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· Department
& University · CSPE · Academic
Links · Students |
Department of
Philosophy, d.bain@philosophy.arts.gla.ac.uk + 44 (0)141 3308768 |
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My publications
and research interests are primarily in the philosophy of mind and
language. At the moment I am engaged
on a project concerning colours, shapes, and microphysical properties, and
their representation in perception and thought. More here.
Biographical sketch here. |
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Publications (Click blue
titles to download.) Articles · “Colour,
Externalism, and Switch Cases”, Southern
Journal of Philosophy, vol. 45, no. 3, Fall 2007. (11,500 words).
Abstract. I defend externalism about colour experiences and colour thoughts,
which I argue colour objectivism requires. Externalists face the
following question: would a subject’s wearing inverting lenses
eventually change the colour content of, for instance, those visual
experiences the subject reports with “red”? From the work of Ned Block,
David Velleman, Paul Boghossian, Michael Tye, and Fiona Macpherson, I extract
a number of problems for each answer to this question. I show how these
problems can be overcome, leaving externalism available to the colour
objectivist. · “The
Location of Pains”, Philosophical
Papers,
vol. 36, no. 2, July 2007, pp. 171-205.
(11,000 words). [Philosophical Papers website here.] Abstract. Perceptualists say that having a pain in a
body part consists in perceiving
the part as instantiating some property.
I argue that perceptualism makes better sense of the connections
between pain location and the experiences undergone by people in pain than
three alternative accounts that dispense with perception. Turning to fellow perceptualists, I also
reject ways in which David Armstrong and Michael Tye understand and motivate
perceptualism, and I propose an alternative interpretation, one that vitiates
a pair of objections—due to John Hyman—concerning the meaning of ‘Amy has a
pain in her foot’ and the idea of bodily sensitivity. Perceptualism, I conclude, remains our best
account of the location of pains. · “Private
Languages and Private Theorists”, Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 216, July 2004, pp. 427-34. ISSN 0031-8094. (4,030 words). [Definitive version available here.] Abstract: Simon Blackburn objects
that Wittgenstein’s private language argument overlooks the possibility of a
private linguist equipping himself with a criterion of correctness by
confirming generalisations about the patterns in which his private sensations
occur. Crispin Wright responds that appropriate generalisations would be too
few to be interesting. But I show that Wright’s calculations are upset by his
failure to appreciate both the richness of the data and the range of theories
that would be available to the linguist. · “Intentionalism and Pain”, Philosophical
Quarterly,
vol. 53, no. 213, October 2003, pp. 502-523.
ISSN 0031-8094. (10,000
words). [Definitive version available here.] Abstract. The pain case can appear to undermine the radically
intentionalist view that the phenomenal character of any experience is entirely constituted by its representational content. That appearance is illusory, I argue. After categorising versions of pain
intentionalism along two dimensions, I argue that an “objectivist” and
“non-mentalist” version is the most promising, provided it can withstand two objections: concerning what we say when in pain,
and the distinctiveness of the pain case. I rebut these objections, in a way that’s
available to both opponents and adherents of the view that experiential
content is entirely conceptual. In
doing so I illuminate peculiarities of somatosensory perception that should
interest even those who take a different view of pain experiences. ·
“Review of Daniel Dennett.
Reconciling Science and Our Self-Conception, by Matthew Elton”,
Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 219, April
2005, pp. 369-371. ISSN 0031-8094.
[Definitive version available here.] Commissioned or Under
Consideration · “Review of Pain, edited by
Murat Aydede”, Mind. · “Review of Experience
and the World’s Own Language, by Richard Gaskin”, Philosophical
Quarterly. · “McDowell: Pain, Colour, and
Subjectivism” Work in Progress · “Revelation and Resemblance” · “Bottom-Up Externalism:
Colours, Shapes, and Microphysical Properties” · “Pain and the Fingertip Argument” (2,906 words) · “Context Switches and Vagueness” · “Itches and Affordances” · “Colour and Circularity” |
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Biographical Sketch: A lecturer in
philosophy at the University of Glasgow since 2004, I have worked at the
Universities of Oxford
(1999-2000), Bristol
(2000-2003), and Nottingham
(2003-04). I started and finished my
university education at Corpus
Christi College, Oxford, where I read for a BA in Philosophy,
Politics, and Economics during 1988-91, and a DPhil in philosophy during
1995-99, under the supervision of Bill Brewer and Bill Child. Between those stints in Oxford, I studied
at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill during 1991-95, where I completed an MA, undertook
preliminary doctoral work (under the supervision of Simon Blackburn), and
taught, before returning to write my thesis in Oxford. Current Research
Interests: …Hitherto I have focussed on bodily sensations,
and somatosensory (or proprioceptive) consciousness more generally, defending
a representationalist account of pain in particular. The project on which I am now engaged
concerns the role perceptual experience has in grounding both our knowledge and
our concepts of our environments, in particular of the following
properties: colours, shapes, and such
diverse microphysical properties as temperatures, on the one hand, and being water, on the other. Being an objectivist about colour, I think
the fascinating differences amongst these cases—some of which the tradition
attempts to capture in terms of one or other forms of the distinction between
primary and second qualities—are differences not in respect of the objectivity, or experience-independence, of
the properties in question, but rather in respect of how these properties are represented in perceptual experience,
and how the experiences in which
they are represented ground knowledge of, and the ability to think (in
certain ways) about, those properties.
In this context, my current research is focussed on the
following: the relations between
externalist accounts of perceptual content and externalist accounts of
thought content; context switch cases, particularly cases involving colour
and shape properties; distinctions amongst different sorts of recognitional
capacity; the scope of perceptual content and the relationship between
perceptual content and phenomenal character; and the idea that the nature of
certain properties—and relations of resemblance amongst them—are revealed to us in perceptual
experience. |
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