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9Non-Perceptual Representational Immersion in Video Games: A Response to David Chalmers' 'Reality+'Philosophy and Technology. forthcoming.This article criticises David Chalmers’ ‘Reality+’ by interrogating its distinction of virtual reality (VR) from 2D, non-VR video games, a distinction made on the grounds that VR is immersive and these types of video games are not because immersion is a distinct characteristic of 3D perceptually represented VR. Building on the Balcerak Jacksons’ account of ‘representational immersion’, which they acknowledge has ‘perceptual’ and ‘non-perceptual’ elements, I develop an account of ‘non-perceptual …Read more
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17In the Face of DeathIn Warren Zevon and Philosophy: Beyond Reptile Wisdom, Carus Books. pp. 187-198. forthcoming.Warren Zevon’s musical career, though brilliant throughout, is particularly notable for its ending: diagnosed with a terminal illness, Zevon refused a potentially debilitating medical treatment to put his remaining energy into recording another album. The resulting record –2003’s 'The Wind' – was in many ways the perfect farewell: songs of dirty, dark, uncompromising, country-tinged rock, blistering guitar solos, all mixed with intelligent, black-as-coal gallows humour. But it was also a moving …Read more
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96Interpreting Dwarf Fortress: Finitude, Absurdity, and NarrativeGames and Culture 1 (OnlineFirst). 2023.This paper interprets the influential colony management simulator ‘Dwarf Fortress’ existentially, in terms of finitude, absurdity, and narrative. It applies Aarseth/Möring’s proposed method of game interpretation, adopting their definition of ‘cybermedia’ as a generalized game ontology, then providing a specialized ontology of ‘Dwarf Fortress’ which describes its genre and salient gameplay features, incorporating Ian Bogost’s concept of ‘procedural rhetoric’. It then gives an existentialist inte…Read more
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158Lyotard, 'The Differend', and the Philosophy of Deep DisagreementSynthese 200 (359): 1-19. 2022.This paper examines the philosophy of Jean-Francois Lyotard in relation to the analytic philosophy of deep disagreement. It argues not just that his work has relevance for this debate, but that it offers a challenge to the ‘epistemic paradigm’ present in its academic literature, represented by the two most prominent sets of theories within it – the ‘fundamental epistemic principle’ and ‘hinge epistemology’ views, arguably most strongly represented by Michael Lynch and Duncan Pritchard, respectiv…Read more
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50Poststructuralism and Transcendental Philosophy: Derrida’s DifféranceKritikos 1 (Spring). 2022.This paper examines how Jacques Derrida appropriates and deepens Immanuel Kant’s transcendental philosophy. In Derrida’s early essay on différance, Kant is conspicuous in his absence. One of the essay’s key aims is to re-think space and time, drawing on the work of Heidegger, Hegel, Nietzsche, and several others to do so. It is therefore curious that Kant is never mentioned, especially because the method and conceptual framework Derrida ends up adopting owes a huge debt to transcendental argumen…Read more
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81Becoming Afflicted, Becoming Virtuous: 'Darkest Dungeon' and the Human Response to StressGames and Culture 18 (2): 19. 2022.The developers of Red Hook Studios’ 2016 gothic horror game ‘Darkest Dungeon’ said that they wanted to ‘capture the human response to stress’. This paper analyses how the game does this with its ‘stress’, ‘affliction’ and ‘virtue’ mechanics. With reference to research literature on stress, I show how these mechanics, which could easily have been cheap gimmicks, approach the topic of stress with admirable detail, offering a complex reflection on the various aspects, positive and negative, of seve…Read more
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7Review of 'Robert C. Scharff: Heidegger Becoming Phenomenological: Interpreting Husserl Through Dilthey, 1916-1925' (review)Phenomenological Reviews. 2019.
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1595Interpreting and Developing Heidegger’s Analytic of Dasein as Philosophical Anthropology, with a Focus on the ‘Revelatory Moods’ of Anxiety, Boredom and JoyDissertation, Central European University. 2021.This dissertation articulates and defends a conception of philosophical anthropology by reading Martin Heidegger’s ‘analytic of Dasein’ as an exemplary case of it and developing its account of anxiety and boredom. I define philosophical anthropology in distinction to empirical anthropology, which I argue is concerned with specificity and difference. Anthropology investigates human beings and their societies in their historical specificity, situated in context, thereby contributing to the underst…Read more
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60Gamesmanship in Professional Darts: A Response to Leota, Turp and HoweSport, Ethics and Philosophy 16 (4): 489-502. 2021.This paper evaluates Howe and Leota/Turp's accounts of gamesmanship by examining case studies of gamesmanship from professional darts. While Leota and Turp make some substantial improvements on Howe in reconceptualizing the idea of sporting excellence, I claim that there are points of criticism that must be addressed, notably in their claims that sports do not prescribe necessary skills, and that it is impossible to distinguish between legitimate sporting strategy unaccounted for by the rules on…Read more
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301Heidegger's Philosophical Anthropology of MoodsHungarian Philosophical Review 2020 (Self, Narrativity, Emotions): 15. 2020.Martin Heidegger often and emphatically claimed that his work, especially in his masterpiece Being and Time, was not philosophical anthropology. He conceived of his project as ‘fundamental ontology’, and argued that because it is singularly concerned with the question of the meaning of Being in general (and not ‘human being’), this precluded him from being engaged in philosophical anthropology. This is a claim we should find puzzling because at the very heart of Heidegger’s project is an analysi…Read more
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279Anxiety and Boredom in the Covid-19 Crisis: A Heideggerian AnalysisBiblioteca Della Libertà (Covid-19: A Global Challenge): 22. 2020.Martin Heidegger gave a penetrating account of the different varieties of the moods of anxiety and boredom, which have no doubt been prevalent in the human experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. Heidegger theorized a particular type of anxiety and boredom as what I call 'revelatory moods', intense affective experiences that involve an encounter with our existence as such, our world, freedom and responsibility for the creation and proliferation of significance. Revelatory moods contain much emancip…Read more
Areas of Specialization
1 more
Continental Philosophy |
Existentialism |
Phenomenology |
Poststructuralism |
Continental Psychoanalysis |
Martin Heidegger |
Areas of Interest
1 more
Continental Philosophy |
Existentialism |
Phenomenology |
Poststructuralism |
Continental Psychoanalysis |
Martin Heidegger |