My philosophical interests
In my philosophical work, I have attempted to understand the nature of the human mind in a general, abstract and comprehensive way.
I have addressed questions such as: what does it mean to have a mind? What is it to think? What is it to be conscious? How are thought and consciousness related? Are there any deep and essential differences between human minds and the minds of other animals? What is the relationship between the knowledge which we all have of our own minds and the knowledge that we get from neuroscience and psychology? What does it mean for the mind to be physical or material?
I have defended a conception of the mind which rejects both scientistic reductionism and the idea that philosophy should be insulated from science. To understand ourselves we need a proper understanding of what science has told us about ourselves; but the idea that science is the only source of knowledge (about ourselves or the rest of the world) has no basis in science, philosophy or anything else.
I have argued that the essential feature of the mind is what the phenomenologists called ‘intentionality’: the mind’s direction on the world, or its representational power. Consciousness should be understood in terms of intentionality.
I call my conception of the mind 'psychologism'. The truth about the psychological is exhausted neither by what neuroscience discovers, nor solely by what our commonsense or 'folk' psychological descriptions of our mental life deliver. These descriptions need to be complemented by a proper understanding of the results of psychology and a proper phenomenology.
The mind-body problem, as I conceive it, is the empirical-philosophical problem of understanding how our mental, intentional capacities are embodied in our brains and bodies. (I find this a more interesting way to approach the problem than the popular approach of asking whether everything necessarily supervenes on the physical.)
For online papers and book reviews to download, follow the links above.
I have addressed questions such as: what does it mean to have a mind? What is it to think? What is it to be conscious? How are thought and consciousness related? Are there any deep and essential differences between human minds and the minds of other animals? What is the relationship between the knowledge which we all have of our own minds and the knowledge that we get from neuroscience and psychology? What does it mean for the mind to be physical or material?
I have defended a conception of the mind which rejects both scientistic reductionism and the idea that philosophy should be insulated from science. To understand ourselves we need a proper understanding of what science has told us about ourselves; but the idea that science is the only source of knowledge (about ourselves or the rest of the world) has no basis in science, philosophy or anything else.
I have argued that the essential feature of the mind is what the phenomenologists called ‘intentionality’: the mind’s direction on the world, or its representational power. Consciousness should be understood in terms of intentionality.
I call my conception of the mind 'psychologism'. The truth about the psychological is exhausted neither by what neuroscience discovers, nor solely by what our commonsense or 'folk' psychological descriptions of our mental life deliver. These descriptions need to be complemented by a proper understanding of the results of psychology and a proper phenomenology.
The mind-body problem, as I conceive it, is the empirical-philosophical problem of understanding how our mental, intentional capacities are embodied in our brains and bodies. (I find this a more interesting way to approach the problem than the popular approach of asking whether everything necessarily supervenes on the physical.)
For online papers and book reviews to download, follow the links above.