Michael Tye

Department of Philosophy
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78750
Tel: (512) 471-6789
E-mail:
mtye@mail.utexas.edu

photograph of Michael Tye

I’m a philosopher at the University of Texas at Austin. My interest in philosophy was awakened at Oxford while an undergraduate. I went up to Oxford to study physics, but after finding out that a physics degree would require a day a week in the laboratory, I switched to physics and philosophy (which involved no lab work at all). By the time I had finished my undergraduate degree, I had decided to focus upon philosophy alone. Subsequently, I came to the USA, though I’ve been back to the UK as a visiting professor at King’s College, London for some ten consecutive years and briefly as the occupant of a chair at the University of St. Andrews.

I work mainly in the philosophy of mind and the foundations of cognitive science, but I also have interests in metaphysics. I’ve published five books, four with MIT Press, Bradford Books and one with Cambridge University Press. The last three were on consciousness, the one before that on the imagery debate in cognitive psychology and the first on the metaphysics of mind. My first book on consciousness (Ten Problems of Consciousness) was an alternate selection of the Library of Science Book Club; it was published in 1995. The follow up (Consciousness, Color, and Content) came out in 2000. Both books defend what has come to be known as the representationalist approach to phenomenal consciousness. There is a web symposium on my views on consciousness (see On-line Papers below). My latest book, Consciousness and Persons, is on the unity of consciousness and was published by MIT Press, Bradford Books, in November 2003. I’ve just completed work on a new book manuscript (to be published in 2008), entitled Consciousness Revisited: Materialism without Phenomenal Concepts.

On-line Papers

This is an Adobe PDF file“The Experience of Emotion: An Intentionalist Theory,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, special issue edited by Joelle Prouste, forthcoming 2008

This is an Adobe PDF file“Intentionalism and the Argument from No Common Content,” Philosophical Perspectives, 2007

This is an Adobe PDF file“Absent Qualia and the Mind-Body Problem,” Philosophical Review, April 2006

This is an Adobe PDF file“New Troubles for the Qualia Freak,” forthcoming in Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Mind, ed. B. McLaughlin and J. Cohen, Blackwell

This is an Adobe PDF file“The Puzzle of True Blue,” Analysis July 2006

This is an Adobe PDF fileJonathan Cohen, C. L. Hardin, & Brian P. McLaughlin, “True Colors,” Analysis, October 2006

This is an Adobe PDF fileTye, “The Truth about True Blue,” Analysis, October 2006

This is an Adobe PDF fileAlex Byrne & David R. Hilbert, “Truest Blue,” Analysis, January 2007

This is an Adobe PDF fileTye, “True Blue Redux,” Analysis, January 2007

This is an Adobe PDF file“Phenomenal Externalism, Lolita and the Planet Xenon,” forthcoming in a collection of essays in honor of Jaegwon Kim, ed. D. Sosa and T. Horgan, MIT Press

This is an Adobe PDF file “Qualia ain’t in the Head” (with Alex Byrne), Nous 2006

This is an Adobe PDF file“The Problem of Common Sensibles”, forthcoming in Perception and Status of Secondary Qualities, ed. R. Schumacher, Kluwer

This is an Adobe PDF file “The Nature of Nonconceptual Content”, in Experience and Analysis, Proceedings of 2004 Kirchberg Philosophy Conference, ed. M. Reicher and J. Marek

This is an Adobe PDF file “Representationalist Theories of Consciousness,” forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, ed. by B. McLaughlin and A. Beckermann, Oxford University Press

This is an Adobe PDF file “Another Look at Representationalism about Pain,” in Pain: New Essays on its Nature and the Methodology of its Study, ed. Murat Aydede (with comments by M. Aydede, N. Block, B. Maund, and P. Noordhof), M. I. T. Press, Bradford Books, 2006

This is an Adobe PDF file Murat Aydede, “The Main Difficulty with Pain: Commentary on Tye,” in Pain: New Essays on its Nature and the Methodology of its Study, ed. Murat Aydede, M. I. T. Press, Bradford Books, 2006

This is an Adobe PDF file Ned Block, “Bodily Sensations as an Obstacle for Representationalism,” in Pain: New Essays on its Nature and the Methodology of its Study, ed. Murat Aydede, M. I. T. Press, Bradford Books, 2006

This is an Adobe PDF file Barry Maund, “Michael Tye on Pain and Representational Content,” in Pain: New Essays on its Nature and the Methodology of its Study, ed. Murat Aydede, M. I. T. Press, Bradford Books, 2006

This is an Adobe PDF file Paul Noordhof, “In a State of Pain,” in Pain: New Essays on its Nature and the Methodology of its Study, ed. Murat Aydede, M. I. T. Press, Bradford Books, 2006

This is an Adobe PDF file “In Defense of Representationalism: Reply to Commentaries” in Pain: New Essays on its Nature and the Methodology of its Study, ed. Murat Aydede, M. I. T. Press, Bradford Books, 2006

This is an Adobe PDF file “Nonconceptual Content, Richness, and Fineness of Grain,” in Perceptual Experience, ed. T. Gendler and J. Hawthorne, Oxford University Press, 2005

This is an Adobe PDF file “A Theory of Phenomenal Concepts,” Philosophy 2003

This is an Adobe PDF file “Visual Qualia and Visual Content Revisited,” in an OUP collection on the philosophy of mind, edited by David Chalmers, 2003

This is an Adobe PDF file “Representationalism and the Transparency of Experience,” Noûs, 2002 (also published in Privileged Access: Philosophical Accounts of Self-knowledge, edited by Brie Gertler)

Web symposium on Consciousness, Color, and Content, 2002

This is an Adobe PDF file “Of Colors, Kestrels, Caterpillars, and Leaves,” (with Peter Bradley) Journal of Philosophy, September 2001

“Qualia,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (revised 31 July 2007)

“Knowing What It Is Like: The Ability Hypothesis and the Knowledge Argument,” in Reality and Humean Supervenience, ed. G. Preyer and F. Siebert, Rowman and Littlefield, 2000; reprinted in There’s Something about Mary, ed. Ludlow, Nagasawa, and Stoljar, MIT Press, 2004

“Phenomenal Consciousness: the Explanatory Gap as Cognitive Illusion” Mind 1999

“Response to Discussants”
(from a Philosophy and Phenomenological Research book symposium on Ten Problems of Consciousness)

“Inverted Earth, Swampman, and Representationism”, Philosophical Perspectives 1998

“Externalism and Memory,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 1998

“Is Content-Externalism Compatible with Privileged Access?” (with Brian McLaughlin), Philosophical Review July 1998

Some Recent Papers (not on-line)

“Fuzzy Realism and the Problem of the Many,” Philosophical Studies, 1996

“Orgasms Again,” Philosophical Issues, Vol. 7, ed. by E. Villenueva, 1996

“The Function of Consciousness,” Noûs, Vol. 30, 1996.

“The Problem of Simple Minds: Is There Anything it is Like to be a Honey Bee?” Philosophical Studies 1997

“Externalism, Twin Earth, and Self-Knowledge,” (with B. McLaughlin), in Knowing Our Own Minds: Essays on Self-knowledge, ed. by B. Smith and C. Macdonald, Oxford University Press, 1998

“Oh Yes It Is,” Mind, 2001

“Vagueness and Reality,” Philosophical Topics, 28, 2001

“Blurry Image, Double Vision and Other Oddities: New Problems for Representationalism?” Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Q. Smith and A. Josic, Oxford University Press, 2003.

Pictures at Meetings

2002 Tucson consciousness conference

2002 Tucson consciousness conference party

2004 NYU philosophy conference in Florence

2005 SPAWN consciousness conference at Syracuse photos

2005 SPAWN consciousness conference at Syracuse movie (QuickTime)