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1936What is Locke's Theory of Representation?British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20 (6): 1077-1095. 2012.On a currently popular reading of Locke, an idea represents its cause, or what God intended to be its cause. Against Martha Bolton and my former self (among others), I argue that Locke cannot hold such a view, since it sins against his epistemology and theory of abstraction. I argue that Locke is committed to a resemblance theory of representation, with the result that ideas of secondary qualities are not representations
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1549Malebranche and the Riddle of SensationPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (3): 689-712. 2012.Like their contemporary counterparts, early modern philosophers find themselves in a predicament. On one hand, there are strong reasons to deny that sensations are representations. For there seems to be nothing in the world for them to represent. On the other hand, some sensory representations seem to be required for us to experience bodies. How else could one perceive the boundaries of a body, except by means of different shadings of color? I argue that Nicolas Malebranche offers an extreme -- …Read more
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1206Propositional Attitudes in Modern PhilosophyDialogue 41 (3): 551-568. 2002.Philosophers of the modern period are often presented as having made an elementary error: that of confounding the attitude one adopts toward a proposition with its content. By examining the works of Locke and the Port-Royalians, I show that this accusation is ill-founded and that Locke, in particular, has the resources to construct a theory of propositional attitudes.
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1113Locke and the Real Problem of CausationLocke Studies 15 53-77. 2015.Discussions of John Locke’s theory of causation tend, understandably, to focus on the related notion of power and in particular the dialectic with David Hume. But Locke faces a very different threat, one that is internal to his view. For he argues both that causation is a relation and that relations are not real. The obvious conclusion is intolerable. And yet the premises, I argue, are unassailable. Building on an interpretation of Locke’s treatment of relations I have developed elsewhere, I sho…Read more
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983Descartes and Berkeley on mind: The fourth distinctionBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 14 (3). 2006.The popular Cartesian reading of George Berkeley's philosophy of mind mischaracterizes his views on the relations between substance and essence and between an idea and the act of thought in which it figures. I argue that Berkeley rejects Descartes's tripartite taxonomy of distinctions and makes use of a fourth kind of distinction. In addition to illuminating Berkeley's ontology of mind, this fourth distinction allows us to dissolve an important dilemma raised by Kenneth Winkler.
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960Phenomenal Intentionality and the Problem of RepresentationJournal of the American Philosophical Association 2 (1): 131--145. 2016.According to the phenomenal intentionality research program, a state’s intentional content is fixed by its phenomenal character. Defenders of this view have little to say about just how this grounding is accomplished. I argue that without a robust account of representation, the research program promises too little. Unfortunately, most of the well-developed accounts of representation – asymmetric dependence, teleosemantics, and the like – ground representation in external relations such as causat…Read more
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927Hume on MeaningHume Studies 32 (2): 233-252. 2006.Hume's views on language have been widely misunderstood. Typical discussions cast Hume as either a linguistic idealist who holds that words refer to ideas or a proto-verificationist. I argue that both readings are wide of the mark and develop my own positive account. Humean signification emerges as a relation whereby a word can both indicate ideas in the mind of the speaker and cause us to have those ideas. If I am right, Hume offers a consistent view on meaning that is neither linguistic ideali…Read more
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781Régis's scholastic mechanismStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 39 (1): 2-14. 2008.Unlike many of Descartes’s other followers, Pierre-Sylvain Re´gis resists the temptations of occasionalism. By marrying the ontology of mechanism with the causal structure of concurrentism, Re´gis arrives at a novel view that both acknowledges God’s role in natural events and preserves the causal powers of bodies. I set out Re´gis’s position, focusing on his arguments against occasionalism and his responses to Malebranche’s ‘no necessary connection’ and divine concursus arguments.
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672The cartesian context of Berkeley's attack on abstractionPacific Philosophical Quarterly 85 (4). 2004.I claim that Berkeley's main argument against abstraction comes into focus only when we see Descartes as one of its targets. Berkeley does not deploy Winkler's impossibility argument but instead argues that what is impossible is inconceivable. Since Descartes conceives of extension as a determinable, and since determinables cannot exist as such, he falls within the scope of Berkeley's argument.
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662Locke's Argument from SignificationLocke Studies 2 145-76. 2002.Locke clearly intends what I call his 'linguistic thesis,' the claim that words signify nothing but ideas, to tell against Aristotelian essentialism. I argue that current interpretations of Locke's anti-essentialist arguments have not accorded the linguistic thesis its proper role. This is largely due to the prevalent misreadings of that thesis. Locke's view is that words reliably indicate ideas in the mind of the speaker. It is only once we see this that we can understand how the thesis functio…Read more
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631Aristotle and Plato on CharacterAncient Philosophy 26 (1): 65-79. 2006.I argue that Aristotle endorses what I call the ‘strong link thesis’: the claim that virtuous and vicious acts are voluntary just in case the character states from which they flow are voluntary. Pace much of the literature, I argue that Aristotle does not defend some kind of limited or qualified responsibility for character: rightly or wrongly, he believes, and must believe, that character states are voluntary, full stop.
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615Causation, intentionality, and the case for occasionalismArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 90 (2): 165-187. 2008.Despite their influence on later philosophers such as Hume, Malebranche's central arguments for occasionalism remain deeply puzzling. Both the famous ‘no necessary connection’ argument and what I call the epistemic argument include assumptions – e.g., that a true cause is logically necessarily connected to its effect – that seem unmotivated, even in their context. I argue that a proper understanding of late scholastic views lets us see why Malebranche would make this assumption. Both arguments t…Read more
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592Philosophy of LanguageIn Daniel Kaufman (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Seventeenth Century Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 354-382. 2014.How language works — its functions, mechanisms, and limitations — matters to the early moderns as much as it does to contemporary philosophers. Many of the moderns make reflection on language central to their philosophical projects, both as a tool for explaining human cognition and as a weapon to be used against competing views. Even in philosophers for whom language is less central, we can find important connections between their views on language and their other philosophical commitments.
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590Locke's Exclusion ArgumentHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 27 (2): 181-196. 2010.In this paper, I argue that Locke is not in fact agnostic about the ultimate nature of the mind. In particular, he produces an argument, much like Jaegwon Kim's exclusion argument, to show that any materialist view that takes mental states to supervene on physical states is committed to epiphenomenalism. This result helps illuminate Locke's otherwise puzzling notion of 'superaddition.'
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576Berkeley’s Best System: An Alternative Approach to Laws of NatureJournal of Modern Philosophy 1 (1): 4. 2019.Contemporary Humeans treat laws of nature as statements of exceptionless regularities that function as the axioms of the best deductive system. Such ‘Best System Accounts’ marry realism about laws with a denial of necessary connections among events. I argue that Hume’s predecessor, George Berkeley, offers a more sophisticated conception of laws, equally consistent with the absence of powers or necessary connections among events in the natural world. On this view, laws are not statements of regul…Read more
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448‘Archetypes without Patterns’: Locke on Relations and Mixed ModesArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 99 (3): 300-325. 2017.John Locke’s claims about relations (such as cause and effect) and mixed modes (such as beauty and murder) have been controversial since the publication of the Essay. His earliest critics read him as a thoroughgoing anti-realist who denies that such things exist. More charitable readers have sought to read Locke’s claims away. Against both, I argue that Locke is making ontological claims, but that his views do not have the absurd consequences his defenders fear. By examining Locke’s texts, as we…Read more
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430The Case Against PowersIn Stathis Psillos, Benjamin Hill & Henrik Lagerlund (eds.), Causal Powers in Science: Blending Historical and Conceptual Perspectives, Oxford University Press. pp. 149-167. 2021.Powers ontologies are currently enjoying a resurgence. This would be dispiriting news for the moderns; in their eyes, to imbue bodies with powers is to slide back into the scholastic slime from which they helped philosophy crawl. I focus on Descartes’s ‘little souls’ argument, which points to a genuine and, I think persisting, defect in powers theories. The problem is that an Aristotelian power is intrinsic to whatever has it. Once this move is accepted, it becomes very hard to see how humble ma…Read more
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430A Troublesome Passage in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics iii 5Ancient Philosophy 20 (1): 99-107. 2000.Pace much of the literature, I argue that Aristotle endorses what I call the ‘strong link thesis’: the claim that virtuous and vicious acts are voluntary just in case the character states from which they flow are voluntary. I trace the strong link thesis to Plato’s Laws, among other texts, and show how it functions in key arguments of both philosophers.
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404Leges sive natura: Bacon, Spinoza, and a Forgotten Concept of LawIn Walter Ott & Lydia Patton (eds.), Laws of Nature, Oxford University Press. pp. 62-79. 2018.The way of laws is as much a defining feature of the modern period as the way of ideas; but the way of laws is hardly without its forks. Both before and after Descartes, there are philosophers using the concept to carve out a very different position from his, one that is entirely disconnected from God or God’s will. I argue that Francis Bacon and Baruch Spinoza treat laws as dispositions that derive from a thing’s nature. This reading upends the currently orthodox treatment of Spinoza’s laws as …Read more
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392Two kinds of people might find this useful: first, those interested in the modern debate over ideas and representation who don’t happen to read French, or who do, but would like to have in one place the relevant excerpts, to see whether looking at the originals is worth their time. Second are teachers of modern philosophy. The back-and-forth among these figures makes for a refreshing change from the massive, often self-contained works that characterize much of the rest of such a course. For exam…Read more
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391Locke and the Scholastics on Theological DiscourseLocke Studies 28 (1): 51-66. 1997.On the face of it, Locke rejects the scholastics' main tool for making sense of talk of God, namely, analogy. Instead, Locke claims that we generate an idea of God by 'enlarging' our ideas of some attributes (such as knowledge) with the idea of infinity. Through an analysis of Locke's idea of infinity, I argue that he is in fact not so distant from the scholastics and in particular must rely on analogy of inequality.
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291Locke on languagePhilosophy Compass 3 (2). 2008.This article canvases the main areas of controversy: the nature of Lockean signification and his position on propositions and particles.
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283Leibniz on Sensation and the Limits of ReasonHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 33 (2): 135-153. 2016.I argue that Leibniz’s doctrine of sensory representation is intended in part to close an explanatory gap in his philosophical system. Unlike the twentieth century explanatory gap, which stretches between neural states on one side and phenomenal character on the other, Leibniz’s gap lies between experiences of secondary qualities like color and taste and the objects that cause them. The problem is that the precise arrangement and distribution of such experiences can never be given a full explana…Read more
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264Intuitions and Assumptions in the Debate over Laws of NatureIn Walter R. Ott & Lydia Patton (eds.), Laws of Nature, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-17. 2018.The conception of a ‘law of nature’ is a human product. It was created to play a role in natural philosophy, in the Cartesian tradition. In light of this, philosophers and scientists must sort out what they mean by a law of nature before evaluating rival theories and approaches. If one’s conception of the laws of nature is yoked to metaphysical notions of truth and explanation, that connection must be made explicit and defended. If, on the other hand, one’s aim is to disentangle laws from truth …Read more
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263Are There Duties to the Dead?Philosophy Now 89 14-16. 2012.Of course not. In this short paper, I offer a series of arguments against Pitcher and Feinberg and reply to the best objection to the view I defend.
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247Locke on sense perceptionIn Jessica Gordon-Roth & Shelley Weinberg (eds.), The Lockean Mind, Routledge. pp. 116-126. 2021.Much recent philosophy of perception is preoccupied with finding a place for phenomenal character in a physical world. By contrast, Locke’s philosophy of sensory perception is an episode in his ‘Historical, plain method’ and seeks to map out the processes by which we experience ordinary objects. On Locke’s account, our ideas of primary and secondary qualities enter the mind ‘simple and unmixed’; having an idea of a colour, for example, is not necessary for the visual experience of a shape. An an…Read more
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94Locke's Philosophy of LanguageCambridge University Press. 2003.This book examines John Locke's claims about the nature and workings of language. Walter Ott proposes an interpretation of Locke's thesis in which words signify ideas in the mind of the speaker, and argues that rather than employing such notions as sense or reference, Locke relies on an ancient tradition that understands signification as reliable indication. He then uses this interpretation to explain crucial areas of Locke's metaphysics and epistemology, including essence, abstraction, knowledg…Read more
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88Causation and laws of nature in early modern philosophyOxford University Press. 2009.Arguing for controversial readings of many of the canonical figures, the book also focuses on lesser-known writers such as Pierre-Sylvain Regis, Nicolas ...
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88Teaching & learning guide for: Locke on languagePhilosophy Compass 4 (5): 877-879. 2009.Although a fascination with language is a familiar feature of 20th-century empiricism, its origins reach back at least to the early modern period empiricists. John Locke offers a detailed (if sometimes puzzling) treatment of language and uses it to illuminate key regions of the philosophical topography, particularly natural kinds and essences. Locke's main conceptual tool for dealing with language is 'signification'. Locke's central linguistic thesis is this: words signify nothing but ideas. Thi…Read more
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17th/18th Century Philosophy |
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Philosophy of Mind |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Physical Science |
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John Locke |
Locke: Ideas |
Locke: Abstract Ideas |
Locke: Representation |
Locke: Innate Ideas |
Locke: Ideas, Misc |