Research
My research focuses on philosophical questions about perception.
In particular, I have written about auditory perception and the nature of its objects.
This work stems from a more general interest in how perceptual
experience relates to its objects and how it shapes our understanding of
the natures of those objects.
Recently, I have been working on the
significance of interactions among
modalities for theorizing more generally about
perception.
Listed below are some projects and papers related to
my work on sound, auditory perception, and multi-modal perception (and
some that are not).
Click to download [pdf] versions where available.
I encourage and welcome your comments.
Research Statement: [pdf]
A list of upcoming and recent talks.
Books
Online papers
- "Experiencing Speech" [pdf]
Philosophical Issues 20, forthcoming 2010
- "Perception and Multimodality" [draft pdf]
Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, eds. Margolis, Samuels, and Stich, forthcoming
- "Hearing, Philosophical Perspectives" [pdf]
Encyclopedia of the Mind, eds. H. Pashler and T. Crane, forthcoming
- "Perception" [pdf]
Cambridge Handbook to Cognitive Science, eds. W. Ramsey and K. Frankish, forthcoming
- "Perceiving the Locations of Sounds" [pdf] [journal]
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2010
- "Is speech special?" [pdf]
UBC Working Papers in Linguistics 24: 57-64, 2009
Proceedings of UBC Interlocution Workshop [volume]
- "Constructing a Theory of Sounds" [pdf]
Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 5, 2009
- "Auditory Perception" [html]
Supplement on "Speech Perception: Empirical and Theoretical Considerations" [html]
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2009
- "Sounds" [pdf]
Oxford Companion to Consciousness, eds. Bayne, Cleeremans, and Wilken, 2009 [OUP]
- "Introduction: The Philosophy of Sounds and Auditory Perception" (with Matt Nudds) [pdf]
Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays, 2009
- "Sounds and Events" [pdf]
Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays, 2009
- "The World of Sounds" [pdf]
The Philosophers' Magazine 45: 63-69, 2009
- "Audition" [pdf]
Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Psychology,
eds. Calvo and Symons, 579-591, 2009 [toc]
- "Seeing What You Hear: Cross-Modal Illusions and Perception" [pdf] [journal]
Philosophical Issues 18(1): 316-338, 2008
- "Object Perception: Vision and Audition" [pdf] [journal]
Philosophy Compass 3(4): 803-829, 2008
- "Echoes" [pdf] [journal]
The Monist 90(3): 403-414, 2007
In progress
- The Senses - In preparation for Routledge.
Unpublished comments, conference papers, and drafts
- Comments on Kelly Trogdon's "Phenomenal Concepts: Acquaintance and Demonstrative Thought" [pdf]
SPP, Jun 2008
- Comments on Bénédicte Veillet's "Concept Acquisition and Partial
Conceptualism" [pdf]
Pacific APA, Mar 2008.
- Comments on James John's "Representationalists Should Be Privitivists" [pdf]
Eastern APA, Dec 2006.
- Comments on Jennifer Susse's
"The Multiple Realization Argument"[pdf]
Pacific APA, Mar 2003.
- "Pitch" [pdf] -
An old draft that has been retired because I no longer am convinced of the conclusion, but I'll leave it here because it surveys the relevant scientific facts. It argues that pitch is not identical with
frequency. Nor is it the subjective correlate of frequency. Pitch is an objective though anthropocentric property of sounds.
- "Audible Qualities" - Same caveat as for "Pitch". This paper extends the lesson of "Pitch" to provide accounts of the musical relations (octave, fifth,
fourth, et al.), and of timbre and loudness, based on the notion
of critical bands. Also addresses counterarguments based on
spectral shifts experienced by recipients of cochlear
implants, which are analogous to color spectrum inversions.