John Schwenkler
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Research

My scholarship is in cross-disciplinary philosophical psychology. Below are some of the topics on which I have published, in reverse chronological order. For a full listing of my scholarly publications, see my CV or my profile on PhilPeople. And here is the interview I did with Richard Marshall in 2019, ranging over much but not all of this work.

Words and concepts.  How can attention to what we say be useful in elucidating what we think? And what is the form that this attention should take? My approach to these questions draws on linguistics and experimental philosophy to show how philosophically significant concepts are often expressed in the grammar of ordinary speech. Some papers that employ this methodology are "Cause, 'Cause', and Norm" and "One: but Not the Same", and I explore the meta-philosophical underpinnings of this project in "Knowledge of Language as Self-Knowledge". It is the main focus of my current research, including the book I am writing, which has the tentative title ​Describing Human Action.

Intention for the future.  What's the connection between intending to do something and believing that this is what one is going to do? And how should our beliefs be affected by evidence that we will not do what we think we should? I explore these questions in several published and forthcoming papers, including "Intending Is Believing" and "Intention as Belief". It's also been the focus of my 2021-2022 sabbatical project, thanks to which several new papers are in preparation.

​Anscombean action theory.  Over the past decade I have written a number of things about the proper interpretation of G.E.M. Anscombe's writings, especially in the philosophy of action. These include: "How to Contradict an Expression of Intention", "What Is the Bearing of Thinking on Doing?", and "Understanding 'Practical Knowledge'", in addition of course to my book on Anscombe's Intention.

Perception.  The bulk of my early research was in the philosophy of perception, especially concerning the spatial character of visual perception and the relation between vision and touch. I continue to research and write on these topics, though with less of an emphasis than before. A few highlights, now ordered chronologically, include "Does Visual Spatial Awareness Require the Visual Awareness of Space?", "Do Things Look the Way They Feel?", "Vision, Self-Location, and the Phenomenology of the 'Point of View'", "Conscious Vision in Action", and "Are Perspectival Shapes Seen or Imagined?".

And more.  A number of my publications don't fit neatly into any of the above categories.  These include "How Can There Be Reasoning to Action?" (on practical reasoning), "Risking Belief" (on when it is rational to guard against having our beliefs changed), "Assertion and Transparent Self-Knowledge" (arguing that beliefs must be transparently self-known in order to be asserted honestly), "Self-Knowledge and its Limits" (on whether the findings of social psychology are in conflict with so-called "rationalist" accounts of self-knowledge), and "The Objects of Bodily Awareness" (an argument in favor of a perceptual account of proprioception).
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  • Home
  • CV
  • Research
  • Writing
    • Books
    • Popular Writing
    • Scholarship
  • Contact