I arrived at RSSS in 2001 from Geneva via Sydney (2000). This year, I'm visiting MIT. In case, here's my CV.

My thesis is in the philosophy of perception: I attempt to show why perceptual experiences have a representational content that isn't conceptual (and so, why having experiences doesn't require the possession of concepts).

The thesis does four things: (1) it advocates a simple way to make sense of the dispute between Conceptualists (those who hold that the content of experiences is conceptual) and their critics; (2) it shows what's wrong with the main epistemic argument for Conceptualism; (3) it shows what's wrong with most of the arguments raised against Conceptualism (and in particular, arguments based on the phenomenology of experience, such as the argument from the fineness of grain of experience, and that from the informational richness of experience); (4) it provides a new objection against Conceptualism, to do with the role perceptual attention and demonstrative concepts play in experience.

Other research endeavours in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics (some of which collaborative) include: what naïve realism might be; phenomenal sorites arguments and perceptual indiscriminability; the epistemology of perception; the structure of perceptual content; temporal experience; fallibilism, externalism, and kinds of defeaters; epistemic deontologism and doxastic voluntarism; the transfer of warrant; intentions and weakness of will; how to improve my recipe for lemon tart!

Some Work in Progress

• Demonstrative Concepts without Re-identification (pdf), forthcoming in Philosophical Studies.
  
  A discussion of Sean Kelly's attempt to redirect the argument from the fineness of grain of experience against the Conceptualists' appeal to demonstrative concepts. Kelly's argument rests upon the condition that, in order to possess a demonstrative concept, a perceiver must be able to re-identify things which fall under that concept. I show why his defense of this re-identification constraint (i) is not as intuitive as it might seem, (ii) ill-motivated, and (iii) appears to rest on a conflation between different kinds of concepts.


• Indiscriminable Shades & Demonstrative Concepts (pdf), under review.
  
  The paper shows why—pace Dokic & Pacherie (2001)—the fact that chromatic indiscriminability is non-transitive does not raise any fatal problem for the Conceptualists' appeal to demonstrative concepts to deal with the fineness of grain of experience. I argue that Bill Brewer's (1999) account of demonstrative concepts can avoid the problems raised by the intransitivity of indiscriminability.


• The Riches of Experience (pdf), under review.
  
  A discussion of the objection raised against Conceptualism that experiences are rich in information. I show that the idea that experiences are rich in information is compatible with cases of change blindness and inattentional blindness. Problems arise with the second premise according to which the deployment of concepts in experience is somehow limited: I argue that Dretske's (1981) attempt to exploit Sperling's (1960) research on iconic memory fails to motivate such a premise. I suggest that the informational richness of experience nevertheless raises an explanatory challenge for Conceptualists like Bill Brewer (1999).


• The Coherence of Conceptualism? (pdf), rough draft.
  
  The paper presents a new objection against Conceptualism. It exploits the emphasis Conceptualists lay on the role demonstrative concepts play in experience, as well as Bill Brewer's account of how perceivers can deploy such concepts on the basis of perceptual attention. I argue that there are substantive empirical reasons to think that it is possible to perceive without attention. In which case, Conceptualists must either, on pain of inconsistency, (i) deny a plausible empirical fact about perception, or (ii) abandon their account of demonstrative concepts.


• Perceptual Reasons (pdf), very rough draft, to be revised very soon.
  
  I critically review Bill Brewer's (1999) version of the epistemic argument for ConceptualismÑnamely, that (1) perceptual experiences provide reasons for beliefs, and that (2) reasons require conceptual contents. First, I show that (i) Brewer hasn't satisfactorily motivated the premises of his argument, and (ii) how such premises could be resisted. Second, I argue that, either (a) the opponents of Conceptualism can accept all the premises without being committed to Conceptualism, or that (b), in order to strengthen the argument, Brewer seems forced towards an unacceptable (by his lights) second-order account of perceptual reasons.


• Looks Non-transitive (pdf), under review (joint effort with Richard Corry, University of Tasmania)
  
  We respond to Delia Graff's (2001) arguments against the claim that perceptual indiscriminability is non-transitive. We show that (i) Graff's rejection of non-transitivity is unmotivated, we defend the idea that (ii) our perceptual discriminatory capacities are indeed limited in the relevant sense, and we argue that (iii) her alternative account of phenomenal continua meets problems of its own.


• You ought to keep your 'cans' under control! (pdf), (with Nic Southwood, ANU)
  
  William Alston's argument against Deontological Theories of Epistemic Justification constitutes a classic—and much debated—piece of contemporary epistemology. At the heart of Alston's argument, however, lies a very simple mistake which, surprisingly, appears to have gone unnoticed in the vast literature now devoted to the argument. After having shown why the standard response to Alston's argument doesn't work, we diagnose the mistake and offer a plausible hypothesis as to why it has remained concealed for so long.

Contact Details

by email: either pchuard at mit dot edu
or
philippe at coombs dot anu dot edu dot au