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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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71Reply 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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7Natasha Mitchell: This is All in the Mind on Radio National abc.net.au/rn I'm Natasha Mitchell and really this past fortnight has been hellish for Australia, the bushfires in Victoria have claimed hundreds of human lives and it's almost been impossible to comprehend the scale of the disaster. Today's show links in a small way to the debate now being waged over what, or who, causes bushfires. It's a discussion about the philosophy of intentions and their profound moral weight
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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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215The Two Sources of Moral StandingReview of Philosophy and Psychology 3 (3): 303-324. 2012.There are two primary traditions in philosophical theorizing about moral standing—one emphasizing Experience (the capacity to feel pain and pleasure) and one emphasizing Agency (complexity of cognition and lifestyle). In this article we offer an explanation for this divide: Lay judgments about moral standing depend importantly on two independent cues (Experience and Agency), and the two philosophical traditions reflect this aspect of folk moral cognition. In support of this two-source hypothesis…Read more
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37Précis of Doing without ConceptsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3): 195-206. 2010.Although cognitive scientists have learned a lot about concepts, their findings have yet to be organized in a coherent theoretical framework. In addition, after twenty years of controversy, there is little sign that philosophers and psychologists are converging toward an agreement about the very nature of concepts.Doing without Concepts(Machery 2009) attempts to remedy this state of affairs. In this article, I review the main points and arguments developed at greater length inDoing without Conce…Read more
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240Getting Rid of Racism: Assessing Three Proposals in Light of Psychological EvidenceJournal of Social Philosophy 41 (3): 293-322. 2010.At the end of a chapter in his book Race, Racism and Reparations, Angelo Corlett notes that “[t]here remain other queries about racism [than those he addressed in his chapter], which need philosophical exploration. … Perhaps most important, how might racism be unlearned?” (2003, 93). We agree with Corlett’s assessment of its importance, but find that philosophers have not been very keen to directly engage with the issue of how to best deal with, and ultimately do away with, racism. Rather, they …Read more
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1This is the penultimate version of the paper.
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29Robustness, optimality, and the handicap principle (review)Biology and Philosophy 25 (5): 868-879. 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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257The bleak implications of moral psychologyNeuroethics 3 (3): 223-231. 2010.In this article, I focus on two claims made by Appiah in Experiments in Ethics: Doris’s and Harman’s criticism of virtue ethics fails, and moral psychology can be used to identify erroneous moral intuitions. I argue that both claims are erroneous.
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190Concept empiricism: A methodological critiqueCognition 104 (1): 19-46. 2006.Thanks to Barsalou
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Review of Words and Thoughts: Subsentences, Ellipsis and the Philosophy of Language (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. forthcoming.
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21Evolution, Rationality, and Cognition: A Cognitive Science for the Twenty-First Century is a fine collection of essays edited by António Zilhão. Most of the essays are written by prominent philosophers of biology and psychology, while a roboticist, Inman Harvey, and a psychologist, Barbara Tversky, complete the list of contributors. Eight of the nine essays are original, although several of the essays are partly made up of material published elsewhere. Most of these articles belong to a growing …Read more
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390Philosophical temperamentPhilosophical Psychology 23 (3): 313-330. 2010.Many philosophers have worried about what philosophy is. Often they have looked for answers by considering what it is that philosophers do. Given the diversity of topics and methods found in philosophy, however, we propose a different approach. In this article we consider the philosophical temperament, asking an alternative question: what are philosophers like? Our answer is that one important aspect of the philosophical temperament is that philosophers are especially reflective: they are less l…Read more
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Scientists’ Concepts of Innateness: Evolution or Attraction?In Richard Samuels & Daniel A. Wilkenfeld (eds.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Science, Bloomsbury. pp. 172-201. 2019.
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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 |