Who is Justin Sytsma?

I am a graduate student in the department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh.

Current Research Projects

In addition to my dissertation research on the new science of consciousness, I have three major ongoing projects. These projects are related in that each tackles an outstanding problem concerning the working of the mind in an empirically informed way. The first investigates the nature of perception and the existence of phenomenal qualities, putting forth an intuitive eliminativism concerning qualia. The second develops an account of the primary factors involved in the causal attributions made by ordinary people, relating this to philosophical theories of actual causation. The third articulates the significant contours of what Dan Dennett has termed “the folk theory of consciousness,” drawing a number of conclusions relevant to debates in philosophy of mind.

Selected Recent Publications

Folk Psychology and Phenomenal Consciousness, Philosophy Compass (forthcoming).

A New Perspective Concerning Experiments on Semantic Intuitions, Sytsma & Livengood, Australasian Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming).

Two Conceptions of Subjective Experience, Sytsma & Machery, Philosophical Studies (forthcoming).

Dennett's Theory of the Folk Theory of Consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies (2010).