Dissertation, "Having Things in Mind"

Suppose that I suffer a hallucination as of a persimmon on a branch above me. Reaching out to pick it, my hand grasps empty air. I cannot truly claim to have picked a persimmon, or to be standing underneath one. But can I say that I saw one? That I wanted to pick it? Here you might answer “yes,” and with increasing conviction: these questions reflect a concern with the subjective perspective, which the envisaged change in my external circumstances need not touch. It’s tempting to retreat, on this basis, to an internalistic conception of the relevant mental states. I argue that this reaction is a mistake. Referring to particulars, invoking relations to them—these are indispensable to a faithful characterization of the subjective point of view. This claim can be squared with our capacity to make informative reports in the empty case on the hypothesis that some of our ordinary mental state ascriptions occur within the bounds of a pretence. (Longer abstract here.)

Papers under review

On the verbs of perception. Under the influence of mescaline, H.H. Price sees a pile of leaves on his bed. It feels right to use a perceptual verb here, but why? Most of the existing literature on the language of perception takes for granted that such utterances are apt because they communicate, either by stating or conveying it, a proposition whose truth does not require the presence of leaves to Price's senses. Against this, I argue that the only way to do justice to the phenomenology of hallucination is by making singular reference to something, and saying that the subject is perceptually related to it. This is a problem, because we lack the materials we would need (a referent, a relation) to make an ascription of this kind. One can deal with this problem by engaging in pretence. A second look at our talk about hallucinations suggests that we are already in the habit of doing just that. 

On singular thought. In our everyday descriptions of our cognitive and experiential lives, we make frequent reference to particulars; we evince a concern with matters of quantitative and not merely qualitative identity. When we undertake to give a philosophical account of the relevant mental states, however, we seem to have no choice but to let particulars drop out. Gareth Evans' account of the "conniving" use of empty singular terms points us towards a way of avoiding this unhappy outcome. The view I set out undercuts a line of reasoning that terminates in internalism, and does so, moreover, by turning the internalist's own evidence against her.

Papers in progress

The Lesson of Intentional Identity. “Hob thinks a witch has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she (the same witch) killed Cob’s sow.” With this sentence, Peter Geach introduces the phenomenon he labels “intentional identity,” in which “a number of people, or one person on different occasions, have attitudes with a common focus, whether or not there actually is something at that focus” (1967: 627). The puzzle of intentional identity, as it is usually understood, is a puzzle about how to analyze the opening sentence. I deny that there is any such puzzle. The flatfooted reading is correct, even though (as I argue) this has the consequence that the sentence expresses no proposition. The fact that it remains our best means of characterizing the relationship between Hob’s and Nob’s attitudes is revealing. The lesson of intentional identity is that objects—not ‘intentional objects,’ or representations, but ordinary things—have an indispensable role to play in our characterization of certain mental states, a lesson that it is much easier to miss when one restricts one’s focus to individual attitudes.

Resolving Prior's Challenge. An old puzzle about intentionality finds concise expression in the following lines from A.N. Prior: "(a) X’s thinking of Y constitutes a relation between X and Y when Y exists, but (b) not when Y doesn’t; but (c) X’s thinking of Y is the same sort of thing whether Y exists or not. Something plainly has to be given up here; what will it be?" (1971: 130). My response to this challenge goes by way of a structurally similar puzzle about mental state ascriptions. We say “X thinks of Y” across two kinds of case that we recognize as importantly distinct. Why? Because we group these states together according to their resemblance from one perspective of interest to us, the subjective one. The fact that this is not the only point of view we acknowledge explains the tension on display in the foregoing lines. That tension, I argue, is best dissolved by giving up (c). Our use of the same language to characterize thoughts actually about particulars and thoughts which are empty serves an expressive purpose, but does not entail that the two cases have a common nature, nor even that we conceive them as such.

Short papers given as talks

Gaslighting and Fragile Knowledge. On the close relationship between the gaslighter and the philosophical skeptic, the disproportionate power of the former to make a lasting impact on our everyday beliefs, and why there are some ostensibly-epistemic challenges that we are well within our rights to ignore. 

Sane Sensing: Art and Affective Disorder in Merleau-Ponty. An interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's essay on Cézanne, which explores the relationship between artistic creation and the distinctive sensory phenomenology associated with certain mental illnesses.