsEstetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 54 (1): 3. 2020.
-
8Hume on the ImaginationDisputatio 7 (8). 2018.This article overviews Hume’s thoughts on the nature and the role of imagining, with an almost exclusive focus on the first book of his Treatise of Human Nature. Over the course of this text, Hume draws and discusses three important distinctions among our conscious mental episodes : between impressions and ideas ; between ideas of the memory and ideas of the imagination; and, among the ideas of the imagination, between ideas of the judgement and ideas of the fancy. I discuss each distinction in …Read more
-
48Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Memory (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2018.This volume presents ten new essays on the nature of perceptual imagination and perceptual memory. The central questions are: How do perceptual imagination and memory resemble and differ from each other and from other kinds of sensory experience? And what role does each play in perception and in the acquisition of knowledge?
-
1340The Limits of Aesthetic EmpiricismIn Gregory Currie, Matthew Kieran, Aaron Meskin & Jon Robson (eds.), Aesthetics and the Sciences of Mind, Oxford University Press. pp. 75-100. 2014.In this chapter, I argue against empiricist positions which claim that empirical evidence can be sufficient to defeasibly justify aesthetic judgements, or judgements about the adequacy of aesthetic judgements, or sceptical judgements about someone's capacity to form adequate aesthetic judgements. First, empirical evidence provides neither inferential, nor non-inferential justification for aesthetic opinions. Second, while empirical evidence may tell us how we do respond aesthetically to artworks…Read more
-
407Editorial: 50th Anniversary IssueEstetika: The Central European Journal of Aestetics 51 (2): 167-169. 2014.
-
4274Focused Daydreaming and Mind-WanderingReview of Philosophy and Psychology 6 (4): 791-813. 2015.In this paper, I describe and discuss two mental phenomena which are somewhat neglected in the philosophy of mind: focused daydreaming and mind-wandering. My aim is to show that their natures are rather distinct, despite the fact that we tend to classify both as instances of daydreaming. The first difference between the two, I argue, is that, while focused daydreaming is an instance of imaginative mental agency, mind-wandering is not—though this does not mean that mind-wandering cannot involve m…Read more
-
791Sentimentalism and the Intersubjectivity of Aesthetic EvaluationsDialectica 61 (3): 417-446. 2007.Within the debate on the epistemology of aesthetic appreciation, it has a long tradition, and is still very common, to endorse the sentimentalist view that our aesthetic evaluations are rationally grounded on, or even constituted by, certain of our emotional responses to the objects concerned. Such a view faces, however, the serious challenge to satisfactorily deal with the seeming possibility of faultless disagreement among emotionally based and epistemically appropriate verdicts. I will argue …Read more
-
1055Emotional imagining and our responses to fictionEnrahonar: Quaderns de Filosofía 46 153-176. 2011.The aim of this article is to present the disagreement between Moran and Walton on the nature of our affective responses to fiction and to defend a view on the issue which is opposed to Moran’s account and improves on Walton’s. Moran takes imagination-based affective responses to be instances of genuine emotion and treats them as episodes with an emotional attitude towards their contents. I argue against the existence of such attitudes, and that the affective element of such responses should rat…Read more
-
403Visualising as Imagining SeeingKongress-Akten der Deutschen Gesellschaft Für Philosophie 22 1-16. 2011.In this paper, I would like to put forward the claim that, at least in some central cases, visualising consists literally in imagining seeing. The first section of my paper is concerned with a defence of the specific argument for this claim that M. G. F. Martin presents in his paper 'The Transparency of Experience' (Martin 2002). This argument has been often misunderstood (or ignored), and it is worthwhile to discuss it in detail and to illustrate what its precise nature is and why I take it to…Read more
-
1442Seeing-In as Aspect PerceptionIn Gary Kemp & Gabriele M. Mras (eds.), Wollheim, Wittgenstein, and Pictorial Representation: Seeing-as and Seeing-In, Routledge. 2016.
-
564The Unity of HallucinationsPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9 (2): 171-191. 2010.My primary aim in this article is to provide a philosophical account of the unity of hallucinations, which can capture both perceptual hallucinations (which are subjectively indistinguishable from perceptions) and non-perceptual hallucinations (all others). Besides, I also mean to clarify further the division of labour and the nature of the collaboration between philosophy and the cognitive sciences. Assuming that the epistemic conception of hallucinations put forward by M. G. F. Martin and othe…Read more
-
390Imagination and the WillDissertation, University College London. 2005.The principal aim of my thesis is to provide a unified theory of imagining, that is, a theory which aspires to capture the common nature of all central forms of imagining and to distinguish them from all paradigm instances of non-imaginative phenomena. The theory which I intend to put forward is a version of what I call the Agency Account of imagining and, accordingly, treats imaginings as mental actions of a certain kind. More precisely, it maintains that imaginings are mental actions that aim …Read more
-
1042Die Natur der FarbenDe Gruyter. 2009.Farben sind für uns sowohl objektive, als auch phänomenale Eigenschaften. In seinem Buch argumentiert Fabian Dorsch, daß keine ontologische Theorie der Farben diesen beiden Seiten unseres Farbbegriffes gerecht werden k ann. Statt dessen sollten wir akzeptieren, daß letzterer sich auf zwei verschiedene Arten von Eigenschaften bezieht: die repräsentierten Reflektanzeigenschaften von Gegenständen und die qualitativen Eigenschaften unserer Farbwahrnehmungen, die als sinnliche Gegebenheitsweisen erst…Read more
-
1108The phenomenology of attitudes and the salience of rational role and determinationPhilosophical Explorations 19 (2): 114-137. 2016.The recent debate on cognitive phenomenology has largely focused on phenomenal aspects connected to the content of thoughts. By contrasts, aspects pertaining to their attitude have often been neglected, despite the fact that they are distinctive of the mental kind of thought concerned and, moreover, also present in experiences and thus less contentious than purely cognitive aspects. My main goal is to identify two central and closely related aspects of attitude that are phenomenologically salien…Read more
-
5911HumeIn Amy Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Imagination, Routledge. pp. 40-54. 2016.This chapter overviews Hume’s thoughts on the nature and role of imagining and focusses primarily on three important distinctions that Hume draws among our conscious mental episodes: (i) between impressions and ideas; (ii) between ideas of the memory and ideas of the imagination; and (iii), among the ideas of the imagination, between ideas of the judgement and ideas of the fancy. In addition, the chapter considers Hume’s views on the imagination as a faculty of producing ideas, as well as on the…Read more
-
687Transparency and Imagining SeeingPhilosophical Explorations 13 (3): 173-200. 2010.In his paper, The Transparency of Experience, M.G.F. Martin has put forward a well- known – though not always equally well understood – argument for the disjunctivist, and against the intentional, approach to perceptual experiences. In this article, I intend to do four things: (i) to present the details of Martin’s complex argument; (ii) to defend its soundness against orthodox intentionalism; (iii) to show how Martin’s argument speaks as much in favour of experiential intentionalism as it speak…Read more
-
517Hume and the Recreative ImaginationRivista di Estetica 53 25-54. 2013.Two particular approaches to the imagination as a recreative capacity have recently gained prominence: neo-Humeanism and simulationatism. According to neo-Humeanism, imaginings have cognitions as a constitutive part of their representational contents; while simulationalists maintain that, in imagining, we essentially simulate the occurrence of certain cognitive states. Two other kinds of constitutive dependence, that figure regularly in the debate, concern the necessity of cognitions for, respe…Read more
-
512Conceptual qualia and communicationIn Gilian Crampton Smith (ed.), The Foundations of Interaction Design, . pp. 1-14. 2005.The claim that consciousness is propositional has be widely debated in the past. For instance, it has been discussed whether consciousness is always propositional, whether all propositional consciousness is linguistic, whether propositional consciousness is always articulated, or whether there can be non-articulated propositions. In contrast, the question of whether propositions are conscious has not very often been the focus of attention.
-
419Transparency and Imagining SeeingIn Marcus Willaschek (ed.), Disjunctivism – Disjunctive Accounts in Epistemology and in the Philosophy of Perception, Routledge. pp. 5-32. 2013.In his paper, The Transparency of Experience, M.G.F. Martin has put forward a well- known – though not always equally well understood – argument for the disjunctivist, and against the intentional, approach to perceptual experiences. In this article, I intend to do four things: (i) to present the details of Martin’s complex argument; (ii) to defend its soundness against orthodox intentionalism; (iii) to show how Martin’s argument speaks as much in favour of experiential intentionalism as it speak…Read more
-
755Review: Hegel's Theory of Imagination (review)British Journal of Aesthetics 45 (3): 309-311. 2005.
-
830Judging and the scope of mental agencyIn Lucy O'Brien & Matthew Soteriou (eds.), Mental actions, Oxford University Press. pp. 38-71. 2009.What is the scope of our conscious mental agency, and how do we acquire self-knowledge of it? Both questions are addressed through an investigation of what best explains our inability to form judgemental thoughts in direct response to practical reasons. Contrary to what Williams and others have argued, it cannot be their subjection to a truth norm, given that our failure to adhere to such a norm need not undermine their status as judgemental. Instead, it is argued that we cannot form judgements …Read more
-
60Editorial - Aesthetic Reasons and Aesthetic ObligationsEstetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 54 (1): 3-19. 2017.
-
756The Phenomenal Presence of Perceptual ReasonsIn Fabian Dorsch & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Phenomenal Presence, Oxford University Press. 2018.Doxasticism about our awareness of normative (i.e. justifying) reasons – the view that we can recognise reasons for forming attitudes or performing actions only by means of normative judgements or beliefs – is incompatible with the following triad of claims: (1) Being motivated (i.e. forming attitudes or performing actions for a motive) requires responding to and, hence, recognising a relevant reason. (2) Infants are capable of being motivated. (3) Infants are incapable of normative judgement or…Read more
-
5775Knowledge by Imagination - How Imaginative Experience Can Ground KnowledgeTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 35 (3): 87-116. 2016.In this article, I defend the view that we can acquire factual knowledge – that is, contingent propositional knowledge about certain (perceivable) aspects of reality – on the basis of imaginative experience. More specifically, I argue that, under suitable circumstances, imaginative experiences can rationally determine the propositional content of knowledge-constituting beliefs – though not their attitude of belief – in roughly the same way as perceptual experiences do in the case of perceptual k…Read more
-
400The Diversity of Disjunctivism (review)European Journal of Philosophy 19 (2): 304-314. 2011.In this review article, I introduce a classification of metaphysical and epistemological forms of disjunctivism and critically discuss the essays on disjunctivism in the philosophy of perception, the philosophy of action and epistemology that are published in Fiona Macpherson and Adrian Haddock’s collection 'Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge' (Oxford University Press, 2008).