•  3
    Introduction
    In Dan Ryder, Justine Kingsbury & Kenneth Williford (eds.), Millikan and Her Critics, Wiley. 2012.
    This chapter contains section titles: Proper Functions Representations: The Basic Teleosemantic Framework Concepts Externalism, Language, and Meaning Rationalism.
  •  59
    Neo-Cartesianism and the expanded problem of animal suffering
    with Phil Halper, David Rudrauf, and Perry N. Fuchs
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 94 (2): 177-198. 2023.
    Several well-known theodicies, whatever their merits, seem to make little sense of animal suffering. Here we argue that the problem of animal suffering has more layers than has generally been acknowledged in the literature and thus poses an even greater challenge to traditional Judeo-Christian Theism than is normally thought. However, the Neo-Cartesian (NC) defence would succeed in defanging this Expanded Problem of Animal Suffering. Several contemporary philosophers have suggested that recent e…Read more
  •  54
    Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness & Projective Geometry
    with Daniel Bennequin and David Rudrauf
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (2): 365-396. 2022.
    We argue that the projective geometrical component of the Projective Consciousness Model can account for key aspects of pre-reflective self-consciousness and can relate PRSC intelligibly to another signal feature of subjectivity: perspectival character or point of view. We illustrate how the projective geometrical versions of the concepts of duality, reciprocity, polarity, closedness, closure, and unboundedness answer to salient aspects of the phenomenology of PRSC. We thus show that the same ma…Read more
  •  32
    The integrated information theory of consciousness: Unmasked and identified
    with Bjorn Merker and David Rudrauf
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45. 2022.
    In our response to a truly diverse set of commentaries, we first summarize the principal topical themes around which they cluster, then address two “outlier” positions. Next, we address ways in which commentaries by non-integrated information theory authors engage with the specifics of our IIT critique, turning finally to the four commentaries by IIT authors.
  •  84
    The integrated information theory of consciousness: A case of mistaken identity
    with Bjorn Merker and David Rudrauf
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45. 2022.
    Giulio Tononi's integrated information theory (IIT) proposes explaining consciousness by directly identifying it with integrated information. We examine the construct validity of IIT's measure of consciousness,phi(Φ), by analyzing its formal properties, its relation to key aspects of consciousness, and its co-variation with relevant empirical circumstances. Our analysis shows that IIT's identification of consciousness with the causal efficacy with which differentiated networks accomplish global …Read more
  •  58
    Against Neo-Cartesianism: Neurofunctional Resilience and Animal Pain
    with Phil Halper, David Rudrauf, and Perry N. Fuchs
    Philosophical Psychology 34 (4): 474-501. 2021.
    Several influential philosophers and scientists have advanced a framework, often called Neo-Cartesianism (NC), according to which animal suffering is merely apparent. Drawing upon contemporary neuroscience and philosophy of mind, Neo-Cartesians challenge the mainstream position we shall call Evolutionary Continuity (EC), the view that humans are on a nonhierarchical continuum with other species and are thus not likely to be unique in consciously experiencing negative pain affect. We argue that s…Read more
  •  44
    Headlessness without Illusions: Phenomenological Undecidability and Materialism
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 27 (5-6): 190-200. 2020.
    I argue that there is a version of (quasi-Armstrongian) weak illusionism that intelligibly relates phenomenal concepts and introspective opacity, accounts for the (hard) problem intuitions Chalmers highlights (modal, epistemic, explanatory, and metaphysical), and undermines the most important arguments Chalmers deploys against type-B and type-C materialisms. If this is successful, we can satisfactorily account for the meta-problem of consciousness, mollify our hard problem intuitions, and remain…Read more
  •  34
    Self-Acquaintance and Three Regress Arguments
    ProtoSociology 36 368-412. 2019.
    The three classic regress problems (the Extensive Regress of states, the Intensive Regress of contents, and the Fichte-Henrich-Shoemaker Regress of de se beliefs) related to the Self-Awareness Thesis (that one’s conscious states are the ones that one is aware of being in) can all be elegantly resolved by a self-acquaintance postulate. This resolution, however, entails that consciousness has an irreducibly circular structure and that self-acquaintance should not be conceived of in terms of an ind…Read more
  •  10
    Introduction
    ProtoSociology 36 7-33. 2019.
  •  9
    Introduction
    with Gloria Zúñiga Y. Postigo
    Axiomathes 27 (5): 437-441. 2017.
  •  61
    The Projective Consciousness Model and Phenomenal Selfhood
    with Daniel Bennequin, Karl Friston, and David Rudrauf
    Frontiers in Psychology 9. 2018.
  •  1
    In this dissertation, the author articulates and defends a version of the historically important view that all consciousness involves self-consciousness. In Chapter 1, the author defends a certain conception of the role of phenomenology in the theory of consciousness. The author argues that any theory of consciousness must account for the properties that phenomenology reveals consciousness to have. The most important properties in this regard are structural: temporality, synchronic unity, and se…Read more
  •  283
    The logic of phenomenal transparency
    Soochow Journal of Philosophical Studies 2007 (16): 181-195. 2007.
    This paper explores the logical consequences of the the thesis that all of the essential properties of consciousness can be known introspectively (Completeness, called "Strong Transparency" in the paper, following D.M. Armstrong's older terminology). It is argued that it can be known introspectively that consciousness does not have complete access to its essential properties; and it is show how this undermines conceivability arguments for dualism.
  •  661
    Zahavi versus Brentano: A rejoinder
    PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 12. 2006.
    Dan Zahavi has argued persuasively that some versions of self- representationalism are implausible on phenomenological and dialectical grounds: they fail to make sense of primitive self-knowledge and lead to an infinite regress. Zahavi proposes an alternative view of ubiquitous prereflective self-consciousness
  •  6
    The Paradoxes of Subjectivity and the Projective Structure of Consciousness
    with David Rudrauf and Gregory Landini
    In Sofia Miguens & Gerhard Preyer (eds.), Consciousness and Subjectivity, Ontos Verlag. pp. 321-354. 2012.
  •  10
    Introduction
    with Gloria Zúñiga Y. Postigo
    Axiomathes 27 (5): 437-441. 2017.
  •  7
    Sartre
    Routledge. 2019.
  •  56
    Some philosophers think that intentionality is ontologically distinct from phenomenal consciousness; call this the Thesis of Separation. Terence Horgan and John Tienson (2002, p. 520) call this.
  • I discuss the main features of Moore’s characterization of consciousness in his well-known 1903 “The Refutation of Idealism” and his little-known 1910 “The Subject-Matter of Psychology.” The presentation is somewhere between an expository exercise in the history of analytical ontology and a philosophical engagement with Moore’s interesting claims. Among other things, I argue that Moore’s famous thesis of the “diaphanousness” of consciousness cannot, contrary to Moore’s own claims, be used to un…Read more
  •  97
    I Am a Strange Loop (review)
    Philosophical Psychology 24 (6): 861-865. 2011.
    Philosophical Psychology, Volume 0, Issue 0, Page 1-5, Ahead of Print
  •  145
    Husserl’s hyletic data and phenomenal consciousness
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12 (3): 501-519. 2013.
    In the Logical Investigations, Ideas I and many other texts, Husserl maintains that perceptual consciousness involves the intentional “animation” or interpretation of sensory data or hyle, e.g., “color-data,” “tone-data,” and algedonic data. These data are not intrinsically representational nor are they normally themselves objects of representation, though we can attend to them in reflection. These data are “immanent” in consciousness; they survive the phenomenological reduction. They partly gro…Read more
  •  93
    Demea's a priori Theistic Proof
    Hume Studies 29 (1): 99-123. 2003.
    Hume's examination of the causal maxim in 1.3.3 of A Treatise of Human Nature can be considered, at least in part, a thinly veiled critique of the cosmological argument, attacking as it does the privileged status of the principle upon which that proof rests. As well, Hume's remarks on the impossibility of demonstrating matters of fact a priori in Part 3 of Section 12 of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding clearly strike at the heart of the ontological argument, even if not explicitly. Unfo…Read more