Mark Phelan

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Mark Phelan’s research lies at the intersection of folk psychology, philosophy of mind, and experimental philosophy. His major contributions center on how ordinary people conceptualize mental states—particularly the folk metaphysical distinction between “thinking” and “feeling,” and the perceived gap between functional and phenomenal consciousness. In his highly cited work “Thinking things and feeling things” (41 citations), Phelan challenges the claim that folk ontology treats subjective experience as fundamentally discontinuous from cognition, arguing instead that people attribute feelings to a wide range of entities. His companion paper “Function and feeling machines” (39 citations) defends the philosophical notion of subjective experience against eliminativist critiques, contending that our concept of phenomenal consciousness remains coherent and indispensable. In “Analytic Functionalism and Mental State Attribution” (8 citations), Phelan argues that folk psychological theory is best captured by analytic functionalism, where mental states are defined by their causal roles. Together, these works have shaped debates in experimental philosophy and cognitive science, offering empirically grounded insights into how we think about minds—both human and machine. Phelan’s research demonstrates the power of integrating philosophical analysis with empirical methods to illuminate our deepest intuitions about the mind.