On this page are some of my philosophical papers from the last few years. Full publication details can be found here.

On other pages are some book reviews, some discussions of philosophers and others, and some public lectures.

PAPERS ON INTENTIONALITY, CONSCIOUSNESS AND PERCEPTION

Intentionalism (2007)

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. NB This version should replace an earlier version of this paper which was on my old website.

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 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.

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) html

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Non-conceptual 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.

PAPERS ON PHYSICALISM, EMERGENCE, MENTAL CAUSATION ETC.

Cosmic Hermeneutics vs Emergence: the Challenge of the Explanatory Gap (2007)

I defend Terence Horgan’s claim that any genuinely physicalist position must distinguish itself from (what has traditionally been known as) emergentism. I claim that this is the proper lesson, for physicalists, of Joseph Levine’s ‘explanatory gap’ argument.

The Mental and the Physical (2007)

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

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.

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, written in 1997)

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. I am now (2006) not so sure that this is the right way to think about the difference between emergentism and non-reductive physicalism, and I hope to give a better account in some forthcoming work.

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.

Introduction to 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.

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,

Here are some book reviews; here are some discussions of other philosophers; here are some public lectures and other pronouncements. For a complete list of publications go here.