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19Social learning and the Baldwin effectIn Antonio Zilhao (ed.), Evolution, Rationality and Cognition: A Cognitive Science for the Twenty-First Century, Routledge. 2010.Article
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91Human MindsRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 53 159-183. 2003.Humans are part of the animal kingdom, but their minds differ from those of other animals. They are capable of many things that lie beyond the intellectual powers ofthe rest of the animal realm. In this paper, I want to ask what makes human minds distinctive. What accounts for the special powers that set humans aside from other animals?
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27Book chapter (revised)
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86Pure, mixed, and spurious probabilities and their significance for a reductionist theory of causationMinnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13 307-348. 1989.
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215The new nativism: a commentary on Gary Marcus’s The birth of the mind (review)Biology and Philosophy 21 (4): 559-573. 2006.Gary Marcus has written a very interesting book about mental development from a nativist perspective. For the general readership at which the book is largely aimed, it will be interesting because of its many informative examples of the development of cognitive structures and because of its illuminating explanations of ways in which genes can contribute to these developmental processes. However, the book is also interesting from a theoretical point of view. Marcus tries to make nativism compatibl…Read more
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280Response to Ehring's 'papineau on causal asymmetry'British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 (4): 521-525. 1988.
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88The Roots of Reason: Philosophical Essays on Rationality, Evolution, and ProbabilityOxford University Press. 2003.David Papineau presents a controversial view of human reason, portraying it as a normal part of the natural world, and drawing on the empirical sciences to illuminate its workings. In these six interconnected essays he discusses both theoretical and practical rationality, and shows how evolutionary theory, decision theory, and quantum mechanics offer fresh approaches to some long-standing problems
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77Causal Powers By R. Harré and E. Madden Basil Blackwell, 1975, viii + 191 pp., £4.75 (review)Philosophy 52 (199): 113. 1977.
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Theories ofIn Ernie Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. pp. 175. 2005.
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2Mind, health, and biological purposeIn A. Phillips Griffiths (ed.), Philosophy, Psychology and Psychiatry, Cambridge University Press. 1994.
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98Causes and mixed probabilitiesInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 4 (1): 79-88. 1990.In Section 1 I examine the use of probabilistic data to establish causal conclusions in non‐experimental research. In Section 2 I show that the probabilities involved in such research are inhomogeneous ‘mixed’ probabilities. Section 3 then argues that such mixed probabilities are responsible for the way common causes screen off correlations between their joint effects. Section 4 concludes that mixed probabilities are therefore crucial for the nature of the causal relation itself.
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268The Case for MaterialismIn Brie Gertler & Lawrence Shapiro (eds.), Arguing About the Mind, Routledge. pp. 4--125. 2007.
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174Kim Sterelny, thought in a hostile world: The evolution of human cognition , oxford: Blackwell, 2003, pp. XI 262, £50 (cloth), £16.95 (paper). Friendly thoughts on the evolution of cognition (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (3). 2004.This Article does not have an abstract
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91X*—Is Epistemology Dead?Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 82 (1): 129-142. 1982.David Papineau; X*—Is Epistemology Dead?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 82, Issue 1, 1 June 1982, Pages 129–142, https://doi.org/10.1093/arist.
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404Representation and explanationPhilosophy of Science 51 (December): 550-72. 1984.Functionalism faces a problem in accounting for the semantic powers of beliefs and other mental states. Simple causal considerations will not solve this problem, nor will any appeal to the social utility of semantic interpretations. The correct analysis of semantic representation is a teleological one, in terms of the biological purposes of mental states: whereas functionalism focuses, so to speak, only on the structure of the cognitive mechanism, the semantic perspective requires in addition th…Read more
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1Arguments for supervenience and physical realizationIn Elias E. Savellos & Ümit D. Yalçin (eds.), Supervenience: New Essays, Cambridge University Press. 1995.
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199Uncertain Decisions and the Many-Minds Interpretation of Quantum MechanicsThe Monist 80 (1): 97-117. 1997.Imagine you are faced with a quantum mechanical device which will display either H or T when it is operated. You know that the single-case probability, or chance, of H is 0.8, and the chance of T is 0.2.
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2Philosophers like asking questions about knowledge. What is it exactly? Why do we value it so much? And do we have any? Ideally they would like an account of the nature of knowledge that shows sceptical doubts about its existence to be unmotivated. Unfortunately two millenia of effort have not produced much in the way of agreed results.
Areas of Specialization
| Metaphysics |
| Philosophy of Mind |
| General Philosophy of Science |
| Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Areas of Interest
| Metaphilosophy |
| Metaphysics |
| Philosophy of Mind |
| General Philosophy of Science |