Fred Dretske

Frederick Irwin Dretske (born 1932) is a philosopher noted for his contributions to epistemology and the philosophy of mind. His more recent work centers on conscious experience and self-knowledge. Additionally, he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize in 1994. Dretske received his Ph.D from The University of Minnesota and taught for a number of years at the University of Wisconsin–Madison before moving to Stanford University. After retiring from Stanford, he moved to Duke University where he is now Senior Research Scholar in Philosophy.

Dretske holds externalist views about the mind, and thus he tries in various writings to show that by means of mere introspection one actually learns about his own mind less than might be expected.

Selected publications

• 1969, Seeing and Knowing, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-7100-6213-3
• 1981, Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Cambridge, Mass. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-04063-8
• 1988, Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes, Cambridge, Mass. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-04094-8
• 1995, Naturalizing the Mind, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-04149-9
• 2000, Perception, Knowledge and Belief, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-77742-9

See also

• Relevant alternatives theory
• Jean Nicod Prize

External links

• Dretske's page at Duke
• An Interview with Fred Dretske where colleagues ask about his work. From The Dualist, Stanford's Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy
• WHAT GOOD IS CONSCIOUSNESS?
• THE MIND'S AWARENESS OF ITSELF
• Where is the Mind when the Body Performs?
• First Person Warrant: Comments On Siewert's The Significance Of Consciousness
• Perception without Awareness
• PSYCHOLOGICAL VS. BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS OF BEHAVIOR
• EXPERIENCE AS REPRESENTATION
• HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE NOT A ZOMBIE?
• KNOWING WHAT YOU THINK vs KNOWING THAT YOU THINK IT, or Externalism: Thought and Their Content
• What We See, Howison Lectures in Philosophy, 14 November 2007, University of California, Berkeley