Simon Prosser
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Profile
I joined the department in 2002 after completing my PhD at the University of Warwick, first as a Teaching Fellow (2002-6), then as Lecturer. I originally studied physics at the University of Birmingham then changed direction and studied philosophy at Warwick. During my graduate studies I also spent one year at CREA, Paris (CNRS/École Polytechnique).
During 2012/13 I am mainly on research leave. I'm spending October to December 2012 at the University of Durham as a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study. After that I'm in St Andrews on research leave. I shall remain Chair of the Management Committee of The Philosophical Quarterly.
You can listen to a public lecture that I gave in Durham ('Does Time Really Pass?') here
See also the PURE research profile.
Selected publications
Complete list of publications with abstracts etc. here
Edited Volume
- Simon Prosser and François Recanati (eds.) Immunity to Error Through Misidentification: New Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Articles, chapters etc.
- 'Experience, Thought, and the Metaphysics of Time', in K. Jaszczolt and L. de Saussure (eds.), Time: Language, Cognition and Reality. Inaugural volume for the series Oxford Studies of Time in Language and Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013: 157-174.
- 'The Passage of Time', in Heather Dyke and Adrian Bardon (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Time. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013: 315-327.
- 'Passage and Perception', Noûs, 47 (2013): 69-84. [Draft]
- 'Emergent Causation', Philosophical Studies, 159 (2012): 21-39. [Draft]
- 'Why Does Time Seem to Pass?', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 85 (2012): 92-116. [Draft]
- 'Sources of Immunity to Error Through Misidentification', in S. Prosser and F. Recanati (eds.) Immunity to Error Through Misidentification: New Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012: 158-179. [Draft]
- 'Affordances and Phenomenal Character in Spatial Perception', The Philosophical Review, 120.4 (2011): 475-513. [Draft]
- 'Zeno Objects and Supervenience', Analysis, 69 (2009): 18-26. [Draft]
- 'The Two-Dimensional Content of Consciousness', Philosophical Studies, 136 (2007): 319-349. [Draft]
- 'Could We Experience the Passage of Time?', Ratio, 20.1 (2007): 75-90. Reprinted in L. Nathan Oaklander (ed.), Philosophy of Time: Critical Concepts in Philosophy. New York/London: Routledge, 2008. [Draft]
- 'The Eleatic Non-Stick Frying Pan', Analysis, 66 (2006): 187-194. [Draft]
- 'Temporal Metaphysics in Z-Land', Synthese, 149 (2006): 77-96. [Draft]
- 'Cognitive Dynamics and Indexicals', Mind & Language, 20 (2005): 369-391. [Draft]
- 'A New Problem for the A-Theory of Time', The Philosophical Quarterly, 50 (2000): 494-498. [Draft]
Research interests
My research interests are principally in the philosophy of mind and perception, though also in metaphysics. The areas that I am most interested in are as follows. The first two projects currently occupy the largest part of my time:
- Intentionalism: This is a view about conscious experience according to which the representational content of an experience wholly determines its phenomenal character ('what it's like'). I am developing a version of intentionalism according to which phenomenal character is reducible to a representational content made up of relations of the kind that Gibson called 'affordances'.
- The relation between temporal experience, temporal thought and the metaphysics of time (especially in relation to the A-theory vs. B-theory debate). I argue that the passage of time cannot be perceived, and that it follows from this that the B-theory is true (and hence time does not pass). I am interested in the features of temporal thought and experience that could explain why it so naturally seems to us that time passes.
- The nature of concepts. I wrote my PhD thesis on this topic, and am now returning to it after getting side-tracked by other issues for a while. I am particularly interested in the atomism vs. inferential role semantics debate, and in what it takes for concepts to be retained through time and shared by different people.
- Indexical thought and experience. Many of my interests concern indexical or 'de se' mental content of one sort or another. In addition to the ways in which these issues arise in projects (1) and (2) I am interested in what David Kaplan called 'the problem of cognitive dynamics' (which is related to what is sometimes known as the 'Rip van Winkle' problem). I am also interested in immunity to error through misidentification, and the relation between the structure of indexical thoughts and the elusiveness of the self.
- Emergent properties. I hold that there are logically possible ontologically emergent properties that do not face problems of downward causation, though I do not think that actual mental properties are among them. My interest in this topic arises partly from an interest in supertasks and the so-called 'new Zeno' phenomena, about which I have also written in a more light-hearted vein.
Research students
Steven Hall, Ines De Asis, David Silverman and Brett Welch
Teaching
Additional information
In my spare time I like taking pictures of the local landscape, often with cumbersome old-fashioned equipment. Some of my efforts can be seen here, along with a few pictures from graduations, reading parties and other St Andrews philosophy events. Some older pictures of the latter kind can be found here.