Jonathan Cohen
Department of
Philosophy
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman
Drive
La Jolla, CA
92093-0119
joncohen AT aardvark DOT ucsd DOT edu
I am an associate professor and the director of graduate studies in
the department of
philosophy at the University of
California, San Diego.
I am also a faculty member of
UCSD's Interdiciplinary Cognitive Science Program.
I was a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in philosophy at the University of
British Columbia, in Vancouver during academic 2000-2001.
I earned my Ph.D. in philosophy at Rutgers
University in 2000.
In 1995 I received my M.A. in philosophy and in 1993 I received a
B.A. in philosophy and math; both of these degrees are from the
University of Chicago.
Much of my work has concerned the nature of color and color
experience.
I'm interested in color for several reasons.
One is that color involves controversies from many different areas of
philosophy including metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind
and language, so working on color means getting to work on all of
these areas.
Another is that there is quite a large amount of scientific work on
color to which any responsible philosophical account must be
sensitive; this burden imposes many interesting constraints on what
counts as an adequate philosophical theory of color.
Aside from my interest in color, much of my work is in the philosophy
of mind, the philosophy of psychology, and the philosophy of language,
particularly as these are informed by the cognitive sciences.
Here is my curriculum vitae (pdf file).
Books
- Contemporary
Debates in the Philosophy of Mind (co-edited
with Brian
McLaughlin). New York: Blackwell, 2007.
This volume of newly commissioned essays presents debates on
fundamental issues by leading figures in philosophy of mind.
- Color Ontology and Color Science (co-edited with Mohan
Matthen). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, forthcoming.
This anthology of philosophical and scientific papers on color grew
out of a pair of interdisciplinary conferences on color held at UCSD in
October 2002 and
University of
British Columbia on October 2003.
- The Red and The Real: An Essay on Color Ontology. Oxford:
Oxford University Press (under contract).
In this in-progress monograph I bring together and extend
many of the themes and ideas I have been pursuing in article form for
the past several years about the nature of color.
In particular, the book is an extended elaboration and defense of
color relationalism and role functionalism about color.
Papers
(Journal papers, book chapters, encyclopedia articles,....
Most that are available on the web are pdf files, and can be viewed
with any pdf reader, such as the free
Adobe Acrobat Reader.
These are all penultimate versions; for the final versions, see the
journals in which they're published.)
- (with Aaron
Meskin) "Counterfactuals,
Probabilities, and Information: Response to
Critics", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, in press.
- (with Aaron
Meskin) "Photographs as Evidence".
In
Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of
Nature, edited by Scott Walden, 70-90. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.
-
"Color Constancy as Counterfactual", Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, 86(1): 61-92, 2008. (Color figures for this paper, which did
not make it into the printed version in the journal, are available
here.)
- "A
Relationalist's Guide to Errors About Color Perception",
Noûs, 41(2): 335–353, 2007.
- "Introduction". In Contemporary
Debates in the Philosophy of Mind, edited by Cohen and McLaughlin.
New York: Blackwell, 2007.
- (with C. L. Hardin and Brian
McLaughlin) "The Truth about `The
Truth about True Blue'", Analysis 67(294): 162-166, 2007.
-
(with Sam Rickless) "Binding
Arguments and Hidden Variables", Analysis, 67(293): 65-71, 2007.
-
"Color, Variation, and the Appeal to Essences: Impasse and
Resolution", Philosophical Studies, 133(3): 425-438, 2007.
- (with Aaron
Meskin) "An
Objective Counterfactual Theory of Information", Australasian
Journal of Philosophy, 84(3):333-352, 2006.
- (with C. L. Hardin and Brian
McLaughlin) "True
Colors", Analysis, 66(292): 335-340, 2006.
-
"Color
and Perceptual Variation Revisited: Unknown Facts, Alien
Modalities, and Perfect Psychosemantics", Dialectica,
60(3): 307-319, 2006.
- (with Craig
Callender) "There
is No Special Problem About Scientific Representation",
Theoria, 55: 67-85, 2006 (special issue on scientific
representation).
- "Colors, Functions, Realizers, and
Roles", Philosophical Topics, 33(1):117-140, 2005.
-
"Color Properties and Color Ascriptions: A Relationalist
Manifesto", The Philosophical Review, 113(4): 451-506, 2004.
-
"Objects, Places, and Perception", Philosophical
Psychology, 17(4): 471-495, 2004.
- (with Aaron
Meskin) "On The
Epistemic Value of Photographs", Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, 62(2): 197-210, 2004.
-
"Information and Content".
In Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Information and Computing,
edited by Luciano Floridi, 215-227. New York: Blackwell, 2004.
- (with P. D. Magnus) "Williamson
on Knowledge and Psychological Explanation", Philosophical
Studies, 116(1): 37-52, 2003.
- "Color:
A Functionalist Proposal", Philosophical Studies 113(1):
1-42, 2003.
-
"Critical Study of Stroud's The Quest for Reality",
Noûs, 37(3): 537-554, 2003.
- "On The
Structural Properties of the Colors", Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, 81(1): 78-95, 2003.
- "Perceptual
Variation, Realism, and Relativization, Or: How I Learned To Stop
Worrying And Love Variations In Color Vision (Open peer commentary on
Byrne and Hilbert, `Color Realism and Color Science')",
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 26(1): 25-26, 2003.
- "The
Grand Grand Illusion Illusion", Journal of Consciousness
Studies, 9(5-6): 141-157, 2002.
-
"On An Alleged Non-Equivalence Between Dispositions And Disjunctive
Properties", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science,
53(1): 77-81, 2002.
- "Whither Visual Representations? Whither Qualia? (Open peer
commentary on O'Regan and Noe, `A Sensorimotor Account of Vision
and Visual Consciousness')," Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
24(5): 980-981, 2001
- "A Guided Tour
of Color", for
A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind, edited by M. Nani and
M. Marraffa, 2001.
- "Color, Content, and Fred: On a Proposed Reductio of the Inverted
Spectrum Hypothesis", Philosophical Studies, 103: 121-144,
2001.
-
"Subjectivism, Physicalism, or None of the Above?: Comments on
Ross's `The Location Problem for Color Subjectivism'",
Consciousness and Cognition, 10(1): 94-104, 2001.
- "Two Recent
Anthologies on Color", Philosophical Psychology, 14(1):
118-122, 2001.
-
"Analyticity and Katz's New Intensionalism: or, If You Sever
Sense from Reference, Analyticity is Cheap But Useless", Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research 61(1): 115-135, 2000.
- "Why Asymmetries in Color Space Can't Save Functionalism (open peer
Commentary on Palmer's `Color, Consciousness, and The Isomorphism
Constraint')," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22(6): 950, 1999.
- "Holism: Some Reasons for Buyer's Remorse," Analysis,
59(2): 63-71, 1999.
- "Holism, Thought, and the Fate of Metaphysics: Counter-reply to
Heal," Analysis, 59(2): 79-85, 1999.
- "The Reality of Psychological Reality: Chomsky and Matthews's Chomsky"
(contribution to the Celebration Project in
celebration of Noam Chomsky's 70th birthday).
- "Frege and Psychologism", Philosophical Papers, 27(1):
45-67, 1998.
- "The Imagery Debate: A Critical Assessment", Journal of
Philosophical Research, 21: 149-182, 1996.
Drafts In Progress
(Papers I am working on, or will be working on, or wish I were working
more on,....
These are drafts, so the usual drill applies: please do not cite them
without permission, but feel free to give me pages and pages of useful
feedback.)
Presentations
(Talks, conference papers, conference comments....)
- "Do Colors Look Relational?," Syracuse Philosophy Annual Workshop
and Network, 16 August 2008.
- "A Better Best System Account of Lawhood,"
(with Craig
Callender) 4 August 2008.
- "Do Colors Look Relational?," University of Kentucky, 7 March
2008.
- "A Better Best System Account of Lawhood," Kyoto University, 6
November 2007.
- "The Red and The Real, I-IV," University of Tokyo, 30 October 2007
- 2 November 2007.
- "It's Not Easy Being Green: Hardin and Color Relationalism,"
Society for Philosophy
and Psychology, 15 June 2007.
- "Colors, Functions, Realizers, and Roles," Florida State
University Conference
on Color, 14 April 2007.
- "Wine, Categories, and Wine Categories," APA
Mini-Conference on Philosophy and Wine, 4 April 2007.
- "Color and Perceptual Variation Revisited: Unknown Facts, Alien
Modalities, and Perfect Psychosemantics,"
Third Biennial Margaret Dauler Wilson Conference, 23 June 2006.
- "Colors, Functions, Realizers, and Roles," University of
California, San Diego, 26 May 2006.
- "Color Properties and Color Ascriptions: A Relationalist
Manifesto," University of Texas, Austin, 9 September 2005.
- "Objects, Places, and Perception," University of Texas, Austin, 7
September 2005.
- "Averill's Colors: Objectivism, Relationalism, Projectivism,"
Texas Tech University, 8 April 2005.
- "Color Constancy as Counterfactual," UC Berkeley, 23 February 2005.
- "Color Constancy as Counterfactual," University of Toronto, 8 February
2005.
- "Color Constancy as Counterfactual," King's College London, 12 May
2004.
- "There is No Special Problem About Scientific Representation,"
London School of Economics, 11 May 2004.
- "Spatially Agnostic Informants and the Epistemic Status of
Photography," (with Aaron
Meskin) Pacific Division, American Philosophical Association, 26
March 2004.
- "Color Constancy as Counterfactual," Eastern Division, American
Philosophical Association, 30 December 2003.
- "Objects, Places, and Perception," Auburn University, 5 December 2003.
- "Error, Variation, and Color Vision," Workshop on Colour Ontology
and Colour Science, University of British Columbia, 4 October 2003.
- "Objects, Places, and Perception," University of British Columbia, 2
October 2003.
- "Williamson on Knowledge and Psychological Explanation" (with P. D. Magnus) Inland
Northwest Philosophy Conference on Explanation and Causation, 2 May
2003.
- "Photographs Are Not Transparent," (with Aaron
Meskin), Pacific Division, American Society for Aesthetics, 3
April 2003.
- "Color Constancy as Counterfactual," University of California,
Santa Barbara, 6 December 2002.
- "Color Properties and Color Ascriptions: A Relationalist
Manifesto," Southern California Philosophy Conference, 27 October
2001.
- "Color and Color Space: Structural and Metrical Properties of the
Colors," Pacific Division, American Philosophical Association, 29
March 2001.
- "Color Properties and Color Experience: When and When Not To Be A
Functionalist," University of British Columbia, 1 March 2001.
- "Color Properties and Color Experience: When and When Not To Be A
Functionalist," Simon Fraser University, 27 October 2000.
- "Analyticity and Katz's New Intensionalism: or, If You Sever
Sense from Reference, Analyticity is Cheap But Useless," Western Canadian
Philosophical Association, 6 October 2000.
- "Color and Color Space: Structural and Metrical Properties of the
Colors," Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 29
September 2000.
- "Inverted Spectra and Fred," Central Division, American
Philosophical Association, 21 April 2000.
- "Color and Color Space: Structural and Metrical Properties of the
Colors," CUNY Graduate Center Cognitive Science Symposium, 3 March
2000.
- "Color and Color Space: Structural and Metrical Properties of the
Colors," Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, 18 November 1999.
- "Primary Qualities and The Structure of Color Space," Rutgers
Undergraduate Cognitive Science Club, 5 October 1999.
- "Imagined Extrapolation of Uniform Motion is Not Continuous," (with
Zenon Pylyshyn) Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology
(poster session), 13 May 1999.
- "Inverted Spectra and Fred," Northeast Cognitive Science Society, 1
May 1999.
- "Comments on Wright's `A Dilemma for Jackson's and Pargetter's
Account of Color'," Rutgers University Graduate Philosophy
Conference, 10 April 1999.
- "Being Red and Seeing Red: Color Properties and Color Perception,"
Rutgers Undergraduate Cognitive Science Club, 24 February 1999.
- "Perceptual Availability and Primary Quality Theories of Color,"
Eastern Division, American Philosophical Association, 29 December
1998.
- "Comments on Hernando's `Belief Attribution, Assertion, and the
New Theory of Reference'," Rutgers University Graduate Philosophy
Conference, 19 April 1998.
- "Holism: Some Reasons for Buyer's Remorse," Pacific Division,
American Philosophical Association, 27 March 1998.
- "Holism: Some Reasons for Buyer's Remorse," Mid-South Philosophy
Conference, 28 February 1998.
- "Comments on Hardcastle's `But Is It Going to Hurt?'," Mid-South
Philosophy Conference, 28 February 1998.
- "Perceptual Availability and Primary Quality Theories of Color,"
Brown University Graduate Student Conference, 22 February 1998.
- "Comments on Armour-Garb's `Contextualism and Attitudinal
Beliefs'," New Jersey Regional Philosophy Conference, 22 November
1997.
- "The Case Against Holism Reconsidered," Society for Philosophy and
Psychology (poster session), 5 June 1997.
- "Modal Realism and Intentional Content," CUNY Graduate Center
Graduate Student Philosophy Conference, 12 April 1997.
- "Mental Content: About Aboutness," Rutgers Undergraduate Philosophy
Club, 4 March 1997.
- "The Case Against Holism Reconsidered," Eastern Pennsylvania
Philosophy Association, 9 November 1996.
- "Why Content Should Not Be Diagonalized," New Jersey Regional
Philosophy Conference, 4 May 1996.
- "Comments on Seltzer's `Psychologism and Logic'," Rutgers
University Graduate Philosophy Conference, 21 April 1996.
- "Pretend, Metarepresentation, and Mixed Inference," Syracuse
University Graduate Philosophy Conference, 23 March 1996.
- "Comments on Robert Rupert's `The Disjunction Problem: Testing
Out'," Mid-South Philosophy Conference, 24 February 1996.
- "Psychological Explanation, Twins, and Narrow Content," Mid-South
Philosophy Conference, 23 February 1996.
- "Pretend, Metarepresentation, and Mixed Inference," New Jersey
Regional Philosophy Conference, 18 November 1995.
- "The Imagery Debate: A Critical Assessment," Workshop for
Contemporary Philosophy, University of Chicago, 9 January 1995.
- "The Distinction of Metaphysics from Epistemology: Kripke's
Contingent A Priori and Descartes's Cogito," Illinois
Philosophical Association, 6 November 1993.
Organizing Duties
Organizing philosophical talks and conferences is a good way to keep
things lively, force myself to stay informed about what others are
working on, and (most importantly) procrastinate on my own work.
I have co-organized a few conferences in recent years:
Agustin Rayo and I
jointly organized the UCSD Philosophy Department colloquia in 2004-2005.
Dana Nelkin and I jointly organized the colloquia in 2003-2004 and 2002-2003.
Courses Taught
(All at UCSD unless otherwise noted.)
Graduate Seminars
Undergraduate Courses
- Senior
Seminar: Wine, Talk, and Winetalk (winter 2007)
- Introduction to
Philosophy: Metaphysics (winter 2007)
- Logic and
Decision Making
(autumn 2004).
- Philosophy of Mind
(spring 2004, spring 2006, spring 2007).
- Epistemology (spring 2008)
- Metaphysics
(autumn 2003, spring 2005, winter 2008).
- Contemporary
Work on Metaphysics and Epistemology (winter 2003).
- Seminar
on Philosophical Methods (autumn 2002).
-
Topics in Aesthetics: Film (spring 2002, winter 2005).
- Philosophy
of Language (winter 2002, spring 2003, autumn 2006).
- Philosophy
of the Cognitive Sciences (autumn 2001, winter 2004).
- Color
Properties and Color Perception (Rutgers spring 2000).
- Introduction
to Philosophy (Rutgers 1997, 1998, 1999).
- Logic, Reasoning, and Persuasion (Rutgers 1996, 1997).
Extracurricular Stuff
|
My newest extracurricular interest is Aaron Gabriel
Cohen, who was born on 10 June 2005. |
|
Here I am with Hume in Edinburgh. |
Some pictures of my brain; you might
not care, but I'm rather fond of it.
Where
to eat on the UCSD campus and immediate environs, courtesy of the
computer science department.
Here are a couple of local places they don't mention but that are
attention-worthy:
- Tapenade (7612 Fay
Avenue in La Jolla) is a fancier, California-fied version of a French
bistro.
While dinners there can get expensive, their $19.95 two course lunch
special (available 7 days/week) is a very good culinary bargain as
measured by the all important quality/dollar metric. It used to be
even better when they charged $16.95. Ah, well.
- Cafe Chloe (721 9th
Avenue in the East Village) is just the sort of place that
San Diego has needed and gone without for too long.
They concentrate
on classic bistro fare, and do relatively simple preparations with
high quality ingredients (unpasteurized cheeses, Belgian beers,
creative ice creams, excellent pastries, and classics like steak
frites or mussels).
- I have two favorite coffee shops in San Diego.
Both roast their own beans daily and pull excellent espresso.
They are:
 |
 |
| 3933 30th Street in North Park | 5627 La Jolla Blvd in Bird
Rock |
In my spare time I play jazz piano and have even composed a few
things.
I'm gradually adding charts for compositions below:
I also enjoy trying to keep up with other riders on a bike.
This site is:
My life is:
For reasons discussed in Allin Cottrell's (hyperbolically named, but
persuasive) article, "Word Processors:
Stupid and Inefficient", I write more or less everything using LaTeX (rather than a
proprietary WYSIWYG word processor from Microsoft, for example).
You should, too.
LaTeX is a great engine for typesetting, and the output has always
looked great; when set up with GNU Emacs and AUC TeX, it is also a
beautiful thing to use.
Make your computer fight AIDS while you're not using it:
Feed the hungry:
Fight Spam! Click Here!
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