Avery Archer
© 2009, Avery Archer
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." - Oscar Wilde
I hail from the beautiful sun-kissed island of Tobago (also known as Crusoe's Isle, because of a famous literary character who was once stranded there). I earned a B.A. from the University of the Southern Caribbean in Trinidad, an M.A. from Harvard University, and an M.Phil. from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. I am currently a fourth year Ph.D. student in Philosophy at Columbia University.
My Research:
My research interests lay at the intersection of Philosophy of Perception, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Action. In my dissertation, I exploit an analogy between perceptual experience and desire to argue that the latter has representational content. However, while perceptual experiences represent a particular state of affairs as being the case (what we may refer to as "theoretical content"), desires represent a particular state of affairs as something to be brought about (what we may refer to as "practical content"). Moreover, I reject the widespread assumption that desires are propositional attitudes since I hold that the content of desires is neither true nor false. Instead of truth-values, I maintain that practical content exhibit something along the lines of Castañeda's "legitimacy-conditions".
Toward this end, I am committed to the following two claims; one negative and the other positive. The negative claim is that practical content is different in kind to theoretical content since the latter represents a particular state of affairs as being the case while the former does not. The positive claim is that practical content has a two-valued logical structure analogous to, but different from, truth-value. One upshot of the negative claim is that one cannot intend the content of a perceptual experience or believe the content of a desire. One upshot of the positive claim is that desires, and other psychological states with practical content, can feature in rational transitions. Thus, my project may be summarised as an attempt to show that truth-value bearing contents are not the only rationally salient contents and that desires, like perceptual experiences, are potentially reason-conferring.
ABOUT ME
