•  703
    Science starts out with the idea of a person as billions of neurons housed in a body that is a cloud of particles. Common sense starts out with the idea of a person having capacities belonging to a single individual. The common sense person does not have parts. Our objectifying science slowly takes over the person as it tends toward physical materialism. Where will it end? What is being gradually pushed out of the world? If science had already taken over, if the categories of neuroscience were c…Read more
  •  632
    Science starts out with the idea of a person as billions of neurons housed in a body that is a cloud of particles. Common sense starts out with the idea of a person having capacities belonging to a single individual. The common sense person does not have parts. Our objectifying science slowly takes over the person as it tends toward physical materialism. Where will it end? What is being gradually pushed out of the world? If science had already taken over, if the categories of neuroscience were c…Read more
  •  78
    The philosophical works of Wilfrid Sellars
    with Jeffrey Sicha
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 22 (1): 187-193. 1991.
  •  47
    Descartes’ Quartum Quid
    Philosophy Research Archives 13 379-409. 1987.
    My goal is to illustrate Descartes’ reliance on two quite different and competing interpretations of objective reality by explaining how each is used in defending his causal axioms. The initial criticism comes from Caterus (and is later taken up by Gassendi) who charges that Descartes makes it appear as if the thought in its objective aspect (the intentional entity) is really distinct from the thought qua modification of the mind (i.e., the thought in its formal aspect). This implies that the ob…Read more
  •  37
    (10) Examples (13) meaning as functional classification (14) meaning as functional classification (14) Introduces dot-quotes (15) “stand for” is a special case of functional classification (19) classical problem of “participation”
  •  33
    Harmony in Descartes and the Medical Philosophers
    Philosophy Research Archives 13 499-556. 1987.
    Among late Renaissance and early Modern philosophers, the concepts of “sympathy” or “harmony” are a recurring theme. My goal is to show that theories which rely on such concepts, far from being an attempt to avoid the emerging mechanistic or empirical trends, are actually the form which these trends took in the wake of an increasing disenchantment with Aristotelian psychology. Fracastorius, Suarez and Descartes provide the texts: their accounts of the interaction between cognitive faculties exhi…Read more
  •  27
    The Metaphysics of Epistemology
    with Wilfred Sellars
    Noûs 26 (4): 517-518. 1992.
  •  11
    Descartes’ Quartum Quid
    Philosophy Research Archives 13 379-409. 1987.
    My goal is to illustrate Descartes’ reliance on two quite different and competing interpretations of objective reality by explaining how each is used in defending his causal axioms. The initial criticism comes from Caterus (and is later taken up by Gassendi) who charges that Descartes makes it appear as if the thought in its objective aspect (the intentional entity) is really distinct from the thought qua modification of the mind (i.e., the thought in its formal aspect). This implies that the ob…Read more
  •  8
    Descartes’ Quartum Quid
    Philosophy Research Archives 13 379-409. 1987.
    My goal is to illustrate Descartes’ reliance on two quite different and competing interpretations of objective reality by explaining how each is used in defending his causal axioms. The initial criticism comes from Caterus (and is later taken up by Gassendi) who charges that Descartes makes it appear as if the thought in its objective aspect (the intentional entity) is really distinct from the thought qua modification of the mind (i.e., the thought in its formal aspect). This implies that the ob…Read more
  •  5
    Integration Area C. Nature, sources, and limits of human knowledge; roles of perception, reason, testimony, and intuition in acquiring rational beliefs; e.g. science, mathematics, values, the arts, religion, social issues, and psychological states. G.E. Integration IC.