My published research covers a range of topics in philosophy of cognitive science, applied ethics, philosophy of art and more. The list below has links to most of my papers, many of which are available Open Access. At the bottom of the page you’ll find a handy table marking which papers are on which topics. You can also find my papers on ResearchGATE pages. Several of these topics are discussed in online talks available on the Media page.
WORKS IN PROGRESS
Paper on ethics of perception
Paper on creativity in AI
Paper on imaginative affordances
Paper on ethical implications of artificial consciousness
Paper on consciousness in biobots
JOURNAL ARTICLES
- Agnosticism About Artificial Consciousness, forthcoming in Mind & Language
- Seeing Others as Objects: Objectification and Affordances, (co-authored with Paulina Sliwa), European Journal of Philosophy, 2025 Open Access
- Attention and Attendabilia: The Perception of Attentional Affordances, European Journal of Philosophy, 2024 Open Access
- Affording Imagination, (co-authored with Monika Dunin-Kozicka) Philosophical Psychology (Online First). Open Access
- Gendered Affordance Perception and Unequal Domestic Labour (co-authored with Paulina Sliwa), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (Online First). Open Access
- Perceptual Motivation, (co-authored with Marta Jorba) Review of Philosophy & Psychology, 2022
- Seeing the Forest for the Trees, Philosophy and the Mind Sciences, 2:1-27, 2021
- The Mental Affordance Hypothesis, Mind, 129(514): 401–427, 2020.
- Ignorance as a Solution to the Meta-Problem of Consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies (Special issue on Chalmers’s ‘The Meta-Problem of Consciousness’), 27 (5-6):108-119, 2020
- Ensemble Representation and the Contents of Visual Experience (co-authored with Tim Bayne), Philosophical Studies, 176:733–753, 2019. Open Access
- Representing Our Options: The Perception of Affordances for Bodily and Mental Action, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 26(3-4): 155-180, 2019.
- Against Virtual Selves, Erkenntnis, 84:21-40, 2019. Open Access
- The Problem of Consciousness: Easy, Hard or Tricky? Topoi: Special Issue on the Hard Problem of Consciousness, 36(1), 17-30, 2017.
- Concepts, Contents and Consciousness (co-authored with Tim Bayne) Neuroscience of Consciousness, (Vol. 1) 2016. Open Access
- Finding the Feel: The Matching Content Challenge to Cognitive Phenomenology, (co-authored with Tim Bayne) Phenomenology and Mind, 10, 26-43, 2016. Open Access
- Gappiness and the Case for Liberalism About Phenomenal Properties, Philosophical Quarterly, 66 (264): 536-558, 2016. Open Access
- Can Self-Representationalism Explain Away the Apparent Irreducibility of Consciousness?, Synthese, 193(6), 1755-1776, 2016.. Open Access
- Affording Introspection: An Alternative Model of Inner Awareness, Philosophical Studies, Vol.172, No. 9, 2469-2492, 2015. Open Access
- The Neo-Russellian Ignorance Hypothesis: A Hybrid Account of Phenomenal Consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol.20, No. 3-4, 125-51, 2013.
- In Defence of Kantian Humility, Thought, Vol.1, 62-70, 2012. Open Access
- The Philosophy of Film and Film as Philosophy, Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, Vol. 2, 2011.
ANTHOLOGY CONTRIBUTIONS
What should we do if we’re uncertain about machine consciousness?, invited contribution to anthology on AI ethics (in progres)
Mental Action and the Scope of Affordance Perception, (co-authored with Max Jones), Mangalam, M. The Modern Legacy of Gibson’s Affordances for the Sciences of Organisms, Resources for Ecological Psychology.
Four Impediments to the Case for Mineness, in M. Guillot & M. García-Carpintero (eds.) Consciousness and the Sense of Mineness, Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 50-76.
Suffering and Affordances for Mental Action, in D. Bain, M. Brady and J. Corns (eds.) The Philosophy of Suffering, Routledge Press, 2020, pp.37-54
Self-Representationalism, in U. Kriegel (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness, Oxford University Press.
Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment: Some Challenges and Solutions, in C. Rawls, D. Neiva & S. Gouveia (eds.) Philosophy and Film: Bridging Divides, Routledge Press, 2019, 92-115.
The Knowledge Argument is Either Indefensible or Redundant, in S. Coleman (ed.) The Knowledge Argument, Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 180-197.
MONOGRAPHS AND EDITED COLLECTIONS
What is Philosophy of Mind? Polity Press, 2021.
Consciousness and Inner Awareness (co-edited with Jonathan Farrell) Special issue of Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 8(1), 2017.
Intruders in the Mind: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Thought Insertion (co-edited with Pablo López Silva), Oxford University Press, 2024. (A blog piece summarising the collection can be found here)
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS
The Winds of Culture: AI Art Generators and the Aeolian Harp, letter in AI & Society, June 2025.
Misembodied Experiences of Artificial Art, Proceedings of the ICCC’22 Workshop: The Role of Embodiment in the Perception of Human & Artificial Creativity (forthcoming)
AI and Affordances for Mental Action, Proceedings of the 10th AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy, 372-379, 2017. Open Access
Editorial: Consciousness and Inner Awareness, (co-authored with Jonathan Farrell) Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 8(1), 1-22, 2017. (Special Issue on Consciousness and Inner Awareness). Open Access
Ensemble Coding and Two Conceptions of Perceptual Sparsity, (co-authored with Tim Bayne), letter published in Trends in Cognitive Science, Vol.20, No. 9, 641-642, 2016.
Receptivity and Phenomenal Self-Knowledge, Thought, Special Issue: Proceedings of the Northern Institute of Philosophy Early Career Conference, Vol.2, No. 4, 293-302, 2013. Open Access
Consciousness, Ignorance and the Explanatory Gap, Philosophical Writings, Special Issue: Proceedings of the Fourteenth BPPA Conference, 45-57, 2011.
What is it like to be John Malkovich? The Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2010. Open Access
BOOK REVIEWS
Commentary on Christopher Devlin Brown’s The Hope and Horror of Physicalism, invited author-meets-critic commentary for Philosophia, forthcoming.
Review of Varela, Thompson, Rosch, The Embodied Mind(Revised Edition), Phenomenological Reviews. Open Access
Review of U. Kriegel The Varieties of Consciousness, Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 66, Issue 265, 871–874, 2016.
Review of R. Howell Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 21, No. 5-6, 236-241, 2014.
Review of D. Pereboom Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 20, No.9-10, 193-200, 2013.
Review of M. Rowlands Can Animals be Moral, Metapsychology Online Reviews 17, Issue 29, 2013. Open Access
GUIDE TO PUBLICATIONS
Most of my work engages with these five overlapping questions:
- Affordances and Mental Actions: do we perceive our environment in terms of the actions we can perform it and, if so, does this extend to actions we do with our minds?
- Perceptual and cognitive content: what kinds of property feature in the contents of our perceptual experience and how do our thoughts contribute to our conscious experiences?
- Metaphysics of consciousness: what is the nature of consciousness and how does it fit into the physical world?
- Self and Subjectivity: what is the self and in what ways do we experience ourselves?
- Aesthetics and Philosophy of Film: how do we experience artworks and how can film contribute to our philosophical understanding?
The table below identifies which papers deal with which topics. Some topics I’ve worked on don’t get their own column (ethics and political philosophy, artificial intelligence, the metaphysics of properties) but it should be easy to spot them.
tommcclelland.org 