Research

"A New Argument for Partial Unity " forthcoming at Ergo. 

Humans whose corpus callosum has been surgically severed – “split-brain” humans – have received the lion’s share of attention in unity of consciousness research. Two dominant views have emerged: one-stream views according to which split-brain consciousness is wholly unified, and two-streams views according to which split-brain consciousness is wholly disunified. A third option involving violations of the transitivity of co-consciousness, the partially unified stream view, has seemed to theorists conceptually problematic and empirically unsettled. This paper offers a new argument for the partially unified stream view based on a different population of humans whose corpus callosum never developed in the first place – congenitally acallosal humans. It proposes a “fine-grained” account of the structure of acallosal consciousness on which highly determinate contents, but not broad psychological capacities, are disunified.  

"The World Behind The Head " (under review) 

In what sense are we aware of objects behind the head? Do we experience such objects perceptually, or are they merely remembered, imagined, kinesthetically sensed, or cognitively believed? How is the space behind us represented more generally, and which mental capacities underwrite our experience of the world behind the head? This paper argues that standard models of such experience are insufficient. It develops and defends a novel account according to which the world behind the head is represented by two semi-independent memory systems: a spatial updating system primarily attuned to transportable objects like keys, cups, phones, and other agents, and a cognitive mapping system primarily attuned to non-transportable objects like buildings, walls, and furniture. Each system has a distinct mechanistic and neural basis, and makes a distinct phenomenal contribution to experience. I show how this account intersects with recent philosophical debates about the relationship between perception, imagination, and memory, and supports a view on which rear space experience is a form of present-tensed, memory-constituted perceptual experience. 

"The Unity of Consciousness and the Self" (manuscript)

This paper addresses the relation between conscious subjects and their experiences. A currently popular approach is to individuate conscious subjects by individuating experiences. This approach mainly comprises two views: ‘thin’ views which identify conscious subjects with bare bundles of experiences, and ‘thick’ views which identify conscious subjects with the physical substrate(s) of those experiences. I argue for a novel alternative to both these views. On the view I propose, conscious subjects are kinds of intentional objects implied by the way certain types of token experiences are structured. I call this the ‘thinking’ view because I argue that conscious thought has the right kind of structure to implicate a conscious subject. I further argue that perceptual experience does too. I articulate and defend the consequence that minimal forms of experience can conceivably occur in the absence of an experiencing subject.   

"Co-Embodiment and the Puzzle of Fluent Action" (manuscript)

This paper centers around what I call the puzzle of co-embodiment and coherent action. Quite surprisingly, the vast majority of non-human animals are born with naturally split-brains. A duckling that imprints on an object with one eye will be indifferent to that object with the other eye for several hours. Nonetheless, such animals act fluently in complex changing environments. I am exploring a solution to this puzzle built on the observation that split-brain animals act habitually so as to minimize interhemispheric conflict. Such actions occur reflexively and unconsciously, and yet, as I argue, ground a kind of indirect or implicit co-consciousness. I develop a view on which implicit co-consciousness constitutes practical knowledge that partly grounds our introspective sense of conscious unity. This makes precise one way in which the subjective structure of conscious unity diverges from its objective structure.