Philosophy research publications

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Recent Submissions
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Bringing the Cognitive Estimation Task into the 21st Century: Normative Data on Two New Parallel Forms
(PLOS One, 2014-03-26)The Cognitive Estimation Test (CET) is widely used by clinicians and researchers to assess the ability to produce reasonable cognitive estimates. Although several studies have published normative data for versions of the ... -
Good, Reason and Objectivity in Aristotle
(1996)In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle begins his investigation by exploring the nature of the end of all action. In the very first sentence of the work he says: "Every art and every enquiry and similarly every action and ... -
Doomsday, Bishop Ussher and simulated worlds
(2007-11-20)This paper attempts three tasks in relation to Carter and Leslie’s Doomsday Argument. First, it criticises Timothy Chambers’ ‘Ussherian Corollary’, a striking but unsuccessful objection to standard Doomsday arguments. ... -
Utilitarianism and prioritarianism II
(2007-11)The priority view has become very popular in moral philosophy, but there is a serious question about how it should be formalized. The most natural formalization leads to ex post prioritarianism, which results from ... -
Theories of team agency
(Oxford University Press, 2007)In decision theory, it is almost universally presupposed that agency is invested in individuals: each person acts on her own preferences and beliefs. A person’s preferences may take account of the effects of her actions on ... -
A Dilemma for Moral Fictionalism
(2007)Mark Kalderon has defended an interesting form of moral fictionalism in his 2005 book. In this paper I challenge his view by pressing a dilemma stemming from the question of what the fictionalist should say is expressed ... -
Expressivism, Inferentialism, and Saving the Debate
(2007)The realism-irrealism debate in metaethics has mostly transpired with representation as its fundamental semantic notion. Realists say ethical claims get their meaning from what they represent, and some of them correctly ... -
The Ontology of Knowledge and Belief in Republic V
(2007-08-30)In Republic V, Plato makes the astonishing claim that knowledge is a different and independent power from belief, in the way, for example, that sight differs from hearing. I will argue that this is a fundamentally different ... -
Mixing the Elements
(2007)All bodies in the sublunary word are composed of mixtures of all the primary elements – fire, air, earth, and water. Aristotle argues for the primacy of these four elements in the constitution of objects in our word. He ... -
How do we know how?
(Taylor and Francis, 2007)I raise some doubts about the plausibility of Stanley and Williamson’s view that all knowledge-how is just a species of propositional knowledge. By tackling the question of what is involved in entertaining a proposition, ... -
What Are Auditory Objects?
(CSLI Publications, 2007)Our auditory experience involves the experience of auditory objects sequences of distinct sounds, or parts of sounds, that are experienced as grouped together into a single sound or stream or sounds. In this paper I argue ... -
Experiencing the Production of Sounds
(Blackwells Publishers Ltd, 2001)Whether or not we would be happy to do without sounds, the idea that our experience of sounds is of things which are distinct from the world of material objects can seem compelling. All you have to do is close your eyes ... -
Auditory Perception and Sounds
(2007)It is a commonly held view that auditory perception functions to tell us about sounds and their properties. In this paper I argue that this common view is mistaken and that auditory perception functions to tell us about ... -
Sounds and Space
(2007-10)Where are sounds are where do we percieve them to be? In what follows I argue that when we hear them sounds are where we are, but that we don't hear them to be where we are because we don't hear them to be anywhere. This ... -
The significance of the senses
(2003)Standard accounts of the senses attempt to answer the question how and why we count five senses (the counting question); none of the standard accounts is satisfactory. Any adequate account of the senses must explain ... -
The senses as psychological kinds
(2007)The distinction we make between five different senses is a universal one. Rather than speaking of generically perceiving something, we talk of perceiving in one of five determinate ways: we see, hear, touch, smell, and ... -
Kinds of experience and the five senses
(2007)In this paper I am going to argue that two commonly held views about perceptual experience are incompatible and that one must be given up. The first is the view that the five senses are to be distinguished by appeal to ... -
Modes of perceiving and imagining
(2000)We enjoy modes of sensory imagining corresponding to our five modes of perception - seeing, touching, hearing, smelling and tasting. An account of what constitutes these different modes of perseption needs also to explain ... -
Curing Cognitive Hiccups: A Defense of The Extended Mind
(2007)Human cognitive processing, according to the Extended Mind Hypothesis may at times extend into the environment surrounding the organism. Such a view should be contrasted with a nearby, (but much more conservative) view ... -
Language, embodiment, and the cognitive niche
(Elsevier, 2006)Embodied agents use bodily actions and environmental interventions to make the world a better place to think in. Where does language fit into this emerging picture of the embodied, ecologically efficient agent? One useful ...