According to the naïve realist, colours are mind-independent properties of objects that are distinct from their physical properties. In today’s post I outline the argument for the first part of the view: the claim that colours are mind-independent. To say that colours are mind-independent properties is to say that their …
Thanks to John Schwenkler for the invitation to write about my book, A Naïve Realist Theory of Colour (Oxford University Press, 2016). Colours are a prominent feature of the perceived world. They are important for us as perceivers, both because they allow us to distinguish and identify objects in our …
The extent and interest of third-personal self-knowledge notwithstanding, first-personal self-knowledge too deserves attention. In The Varieties of Self-Knowledge three chapters are devoted to a critique of contemporary accounts of it. In particular, I consider Armstrong’s reliabilist model, Peacocke’s and Burge’s different kinds of rationalism, Evans’s transparency method and its two …
Despite their differences, all previously reviewed accounts have something in common. That is, they adhere to monism with respect to self-knowledge. What they all do is focus on one specific instance, provide what seems at least a prima facie suitable explanation and then try to generalize it to all other …
“Know thyself” is the dictum which appeared on the front of the temple in Delphi. But what does that mean and why is it important? Presumably, it means to know, first and foremost, one’s own character and it is important because only by knowing one’s character can one be aware …
Neutral monism has a fascinating history, from Mach and Chancey Wright (b. 1830 in Northampton MA, where I happen to live) through William James, the American New Realists, including E.B. Holt and Ralph Barton Perry, many of them very much Harvard figures, Bertrand Russell, from 1919 to 1927, to Moritz …
I really like so-called neutral theories of mind-body relations. The “neutral” here means that the theories do not try to extract mind from matter by tortuous logical means, nor do they try to dissolve matter into mind, as idealism does. Most philosophers think that Wittgenstein and Ryle were behaviorists, but …
