Frank Cameron Jackson

Frank Cameron Jackson
Australian National University | ANU · Research School of Social Sciences

BSc, BA (Melb), PhD (La Trobe)

About

214
Publications
13,450
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9,384
Citations
Introduction
Philosophy of mind and language, and ethics
Additional affiliations
September 2007 - January 2014
Princeton University
Position
  • Professor
Description
  • Visited each Fall.

Publications

Publications (214)
Chapter
This volume is a collection of essays on new perspectives on the philosophy of David Lewis. The main topics under discussion come from major areas of analytic philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, language, and ethics. Specifically, the chapters discuss the metaphysics and epistemology of modality, the status of grounding, the...
Chapter
Why believe in belief de se? Someone crossing the road against traffic needs reliable beliefs about how things are relative to themselves. Why accept one version or another of the causal–historical theory of reference for proper names? It explains why names can serve as parts of information channels—a property we exploit when we use names to get di...
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We know, more intimately than anything else, what it’s like to undergo a rich world of experiences: agonizing pains, dizzying pleasures, heady rage and existential doubts. But, despite the incredible advances of physical science, it seems that we’re no closer to an explanation of how this inner world of experiences comes about. No matter how detail...
Chapter
This chapter by Jackson provides his reply to his famous knowledge argument against physicalism by using Armstrong-influenced discussions of colour and of perception, arguing that Armstrong’s treatment of perception in terms of the acquisition of belief is along the right lines but needs to be modified. One should think of perceptual experiences as...
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Some necessary truths are a posteriori. That’s widely agreed and is presumed here. Their existence might appear to show that discoveries about how things are in fact—about how things actually are—can lead to discoveries about all the ways things might be, about the nature of logical space. I detail one way of resisting this conclusion for a number...
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Why is it good to have a language? Many reasons, but one reason above all others: a shared language is a wonderful way of transmitting information. We will see how this simple, ‘Moorean’ observation tells us what to say about reference for proper names, two-dimensionalism, and the internalism–externalism debate. Throughout, the discussion will pres...
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Full-text available
One way to approach the theory of reference for proper names is by asking what proper names are good for in the sense of the valuable purposes they serve. Suppose we approach ethical terms and concepts in the same spirit, asking questions like: What purposes do they serve? How could we do something similar but do it better? This chapter explores th...
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Color is an incredibly controversial topic. Here is a sample of views taken seriously: colors are dispositions to look coloured; colors are physical properties of surfaces or of light; colors are properties of certain mental states, which get projected onto the surfaces of objects or onto reflected or transmitted light; colors are an illusion; colo...
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Full-text available
Colours are as objective as shapes. Representationalism about perceptual experiences – the view that perceptual experiences represent that things are thus and so, and that their doing so is at least part of what makes them the kinds of experiences they are – tells us this, and also how to defend the position against the most potent objection to it,...
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David Lewis argues that believing something is self‐ascribing a property rather than holding true a proposition. But what is self‐ascription? Is it some new mysterious primitive? Is Lewis saying that every belief you have is about you? Several recent authors have suggested that, in the light of these questions, Lewis's theory should be rejected, de...
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Bart Streumer makes an interesting case for an error theory in ethics—and for an error theory for normativity more generally, but I will focus on the more restricted target. I offer a reply on behalf of naturalists (reductionists, reductive realists) in ethics. My case for resistance will involve identifying a three-fold ambiguity in his use of the...
Preprint
Bart Streumer makes an interesting case for an error theory in ethics-and for an error theory for normativity more generally, but I will focus on the more restricted target. I offer a reply on behalf of naturalists (reductionists, reductive realists) in ethics. My case for resistance will involve identifying a threefold ambiguity in his use of the...
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Recently, philosophers have been carrying out a certain amount of soul searching. In this context, the term “professionalism” gets thrown around. The thought is that too much of what we philosophers do looks inward at the work of colleagues instead of outwards at the issues. Sometimes it can seem that it is more important for one's career to demons...
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The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology offers clear and comprehensive coverage of the main methodological debates and approaches within philosophy. The chapters in this volume approach the question of how to do philosophy from a wide range of perspectives, including conceptual analysis, critical theory, deconstruction, experimental ph...
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Suppose that, for one reason or another, the knowledge argument fails as a refutation of physicalism. Even so, it remains the case that there is a pressing question for physicalists raised by the argument. Does Mary acquire old information or misinformation when she leaves the black and white room? Answering this question requires physicalists to a...
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Karl Popper was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His criticism of induction and his falsifiability criterion of demarcation between science and non-science were major contributions to the philosophy of science. Popper's broader philosophy of critical rationalism comprised a distinctive philosophy of social science...
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1. Jaegwon Kim has done as much as anyone to make us aware of the challenge of finding a place in the causal nexus for mental properties. There are many ways of setting the problem up, but at the heart of all the ways is the point that although we physicalists can and should allow that mental properties supervene on physical properties – the kinds...
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In Spreading the Word, Simon Blackburn defends universalism about singular thought. The aim of this chapter is to defend the same view, but within a more thorough-going possible worlds framework. Two central questions about singular belief are addressed. The first is what should be said about the content of singular beliefs, and in particular about...
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How is what an agent ought to do at time t related to what they ought to do over a period of time that includes t? I revisit an example that sheds light on this question, taking account of issues to do with the agent's intentions and the distinction between subjective (or expective) and objective obligation.
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One question is how things are. Another question is how they ought to be, including what ought to be done. But the two questions are intimately connected.
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Sometimes we infer the moral status of an action – its status as captured by using terms like “ought,” “morally good,” “wrong” and the like – from its nonmoral properties. Perhaps we discover that an action would lead to many deaths and conclude that it would be wrong; or, on discovering that Gordon had inside information when he bought shares, we...
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There is no single version of physicalism. There is no single argument for physicalism. There is, accordingly, no standard answer concerning the implications of physicalism for the causation of human action by mental states. This chapter begins by describing a preferred version of physicalism and its implications about the connection between subjec...
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We draw some metaphysical conclusions about colour and belief from some epistemological commonplaces. It turns out that this requires us to challenge orthodoxy on the causal efficacy of mental properties and to rewrite the standard argument against dualism, but in a way which is good news for functionalists about the mind.
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PREAMBLE In many philosophy of mind texts the Australian version of the mind–brain identity theory, the version that affirms type–type identities between mental states and brain states, is portrayed as the Hindenburg of modern materialist theories of mind – an interesting idea that went down in flames. Those with identity theory predilections are a...
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This essay is about an old problem that lies at the intersection of metaphysics and the philosophy of language. It comes up in many contexts. The context that will concern us is ethical naturalism. This is partly because this volume is concerned with ethical naturalism and partly because the author of this essay is a naturalist in ethics. There is...
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How should we react to the contention that there is empirical evidence showing that many judge Gettier cases to be cases of knowledge, contrary to the verdict of most analytical philosophers about these cases? I argue that there is no single answer to this question. The discussion is set inside a view about how to view the role and significance of...
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What role if any is there for conceptual analysis in metaphysics? On the face of it, very little. Metaphysics is to do with what is in the world and what it is like, not with concepts and semantics.1 We would expect science in the wide sense to be highly relevant, but not the armchair deliberations of the philosopher concerned with the analysis of...
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Many sentences represent the kind of world we inhabit, in the sense of providing putative information about it. For each such sentence, there is a set of possibilities, ways things might be, which are in accord with how things are being represented to be by the sentence, and which are such that the credence we give the sentence's being true is the...
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We use words to mark out patterns in nature. This is why a word like 'nutritious' is so useful. One way of thinking about conceptual analysis is as the business of capturing the structure in the patterns so picked out, for it is not credible that the patterns are one and all sui generis. This paper spells out this way of thinking about conceptual a...
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One spaceism versus two spaceism: setting the sceneTwo spaceism and ir-contentWhich label: “epistemic” or “conceptual”?Which possibilities, precisely, are the ones two spaceism holds are conceptually possible but metaphysically impossible?How working with the bigger canvass raises some of the same questions over againWhy two spaceism is not a happy...
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Where we will make our startThe supervenience of reference on natureThe availability issueWhat is required of a user of a name?The issue about personal level knowledgeThe demand for precise and explicit specificationsWhat is a theory of reference a theory of?In the mouths of the very youngThe description theory and interchangeabilityWhat is to come...
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PreambleThe case of proper namesThe difference principleThe ‘within a world’ version of the argument using the difference principleSentences containing “actual” and “actually”Demonstrative adjectivesNatural kind termsA passing comment on centeringWhere to from here?
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Half-Title PageWiley Series PageTitle PageCopyright PageDedication PageTable of ContentsPrologue
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Language, Names, and Information is an important contribution to philosophy of language by one of its foremost scholars, challenging the pervasive view that the description theory of proper names is dead in the water, and defending a version of the description theory from a perspective on language that sees words as a wonderful source of informatio...
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Where we areWhen truth at a world depends on more than how that world isA diagram to give the key ideaA language where truth at a world is, by stipulation, a function of which world is actualOn looking for examples of two–dimensional sentences in the English of the folkHow should we approach questions like, How do we use the word “water”? and, How...
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Book Information Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia. Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia James Franklin, (Sydney : Macleay Press, 2003), 465, AU$59.95 By James Franklin. Macleay Press. Sydney. Pp. 465. AU$59.95,
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W. V. Quine's famous objection to essentialism has provoked two responses. The unfriendly response is that it conflates the de re and the de dicto. The friendly response does not dispute the point about conflation but argues that, behind Quine's argument, lies an important epistemological problem for essentialism. This chapter argues that the probl...
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In order for subjects to know or remember, they must be the right way internally, and the environment they inhabit must be the right way. Those in a deep coma don't know or remember anything; they fail the internal constraint. No-one knows or remembers that all swans are white, because the environment is one where some swans are black. Should we th...
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How Eliminativism Became Embroiled in the Theory of ReferenceStich on the Meta-theory of Reference, and EliminativismStich's Way OutThe Easy Way OutThe Theory of Reference and How Sentences Code for ContentCodaNotes and References
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This chapter presents Frank Jackson's response to his critics in the preceding chapters. His responses are guided by the following principles. i) There didn't seem much value in repeating points that he largely agreed with, unless he felt it could make a useful emendation or clarification; in one case, he says very little because he agreed with jus...
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A new program of philosophical analysis that reconciles a certain account of analysis with philosophical naturalism is applied to a range of philosophical issues. Many philosophical naturalists eschew analysis in favor of discovering metaphysical truths from the a posteriori, contending that analysis does not lead to philosophical insight. A counte...
Chapter
Materialism about the mindPerception, sensations, belief, knowledgeTime and actionUniversals, laws, causation, possibility, and states of affairs
Article
This paper argues that the path to knowledge concerning the right account of proper names attends to their representational and epistemological roles — to, that is, their contribution in sentences of the form "A is F" to how things are being represented to be by the sentence, to the information about how things are that such sentences deliver to us...
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Full-text available
Redness is the property that makes things look red in normal circumstances. That seems obvious enough. But then colour is whatever property does that job: a certain reflectance profile as it might be. Redness is the property something is represented to have when it looks red. That seems obvious enough. But looking red does not represent that which...
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This paper is a discussion of Michael Thau’s interesting critique in Chapter 2 of Consciousness and Cognition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, of the common view that beliefs are internal states.
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This chapter develops a representationalist view about perceptual experience and defends its application to the knowledge argument. This view is based partly on the idea that perceptual experience is diaphanous - in other words, that accessing the nature of the experience itself is nothing other than accessing the properties of its object. It is ar...
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Eleven distinguished philosophers have contributed specially written essays on a set of topics much debated in recent years, including physicalism, qualia, semantic competence, conditionals, presuppositions, two-dimensional semantics, and the relation between logic and metaphysics. All these topics are prominent in the work of Robert Stalnaker, a m...
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We make powerful motor cars by suitably assembling items that are not themselves powerful, but we do not do this by 'adding in the power' at the very end of the assembly line; nor, if it comes to that, do we add portions of power along the way. Powerful motor cars are nothing over and above complex arrangements or aggregations of items that are not...
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Physicalists are committed to the determination without remainder of the psychological by the physical, but are they committed to this determination being a priori? This paper distinguishes this question understood de dicto from this question understood de re, argues that understood de re the answer is yes in a way that leaves open the answer to th...
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My defence of a priori physicalism will cover a fair amount of ground in a short space, so parts will inevitably be a little schematic but I trust the basic case for a priori physicalism will emerge. A priori physicalists agree with almost all physicalists in holding that
Chapter
The sense datum theory is an act-object account of sensory experience, an account that captures the nature of experience through the properties of the objects of awareness. On the act-object view, the difference between an itch and a pain lies in the difference between what one is aware of, and not in the mode of awareness as in adverbial theories....
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I think recent discussions of content and reference have not paid enough attention to the role of language as a convention-governed system of communication. With this as a background theme, I explain the role of A-intensions in elucidating one important notion of content and correlative notions of reference.
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Frank Jackson introduces a seemingly intractable mystery concerning ‘if…then…’ statements.
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The sentence ‘x is square ’ might have had different truth conditions from those it in fact has. It might have had no truth conditions at all. Its having truth conditions and its having the ones it has rest on empirical facts about our use of ‘x is square’. What empirical facts? Any answer that goes into
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Those who identify colours with physical properties need to say how the content of colour experiences relate to their favoured identifications. This is because it is not plausible to hold that colour experiences represent things as having the physical properties in question. I sketch how physical realists about colour might tackle this item of unfi...
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L'A. defend une theorie de la description de la reference dans la langue parlee et dans la langue ecrite en insistant sur le fait que l'on accede aux objets par l'intermediaire de leurs proprietes. Il fait ici le tour des objections adressees a l'encontre de cette theorie essentiellement basee sur la conception de Locke et montre dans quelle mesure...
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I argue that the (widely accepted) normative constraints on belief raise a serious problem for non-cognitivism about normativity.

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