• Selfless persons: Goodness in an impersonal world?
    In Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Mind, Self and Person, Cambridge University Press. 2015.
  •  1
    6. Reason and Religion
    In Maria Cristina Amoretti & Nicla Vassallo (eds.), Reason and Rationality, Ontos Verlag. pp. 129-148. 2012.
  •  4
    Constitutionalism
    In Jonathan J. Loose, Angus John Louis Menuge & J. P. Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism, Wiley-blackwell. 2018.
    This chapter deals with a brief word about the Christian doctrine of Incarnation. The doctrine of the Incarnation, which takes Jesus Christ to be a person fully human and fully divine, requires a slight modification of constitutionalism. Constitutionalism seems to have an advantage over mind‐body dualism about Christ's nature: his human nature is wholly material and his divine nature is wholly immaterial. The chapter also focuses on Christian doctrines of resurrection of the dead. Next, it discu…Read more
  •  3
    Ontology and Ordinary Objects
    In Christian Kanzian, Winfried Löffler & Josef Quitterer (eds.), The Ways Things Are: Studies in Ontology, Ontos. pp. 167-180. 2011.
  •  6
    The Nature of True Minds (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (2): 475-478. 1995.
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  •  199
    Christian materialism in a scientific age
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 70 (1): 47-59. 2011.
    Many Christians who argue against Christian materialism direct their arguments against what I call ‘Type-I materialism’, the thesis that I cannot exist without my organic body. I distinguish Type-I materialism from Type-II materialism, which entails only that I cannot exist without some body that supports certain mental functions. I set out a version of Type-II materialism, and argue for its superiority to Type-I materialism in an age of science. Moreover, I show that Type-II materialism can acc…Read more
  •  1
    The Threat of Cognitive Suicide
    In John Heil (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: A Guide and Anthology, Oxford University Press. 2003.
  •  57
    On the mind-dependence of temporal becoming
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 39 (3): 341-357. 1979.
  •  98
    Replies
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (3): 623-635. 2002.
    Persons and Bodies develops and defends an account of persons and of the relation between human persons and their bodies. Human persons are constituted by bodies, without being identical to the bodies that constitute them—just as, I argue, statues are constituted by pieces of bronze, say, without being identical to the pieces of bronze that constitute them. The relation of constitution, therefore, is not peculiar to persons and their bodies, but is pervasive in the natural world.
  •  276
    Making sense of ourselves: self-narratives and personal identity
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 15 (1): 7-15. 2016.
    Some philosophers take personal identity to be a matter of self-narrative. I argue, to the contrary, that self-narrative views cannot stand alone as views of personal identity. First, I consider Dennett’s self-narrative view, according to which selves are fictional characters—abstractions, like centers of gravity—generated by brains. Neural activity is to be interpreted from the intentional stance as producing a story. I argue that this is implausible. The inadequacy is masked by Dennett’s ambig…Read more
  •  3
    Thought and Object: Essays on Intentionality
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45 (1): 137-142. 1984.
  •  8
    Autism and 'I'
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 22 (11-12): 180-193. 2015.
    After summarizing my own views of 'I' and the first-person perspective, I consider a well-known autistic, Temple Grandin, who claims that she thinks only in pictures, not in language. I argue, to the contrary, that Grandin's mental life as she describes it in fact requires language, which, as a writer, she undoubtedly has. Finally, I turn to the question of whether thought as Temple Grandin describes it is independent of language.
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    The First-Person Perspective
    Philosophia Christi 20 (1): 61-66. 2018.
    Baker rejects naturalistic views that exclude first-person facts. Persons are emergent, constituted entities having first-person perspectives that are ineliminable, first-personal, dispositional, multi-stage properties. Persons appear gradually with FPPs in the rudimentary stage, but are distinguished by the later, robust stage. We possess first-person perspectives essentially and thereby have first-personal persistence conditions. Transtemporal identity is unanalyzable, requiring a variant of t…Read more
  •  40
    Naturalism and the Idea of Nature
    Philosophy 92 (3): 333-349. 2017.
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    Practical Realism as Metaphysics
    American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (4): 297-304. 2014.
    Mainstream analytic metaphysics is a priori metaphysics. It is hemmed in by basic assumptions that rest on no more than a priori intuitions. Jaegwon Kim's arguments about causation are a paradigm example of sophisticated arguments with little or no justification from the world as we know it. And Peter van Inwagen's arguments about material objects are motivated by a question that, I think, has no nontrivial answer: Under what conditions do some x's compose an object y? The trivial answers are "a…Read more
  •  10
    Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism (edited book)
    Princeton University Press. 1987.
    This stimulating book critically examines a wide range of physicalistic conceptions of mind in the works of Jerry A. Fodor, Stephen P. Stich, Paul M. Churchland, Daniel C. Dennett, and others. Part I argues that intentional concepts cannot be reduced to nonintentional concepts; Part II argues that intentional concepts are nevertheless indispensable to our cognitive enterprises and thus need no foundation in physicalism. As a sustained challenge to the prevailing interpretation of cognitive scien…Read more
  •  1
    Contents
    In Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism, Princeton University Press. 1987.
  •  19
    7. The Threat of Cognitive Suicide
    In Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism, Princeton University Press. pp. 134-148. 1987.
  •  1
    8. Instrumentalism: Back from the Brink?
    In Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism, Princeton University Press. pp. 149-166. 1987.
  •  7
    1. Common Sense and Physicalism
    In Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism, Princeton University Press. pp. 1-20. 1987.
  •  4
    2. Belief in Cognitive Science
    In Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism, Princeton University Press. pp. 23-42. 1987.
  •  5
    6. How High the Stakes?
    In Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism, Princeton University Press. pp. 113-133. 1987.
  • Frontmatter
    In Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism, Princeton University Press. 1987.