•  1102
    The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to surface new and puzzling manifestations of the culture wars between liberals and conservatives, especially in the US. One such manifestation is the one centered around mask-wearing as a way to protect others from viral infection. In public spaces, mask-wearing has become a signal as to whether one is a liberal or a conservative. Liberals tend to wear the mask and condemn as immoral conservatives, who tend not to wear it. I argue that the liberal attitude does…Read more
  •  598
    Powers and the mind–body problem
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 18 (1). 2010.
    This paper proposes a new line of attack on the conceivability argument for mind-body property dualism, based on the causal account of properties, according to which properties have their conditional powers essentially. It is argued that the epistemic possibility of physical but not phenomenal duplicates of actuality is identical to a metaphysical possibility, but irrelevant for establishing the falsity of physicalism. The proposed attack is in many ways inspired by a standard, broadly Kripkean …Read more
  •  568
    The nature of shadows, from Yale to bilkent
    Philosophy 85 (2): 219-223. 2010.
    I discuss a solution to the Yale shadow puzzle, due to Roy Sorensen, based on the actual process theory of causation, and argue that it does not work in the case of a new version of the puzzle, which I call "the Bilkent shadow puzzle". I offer a picture of the ontology of shadows that constitute the basis for a new solution that uniformly applies to both puzzles.
  •  548
    Shadows of constitution
    The Monist 90 (3): 415-431. 2007.
    Mainstream metaphysics has been preoccupied by inquiring into the nature of major kinds of entities, like objects, properties and events, while avoiding minor entities, like shadows or holes. However, one might want to hope that dealing with such minor entities could be profitable for even solving puzzles about major entities. I propose a new ontological puzzle, the Shadow of Constitution Puzzle, incorporating the old puzzle of material constitution, with shadows in the role of the minor entity …Read more
  •  513
    The “brain in a vat” thought experiment is presented and refuted by appeal to the intuitiveness of what the author informally calls “the eye for an eye principle”, namely: Conscious mental states typically involved in sensory processes can conceivably successfully be brought about by direct stimulation of the brain, and in all such cases the utilized stimulus field will be in the relevant sense equivalent to the actual PNS or part of it thereof. In the second section, four classic problems of Fu…Read more
  •  453
    The author presents an autobiographical story of serious peripheral motor nerve damage resulting from chemotoxicity induced as a side effect of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma treatment. The first-person, phenomenological account of the condition naturally leads to philosophical questions about consciousness, felt presence of oneself all over and within one’s body, and the felt constitutiveness of peripheral processes to one’s mental life. The first-person data only fit well with a philosophical approach to …Read more
  •  447
    The dictionary tells you that a shadow is a dark area or volume caused by an opaque object blocking some light. The definition is correct, but we need to clarify a couple of its elements: darkness and blocking. The clarification leads to the view that to see a shadow is a degree of failing to see a surface. I will also argue that seeing a silhouette (i.e. a backlit object) is a particular way of failing to see an object. Thus visual discriminability is not sufficient for seeing. Finally, I argue…Read more
  •  446
    A New Argument for Mind–Brain Identity
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 62 (3): 489-517. 2011.
    In this article, I undertake the tasks: (i) of reconsidering Feigl’s notion of a ‘nomological dangler’ in light of recent discussion about the viability of accommodating phenomenal properties, or qualia, within a physicalist picture of reality; and (ii) of constructing an argument to the effect that nomological danglers, including the way qualia are understood to be related to brain states by contemporary dualists, are extremely unlikely. I offer a probabilistic argument to the effect that merel…Read more
  •  326
    The reappearing act
    Acta Analytica 24 (1). 2009.
    In his latest book, Roy Sorensen offers a solution to a puzzle he put forward in an earlier article -The Disappearing Act. The puzzle involves various question about how the causal theory perception is to be applied to the case of seeing shadows. Sorensen argues that the puzzle should be taken as bringing out a new way of seeing shadows. I point out a problem for Sorensen’s solution, and offer and defend an alternative view, according to which the puzzle is to be interpreted as showing a new w…Read more
  •  291
    Silencing the Argument from Hallucination
    In Fiona MacPherson & Dimitris Platchias (eds.), Hallucination (MIT Press), Mit Press. 2013.
    Ordinary people tend to be realists regarding perceptual experience, that is, they take perceiving the environment as a direct, unmediated, straightforward access to a mindindependent reality. Not so for (ordinary) philosophers. The empiricist influence on the philosophy of perception, in analytic philosophy at least, made the problem of perception synonymous with the view that realism is untenable. Admitting the problem (and trying to offer a view on it) is tantamount to rejecting ordinary peop…Read more
  •  290
    Excluding exclusion: the natural(istic) dualist approach
    Philosophical Explorations 11 (1): 67-78. 2008.
    The exclusion problem for mental causation is one of the most discussed puzzles in the mind–body literature. There has been a general agreement among philosophers, especially because most of them are committed to some form of physicalism, that the dualist cannot escape the exclusion problem. I argue that a proper understanding of dualism – its form, commitments, and intuitions – makes the exclusion problem irrelevant from a dualist perspective. The paper proposes a dualist approach, based on a t…Read more
  •  289
    Should we fear quantum torment?
    Ratio 25 (3): 249-259. 2012.
    The prospect, in terms of subjective expectations, of immortality under the no-collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics is certain, as pointed out by several authors, both physicists and, more recently, philosophers. The argument, known as quantum suicide, or quantum immortality, has received some critical discussion, but there hasn't been any questioning of David Lewis's point that there is a terrifying corollary to the argument, namely, that we should expect to live forever in a crippled, …Read more
  •  273
    Hesperus is phosphorus, indeed
    Axiomathes 19 (2): 223-224. 2009.
    Tobias Hansson Wahlberg argues in a recent article (2009) that the truth of “Hesperus is Phosphorus” depends on the assumption that the endurance theory of persistence is true. The statement is not true (or at least can reasonably be doubted), he argues, if one assumes (a) the theory of persistence according to which objects are four-dimensional entities, persisting through perdurance, i.e. by having temporal parts that are numerically distinct, and (b) the thesis of unrestricted mereological co…Read more
  •  261
    Physical Constituents of Qualia
    Philosophical Studies 116 (2): 103-131. 2003.
    In this paper I propose a defense of a posteriori materialism.Problems with a posteriori identity materialism are identified,and a materialism based on composition, not identity, is proposed.The main task for such a proposal is to account for the relationbetween physical and phenomenal properties. Composition does notseem to be fit as a relation between properties, but I offer apeculiar way to understand property-composition, based on somerecent ideas in the literature on ontology. Finally, I pr…Read more
  •  237
    If everything exists, then it looks, prima facie, as if talking about nothing is equivalent to not talking about anything. However, we appear as talking or thinking about particular nothings, that is, about particular items that are not among the existents. How to explain this phenomenon? One way is to deny that everything exists, and consequently to be ontologically committed to nonexistent “objects”. Another way is to deny that the process of thinking about such nonexistents is a genuine singu…Read more
  •  176
    The solo numero paradox
    American Philosophical Quarterly 48 (4): 347. 2011.
    Leibniz notoriously insisted that no two individuals differ solo numero, that is, by being primitively distinct, without differing in some property. The details of Leibniz’s own way of understanding and defending the principle –known as the principle of identity of indiscernibles (henceforth ‘the Principle’)—is a matter of much debate. However, in contemporary metaphysics an equally notorious and discussed issue relates to a case put forward by Max Black (1952) as a counter-example to any necess…Read more
  •  125
    The book offers a novel approach to the idea of divinity in guise of a philosophical doctrine called 'Logical Pantheism', according to which the only way to establish the existence of God undeniably is by equating God with Logical Space.
  •  123
    Recent discussion, both in the academia-related popular media and in some professional academic venues, about the current state and role of mainstream Anglo-American analytic philosophy among the humanities, has revealed a certain uneasiness expressed by both champions of this approach and traditional adversaries of it regarding its perceived isolation from the other fields of humanities. The fiercer critics go as far as to claim that the image of this type of philosophizing in the contemporary …Read more
  •  110
    (Con)fusing the un(con)fusable
    Analysis 63 (3). 2003.
  •  53
    Logical Pantheism
    Philosophy Compass 17 (7). 2022.
    Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 7, July 2022.
  •  50
    Preteriception: memory as past-perception
    Synthese 198 (11): 10765-10792. 2020.
    The paper explicates and defends a direct realist view of episodic memory as pastperception, on the model of the more prominent direct realism about perception. First, a number of extant allegedly direct realist accounts are critically assessed, then the slogan that memory is past-perception is explained, defended against objections, and compared to extant rival views. Consequently, it is argued that direct realism about memory is a coherent and defensible view, and an attractive alternative to …Read more
  •  48
    Body, skill, and look: is bodybuilding a sport?
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 17 (2): 401-410. 2018.
    I argue that bodybuilding should not qualify as a sport, given that at the competition stage it lacks an essential feature of sports, namely, skillful activity. Based on the classic distinction between Leib and Körper in phenomenology, I argue that bodybuilding competition’s sole purpose is to present the Körper, whereas sports are about manifestations of Leib. I consider several objections to this analysis, after which I conclude that bodybuilding is an endeavor closer to both beauty competitio…Read more
  •  44
    Philosophers of mind, both in the conceptual analysis tradition and in the empirical informed school, have been implicitly neglecting the potential conceptual role of the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) in understanding sensory and perceptual states. Instead, the philosophical as well as the neuroscientific literature has been assuming that it is the Central Nervous System (CNS) alone, and more exactly the brain, that should prima facie be taken as conceptually and empirically crucial for a phil…Read more
  •  42
    Physicalism and Its Discontents (review)
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 2 (3): 363-370. 2002.
  •  39
    Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind (review)
    Philosophical Review 128 (1): 138-141. 2019.