•  117
    The debate between exceptionalists and anti-exceptionalists about logic is often framed as concerning whether the justification of logical theories is a priori or a posteriori (for short: whether logic is a priori or a posteriori). As we substantiate (S1), this framing more deeply encodes the usual anti-exceptionalist thesis that logical theories, like scientific theories, are abductively justified, coupled with the common supposition that abduction is an a posteriori mode of inference, in the s…Read more
  •  69
  •  14
    Contending coalitions in agricultural research and development: Challenges for planning and management
    with Grant Smith
    Knowledge, Technology & Policy 10 (4): 77-89. 1998.
    There is a gap between the methods and techniques discussed in planning and management literature, and practitioners’ experiences of agricultural research and extension. This gap is attributable to the fact that outcomes of research and extension (R&E) initiatives are shaped by the interactions of contending coalitions that form around issues or approaches and promote or oppose them. This framework is used to elucidate the development of technologies and methodologies in the past. Implications a…Read more
  •  892
    Epistemic two-dimensional semantics, advocated by Chalmers and Jackson, among others, aims to restore the link between necessity and a priority seemingly broken by Kripke, by showing how armchair access to semantic intensions provides a basis for knowledge of necessary a posteriori truths. The most compelling objections to E2D are that, for one or other reason, the requisite intensions are not accessible from the armchair. As we substantiate here, existing versions of E2D are indeed subject to s…Read more
  •  170
    Abduction versus conceiving in modal epistemology
    Synthese 198 (Suppl 8): 2045-2076. 2019.
    How should modal reasoning proceed? Here we compare abduction-based and conceiving-based modal epistemologies, and argue that an abduction-based approach is preferable, and by a wide margin.
  •  56
    This Handbook offers students and more advanced readers a valuable resource for understanding linguistic reference; the relation between an expression (word, phrase, sentence) and what that expression is about. The volume’s forty-one original chapters, written by many of today’s leading philosophers of language, are organized into ten parts: I Early Descriptive Theories II Causal Theories of Reference III Causal Theories and Cognitive Significance IV Alternate Theories V Two-Dimensional Sem…Read more
  •  98
    Review: A Place for Consciousness (review)
    Mind 115 (460): 1166-1171. 2006.
  •  113
    Phenomenal concepts in mindreading
    Philosophical Psychology 22 (6). 2009.
    In an earlier paper (Biggs, 2007) I argue that those attributing mental states sometimes simulate the phenomenal states of those to whom they are making attributions (i.e., targets). In this paper I argue that such phenomenal simulation plays an important role in some third-person mental state attributions. More specifically, I identity three important roles that phenomenal simulation could play in third-person mental state attributions: phenomenal simulation could cause attributions, facilitate…Read more
  •  139
    The scrambler: An argument against representationalism
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (2). 2009.
    Brentano famously claimed that two features demarcate the mental: consciousness and intentionality. Although he claimed that these features are intimately related, subsequent generations of philosophers rarely treated them together. Recently, however, the tide has turned. Many philosophers now accept that consciousness is intentional, where to be intentional is to have representational content, is to represent ‘things as being thus and so — where, for all that, things need not be that way’. In f…Read more
  •  24
    A Review Of Jeffrey Gray’s Consciousness: Creeping Up On The Hard Problem (review)
    PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 11. 2005.
    Jeffrey Gray’s Consciousness: Creeping up on the Hard Problem will be enjoyed by everyone interested in consciousness. Gray, a neuropsychologist, eloquently summarizes significant experimental results on consciousness and, more importantly, explains both how these results interrelate and how they constrain potential theories of consciousness. He also uses these results to build a novel, fascinating theory of what consciousness does and does not do. Throughout the work Gray’s accessible presentat…Read more
  •  632
    Sorting the Senses
    In Dustin Stokes, Mohan Matthen & Stephen Biggs (eds.), Perception and Its Modalities, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-19. 2014.
    We perceive in many ways. But several dubious presuppositions about the senses mask this diversity of perception. Philosophers, scientists, and engineers alike too often presuppose that the senses (vision, audition, etc.) are independent sources of information, perception being a sum of these independent contributions. We too often presuppose that we can generalize from vision to other senses. We too often presuppose that vision itself is best understood as a passive receptacle for an image thro…Read more
  •  17
    The Scrambler: An Argument Against Representationalism
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (2): 215-236. 2009.
    Brentano (1874) famously claimed that two features demarcate the mental: consciousness and intentionality. Although he claimed that these features are intimately related, subsequent generations of philosophers rarely treated them together. Recently, however, the tide has turned. Many philosophers now accept that consciousness is intentional, where to be intentional is to have representational content, is to represent ‘things as being thus and so — where, for all that, things need not be that way…Read more
  •  233
    Carnap, the necessary a priori, and metaphysical anti-realism
    In Stephen Blatti & Sandra Lapointe (eds.), Ontology after Carnap, . pp. 81-104. 2016.
    In Meaning and Necessity (1947/1950), Carnap advances an intensional semantic framework on which modal claims are true in virtue of semantical rules alone, and so are a priori. In 'Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology' (1950), Carnap advances an epistemic-ontological framework on which metaphysical claims are either trivial or meaningless, since lacking any means of substantive confirmation. Carnap carried out these projects two decades before Kripke influentially argued, in Naming and Necessity …Read more
  •  287
    The a priority of abduction
    Philosophical Studies 174 (3): 735-758. 2017.
    Here we challenge the orthodoxy according to which abduction is an a posteriori mode of inference. We start by providing a case study illustrating how abduction can justify a philosophical claim not justifiable by empirical evidence alone. While many grant abduction's epistemic value, nearly all assume that abductive justification is a posteriori, on grounds that our belief in abduction's epistemic value depends on empirical evidence about how the world contingently is. Contra this assumption, w…Read more
  •  2698
    The dominance of the visual
    In D. Stokes, M. Matthen & S. Biggs (eds.), Perception and Its Modalities, Oxford University Press. 2014.
    Vision often dominates other perceptual modalities both at the level of experience and at the level of judgment. In the well-known McGurk effect, for example, one’s auditory experience is consistent with the visual stimuli but not the auditory stimuli, and naïve subjects’ judgments follow their experience. Structurally similar effects occur for other modalities (e.g. rubber hand illusions). Given the robustness of this visual dominance, one might not be surprised that visual imagery often domina…Read more
  •  342
    Perception and Its Modalities (edited book)
    with Dustin Stokes and Mohan Matthen
    Oxford University Press. 2014.
    This volume is about the many ways we perceive. Contributors explore the nature of the individual senses, how and what they tell us about the world, and how they interrelate. They consider how the senses extract perceptual content from receptoral information. They consider what kinds of objects we perceive and whether multiple senses ever perceive a single event. They consider how many senses we have, what makes one sense distinct from another, and whether and why distinguishing senses may be us…Read more
  •  109
    The phenomenal mindreader: A case for phenomenal simulation
    Philosophical Psychology 20 (1): 29-42. 2007.
    This paper specifies two hypotheses that are intimated in recent research on empathy and mindreading. The first, the phenomenal simulation hypothesis, holds that those attributing mental states (i.e., mindreaders) sometimes simulate the phenomenal states of those to whom they are making attributions (i.e., targets). The second, the phenomenal mindreading hypothesis, holds that this phenomenal simulation plays an important role in some mental state attributions. After explicating these hypotheses…Read more
  •  289
    Abduction and Modality
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (2): 283-326. 2010.
    This paper introduces a modal epistemology that centers on inference to the best explanation (i.e. abduction). In introducing this abduction-centered modal epistemology, the paper has two main goals. First, it seeks to provide reasons for pursuing an abduction-centered modal epistemology by showing that this epistemology aids a popular stance on the mind-body problem and allows an appealing approach to modality. Second, the paper seeks to show that an abduction-centered modal epistemology can wo…Read more