•  2
    Are Colours Visually Complex?
    In Christer Svennerlind, Almäng Jan & Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (eds.), Johanssonian Investigations: Essays in Honour of Ingvar Johansson on His Seventieth Birthday, Ontos Verlag. pp. 627-639. 2013.
  •  970
    A visual experience, as understood here, is a sensory event that is conscious, or like something to undergo. This chapter focuses on three issues concerning such experiences. The first issue is the so-called ‘transparency’ of experiences. The chapter distinguishes a number of different interpretations of the suggestion that visual experiences are ‘transparent’. It then discusses in what sense, if any, visual experiences are ‘transparent’, and what further conclusions one can draw from that. …Read more
  •  26
    On Imagism about Phenomenal Thought
    Philosophical Review 119 (3): 43-95. 2010.
    Imagism about Phenomenal Thought is the view that there is some concept Q that we can employ only while we experience the quality Q. I believe this view is theoretically significant, is or can be made intuitively appealing, and is explicitly or implicitly accepted by many contemporary philosophers. However, there is no good reason to accept it. Or so I argue.
  •  720
    Nagel's case against Physicalism
    SATS 3 (2). 2002.
    This paper is an attempt to understand and assess Thomas Nagel's influential case against physicalism in the philosophy of mind. I show that Nagel has claimed that experience is "subjective", or "essentially connected with a single point of view" in at least three different senses: first, in the sense that it is essential to every experience that there be something it is like to have it; second, in the sense that what an experience is like for its possessor cannot be understood by a radically di…Read more
  •  5
    Consciousness and Intentionality of Action
    The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 35 215-220. 1998.
    One much discussed issue in contemporary philosophy is the relation between consciousness and intentionality. Philosophers debate whether consciousness and intentionality are somehow ‘connected’; whether we have reason to be more optimistic about an ‘objective,’ ‘scientific’ or ‘third person’ ‘account’ of intentionality than about an analogous account of consciousness. This paper is intended as a limited contribution to that debate. I shall be concerned only with the intentionality of action. No…Read more
  •  15
    In recent years, many philosophers and scientists have argued or accepted that it is impossible to learn primitive sensory concepts like “blue” and “red”. This paper defends a more qualified picture. I try to show that some received characterisations of “learning” are nonequivalent and point towards different learning-nonlearning distinctions. And, on some ways of specifying such a distinction, it might be correct that we do not and cannot “learn” a concept of blue. But on other ways of specifyi…Read more
  •  20
    A strong form of representationalism says that every conscious property of every mental state can be identified with some part of the state’s representational properties. A weaker representationalism says that some conscious property of some mental state can be identified with some part of the state’s representational properties. David Papineau has recently argued that all such theories are incorrect since they construe consciousness as consisting in “relations to propositions or other abstract …Read more
  •  58
    A strong form of representationalism says that every conscious property of every mental state can be identified with some part of the state’s representational properties. A weaker representationalism says that some conscious property of some mental state can be identified with some part of the state’s representational properties. David Papineau has recently argued that all such theories are incorrect since they construe consciousness as consisting in “relations to propositions or other abstract …Read more
  •  874
    Colour and Consciousness: Untying the Metaphysical Knot
    Philosophical Studies 136 (2). 2007.
    Colours and consciousness both present us with metaphysical problems. But what exactly are the problems? According to standard accounts, they are roughly the following. On the one hand, we have reason to believe, about both colour and consciousness, that they are identical with some familiar natural phenomena. But on the other hand, it is hard to see how these identities could obtain. I argue that this is an adequate characterisation of our metaphysical problem of colour, but a mischaracterisati…Read more
  •  50
    In recent years, many philosophers and scientists have argued or accepted that it is impossible to learn primitive sensory concepts like “blue” and “red”. This paper defends a more qualified picture. I try to show that some received characterisations of “learning” are nonequivalent and point towards different learning-nonlearning distinctions. And, on some ways of specifying such a distinction, it might be correct that we do not and cannot “learn” a concept of blue. But on other ways of specifyi…Read more
  •  761
    On Imagism About Phenomenal Thought
    Philosophical Review 120 (1): 43-95. 2011.
    Imagism about Phenomenal Thought is (roughly) the view that there is some concept *Q* (for some sensory quality Q) that we can employ only while we experience the quality Q. I believe this view is theoretically significant, is or can be made intuitively appealing, and is explicitly or implicitly accepted by many contemporary philosophers However, there is no good reason to accept it. Or so I argue.
  •  159
    Wittgenstein, consciousness, and the mind
    Sorites 16 (December): 6-22. 2005.
    Contrary to philosophical tradition, modern theorists of the mind have often downplayed the importance of consciousness. Instead, they have accounted for the mind in terms of phenomena like mechanisms, dispositions, abilities and even environmental features. One of many inspirations for this trend is a series of passages of the later Wittgenstein. These passages discuss a variety of specific mental phenomena, like searching, comparing, understanding and reading. The passages have often been take…Read more
  •  983
    Nagel's case against physicalism
    SATS 3 (2): 91-108. 2002.
    This paper is an attempt to understand and assess Thomas Nagel's influential case against physicalism in the philosophy of mind. I show that Nagel has claimed that experience is "subjective", or "essentially connected with a single point of view" in at least three different senses: first, in the sense that it is essential to every experience that there be something it is like to have it; second, in the sense that what an experience is like for its possessor cannot be understood by a radically di…Read more
  •  405
    Lessons for Mary
    In Marek and Reicher (ed.), Experience and Analysis: Papers of the 27th International Wittgenstein Symposium, The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. 2004.
    What could you learn if you saw a colour after being confined from birth to a black-and-white room? It turns out that this is surprisingly hard to say. I suggest that reflection on this question teaches us that colour perception has a richer content than we might have thought.
  •  522
    This paper develops a proposal about phenomenal consciousness that is (somewhat) eliminativist in two respects. First, regarded in the light of some common ways of conceiving of consciousness, the proposal is "deflationary". Second, it opens up space for a development in which what we now naturally think about as consciousness turns out to be many different things.
  •  118
    How Physicalists Can—and Cannot—Explain the Seeming “Absurdity” of Physicalism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 97 (3): 681-703. 2017.
    According to a widely held physicalist view, consciousness is identical with some physical or functional phenomenon just as liquidity is identical with loose molecular connection. To many of us, this claim about consciousness seems more problematic than the claim about liquidity. To many—including many physicalists—the identification of consciousness with some physical phenomenon even seems “absurd” or “crazy”. A full defence of physicalism should explain why the allegedly correct hypothesis com…Read more
  •  1952
    Two types of qualia theory
    The Harvard Review of Philosophy 20 107-131. 2014.
    This paper distinguishes two types of qualia theory, which I call Galilean and non-Galilean qualia theories. It also offers considerations against each type of theory. To my mind the considerations are powerful. In any case, they bring out the importance of distinguishing the two types of theory. For they show that different considerations come into play—or considerations come into play in quite different ways—in assessing the two types of theory.
  •  485
    Humes utelämnade nyans av blått
    Filosofisk Tidskrift 29 (3): 18-33. 2008.
  •  822
    A number of philosophers have recently argued that consciousness properties are identical with some set of physical or functional properties and that we can explain away the frequently felt puzzlement about this claim as a delusion or confusion generated by our different ways of apprehending or thinking about consciousness. This paper examines David Papineau’s influential version of this view. According to Papineau, the difference between our “phenomenal” and “material” concepts of consciousness…Read more
  •  587
    Are colours visually complex?
    In Christer Svennerlind, Jan Almäng & Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (eds.), Johanssonian Investigations. Essays in Honour of Ingvar Johansson on His Seventieth Birthday, Ontos Verlag. 2013.
    This paper articulates a case for supposing that all shades of colour are visually complex.