New York University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2009
New York City, New York, United States of America
  •  5
    Spinoza on Numerical Identity and Time
    In Yitzhak Y. Melamed (ed.), A Companion to Spinoza, Wiley. 2021.
    Spinoza claims that a person's body can be numerically identical over time, despite changes in its size, shape, and speed. This chapter argues that he would reject the Indiscernibility of Identicals. The Indiscernibility of Identicals is often taken to have profound implications for one's view of change. Spinoza seems to deny the existence of times, because he similarly classifies them as “beings of reason”. As Spinoza understands instantiation, whenever a property is instantiated by an object, …Read more
  •  149
    There is variation in how people perceive colors and other secondary qualities. The challenge of perceptual variation is to say whose perceptions are accurate. According to Sextus, Protagoras’ response is that all of our perceptions might be accurate. As this response is traditionally developed, it is difficult to explain color illusion and color constancy. This difficulty is due to a widespread assumption called perceptual atomism. This chapter argues that, if we want to develop Protagoras’ res…Read more
  •  181
    Aquinas, Ockham, and Burdan all claim that a person can be numerically identical over time, despite changes in size, shape, and color. How can we reconcile this with the Indiscernibility of Identicals, the principle that numerical identity implies indiscernibility across time? Almost all contemporary metaphysicians regard the Indiscernibility of Identicals as axiomatic. But I will argue that Aquinas, Ockham, and Burdan would reject it, perhaps in favor of a principle restricted to indiscernibili…Read more
  •  238
    Third‐personal evidence for perceptual confidence
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (1): 106-135. 2023.
    Perceptual Confidence is the view that our conscious perceptual experiences assign confidence. In previous papers, I motivated it using first-personal evidence (Morrison, 2016), and Jessie Munton motivated it using normative evidence (Munton, 2016). In this paper, I will consider the extent to which it is motivated by third-personal evidence. I will argue that the current evidence is supportive but not decisive. I will then describe experiments that might provide stronger evidence. I hope to the…Read more
  •  212
    Spinoza claims that a person’s mind and body are one and the same. But he also claims that minds think and do not move, whereas bodies move and do not think. How can we reconcile these claims? I believe that Spinoza is building on a traditional view about identity over time. According to this view, identity over time is linked to essence, so that a thing that is now resting is identical to a thing that was previously moving, provided that they share the same essence. I believe that Spinoza has a…Read more
  •  32
    Descartes on Numerical Identity and Time
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (2): 230-246. 2022.
    According to most contemporary philosophers, the Indiscernibility of Identicals is obviously true. We might therefore expect earlier philosophers to endorse it. But I will use a puzzle about identity over time to argue that Descartes would reject it.
  •  25
    Perceptual variation and ignorance
    Synthese 199 (1-2): 5145-5173. 2021.
    There is variation in how people perceive colors and other secondary qualities. The challenge of perceptual variation is to say whose perceptions are accurate. A natural and influential response is that, whenever there’s variation in two people’s perceptions, at most one of their perceptions is accurate. I will argue that this leads to an unacceptable kind of ignorance.
  •  466
    I suggest a solution to two puzzles in Spinoza's metaphysics. The first puzzle involves the mind and the idea of the mind, in particular how they can be identical, even though the mind thinks about bodies and nothing else, whereas the idea of the mind thinks about ideas and nothing else. The second puzzle involves the mind and the idea of a thing that belongs to an unknown attribute, in particular how they can be identical, even though the mind thinks about bodies and nothing else, whereas th…Read more
  •  154
    Truth in the Emendation
    In Yitzhak Y. Melamed (ed.), The Young Spinoza: A Metaphysician in the Making, Oxford University Press Usa. 2015.
    Spinoza’s claims about true ideas are central to the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. It is therefore worth trying to reconstruct what he means when he says that an idea is true. I argue that the three leading interpretations – correspondence, coherence, and causal – don’t explain key passages. I then propose a new interpretation. Roughly, I propose that an idea is true if and only if it represents an essence and was derived in the right kind of way by the intellect from an innat…Read more
  •  701
    Perceptual Variation and Structuralism
    Noûs 54 (2): 290-326. 2018.
    I use an old challenge to motivate a new view. The old challenge is due to variation in our perceptions of secondary qualities. The challenge is to say whose perceptions are accurate. The new view is about how we manage to perceive secondary qualities, and thus manage to perceive them accurately or inaccurately. I call it perceptual structuralism. I first introduce the challenge and point out drawbacks with traditional responses. I spend the rest of the paper motivating and defending a structura…Read more
  •  734
    Anti‐Atomism about Color Representation
    Noûs 47 (2): 94-122. 2013.
    According to anti-atomism, we represent color properties (e.g., red) in virtue of representing color relations (e.g., redder than). I motivate anti-atomism with a puzzle involving a series of pairwise indistinguishable chips. I then develop two versions of anti-atomism
  •  329
    Restricting Spinoza's Causal Axiom
    Philosophical Quarterly 65 (258): 40-63. 2015.
    Spinoza's causal axiom is at the foundation of the Ethics. I motivate, develop and defend a new interpretation that I call the ‘causally restricted interpretation’. This interpretation solves several longstanding puzzles and helps us better understand Spinoza's arguments for some of his most famous doctrines, including his parallelism doctrine and his theory of sense perception. It also undermines a widespread view about the relationship between the three fundamental, undefined notions in Spinoz…Read more
  •  970
    I will develop a new problem for almost all realist theories of colour. The problem involves fluctuations in our colour experiences that are due to visual noise rather than changes in the objects we are looking at.
  •  158
    Spinoza's Geometry of Power (review)
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (3): 610-613. 2013.
    A book review of Valtteri Viljanen's "Spinoza’s Geometry of Power"
  •  537
    Perceptual Confidence
    Analytic Philosophy 57 (1): 15-48. 2016.
    Perceptual Confidence is the view that perceptual experiences assign degrees of confidence. After introducing, clarifying, and motivating Perceptual Confidence, I catalogue some of its more interesting consequences, such as the way it blurs the distinction between veridical and illusory experiences, a distinction that is sometimes said to carry a lot of metaphysical weight. I also explain how Perceptual Confidence fills a hole in our best scientific theories of perception and why it implies th…Read more
  •  290
    Triangulating How Things Look
    Mind and Language 30 (2): 140-161. 2015.
    Suppose you're unable to discriminate the colors of two objects. According to the triangulation view, their colors might nonetheless look different to you, and that's something you can discover as a result of further comparisons. The primary motivation for this view is its apparent ability to solve a puzzle involving a series of pairwise indiscriminable objects. I argue that, due to visual noise, the triangulation view doesn't really solve the puzzle.
  •  571
    Conception and causation are fundamental notions in Spinoza's metaphysics. I argue against the orthodox view that, due to the causal axiom, if one thing is conceived through another thing, then the second thing causes the first thing. My conclusion forces us to rethink Spinoza's entitlement to some of his core commitments, including the principle of sufficient reason, the parallelism doctrine and the conatus doctrine
  •  338
    Perceptual Confidence and Categorization
    Analytic Philosophy 58 (1): 71-85. 2017.
    In “Perceptual Confidence,” I argue that our perceptual experiences assign degrees of confidence. In “Precision, not Confidence, Describes the Uncertainty of Perceptual Experience,” Rachel Denison disagrees. In this reply I first clarify what i mean by ‘perceptual experiences’, ‘assign’ and ‘confidence’. I then argue, contra Denison, that perception involves automatic categorization, and that there is an intrinsic difference between a blurry perception of a sharp image and a sharp perception o…Read more
  •  276
    A book review of Raffaella De Rosa's Descartes and the Puzzle of Sensory Representation"