Talks
Forthcoming talks
Past talks
Where: Oxford Philosophy Department, The Admissible Contents of Experience When: 21st March 2007
Like (5)Colour Space and Fineness of Grain
Where: Oxford Philosophy Department, Ockham Society When: 22nd November 2005
Below is the abstract that was circulated for this talk. The ideas from this talk were changed, and eventually made it into Chapter 6 of my thesis (available on my papers page). Chapter 6 of my thesis contains my latest views on this topic.
Suppose that patch A looks scarlet to us, and patch B looks crimson to us. Consider a being which cannot visually discriminate between scarlet and crimson; i.e. a being with more coarse-grained visual experiences than us. How would patches A and B look to such a being?
According to the deleted colour view, either A and B both look scarlet or they both look crimson to this being: the being sees fewer colours than us. According to the neutrality view, A and B look to this being some colour, red*, that is neutral between scarlet and crimson. There are different ways of understanding this notion of neutrality. On the disjunctive understanding
of neutrality, being red* is being either scarlet or crimson, so that A looks either scarlet or crimson to the being. On the one-many similarity understanding of neutrality, red* is a colour that bears a relation of one-many similarity to scarlet and crimson.
In this talk I will present the details of the above three accounts of coarse-grained experiences, and suggest some reasons for being doubtful of the disjunctive view.
What Properties Does Experience Represent?
Where: National Postgraduate Analytic Philosophy Conference When: 16th July 2005
This paper ended up as Chapter 1 of my thesis, available on my Papers page ('A Sparse View About The Properties That Objects Look To Have')
Relational Looking and the Reversibility Constraint
Where: Harvard/MIT Graduate Conference When: 20th March 2005
A later version of this paper was published in Philosophical Perspectives as 'Content Ascriptions and the Reversibility Constraint', available on my papers page.
A later version of that paper became Chapter 2 of my thesis ('The Tension Between Exportation And The View That Objects Phenomenally Look To The Left And Right Of Me'), available on my papers page. The thesis chapter has my latest views on the topic.
The Nature of Visual Space
Where: Oxford Philosophy Department, Ockham Society When: 15th March 2005
Below is the abstract that was circulated with the talk. The ideas from this talk ended up, in a modified form, in Section 4 of Chapter 4 of my thesis, available on my papers page. Chapter 4 of my thesis contains my latest views on this topic.
In this talk, I discuss and motivate two hypotheses about the content of visual experience:
1.) that everything could look smaller to you than to me, without there being any behavioural difference between us.
2.) that everything could look further to the left to you than to me, without there being any behavioural difference between us. I will finish by discussing some of the consequences these hypotheses have for the content of visual experience.
Where: The Invariants Society (Oxford Mathematics Society). When: 25th January 2005
This was a talk I gave to the Invariants Society, a Mathematics Society at Oxford. The talk discussed three paradoxes. See the iPaper file below.
Relational Looking and the Reversibility Constraint
Where: Warwick Graduate Conference When: 28th November 2004
This talk eventually ended up as Chapter 2 of my thesis, available on my papers page.
Vagueness and the Content of Experience
Where: Oxford Philosophy Department, Ockham Society When: 8th July 2004
Below is the abstract that was circulated with the talk. I don't now agree with all the arguments in this talk. However, a version of one of the arguments in this talk made it into Chapter 1 of my thesis (section 4.2 of that chapter, 'The Vagueness Argument'), which is available on my papers page.
Abstract
In this talk I will argue that objects do not look red, but look only determinate shades of red (e.g. red21). Take a sequence of shades going from red to yellow. If one thinks that the red patches look red (as opposed simply to determinate shades of red), I will argue that one is committed to two implausible conclusions about what happens when your eyes scan this sequence: one, that there is variation in the level of vagueness of how things look; two, that there is variation in the level of vagueness of whether the shades are the way they look. I will extend the argument to show that objects do not look to be tables, or to be watches, or look expensive or hot or old. What ways do I think objects look? I shall suggest that objects look determinate shades of colour, determinate sizes, determinate shapes, at determinate positions.
What Properties Does Experience Represent?
Where: Columbia/NYU Graduate Conference When: 15th March 2004
I gave this paper at the Columbia/NYU Graduate Conference in 2004. In the paper I defend a sparse view of what properties experience represents. The ideas in this paper were modified quite significantly, and ended up in Chapter 1 of my thesis, which is available on my papers page.
Reply to Jerry Fodor's talk 'Having Concepts: A Brief Refutation of Practically Everything'
Where: Oxford Philosophy Department, 2002 Oxford Philosophy Graduate Conference When: 11th November 2002
This was a reply to Jerry Fodor's talk 'Having Concepts: A Brief Refutation of Practically Everything', given at the 2002 Oxford Graduate Conference in Philosophy.
Fodor's paper is available here: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0017.2004.00245.x?cookieSet=1&journalCode=mila
Is The Content of Experience Nonconceptual?
Where: Oxford Philosophy Department, Ockham Society When: 15th May 2002
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