Indexicality:
If I think about the current moment as 'now’ that exploits a perspective I have on a particular moment of time. The same moment can be thought of in a perspective free way, e.g. as five minutes past noon GMT on the 3rd April 2016, by people who exist before or after me. Similarly, if I think about myself as 'I’, that exploits a perspective I have on a particular human being. The same human being can be thought about in a perspective-free way (e.g. as 'Daniel Morgan’). I’m interested in perspectival thoughts like these, and in the words, like ‘I’ and ‘now’, we use to express them. The main project is to say why perspectival thoughts matter. What, if anything, would a God-like thinker who knew all the facts about the world, but apprehended them from no particular perspective be missing out on? I'm also interested in puzzles that arise when we try to create a framework for think about language, thought and communication that allows for the possibility of perspective-involving and perspective-free components of representations gelling together, as for example in the thought 'I am Daniel Morgan'.
See:
‘Self-notions and top-down distortion’, Inquiry 60 (2017).
‘The Demonstrative Model of First-Person Thought’, Philosophical Studies 172 (2015): 1795-1811.
'Immunity to error through misidentification: what does it tell us about the de se?', in S. Prosser and F. Recanati (eds.) Immunity to Error Through Misidentification: New Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012: 104-124.
‘Can you think my “I”-thoughts?’, Philosophical Quarterly 59 (234) (2009): 68-85.
Desire:
What kinds of state are desires? Is it a desideratum on an account of desire that a desire to φ must provide one with a reason to φ? If so, how does that constrain our account of what desires are. Should we think of desires as dividing into a world-to-mind aspect (which accounts for the pull of desire) and a mind-to-world aspect (which accounts for the way in which desire presents their objects as positive)? If so, could there be states that involve the first aspect but not the second – states that share the pull of desire but do not present their objects as positive in any way, which we might therefore think of as involving wanting but not liking? Is this a plausible account of the states – often, though not always, conceived as a kind of desire – that pull addicts towards using the substances to which they are addicted? Can the most distinctive aspect of the neurophysiology of paradigm addictive substances – the way in which they impact the mesolimbic dopamine system – be used to provide empirical support for such a model?
See:
‘Getting out of your head: addiction and the motive of self-escape’ (with Lucy O’ Brien), Mind and Language 31 (3) (2016): 314-334.
If I think about the current moment as 'now’ that exploits a perspective I have on a particular moment of time. The same moment can be thought of in a perspective free way, e.g. as five minutes past noon GMT on the 3rd April 2016, by people who exist before or after me. Similarly, if I think about myself as 'I’, that exploits a perspective I have on a particular human being. The same human being can be thought about in a perspective-free way (e.g. as 'Daniel Morgan’). I’m interested in perspectival thoughts like these, and in the words, like ‘I’ and ‘now’, we use to express them. The main project is to say why perspectival thoughts matter. What, if anything, would a God-like thinker who knew all the facts about the world, but apprehended them from no particular perspective be missing out on? I'm also interested in puzzles that arise when we try to create a framework for think about language, thought and communication that allows for the possibility of perspective-involving and perspective-free components of representations gelling together, as for example in the thought 'I am Daniel Morgan'.
See:
‘Self-notions and top-down distortion’, Inquiry 60 (2017).
‘The Demonstrative Model of First-Person Thought’, Philosophical Studies 172 (2015): 1795-1811.
'Immunity to error through misidentification: what does it tell us about the de se?', in S. Prosser and F. Recanati (eds.) Immunity to Error Through Misidentification: New Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012: 104-124.
‘Can you think my “I”-thoughts?’, Philosophical Quarterly 59 (234) (2009): 68-85.
Desire:
What kinds of state are desires? Is it a desideratum on an account of desire that a desire to φ must provide one with a reason to φ? If so, how does that constrain our account of what desires are. Should we think of desires as dividing into a world-to-mind aspect (which accounts for the pull of desire) and a mind-to-world aspect (which accounts for the way in which desire presents their objects as positive)? If so, could there be states that involve the first aspect but not the second – states that share the pull of desire but do not present their objects as positive in any way, which we might therefore think of as involving wanting but not liking? Is this a plausible account of the states – often, though not always, conceived as a kind of desire – that pull addicts towards using the substances to which they are addicted? Can the most distinctive aspect of the neurophysiology of paradigm addictive substances – the way in which they impact the mesolimbic dopamine system – be used to provide empirical support for such a model?
See:
‘Getting out of your head: addiction and the motive of self-escape’ (with Lucy O’ Brien), Mind and Language 31 (3) (2016): 314-334.
