John Morrison
Department
Cognitive Science, Neuroscience & Behavior, Philosophy
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Professor Morrison joined the philosophy department in 2009. He is currently working on two projects. The first is about the best way to understand the brain. In particular, he would like to identify general principles for attributing representations and inferences to it, especially when those representations and inferences involve probabilities. The second project is about the foundations of Spinoza's metaphysics. He hopes to unravel Spinoza's claims about minds, bodies, God, and their essences.
Professor Morrison is an affiliate of the neuroscience and behavior department. He is also an affiliate of Columbia's Mind Brain Behavior Institute, and a member of its Center for Theoretical Neuroscience.
- B.A., Williams College
- M.A., University of Pittsburgh
- Ph.D., New York University
- Philosophy of Mind
- Early Modern Philosophy (esp. Spinoza)
"Colour in a Physical World," Mind (2012)
"Conception and Causation in Spinoza's Metaphysics," Philosophers' Imprint (2013)
"Restricting Spinoza's Causal Axiom,” Philosophical Quarterly (2015)
"Anti-Atomism about Color Representation," Noûs (2015)
"Triangulating How Things Look,” Mind & Language (2015)
"Truth in the Emendation,” The Young Spinoza, Melamed (ed.) (2015)
"Perceptual Confidence,” Analytic Philosophy (2016)
*Winner of the 2015 Sanders Prize in Philosophy of Mind
"Two puzzles about Thought and Identity in Spinoza,” Cambridge Critical Guide to Spinoza's Ethics, Melamed (ed.) (2017)
"Perceptual Structuralism," Noûs (forthcoming)
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