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14How thirst compels: An aggregation model of sensory motivationMind and Language 38 (1): 141-155. 2021.Many sensory states motivate. I offer an account of how such states compel intentional action. I focus on thirst as it is relatively simple in physiological and behavioral terms, it carries little theoretical baggage, and the motivational story for thirst seems likely to generalize. I argue that thirst motivates using a variety of flexible strategies, and that no single explanatory mechanism fully captures its motivational force. The resulting view, the aggregation model of sensory motivation, o…Read more
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746Affect: Representationalists' HeadachePhilosophical Studies 170 (2): 175-198. 2014.Representationalism is the view that the phenomenal character of experiences is identical to their representational content of a certain sort. This view requires a strong transparency condition on phenomenally conscious experiences. We argue that affective qualities such as experienced pleasantness or unpleasantness are counter-examples to the transparency thesis and thus to the sort of representationalism that implies it
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1065Reasons and Theories of Sensory AffectIn David Bain, Michael Brady & Jennifer Corns (eds.), Philosophy of Pain, Routledge. pp. 27-59. 2018.Some sensory experiences are pleasant, some unpleasant. This is a truism. But understanding what makes these experiences pleasant and unpleasant is not an easy job. Various difficulties and puzzles arise as soon as we start theorizing. There are various philosophical theories on offer that seem to give different accounts for the positive or negative affective valences of sensory experiences. In this paper, we will look at the current state of art in the philosophy of mind, present the main conte…Read more
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115Affect, Rationalization, and MotivationReview of Philosophy and Psychology 5 (1): 103-118. 2014.Recently, a number of writers have presented an argument to the effect that leading causal theories make available accounts of affect’s motivational role, but at the cost of failing to understand affect’s rationalizing role. Moreover, these writers have gone on to argue that these considerations support the adoption of an alternative (“evaluationist”) conception of pleasure and pain that, in their view, successfully explains both the motivational and rationalizing roles of affective experience. …Read more
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82Perception, Emotion, and the Interconnected MindJournal of Consciousness Studies 27 (7-8): 7-30. 2020.I argue on the basis of extensive empirical research that perception and emotion are more deeply entangled than we might have thought. This evidence strongly suggests that we should expand our conception of perception to include emotional elements, and our conception of emotion to include perceptual ones. This expansion poses a challenge to our current taxonomic practices. In the face of this challenge, I advocate principled pluralism about psychological kinds. This view holds that, depending on…Read more
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119Emotional PerceptionAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (1): 16-30. 2020.Some perceptual experiences seem to have an emotional element that makes both an affective and motivational difference in the content and character of the experience. I offer a novel account of the...
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41Beyond Vision: Philosophical Essays By Casey O’Callaghan (review)Analysis 78 (3): 577-580. 2018.Beyond Vision: Philosophical Essays By O’CallaghanCaseyOxford University Press, 2017. xii + 204 pp.
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139The unity of haptic touchPhilosophical Psychology 24 (4). 2011.Haptic touch is an inherently active and exploratory form of perception, involving both coordinated movements and an array of distinct sensory receptors in the skin. For this reason, some have claimed that haptic touch is not a single sense, but rather a multisensory collection of distinct sensory systems. Though this claim is often made, it relies on what I regard as a confused conception of multisensory interaction. In its place, I develop a nuanced hierarchy of multisensory involvement. Accor…Read more
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115The First Sense: a philosophical study of human touchMIT Press. 2013.It is through touch that we are able to interact directly with the world; it is our primary conduit of both pleasure and pain. Touch may be our most immediate and powerful sense—“the first sense" because of the central role it plays in experience. In this book, Matthew Fulkerson proposes that human touch, despite its functional diversity, is a single, unified sensory modality. Fulkerson offers a philosophical account of touch, reflecting the interests, methods, and approach that define contempor…Read more
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155Touch Without TouchingPhilosophers' Imprint 12. 2012.In this paper, I argue that in touch, as in vision and audition, we can and often do perceive objects and properties even when we are not in direct or even apparent bodily contact with them. Unlike those senses, however, touch experiences require a special kind of mutually interactive connection between our sensory surfaces and the objects of our experience. I call this constraint the Connection Principle. This view has implications for the proper understanding of touch, and perceptual reference…Read more
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66Rethinking the senses and their interactions: the case for sensory pluralismFrontiers in Psychology 5 120861. 2014.I argue for sensory pluralism. This is the view that there are many forms of sensory interaction and unity, and no single category that classifies them all. In other words, sensory interactions do not form a single natural kind. This view suggests that how we classify sensory systems (and the experiences they generate) partly depends on our explanatory purposes. I begin with a detailed discussion of the issue as it arises for our understanding of thermal perception, followed by a general account…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Perception |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Moral Psychology |
Areas of Interest
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Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Physical Science |
Perception |
Moral Psychology |