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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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28Robustness, 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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Review of Words and Thoughts: Subsentences, Ellipsis and the Philosophy of Language (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. forthcoming.
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186Concept empiricism: A methodological critiqueCognition 104 (1): 19-46. 2006.Thanks to Barsalou
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387Philosophical 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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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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62You can't have it both ways: What is the relation between morality and fairness?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (1). 2013.Baumard and colleagues put forward a new hypothesis about the nature and evolution of fairness. In this commentary, we discuss the relation between morality and their views about fairness
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182Innateness, canalization, and 'biologicizing the mind'Philosophical Psychology 21 (3). 2008.This article examines and rejects the claim that 'innateness is canalization'. Waddington's concept of canalization is distinguished from the narrower concept of environmental canalization with which it is often confused. Evidence is presented that the concept of environmental canalization is not an accurate analysis of the existing concept of innateness. The strategy of 'biologicizing the mind' by treating psychological or behavioral traits as if they were environmentally canalized physiologica…Read more
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84Power and Negative ResultsPhilosophy of Science 79 (5): 808-820. 2012.The use of power to infer null hypotheses from negative results has recently come under severe attack. In this article, I show that the power of a test can justify accepting the null hypothesis. This argument also gives us a new powerful reason for not treating p-values and power as measures of the strength of evidence.
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210The folk concept of intentional action: Philosophical and experimental issuesMind and Language 23 (2). 2008.Recent experimental fi ndings by Knobe and others ( Knobe, 2003; Nadelhoffer, 2006b; Nichols and Ulatowski, 2007 ) have been at the center of a controversy about the nature of the folk concept of intentional action. I argue that the signifi cance of these fi ndings has been overstated. My discussion is two-pronged. First, I contend that barring a consensual theory of conceptual competence, the signifi cance of these experimental fi ndings for the nature of the concept of intentional action canno…Read more
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Essay Review-Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human NatureIn Borchert (ed.), Philosophy of Science, Macmillan. pp. 73--2. 2006.
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32It is difficult to overestimate Paul Meehl’s influence on judgment and decision-making research. His ‘disturbing little book’ (Meehl, 1986, p. 370) Clinical versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence (1954) 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,…Read more
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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 |