Casey O'Callaghan

Research

My research focuses on philosophical questions about perception. In particular, I have written about auditory perception and the nature of its objects and about multisensory perception and consciousness. This work stems from a more general interest in how perceptual awareness relates to its objects and how it shapes our understanding of the natures of those objects.

Recently, I have been writing about speech perception, the significance of interactions among sense modalities for theorizing more generally about perception, how to differentiate the senses, how perception differs from extra-perceptual cognition, and psychological explanation and taxonomy.

Some of my essays on these topics are collected in Beyond Vision, published by OUP in 2017. A new monograph about multisensory perception and consciousness appeared in 2019. It is called, A Multisensory Philosophy of Perception.

Listed below are some projects and papers related to my work on sound, auditory perception, and multimodal perception (and some that are not). Click to download [pdf] versions where available. I encourage and welcome your comments.

Research Statement: [pdf]

Video of a short talk called "Beyond Vision," from Scientia's "The Power of Ideas" series. I try to explain my research in 5 minutes to a general audience: [video]

Hi-Phi Nation, "The Illusionist" [podcast]

Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Radio Web MACBA, "On Listening" [podcast]

A list of past talks.

Books

• A Multisensory Philosophy of Perception
  Oxford University Press, 2019
  paperback, 2021
  [oxford scholarship online] [oup] [amazon]
  Table of Contents, Preface, and Chapter Abstracts: [pdf]
• Beyond Vision: Philosophical Essays
  Oxford University Press, 2017
  [oxford scholarship online] [oup] [amazon]
  Reviews: [ndpr] [analysis]
• Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays
  Edited with Matthew Nudds
  Oxford University Press, 2009
  paperback, 2012
  [google books] [oxford scholarship online] [oup] [amazon]
  Reviews: [ndpr] [tls] [jcs] [bja]
• Sounds: A Philosophical Theory
  Oxford University Press, 2007
  paperback, 2010
  [google books] [oxford scholarship online] [oup] [amazon]

Online papers

• "Amodal Completion and Presentational Conservatism" [pdf] [journal]
  Analysis, 2024.
• "Perceptual Expertise, Universality, and Objectivity" [pdf] [journal] [shared]
  Philosophical Studies, 2023.
• "Crossmodal Identification" [pdf] [oup]
  Sensory Individuals, eds. Aleksandra Mroczko-Wasowicz and Rick Grush, Oxford University Press, 2023.
• "Perception, Flux and Learning," [pdf] [journal]
  Analysis, 1-11, 2022.
• "Senses as Capacities" [pdf] [journal]
  Multisensory Research, 34, 233-259, 2021.
• "Multisensory Evidence" [pdf] [journal]
  Philosophical Issues, 30(1), 238-256, 2020.
• "Perceptual Capacities, Success, and Content" [pdf] [journal]
  Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, 100(3), 738-743, 2020.
• "Non-Visual Perception" [pdf] [oup]
  Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness, ed. Uriah Kriegel, Oxford University Press, 2020.
• "Review of Susanna Siegel, The Rationality of Perception" [pdf] [journal]
  The Philosophical Review, 128(1), 126-130, 2018.
• "Sensing, the Senses, and Attention" [pdf] [journal]
  Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, 95(2), 485-491, 2017.
• "Grades of Multisensory Awareness" [pdf] [journal]
  Mind & Language, 32(2), 155-181, 2017.
• "Enhancement Through Coordination" [pdf]
  Contemporary Controversies in Philosophy of Perception, ed. Bence Nanay, Routledge, 2017.
• "Synesthesia vs. Cross-modal Illusions" [pdf]
  Sensory Blendings: New Essays on Synaesthesia, ed. Ophelia Deroy, Oxford University Press, 2017.
• "Objects for Multisensory Perception" [pdf] [journal] [shared]
  Philosophical Studies 173: 1269-1289, 2016.
• "The Multisensory Character of Perception" [pdf] [journal]
  The Journal of Philosophy 112(10), 551-569, 2015.
• "Speech Perception" [pdf] [oup]
  Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception, ed. Mohan Matthen, 2015.
• "Not All Perceptual Experience Is Modality Specific" [pdf] [oup]
  Perception and Its Modalities, eds. Stokes, Biggs, and Matthen, Oxford University Press, 2015.
• "Intermodal Binding Awareness" [pdf] [mit]
  Sensory Integration and the Unity of Consciousness, eds. David Bennett and Christopher Hill, MIT Press, 2014.
• "Auditory Perception" [html]
  Supplement on "Speech Perception: Empirical and Theoretical Considerations" [html]
  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first published 2009, substantive revision 2014.
• "Audible Independence and Binding" [pdf] [springer]
  Consciousness Inside and Out: Phenomenology, Neuroscience, and the Nature of Experience, ed. R. Brown, Springer Studies in Brain and Mind, 2014.
• "Hearing, Philosophical Perspectives" [pdf] [SAGE]
  Encyclopedia of the Mind, eds. H. Pashler (T. Crane), SAGE, 2013.
• "Perception and Multimodality" [pdf] [oup]
  Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, eds. Margolis, Samuels, and Stich, 2012.
• "Perception" [pdf]
  Cambridge Handbook to Cognitive Science, eds. W. Ramsey and K. Frankish, 2012.
  (nice NDPR review comments on my contribution)
• "Against Hearing Meanings" [pdf preprint] [journal]
  Philosophical Quarterly 61: 783-807, 2011.
• "Hearing Properties, Effects, or Parts?" [pdf] [journal]
  Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 111(3): 375-405, 2011.
• "Lessons from Beyond Vision (Sounds and Audition)" [pdf] [journal] [shared]
  Philosophical Studies 153(1): 143-160, 2011.
• "Privations and Their Perception" [pdf] [journal]
  Acta Analytica 26(2): 175-186, 2011.
• "Experiencing Speech" [pdf] [journal]
  Philosophical Issues 20: 305-332, 2010.
• "Constructing a Theory of Sounds" [pdf]
  Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 5, 2010.
• "Perceiving the Locations of Sounds" [pdf] [journal]
  Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1: 123-140, 2010.
• "Is speech special?" [pdf]
  UBC Working Papers in Linguistics 24: 57-64, 2009.
  Proceedings of UBC Interlocution Workshop [volume]
• "Sounds" [pdf]
  Oxford Companion to Consciousness, eds. Bayne, Cleeremans, and Wilken, 2009. [OUP]
• "Introduction: The Philosophy of Sounds and Auditory Perception" (with Matt Nudds) [pdf]
  Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays, 2009.
• "Sounds and Events" [pdf]
  Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays, 2009.
• "The World of Sounds" [pdf] [tpm]
  The Philosophers' Magazine 45: 63-69, 2009.
• "Audition" [pdf]
  Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Psychology, eds. Calvo and Symons, 579-591, 2009. [toc]
• "Seeing What You Hear: Cross-Modal Illusions and Perception" [pdf] [journal]
  Philosophical Issues 18(1): 316-338, 2008.
• "Object Perception: Vision and Audition" [pdf] [journal]
  Philosophy Compass 3(4): 803-829, 2008.
• "Echoes" [pdf] [jstor]
  The Monist 90(3): 403-414, 2007.

Unpublished comments, conference papers, and drafts

• Comments on Alistair Isaac's "Physicalist vs Ecological Accounts of Perceptual Content: Lessons from Timbre" [pdf]
  Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Austin, TX, Mar 2013
• Comments on Jason Leddington's "What We Hear" [pdf]
  Online Consciousness Conference, 3, Feb 2011
• Comments on Kelly Trogdon's "Phenomenal Concepts: Acquaintance and Demonstrative Thought" [pdf]
  Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Jun 2008
• Comments on Bénédicte Veillet's "Concept Acquisition and Partial Conceptualism" [pdf]
  Pacific APA, Mar 2008.
• Comments on James John's "Representationalists Should Be Privitivists" [pdf]
  Eastern APA, Dec 2006.
• Comments on Jennifer Susse's "The Multiple Realization Argument"[pdf]
  Pacific APA, Mar 2003.
• "Pitch" [pdf] - An old draft that has been retired because I no longer am convinced of the conclusion, but I'll leave it here because it surveys the relevant scientific facts. It argues that pitch is not identical with frequency. Nor is it the subjective correlate of frequency. Pitch is an objective though anthropocentric property of sounds.
• "Audible Qualities" - Same caveat as for "Pitch". This paper extends the lesson of "Pitch" to provide accounts of the musical relations (octave, fifth, fourth, et al.), and of timbre and loudness, based on the notion of critical bands. Also addresses counterarguments based on spectral shifts experienced by recipients of cochlear implants, which are analogous to color spectrum inversions.