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253Truthmakers: A tale of two explanatory projectsSynthese 181 (3): 413-431. 2011.Truthmakers are supposed to explain the truth of propositions, but it is unclear what kind of explanation truthmakers can provide. In this paper, I argue that ‘truthmaker explanations’ conflate two different explanatory projects. The first project is essentially concerned with truth, while the second project is concerned with reductive explanation. It is the latter project, I maintain, which is really central to truthmaking theory. On this basis, a general account of truthmaking can be formulate…Read more
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219How Frogs See the World: Putting Millikan’s Teleosemantics to the TestPhilosophia 40 (3): 483-496. 2012.How do frogs represent their prey? This question has been the focus of many debates among proponents of naturalistic theories of content, especially among proponents of teleosemantics. This is because alternative versions of the teleosemantic approach have different implications for the content of frog representations, and it is still controversial which of these content ascriptions (if any) is the most adequate. Theorists often appeal to intuitions here, but this is a dubious strategy. In this …Read more
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159Perceiving the World Outside: How to Solve the Distality Problem for Informational TeleosemanticsPhilosophical Quarterly 68 (271): 349-369. 2018.Perceptual representations have distal content: they represent external objects and their properties, not light waves or retinal images. This basic fact presents a fundamental problem for ‘input-oriented’ theories of perceptual content. As I show in the first part of this paper, this even holds for what is arguably the most sophisticated input-oriented theory to date, namely Karen Neander's informational teleosemantics. In the second part of the paper, I develop a new version of informational te…Read more
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159The Difference Between Moral and Rational “Oughts”: An Expressivist AccountEthical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (2): 159-174. 2012.Morality and rationality are both normative: the moral claim “you ought to help others” is a genuine normative judgment, as well as the rational maxim “you ought to brush your teeth twice a day”. But it seems that there is a crucial difference these two judgments. In the first part of this paper, I argue that this difference is to be understood as a difference between two kinds of normativity: demanding and recommending normativity. But the crucial task is, of course, to explain the difference. …Read more
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156Perceptual representations: a teleosemantic answer to the breadth-of-application problemBiology and Philosophy 30 (1): 119-136. 2015.Teleosemantic theories of representation are often criticized as being “too liberal”, i.e. as categorizing states as representations which are not representational at all. Recently, a powerful version of this objection has been put forth by Tyler Burge. Focusing on perception, Burge defends the claim that all teleosemantic theories apply too broadly, thereby missing what is distinctive about representation. Contra Burge, I will argue in this paper that there is a teleosemantic account of percept…Read more
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156How AI Systems Can Be BlameworthyPhilosophia (4): 1-24. 2024.AI systems, like self-driving cars, healthcare robots, or Autonomous Weapon Systems, already play an increasingly important role in our lives and will do so to an even greater extent in the near future. This raises a fundamental philosophical question: who is morally responsible when such systems cause unjustified harm? In the paper, we argue for the admittedly surprising claim that some of these systems can themselves be morally responsible for their conduct in an important and everyday sense o…Read more
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153Why mental content is not like water: reconsidering the reductive claims of teleosemanticsSynthese 197 (5): 2271-2290. 2020.According to standard teleosemantics, intentional states are selectional states. This claim is put forward not as a conceptual analysis, but as a ‘theoretical reduction’—an a posteriori hypothesis analogous to ‘water = H2O’. Critics have tried to show that this meta-theoretical conception of teleosemantics leads to unacceptable consequences. In this paper, I argue that there is indeed a fundamental problem with the water/H2O analogy, as it is usually construed, and that teleosemanticists should …Read more
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150Can Truthmaker Theorists Claim Ontological Free Lunches?European Journal of Philosophy 22 (2): 249-268. 2011.Truthmaker theorists hold that propositions about higher-level entities (e.g. the proposition that there is a heap of sand) are often made true by lower-level entities (e.g. by facts about the configuration of fundamental particles). This generates a problem: what should we say about these higher-level entities? On the one hand, they must exist (since there are true propositions about them), on the other hand, it seems that they are completely superfluous and should be banished for reasons of on…Read more
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141Grounding NominalismPacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (2): 482-505. 2018.The notion of grounding has gained increasing acceptance among metaphysicians in recent years. In this paper, I argue that this notion can be used to formulate a very attractive version of (property) nominalism, a view that I call ‘grounding nominalism’. Simplifying somewhat, this is the view that all properties are grounded in things. I argue that this view is coherent and has a decisive advantage over competing versions of nominalism: it allows us to accept properties as real, while fully acco…Read more
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137The nature of perceptual constanciesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (1): 3-20. 2021.Perceptual constancies have been studied by psychologists for decades, but in recent years, they have also become a major topic in the philosophy of mind. One reason for this surge of interest is Tyler Burge’s (2010) influential claim that constancy mechanisms mark the difference between perception and mere sensitivity, and thereby also the difference between organisms with genuine representational capacities and ‘mindless’ beings. Burge’s claim has been the subject of intense debate. It is beco…Read more
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129The Structuring Causes of Behavior: Has Dretske Saved Mental Causation?Acta Analytica 29 (3): 267-284. 2014.Fred Dretske’s account of mental causation, developed in Explaining Behavior and defended in numerous articles, is generally regarded as one of the most interesting and most ambitious approaches in the field. According to Dretske, meaning facts, construed historically as facts about the indicator functions of internal states, are the structuring causes of behavior. In this article, we argue that Dretske’s view is untenable: On closer examination, the real structuring causes of behavior turn out …Read more
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120How to link particulars to universals: Four versions of Bradley's regress refutedPhilosophia Naturalis 44 (2): 219-237. 2007.It is often claimed that Realism about universals is problematic because it cannot account for the relation between particulars and universals without falling prey to ,,Bradley's regress". In this article, I consider four different versions of this regress argument (the semantic regress, the explanatory regress, the ,One over Many' regress, and the truthmaker regress), each based on a different ,regress-generating' assumption. I argue that none of these arguments succeeds in refuting Realism. St…Read more
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116Beyond Verbal Disputes: The Compatibilism Debate RevisitedErkenntnis 79 (3): 669-685. 2014.The compatibilism debate revolves around the question whether moral responsibility and free will are compatible with determinism. Prima facie, this seems to be a substantial issue. But according to the triviality objection, the disagreement is merely verbal: compatibilists and incompatibilists, it is maintained, are talking past each other, since they use the terms “free will” and “moral responsibility” in different senses. In this paper I argue, first, that the triviality objection is indeed a …Read more
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101Naturalizing the content of desirePhilosophical Studies 176 (1): 161-174. 2019.Desires, or directive representations, are central components of human and animal minds. Nevertheless, desires are largely neglected in current debates about the naturalization of representational content. Most naturalists seem to assume that some version of the standard teleological approach, which identifies the content of a desire with a specific kind of effect that the desire has the function of producing, will turn out to be correct. In this paper I argue, first, that this common assumption…Read more
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81Constancy Mechanisms and Distal Content: a Reply to GarsonPhilosophical Quarterly 72 (1): 229-237. 2021.Sensory perceptions represent things in the outside world. This mundane fact raises a major problem for naturalistic theories of content: the ‘distality problem’. In a previous paper for this journal, I presented a solution to this problem which makes central appeal to constancy mechanisms. Justin Garson, also in this journal, recently criticized my solution and suggested a Dretskean alternative to it. Here, I defend my proposal by arguing, first, that Garson's criticisms ultimately miss the mar…Read more
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80No Functions for Rocks: Garson’s Generalized Selected Effects Theory and the Liberality ProblemAnalysis 81 (2): 369-378. 2021.1. IntroductionIn What Biological Functions Are and Why They Matter, Justin Garson offers a novel theory of biological functions, the generalized selected effects (GSE) theory.1 He presents the theory in a clear and comprehensive way, defends it against various objections and applies it to different areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of psychiatry, the debate about mechanisms and the debate about teleosemantic theories of mental content.2Like other proponents of the aetiological appro…Read more
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71Challenging Liberal Representationalism: A Reply to ArtigaDialectica 73 (3): 331-348. 2019.Liberal representationalism is the view that even some internal states of very simple organisms like plants or bacteria count as genuine representations. This view has been heavily criticized by many authors, including myself. In a recent paper, Marc Artiga attempts to defend liberal representationalism against these criticisms. One of his main targets is an argument of explanatory exclusion that he ascribes to Burge, Ramsey, Rescorla, Sterelny and me (among others). In this paper, I reply to Ar…Read more
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62Teleosemantik weitergedacht. Über Grundlagen, Probleme, neue EntwicklungenInformation Philosophie 3 18-31. 2019.
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45Mental contentCambridge University Press. 2023.This Element provides a comprehensive introduction to contemporary theories of mental content. After clarifying central concepts and identifying the questions that dominate the current debate, it presents and discusses the principal accounts of the nature of mental content (or mental representation), which include causal, informational, teleological and structuralist approaches, alongside the phenomenal intentionality approach and the intentional stance theory. Additionally, it examines anti-rep…Read more
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45Plädoyer für einen physikalistischen NaturalismusZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 64 (2): 165-189. 2010.Naturalisten stehen heute vor zwei großen Herausforderungen: Sie müssen zunächst präzisieren, was sie mit dem Ausdruck „Naturalismus“ meinen, und ihre Position anschließend plausibel begründen. Gegner des Naturalismus haben in den letzten Jahren immer wieder zu zeigen versucht, dass der Naturalist diesen Herausforderungen nicht gerecht werden kann. Ich argumentiere in diesem Artikel dafür, dass traditionelle Formulierungen der Naturalismusthese tatsächlich problematisch sind, dass es aber einen …Read more
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35Worum geht es in der Kompatibilismusdebatte?Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 66 (2): 310-334. 2012.
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32Willensfreiheit und Aufmerksamkeit bei DescartesZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 71 (1): 5-36. 2017.The claims about free will that Descartes makes in his writings seem, at first glance, to be inconsistent. In recent years, several authors have argued that we can dissolve the apparent contradiction by taking a closer look at the role that attention plays in Descartes’s theory of the processes of judging and deciding. Prima facie, this exegetical approach seems promising, thus its considerable influence is understandable. Nevertheless, I aim to show that the approach is doomed to failure, since…Read more
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23Glaube und Rationalität - Gibt es gute Gründe für den (A)theismus? (edited book)Mentis. 2019."Menschen glauben aus den unterschiedlichsten Gründen an Gott. Aber ist dieser Glaube rational gerechtfertigt? In diesem Band streiten führende Religionsphilosoph/-innen um die Frage, ob die besten Gründe für oder gegen den Theismus sprechen. Einige Beiträge unterziehen klassische Argumente für bzw. gegen die Existenz Gottes einer neuen Betrachtung. Andere gehen der Frage nach, welche Bedingungen eigentlich erfüllt sein müssen, damit die Überzeugung, Gott existiere, als vernünftig angesehen werd…Read more
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15Philosophy of Plant Cognition: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (edited book)Routledge. 2024.This volume features new research about the philosophy of plant intelligence and plant cognition, one of the most intriguing and complex current debates at the intersection of biology, cognitive science and philosophy. The debate about plant cognition is marked by deep disagreements. Some theorists are confident that the empirical evidence supports the ascription of cognitive capacities to plants. Others hold that such claims are overblown, and defend more traditional, non-cognitive accounts of …Read more
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11Inneres Sprechen und die Sprache des Geistes: Ein Kommentar zu Language, Cognition, and the Way We ThinkZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 78 (3): 442-446. 2024.
Zürich, Canton of Zürich, Switzerland
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Metaphysics |
Meta-Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Biology |