Articles
"Literal Self-Deception", Analysis (forthcoming)
Abstract: It is widely assumed that a literal understanding of someone’s self-deception that P yields the following contradiction. Qua self-deceiver, she does not believe that P, yet – qua self-deceived – she does believe that P. I argue that this assumption is ill-founded. Literalism about self-deception – the view that self-deceivers literally self-deceive – is not committed to this contradiction. On the contrary, properly understood, literalism (non-trivially) excludes it.
Abstract: It is widely assumed that a literal understanding of someone’s self-deception that P yields the following contradiction. Qua self-deceiver, she does not believe that P, yet – qua self-deceived – she does believe that P. I argue that this assumption is ill-founded. Literalism about self-deception – the view that self-deceivers literally self-deceive – is not committed to this contradiction. On the contrary, properly understood, literalism (non-trivially) excludes it.
"Secondary Self-Deception", Ratio 32.2 (2019), 122-130
Abstract: According to doxastic accounts of self‐deception, self‐deception that P yields belief that P. For doxastic accounts, the self‐deceiver really believes what he, in self‐deception, professes to believe. I argue that doxastic accounts are contradicted by a phenomenon that often accompanies self‐deception. This phenomenon – which I term ‘secondary deception’ – consists in the self‐deceiver's defending his professed (deceit‐induced) belief to an audience by lying to that audience. I proceed to sketch an alternative, non‐doxastic account of how we should understand self‐deception in terms of the self‐deceiver's misrepresentation of himself as believing that P.
Abstract: According to doxastic accounts of self‐deception, self‐deception that P yields belief that P. For doxastic accounts, the self‐deceiver really believes what he, in self‐deception, professes to believe. I argue that doxastic accounts are contradicted by a phenomenon that often accompanies self‐deception. This phenomenon – which I term ‘secondary deception’ – consists in the self‐deceiver's defending his professed (deceit‐induced) belief to an audience by lying to that audience. I proceed to sketch an alternative, non‐doxastic account of how we should understand self‐deception in terms of the self‐deceiver's misrepresentation of himself as believing that P.
"Representation and Regress", Husserl Studies 33.1 (2017), 19-43
Abstract: I defend a Husserlian account of self-consciousness against representationalist accounts: higher-order representationalism and self-representationalism. Of these, self-representationalism is the harder to refute since, unlike higher-order representationalism, it does not incur a regress of self-conscious acts. However, it incurs a regress of intentional contents. I consider, and reject, five strategies for avoiding this regress of contents. I conclude that the regress is inherent to self-representationalism. I close by showing how this incoherence obtrudes in what must be the self-representationalist’s account of the phenomenology of experience.
Abstract: I defend a Husserlian account of self-consciousness against representationalist accounts: higher-order representationalism and self-representationalism. Of these, self-representationalism is the harder to refute since, unlike higher-order representationalism, it does not incur a regress of self-conscious acts. However, it incurs a regress of intentional contents. I consider, and reject, five strategies for avoiding this regress of contents. I conclude that the regress is inherent to self-representationalism. I close by showing how this incoherence obtrudes in what must be the self-representationalist’s account of the phenomenology of experience.
"Sartrean Self-Consciousness and the Principle of Identity: Sartre’s Implicit Argument for the Non-Self-Identity of the Subject", Sartre Studies International 23.2 (2017), 98-113
Abstract: I address the problem of what grounds Sartre’s paradoxical claim that consciousness is non-self-identical, and his equally paradoxical gloss on that claim – that the nature of consciousness is to be what it is not and not to be what it is. I argue that there is an implicit argument in Being and Nothingness, which both yields and elucidates Sartre’s claim that consciousness is non-self-identical, and which also maps on to, and clarifies, the explicit argument that Sartre provides for this conclusion. This implicit argument presupposes that we attribute to Sartre a distinctive theory of pre-reflective self-consciousness – what I call the non-iterative theory. I argue that we should attribute the non-iterative theory to Sartre.
Chapters
"Necessary Self-Awareness", (2019) in Automata's Inner Movie: Science and Philosophy of Mind (Steven S. Gouveia & Manuel Curado, Eds.), Wilmington: Vernon Press, 213-229
Abstract: I address the related problems of whether consciousness (or experience) is necessarily self-aware and, if so, what constitutes that self-awareness. I argue that consciousness is necessarily self- aware and that this self-awareness is distinct in kind from intentionality. The self-awareness that is necessary to an experience does not posit that experience as an intentional object, via an intentional content. Rather, it apprehends that experience immediately, as the experience it is.
Abstract: I address the related problems of whether consciousness (or experience) is necessarily self-aware and, if so, what constitutes that self-awareness. I argue that consciousness is necessarily self- aware and that this self-awareness is distinct in kind from intentionality. The self-awareness that is necessary to an experience does not posit that experience as an intentional object, via an intentional content. Rather, it apprehends that experience immediately, as the experience it is.