University of Leeds
School of Philosophy, Religion, and History of Science
PhD, 2009
Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind
  •  31
    The Inadequacy of Materialistic Explanation A Review of Joseph Levine's Purple Haze
    PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 9. 2003.
    Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness, by Joseph Levine, is reviewed. The position that Levine takes in the current philosophical debate about consciousness is identified and the general approach of the essay outlined. I focus on two of the more important issues in the book - the conceivability argument against materialism, and the explanatory gap argument against dualism - and argue that Levine's argument against the former is unconvincing and his diagnosis of the source of the latter leads …Read more
  •  26
    On the Mark
    Augustinian Studies 38 (2): 353-363. 2007.
  •  20
    On the Mark
    Augustinian Studies 38 (2): 353-363. 2007.
  •  88
    The Causal Efficacy of Qualia
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 18 (11-12): 11-12. 2011.
    Qualia are the elements of phenomenal consciousness -- the raw feels which constitute what it is like to be in a conscious mental state. Some claim that qualia are epiphenomenal properties -- mere by-products of brain function which are causally inert. Though this is an implausible theory, it is difficult to show that it is false. Here I present an ad hominem argument -- the argument from coincidence -- which shows that epiphenomenalism about qualia is explanatorily deficient because it leaves u…Read more
  • The Negative Characterisation Of Physicalism
    Philosophical Writings 32 (2). 2006.
    One recent attempt to capture the content of physicalism involves characterising it negatively in terms of the non-mental. This thesis is criticised on the grounds that it fails to provide a sufficient condition for an adequate characterisation of physicalism, since, from a global physicalist perspective, it has both nothing to say about other so-called non-physical entities and fails to exclude them from the fundamental entities that such an account must posit. This latter problem is also faced…Read more
  •  55
    Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome
    Cambridge University Press. 2009.
    The study of colour has become familiar territory in anthropology, linguistics, art history and archaeology. Classicists, however, have traditionally subordinated the study of colour to form. By drawing together evidence from contemporary philosophers, elegists, epic writers, historians and satirists, Mark Bradley reinstates colour as an essential informative unit for the classification and evaluation of the Roman world. He also demonstrates that the questions of what colour was and how it funct…Read more