Areas of Interest

My original interest in philosophy centred around philosophy of language, theory of reference in particular. I was, and remain, especially interested in the connections, and differences, between linguistic reference and intentionality and the consequences of direct reference theory for accounts of mental representation. A related area of research has been anti-individualism or externalism and its relation to the first set of issues.

Current Research Projects

My interest in mental representation has naturally lead to issues concerning the intentionality of perception and the project that has occupied most of my research time over the past several years: colour, its perception, phenomenology and metaphysics. The project, which is a collaborative effort with Kathleen Akins, is going to result in a book which argues for a new account of colour perception which solves some long-standing puzzles in neuroscience. The account also supports several quite unusual, but we believe ultimately correct, conclusions about the phenomenology and metaphysics of colour. I have also been working on some general issues in the theory of perception, the role and nature of sensations in particular.

Publications

• "Do metamers matter?” response to Byrne and Hilbert, “Color realism and color science,” in Brain and Behavioral Sciences, 2003, 26, 1: 30-31.

   

• "When Swampmen Get Arthritis: ‘Externalism’ in Burge and Davidson,” in Reflections and Replies: Essays on the Philosophy of Tyler Burge, Martin Hahn and Bjørn Ramberg, eds. Bradford Books, MIT Press, 2003.

   

• Reflections and Replies: Essays on the Philosophy of Tyler Burge, co-edited with Bjørn Ramberg, Bradford Books, MIT Press, 2003.

   

• "The Peculiarity of Colour,” with Kathleen Akins, in Steven Davis, ed., Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science, OUP 2000.

   

• "Frege's Puzzle one more time,” in John Biro and Peter Kotatko, eds., Sense and Reference One Hundred Years Later, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995.

   

• "How not to Draw the De Re/De Dicto Distinction,” in The Logical Foundations of Cognition, John McNamara, ed., Vol. 4 of Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science, Oxford University Press, 1994, 325-353.