Concepts, Belief, and Perception

At least in one well-motivated sense of ‘concept’, all perception involves concepts, even perception as practiced by lizards and bees. That is because—the paper argues—all perception involves belief

The science of color and color vision

A survey of color science and color vision

Objectivist reductionism

A survey of arguments for and against the view that colors are physical properties

Hmm… Hill on the paradox of pain

1 Pain perception Bodily sensations, for instance pains, are often thought to pose insuperable difficulties for representational theories of consciousness. Chris Hill is never one to dodge a problem, and chapter 6 of his splendid and instructive Consciousness is devoted to outlining a perceptual/representational theory of pain, in the tradition of Armstrong and Pitcher

Sensory qualities, sensible qualities, sensational qualities

Philosophers of mind have distinguished (and sometimes conflated) various qualities. This article tries to sort things out

Are women adult human females?

Are women (simply) adult human females? Dictionaries suggest that they are. However, philosophers who have explicitly considered the question invariably answer no. This paper argues that they are wrong. The orthodox view is that the category *woman* is a social category, like the categories *widow* and *police officer*, although exactly what this social category consists in is a matter of considerable disagreement. In any event, orthodoxy has it that *woman* is definitely not a biological category, like the categories *amphibian* or *adult human female*. In the first part, a number of arguments are given for the view that women are adult human females; the second part turns to rebutting the main objections. Finally, a couple of morals are briefly noted: one for activist sloganeering, and one for ameliorative projects that seek to change the meaning of ‘woman’

Skepticism about the internal world

Skepticism about the internal world is actually more troubling than skepticism about the external world

Comment on Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne, Narrow Content

This comment mainly examines Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne’s preferred framework for examining whether narrow content is viable, arguing that their framework is not well-suited to the task; once a more traditional framework is adopted, Y&H’s case against internalism is strengthened