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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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323Transparency vs. revelation in color perceptionPhilosophical Topics 33 (1): 105-115. 2005.What knowledge of the colors does perception of the colors provide? My first aim in this essay is to characterize the way in which color experience seems to provide knowledge of colors. This in turn tells us something about what it takes for there to be colors. Color experience provides knowledge of the aspect of the world that is being acted on when we, or some external force, act on the color of an object and thus make a difference to the experiences of people looking at it. It is in this sens…Read more
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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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303Sensorimotor Knowledge and Naïve Realism (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3). 2008.No Abstract
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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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266Information-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.Ordinary common sense suggests that we have just one set of shape concepts that we apply indifferently on the bases of sight and touch. Yet we understand the shape concepts, we know what shape properties are, only because we have experience of shapes. And phenomenal experience of shape in vision and phenomenal experience of shape in touch seem to be quite different. So how can the shape concepts we grasp and use on the basis of vision be the same as the shape concepts we grasp and use on the bas…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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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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228Suppose your conscious life were surgically excised, but everything else left intact, what would you miss? In this situation you would not have the slightest idea what was going on. You would have no idea what there is in the world around you; what the grounds are of the potentialities and threats are that you are negotiating. Experience of your surroundings provides you with knowledge of what is there: with your initial base of knowledge of what the things are that you are thinking and talking …Read more
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216What’s the Role of Spatial Awareness in Visual Perception of Objects?Mind and Language 22 (5). 2007.I set out two theses. The first is Lynn Robertson’s: (a) spatial awareness is a cause of object perception. A natural counterpoint is: (b) spatial awareness is a cause of your ability to make accurate verbal reports about a perceived object. Zenon Pylyshyn has criticized both. I argue that nonetheless, the burden of the evidence supports both (a) and (b). Finally, I argue conscious visual perception of an object has a different causal role to both: (i) non-conscious perception of the object, and…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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190Joint attention and common knowledgeIn Naomi Eilan, Christoph Hoerl, Teresa McCormack & Johannes Roessler (eds.), Joint Attention: Communication and Other Minds: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology, Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 287--297. 2005.This chapter makes the case for a relational version of an experientialist view of joint attention. On an experientialist view of joint attention, shifting from solitary attention to joint attention involves a shift in the nature of your perceptual experience of the object attended to. A relational analysis of such a view explains the latter shift in terms of the idea that, in joint attention, it is a constituent of your experience that the other person is, with you, jointly attending to the obj…Read more
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181Manipulating colour: Pounding an AlmondIn Tamar Szabo Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual experience, Oxford University Press. pp. 31--48. 2006.It seems a compelling idea that experience of colour plays some role in our having concepts of the various colours, but in trying to explain the role experience plays the first thing we have to describe is what sort of colour experience matters here. I will argue that the kind of experience that matters is conscious attention to the colours of objects as an aspect of them on which direct intervention is selectively possible. As I will explain this idea, it is a matter of being able to use experi…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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156Interventionism, control variables and causation in the qualitative worldPhilosophical Issues 18 (1): 426-445. 2008.No Abstract
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143Does knowledge of material objects depend on spatial perception? Comments on Quassim Cassam's the possibility of knowledgeAnalysis 69 (2): 309-317. 2009.1. The spatial perception requirementCassam surveys arguments for what he calls the ‘Spatial Perception Requirement’ . This is the following principle: " SPR: In order to perceive that something is the case and thereby to know that it is the case one must be capable of spatial perception. " A couple of preliminary glosses. By ‘spatial perception’ Cassam means either perception of location, or perception of specifically spatial properties of an object, such as its size and shape. Second, Cassam t…Read more
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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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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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123A Straightforward Solution to Berkeley's PuzzleThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 18 (1): 31-49. 2012.
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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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University of California, Los AngelesRegular Faculty
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Biology |