•  6
    The canonical Buddhist account of the cognitive processes underlying our experience of the world prefigures recent developments in neuroscience. The developments in question are centered on two main trends in neuroscience research and thinking. The first of these involves the idea that our everyday experience of ourselves and of the world consists in a series of discrete microstates. The second closely related notion is that affective structures and systems play critical roles in governing the f…Read more
  •  17
    In the search for the foundations of cognition philosophers often encounter a familiar problem - the problem of content. The problem of content is essentially the problem of how content, whether experiential or intentional, is possible. In practice providing a response to this problem involves providing an account of how an active self-consciousness is able to conceive/perceive, or in some way be consciousness ofx. The unique nature of this problem imposes significant constraints on the field of…Read more
  •  97
    Source: Masterss International, Volume: 40-07, page:. Thesis --University of Windsor, 1989.
  •  843
    The Epistemology of Illumination in Meister Eckhart
    Philosophy and Theology 13 (2): 275-286. 2001.
    How is experience possible if the one who experiences is ‘forgotten’ and transcended? In his book Meister Eckhart: Mystic and Philosopher Reiner Schürmann explores two lines of thought in Eckhart’s philosophy of mind—Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic. The first of these, he observes, leads to the idea that being is revealed in the “birth of the Son”—that is, in God acting in place of the active intellect. The second leads to the idea that being is revealed in an unrepresentable Unity. These two line…Read more
  •  107
    Buddhism and brain science
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (11): 17-26. 2001.
    Explanations of consciousness from both philosophy and cognitive science are traditionally conceived in terms of how an active self-consciousness relates to the various aspects of the world with which it is faced. This way of framing the problem is intuitive, but it also leads ultimately to an infinite regress. A better approach to consciousness is suggested by Buddhism, which responds to the regress by arguing that consciousness and its apparent relata are, in any given instance, actually simul…Read more
  •  225
    Causation in Moral Judgment
    Mind and Matter 9 (2): 153-170. 2011.
    Research on moral judgment is refueling public interest in an old debate concerning the general foundation of morals. Are moral judgments based on reason or on feeling? Recent research in moral psychology and neuroscience concludes that moral judgments occur rapidly, automatically, and largely without the aid of inference. Such findings are utilized to criticize moral theories that require deliberation to precede moral judgment as its cause. The main targets of this criticism are the moral theor…Read more
  •  316
    Causation in Reflective Judgment
    Kant Studies Online (1): 12-41. 2016.
    The existing body of scholarship on Kant’s Critique of Judgment is rife with disagreement. At the centre of much of this disagreement is the issue of precisely what Kant understands to be taking place in a harmonization of the cognitive faculties. Is aesthetic reflective judgment to be identified with, or separated from, this harmonious state of the faculties of imagination and understanding? If aesthetic judgment is identified with this state, as is argued herein, then upon what is a judgment o…Read more
  •  74
    Michael McGhee, Transformations of Mind: Philosophy as Spiritual Practice Reviewed by (review)
    Philosophy in Review 21 (3): 189-191. 2001.
    Michael McGhee