•  478
    The Causal Argument against Disjunctivism
    Facta Philosophica 9 (1): 245-267. 2007.
    In this paper, I will ask whether naïve realists have the conceptual resources for meeting the challenge stemming from the causal argument. As I interpret it, naïve realism is committed to disjunctivism. Therefore, I first set out in detail how one has to formulate the causal argument against the background of disjunctivism. This discussion is above all supposed to work out the key assumptions at stake in the causal argument. I will then go on to sketch out several possible rejoinders on behalf …Read more
  •  153
    Naïve realism and the problem of causation
    Disputatio 3 (25): 1-19. 2008.
    In the present paper, I shall argue that disjunctively construed naïve realism about the nature of perceptual experiences succumbs to the empirically inspired causal argument. The causal argument highlights as a first step that local action necessitates the presence of a type-identical common kind of mental state shared by all perceptual experiences. In a second step, it sets out that the property of being a veridical perception cannot be a mental property. It results that the mental nature of p…Read more
  •  137
    Rethinking synesthesia
    Philosophical Psychology 26 (2). 2013.
    Synesthetes are people who report having perceptual experiences that are very unusual, such as ?seeing? sounds as colors or ?smelling? colors as odors. It is commonly assumed these days that such synesthetic experiences must be instances of misperceptions. Against this widespread assumption, I will highlight that there is reason to think that at least some synesthetic experiences can be viewed as truly veridical perceptions, and not as illusions or hallucinations. On this view, which I will back…Read more
  •  130
    In Defence of a Structural Account of Indirect Realism
    European Journal of Philosophy 23 (4): 815-837. 2013.
    Current orthodoxy in the philosophy of perception views indirect realism as misguided, wrongheaded or simply outdated. The reasons for its pariah status are variegated. Although it is surely not unreasonable to speculate that philosophical fashion is one factor that contributes to this situation, there are also solid philosophical arguments which put pressure on the indirect realist position. In this paper, I will discuss one such main objection and show how the indirect realist can face it. The…Read more
  •  121
    Causation in Perception: A Challenge to Naïve Realism
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3 (4): 581-595. 2012.
    Defending a form of naïve realism about visual experiences is quite popular these days. Those naïve realists who I will be concerned with in this paper make a central claim about the subjective aspects of perceptual experiences. They argue that how it is with the perceiver subjectively when she sees worldly objects is literally determined by those objects. This way of thinking leads them to endorse a form of disjunctivism, according to which the fundamental psychological nature of seeings and ha…Read more
  •  69
    Making Sense of an Endorsement Model of Thought‐Insertion
    Mind and Language 29 (5): 590-612. 2014.
    Experiences of thought-insertion are a first-rank, diagnostically central symptom of schizophrenia. Schizophrenic patients who undergo such delusional mental states report being first-personally aware of an occurrent conscious thought which is not theirs, but which belongs to an external cognitive agent. Patients seem to be right about what they are thinking but mistaken about who is doing the thinking. It is notoriously difficult to make sense of such delusions. One general approach to explaini…Read more
  •  42
    The Epistemological Problem of Other Minds and the Knowledge Asymmetry
    European Journal of Philosophy 25 (4): 1476-1495. 2017.
    The traditional epistemological problem of other minds seeks to answer the following question: how can we know someone else's mental states? The problem is often taken to be generated by a fundamental asymmetry in the means of knowledge. In my own case, I can know directly what I think and feel. This sort of self-knowledge is epistemically direct in the sense of being non-inferential and non-observational. My knowledge of other minds, however, is thought to lack these epistemic features. So what…Read more
  •  27
    The aim of the present paper is to sketch a new structural version of the Representative Theory of Perception which is supported both by conceptual and empirical arguments. To this end, I will discuss, in a first step, the structural approach to representation and show how it can be applied to perceptual consciousness. This discussion will demonstrate that perceptual experiences possess representational as well as purely sensational properties. In a second step, the focus will switch to empirica…Read more
  •  14
    Commentary on Jaegwon Kim, "Laws, Causation, and Explanation in the Special Sciences"
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 27 (3/4). 2005.
    In the present commentary on Jaegwon Kim's Laws, Causation, and Explanation in the Special Sciences, I first give a short summary of the global problem. In a second step, I go on to sum up and comment on the three arguments which Kim gives to the disadvantage of 'strict' special-science laws. In so doing, I shall focus on the question whether ceteris paribus laws can still apply in special sciences
  •  4
    Neural substrates of socioemotional self-awareness in neurodegenerative disease
    with H. J. Rosen, T. Shany-Ur, J. Ullah, C. M. Stanley, V. Laluz, M. W. Weiner, S. M. Wilson, B. L. Miller, and K. P. Rankin
    Background: Neuroimaging studies examining neural substrates of impaired self-awareness in patients with neurodegenerative diseases have shown divergent results depending on the modality of awareness. Evidence is accumulating to suggest that self-awareness arises from a combination of modality-specific and large-scale supramodal neural networks. Methods: We investigated the structural substrates of patients' tendency to overestimate or underestimate their own capacity to demonstrate empathic con…Read more
  • Eine metatheoretisch motivierte Interpretation der „Ewigen Wiederkunft" Nietzsches
    Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie Und Theologie 56 (1): 145-163. 2009.