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1271Folk psychology does not existIn Daniel D. Hutto & Matthew Ratcliffe (eds.), Folk Psychology Re-Assessed, Springer Press. pp. 211--221. 2007.I discuss the possibility that there is no intrinsic unity to the capacities which are bundled under the label "folk psychology". Cooperative skills, attributional skills, and predictive skills may be scattered as parts of other non--psychological capacities. I discuss how some forms of social life bring these different skills together. I end with some remarks on how abilities that are not unified in their essential mechanisms may still form a rough practical unity. (Remark: the paper is conject…Read more
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592Review of Paul Weirich, Realistic Decision Theory: Rules for Nonideal Agents in Nonideal Circumstances (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (8). 2005.
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1015Because he thought he had insulted himJournal of Philosophy 72 (1): 5-15. 1975.I compare our idioms for quantifying into belief contexts to our idioms for quantifying into intention contexts. The latter is complicated by the fact that there is always a discrepancy between the action as intended and the action as performed. The article contains - this is written long after it appeared - an early version of a tracking or sensitivity analysis of the relation between a thought and its object.
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635The Party-Goer's Guide to PhilosophyCogito 4 (2): 134-134. 1990.some lighthearted definitions of philosophical terms.
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1024Extensional and non-truth-functional contextsJournal of Philosophy 66 (6): 159-164. 1969.I discuss Frege's argument - later called the slingshot - that if a construction is extensional and preserves logical equivalence then it is truth-functional. I consider some simple apparent counterexamples and conclude that they are not sentence-embedding in the required way.
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83Phenomenal and attentional consciousness may be inextricableBehavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2): 263-264. 1995.In common sense consciousness has a fairly determinate content – the (single) way an experience feels, the (single) line of thought being consciously followed. The determinacy of the object may be achieved by linking Block's two concepts, so that as long as we hold on to the determinacy of content we are unable to separate P and A.
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691Double ConditionalsAnalysis 50 (2). 1990.I consider embeddings of one subjunctive conditional in the consequent of another, and argue that (if A then (if B then C)) is not equivalent to (if (A & B) then C ), given the meanings we usually give to the outer and the inner 'if'.
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654Lockhart’s problemThe Philosophers' Magazine 25 (30): 25-30. 2014.If we had more powerful minds would we be puzzled by less - because we could make better theories - or by more - because we could ask more difficult questions? This paper focuses on clarifying the question, with an emphasis on comparisons between actual and possible species of thinker. A pre-publication version of the paper is available on my website at http://www.fernieroad.ca/a/PAPERS/papers.html .
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789Book Review:Studies in Perception Peter K. Machamer, Robert G. Turnbull (review)Philosophy of Science 46 (4): 657. 1979.
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870Consciousness Explained (review)Cogito 7 (2): 159-161. 1993.reviews of Dennett & McGinn on consciousness for an unsophisticated audience.
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911If I were a Dry Well-Made MatchDialogue 12 (2): 322-324. 1973.I discuss Goodman's claim that when 'all As are Bs' is a law then the counterfactual 'if a were an A, it would be a B' is tue. I give counterexamples, and link the failure of the connection to the contrast between higher level and lower level laws
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611Suppose, SupposeAnalysis 53 (1). 1993.I give reasons stemming from the nature of narrative thinking why two-antecedent conditionals, most naturally expressed as "Suppose A. Suppose moreover B. Then C" the two antecedents play different roles. I formalise this idea with a two-dimensional similarity relation between possible worlds.
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57But what is the intentional schema?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (1): 133-134. 1996.The intentional schema may not be sufficiently characterized to make questions about its role in individual and species development intelligible. The idea of metarepresentation may perhaps give it enough content. The importance of metarepresentation itself, however, can be called into question.
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1078Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting TogetherPhilosophical Quarterly 65 (260): 582-585. 2015.I praise Bratman's minimal account of shared agency, while expressing some doubts about the explanatory force of his central concepts and some puzzlement about what he means by norms.
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41Freudian commonsenseIn Richard Wollheim & James Hopkins (eds.), Philosophical Essays on Freud, Cambridge University Press. 1982.I discuss aspects of Freudian theory that have entered folk psychology
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1078Review of Armstrong & Malcolm *Consciousness and Causality*British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 36 (3): 341-344. 1985.Malcolm and Armstrong think they are disagreeing, but in fact they share some's apprehensions about mental states, particularly perceptual states
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876A solution to the donkey sentence problemAnalysis 75 (4): 554-557. 2015.The problem concerns quantifiers that seem to hover between universal and existential readings. I argue that they are neither, but a different quantifier that has features of each. NOTE the published paper has a mistake. I have corrected this in the version on this site. A correction note will appear in Analysis.
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24A vegetarian argument: We should avoid meat not because we think that animals are like us but because most animals are very different from humans. Most animals are not persons: they think and feel but do not have thoughts and feelings about their thoughts and feelings. With persons the obligation to prevent suffering, and indeed the obligation to preserve life, can be over-ridden by mutual agreement. I'll risk my life and welfare to protect your children if you do the same for mine. And even whe…Read more
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48Domains of discourse and common-sense metaphysicsIn Charles Travis (ed.), Meaning and interpretation, Blackwell. 1986.a discussion of contextual factors determining the domains of quantifiers. Since the time it was written, much more satisfying work on the topic has been done by Stanley, Williamson, Bach, and Gauker.
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315Mathematical models: Questions of trustworthinessBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (4): 659-674. 1993.I argue that the contrast between models and theories is important for public policy issues. I focus especially on the way a mathematical model explains just one aspect of the data.
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108CorrespondencePhilosophy and Public Affairs 2 (4): 407-432. 1973.I discuss Tooley's use of the concept of a person with respect to other moral issues such as justifiable suicide.
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1457The architecture of reason: The Structure and Substance of Rationality (review)Philosophy 77 (3): 454-471. 2002.I admire Audi's intentions in discussing the rationality of beliefs, desires, and actions together, and doubt that this can be done internalistically, as he tries.
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808Critical noticeCanadian Journal of Philosophy 12 (4): 805-808. 1982.a review of Keenan, ed. *Formal Semantics of Natural Language*
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953Kinds of ModelsIn Malcolm G. Anderson & Paul D. Bates (eds.), Model Validation: perspectives in hydrological science, Wiley. pp. 11-22. 2001.We separate metaphysical from epistemic questions in the evaluation of models, taking into account the distinctive functions of models as opposed to theories. The examples a\are very varied.
