Brown University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2003
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Areas of Interest
Epistemology
Philosophy of Mind
  •  416
    Intentional objects of memory
    In Sven Bernecker & Kourken Michaelian (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory. pp. 88-100. 2017.
    Memories are mental states with a number of interesting features. One of those features seems to be their having an intentional object. After all, we commonly say that memories are about things, and that a subject represents the world in a certain way by virtue of remembering something. It is unclear, however, what sorts of entities constitute the intentional objects of memory. In particular, it is not clear whether those are mind-independent entities in the world or whether they are mental enti…Read more
  •  358
    Memory: A Self-Referential Account
    Oxford University Press. 2019.
    This book offers a philosophical account of memory. Memory is remarkably interesting from a philosophical point of view. Our memories interact with mental states of other types in a characteristic way. They also have some associated feelings that other mental states lack. Our memories are special in terms of their representational capacity too, since we can have memories of objective events, and we can have memories of our own past experiences. Finally, our memories are epistemically special, in…Read more
  •  338
    The functional character of memory
    In Denis Perrin Dorothea Debus Kourken Michaelian (ed.), New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory. pp. 52-72. 2018.
    The purpose of this chapter is to determine what is to remember something, as opposed to imagining it, perceiving it, or introspecting it. What does it take for a mental state to qualify as remembering, or having a memory of, something? The main issue to be addressed is therefore a metaphysical one. It is the issue of determining which features those mental states which qualify as memories typically enjoy, and those states which do not qualify as such typically lack. In sections 2 and 3, I will…Read more
  •  291
    Self-Referential Memory and Mental Time Travel
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (2): 283-300. 2020.
    Episodic memory has a distinctive phenomenology. One way to capture what is distinctive about it is by using the notion of mental time travel: When we remember some fact episodically, we mentally travel to the moment at which we experienced it in the past. This way of distinguishing episodic memory from semantic memory calls for an explanation of what the experience of mental time travel is. In this paper, I suggest that a certain view about the content of memories can shed some light on the exp…Read more
  •  280
    Memory, past and self
    Synthese 160 (1). 2008.
    The purpose of this essay is to determine how we should construe the content of memories. First, I distinguish two features of memory that a construal of mnemic content should respect. These are the ‘attribution of pastness’ feature (a subject is inclined to believe of those events that she remembers that they happened in the past) and the ‘attribution of existence’ feature (a subject is inclined to believe that she existed at the time that those events that she remembers took place). Next, I di…Read more
  •  240
    Privileged access naturalized
    Philosophical Quarterly 53 (212): 352-372. 2003.
    The purpose of this essay is to account for privileged access or, more precisely, the special kind of epistemic right that we have to some beliefs about our own mental states. My account will have the following two main virtues. First of all, it will only appeal to those conceptual elements that, arguably, we already use in order to account for perceptual knowledge. Secondly, it will constitute a naturalizing account of privileged access in that it does not posit any mysterious faculty of intros…Read more
  •  226
    Thought insertion and self-knowledge
    Mind and Language 25 (1): 66-88. 2010.
    I offer an account of thought insertion based on a certain model of self-knowledge. I propose that subjects with thought insertion do not experience being committed to some of their own beliefs. A hypothesis about self-knowledge explains why. According to it, we form beliefs about our own beliefs on the basis of our evidence for them. First, I will argue that this hypothesis explains the fact that we feel committed to those beliefs which we are aware of. Then, I will point to one feature of schi…Read more
  •  220
    The papers in this volume are drawn from a workshop on delusion and self-deception, held at Macquarie University in November of 2004. Our aim was to bring together theorists working on delusions and self-deception with an eye towards identifying and fostering connections—at both empirical and conceptual levels—between these domains. As the contributions to this volume testify, there are multiple points of contact between delusion and self-deception. This introduction charts the conceptual space …Read more
  •  211
    Memory and time
    Philosophical Studies 141 (3). 2008.
    The purpose of this essay is to clarify the notion of mnemonic content. Memories have content. However, it is not clear whether memories are about past events in the world, past states of our own minds, or some combination of those two elements. I suggest that any proposal about mnemonic content should help us understand why events are presented to us in memory as being in the past. I discuss three proposals about mnemonic content and, eventually, I put forward a positive view. According to this…Read more
  •  200
    Desire and self-knowledge
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (4). 2007.
    In this paper, I propose an account of self-knowledge for desires. According to this account, we form beliefs about our own desires on the basis of our grounds for those desires. First, I distinguish several types of desires and their corresponding grounds. Next, I make the case that we usually believe that we have a certain desire on the basis of our grounds for it. Then, I argue that a belief formed thus is epistemically privileged. Finally, I compare this account to two other similar accounts…Read more
  •  190
    The intentionality of memory
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (1): 39-57. 2006.
    The purpose of this essay is to determine how we should construe the content of memories or, in other words, to determine what the intentional objects of memory are.1 The issue that will concern us is, then, analogous to the traditional philosophical question of whether perception directly puts us in cognitive contact with entities in the world or with entities in our own minds. As we shall see, there are some interesting aspects of the phenomenology and the epistemology of memory, and I shall a…Read more
  •  189
    Self-deception and self-knowledge
    Philosophical Studies 162 (2): 379-400. 2013.
    The aim of this paper is to provide an account of a certain variety of self-deception based on a model of self-knowledge. According to this model, one thinks that one has a belief on the basis of one’s grounds for that belief. If this model is correct, then our thoughts about which beliefs we have should be in accordance with our grounds for those beliefs. I suggest that the relevant variety of self deception is a failure of self-knowledge wherein the subject violates this epistemic obligation. …Read more
  •  184
    Self‐Knowledge, Rationality and Moore's Paradox
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (3): 533-556. 2007.
    I offer a model of self‐knowledge that provides a solution to Moore's paradox. First, I distinguish two versions of the paradox and I discuss two approaches to it, neither of which solves both versions of the paradox. Next, I propose a model of self‐knowledge according to which, when I have a certain belief, I form the higher‐order belief that I have it on the basis of the very evidence that grounds my first‐order belief. Then, I argue that the model in question can account for both versions of …Read more
  •  176
    Resisting ruthless reductionism: A commentary on Bickle
    with Tim Bayne
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (3): 239-48. 2005.
    Philosophy and Neuroscience is an unabashed apologetic for reductionism in philosophy of mind. Bickle chides his fellow philosophers for their ignorance of mainstream neuroscience, and promises them that a subscription to Cell, Neuron, or any other journal in mainstream neuroscience will be amply rewarded. Rather than being bogged down in the intricacies of two-dimensional semantics or the ontology of properties, philosophers of mind need to get neuroscientifically informed and ruthlessly reduct…Read more
  •  141
    Memory and Immunity to Error through Misidentification
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 5 (3): 373-390. 2014.
    The aim of this paper is to defend the view that judgments based on episodic memory are immune to error through misidentification. I will put forward a proposal about the contents of episodic memories according to which a memory represents a perception of a past event. I will also offer a proposal about the contents of perceptual experiences according to which a perceptual experience represents some relations that its subject bears to events in the external world. The combination of the two view…Read more
  •  126
    Schopenhauer’s Pessimism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (3). 2006.
    My purpose in this essay is to clarify and evaluate Arthur Schopenhauer's grounds for the view that happiness is impossible. I shall distinguish two of his arguments for that view and argue that both of them are unsound. Both arguments involve premises grounded on a problematic view, namely, that desires have no objects. What makes this view problematic is that, in each of the two arguments, it conflicts with Schopenhauer's grounds for other premises in the argument. I shall then propose a way o…Read more
  •  122
    This collection of essays focuses on the interface between delusions and self-deception.
  •  105
    Does the supervenience argument generalize?
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 49 (4): 321-346. 2011.
    We evaluate the scope of Jaegwon Kim's “supervenience argument” for reduction. Does its conclusion apply only to psychology, or does it generalize to all the special sciences? The claim that the supervenience argument generalizes to all the special sciences if it goes through for psychology is often raised as an objection to the supervenience argument. We argue that this objection is ambiguous. We distinguish three readings of it and suggest that some of them make it a plausible claim, whereas o…Read more
  •  99
    Privileged Access Revisited
    Philosophical Quarterly 55 (218). 2005.
    Aaron Zimmerman has recently raised an interesting objection to an account of self-knowledge I have offered. The objection has the form of a dilemma: either it is possible for us to be entitled to beliefs which we do not form, or it is not. If it is, the conditions for introspective justification within the model I advocate are insufficient. If not, they are otiose. I challenge Zimmerman's defence of the first horn of the dilemma.
  •  99
    Epistemic Generation in Memory
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (2): 620-644. 2016.
    Does memory only preserve epistemic justification over time, or can memory also generate it? I argue that memory can generate justification based on a certain conception of mnemonic content. According to it, our memories represent themselves as originating on past perceptions of objective facts. If this conception of mnemonic content is correct, what we may believe on the basis of memory always includes something that we were not in a position to believe before we utilised that capacity. For tha…Read more
  •  91
    Program Explanation and Higher-Order Properties
    Acta Analytica 25 (4): 393-411. 2010.
    Our aim in this paper is to evaluate Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit’s ‘program explanation’ framework as an account of the autonomy of the special sciences. We argue that this framework can only explain the autonomy of a limited range of special science explanations. The reason for this limitation is that the framework overlooks a distinction between two kinds of properties, which we refer to as ‘higher-level’ and ‘higher-order’ properties. The program explanation framework can ac…Read more
  •  91
    Explanation by computer simulation in cognitive science
    Minds and Machines 13 (2): 269-284. 2003.
    My purpose in this essay is to clarify the notion of explanation by computer simulation in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. My contention is that computer simulation may be understood as providing two different kinds of explanation, which makes the notion of explanation by computer simulation ambiguous. In order to show this, I shall draw a distinction between two possible ways of understanding the notion of simulation, depending on how one views the relation in which a computing s…Read more
  •  79
    Externalism and self-knowledge: A puzzle in two dimensions
    European Journal of Philosophy 12 (1): 17-37. 2004.
    The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com
  •  78
    Unifying the Philosophy of Truth (edited book)
    with T. Achourioti, H. Galinon, and K. Fujimoto
    Imprint: Springer. 2015.
    This anthology of the very latest research on truth features the work of recognized luminaries in the field, put together following a rigorous refereeing process. Along with an introduction outlining the central issues in the field, it provides a unique and unrivaled view of contemporary work on the nature of truth, with papers selected from key conferences in 2011 such as Truth Be Told (Amsterdam), Truth at Work (Paris), Paradoxes of Truth and Denotation (Barcelona) and Axiomatic Theories of Tr…Read more
  •  75
    What are the benefits of memory distortion?
    Consciousness and Cognition 33 536-547. 2015.
    Jordi Fernández
  •  73
    Causal Inheritance and Second-order Properties
    Abstracta 4 (2): 74-95. 2008.
    We defend Jaegwon Kim’s ‘causal inheritance’ principle from an objection raised by Jurgen Schröder. The objection is that the principle is inconsistent with a view about mental properties assumed by Kim, namely, that they are second-order properties. We argue that Schröder misconstrues the notion of second-order property. We distinguish three notions of second-order property and highlight their problems and virtues. Finally, we examine the consequence of Kim’s principle and discuss the issue of …Read more
  •  60
    Introspection
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (1): 385-406
    This paper will argue that there is no such thing as introspective access to judgments and decisions. I t won't challenge the existence of introspective access to perceptual and imagistic states, nor to emotional feelings and bodily sensations. On the contrary, the model presented in Section 2 presumes such access. Hence introspection is here divided into two categories: introspection of propositional attitude events, on the one hand, and introspection of broadly perceptual events, on the other.…Read more
  •  60
    Transparent Minds: A Study of Self-Knowledge
    Oxford University Press. 2013.
    How do we know our current states of mind--what we want, and believe in? Jordi Fernández proposes a new theory of self-knowledge, challenging the traditional view that it is a matter of introspection. He argues that we know what we believe and desire by 'looking outward', towards the states of affairs which those beliefs and desires are about
  •  56
    Schopenhauer’s Pessimism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (3): 646-664. 2006.
    My purpose in this essay is to clarify and evaluate Arthur Schopenhauer's grounds for the view that happiness is impossible. I shall distinguish two of his arguments for that view and argue that both of them are unsound. Both arguments involve premises grounded on a problematic view, namely, that desires have no objects. What makes this view problematic is that, in each of the two arguments, it conflicts with Schopenhauer's grounds for other premises in the argument. I shall then propose a way o…Read more