Thomas W. Polger
Ph.D., 2000, Duke University

homepage

thomas.polger@uc.edu

Department of Philosophy
University of Cincinnati
P. O. Box 210374
Cincinnati, OH 45221-0374

Areas of Specialization

Tom Polger's primary research is in contemporary philosophy of mind. His work is organized around the long-term project of exploring how to understand conscious experience as a natural feature of biological organisms. Among his interests are the metraphysics of experience, the role of evolutionary theory in thinking about minds, the nature of color vision, and the relation between psychological explanations and those in biology and the neurosciences.

Selected Publications

Natural Minds, MIT Press, 2003.

"Consciousness, Function of," in Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Lynn Nadel (Ed.), Nature Publishing Group, 2002.

"Putnam's Intuition" Philosophical Studies 109 (2002): 143-170.

"Consciousness, Adaptation, and Epiphenomenalism," (with Owen Flanagan). In Consciousness Evolving,James Fetzer (Ed.), Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002.

"Zombies Explained," in Dennett's Philosophy: A Comprehensive Assessment, Don Ross, Andrew Brook, and David Thompson (Eds.), MIT Press, 2000.

"Color Vision and the Four-Color-Map Problem," (with Dale Purves and Beau Lotto), Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12 (2000): 233-237.

"Natural Answers to Natural Questions," (with Owen Flanagan), in Where Biology Meets Psychology: Philosophical Essays, Valerie Hardcastle (Ed.), MIT Press, 1999.

"Zombies and the Function of Consciousness," (with Owen Flanagan), Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (1995): 313-321.