I finally got around to posting last semester’s philosophy essays on this site, along with a slightly updated version of a previous essay. Further details below.

Direct Realism and Visible Figure in Reid

Describes the role that the notion of ‘visible figure’ plays within Thomas Reid’s theory of visual perception. I really enjoyed writing and researching this essay and am relatively pleased with the results, since this seems to be something of an unresolved issue within Reid scholarship. My interpretation was influenced by Ryan Nichols’s excellent book on Reid’s theory of perception, and takes visible figure to consist of the objective set of relational properties that holds between the perceiver and the object. On the advice of my lecturer, I’m hoping to revise this paper for possible publication later this year.

Realism and Conceivability

My attempt to refute Nagel’s argument against Davidson from chapter VI of The View from Nowhere. Raises some interesting questions about realism, idealism, the existence of inconceivable facts, and the various types of conceivability involved. Not, I think, terribly conclusive, but it was the best I could manage given the constraints upon time and word limit. In retrospect, I wish I’d written something entirely different on another topic that interested me more since a lot of the interesting stuff sadly got edited out at the proposal stage… oh well, that’ll teach me!

Making Sense of Indexicals

Evaluates Wolfgang Künne’s account of the first-person indexical, ‘I’, which involves the use of a unique ‘ego-mode’ of presentation much as Frege himself envisaged (although the details of Frege’s own account remain unclear). I argue that such an approach successfully accounts for the logical structure of first-person statements, and that it can be generalised to account for other indexical terms, such as ‘here’ or ‘now’, although the details of the generalisation are not spelled out in any great detail. More descriptive than critical, the essay gives a reasonably clear exposition of the problem and Künne’s distinctive response to it, which is itself quite difficult to understand.

Time, Tense and Adverbial Change

A slightly updated version of an essay I wrote in my final undergraduate year at the University of York evaluating what I take to be E. J. Lowe’s adverbialist account of time and tense. I say take to be as I have started to wonder to what extent Lowe really is an adverbialist about time, although if he isn’t then I really think he should be, as it’s an interesting and (I hope) attractive view. The changes are limited to rewritten introduction, which more clearly sets out the aims of the paper, and some additions to Section III that explain why the adverbial account is preferable to some of the alternatives. After giving this paper at a University of St Andrews graduate reading party, I found that most of the questions related to this section of the essay, which I’d previously been forced to cut out due to space constraints (damn word limits!). Reinstating this material makes for a more balanced and well-rounded account of the benefits of adverbialism. I have since submitted this paper for a graduate conference on time and consciousness that I’ll be attending in June, although I’ve yet to hear whether it’s been accepted.

As always, I’d be grateful for any comments and feedback that you might have, especially for the first and last papers, which I’d like to try and do more with if at all possible. In the meantime, I’d better get back to writing the next batch of essays, which are due to be handed in in less than three weeks time!