Is Perception a Propositional Attitude? (2009)

I criticise the widely held view that the content of a perceptual experience is propositional in the way the content of a belief is (i.e. assessable as true or false).

Sainsbury on Thinking about an Object (2009)

This is a sympathetic criticism of one part of Mark Sainsbury’s fine book, Reference without Referents (OUP 2005). I criticise Sainsbury’s claim in that book that it can never be literally true that one can think about something that does not exist; and I sketch an account of ‘thinking about’ which does not have this consequence and which is, I think, in keeping with Sainsbury’s theory of reference.

Causation and Determinate Properties: on the Efficacy of Colour, Shape and Size (2008)

I argue that if we believe in a distinction between sparse and abundant properties in Lewis’s sense, and we think properties are causes, then we should hold that only the most determinate properties (e.g. exact shades of colour) are efficacious, and not their determinables.

Intentionalism (2008)

Intentionalism about consciousness is the view that consciousness is a form of intentionality or mental representation. A popular form of intentionalism says that the conscious or phenomenal character of a state of mind is determined by its intentional content. I argue against this form of intentionalism, and in favour of what David Chalmers calls ‘impure’ intentionalism: the view that the conscious character of a state of mind is determined by its entire intentional nature.

Reply to Nes (2008)

Anders Nes argued that my description of intentionality in Elements of Mind cannot distinguish between ascriptions of intentionality and ascriptions of other non-mental states. What we need in order to make this distinction, I argue, is explicit appeal to the notion of representation.

The Mental and the Physical (2007)

This is a short and simple introduction to a German collection of six of my essays, published by Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag in 2007. It has not been published in English, and probably won’t be.

Is there a Perceptual Relation? (2006)

I argue that the central question in the philosophy of perception is the question of whether perceptual experience should be understood fundamentally in terms of a perceptual relation to the environment, or in terms of intentionality (or representation). The question of whether experience involves ‘qualia’ is, by comparison, not very significant.

Comment on Honderich’s ‘Radical Externalism’ (2006)

This is part of a Journal of Consciousness Studies symposium on Ted Honderich’s paper, ‘Radical Externalism’.

Intentionality and Emotion (2006)

Although the title of this article is ‘Intentionality and Emotion’, most of the article is a criticism of Dan Hutto’s views on what is wrong with everyone in contemporary philosophy of mind (including me). 

Brentano’s Concept of Intentional Inexistence (2006)

What Brentano meant by ‘intentional inexistence’ is explained, as is Brentano’s change of mind about this notion. It is only when we understand the metaphysical and methodological assumptions lying behind Brentano’s original doctrine that we can understand why we have a problem of intentionality in a way Brentano does not.

The Problem of Perception (2005)

This rather long entry for the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy deals with those aspects of the philosophy of perception which arise from the antinomies created by the arguments from illusion and hallucination.

Papineau on Phenomenal Concepts (2005)

This is part of a symposium in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research on David Papineau’s Thinking About Consciousness. I criticise David’s view that when we think about conscious states using what he calls ‘phenomenal concepts’, we are in a state of mind which resembles that state of consciousness itself.

Précis of Elements of Mind and Replies to Critics (2004)

This contains a short summary of my 2001 book, Elements of Mind and responses to some criticisms of the book published in the Croatian Journal of Philosophy.

The Intentional Structure of Consciousness (2003)

This paper develops in more detail the view proposed in ‘Intentionality as the Mark of the Mental’. I challenge the widely accepted distinction between the intentional and the qualitative, and I argue that all aspects of consciousness can be understood in terms of the notions of intentional content, intentional mode and intentional object.

Mental Substances (2003)

This paper makes a case for using a traditional notion of substance in giving an account of the ontology of the mental. I argue that the contemporary mind-body problem does not arise because of any assumptions about substance, and I offer some defence of PF Strawson’s view that the category of the person is a basic category in metaphysics. 

Subjective Facts (2003)

I defend Frank Jackson’s original knowledge argument against some of its critics. The knowledge argument is a sound argument, not for the conclusion that physicalism is false, but for the conclusion that some facts (i.e. objects of propositional knowledge) about certain kinds of subject-matter cannot be known simply by knowing the scientific theory of that subject-matter. In a sense, then, science cannot state or express all the facts that there are; but this does not threaten physicalism. This paper was written for a festschrifft for my teacher Hugh Mellor.

Mental Causation (2003)

This is a short introduction to the topic of mental causation, originally an entry for the Macmillan Encylopedia of Cognitive Science.

The Significance of Emergence (2001)

I argue that the metaphysics of the traditional doctrine of emergence is the same as that of non-reductive physicalism; but the doctrines differ in their explanatory ambitions.

Intentional Objects (2001)

An intentional object is, by definition, the object of an intentional state: what it is that is thought about, wished for, feared etc. This short paper explains why a theory of intentionality should not dispense with the concept of an intentional object, and why the category of intentional object is not an ontological category.

The Origins of Qualia (2000)

The early 20th century origins of the notions of qualia and sense-data are examined, as are the similarities and differences in the roles they have played. A hypothesis is advanced about the decline in popularity of the notion of sense-data.

Dualism, Monism, Physicalism (2000)

This paper argues that physicalism should not be understood simply as the (non-idealist) denial of Cartesian dualism, but rather as a stronger doctrine which gives an ontological and explanatory priority to physics.

The Mind-Body Problem (1999)

This is the penultimate version of a short entry for the MIT Encylopedia of Cognitive Science, giving an overview of the Mind-Body problem as it looked in the late 1990s.

Intentionality as the Mark of the Mental (1998)

I defend the view that all mental states (and events etc.) are intentional by disposing of two supposed counter-examples to this view: bodily sensations and moods/emotions.

introduction to A Debate on Dispositions (1996)

This is the introduction to the Debate on Dispositions between D.M. Armstrong, C.B. Martin and U.T. Place, which I edited in 1996. It might be of interest to someone wanting to find out what the big deal about dispositions is. Of course, things have moved on quite a lot since then.

Reply to Child (1996)

This is a response to Bill Child’s criticism of my paper, ‘The Mental Causation Debate’. Bill Child’s paper was published in the 1996 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.

The Mental Causation Debate (1995)

I detect a parallel between the standard causal argument for physicalism and the standard way of posing the mental causation problem for non-reductive physicalists. I argue that the normal way non-reductive physicalists respond to this problem leaves them without any good reason for being a physicalist.

The Nonconceptual Content of Experience (1992)

Following Adrian Cussins, I define what it means for a mental state to have non-conceptual content. (For those who have followed the more recent debate on this topic, the definition is a version of what Richard Heck has called the ‘state’ view.) I then offer an argument for the thesis that perceptual experiences have non-conceptual content in this sense, based on the lack of anything corresponding to rational inference in experience.

All the Difference in the World (1991)

I outline the Twin Earth and Anti-Individualism arguments of Putnam and Burge, and show their common structure. I argue against Putnam’s use of a conception of natural kinds in deriving his conclusion that meanings are not in the head; and I dispute Burge’s appeal to ordinary propositional attitude attributions in deriving his conclusion.

For what it’s worth, I now think that my argument against Putnam fails, for reasons given in chapter 4 of Elements of Mind. I am still content with what I say about Burge’s argument.

Full publication details can be found here.