•  306
    What is it like to be a phenomenologist?
    Philosophical Quarterly 48 (191): 204-9. 1998.
  •  273
    The knowledge argument against the knowledge argument
    Analysis 49 (June): 158-60. 1989.
    Epiphenomenalism => qualia don't cause beliefs => we don't know about qualia
  •  182
    Response-dependence about aesthetic value
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (3): 338-352. 2012.
    The dominant view about the nature of aesthetic value holds it to be response-dependent. We believe that the dominance of this view owes largely to some combination of the following prevalent beliefs: 1 The belief that challenges brought against response-dependent accounts in other areas of philosophy are less challenging when applied to response-dependent accounts of aesthetic value. 2 The belief that aesthetic value is instrumental and that response-dependence about aesthetic value alone accom…Read more
  •  173
    Seeing red: The metaphysics of colours without the physics
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (1): 33-52. 2005.
    By treating colours as sui generis intrinsic properties of objects we can maintain that (1) colours are causally responsible for colour experiences (and so agree with the physicalist) and (2) colours, along with the similarity and difference relations that colours bear to one another, are presented to us by casual observation (and so agree with the dispositionalist). The major obstacle for such a view is the causal overdetermination of colour experience. Borrowing and expanding on the works of S…Read more
  •  150
    A posteriori primitivism
    Philosophical Studies 150 (1). 2010.
    Recent criticisms of non-reductive accounts of color assume that the only arguments for such accounts are a priori arguments. I put forward a posteriori arguments for a non-reductive account of colors which avoids those criticisms
  •  53
    Intentionalism and the Inverted Spectrum
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 8 (3): 299-313. 2008.
    Intentionalism holds that two experiences differ in their representational content if and only if they differ in phenomenal character. It is generally held that Intentionalism cannot allow for the possibility of spectrum inversion without systematic error, unless it abandons the idea that, for example, the qualitative character of color experience is inherited from the qualitative character of colors. The paper argues that the conjunction of all three -- the possibility of spectrum inversion, In…Read more
  •  51
    Supervenience and Realization: Aesthetic Objects and their Properties
    British Journal of Aesthetics 61 (2): 229-245. 2021.
    Aestheticians generally agree that the aesthetic features of an object depend upon the non-aesthetic features of an object, and that this dependence can be captured by some formulation of the supervenience relation. I argue that the aesthetic depends upon the non-aesthetic in various and importantly different ways; that these dependence relations cannot be explained by supervenience; that appeals to supervenience create puzzles that aestheticians have neither fully appreciated nor resolved; and …Read more
  •  41
    Colours and Causes: A Reply to Jackson and Pargetter
    Dialogue 36 (2): 281-286. 1997.
    RésuméFrank Jackson et Robert Pargetter défendent l'idée que la couleur rouge est lapropriété, quelle qu'elle soit, qui cause ou causerait l'apparition de rouge dans notre expérience visuelle. Ceci empêche la couleur rouge d'être une propriété dispositionnelle, soutiennent-ils, puisque les propriétés dispositionnelles sont causalement inertes. Pour des raisons similaires, Us concluent aussi que la couleur rouge ne peut pas être une propriété disjonctive. Mais, comme ils s'en rendent bien compte,…Read more
  •  40
    RésuméPaul Boghossian et David Velleman ont soutenu que les théories physicalistes des couleurs — celles qui identifient les propriétés de couleur avec certaines propriétés physiques des objets ou de la lumière—ne peuvent accommoder l'intuition profonde selon laquelle nous ne pouvons pas être dans l'erreur au sujet des contenus représentationnels de nos expériences de couleur. Contre Boghossian et Velleman, je soutiens que cette intuition prétendue que les théories physicalistes ne réussisssent …Read more
  •  35
    The Red and the Real: An Essay on Color Ontology (review)
    Philosophical Review 120 (2): 326-329. 2011.
  •  33
    Dispositionalism, ostension, and austerity
    Philosophical Studies 73 (1). 1994.
  •  30
    Varieties of Relativism (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 50 (3): 663-665. 1997.
    As the title suggests, Varieties of Relativism presents a catalogue of types of relativism, as well as the arguments both for and against each type. The authors say they "are aiming at a presentation that would serve in the classroom to introduce the kinds of arguments that appear in particular texts", and the book is primarily devoted to this task. The authors also suggest a positive thesis, what they take to be a version of relativism. Their primary concern is not to develop that thesis, howev…Read more
  •  22
  •  9
    The Problem of Perceptual Agreement
    with Elay Shech
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 23 (68): 133-138. 2023.
    We present the problem of perceptual agreement (of determinate color) and submit that it proves to be a serious and long overlooked obstacle for those insisting that colors are not objective features of objects, viz., nonobjectivist theories like C. L. Hardin’s (2003) eliminativism and Jonathan Cohen’s (2009) relationalism.
  •  3
    In Rediscovering Colors: A Study in Pollyanna Realism, Michael Watkins endorses the Moorean view that colors are simple, non-reducible, properties of objects. Consequently, Watkins breaks from what has become the received view that either colors are reducible to certain properties of interest to science, or else nothing is really colored. What is novel about the work is that Watkins, unlike other Mooreans, takes seriously the metaphysics of colors. Consequently, Watkins provides an account of wh…Read more