Associate Professor Neil Mehta is a philosopher of mind and epistemologist who dabbles in metaphysics. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2008 and 2012 respectively, and an undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College in 2005.
In his spare time, Assoc Prof Mehta reads fantasy novels, drinks single-malt whisky, and runs role-playing games.
My first main research project is in philosophy of perception. Here I defend rich pluralism, which says that conscious perception consists of two very different kinds of sensory awareness that are exercised in concert: representational awareness of particulars, and non-representational, partly essence-revealing awareness of sensory qualities.
My second main research project is in epistemology. Here I explore contextualist and skeptical theories on broadly metaphysical rather than linguistic grounds. For instance, I argue that, as compared to invariantism, contextualism and skepticism better honour the idea that knowledge explains action; they better respect the natural structure of epistemically significant kinds like justification and evidence; and they better account for chancy and inductive knowledge.
Review of Michael Madary’s book Visual Phenomenology, Philosophical Review, forthcoming
“Phenomenal, normative, and other explanatory gaps: A general diagnosis,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2017 (online)
“Can grounding characterize fundamentality?,” Analysis, 2017
“On the generality of experience: A reply to French and Gomes,” with co-author Todd Ganson, Philosophical Studies, 2016
“Knowledge and other norms for assertion, action, and belief,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2015/2016 (online/print)
“The limited role of particulars in phenomenal experience,” Journal of Philosophy, 2014
“Beyond transparency: the spatial argument for experiential externalism,” Philosophers’ Imprint, 2013
“Is there a phenomenological argument for higher-order representationalism?,” Philosophical Studies, 2013
“How to explain the explanatory gap,” Dialectica, 2013
“General and specific consciousness: a first-order representationalist approach,” with George Mashour (neuroscientist/anesthesiologist) as second author, Frontiers in Consciousness Research, 2013
“Exploring subjective representationalism,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2012
