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306Racism: Against Jorge Garcia's moral and psychological monismPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 39 (1): 41-62. 2009.In this article, we argue that it can be fruitful for philosophers interested in the nature and moral significance of racism to pay more attention to psychology. We do this by showing that psychology provides new arguments against Garcia's views about the nature and moral significance of racism. We contend that some scientific studies of racial cognition undermine Garcia's moral and psychological monism about racism: Garcia disregards (1) the rich affective texture of racism and (2) the diversit…Read more
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55Explaining why experimental behavior varies across cultures: A missing step in “The weirdest people in the world?”Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3): 101-102. 2010.In this commentary, I argue that to properly assess the significance of the cross-cultural findings reviewed by Henrich et al., one needs to understand better the causes of the variation in performance in experimental tasks across cultures
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147Two dogmas of neo-empiricismPhilosophy Compass 1 (4). 2006.This article critically examines the contemporary resurgence of empiricism (or “neo-empiricism”) in philosophy, psychology, neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence. This resurgence is an important and positive development. It is the first time that this centuries-old empiricist approach to cognition is precisely formulated in the context of cognitive science and neuroscience. Moreover, neo-empiricists have made several findings that challenge amodal theories of concepts and higher cognition…Read more
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23Robot pains and corporate feelingsThe Philosophers' Magazine 52 78-82. 2011.Most philosophers of mind follow Thomas Nagel and hold that subjective experiences are characterised by the fact that there is “something it is like” to have them. Philosophers of mind have sometimes speculated that ordinary people endorse, perhaps implicitly, this conception of subjective experiences. Some recent findings cast doubt on this view.
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57Developmental disorders and cognitive architectureIn Pieter R. Adriaens & Andreas de Block (eds.), Maladapting Minds: Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Evolutionary Theory, Oxford University Press. 2011.For the last thirty years, cognitive scientists have attempted to describe the cognitive architecture of typically developing human beings, using, among other sources of evidence, the dissociations that result from developmental psychopathologies such as autism spectrum disorders, Williams syndrome, and Down syndrome. Thus, in his recent defense of the massive modularity hypothesis, Steven Pinker insists on the importance of such dissociations to identify the components of the typical cognitive …Read more
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144Reconceptualizing Human Nature: Response to Lewens (review)Philosophy and Technology 25 (4): 475-478. 2012.There is a growing consensus that the traditional notion of human nature has failed and that human nature needs to be reconceptualized in light of our current scientific knowledge, including the knowledge gained in genetics and evolutionary biology. In “A Plea for Human Nature,” I highlighted this need, and I engaged in this reconceptualization effort, proposing a new notion of human nature, “the nomological notion of human nature” [Machery (Philosophical Psychology 21:321–330, 2008)]; for some …Read more
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558Two conceptions of subjective experiencePhilosophical Studies 151 (2): 299-327. 2010.Do philosophers and ordinary people conceive of subjective experience in the same way? In this article, we argue that they do not and that the philosophical concept of phenomenal consciousness does not coincide with the folk conception. We first offer experimental support for the hypothesis that philosophers and ordinary people conceive of subjective experience in markedly different ways. We then explore experimentally the folk conception, proposing that for the folk, subjective experience is cl…Read more
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63Psychologists of concepts’ traditional assumption that there are many properties common to all concepts has been subject to devastating critiques in psychology and in the philosophy of psychology. However, it is currently unclear what approach to concepts is best suited to replace this traditional assumption. In this article, we compare two competing approaches, the Heterogeneity Hypothesis and the hybrid theories of concepts, and we present an empirical argument that tentatively supports the fo…Read more
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42Précis of Doing without ConceptsMind and Language 25 (5): 602-611. 2010.In this précis, I review the main points and arguments developed at greater length in Doing without Concepts, and I explain why eliminating the notion of concept would contribute to the progress of the psychology of higher cognition.
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8100 years of psychology of concepts: The theoretical notion of concept and its operationalizationStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (1): 63-84. 2005.
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35It is difficult to overestimate Paul Meehl's influence on judgment and decision-making research. His 'disturbing little book' Clinical versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence is known as an attack on human judgment and a call for replacing clinicians with actuarial methods. More than 40 years later, fast and frugal heuristics - proposed as models of human judgment - were formalized, tested, and found to be surprisingly accurate, often more so than the a…Read more
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227In Defense of Reverse InferenceBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65 (2): 251-267. 2014.Reverse inference is the most commonly used inferential strategy for bringing images of brain activation to bear on psychological hypotheses, but its inductive validity has recently been questioned. In this article, I show that, when it is analyzed in likelihoodist terms, reverse inference does not suffer from the problems highlighted in the recent literature, and I defend the appropriateness of treating reverse inference in these terms. 1 Introduction2 Reverse Inference3 Reverse Inference Defen…Read more
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42Contemporary research on racial categorization is mostly encompassed by two research traditions—social constructionism and the cognitive-cum-evolutionary approach. Although both literatures have some plausible empirical evidence and some theoretical insights to contribute to a full understanding of racial categorization, there has been little contact between their proponents. In order to foster such contacts, we critically review both traditions, focusing particularly on the recent evolutionary/…Read more
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58La Philosophie Expérimentale (edited book)Vuibert. 2012.La philosophie expérimentale est un mouvement récent qui tente de faire progresser certains débats philosophiques grâce à l'utilisation de méthodes expérimentales. À la différence de la philosophie conventionnelle qui privilégie l'analyse conceptuelle ou la spéculation, la philosophie expérimentale préconise le recours aux études empiriques pour mieux comprendre les concepts philosophiques. Apparue il y a une dizaine d'années dans les pays anglo-saxons, cette approche constitue actuellement l'un…Read more
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27Evolution of moralityIn John M. Doris (ed.), Moral Psychology Handbook, Oxford University Press. pp. 3. 2010.
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118Symposium on J.-L. Dessalles’s Why we Talk : Precis by J.-L. Dessalles, commentaries by E. Machery, F. Cowie, and J. Alexander, Replies by J.-L. Dessalles (review)Biology and Philosophy 25 (5): 851-901. 2010.This symposium discusses J.-L. Dessalles's account of the evolution of language, which was presented in Why we Talk (OUP 2007)
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48Review of Robert J. Stainton, Words and Thoughts: Subsentences, Ellipsis, and the Philosophy of Language (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (6). 2007.
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121The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2012.Leading linguists and philosophers report on all aspects of compositionality, the notion that the meaning of an expression can be derived from its parts. This book explores every dimension of this field, reporting critically on different lines of research, revealing connections between them, and highlighting current problems and opportunities.
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4A better philosophy for a better psychology: Comment on Slaney and Racine (2011)Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 31 (2): 90-95. 2011.
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26This article maybe used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
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14Evidence for distinct contributions of form and motion information to the recognition of emotions from body gesturesCognition 104 (1): 59-72. 2007.
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220The Folk Probably Don’t Think What You Think They Think: Experiments on Causation by AbsenceMidwest Studies in Philosophy 31 (1). 2007.Folk theories—untutored people’s (often implicit) theories about various features of the world—have been fashionable objects of inquiry in psychology for almost two decades now (e.g., Hirschfeld and Gelman 1994), and more recently they have been of interest in experimental philosophy (Nichols 2004). Folk theories of psy- chology, physics, biology, and ethics have all come under investigation. Folk meta- physics, however, has not been as extensively studied. That so little is known about folk met…Read more
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One hundred years of psychology of concepts: Theoretical notions and their operationalizationStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A. forthcoming.
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7Describing a person as knowing a proposition involves a rich array of abilities: psychological capacities to attribute mental states to others, linguistic competence with mental state verbs, conceptual grasp of the nature of knowledge and its relation to features such as reliability and evidence. One might wonder whether these abilities are all part of our natural endowment as human beings, or whether any of them is a product of a person's specific cultural context. This one-day workshop brings …Read more
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12Culture and cognitionIn E. Margolis, R. Samuels & S. Stich (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Oxford University Press. 2012.
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430Thought experiments and philosophical knowledgeMetaphilosophy 42 (3): 191-214. 2011.: While thought experiments play an important role in contemporary analytic philosophy, much remains unclear about thought experiments. In particular, it is still unclear whether the judgments elicited by thought experiments can provide evidence for the premises of philosophical arguments. This article argues that, if an influential and promising view about the nature of the judgments elicited by thought experiments is correct, then many thought experiments in philosophy fail to provide any evid…Read more
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70Reply to Barbara Malt and Jesse PrinzMind and Language 25 (5): 634-646. 2010.In this response to Malt's and Prinz's commentaries, I argue that neo-empiricist hypotheses fail to threaten the argument for the elimination of ‘concept’ because they are unlikely to be true of all concepts, if they are true at all. I also defend the hypothesis that we possess bodies of knowledge retrieved by default from long-term memory, and I argue that prototypes, exemplars, and theories form genuinely distinct concepts
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94Dissociations in Neuropsychology and Cognitive NeurosciencePhilosophy of Science 79 (4): 490-518. 2012.In this article, I compare the epistemic standing of the function-to-structure inferences found in cognitive neuroscience and of the inferences based on dissociations in neuropsychology. I argue that the former have a poorer epistemic standing than the latter.
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18Review of António Zilhão (ed.), Evolution, Rationality, and Cognition: A Cognitive Science for the Twenty-First Century (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (4). 2006.
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University of PittsburghHistory and Philosophy of Science
Center for Philosophy of ScienceDistinguished Professor
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
General Philosophy of Science |