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89The language-thought partnership: A Bird's eye viewLanguage and Communication 21 (2): 157-166. 2001.I sketch in miniature the whole of my work on the relation between language and thought. Previously I have offered closeups of this terrain in various papers and books, and I reference them freely. But my main purpose here is to explain the relations among the parts, hoping this can serve as a short introduction to my work on language and thought for some, and for others as a clarification of the larger plan
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1145In defense of proper functionsPhilosophy of Science 56 (June): 288-302. 1989.I defend the historical definition of "function" originally given in my Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories (1984a). The definition was not offered in the spirit of conceptual analysis but is more akin to a theoretical definition of "function". A major theme is that nonhistorical analyses of "function" fail to deal adequately with items that are not capable of performing their functions
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461A more plausible kind of "recognitional concept"Philosophical Issues 9 35-41. 1998.It's a sort of moebus strip argument. Rather than circularly assuming what it should prove, it assumes one of the things Fodor says he has disproved. It assumes that the extensions of those concepts thought by some to be recognitional are in fact controlled by stereotypes. Why do I say that? Because Fodor assumes that what makes an instance of a concept a "good instance" is that it is an average instance, that it sports the properties statistically most commonly found among instances of that con…Read more
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95Existence proof for a viable externalismIn Richard Schantz (ed.), The Externalist Challenge, De Gruyter. pp. 227-238. 2004.
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409On swampkindsMind and Language 11 (1): 103-17. 1996.Suppose lightning strikes a dead tree in a swamp; I am standing nearby. My body is reduced to its elements, while entirely by coincidence (and out of different molecules) the tree is turned into my physical replica. My replica, The Swampman.....moves into my house and seems to write articles on radical interpretation. No one can tell the difference
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79Useless contentIn Graham Macdonald & David Papineau (eds.), Teleosemantics: New Philo-sophical Essays, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2006.
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28Chapter jc W 1 4In Aloysius Martinich (ed.), The philosophy of language, Oxford University Press. pp. 363. 1985.
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138Teleological Theories of mental contentIn Lynn Nadel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Nature Publishing Group. 2003.
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183Seismograph Readings for explaining behaviorPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (4): 807-812. 1990.
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262Representations, targets and attitudesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1): 103-111. 2000.
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274Styles of RationalityIn Susan Hurley & Matthew Nudds (eds.), Rational Animals?, Oxford University Press. 2006.By whatever general principles and mechanisms animal behavior is governed, human behavior control rides piggyback on top of the same or very similar mechanisms. We have reflexes. We can be conditioned. The movements that make up our smaller actions are mostly caught up in perception-action cycles following perceived Gibsonian affordances. Still, without doubt there are levels of behavior control that are peculiar to humans. Following Aristotle, tradition has it that what is added in humans is ra…Read more
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200Purposes and Cross-Purposes: On the Evolution of Languages and LanguageThe Monist 84 (3): 392-416. 2001.§1. Both the human capacity for language and individual languages have evolved, in part, by natural selection. This paper considers certain aspects and consequences of this, concerning, among other things, the semanticspragmatics distinction.
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2A bet with PeacockeIn Cynthia MacDonald & Graham MacDonald (eds.), Philosophy of Psychology: Debates on Psychological Explanation, Blackwell. pp. 285--292. 1994.
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223Words, concepts, and entities: With enemies like these, I don't need friendsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (1): 89-100. 1998.A number of clarifications of the target article and some corrections are made. I clarify which concepts the thesis was intended to be about, what “descriptionism” means, the difference between “concepts” and “conceptions,” and why extensions are not determined by conceptions. I clarify the meaning of “substances,” how one knows what inductions to project over them, the connection with “basic level categories,” how it is determined what substance a given substance concept is of, how equivocation…Read more
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1On Meaning, Meaning, and MeaningIn Ruth Garrett Millikan (ed.), Language: A Biological Model, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 53-76. 2005.To understand how language works, one must first look to the cooperative functions that various language forms perform, understanding these on a biological model as what these forms accomplish that keeps them in circulation. Next, one should look at language mechanics, at how language forms perform their functions, and especially to the conditions in the world that are necessary to support their specific functions. These are, in part, truth conditions, which are determined by a kind of “meaning”…Read more
Areas of Interest
| Philosophy of Language |
| Philosophy of Mind |