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777A simple view of colourIn John Haldane & Crispin Wright (eds.), Reality, representation, and projection, Oxford University Press. pp. 257-268. 1993.Physics tells us what is objectively there. It has no place for the colours of things. So colours are not objectively there. Hence, if there is such a thing at all, colour is mind-dependent. This argument forms the background to disputes over whether common sense makes a mistake about colours. It is assumed that..
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538Consciousness and ReferenceIn Brian McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind, Oxford University Press. 2007.
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311Berkeley's puzzleIn Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford University Press. 2002.But say you,surely there is nothing easier than to imagine trees,for instance,in a park, or books existing in a closet, and nobody by to perceive them. I answer, you may so, there is no dif?culty in it:but what is all this,I beseech you,more than framing in your mind certain ideas which you call books and trees, and at the same time omitting to frame the idea of anyone that may perceive them? But do you not yourself perceive or think of them all the while? This therefore is nothing to the purpos…Read more
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110Visual Attention and the Epistemic Role of AttentionIn Christopher Mole, Declan Smithies & Wayne Wu (eds.), Attention: Philosophical and Psychological Essays, Oxford University Press. pp. 323. 2011.
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10A simple view of colourIn John Haldane & Crispin Wright (eds.), Reality, representation, and projection, Oxford University Press. pp. 257-268. 1993.Physics tells us what is objectively there. It has no place for the colours of things. So colours are not objectively there. Hence, if there is such a thing at all, colour is mind-dependent. This argument forms the background to disputes over whether common sense makes a mistake about colours. It is assumed that..
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Information processing, phenomenal consciousness, and Molyneux's questionIn José Luis Bermúdez (ed.), Thought, reference, and experience: themes from the philosophy of Gareth Evans, Clarendon Press. 2005.
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4Berkeley's puzzleIn Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford University Press. 2002.But say you,surely there is nothing easier than to imagine trees,for instance,in a park, or books existing in a closet, and nobody by to perceive them. I answer, you may so, there is no dif?culty in it:but what is all this,I beseech you,more than framing in your mind certain ideas which you call books and trees, and at the same time omitting to frame the idea of anyone that may perceive them? But do you not yourself perceive or think of them all the while? This therefore is nothing to the purpos…Read more
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257Molyneux's questionPhilosophical Issues 7 301-318. 1996.in Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Perception (Philosophical Issues vol. 7) (Atascadero: Ridgeview 1996), 301-318, with replies by Brian Loar and Kirk Ludwig
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358Sense, Reference and Selective AttentionAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 71 (71): 55-98. 1997.Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 71 (1997), 55-74, with a reply by Michael Martin
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7Causation in psychiatryIn Kenneth S. Kendler & Josef Parnas (eds.), Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry: Explanation, Phenomenology, and Nosology, Johns Hopkins University Press. 2008.
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1Visual Attention and the Epistemic Role of AttentionIn Christopher Mole, Declan Smithies & Wayne Wu (eds.), Attention: Philosophical and Psychological Essays, Oxford University Press. pp. 323. 2011.
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127The simple view of colourIn Alex Byrne & David R. Hilbert (eds.), Readings on Color, Volume 1: The Philosophy of Color, Mit Press. pp. 177-90. 1997.Physics tells us what is objectively there. It has no place for the colours of things. So colours are not objectively there. Hence, if there is such a thing at all, colour is mind-dependent. This argument forms the background to disputes over whether common sense makes a mistake about colours. It is assumed that..
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131Molyneux's question and cognitive impenetrabilityIn Athanassios Raftopoulos (ed.), Cognitive Penetrabiity of Perception: Attention, Strategies and Bottom-Up Constraints, Nova Science. 2005.
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770A variational approach to niche constructionJournals of the Royal Society Interface 15 1-14. 2018.In evolutionary biology, niche construction is sometimes described as a genuine evolutionary process whereby organisms, through their activities and regulatory mechanisms, modify their environment such as to steer their own evolutionary trajectory, and that of other species. There is ongoing debate, however, on the extent to which niche construction ought to be considered a bona fide evolutionary force, on a par with natural selection. Recent formulations of the variational free-energy principle…Read more
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108The First Person, Embodiment, and the Certainty that One ExistsThe Monist 87 (4): 475-488. 2004.Descartes made vivid that my certainty as to which psychological states are mine seems to outrun by far my certainty about which body is mine, or even that I have a body. This can make it seem compelling that in our ordinary use of the first person, we are referring to purely psychological subjects, which just so happen to be specially related to particular bodies. This would explain why your certainty about your ownership of a particular psychological life can outrun your certainty about your o…Read more
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216My project in this paper is to extend the interventionist analysis of causation to give an account of causation in psychology. Many aspects of empirical investigation into psychological causation fit straightforwardly into the interventionist framework. I address three problems. First, the problem of explaining what it is for a causal relation to be properly psychological rather than merely biological. Second, the problem of rational causation: how it is that reasons can be causes. Finally, I lo…Read more
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250An interventionist approach to causation in psychologyIn Alison Gopnik & Laura Schulz (eds.), Causal learning: psychology, philosophy, and computation, Oxford University Press. pp. 58--66. 2007.
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10Consciousness and ReferenceIn Brian McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind, Oxford University Press. 2007.in Brian McLaughlin and Ansgar Beckermann (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind (Oxford, Oxford University Press, in press)
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17New Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Dummett (edited book)Atlanta: Rodopi. 1998.Ever since the publication of 'Truth' in 1959 Sir Michael Dummett has been acknowledged as one of the most profoundly creative and influential of contemporary philosophers. His contributions to the philosophy of thought and language, logic, the philosophy of mathematics, and metaphysics have set the terms of some of most fruitful discussions in philosophy. His work on Frege stands unparalleled, both as landmark in the history of philosophy and as a deep reflection on the defining commitments of …Read more
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176Cogito Ergo Sum: Christopher Peacocke and John Campbell: II—Lichtenberg and the CogitoProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 112 (3pt3): 361-378. 2012.Our use of ‘I’, or something like it, is implicated in our self-regarding emotions, in the concern to survive, and so seems basic to ordinary human life. But why does that pattern of use require a referring term? Don't Lichtenberg's formulations show how we could have our ordinary pattern of use here without the first person? I argue that what explains our compulsion to regard the first person as a referring term is our ordinary causal thinking, which requires us to find a persisting object as t…Read more
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25Institutionnal Analysis and the Role of Ideas in Political EcnomyTheory and Society 27 (3): 377-409. 1998.
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480The Ownership of ThoughtsPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 9 (1): 35-39. 2002.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 35-39 [Access article in PDF] The Ownership of Thoughts John Campbell Keywords: schizophrenia, thought insertion, immunity to error through misidentification. SYDNEY SHOEMAKER FORMULATED a basic point about first-person, present-tense ascriptions of psychological states when he declared that they are, in general, immune to error through misidentification (Shoemaker 1984). Assuming Shoem…Read more
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356Schizophrenia, the space of reasons, and thinking as a motor processThe Monist 82 (4): 609-625. 1999.Ordinarily, if you say something like “I see a comet,” you might make a mistake about whether it is a comet that you see, but you could not be right about whether it is a comet but wrong about who is seeing it. There cannot be an “error of identification” in this case. In making a judgement like, “I see a comet,” there are not two steps, finding out who is seeing the thing and finding out what it is that is being seen, so that you could go wrong at either step. The only place to go wrong is in y…Read more
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97Sense and consciousnessIn Abraham Zvie Bar-On (ed.), Grazer Philosophische Studien, Distributed in the U.s.a. By Humanities Press. pp. 195-211. 1986.On a classical conception, knowing the sense of a proposition is knowing its truth-condition, rather than simply knowing how to verify the proposition, or how to find its implications (whether deductive implications or implications for action). But knowing the truth-condition of a proposition is not unrelated to your use of particular methods for verifying the proposition, or finding its implications. Rather, your knowledge of the truth-condition of the proposition has to justify the use of part…Read more
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35Joint Attention and the First PersonRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 43 123-136. 1998.It is sometimes said that ordinary linguistic exchange, in ordinary conversation, is a matter of securing and sustaining joint attention. The minimal condition for the success of the conversation is that the participants should be attending to the same things. So the psychologist Michael Tomasello writes, ‘I take it as axiomatic that when humans use language to communicate referentially they are attempting to manipulate the attention of another person or persons.’ I think that this is an extreme…Read more
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272Immunity to error through misidentification and the meaning of a referring termPhilosophical Topics 26 (1-2): 89-104. 1999.
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123A Straightforward Solution to Berkeley's PuzzleThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 18 (1): 31-49. 2012.
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599Reference and ConsciousnessOxford University Press. 2002.John Campbell investigates how consciousness of the world explains our ability to think about the world; how our ability to think about objects we can see depends on our capacity for conscious visual attention to those things. He illuminates classical problems about thought, reference, and experience by looking at the underlying psychological mechanisms on which conscious attention depends.
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88Causation in PsychologyHarvard University Press. 2020."A blab droid is a robot with a body shaped like a pizza box, a pair of treads, and a smiley face. Guided by an onboard video camera, it roams hotel lobbies and conference centers, asking questions in the voice of a seven-year-old. "Can you help me?" "What is the worst thing you've ever done?" "Who in the world do you love most?" People pour their hearts out in response. This droid prompts the question of what we can hope from social robots. Might they provide humanlike friendship? Philosopher J…Read more
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University of California, Los AngelesRegular Faculty
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Biology |