John Schwenkler
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Research

My scholarly research is centered around a nest of issues connecting perception, agency, reason, and the self. These days I am writing a lot about action, developing an interpretation of Elizabeth Anscombe's idea that intentional activity is distinguished by its being informed by a person’s "practical knowledge" of what he or she is doing. This is the subject of several of my published papers as well as a book, Anscombe's Intention: A Guide, that will be published by Oxford in 2019.

In addition to this I do a lot of work in the philosophy of perception, especially on questions concerning the structure of perceptual space, the relationship between vision and touch, and the connections of perception to action and self-awareness.

If you have an unreasonable amount of time on your hands and want an overall flavor of my work in the philosophy of action, I'd suggest starting with my 2011 paper "Perception and Practical Knowledge", which sketches the basic idea in ways I now find somewhat problematic, and then reading my "Understanding 'Practical Knowledge'", a long paper that is a partly exegetical-interpretive, partly constructive-critical engagement with Anscombe's position in ​Intention. My paper "Intending is Believing: A Defense of Strong Cognitivism", which I wrote together with Beri Marušić, develops a broadly Anscombean account of intention for the future.

If instead you want to spend your unreasonable amount of free time looking at my work in perception, start with "Does Visual Spatial Awareness Require the Visual Awareness of Space?", then read "Vision, Self-Location, and the Phenomenology of the 'Point of View'" and "Do Things Look the Way They Feel?". You might also read "Conscious Vision in Action", co-authored with Robert Briscoe, and "Are Perspectival Shapes Seen or Imagined? An Experimental Approach", co-authored with Assaf Weksler.

Lately I've begun writing things about the nature and limits of self-knowledge. In this vein see "Self-Knowledge and Its Limits" (a critical notice of recent books by Quassim Cassam and John Doris) and "Assertion and Transparent Self-Knowledge", co-authored with Eric Marcus.

In much of my research I try to engage perennial philosophical questions in ways that are sensitive to relevant empirical discoveries, especially in neuroscience and cognitive and social psychology, showing how the results of experimental work and "armchair" philosophical reflection can be mutually illuminating. To this end, in 2017 I attended the Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy at Duke University (see here for some information on my project), and from 2018 to 2021 I'll be doing graduate coursework in Psychology here at Florida State University, supported by an Academic Cross-Training Fellowship from the John Templeton Foundation.
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  • Home
  • CV
  • Bio
  • Research
  • Writing
    • Articles
    • Books
    • Essays & Reviews
  • Contact
  • Blog