My main research interests are in the philosophy of thought. How should we understand de se thought? Do we think in language-like structures? Is there a temporal dimension to de se thought? What is the difference between the expression of thought in language and artistic expression? How do we come to know about our own thoughts? I'm also interested in bodies - in particular, the special ways we epistemically interact with our own bodies, and how that affects how we think of ourselves. And for better or worse, I seem to think about immunity to error through misidentification quite a bit.
Publications
Philosophy of Thought: The Basics
Routledge, forthcoming (under contract, under review)
A general audience book that combines an introduction to classic debates about the determination of thought content, externalism, and the representational format of thought with more applied discussions about cognitive pathologies, various non-pathological ways in which we are non-ideal thinkers, and the ways in which the social or political conditions of thinking can make a difference to what we think. Suitable for interested non-philosophers, or as a basis for UG and MA teaching.
'Artspeak (Or: What Dorothea Learned in Rome)'
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, forthcoming
In which I propose a novel view of what we might think of as 'deep' content in art. Deep artistic content is, I argue, ostensive content - it consists in that to which the art-maker draws our attention.
[Submitted draft/talk podcast; published]
'Introspection and first-person thought'
Coauthored with Daniel Morgan, forthcoming in The Routledge Handbook of Introspection (ed. Anna Giustina)
A handbook piece in which we explore different ways of construing the relationship between introspection and first person thought.
[paper available shortly]
'Practical Assent in The Practical Self by Anil Gomes'
European Journal of Philosophy, 33:3 (2025)
A symposium piece on Anil Gomes's wonderful and much recommended book The Practical Self; Anil replies to all pieces in the symposium here.
[published]
Saying What One Thinks
OUP, 2025
This book is about self-knowledge, but a rather special kind of self-knowledge - that is, the knowledge we have of our own minds that results from articulating our thoughts. I argue that the initial obstacle to knowing these pre-articulated thoughts is not a brute neural blip or a matter of hermeneutical impoverishment, but a question of getting the format of the thought right. Sometimes, as we go about our ordinary mental lives, we spot a non-propositionally structured pattern among the ever-shifting contents of our minds. And sometimes these patterns strike as important, or meaningful - as a thought just out of reach. In these cases, I argue, we need to transform it into something wordy before it can be known, even to ourselves. Here is a blog post I wrote about the target phenomenon of the book.
[Oxford Scholarship Online]
'Remember Me?: First Person Thought, Memory, and Explanations of IEM'
Special issue on IEM in Philosophical Psychology, eds. Michele Palmira and Analisa Coliva, 38:3 (2025)
In which I explore various different explanations of the failure of q-memory cases to undermine the IEM of first personal episodic memory judgments, as a case study from which I draw broader conclusions about the pluralistic significance of IEM in general.
[published]
'Minding the Children: Childcare, Empathy, and the Phinneas Gage Effect'
Philosophy, 100:1 (2025)
A sister paper to my 2021 AJP paper below, in which I argue that there is a form of emotional self-alienation that is apt to arise in depression that is also associated with the special sort of complex empathetic work involved in childcare.
[published]
'Composing Thoughts: Free Speech and the Importance of Thinking Aloud in Music and Images'
Coauthored with Rob Simpson (UCL), in Legal Theory, 30:2 (2024)
In which we make the case that (some) music and images should be included in the scope of free speech protections because of the special cognitive role such acts of artistic expression can play - a role we call 'thinking aloud'.
[submitted | published]
'Conscious Experience: What's In It For Me?'
Coauthored with Alexander Geddes, in The Sense of Mineness, OUP, Feb 2023
A critical paper in which we raise a series of doubts about the case for the feature of experience sometimes known as ‘the sense of mineness’.
[submitted | published]
'Depression, Ataraxia and the Pig'
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, published online Nov 2021
In which I draw on a contrast between the affective flattening characteristic of depression and the tranquil emotional restraint characteristic of the Epicurean ataraxic to shed light on a new proposed source of the value of affect in our lives: namely, that it can help us feel like ourselves.
[submitted | published ]
'Lit From Within'
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 50:6 2020
In which I propose a diagnosistic explanation of our temptation to mystify the self coming from the inbuilt epistemic conditions of first person thought.
[submitted | published]
'First Person Thought'
Coauthored with Daniel Morgan, Analysis, 80:1, 2020
A survey article in which we present what we take to be the state of various debates in this the area of first person thought in the last decade.
[submitted | published]
'The Essential non-Indexical'
Philosophers' Imprint, 19:20, 2019
In which I argue for the importance of non first personal ways of thinking about ourselves for social self-knowledge.
[published]
'The Inside-Out Binding Problem'
in Spatial Senses: Philosophy of Perception in an Age of Science, Tony Cheng, Ophelia Deroy, Charles Spence (eds.) Routledge, 2019
In which I explore a sort of ‘Molyneux’s problem’, or integration question, about our multimodal perceptions of our own bodies from both the outside and the inside sense modalities.
[submitted]
'Talking our way to Systematicity'
Philosophical Studies, 176: 10, 2019
In which I challenge the widely-held view that our status as language-users gives us a reason to conclude that we think in language too.
[published]
'Crossed Wires About Crossed Wires: somatosensation and immunity to error through misidentification'
Dialectica, 71:1, 2017
In which I defend the importance of bodily self-knowledge, by disarming the popular challenge from so-called ‘crossed wire’ cases.
[submitted | published]
'Thinking About You'
Mind, 126:53, 2017
In which I propose, motivate and defend the view that second-person speech is canonically expressive of a distinctive and especially intimate way we have of thinking of each other.
[published]
'The Subjective Perspective in Introspection'
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23: 3-4, 2016
In which I both offer a new distinction to the IEM literature, and show why thought insertion is not a counterexample to the IEM of introspective self-knowledge.
[published]
Review: About Oneself: de se thought and communication
Manuel García-Carpintero and Stephan Torre (eds), OUP: 2016; Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
[published]
Routledge, forthcoming (under contract, under review)
A general audience book that combines an introduction to classic debates about the determination of thought content, externalism, and the representational format of thought with more applied discussions about cognitive pathologies, various non-pathological ways in which we are non-ideal thinkers, and the ways in which the social or political conditions of thinking can make a difference to what we think. Suitable for interested non-philosophers, or as a basis for UG and MA teaching.
'Artspeak (Or: What Dorothea Learned in Rome)'
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, forthcoming
In which I propose a novel view of what we might think of as 'deep' content in art. Deep artistic content is, I argue, ostensive content - it consists in that to which the art-maker draws our attention.
[Submitted draft/talk podcast; published]
'Introspection and first-person thought'
Coauthored with Daniel Morgan, forthcoming in The Routledge Handbook of Introspection (ed. Anna Giustina)
A handbook piece in which we explore different ways of construing the relationship between introspection and first person thought.
[paper available shortly]
'Practical Assent in The Practical Self by Anil Gomes'
European Journal of Philosophy, 33:3 (2025)
A symposium piece on Anil Gomes's wonderful and much recommended book The Practical Self; Anil replies to all pieces in the symposium here.
[published]
Saying What One Thinks
OUP, 2025
This book is about self-knowledge, but a rather special kind of self-knowledge - that is, the knowledge we have of our own minds that results from articulating our thoughts. I argue that the initial obstacle to knowing these pre-articulated thoughts is not a brute neural blip or a matter of hermeneutical impoverishment, but a question of getting the format of the thought right. Sometimes, as we go about our ordinary mental lives, we spot a non-propositionally structured pattern among the ever-shifting contents of our minds. And sometimes these patterns strike as important, or meaningful - as a thought just out of reach. In these cases, I argue, we need to transform it into something wordy before it can be known, even to ourselves. Here is a blog post I wrote about the target phenomenon of the book.
[Oxford Scholarship Online]
'Remember Me?: First Person Thought, Memory, and Explanations of IEM'
Special issue on IEM in Philosophical Psychology, eds. Michele Palmira and Analisa Coliva, 38:3 (2025)
In which I explore various different explanations of the failure of q-memory cases to undermine the IEM of first personal episodic memory judgments, as a case study from which I draw broader conclusions about the pluralistic significance of IEM in general.
[published]
'Minding the Children: Childcare, Empathy, and the Phinneas Gage Effect'
Philosophy, 100:1 (2025)
A sister paper to my 2021 AJP paper below, in which I argue that there is a form of emotional self-alienation that is apt to arise in depression that is also associated with the special sort of complex empathetic work involved in childcare.
[published]
'Composing Thoughts: Free Speech and the Importance of Thinking Aloud in Music and Images'
Coauthored with Rob Simpson (UCL), in Legal Theory, 30:2 (2024)
In which we make the case that (some) music and images should be included in the scope of free speech protections because of the special cognitive role such acts of artistic expression can play - a role we call 'thinking aloud'.
[submitted | published]
'Conscious Experience: What's In It For Me?'
Coauthored with Alexander Geddes, in The Sense of Mineness, OUP, Feb 2023
A critical paper in which we raise a series of doubts about the case for the feature of experience sometimes known as ‘the sense of mineness’.
[submitted | published]
'Depression, Ataraxia and the Pig'
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, published online Nov 2021
In which I draw on a contrast between the affective flattening characteristic of depression and the tranquil emotional restraint characteristic of the Epicurean ataraxic to shed light on a new proposed source of the value of affect in our lives: namely, that it can help us feel like ourselves.
[submitted | published ]
'Lit From Within'
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 50:6 2020
In which I propose a diagnosistic explanation of our temptation to mystify the self coming from the inbuilt epistemic conditions of first person thought.
[submitted | published]
'First Person Thought'
Coauthored with Daniel Morgan, Analysis, 80:1, 2020
A survey article in which we present what we take to be the state of various debates in this the area of first person thought in the last decade.
[submitted | published]
'The Essential non-Indexical'
Philosophers' Imprint, 19:20, 2019
In which I argue for the importance of non first personal ways of thinking about ourselves for social self-knowledge.
[published]
'The Inside-Out Binding Problem'
in Spatial Senses: Philosophy of Perception in an Age of Science, Tony Cheng, Ophelia Deroy, Charles Spence (eds.) Routledge, 2019
In which I explore a sort of ‘Molyneux’s problem’, or integration question, about our multimodal perceptions of our own bodies from both the outside and the inside sense modalities.
[submitted]
'Talking our way to Systematicity'
Philosophical Studies, 176: 10, 2019
In which I challenge the widely-held view that our status as language-users gives us a reason to conclude that we think in language too.
[published]
'Crossed Wires About Crossed Wires: somatosensation and immunity to error through misidentification'
Dialectica, 71:1, 2017
In which I defend the importance of bodily self-knowledge, by disarming the popular challenge from so-called ‘crossed wire’ cases.
[submitted | published]
'Thinking About You'
Mind, 126:53, 2017
In which I propose, motivate and defend the view that second-person speech is canonically expressive of a distinctive and especially intimate way we have of thinking of each other.
[published]
'The Subjective Perspective in Introspection'
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23: 3-4, 2016
In which I both offer a new distinction to the IEM literature, and show why thought insertion is not a counterexample to the IEM of introspective self-knowledge.
[published]
Review: About Oneself: de se thought and communication
Manuel García-Carpintero and Stephan Torre (eds), OUP: 2016; Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
[published]