-
417The concepts of knowledge and of accomplishment have many similarities. In fact they are duals, in a sense that I explain. Similar issues arise about both of them, deriving from the functions they serve in everyday evaluation of inquiry and action.
-
428Shared 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.
-
13
-
423Formal Semantics of Natural Language (review)Canadian Journal of Philosophy 12 (4): 805-808. 1982.a review of Keenan, ed. *Formal Semantics of Natural Language*
-
196Review: John L. Pollock, Language and Thought (review)Journal of Symbolic Logic 50 (1): 252-252. 1985.
-
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
-
428Epistemic virtues, metavirtues, and computational complexityNoûs 38 (3). 2004.I argue that considerations about computational complexity show that all finite agents need characteristics like those that have been called epistemic virtues. The necessity of these virtues follows in part from the nonexistence of shortcuts, or efficient ways of finding shortcuts, to cognitively expensive routines. It follows that agents must possess the capacities – metavirtues –of developing in advance the cognitive virtues they will need when time and memory are at a premium.
-
26Phenomenal 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.
-
281Against the Ramsey testAnalysis 64 (4): 294-299. 2004.I argue against the Ramsey test connecting indicative conditionals with conditional probability, by means of examples in which conditional probability is high but the conditional is intuitively implausible. At the end of the paper, I connect these issues to patterns of belief revision.
-
985The 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.
-
25Domains 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.
-
465Mathematics as languageIn Adam Morton & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), Benacerraf and His Critics, Blackwell. pp. 213--227. 1996.I discuss ways in which the linguistic form of mathimatics helps us think mathematically
-
386But are they right? The prospects for empirical conceptologyJournal of Cognition and Culture 6 (1-2): 193-197. 2006.This is exciting stuff. Philosophers have long explored the structure of human concepts from the inside, by manipulating their skills as users of those concepts. And since Quine most reasonable philosophers have accepted that the structure is a contingent matter – we or not too different creatures could have thought differently – which in principle can be..
-
27II—Adam Morton: Emotional AccuracyAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 76 (1): 265-275. 2002.
-
356Book Review:Studies in Perception Peter K. Machamer, Robert G. Turnbull (review)Philosophy of Science 46 (4): 657-. 1979.
-
639Saving epistemology from the epistemologists: recent work in the theory of knowledgeBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51 (4): 685-704. 2000.This is a very selective survey of developments in epistemology, concentrating on work from the past twenty years that is of interest to philosophers of science. The selection is organized around interesting connections between distinct themes. I first connect issues about skepticism to issues about the reliability of belief-acquiring processes. Next I connect discussions of the defeasibility of reasons for belief to accounts of the theory-independence of evidence. Then I connect doubts about Ba…Read more
-
531Causation: A Realist ApproachPhilosophical Books 30 (3): 157-161. 1989.a review of Tooley's Causation: a realist approach*, with emphasis on his use of probability and Ramsey sentences.
-
255Review of VaguenessPhilosophical Books 36 (4): 272-276. 1995.review of Williamson's *Vagueness*
-
268Heuristics all the way up?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (5): 758-759. 2000.I investigate whether heuristics similar to those studied by Gigerenzer and his co-authors can apply to the problem of finding a suitable heuristic for a given problem. I argue that not only can heuristics of a very similar kind apply but they have the added advantage that they need not incorporate specific trade-off parameters for balancing the different desiderata of a good decision-procedure.
-
389Review of Sosa Knowing Full Well (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 23. 2011.A review of Ernest Sosa's *Knowing Full Well* focusing on the safety/reliability contrast and the relation between knowledge and action. There are also remarks on the issue of what value knowledge adds to true belief.
-
342The possible in the actualNoûs 7 (4): 394-407. 1973.I give models for modal languages in which all individuals are actual.
-
520Folk PsychologyIn Brian P. McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind, Oxford University Press. 2007.I survey the previous 20 years work on the nature of folk psychology, with particular emphasis on the original debate between theory theorists and simulation theorists, and the positions that have emerged from this debate.
-
446Review of Armstrong & Malcolm *Consciousness and Causality* (review)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
-
268Review of McLennen *Rationality and Dynamic Choice* (review)Mind 101 (402): 381-383. 1992.review of McLennen's *Rationality and Dynamic Choice*. The topic is important and the discussion is powerful. Some connection with modelling and simulation would be valuable.
-
2954Epistemic EmotionsIn Peter Goldie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, Oxford University Press. pp. 385--399. 2009.I discuss a large number of emotions that are relevant to performance at epistemic tasks. My central concern is the possibility that it is not the emotions that are most relevant to success of these tasks but associated virtues. I present cases in which it does seem to be the emotions rather than the virtues that are doing the work. I end of the paper by mentioning the connections between desirable and undesirable epistemic emotions.
-
313A note on comparing death and painBioethics 2 (2). 1988.I give ways of comparing the disvalue of death and of pain by comparing each to other evils.