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231Doxastic Addiction and Effective InterventionsIn Jennifer Lackey & Aidan McGlynn (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Social Epistemology, Oxford University Press. 2024.We are consumers of drugs and news, and sometimes call ourselves addicts or junkies of one or both. I propose to take the concept of news – more generally, doxastic – addiction seriously. I define doxastic addiction and relate this type of addiction to echo chambers and religious belief. I show how this analysis directs attention to appropriate interventions to help doxastic addicts, and how it offers a new type of justification for limits on free speech.
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98Individuating Cognitive Characters: Lessons from Praying Mantises and PlantsPhilosophy of Science. forthcoming.This paper advances the development of a phylogeny-based psychology in which cognitive ability types are individuated as characters in the evolutionary biological sense. I explain the character concept and its utility in addressing (or dissolving) conceptual problems arising from discoveries of cognitive abilities across a wide range of species. I use the examples of stereopsis in the praying mantis, internal cell-to-cell signaling in plants, and episodic memory in scrub jays to show how anthrop…Read more
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71(When) Is Scientific Reporting Ethical? The Case for Recognizing Shared Epistemic Responsibility in Science JournalismFrontiers in Communication 2 1-7. 2017.Internal mechanisms that uphold the reliability of published scientific results have failed across many sciences, including some that are major sources of science news. Traditional methods for reporting science in the mass media do not effectively compensate for this unreliability. I argue for a new conceptual framework in which science journalists and scientists form a complex knowledge community, with science news as the interdisciplinary product. This approach motivates forms of collaboration…Read more
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55Beyond the human standard in the cognitive domain: a reply to Rodriguez' “Cognition beyond the human domain”Philosophical Psychology 33 (8): 1204-1208. 2020.In "Cognition Beyond the Human Domain", Angel Garcia Rodriguez provides critical commentary on Pieces of Mind: The proper domain of psychological predicates (Oxford UP, 2018). In this reply, I argue that his alternative "No-Core" semantic proposal is not an alternative to the Literalist view I defend, but rather one way of elaborating that position.
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55Pieces of Mind: The Proper Domain of Psychological PredicatesOxford University Press. 2018.Carrie Figdor presents a critical assessment of how psychological terms are used to describe the non-human biological world. She argues against the anthropocentric attitude which takes human cognition as the standard against which non-human capacities are measured, and offers an alternative basis for naturalistic explanation of the mind.
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52Why literalism is still the best game in town: Replies to Drayson, Machery, and SchwitzgebelMind and Language 35 (5): 687-693. 2020.In Pieces of Mind: The Proper Domain of Psychological Predicates (Oxford UP, 2018), I argue that psychological predicates used to ascribe cognitive capacities to many nonhuman biological species should be interpreted literally with the same reference for humans and nonhumans alike. In this Mind & Language book symposium, I respond to comments and criticisms by Zoe Drayson, Edouard Machery, and Eric Schwitzgebel, and conclude that the Literalist position is still the best interpretation of these …Read more
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34Muhammad Ali Khalidi's Cognitive Ontology (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 2023.A review of Muhammad Ali Khalidi's Cognitive Ontology: Taxonomic Practices in the Mind-Brain Sciences
Iowa City, Iowa, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
Applied Ethics |
General Philosophy of Science |
Media Ethics |