•  1
    The Explanatory Role of Consciousness
    In Timothy O'Connor & Constantine Sandis (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Action, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.
    This chapter contains sections titled: The Problem Perceptual Consciousness and Action: Experimental Dissociations and Commonsense Connections Awareness of Intentions and Action Initiation References.
  •  31
    Sensorimotor skills and perception
    with Andy Clark
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106 (1): 67-88. 2006.
    [Andy Clark] What is the relation between perceptual experience and the suite of sensorimotor skills that enable us to act in the very world we perceive? The relation, according to 'sensorimotor models' is tight indeed. Perceptual experience, on these accounts, is enacted via skilled sensorimotor activity, and gains its content and character courtesy of our knowledge of the relations between movement and sensory stimulation. I shall argue that this formulation is too extreme, and that it fails t…Read more
  • Joint attention, communication, and mind
    In Naomi Eilan, Christoph Hoerl, Teresa McCormack & Johannes Roessler (eds.), Joint Attention: Communication and Other Minds: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology, Oxford University Press. 2005.
  •  51
    Intersubjective exchanges
    Philosophical Explorations 23 (3): 292-301. 2020.
    Richard Moran’s “social-relational” account of illocutionary acts such as telling takes off from, and develops, a particularly powerful version of Reid’s notion of “social acts of mind”. On his ver...
  •  57
    IV*—The First Person Perspective
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95 (1): 51-66. 1995.
    Naomi Eilan; IV*—The First Person Perspective, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June 1995, Pages 51–66, https://doi.org/10.1093/ar.
  •  28
    My question is: does phenomenal consciousness have a critical role in explaining the way conscious perceptions achieve objective import? I approach it through developing a dilemma I label ‘Burge’s Challenge’, which is implicit in his approach to perceptual objectivity. It says, crudely: either endorse the general structure of his account of how objective perceptual import is achieved, and give up on a role for consciousness. Or, relinquish Caused Representation, and possibly defend a role for co…Read more
  •  11
    Objectivity and the Perspective of Consciousness
    European Journal of Philosophy 5 (3): 235-250. 2002.
  • Spatial Representation. Problems in philosophy and psychology
    with Rosaleen Mccarthy and Bill Brewer
    Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 191 (1): 119-120. 2001.
  •  134
    My question is: does phenomenal consciousness have a critical role in explaining the way conscious perceptions achieve objective import? I approach it through developing a dilemma I label ‘Burge’s Challenge’, which is implicit in his approach to perceptual objectivity. It says, crudely: either endorse the general structure of his account of how objective perceptual import is achieved, and give up on a role for consciousness. Or, relinquish Caused Representation, and possibly defend a role for co…Read more
  •  66
    The Quest for Reality, contains, amongst much else, a sustained and deeply illuminating investigation of the thesis Barry Stroud labels ’subjectivism’ about colours. The grounds he relentlessly amasses for rejecting the thesis are, in my view, compelling. There is a sense, indeed, in which I think they are more compelling than he says he himself finds them. For as I understand his arguments, they contain the materials for delivering a positive answer to the question: are objects really coloured?…Read more
  •  187
    The causal theory of perception has come under a great deal of critical scrutiny from philosophers of mind interested in the nature of perception. M. H. Newman's set-theoretic objection to Russell's structuralist version of the CTP, in his 1928 paper “Mr Russell's Causal Theory of Perception” has not, to my knowledge, figured in these discussions. In this paper I aim to show that it should: Newman's objection can be generalized to yield a particularly powerful and incisive challenge to all versi…Read more
  •  22
    The past few years have witnessed an exponentially growing body of work conducted under the ‘second person’ heading. This idea has been explored in various areas of philosophy , in developmental psychology, in psychiatry, and even in neuroscience. We may call this interest in the second person the ‘You Turn’. To put it at its most general, and ambitious, the idea driving much of the work is this: proper attention to the ways in which we relate to one another when we stand in second person relati…Read more
  •  31
    Self-consciousness and the body: An interdisciplinary introduction
    with Anthony J. Marcel
    In Jose Luis Bermudez, Anthony J. Marcel & Naomi M. Eilan (eds.), The Body and the Self, Mit Press. 1995.
  •  111
    Perceptual intentionality, attention and consciousness
    In Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, Cambridge University Press. pp. 181-202. 1998.
    of presence cannot be explained by appeal to the notion of non-representational of experience. world see John Campbell, 'The Role of Physical Objects in Thinking', in Representation: Problems Perceptual Intentionality, and
  •  228
    Agency and Self-Awareness: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2003.
    In recent years there has been much psychological and neurological work purporting to show that consciousness and self-awareness play no role in causing actions, and indeed to demonstrate that free will is an illusion. The essays in this volume subject the assumptions that motivate such claims to sustained interdisciplinary scrutiny. The book will be compulsory reading for psychologists and philosophers working on action explanation, and for anyone interested in the relation between the brain sc…Read more
  •  29
    Ecological perception and the notion of a non-conceptual point of view
    with José Luis Bermúdez and Anthony Marcel
    In Jose Luis Bermudez, Anthony J. Marcel & Naomi M. Eilan (eds.), The Body and the Self, Mit Press. 1995.
  •  51
    Philosophy of Mind
    The Philosophers' Magazine 2 (2): 50-51. 1998.
  •  138
    The strong sensorimotor account of perception gives self-induced movements two constitutive roles in explaining visual consciousness. The first says that self-induced movements are vehicles of visual awareness, and for this reason consciousness ‘does not happen in the brain only’. The second says that the phenomenal nature of visual experiences is consists in the action-directing content of vision. In response I suggest, first, that the sense in which visual awareness is active should be explain…Read more
  •  104
    Is the location of consciousness in the objectively represented world intelligible? The paper examines the grounds for Nagel's negative answer, which can be presented as a response to the following paradox. (1) We are realists about consciousness. (2) Realism about a domain of reference requires commitment to the possibility of an objective, perspective-free conception of it. (3) The phenomenal character of an experience can only be captured by means of perspectival concepts. According to Nagel,…Read more
  •  170
    Consciousness, acquaintance and demonstrative thought (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2). 2001.
    Suppose you are a blindsighted subject and an experimenter sitting opposite you says of an object in your functionally blind field ‘that peach looks delicious’. Unless you move your head to encompass the object within your normal field of vision you will not know which object she is talking about. Suppose now she reverts to the strategy used by neurophsychologists who work with blindsighted subjects and simply tells you that there is an object there and asks you either to reach for it or guess i…Read more
  •  144
    The You Turn
    Philosophical Explorations 17 (3): 265-278. 2014.
    This introductory paper sets out a framework for approaching some of the claims about the second person made by the papers collected in the special edition of Philosophical Explorations on The Second Person . It does so by putting centre stage the notion of a ‘bipolar second person relation’, and examining ways of giving it substance suggested by the authors of these papers. In particular, it focuses on claims made in these papers about the existence and/or nature of second person thought, secon…Read more
  •  25
    ‘Like the shadow of one’s own head, [the referent of one’s ‘I’ thoughts] will not wait to be jumped on. And yet it is never very far ahead; indeed, sometimes it does not seem to be ahead of the pursuer at all. It evades capture by lodging itself in the very inside of the muscles of the pursuer. It is too near even to be within arm’s reach.’(C of M 177-89)
  •  13
    Perceptual Intentionality. Attention and Consciousness
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 43 181-202. 1998.
    A representative expression of current thinking on the ‘problem of consciousness’ runs as follows. There is one, impenetrably hard problem; and a host of soluble, and in this sense easy problems. The hard problem is: how could a physical system yield subjective states? How could there be something it is like to be a physical system? This problem corresponds to a concept of consciousness invariably labelled ‘phenomenal consciousness’. It is here, with respect to phenomenal consciousness, that we …Read more
  •  157
    Objectivity and the perspective of consciousness
    European Journal of Philosophy 5 (3): 235-250. 1997.