Arnon Cahen
Bar Ilan University
Fall 2019

Arnon Cahen is a researcher at Bar Ilan University. Prior to this appointment, he was a lecturer for several years at Ben Gurion University’s Philosophy department and its Brain and Cognitive Sciences department, since its inception, and where he played a leading role in designing its interdisciplinary undergraduate program. He was also a recipient of Ben Gurion’s prestigious Kreitman post-doctoral research fellowship as well as a post-doctoral fellowship at Haifa University and at the Open University (all while living in Israel).

Among his main research interests are the philosophy of perception, the philosophy of cognitive science, action theory, rationality, metaphysics of mind, causation, and fundamental ontology. He has published most recently on topics concerning mental content, and nonconceptual perceptual content in particular, as well as on the metaphysics of mental causation and difference-making accounts of causation.

During his visit, Arnon aims to explore different ways in which contemporary debates in the philosophy of perception can inform, and be informed by, parallel debates occurring within the philosophy of science, in particular, concerning the nature and epistemology of observation, instruments, measurements and representations.

Recent publications:

Cahen, A. and Kaufmann, A. (forthcoming). ‘Temporal Representation and Reasoning in Nonhuman Animal (Commentary on Hoerl & McCormack)’. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Cahen, A. (2019) ‘Nonconceptual Apprehension: The Problem of Perceptual Reason-Giving’. Synthese, 196: 2355. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1543-4

Bermúdez, J. L. and Cahen, A. (2018). ‘Mental Causation and Counterfactuals: A New Argument for the Type-Identity Thesis’. In Mihretu G. (Ed.) Consciousness and the Ontology of Properties. Routledge.

Cahen, A. and Musholt, K. (2017). ‘Perception, Nonconceptual Content, and Immunity to Error through Misidentification’. Inquiry, 60(7): 703-723, DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2015.1122548

Bermúdez, J. L. and Cahen, A. (2015). ‘Mental Causation and Exclusion: Why the Difference-Making Account of Causation is no Help’. Humana.Mente: Journal of Philosophical Studies, Vol. 29: 47-68.

Bermúdez, J. L. and Cahen, A., (2015). ‘Nonconceptual Mental Content’. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/content-nonconceptual/>.