Syracuse University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1991
San Diego, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics
Philosophy of Mind
  •  8
    Intention, Action, and De Se Indexicality
    Acta Analytica 1-16. forthcoming.
    The view that first-person (de se) mental content is essential to the explanation of action in general is a strong essential indexicality thesis. A weaker essential indexicality claim is that de se mental content is an essential ingredient of intentional action. An argument by Bermúdez for the former thesis and an argument from Babb in support of the latter are discussed in Section 2, and for reasons presented there it seems that both arguments are unsound and the conclusions are false as well. …Read more
  •  115
    Subjective experience and points of view
    Journal of Philosophical Research 18 25-36. 1993.
    Thomas Nagel contends that facts regarding the qualitative character of conscious experience can be grasped from only a single point of view. This feature, he claims, is what renders conscious experience subjective in character, and it is what makes facts about the qualitative experience subjective facts. While much has been written regarding the ontological implications of the ‘point of view account’ relatively Iittle has been said on whether the account itself successfully defines the subjecti…Read more
  •  46
    All manner of mind
    Metascience 32 (2): 289-292. 2023.
  •  287
    Animalism with Psychology
    Dialectica. forthcoming.
    Here I develop an account of our persistence that accommodates each of the following compelling intuitions: (i) that we are animals, (ii) that we existed prior to the onset of whatever psychological capacities are necessary for personhood, and we can continue to exist with the loss of those and other psychological capacities, (iii) that with suitable psychological continuity, the person goes with the brain/cerebrum in remnant person and brain/cerebrum transplant cases, and (iv) that it is possib…Read more
  •  361
    Who are “we”?: Animalism and conjoined twins
    Analytic Philosophy 64 (4): 422-442. 2023.
    Various cases of conjoined twinning have been presented as problems for the animalist view that we are animals. In some actual and possible cases of human dicephalus that have been discussed in the literature, it is arguable that there are two persons but only one human animal. It is also tempting to believe that there are two persons and one animal in possible instances of craniopagus parasiticus that have been described. Here it is argued that the animalist can admit that these are cases in wh…Read more
  •  307
    Maximality, Function, and the Many
    Metaphysica 20 (2): 175-193. 2019.
    In the region where some cat sits, there are many very cat-like items that are proper parts of the cat (or otherwise mereologically overlap the cat) , but which we are inclined to think are not themselves cats, e.g. all of Tibbles minus the tail. The question is, how can something be so cat-like without itself being a cat. Some have tried to answer this “Problem of the Many” (a problem that arises for many different kinds of things we regularly encounter, including desks, persons, rocks, and clo…Read more
  •  9
    Whether Mentality Is "Higher-Level"
    Philosophical Inquiry 24 (3-4): 65-76. 2002.
  • Behavior and Mental Content
    Dissertation, Syracuse University. 1991.
    Behaviorism is dead! Or so claim the majority of philosophers today. I aim to show that they are wrong. ;I defend philosophical behaviorism as an account of our ordinary, pretheoretical concepts pertaining to the intentional aspects of mind. The theory purports to explain in purely behavioral terms what it is for a mental state to be a belief, a desire or a thought, and what it is about the state that gives it its content. Like Rylean behaviorism, it does not seek to characterize intentional sta…Read more
  •  1296
    Physicalism and the Mind
    Springer. 2014.
    This book addresses a tightly knit cluster of questions in the philosophy of mind. There is the question: Are mental properties identical with physical properties? An affirmative answer would seem to secure the truth of physicalism regarding the mind, i.e., the belief that all mental phenomena obtain solely in virtue of physical phenomena. If the answer is negative, then the question arises: Can this solely in virtue of relation be understood as some kind of dependence short of identity? And ans…Read more
  •  315
    Mental Excess and the Constitution View of Persons
    Philosophical Papers 46 (2): 211-243. 2017.
    Constitution theorists have argued that due to a difference in persistence conditions, persons are not identical with the animals or the bodies that constitute them. A popular line of objection to the view that persons are not identical with the animals/bodies that constitute them is that the view commits one to undesirable overpopulation, with too many minds and too many thinkers. Constitution theorists are well aware of these overpopulation concerns and have gone a long way toward answering th…Read more
  •  674
    Surviving death: how to refute termination theses
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 61 (2): 178-197. 2018.
    When deciding how ‘death’ should be defined, it is helpful to consider cases in which vital functions are restored to an organism long after those vital functions have ceased. Here I consider whether such restoration cases can be used to refute termination theses. Focusing largely on the termination thesis applied to human animals, I develop a line of argument from the possibility of human restoration to the conclusion that in many actual cases, human animals continue to exist after they die. Th…Read more
  •  5
    Subjectivity
    In Edward Craig (ed.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge. 1998.
  •  72
    Companion to Intrinsic Properties (edited book)
    De Gruyter. 2014.
    What makes a property intrinsic? What exactly does the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction rest upon, and how can we reasonably justify this distinction? These questions bear great importance on central debates in such diverse philosophical fields as ethics, philosophy of mind, epistemology and philosophy of science - to only name a few. Given the central relevance of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction to philosophical research, a collection of pertinent essays on the topic is an essential addition…Read more
  •  289
    Constitution and the Necessity of Identity
    Logique Et Analyse 48 (192): 311-321. 2005.
    It is tempting to think that in the case of complete spatio-temporal coincidence, the statue is identical with the constituent lump of clay. However, some philosophers have thought that accepting constitution as identity in this type of case forces one to reject the necessity of identity. I show that there is no conflict here. By distinguishing between an object's being necessarily an F and an object's being necessity identical with an F, we can see that accepting the necessity of identity does …Read more
  •  136
    Understanding the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9549-x Authors Robert Francescotti, Department of Philosophy, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182-6044, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.
  •  611
    Even: The conventional implicature approach reconsidered
    Linguistics and Philosophy 18 (2). 1995.
    Like Bennett's account of ‘even’, my analysis incorporates the following plausible and widespread intuitions. (a) The word ‘even’ does not make a truth-functional difference; it makes a difference only in conventional implicature. In particular, ‘even’ functions neither as a universal quantifier, nor a most or many quantifier. The only quantified statement that ‘Even A is F’ implies is the existential claim ‘There is an x (namely, A) that is F’, but this implication is nothing more than what the…Read more
  •  2
    This paper examines two popular arguments for the nonidentity of the statue and its constituent material. An essentialist response is provided to one of the arguments; that response is then shown to undermine the other argument as well. It is also shown that even if we accept these arguments and concede nonidentity, we can still avoid the further conclusion that constitution is not identity. These ideas are then extended to other applications of the arguments for nonidentity (specifically, their…Read more
  •  422
    The Non-Reductionist's Troubles with Supervenience
    Philosophical Studies 89 (1): 105-124. 1998.
    I argue that there is a tension between three popular views in the philosophy of mind: (1) mental properties are not identical with physical properties (a version of nonreductionism), but (2) mental properties are had solely by virtue of physical properties (physicalism regarding the mind), which requires that (3) mental properties supervene on physical properties. To earn the title "physicalist," one must hold a sufficiently strong version of the supervenience thesis. But this, I argue, will be…Read more
  •  1
    Introspection and qualia: A defense of infallibility
    Communication and Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly Journal 33 (3-4): 161-173. 2000.
  • Defining "physicalism"
    Journal of Mind and Behavior 19 (1): 51-64. 1998.
    To earn the title “ontological physicalist,” one must endorse an entailment thesis of the following sort: the physical properties that are had, together with the causal laws, determine which higher-level properties are had. I argue that if this thesis is to capture all that is essential to physicalist intuitions, the relevant set of causal laws must be restricted to purely physical laws. But then it follows that higher-level properties are physical properties. The conclusion is that one cannot c…Read more
  •  972
    Intrinsic/Extrinsic: A Relational Account Defended
    In Robert M. Francescotti (ed.), Companion to Intrinsic Properties, De Gruyter. pp. 175-198. 2014.
    In "How to Define Intrinsic Properties" I offered a relational account of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction. The basic idea is that F is an intrinsic property of an item x just in case x’s having F consists entirely in x’s having certain internal properties, where an internal property is one whose instantiation does not consist in one’s relation to any distinct items (items other than oneself and one’s proper parts). I still think that this relational analysis is largely correct, and here I pr…Read more
  •  424
    Realization and Physicalism
    Philosophical Psychology 23 (5): 601-616. 2010.
    Melnyk provides a rigorous analysis of the notion of realization with the aim of defining Physicalism. It is argued here that contrary to Melnyk's Realization Physicalism, the idea that mental phenomena are realized by physical phenomena fails to capture the physicalist belief that the former obtain in virtue of the latter. The conclusion is not that Physicalism is false, but that its truth is best explained with some notion other than realization in Melnyk's sense. I also argue that the problem…Read more
  •  554
    Fetuses, corpses and the psychological approach to personal identity
    Philosophical Explorations 8 (1): 69-81. 2005.
    Olson (1997a) tries to refute the Psychological Approach to personal identity with his Fetus Argument, and Mackie (1999) aims to do the same with the Death Argument. With the help of a suggestion made by Baker (1999), the following discussion shows that these arguments fail. In the process of defending the Psychological Approach, it is made clear exactly what one is and is not committed to as a proponent of the theory
  •  24
    The problem of animal pain and suffering
    In Justin McBrayer Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to the Problem of Evil, Wiley. pp. 113-127. 2013.
    Here I discuss some theistic responses to the problem of animal pain and suffering with special attention to Michael Murray’s presentation in Nature Red in Tooth and Claw. The neo-Cartesian defenses he describes are reviewed, along with the appeal to nomic regularity and Murray’s emphasis on the progression of the universe from chaos to order. It is argued that despite these efforts to prove otherwise the problem of animal suffering remains a serious threat to the belief that an all-powerful, al…Read more
  •  673
    The problem of extras and the contingency of physicalism
    Philosophical Explorations 17 (2): 241-254. 2014.
    Perhaps all concrete phenomena obtain solely in virtue of physical phenomena. Even so, it seems that the world could have been otherwise. It seems that physicalism, if true, is contingently true. In fact, many believe that the actual truth of physicalism allows metaphysically possible worlds duplicating the actual world in all physical respects while containing immaterial extras, e.g. ghosts, spirits, or Cartesian souls, that no physicalist would believe actually exist. Here I focus on physicali…Read more
  •  629
    Ontological physicalism and property pluralism: Why they are incompatible
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 81 (4): 349-362. 2000.
    To earn the title “ontological physicalist,” one must endorse an entailment thesis of the following sort: the physical properties that are had, together with the causal laws, determine which higher-level properties are had. I argue that if this thesis is to capture all that is essential to physicalist intuitions, the relevant set of causal laws must be restricted to purely physical laws. But then it follows that higher-level properties are physical properties. The conclusion is that one cannot c…Read more
  •  265
    Emergence
    Erkenntnis 67 (1). 2007.
    Here I offer a precise analysis of what it takes for a property to count as emergent. The features widely considered crucial to emergence include novelty, unpredictability, supervenience, relationality, and downward causal influence. By acknowledging each of these distinctive features, the definition provided below captures an important sense in which the whole can be more than the sum of its parts