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109Can connectionists explain systematicity?Mind and Language 12 (2): 154-77. 1997.Classicists and connectionists alike claim to be able to explain systematicity. The proposed classicist explanation, I argue, is little more than a promissory note, one that classicists have no idea how to redeem. Smolensky's (1995) proposed connectionist explanation fares little better: it is not vulnerable to recent classicist objections, but it nonetheless fails, particularly if one requires, as some classicists do, that explanations of systematicity take the form of a‘functional analysis’. N…Read more
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21Troubles with representationalismSocial Research: An International Quarterly 51 (4): 1065-97. 1984.
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36The Elusive Case for Relationalism about the Attitudes: Reply to RattanPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (2): 453-462. 2017.The question I address here is whether there is anything about what Rattan describes as the normative and perspectival aspects of propositional attitudes that demands a relational account of the attitudes, specifically anything that cannot equally well be explained on measurement-theoretic accounts of the sort that I (and others) have defended which do not incorporate or presume a cognitive relation to a proposition. I argue that there is not.
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Logical form and the relational conception of beliefIn Gerhard Preyer Georg Peter (ed.), Logical Form and Language, Oxford University Press. pp. 421--43. 2002.
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62Describing and interpreting a work of artJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 36 (1): 5-14. 1977.
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28Epistemic Heresies: Reply to John Collins’ ReduxCroatian Journal of Philosophy 8 (1): 45-55. 2008.Elaborating on views I have expressed elsewhere, I argue that the common-sense notion of linguistic competence as a kind of knowledge is both required by common-sense explanatory and justificatory practice and furthermore fully compatible with the non-intentional characterization of linguistic competence provided by current linguistic theory, which is itself non-intentional.
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29Can Connectionists Explain Systematicity?Mind and Language 12 (2): 154-177. 1997.Classicists and connectionists alike claim to be able to explain systematicity. The proposed classicist explanation, I argue, is little more than a promissory note, one that classicists have no idea how to redeem. Smolensky's (1995) proposed connectionist explanation fares little better: it is not vulnerable to recent classicist objections, but it nonetheless fails, particularly if one requires, as some classicists do, that explanations of systematicity take the form of a‘functional analysis’. N…Read more
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35Book Review:Inquiries and Provocations: Selected Writings, 1929-1974 Herbert Feigl (review)Philosophy of Science 50 (2): 339-. 1983.
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79Three-concept Monte: Explanation, implementation, and systematicitySynthese 101 (3): 347-63. 1994.Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988), Fodor and McLaughlin (1990) and McLaughlin (1993) challenge connectionists to explain systematicity without simply implementing a classical architecture. In this paper I argue that what makes the challenge difficult for connectionists to meet has less to do with what is to be explained than with what is to count as an explanation. Fodor et al. are prepared to admit as explanatory, accounts of a sort that only classical models can provide. If connectionists are to mee…Read more
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24Does cognitive science need “real” intentionality?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4): 616-617. 1990.
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16Connectionism and systematicityIn L. Nadel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Nature Publishing Group. 2003.
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21The alleged evidence for representationalismIn Stuart Silvers (ed.), Rerepresentation, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1989.
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Is there vindication through representationalism?In Barry M. Loewer (ed.), Meaning in Mind: Fodor and His Critics, Blackwell. 1991.
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70Could Competent Speakers Really Be Ignorant of Their Language?Croatian Journal of Philosophy 6 (3): 457-467. 2006.This paper defends the commonsense conception of linguistic competence according to which linguistic competence involves propositional knowledge of language. More specifically, the paper defends three propositions challenged by Devitt in his Ignorance af Language. First, Chomskian linguists were right to embrace this commonsense conception of linguistic cornpetence. Second, the grammars that these linguists propose make a substantive claim about the computational processes that are presumed to c…Read more
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25On the hypothesis that grammars are mentally representedBehavioral and Brain Sciences 6 (3): 405-406. 1983.
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80Measurement and Computational SkepticismNoûs 51 (4): 832-854. 2017.Putnam and Searle famously argue against computational theories of mind on the skeptical ground that there is no fact of the matter as to what mathematical function a physical system is computing: both conclude (albeit for somewhat different reasons) that virtually any physical object computes every computable function, implements every program or automaton. There has been considerable discussion of Putnam's and Searle's arguments, though as yet there is little consensus as to what, if anything,…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |