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20Merleau–Ponty on the BodyRatio 15 (4): 376-391. 2002.The French philosopher Maurice Merleau–Ponty claims that there are two distinct ways in which we can understand the place of an object when we are visually apprehending it. The first involves an intentional relation to the object that is essentially cognitive or can serve as the input to cognitive processes; the second irreducibly involves a bodily set or preparation to deal with the object. Because of its essential bodily component, Merleau–Ponty calls this second kind of understanding ‘motor i…Read more
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31Demonstrative Concepts and ExperiencePhilosophical Review 110 (3): 397-420. 2001.A number of authors have argued recently that the content of perceptual experience can, and even must, be characterized in conceptual terms. Their claim, more precisely, is that every perceptual experience is such that, of necessity, its content is constituted entirely by concepts possessed by the subject having the experience. This is a surprising result. For it seems reasonable to think that a subject’s experiences could be richer and more fine-grained than his conceptual repertoire; that a su…Read more
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38Content and Constancy: phenomenology, psychology, and the content of perceptionPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3): 682-690. 2008.
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108Existential phenomenology and cognitive scienceElectronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy (4). 1996.[1] In _What Computers Can't Do_ (1972), Hubert Dreyfus identified several basic assumptions about the nature of human knowledge which grounded contemporary research in cognitive science. Contemporary artificial intelligence, he argued, relied on an unjustified belief that the mind functions like a digital computer using symbolic manipulations ("the psychological assumption") (Dreyfus 1992: 163ff), or at least that computer programs could be understood as formalizing human thought ("the epistemo…Read more
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126Temporal awarenessIn David Woodruff Smith & Amie Lynn Thomasson (eds.), Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2005.
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100The normative nature of perceptual experienceIn Bence Nanay (ed.), Perceiving the world, Oxford University Press. pp. 146. 2010.
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The normative nature of perceptual experienceIn Bence Nanay (ed.), Perceiving the world, Oxford University Press. 2010.
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92On the demonstration of blindsight in monkeysMind and Language 21 (4): 475-483. 2006.The work of Alan Cowey and Petra Stoerig is often taken to have shown that, following lesions analogous to those that cause blindsight in humans, there is blindsight in monkeys. The present paper reveals a problem in Cowey and Stoerig's case for blindsight in monkeys. The problem is that Cowey and Stoerig's results would only provide good evidence for blindsight if there is no difference between their two experimental paradigms with regard to the sorts of stimuli that are likely to come to consc…Read more
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357Merleau–ponty on the bodyRatio 15 (4). 2002.The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty claims that there are two distinct ways in which we can understand the place of an object when we are visually apprehending it. The first involves an intentional relation to the object that is essentially cognitive or can serve as the input to cognitive processes; the second irreducibly involves a bodily set or preparation to deal with the object. Because of its essential bodily component, Merleau-Ponty calls this second kind of understanding ‘motor i…Read more
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188Closing the Gap: Phenomenology and Logical AnalysisThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 13 (2): 4-24. 2005.phenomenology and logical analysis. John Searle and Bert Dreyfus are for me two of the paradigm figures of contemporary philosophy, so I am extremely proud to have been offered the opportunity to engage with their work. The editors of The Harvard Review of Philosophy, it seems to me, have shown a keen sense of what is deep and important in our discipline by publishing extended interviews with these two influential thinkers. At the same time, writing this article meant entering into a debate betw…Read more
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292Content and constancy: Phenomenology, psychology, and the content of perception (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3). 2008.No Abstract
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146Saving the Sacred from the Axial RevolutionInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 54 (2): 195-203. 2011.Prominent defenders of the Enlightenment, like Jürgen Habermas, are beginning to recognize that the characterization of human beings in entirely rational and secular terms leaves out something important. Religion, they admit, plays an important role in human existence. But the return to a traditional monotheistic religion seems sociologically difficult after the death of God. We argue that Homeric polytheism retains a phenomenologically rich account of the sacred, and a similarly rich understand…Read more
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486Demonstrative concepts and experiencePhilosophical Review 110 (3): 397-420. 2001.A number of authors have argued recently that the content of perceptual experience can, and even must, be characterized in conceptual terms. Their claim, more precisely, is that every perceptual experience is such that, of necessity, its content is constituted entirely by concepts possessed by the subject having the experience. This is a surprising result. For it seems reasonable to think that a subject’s experiences could be richer and more fine-grained than his conceptual repertoire; that a su…Read more
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What do we see (when we do)?In Thomas Baldwin (ed.), Reading Merleau-Ponty: On Phenomenology of Perception, Routledge. 2007.
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8The combination of target motion and dynamic changes in context greatly enhance visual size illusionsFrontiers in Human Neuroscience 16 959367. 2022.Perceived size is a function of viewing distance, retinal images size, and various contextual cues such as linear perspective and the size and location of neighboring objects. Recently, we demonstrated that illusion magnitudes of classic visual size illusions may be greatly enhanced or reduced by adding dynamic elements. Specifically, a dynamic version of the Ebbinghaus illusion (classically considered a “size contrast” illusion) led to a greatly enhanced illusory effect, whereas a dynamic versi…Read more
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1Review of Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again (review)Mind 109 (433). 2000.The title of Andy Clark's book is, among other things, a reference to one of the central terms in Martin Heidegger's early work: "Dasein" (being there) is the word that Heidegger uses to refer to beings like ourselves. Clark is no Heidegger scholar, but the reference is deliberate; among the predecessors to his book he lists not only Heidegger himself, but also the American Heidegger scholar Hubert Dreyfus and the French Heideggerean phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This triumvirate has pl…Read more
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3Can one act for a reason without acting intentionally?In Constantine Sandis (ed.), New essays on the explanation of action, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 169--183. 2009.
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376The puzzle of temporal experienceIn Andrew Brook & Kathleen Akins (eds.), Cognition and the Brain: The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement, Cambridge University Press. pp. 208--238. 2005.There you are at the opera house. The soprano has just hit her high note – a glassshattering high C that fills the hall – and she holds it. She holds it. She holds it. She holds it. She holds it. She holds the note for such a long time that after a while a funny thing happens: you no longer seem only to hear it, the note as it is currently sounding, that glass-shattering high C that is loud and high and pure. In addition, you also seem to hear something more. It is difficult to express precisely…Read more
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3Time and experienceIn Andrew Brook & Kathleen Akins (eds.), Cognition and the Brain: The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement, Cambridge University Press. 2005.
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On time and truthIn Kurt J. Pritzl (ed.), Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, Catholic University of America Press. forthcoming.
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42Husserl and phenomenologyIn Robert C. Solomon & D. Sherman (eds.), Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy, Blackwell. pp. 12--112. 2002.
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281Heterophenomenology: Heavy-handed Sleight-of-hand (review)Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 6 (1-2): 45-55. 2007.We argue that heterophenomenology both over- and under-populates the intentional realm. For example, when one is involved in coping, one’s mind does not contain beliefs. Since the heterophenomenologist interprets all intentional commitment as belief, he necessarily overgenerates the belief contents of the mind. Since beliefs cannot capture the normative aspect of coping and perceiving, any method, such as heterophenomenology, that allows for only beliefs is guaranteed not only to overgenerate be…Read more
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167Bridging embodied cognition and brain function: The role of phenomenologyPhilosophical Psychology 13 (2): 261-266. 2000.Both cognitive science and phenomenology accept the primacy of the organism-environment system and recognize that cognition should be understood in terms of an embodied agent situated in its environment. How embodiment is seen to shape our world, however, is fundamentally different in these two disciplines. Embodiment, as understood in cognitive science, reduces to a discussion of the consequences of having a body like ours interacting with our environment and the relationship is one of continge…Read more
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99Phenomenology, dynamical neural networks and brain functionPhilosophical Psychology 13 (2): 213-228. 2000.Current cognitive science models of perception and action assume that the objects that we move toward and perceive are represented as determinate in our experience of them. A proper phenomenology of perception and action, however, shows that we experience objects indeterminately when we are perceiving them or moving toward them. This indeterminacy, as it relates to simple movement and perception, is captured in the proposed phenomenologically based recurrent network models of brain function. The…Read more
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361The non-conceptual content of perceptual experience: Situation dependence and fineness of grainPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (3): 601-608. 2001.I begin by examining a recent debate between John McDowell and Christopher Peacocke over whether the content of perceptual experience is non-conceptual. Although I am sympathetic to Peacocke’s claim that perceptual content is non-conceptual, I suggest a number of ways in which his arguments fail to make that case. This failure stems from an over-emphasis on the "fine-grainedness" of perceptual content - a feature that is relatively unimportant to its non-conceptual structure. I go on to describe…Read more
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171Homer has a unique understanding of the body. On his view the body is that by means of which we are subject to moods, and moods are what attune us to our situation. Being attuned to a situation, in turn, opens us to the various ways things and people can be engaging. We agree with Homer that this receptivity is evident throughout our entire existence. It characterizes everything from our basic bodily skills for coping with objects and people to our tendency to be immersed in and guided by moods …Read more
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2What makes perceptual content non-conceptual?Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy. 2002.the world. <sup>1</sup> Whereas the content of our beliefs, thoughts, and judgements necessarily involves "conceptualization" or "concept application", the content of our perceptual experiences is, according to Evans, "non-conceptual". Because Evans takes it for granted that we are often able to entertain thoughts about an object in virtue of having perceived it, a central problem in