• René Descartes
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2018.
  •  93
    Theoretical Philosophy After 1781 (edited book)
    with Henry E. Allison, Peter Heath, and Michael Friedman
    Cambridge University Press. 2010.
    This volume, originally published in 2002, assembles the historical sequence of writings that Kant published between 1783 and 1796 to popularize, summarize, amplify and defend the doctrines of his masterpiece, the Critique of Pure Reason of 1781. The best known of them, the Prolegomena, is often recommended to beginning students, but the other texts are also vintage Kant and are important sources for a fully rounded picture of Kant's intellectual development. As with other volumes in the series …Read more
  •  3
    Animals
    In Janet Broughton & John Carriero (eds.), A Companion to Descartes, Blackwell. 2007.
    This chapter contains section titled: Status of Animals Origins of Animals Life, Health, and Function Sense and Cognition Are Descartes's Animals Unfeeling Machines? Descartes's Legacy References and Further Reading.
  •  6
    This chapter contains sections titled: Sense Perception as a Natural Process Metaphysical, Epistemological, and Functional Aspects of Perception Sense, Mind, and Knowledge in Seventeenth‐Century Rationalism.
  •  2
    3. The Senses and the Fleshless Eye: The Meditations as Cognitive Exercises
    In Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (ed.), Essays on Descartes’ Meditations, University of California Press. pp. 45-80. 1986.
  •  73
    A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, 2nd ed (review)
    Teaching Philosophy 6 (1): 76-78. 1983.
    Review of: John Losee, A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. 258 pages.
  •  2
    The Prolegomena and the Critiques of Pure Reason
    In Volker Gerhardt, Rolf-Peter Horstmann & Ralph Schumacher (eds.), Kant Und Die Berliner Aufklärung: Akten des Ix Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 185-208. 2001.
    This article first refines the question of Kant's relation to Hume's skepticism, and then considers the evidence for Kant's attitude toward Hume in three contexts: the A Critique, the Prolegomena, and the B Critique. My thesis is that in the A Critique Kant viewed skepticism positively, as a necessary reaction to dogmatism and a spur toward critique. In his initial statement of the critical philosophy Kant treated Hume as an ally in curbing dogmatism, but one who stopped short of what was reall…Read more
  •  40
    Gibson and Gestalt: (re)presentation, processing, and construction
    Synthese 198 (Suppl 9): 2213-2241. 2019.
    Seeking to avoid the typical binary choices between symbolic representations and no representations, or between functionally decomposable psychological processes and no psychological processes, or between direct perception of mind-independent physical properties and indirect perception of sense data, this article proposes that even a clear-thinking friend of Gibson can accept that perception of the environment is mediated by appearances and that such appearances are produced by functionally deco…Read more
  • Ch. 16. The emergence of psychology
    In W. J. Mander (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press. pp. 324-344. 2014.
    This chapter considers the development of experimental psychology as a distinct discipline from philosophy, a result that arrived more slowly in Britain than in Germany or the United States. The chapter first considers more closely the question of what it means to chart the ‘emergence’ of psychology as a separate discipline. It finds that the usual criteria applied by historians of psychologh, that a discipline arises through institutional structures such as professorships (a specialist career p…Read more
  • Mind and psychology in Descartes
    In Steven Nadler, Tad M. Schmaltz & Delphine Antoine-Mahut (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism, Oxford University Press. 2019.
  •  23
    The Senses and the History of Philosophy ed. by Brian Glenney and José Filipe Silva (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 59 (4): 696-697. 2021.
    This edited volume of newly commissioned papers aims to further understanding of the philosophy of perception and its history. It seeks a broad historical coverage, to include works outside the Western tradition and figures only newly prominent within the Western tradition. Its principal theme is the problem of perceptual error, which it asserts has been understudied, at least in antiquity and the middle ages, as has, allegedly, the history of theories of perception more generally. The individua…Read more
  •  837
    Wundt and “Higher Cognition”: Elements, Association, Apperception, and Experiment
    Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 10 (1): 48-75. 2020.
    Throughout his career, Wundt recognized Völkerpsychologie (VP) as (at first) ancillary to experimental psychology or (later) as its required complement. New scholarship from around 1979 highlighted this fact while claiming to correct a picture of Wundt as a pure associationist, attributed to Boring’s History of Experimental Psychology, by instead emphasizing apperception in Wundt’s scheme (sec. 2). The criticisms of Boring, summarized by Blumenthal in 1980, overshot the mark. Boring’s Wundt was…Read more
  •  27
    A construção da experiência perceptiva: o que isso quer dizer?
    Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 21 (2): 167-188. 2017.
    Abstract. Classical constructivists such as Rock and Hoffman contend that the processes of perception are intelligent and construct perceptual experience by going beyond the stimulus information or by creating a percept that deviates from the physical properties of the object. On these terms, Gibson’s theory of perception is anti-constructivist. After reviewing classical constructivism, this article maintains, first, that the phenomenology of visual space shows a deviation from physical spatial …Read more
  •  60
    Erik C. Banks, The Realistic Empiricism of Mach, James, and Russell: Neutral Monism Reconceived (review)
    Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 6 (5). 2018.
    Review of Erik C. Banks, The Realistic Empiricism of Mach, James, and Russell: Neutral Monism Reconceived
  •  485
    Review of THEO C. MEYERING, Historical Roots of Cognitive Science : The Rise of a Cognitive Theory of Perception from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century. Boston: Kluwer, xix + 250 pp. $69.00. Examines the author's interpretation of Aristotelian theories of perceptual cognition, early modern theories, and Helmholtz's theory.
  •  40
    Michael Friedman and Alfred Nordmann, eds. The Kantian Legacy in Nineteenth-Century Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. Pp. vi+370. $45.00 (review)
    Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 2 (1): 172-177. 2012.
    Review of: Michael Friedman and Alfred Nordmann, eds. The Kantian Legacy in Nineteenth-Century Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. Pp. vi+370. $45.00 (cloth).
  •  154
    This article considers Helmholtz’s relation to philosophy, including Fichte’s philosophy. Recent interpreters find Fichtean influence on Helmholtz, especially concerning the role of voluntary movement in distinguishing subject from object, or “I” from “not-I.” After examining Helmholtz’s statements about Fichte, the article describes Fichte’s ego-doctrine and asks whether Helmholtz could accept it into his sensory psychology. He could not accept Fichte’s core position, that an intrinsically acti…Read more
  •  60
    L’Homme in Psychology and Neuroscience
    In Stephen Gaukroger & Delphine Antoine-Mahut (eds.), Descartes' Treatise on Man and Its Reception, Springer. 2016.
    L’Homme presents what has been termed Descartes’ “physiological psychology”. It envisions and seeks to explain how the brain and nerves might yield situationally appropriate behavior through mechanical means. On occasion in the past 150 years, this aim has been recognized, described, and praised. Still, acknowledgement of this aspect of Descartes’ writing has been spotty in histories of neuroscience and histories of psychology. In recent years, there has been something of a resurgence. This chap…Read more
  •  77
    Descartes: new thoughts on the senses
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (3): 443-464. 2017.
    Descartes analysed the mind into various faculties or powers, including pure intellect, imagination, senses, and will. This article focuses on his account of the sensory power, in relation to its Aristotelian background. Descartes accepted from the Aristotelians that the senses serve to preserve the body by detecting benefits and harms. He rejected the scholastic Aristotelian sensory ontology of resembling species, or ‘forms without matter’. For the visual sense, Descartes offered a mechanistic …Read more
  •  426
    A Theory Of Method By Husain Sarkar (review)
    Isis 77 (1): 125-125. 1986.
    Review of: Husain Sarkar. A Theory of Method. xvii+ 229 pp., bibl., indexes. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1983. $29.95. The subject of this book is best stated in the author's words: "A theory is about the world; a method is about theories; and, a theory of method is about methods" (p. 1). A theory of method seeks to offer a general framework within which to choose among methods. Through critical examination of the positions of Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos, and Larry…Read more
  •  516
    Review of: Menachem Fisch; Simon Schaffer (Editors). William Whewell: A Composite Portrait. xiv + 403 pp., bibl., index. Oxford: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1991. $98.
  •  456
    Review of: Marinus Dirk Stafleu. Theories at Work: On the Structure and Functioning of Theories in Science, in Particular during the Copernican Revolution. (Christian Studies Today.) 310 pp., bibl., index. Lanham, Md./New York: University Press of America, 1987; Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies, 1987. $28.75 (cloth); $16.50 (paper).
  •  179
    Vorlesungsverzeichnisse der Universität Königsberg (review)
    Isis 93 (4): 693-694. 2002.
    Review of Michael Oberhausen; Riccardo Pozzo (Editors). Vorlesungsverzeichnisse der Universitaet Koenigsberg (1720–1804). (Forschungen und Materialen zur Universitaetsgeschichte, 1.) 2 volumes. lxviii, 778 pp., illus., indexes. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1999.
  •  349
    Review of Desmond M. Clarke. Descartes: A Biography. xi + 507 pp., apps., figs., bibl., index. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. $40 (cloth).; Richard Watson, Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Life of René Descartes. viii + 375 pp., figs., bibl., index. Boston: David R. Godine, 2002. $35 (cloth).