Eric Schwitzgebel

eschwitz at domain- ucr.edu

Professor of Philosophy (Ph.D., U.C. Berkeley, 1997)

Areas of interest: Philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, cognitive development,

philosophy of science, classical Chinese philosophy,

epistemology, perceptual and cognitive psychology, metaphilosophy.

My Blog:

is here.

A Broad-Ranging Interview on My Work:

is here.

Books:

• Perplexities of Consciousness, MIT Press (2011).

Here at Amazon and here at Barnes & Noble.  For an abstract and access to chapter drafts from 2009 see here.

Philosophical Studies is publishing a symposium on the book, consisting of my Precis, commentaries by Uriah Kriegel, by Declan Smithies, and by Maja Spener, and my reply. 

• Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic, with Russell T. Hurlburt, MIT Press (2007).

Here at Amazon and here at Barnes & Noble.  For an abstract and access to chapter drafts from 2006 see here.

Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted an issue to ten commentaries on this book, with 100 pages of replies by Russ and me: See here.

Essays Sorted by Theme:

Belief:

• "A Dispositional Approach to Attitudes: Thinking Outside of the Belief Box" (forthcoming), in Nikolaj Nottelmann (ed.), Belief (Palgrave).
• (with Blake Myers-Schulz) "Knowing That P Without Believing That P", (forthcoming), Nous.
• "Knowing Your Own Beliefs" (2011), Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 35, supplement 41-62.
• "Acting Contrary to Our Professed Beliefs, or the Gulf Between Occurrent Judgment and Dispositional Belief" (2010), Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 91, 531-553.
• "Mad Belief?" (forthcoming), NeuroEthics.  [A commentary on Lisa Bortolotti, Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (2010).]
• "Belief" (2006), entry for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• "A Phenomenal, Dispositional Account of Belief" (2002), Nous, 36, 249-275.  [This is my central essay on the topic.]
  • "In-Between Believing" (2001), Philosophical Quarterly, 51, 76-82.
  • "On Containers and Content, with a Cautionary Note to Philosophers of Mind" (not for print publication).
• "Gradual Belief Change in Children" (1999), Human Development, 42, 283-296.

Our Poor Knowledge of Our Own Conscious Experience:

• "If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious", in draft.
• "Introspection, What?" (2012) in Declan Smithies and Daniel Stoljar (eds.), Introspection and Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford).
• "Self-Ignorance" (2012) in JeeLoo Liu and John Perry (eds.), Consciousness and the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge).
• "Introspection" (2010), entry for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• "The Unreliability of Naive Introspection" (2008), Philosophical Review, 117, 245-273.  [This is my central essay on the topic.]
  • "No Unchallengeable Epistemic Authority, of Any Sort, Regarding Our Own Conscious Experience -- Contra Dennett?" (2007), Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6, 107-113.  (For further thoughts in response to an exchange with Dennett, see here.)
• "Descartes Inverted" (2007), from Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic (with Russell T. Hurlburt).
• "Do You Have Constant Tactile Experience of Your Feet in Your Shoes? Or Is Experience Limited to What's in Attention?" (2007), Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14, no. 3, 5-35.
• "Do Things Look Flat?" (2006), Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, 72, 589-599..
• "Introspective Training Apprehensively Defended: Reflections on Titchener's Lab Manual" (2004), Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11, no. 7-8, 58-76..
  • "Difference Tone Training: A Demonstration Adapted from Titchener's Experimental Psychology" (2005), Psyche, 11, no. 6.
• "Why Did We Think We Dreamed in Black and White?" (2002), Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 33, 649-660.  
  • "Do People Still Report Dreaming in Black and White? An Attempt to Replicate a Questionnaire from 1942" (2003), Perceptual & Motor Skills, 96, 25-29; and 
  • (with Changbing Huang and Zhou Yifeng) "Do We Dream in Color? Cultural Variations and Skepticism" (2006), Dreaming, 16, 36-42.
• "How Well Do We Know Our Own Conscious Experience? The Case of Visual Imagery" (2002), Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9, no. 5-6, 35-53.
• (with Michael S. Gordon) "How Well Do We Know Our Own Conscious Experience? The Case of Human Echolocation" (2000), Philosophical Topics, 28, 235-246.

The Relationship Between Moral Reflection and Moral Behavior:

• "Are Ethicists Any More Likely to Pay Their Registration Fees at Professional Meetings?", in draft.
• (with Joshua Rust) "The Moral Behavior of Ethicists and the Power of Reason", in draft.
• (with Joshua Rust) "The Moral Behavior of Ethics Professors: Relationships Among Self-Reported Behavior, Expressed Normative Attitude, and Directly Observed Behavior" (forthcoming), Philosophical Psychology.
• (with Joshua Rust) "Ethicists' and Non-Ethicists' Responsiveness to Student Emails: Relationships among Expressed Normative Attitude, Self-Described Behavior, and Experimentally Observed Behavior" (forthcoming), Metaphilosophy.
• (with Fiery Cushman) "Expertise in Moral Reasoning? Order Effects on Moral Judgment in Professional Philosophers and Non-Philosophers" (2012), Mind & Language, 27, 135-153.
• (with Joshua Rust, Linus Huang, Alan Moore, and Justin Coates), "Ethicists' Courtesy at Philosophy Conferences" (2012), Philosophical Psychology, 35, 331-340.
• (with Joshua Rust) "Do Ethicists and Political Philosophers Vote More Often Than Other Professors?" (2010) Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1, 189-199.
• (with Joshua Rust) "The Moral Behavior of Ethicists: Peer Opinion" (2009) Mind, 118,1043-1059.
• "Do Ethicists Steal More Books?" (2009) Philosophical Psychology, 22, 711-725.
• "Human Nature and Moral Education in Mencius, Xunzi, Hobbes, and Rousseau" (2007) History of Philosophy Quarterly, 24, 147-168.

Foundational Issues in Cognitive Development:

• (with Victoria McGeer) "Disorder in the Representational Warehouse" (2006), Child Development, 77, 1557-1562.  [This is a commentary on an essay by Jacqueline Woolley, but it is written so as to be comprehensible without knowledge of Woolley's paper.]
• "Gradual Belief Change in Children" (1999), Human Development, 42, 283-296.  [Also listed under "Belief" above.]
• "A Difficulty for Simulation Theory Due to the Close Connection of Pretense and Action in Early Childhood" (2000, not for print publication)
• "Children's Theories and the Drive to Explain" (1999), Science & Education, 8, 457-488.
  • "Theories in Children and the Rest of Us" (1996), Philosophy of Science, Supplemental Issue, 63, s202-s210.
• "Representation and Desire: A Philosophical Error with Consequences for Theory-of-Mind Research" (1999), Philosophical Psychology, 12, 157-180.
• "Difficulties in Davidson's Arguments Against Belief Without Language" (1997, not for print publication)

Metaphilosophy, Metaphysics, Skepticism, and Cosmology:

• "Experimental Evidence for the Existence of an External World", in draft.
• "The Problem of Known Illusion and the Resemblance of Experience to Reality", in draft.
• "The Crazyist Metaphysics of Mind", in draft.
• "If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious", in draft.
• (with Alison Gopnik) "Whose Concepts Are They, Anyway?  The Role of Philosophical Intuition in Empirical Psychology" (1998),  in M.R. DePaul and W. Ramsey (eds.), Rethinking Intuition (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield).
• "Zhuangzi's Attitude Toward Language and His Skepticism" (1996), in P. Kjellberg and P.J. Ivanhoe (eds.), Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi (SUNY Press).

Chinese Philosophy:

• "Human Nature and Moral Development in Mencius, Xunzi, Hobbes, and Rousseau" (2007) History of Philosophy Quarterly, 24, 147-168.  [Also listed under "The Relationship Between Moral Reflection and Moral Behavior" above.]
• "Why Don't We Know Our Chinese Philosophy?" (2001), APA Newsletter on the Status of Asian & Asian-American Philosophers & Philosophies, 1, 26-27.
• "Zhuangzi's Attitude Toward Language and His Skepticism" (1996), in P. Kjellberg and P.J. Ivanhoe (eds.), Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi (SUNY Press).  [Also listed under "Metaphilosophy" above.]

Other:

• (with Josh Dever) "The Two Envelope Paradox and Using Variables Within the Expectation Formula" (2008), Sorites, 20, 135-140 -- also see our Simple Explanation of the Two Envelope Paradox.

Dissertation:

• Words about Young Minds: The Concepts of Theory, Representation, and Belief in Philosophy and Developmental Psychology (U.C. Berkeley, Philosophy Department, 1997).

Fictions:

• "The Mnemonists" (in draft).
• "Adam and Eve in the Happiness Pod" (with R. Scott Bakker, in draft).  (Early version here.)
• "Illuminations of Horatio" (in draft).
• "The Tyrant's Headache" (in draft).
• "SarahAbraham" (in draft).
• "Waterfall Skepticism" (in draft).
• "Tree" (in draft).

Miscellaneous Thoughts:

• Conjugal love.
• Marilyn Vos Savant on Goliath and Lump1.
• Wundt's Selbstbeobachtung und innere Wahrnehmung

Recent Courses:

Lower Division: 

Evil (Winter 2013, Spring 2012, Fall 2010, Spring 2007)

Upper Division: 

Philosophy of Science (Spring 2013, Spring 2011, Fall 2009)

Philosophy of Mind (Spring 2013, Fall 2011, Fall 2010)

Classical Chinese Philosophy (Winter 2007)

Senior Seminar:

        Proofs of the External World (Winter 2011)

        Consciousness (Fall 2007)

        Chalmers on Consciousness (Fall 2006)

        Philosophy of Mind (Winter 2005)

Graduate Seminars:

What Is the Use of Ethics? (Fall 2012)

The Psychology of Metaphysics (Winter 2012)

Perplexities of Consciousness (Spring 2009)

Visual Consciousness (Winter 2008)

Workshop: Moral Psychology (Winter 2008)

Moral Reflection and Moral Behavior (Winter 2007)

Self-Knowledge (Spring 2006)

Moral Sentiments (Spring 2005)

Dissertations completed under my direction:

• Nick Baiamonte (2008): On The Possibility of Being Virtuous in a Wicked World: The Nature, Character, and Power of Genuine Moral Reflection.
• Joshua Rust (2005): John Searle's Ideal Type: Max Weber and the Construction of Social Reality.
• Ted M. Preston (2005): Bridging the Gap Between Normative Beliefs and Actions.

Friends' businesses:

Southland Solar

August Games

Keos Electronics

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(hits since August 18, 2004)