Jonathan Cohen

I am a 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.

Books

• The Red and The Real: An Essay on Color Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
  In this 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.
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• 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.
  [google books] [wiley-blackwell] [amazon]
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 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.

Papers

1. (with Craig Callender) "Special Sciences, Conspiracy, and the Better Best System Account of Lawhood", Erkenntnis, in press.
2. (with Shaun Nichols) "Colors, Color Relationalism, and The Deliverances of Introspection", Analysis, in press.
3. "Color Relationalism and Color Phenomenology", in Bence Nanay (ed.), Perceiving the World. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
4. "Sounds and Temporality" Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, 5: 303-320, 2010.
5. (with Craig Callender) "A Better Best System Account of Lawhood", Philosophical Studies, 145(1):1-34, 2009.
6. (with Aaron Meskin) "Photography and Its Epistemic Values: Reply to Cavedon-Taylor", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 67(2): 235-237, 2009.
7. "Color" in John Symons and Paco Calvo (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology, 568-578. New York: Routledge, 2009.
8. (with Aaron Meskin) "Counterfactuals, Probabilities, and Information: Response to Critics", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 86(4): 635-642, 2008.
9. (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.
10. "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.)
11. "A Relationalist's Guide to Errors About Color Perception", Noûs, 41(2): 335–353, 2007.
12. "Introduction". In Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Mind, edited by Cohen and McLaughlin. New York: Blackwell, 2007.
13. (with C. L. Hardin and Brian McLaughlin) "The Truth about `The Truth about True Blue'", Analysis 67(294): 162-166, 2007.
14. (with Sam Rickless) "Binding Arguments and Hidden Variables", Analysis, 67(293): 65-71, 2007.
15. "Color, Variation, and the Appeal to Essences: Impasse and Resolution", Philosophical Studies, 133(3): 425-438, 2007.
16. (with Aaron Meskin) "An Objective Counterfactual Theory of Information", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 84(3):333-352, 2006.
17. (with C. L. Hardin and Brian McLaughlin) "True Colors", Analysis, 66(292): 335-340, 2006.
18. "Color and Perceptual Variation Revisited: Unknown Facts, Alien Modalities, and Perfect Psychosemantics", Dialectica, 60(3): 307-319, 2006.
19. (with Craig Callender) "There is No Special Problem About Scientific Representation", Theoria, 55: 67-85, 2006 (special issue on scientific representation).
20. "Colors, Functions, Realizers, and Roles", Philosophical Topics, 33(1):117-140, 2005.
21. "Color Properties and Color Ascriptions: A Relationalist Manifesto", The Philosophical Review, 113(4): 451-506, 2004.
22. "Objects, Places, and Perception", Philosophical Psychology, 17(4): 471-495, 2004.
23. (with Aaron Meskin) "On The Epistemic Value of Photographs", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 62(2): 197-210, 2004.
24. "Information and Content". In Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Information and Computing, edited by Luciano Floridi, 215-227. New York: Blackwell, 2004.
25. (with P. D. Magnus) "Williamson on Knowledge and Psychological Explanation", Philosophical Studies, 116(1): 37-52, 2003.
26. "Color: A Functionalist Proposal", Philosophical Studies 113(1): 1-42, 2003.
27. "Critical Study of Stroud's The Quest for Reality", Noûs, 37(3): 537-554, 2003.
28. "On The Structural Properties of the Colors", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 81(1): 78-95, 2003.
29. "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.
30. "The Grand Grand Illusion Illusion", Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9(5-6): 141-157, 2002.
31. "On An Alleged Non-Equivalence Between Dispositions And Disjunctive Properties", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 53(1): 77-81, 2002.
32. "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
33. "A Guided Tour of Color", for A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind, edited by M. Nani and M. Marraffa, 2001.
34. "Color, Content, and Fred: On a Proposed Reductio of the Inverted Spectrum Hypothesis", Philosophical Studies, 103: 121-144, 2001.
35. "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.
36. "Two Recent Anthologies on Color", Philosophical Psychology, 14(1): 118-122, 2001.
37. "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.
38. "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.
39. "Holism: Some Reasons for Buyer's Remorse," Analysis, 59(2): 63-71, 1999.
40. "Holism, Thought, and the Fate of Metaphysics: Counter-reply to Heal," Analysis, 59(2): 79-85, 1999.
41. "The Reality of Psychological Reality: Chomsky and Matthews's Chomsky" (contribution to the Celebration Project in celebration of Noam Chomsky's 70th birthday).
42. "Frege and Psychologism", Philosophical Papers, 27(1): 45-67, 1998.
43. "The Imagery Debate: A Critical Assessment", Journal of Philosophical Research, 21: 149-182, 1996.

Drafts In Progress

• "Computation and the Ambiguity of Perception" for a collection on perceptual constancy edited by Sarah Allred and Gary Hatfield.
• "Perception and Computation" for an issue of Philosophical Issues on philosophy of mind.
• "It's Not Easy Being Green: Hardin and Color Relationalism", for Cohen and Matthen (ed.), Color Ontology and Color Science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, forthcoming.
  

Presentations

• "Computation and the Ambiguity of Perception," Northwestern University, 15 January 2010.
• "Comments on Brogaard's `An Alternative to Color Relationalism'," Eastern Division, American Philosophical Association, 29 December 2009.
• "Special Sciences, Conspiracy and the Better Best System Account of Lawhood," (with Craig Callender) Pitt-Paris II: Emergence and Reduction in the Sciences, 12 December 2009.
• "Computation and the Ambiguity of Perception," Washington University, St. Louis, 3 December 2009.
• "Computation and the Ambiguity of Perception," University of California, Irvine, 16 October 2009.
• "A Better Best System Account of Lawhood," (with Craig Callender) Pacific Division, American Philosophical Association, April 2009.
• "Computation and the Ambiguity of Perception," Workshop on Cognitive and Developmental Factors in Perceptual Constancy, University of Pennyslvania, 20 February 2009.
• "Do Colors Look Relational?," Syracuse Philosophy Annual Workshop and Network, 17 August 2008.
• "A Better Best System Account of Lawhood," (with Craig Callender) Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference, 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

I have co-organized a few conferences in recent years:

• (with Craig Callender) 2006 meeting of the Society for Exact Philosophy.
• (with Mohan Matthen) Color Perception: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives, held at UCSD in October 2002 and University of British Columbia in October 2003.
• (with Dick Arneson) The 2003 UCSD Graduate Student Conference.

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

Graduate Seminars

• Seminar on Perception (autumn 2008).
• Proseminar: Philosophy of Mind (autumn 2007).
• Seminar on Color (autumn 2006).
• Seminar on the History of Analytic Philosophy (spring 2006).
• Seminar on Information (spring 2005).
• Seminar on Philosophy of Language: Naming and Necessity and its Wake (winter 2004).
• Seminar on Philosophy of Language (spring 2003, autumn 2009).
• Seminar on Perception (spring 2002).

Undergraduate Courses

• Freshman Seminar: What's For Dinner?: Eating Well and Doing Good (autumn 2008, autumn 2009)
• 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, spring 2009)
• Metaphysics (autumn 2003, spring 2005, winter 2008, winter 2010).
• 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, winter 2009).
• 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.

Some pictures of my brain; you might not care, but I'm rather fond of it.

• 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:

• In A Blue Funk
• Perspicacity
• Perpetual Motion Machine
• Red City In A Blue State

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:

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