Papers Go to papers page I have two papers available right now, with more in progress. Foundational beliefs and the structure of justification I defend a distinctive version of foundationalism which requires that justification for our beliefs about the external physical world be constituted by the justification we have for propositions about our perceptual experiences without the requirement that we actually have beliefs about our perceptual experiences. I presented it at the APA Pacific meeting in 2006 and appeared in Synthese. In defense of relational direct realism I explicate and defend what I call relational direct realism. According to this view, veridical perceptual experiences are partially constituted by the object of the experience. This view arguably entails that the causal theory of perception is false. This conception of perception has been subject to a series of criticisms by Paul Coates. I defend the view against his objections. Dissertation Go to dissertation page Real appearances: the metaphysics and epistemology of direct realism I defend a version of relational direct realism called the real appearances theory according to which perception of mind-independent physical objects and events in the external world is constituted by direct acquaintance with instances of color and shape properties that belong to physical objects and with surfaces of those objects. Thus, in contrast to compositional direct realism, the real appearances theory does not appeal to representations to mediate perception. Further, according to the real appearances theory, hallucinatory experiences involves direct acquaintance with property instances that do not belong to any physical object. Thus, in contrast to disjunctivist theories, the real appearances theory does not dismiss or minimize the standard objections to direct realism or deny that there is a common ontological component present in both hallucinatory and non-hallucinatory experiences. |