Publications

Can humans acquire knowledge of ultimate reality, even significant or comprehensive knowledge? I argue that for all we know we can, and that is so whether ultimate reality is divine or non-divine. My strategy involves arguing that we are ignorant, in the sense of lacking public or shared knowledge, about which possibilities, if any, obtain for humans to acquire knowledge of ultimate reality. This follows from a deep feature of our epistemic situation—that our current psychology strongly constrains what we can conceive about the extent to which human intellectual and other psychological capacities might develop in the future. This mean that many possibilities for such development remain open to us epistemically, including the possibility that we might come to understand vastly more about ultimate reality than we currently do, even if ultimate reality is divine. I also argue that there is room to rationally hope that that is so.

The New Atheists (Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and others) have strongly appealed to “evidentialism”—the view that a belief is rational or justified if and only if it is supported by one’s evidence. However, they typically have been unwilling to apply these same evidentialist standards to their own atheism—their belief that there is no god or other divine reality. Instead, they give various reasons why atheism requires no evidence. In the article I discuss five of the most commonly offered reasons, and argue that none of them succeed. At the end I gesture toward what I believe is the right way to view matters.

Simulation constraints cannot help explain afterlife beliefs in general because belief in an afterlife is a precondition for running a simulation. Instead, an explanation may be found by examining more deeply our common-sense dualistic conception of the mind or soul.

An argument is offered for this conditional: If our current concept conscious state is sharp rather than vague, and also correct (at least in respect of its sharpness), then common versions of familiar metaphysical theories of consciousness are false – namely versions of the identity theory, functionalism, and dualism that appeal to complex physical or functional properties in identification, realization, or correlation. Reasons are also given for taking seriously the claim that our current concept conscious state is sharp. The paper ends by surveying the theoretical options left open by the concept’s sharpness and the truth of the conditional argued for in the paper.

An argument is offered against three naturalistic theories of intentional content: causal-covariation theories, teleological theories, and certain versions of conceptual role semantics. The strategy involves focusing on a normative problem regarding the practice of associating content expressions (e.g., that-clauses) with internal entities (states, symbol structures, etc.). The problem can be expressed thus: Which content expressions are the right ones to associate with internal entities? I argue, first, that an empirical solution to this problem—what I call the normative problem—will follow naturally from a descriptive-explanatory account of the practice of associating content expressions with internal entities; and second, that the empirical solution will be accepted and adopted within cognitive science. Naturalistic theories of content also entail solutions to the normative problem, and such theories are shown to be false by showing that their solutions to the normative problem are inconsistent with the empirical solution coming out of cognitive science.

Block explains the conflation of phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness by appeal to the ambiguity of the term “consciousness.” However, the nature of ambiguity is not at all clear, and the thesis that “consciousness” is ambiguous between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness is far from obvious. Moreover, the conflation can be explained without supposing that the term is ambiguous. Block’s argument can thus be strengthened by avoiding controversial issues in the semantics of “consciousness.”

Two criticisms of Davidson’s argument for monism are presented. The first is that there is no obvious way for the anomalism of the mental to do any work in his argument. Certain implicit premises, on the other hand, entail monism independently of the anomalism of the mental, but they are question-begging. The second criticism is that even if Davidson’s argument is sound, the variety of monism that emerges is extremely weak at best. I show that by constructing ontologically “hybrid” events that are consistent with the premises and assumptions of Davidson’s argument, but entail ontological dualism.

While Consciousness Explained has received an enormous amount of attention since its publication, there is still little agreement on what Dennett’s account of consciousness is.  Most interpreters treat his view as an instance of one or another of the standard ontological positions (functionalism, behaviorism, eliminativism, instrumentalism).  I believe a different metaphysical account underlies Dennett’s view, one that is important though ill-understood.  In the paper I attempt to point in the direction of a proper characterization of that account through the use of two illustrative examples.  A ten-point story that applies to the examples is developed, and it is suggested that the story applies equally well to Dennett’s view of consciousness.

The use of expressions like ‘concepts of consciousness’, ‘kinds of consciousness’, and ‘meanings of ‘consciousness’ ’ interchangeably is ubiquitous within the consciousness literature. It is argued that this practice can be made sense of in only two ways. The first involves interpreting ‘concepts of consciousness’ and ‘kinds of consciousness’ metalinguistically to mean, roughly, concepts expressed by ‘consciousness’ and kinds expressed by ‘consciousness’; and the second involves certain literal, though semantically deviant, interpretations of those expressions. The trouble is that researchers frequently use the above expressions interchangeably without satisfying either way of doing so coherently. The result is considerable error and confusion, which is demonstrated in the works of
philosophers currently writing on consciousness.

That consciousness is composed of simple or basic elements that combine to form complex experiences is an idea with a long history.   This idea is approached through an examination of our “picture” or conception of  consciousness (CC).  It is argued that CC commits us to a certain abstract notion of simple experiential events, or simples, and that traditional critiques of simple elements of experience do not threaten simples.   To the extent that CC is taken to conform to how consciousness really is, therefore, the concept of simples must be treated in kind.

It is widely assumed that ‘consciousness’ (and its cognates) is multiply ambiguous within the consciousness literature. Some alleged senses of the term are access consciousness, phenomenal consciousness, state consciousness, creature consciousness, introspective consciousness, self consciousness, to name a few. In the paper I argue for two points. First, there are few if any good reasons for thinking that such alleged senses are genuine: ‘consciousness’ is best viewed as univocal within the literature. The second point is that researchers would do best to avoid the semantics of ‘consciousness’, since resorting to ‘semantic ascent’ typically serves no clear purpose in the case of consciousness, and confuses matters more than anything else.

In spite of the enormous interdisciplinary interest in consciousness these days, sorely lacking are general methodologies in terms of which individual research efforts across disciplines can be seen as contributing to a common end.  In the paper I outline such a methodology.  The central idea is that empirically studying our conception of consciousness—what we have in mind when we think about consciousness—can lead to progress on consciousness itself.  The paper clarifies and motivates that idea.

I argue that the temporal boundaries of certain experiences — those I call ‘simple experiential events’ (SEEs) — have a different character than the temporal boundaries of the events most frequently associated with experience: neural events. In particular, I argue that the temporal boundaries of SEEs are more sharply defined than those of neural events. Indeed, they are sharper than the boundaries of all physical events at levels of complexity higher than that of elementary particle physics. If correct, it follows that the most common forms of identity theory-functionalism and dualism (according to which neurophysiological (or other complex) events play key roles through identification or correlation) — are mistaken. More positively, the conclusion supports recent approaches that attempt to explain conciousness by appeal to quantum physics.

An argument is offered against functionalist theories of consciousness. The argument exploits an intuition to the effect that parts of an individual’s brain (or of whatever else might realize the individual’s mental states, processes, etc.) that are not in use at a time t, can have no bearing whatever on whether that individual is conscious at t. After presenting the argument, I distinguish it from two arguments which are prima facie similar to my argument, I clarify the argument’s central intuition, and finally defend the argument against a natural objection.

The paper addresses Tyler Burge’s thesis, based on his thought experiments in ‘Individualism and the Mental’, that propositional attitudes are properties individuals have in virtue of social relations they bear to other language users. An alternative interpretation of Burge’s thought experiments is offered on which the intuitions Burge evokes can be accepted while his conclusions about the social character of thought are denied. The alternative interpretation given, I go on to argue that it is preferable to Burge’s.

It is widely assumed that ‘consciousness’ (and its cognates) is multiply ambiguous within the consciousness literature. Some alleged senses of the term are access consciousness, phenomenal consciousness, state consciousness, creature consciousness, introspective consciousness, self consciousness, to name a few. In the paper I argue for two points. First, there are few if any good reasons for thinking that such alleged senses are genuine: ‘consciousness’ is best viewed as univocal within the literature. The second point is that researchers would do best to avoid the semantics of ‘consciousness’, since resorting to ‘semantic ascent’ typically serves no clear purpose in the case of consciousness, and confuses matters more than anything else.

Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988) have argued that the cognitive architecture is not Connectionist. Their argument takes the following form: (1) the cognitive architecture is Classical; (2) Classicalism and Connectionism are incompatible; (3) therefore the cognitive architecture is not Connectionist. In this essay I argue that Fodor and Pylyshyn’s defenses of (1) and (2) are inadequate. Their argument for (1), based on their claim that Classicalism best explains the systematicity of cognitive capacities, is an invalid instance of inference to the best explanation. And their argument for (2) turns out to be question-begging. The upshot is that, while Fodor and Pylyshyn have presented Connectionists with the important empirical challenge of explaining systematicity, they have failed to provide sufficient reason for inferring that the cognitive architecture is Classical and not Connectionist.

Glowacki argues that the human capacity for peace emerged 100,000 years ago, and that the logic of peace is such that the traits and technologies that enable peace are the same that are used to wage war. In my commentary I raise some concerns about these points as well as about Glowacki’s understanding of peace.