My main research interests are in the philosophy of thought. How should we understand de se thought? Could there be forms of conceptual thought that look more like maps than like language? Is there a temporal dimension to de se thought? Does de nunc thought have proprietary features that risk slipping under the radar if we approach it with theoretical tools built to deal with de se thought? 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.
Papers
'Conscious Experience: What's In It For Me?'
Coauthored with Alexander Geddes, in The Sense of Mineness, OUP, forthcoming
A critical paper in which we raise a series of doubts about the case for the feature sometimes known as ‘the sense of mineness’.
[submitted]
'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]
Revew: About Oneself: de se thought and communication
Manuel García-Carpintero and Stephan Torre (eds), OUP: 2016; Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
[published]
Coauthored with Alexander Geddes, in The Sense of Mineness, OUP, forthcoming
A critical paper in which we raise a series of doubts about the case for the feature sometimes known as ‘the sense of mineness’.
[submitted]
'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]
Revew: About Oneself: de se thought and communication
Manuel García-Carpintero and Stephan Torre (eds), OUP: 2016; Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
[published]
Projects
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Persons as Animals (AHRC)
In 2015-16 I worked with Helen Steward on her AHRC-funded Persons as Animals project. The guiding idea of the project was to consider how taking seriously our animal natures will bear on philosophical questions not normally approached through the lens of our animality – specifically, questions about the nature of human perception, agency and cognition. My work on the project gravitated around the third strand; as one species among others, what reasons do we have for thinking that our thought is signficantly unlike that of other animals? Here's a blog post I wrote about some of the work we did on the project. |
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First person thought (AHRC)
My doctoral project took as its starting point two prima facie plausible features of first person thought: its pure reflexivity on the one hand, and on the other its special relationship to a limited cluster of ways of knowing about ourselves in which we are seemingly given to ourselves in a distinctively first personal way. I proposed a new model of first person thought that brings together these two features by casting our special first personal forms of self-knowledge in a role associated with comprehension rather than one of reference-determination. Here's a blog post I wrote about one of the papers coming out of that project. |