In this paper, we will introduce a novel argument (the "Region Argument") that objects do not have frame-independent shapes in special relativity. The Region Argument lacks vulnerabilities present in David Chalmers' argument for that conclusion based on length contraction. We then examine how views on persistence interact with the Region Argument. We argue that this argument and standard four-dimensionalist assumptions entail that nothing in a relativistic world has any shape, not even stages or the regions occupied by them. We also (...) argue that endurantists have viable ways of preserving shape despite the Region Argument. The upshot of these arguments is that contrary to conventional wisdom, considerations about shape in relativity support endurantism rather than four-dimensionalism. We conclude by examining the implications of our discussion for the debate over Edenic shapes, noting that endurantists have a satisfying response to skeptical arguments about Edenic shapes similar to the one they have against the Region Argument. (shrink)

A preview of my book *Perception*. Discusses the relationship between perception and the physical world and the issue of whether reality is as it appears. Useful examples are included throughout the book to illustrate the puzzles of perception, including hallucinations, illusions, the laws of appearance, blindsight, and neuroscientific explanations of our experience of pain, smell and color. The book covers both traditional philosophical arguments and more recent empirical arguments deriving from research in psychophysics and neuroscience. The addition of chapter summaries, (...) suggestions for further reading and a glossary of terms make Perception essential reading for anyone studying the topic in detail, as well as for students of philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology and metaphysics. (shrink)

Suppose that, while you are dreamlessly asleep, the sizes of and distances between all objects in the world are uniformly multiplied. Would you be able to detect this global inflation? Intuitively, no. But would your experience of size remain accurate? Intuitively, yes. On these grounds, some have concluded that our experiences do not represent size and instead represent modes of presentation of size. We are, in this sense, ‘cut off’ from the sizes of things in the external world. Here, I (...) argue for a more modest conclusion: undetectable inflation reveals that our experiences represent only relative size. Call this view austere phenomenal relativism––or austere relativism, for short. I develop a framework to contrast austere relativism with its competitors, give an extended argument for the view, and then defuse a potential dilemma concerning the units in which our experiences represent size. (shrink)

Fragmentalism was first introduced by Kit Fine in his ‘Tense and Reality’. According to fragmentalism, reality is an inherently perspectival place that exhibits a fragmented structure. The current paper defends the fragmentalist interpretation of the special theory of relativity, which Fine briefly considers in his paper. The fragmentalist interpretation makes room for genuine facts regarding absolute simultaneity, duration and length. One might worry that positing such variant properties is a turn for the worse in terms of theoretical virtues because such (...) properties are not involved in physical explanations and hence theoretically redundant. It will be argued that this is not right: if variant properties are indeed instantiated, they will also be involved in straightforward physical explanations and hence not explanatorily redundant. Hofweber and Lange, in their ‘Fine’s Fragmentalist Interpretation of Special Relativity’, object that the fragmentalist interpretation is in tension with the right explanation of the Lorentz transformations. It will be argued that their objection targets an inessential aspect of the fragmentalist framework and fails to raise any serious problem for the fragmentalist interpretation of special relativity. (shrink)

According to Michael Thompson’s defence of neo-Aristotelian naturalism in meta-ethics, (i) ‘[t]he concept LIFE-FORM is a pure or a priori, perhaps a logical, concept’, and (ii) ‘[t]he concept HUMAN, as we human beings have it, is an a priori concept’ (p. 57). Here I show Thompson’s argument for (ii) to be unsound, hoping thereby to shed light on the neglected subject of the a prioricity of concepts more generally.

Perceptual illusionism is the view that perceptual experience is, in general, radically illusory. That is, perceptual experience presents objects as having certain sensible properties and standing in certain sensible relations, but nothing in the subject’s environment has those properties or stands in those relations. This paper makes the case for perceptual illusionism by showing how a broad set of philosophical and scientific considerations converge to support illusionism about the full range of sensible properties and relations. After clarifying the illusionist thesis, (...) I set out the argument in three parts. First, I briefly make the case for an illusionist view of color. I then argue for illusionism about the spatial/temporal properties presented in experience on the assumption that some “radical” view of space (and/or time) is correct—that is, some view according to which nothing like our ordinary three-dimensional space (or four-dimensional spacetime) exists at the fundamental level. Finally, I argue that there is a strong case for illusionism even if all radical views turn out to be false. (shrink)

I explore two views about the relationship between spatial experience and spatial reality: spatial functionalism and spatial presentationalism. Roughly, spatial functionalism claims that the instantiated spatial properties are those playing a certain causal role in producing spatial experience while spatial presentationalism claims that the instantiated spatial properties include those presented in spatial experience. I argue that each view, in its own way, leads to an ontologically inflationary form of primitivism: whereas spatial functionalism leads to primitivism about phenomenal representation, spatial presentationalism (...) leads to primitivism about spatial properties. I conclude by discussing how to adjudicate between spatial functionalism and spatial presentationalism. (shrink)