•  455
    The transparency of experience and the neuroscience of attention
    with Assaf Weksler and Zohar Z. Bronfman
    Synthese 198 (5): 4709-4730. 2019.
    According to the thesis of transparency, subjects can attend only to the representational content of perceptual experience, never to the intrinsic properties of experience that carry this representational content, i.e., to “mental paint.” So far, arguments for and against transparency were conducted from the armchair, relying mainly on introspective observations. In this paper, we argue in favor of transparency, relying on the cognitive neuroscience of attention. We present a trilemma to those w…Read more
  •  92
    The Role of Valence in Perception: An ARTistic Treatment
    Philosophical Review 130 (4): 481-531. 2021.
    Attempts to account for the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences have so far largely focused on their sensory aspects. The first aim of this article is to support the claim that phenomenal character has another, significant, aspect—the phenomenal realm is suffused with valence. What it’s like to undergo perceptual experiences—from pains to supposedly “neutral” visual experiences—standardly feels good or bad to some degree. The second aim is to argue, by appealing to theoretical and emp…Read more
  •  484
    The question of whether conscious experience is restricted by cognitive access and exhausted by report, or whether it overflows it—comprising more information than can be reported—is hotly debated. Recently, we provided evidence in favor of Overflow, showing that observers discriminated the color‐diversity (CD) of letters in an array, while their working‐memory and attention were dedicated to encoding and reporting a set of cued letters. An alternative interpretation is that CD‐discriminations d…Read more
  •  119
    Not Only a Messenger: Towards an Attitudinal‐Representational Theory of Pain
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (2): 382-408. 2018.
    The main goal of this paper is to present a theory of the most salient aspect of the phenomenal character of pain – namely, the painfulness of pain or its negative affective quality. This task involves developing an account of the evaluative structure of pain, according to which painfulness is constituted by a frustrated conative attitude that is directed towards the bodily condition the obtaining of which the pain represents. The argument for the proposed Attitudinal-Representational Theory of …Read more
  •  1
    Current theories of phenomenal consciousness---theories, that is, of the felt or qualitative aspect of mental states---are often accused of leaving out the essential features of this phenomenon. Moreover, the opponents of these theories typically hold that their failure is not accidental. They argue either that the problem of phenomenal consciousness is unsolvable, or that we still lack even the conceptual resources needed for its solution. My dissertation challenges both the adequacy of current…Read more
  •  82
    The scientific untraceability of phenomenal consciousness
    Philosophia 36 (4): 509-529. 2008.
    It is a common conviction among philosophers who hold that phenomenal properties, qualia, are distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional properties, that it is possible to trace the neural correlates of these properties. The main purpose of this paper is to present a challenge to this view, and to show that if “non-cognitive” phenomenal properties exist at all, they lie beyond the reach of neuroscience. In the final section it will be suggested that they also lie beyond the reach of…Read more
  •  148
    Killing the Messenger: Representationalism and the Painfulness of Pain
    Philosophical Quarterly 63 (252): 509-519. 2013.
    According to strong representationalism it is in virtue of having a particular representational content that an experience has the specific phenomenal character that it has. This paper argues that representationalism does not have the resources to explain the most salient aspect of the phenomenal character of pain – it is bound to leave out the painfulness of pain or its negative affect. Its central argument proceeds by analysing the rationalising role of pains. According to it, representational…Read more
  •  7
    Semantic Innateness
    Analysis and Metaphysics 7 13-32. 2008.
    Various objections have been raised against the thesis of semantic innateness – the view that all (or most) of our concepts are innate – and the arguments in its favor. Its main contemporary advocate, Jerry Fodor, no longer adheres to this radical view. Yet the issue is still alive. The objections have not been very persuasive, and Fodor's own response to his argument is both controversial and involves a high price. This paper first explicates this view, exposes its radical nature, and presents …Read more
  •  134
    Against Perceptual Conceptualism
    with Hilary Putnam
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 24 (1): 1-25. 2016.
    This paper is concerned with the question of whether mature human experience is thoroughly conceptual, or whether it involves non-conceptual elements or layers. It has two central goals. The first goal is methodological. It aims to establish that that question is, to a large extent, an empirical question. The question cannot be answered by appealing to purely a priori and transcendental considerations. The second goal is to argue, inter alia by relying on empirical findings, that the view known …Read more
  •  96
    Motivational Cognitivism and the Argument from Direction of Fit
    Philosophical Studies 127 (3): 561-580. 2006.
    An important argument for the belief-desire thesis is based on the idea that an agent can be motivated to act only if her mental states include one which aims at changing the world, that is, one with a “world-to-mind”, or “telic”, direction of fit. Some cognitivists accept this claim, but argue that some beliefs, notably moral ones, have not only a “mind-to-world”, or “thetic”, direction of fit, but also a telic one. The paper first argues that this cognitivist reply is deficient, for only the “…Read more
  • Brandom on Kripke's Puzzle
    Logique Et Analyse 189 159-168. 2005.
  •  105
    Syntax, semantics, and intentional aspects
    Philosophical Papers 33 (1): 67-95. 2004.
    Abstract It is widely assumed that the meaning of at least some types of expressions involves more than their reference to objects, and hence that there may be co-referential expressions which differ in meaning. It is also widely assumed that ?syntax does not suffice for semantics?, i.e. that we cannot account for the fact that expressions have semantic properties in purely syntactical or computational terms. The main goal of the paper is to argue against a third related assumption, namely that …Read more
  • From causality to rigidity
    Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations 8 134-138. 2009.
  •  44
    Against Strong Cognitivism: An Argument from Caring
    Dialogue 54 (1): 139-158. 2015.
    According to ‘strong cognitivism’, all reasons for action are rooted in normative features that the motivated subject takes objects to have independently of her attitudes towards these objects. My main concern in this paper is to argue against strong cognitivism, that is, to establish the view that conative attitudes do provide subjects with reasons for action. My central argument to this effect is a top-down one that proceeds by an analysis of the complex phenomenon of caring and derives a conc…Read more
  •  64
    The view (held, e.g., by Davidson) that the having of beliefs and desires presupposes the having of reflective capacities is sometimes supported by appealing to the idea that the concept of belief is a concept of a mental state which involves a normative aspect: beliefs can be “successful” or “unsuccessful” from the perspective of their possessors, and sometimes discarded in light of their “failure.” This naturally invites the idea that believers must be capable of reflecting on their beliefs. D…Read more
  •  43
    We See More Than We Can Report “Cost Free” Color Phenomenality Outside Focal Attention
    with Zohar Z. Bronfman, Noam Brezis, and Marius Usher
    Psychological Science 25 (7): 1394-1403. 2014.
    The distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness is a subject of intensive debate. According to one view, visual experience overflows the capacity of the attentional and working memory system: We see more than we can report. According to the opposed view, this perceived richness is an illusion—we are aware only of information that we can subsequently report. This debate remains unresolved because of the inevitable reliance on report, which is limited in capacity. To bypa…Read more
  •  99
    Although adverbialism is not given much attention in current discussions of phenomenal states, it remains of interest to philosophers who reject the representationalist view of such states, in suggesting an alternative to a problematic ‘act-property’ conception. We discuss adverbialism and the formalization Tye once offered for it, and criticize the semantics he proposed for this formalization. Our central claim is that Tye’s ontological purposes could have been met by a more minimal view, which…Read more
  •  7
    From Causality to Rigidity
    Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations 8 75-93. 2009.
    Kripke has argued that names are rigid designators, and that a name's reference is determined by a causal chain of a certain kind that connects an object with the name's use, thus making the name this object's name. He has not shown that there is a logical connection between these two theses of him. The purpose of the paper is to establish such a connection. It argues that on the assumption that names refer to objects in possible worlds other than the ones in which they are used, the causal theo…Read more
  •  140
    Against Strong Cognitivism: An Argument from the Particularity of Love
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (3): 563-596. 2014.
    According to the view we may term “strong cognitivism”, all reasons for action are rooted in normative features that the motivated subject takes objects to have independently of her attitudes towards these objects. The main concern of this paper is to argue against strong cognitivism, that is, to establish the view that conative attitudes do provide subjects with reasons for action. The central argument to this effect is a top-down argument: it proceeds by an analysis of the complex phenomenon o…Read more
  •  89
    Two debates loom large in current discussions on phenomenal consciousness. One debate concerns the relation between phenomenal character and representational content. Representationalism affirms, whereas “content separatism” denies, that phenomenal character is exhausted by representational content. Another debate concerns the relation between phenomenal consciousness and cognitive access. “Access separatism” affirms, whereas, e.g., the global workspace model denies, that there are phenomenally …Read more
  •  90
    The paper argues that Jackson's knowledge argument fails to undermine physicalist ontology. First, it is argued that, as this argument stands, it begs the question. Second, it is suggested that by supplementing the argument , this flaw can be remedied insofar as the argument is taken to be an argument against type-physicalism; however, this flaw cannot be remedied insofar as the argument is taken to be an argument against token-physicalism. The argument cannot be supplemented so as to show that …Read more