CV

Articles

Consciousness: from Chalmers to Carnap ↓The status of our cognitive position in regard to consciousness is central to the three-way dispute among Chalmers, Lewis, and Carnap. This review of Chalmers's collected papers on consciousness defends Carnap. Section I rehearses Chalmers's views on our cognitive position. I criticize these views in section II on the grounds that they cannot be made compatible with the 'transparency' of perception. In section III, I develop a pair of related complaints against the Chalmers system: my knowledge of the stream of consciousness of the other is not by inference to the best explanation, and the central notion of a 'phenomenal property' is incomprehensible. In section IV, I explain the form-content distinction; and in section V, I argue that a Carnap-style view exploiting this distinction is the way forward: the content of the world is physical; my stream of consciousness makes up the form of the world.

Forthcoming in Analysis Reviews symposium on Chalmers's The Character of Consciousness.
There it is ↓A direct realist theory of perceptual justification. I take a ground-up approach, beginning with a theory of subjective rationality understood in terms of first-person rational explicability of the stream of consciousness. I mathematize this picture via a Tractarian spin on a semantical framework developed by Rayo. Perceptual states justify by being 'receptive': rationally inexplicable intentional states encoded in sentences that are analytic. Direct realists working within this framework should say that when one is taken in by hallucination one's overall picture of the world is incoherent; in this sense, a belief based on delusive hallucination can be provided with exculpation but not with justification.

Philosophical Issues 21, 110--164, 'Direct realism and perceptual justification', Berit Brogaard and Ernest Sosa, editors, 2011.
An externalist's guide to inner experience ↓Let's be externalists about perceptual consciousness and think the form of veridical perceptual consciousness includes seeing this or that mind-independent particular and its colors. Let's also take internalism seriously, granting that spectral inversion and hallucination can be 'phenomenally' the same as normal seeing. Then perceptual consciousness and phenomenality are different, and so we need to say how they are related. It's complicated!

Phenomenal sameness is (against all odds) reflective indiscriminability. I build a 'displaced perception' account of reflection on which indiscriminability stems from shared 'qualia'. Qualia are compatible with direct realism: while they generate an explanatory gap (and colors do not), so does seeing; qualia are excluded from perceptual consciousness by its 'transparency'; instead, qualia are aspects of thought about the perceived environment.

The asymmetry between my treatments of color and seeing is grounded in the asymmetry between ignorance and error: while inversion shows that normal subjects are ignorant of the natures of the colors, hallucination shows not that perceivers are ignorant of the nature of seeing but that hallucinators are prone to error about their condition. Past literature has treated inversion and hallucination as on a par: externalists see error in both cases, while internalists see mutual ignorance. My account is so complicated because plausible results require mixing it up.

Bence Nanay, editor, Perceiving the World (OUP, 2010).
The multidisjunctive conception of hallucination ↓Direct realists think that we can't get a clear view the nature of hallucinating a white picket fence: is it representing a white picket fence? is it sensing white-picket-fencily? is it being acquainted with a white' picketed' sense-datum? These are all epistemic possibilities for a single experience; hence they are all metaphysical possibilities for various experiences. Hallucination itself is a disjunctive or 'multidisjunctive' category. I rebut MGF Martin's argument from statistical explanation for his 'epistemic' conception of hallucination, but his view embeds in my view as a 'reference-fixer'.

Forthcoming in Fiona MacPherson, editor, Hallucination (The MIT Press, 2011).
Factive phenomenal characters ↓ The notion of 'phenomenal character' is defective because overconstrained. It is supposed to be shared among introspectively indiscriminable experiences, but it is also supposed to be the way consciousness presents itself. But consciousness presents itself as acquaintance with tables and chairs, so the defectiveness follows from the argument from hallucination.

Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 21, 259--306 (2007).
That which makes the sensation of blue a mental fact ↓ An interpretation of the anti-idealist manoeuverings of the second half of Moore's 'The refutation of idealism', source of the 'transparency' and 'diaphaneity' passages. The centerpiece of these manoeuverings is a phenomenological argument for a relational view of perceptual phenomenal character, on which, roughly, 'that which makes the sensation of blue a mental fact' is a relation of conscious awareness. I dispel some myths: representationalism is Moore's main opponent; the discussion of transparency and diaphanousness is a sidelight, rebutting an objection to the phenomenological argument; the point of those passages is that the relation of conscious awareness is not transparent (though can seem to be).

European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 15, 334--66 (December 2007).
'There's something it's like' and the structure of consciousness ↓ I discuss the meaning of 'There's something e is like', offering four candidates: (a) e is some way as regards its subject; (b) e is some way and e's being that way is in the possession of its subject; (c) e is some way in the awareness of its subject; (d) e's subject is the 'experiencer' of e. Contra Eric Lormand, there's nothing perceptual about it.

The Philosophical Review, vol. 116, 441--63 (July 2007).
Beyond phenomenal naivete ↓ Direct realism is threatened by the argument from hallucination, but supported by introspection. This support would be defeated if we made a shift of attention in introspecting: we shift from the object of (intentional) sight, which is external, to the relation born to sense-data.

The Philosophers' Imprint, vol. 6 nr. 2 (May 2006).
Noise and perceptual indiscriminability ↓ The color of this paint chip is seen under a mode of presentation; this mode of presentation is inexact, can be satisfied by a small but nonzero range of colors; so this color might be any color in this range. Going by the modes of presentation of a's color and b's color, they might be the same and might be different. Going by the modes of presentation of b's color and c's color, they might be the same and might be different. But going by the modes of presentation of a's color and c's color, they must be different. This is the 'nontransitivity of perceptual indiscriminability'. Against Jackson and Pinkerton, Raffman, and Graff, there is no need to think this requires a change in us in two episodes of looking at the same paint chip. Modes of presentation are inexact because every signal is noisy. We can introspect this noise: close your eyes and note the flickering; it's still there, if weakly, when you open them.

Mind, vol. 114, 481--508 (July 2005).
Higher-order intentionality and higher-order acquaintance ↓ If you are of the sort who thinks that consciousness requires one's awareness of some aspect of one's own condition, no need to think it requires self-representation: it could instead be acquaintance with one's own condition. This view is better because acquaintance can't be wrong.

Philosophical Studies vol. 134: 289--324 (July 2007).
Inexpressible truths and the allure of the knowledge argument ↓ The Knowledge Argument concludes that some truth---that seeing a red thing is F---is not 'physical', and its form is valid (compare Stalnaker's Locke Lectures). Its central premiss, that Mary does not know what seeing a red thing is like, means that that truth of form seeing a red thing is F is unknown to Mary. This is unknown to Mary because the F-concept is acquaintance-based, and she lacks it. What if we grant her the concept? Then the Knowledge Argument succeeds only if physical spectral inversion is conceivable.

Peter Ludlow, Yujin Nagasawa, and Daniel Stoljar, editors, There's Something about Mary (MIT Press, 2004).

Other research materials

Knowledge ascription as expression of trust ↓Sketch of a test semantics for knowledge ascriptions: the point is to align patterns of trust. Four arguments for the view: (1) allows for K = TB (2) gets the logic of knowledge right (3) explains the course of discussion in modern epistemology (4) approximates using minimal conceptual resources to an ideal epistemic logic
The neonatal intensive care unit of theory ↓If there is progress in philosophy, there is a thing, philosophy, which can progressively achieve its aims. This thing is an academic 'guild' with the special distinction that it has no subject-matter. I argue that such a guild would look like philosophy: its members would be skeptics, would be sympathetic to other views, would be comfortable with cognitive dissonance, would keep their heroes alive, and would work on issues philosophers do in fact work on. Philosophy should think of itself on a medical analogy: we work to get new ideas up and flying with creativity, diligence, care, and a sense of tragedy.

Progress in Philosophy, Harvard, September 2011
Regarding a question as determinately answered ↓Williamson and Barnett argue that if it is (metaphysically) indeterminate whether P, a contradiction is true. I (i) radically simplify the argument (ii) show that the argument assumes the validity of a meta-rule of contraposition (iii) develop the argument in two other ways not assuming this meta-rule (iv) develop parallel worries about Moorean belief (v) observe that in all cases the worries involve inference rules involving supposition (vi) argue that the problem for belief dissolves on a 'test' semantics according to which 'I believe that P' can have a different content in the scope of a supposition than outside the scope of the supposition (vii) develop a test semantics for 'determinate' on which 'it is determinate whether P' expresses one's sense that there is an answer to the question whether P (viii) extract a metaphysics from this semantics which supplements the familiar 'content of the objective world' with a 'form of my world', which it is the function of sentences with a test semantics to display.

Indeterminacy Workshop, University of Leeds, September 2011
Susanna Schellenberg's 'Experience and evidence' ↓Carolina Metaphysics Workshop, Duck, NC, June 2011.
Conscious Life Draft 0.0 ↓Archive of selected excerpts from Summer 2010 draft of the MS
There it is ↓ A theory of perceptual justification. The given and its interpretation say the same thing but show it differently. They are rationally linked by conditional policies of treating them as equivalent. Hallucination misleads through a combination of an error about which such policy is in force and a bad habit of ascertaining what is given.
The map and the territory ↓ Spectral inversion, or considerations of the arbitrariness of the sign more generally, have threatened our prereflective sense of acquaintance with the manifest since Hume. But if we both acquiesce in our home language and attend with exquisite care to the use-mention distinction, we can find our way back to daylight.
What am I doing? ↓Theory of acquaintance runs more smoothly if its objects are objects of know-how, namely actions. If evidence if in part about acquaintance, then there is basic knowledge of external-world support for actions. If so, knowledge by bold conjecture is pervasive: voluntarism. In order for the voluntarist to be practically rational, we must be incoherent: subjects don't have beliefs, except as relative to strands of action.

SUNY--Buffalo, September 2010
Perceptual acts and sensational states ↓Perceptual acts (looking) are experiences, sensational states (seeing (as of)) aren't. On a 'dynamic' epistemology of perception, rationality in perceptual judgement is practical rationality; the result looks a lot like signal detection theory.

Keynote address, New Directions in Philosophy of Mind, Columbia University, May 2010
Action as experience ↓From a philosophy of action perspective, actions look like experiences; amalgamates decision theory and 'naive' action theory. (I) Concepts of action are irreducible. (II) Actions are (in the good case) revealed. (III) The centers of centered worlds should be grained up to the level of the strand of action, so that actions in a sense compose the subject.

University of Miami, May 2010
Silence in the ontology room ↓ What is 'indeterminacy'? Williamson and Barnett argue that there is no coherent explanation of what we mean when we say 'it is indeterminate whether there will be a sea-battle tomorrow'. Their mistake is to assume that this is intended to represent things in a certain way, when actually it is intended to signal a certain sort of refusal to represent. I present a version of the sea-battle argument for indeterminacy at the fundamental level, and then expound at some length upon the question of what exactly it is that I am refusing to do.
Introspection despite transparency ↓ Material similar to that in section 3 of 'An externalist's guide to inner experience'.

University of Barcelona, June 2009.
Helen Steward's 'Concepts of causation' ↓Perspectives on Ontology, University of Leeds, September 2008.
Experience as a limit ↓There could be 'weak zombies', creatures physically and qualitatively like us, but without a perspective on the world.

Consciousness and Thought, Interuniversity Center, Dubrovnik, August 2008.
Jenann Ismael's 'Probability and physics' ↓Arizona Ontology Conference, January 2008.
How to color McTaggart ↓Inversion without illusion meets Kit Fine-style metaphysical relativism.

Consciousness on the Beach, ANU, February 2007.
Christopher Peacocke's 'Concepts of conscious states' ↓Peacocke Week, University of Toronto, October 2006.
Representationalism ↓Tim Bayne, Axel Cleeremans, and Patrick Wilkin, editors, Oxford Companion to Consciousness (OUP, 2009).
Acquaintance ↓Tim Bayne, Axel Cleeremans, and Patrick Wilkin, editors, Oxford Companion to Consciousness (OUP, 2009).
Justin Fisher's 'Color representations as hash-values' ↓Central APA, 2006.
Visual form, attention, and binocularity ↓A "spectral inversion" style thought experiment involving someone whose right and left images blend unusually in the visual field shows that the visual mode of presentation of space is under possible locations of the attentional spotlight.
Consciousness and representationalism ↓Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (Macmillan, 2002).

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