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245Looking Back to Look Forward: Disability, Philosophers, and Activism.Diversity and Inclusion Section, APA Blog. 2020.How have and how might philosophers contribute to linking disability and activism in these peri-COVID-19 times, especially in forms of public engagement that go beyond podcasted talks and articles aimed at a public audience? How do we harness philosophical thinking to contribute positively to those living with disability whose vulnerabilities are heightened by this pandemic and the ableism highlighted by collective responses to it?
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259The Cognitive Sciences: A comment on 6 reviews of The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive SciencesArtificial Intelligence 130 (2): 223-229. 2001.As the pluralization in the title of MITECS suggests, and as many reviewers have noted, the stance that we adopted as general editors for this project was ecumenical. We were particularly concerned to generate a volume whose range of topics and perspectives indicated that “cognitive science” was different things to different groups of researchers, and that many even fundamental questions remain open after at least four decades of various interdisciplinary ventures. Implicit in this view is a war…Read more
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281Review of Eva Kittay, Learning from My Daughter: The Value and Care of Disabled Minds (Oxford 2018) (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2020. 2020.This is a 2000-word review of Eva Kittay's recent book on cognitive disability.
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3229Eugenics UndefendedMonash Bioethics Review 37 (1-2): 68-75. 2019.This is a critical response to "Defending Eugenics", published in MBR in 2018.
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1325PhilosophyIn Robert Andrew Wilson & Frank C. Keil (eds.), MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, Mit Press. 1999.This is an introduction to the 80 articles on philosophy in MITECS.
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358Explaining ExplanationIn Frank C. Keil & Robert A. Wilson (eds.), Explanation and Cognition, Mit Press. pp. 1-18. 2000.It is not a particularly hard thing to want or seek explanations. In fact, explanations seem to be a large and natural part of our cognitive lives. Children ask why and how questions very early in development and seem genuinely to want some sort of answer, despite our often being poorly equipped to provide them at the appropriate level of sophistication and detail. We seek and receive explanations in every sphere of our adult lives, whether it be to understand why a friendship has foundered, wh…Read more
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165MovingAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 66 (2). 1988.This article discusses Jennifer Hornsby's account of action in her *Actions*, together with Brian O'Shaughnessy's in *The Will*.
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454Prologue: Eugenics and its StudyIn Frank Stahnisch & Erna Kurbegovic (eds.), Exploring the Relationship of Eugenics and Psychiatry: Canadian and Trans-Atlantic Perspectives 1905 – 1972, Athabasca University Press. 2020.This is the prologue to a collection of essays on eugenics and psychiatry.
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146Sorts of peopleEugenics Archive. 2014.This brief article examines the notion of that there are sorts (or kinds) of people are varying qualities relevant to their eugenic policies, such as sterilization or immigration restriction.
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451
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261ExternalismIn L. Nadel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Nature Publishing Group. pp. 92-97. 2003.Introduction to externalism in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.
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194IntroductionIn Robert Andrew Wilson (ed.), Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, Mit Press. 1999.This volume of twelve specially commissioned essays about species draws on the perspectives of prominent researchers from anthropology , botany, developmental psychology , the philosophy of biology and science, protozoology, and zoology . The concept of species has played a focal role in both evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology , and the last decade has seen something of a publication boom on the topic (e.g., Otte and Endler 1989; Ereshefsky 1992b; Paterson 1994; lambert and Spenc…Read more
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Levels of SelectionIn Mohan Matthen & Christopher Stephens (eds.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, Volume 3, Philosophy of Biology, . pp. 155-176. 2007.This article provides an overview of work on the levels of selection in the philosophy of biology.
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714Locke's Primary QualitiesJournal of the History of Philosophy 40 (2): 201-228. 2002.Introduction in chapter viii of book ii of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke provides various putative lists of primary qualities. Insofar as they have considered the variation across Locke's lists at all, commentators have usually been content simply either to consider a self-consciously abbreviated list (e.g., "Size, Shape, etc.") or a composite list as the list of Lockean primary qualities, truncating such a composite list only by omitting supposedly co-referential terms. Do…Read more
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605Biological IndividualsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2024.The impressive variation amongst biological individuals generates many complexities in addressing the simple-sounding question what is a biological individual? A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy als…Read more
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16Review of Samir Okasha, Agents and Goals in Evolution. (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 1 1. 2019.Review of Samir Okasha's Agents and Goals in Evolution, Oxford University Press, 2018.
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1041Incest, Incest Avoidance, and Attachment: Revisiting the Westermarck EffectPhilosophy of Science 86 (3): 391-411. 2019.This article defends a version of the Westermarck Effect, integrating existing clinical, biological, and philosophical dimensions to incest avoidance. By focusing on care-based attachment in primates, my formulation of the effect suggests the power of a phylogenetic argument widely accepted by primatologists but not by cultural anthropologists. Identifying postadoption incest as a phenomenon with underexplored evidential value, the article sketches an explanatory strategy for reconciling the eff…Read more
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935Externalism and Internalism in the Philosophy of MindOxford Bibliographies. 2017.Annotated bibliography of works on externalism and internalism in the philosophy of mind.
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659Eugenics in PhilosophyOxford Bibliographies Online. 2017.Annotated bibliography on eugenics and philosophy.
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445Group-level Cognizing, Collaborative Remembering, and IndividualsIn and Amanda Barnier John Sutton Celia Harris Penny Van Bergen Michelle Meade (ed.), Collaborative Remembering: Theories, Research, and Applications. pp. 248-260. 2017.This chapter steps back from the important psychological work on collaborative remembering at the heart of the present volume to take up some broader questions about the place of memory in Western cultural thought, both historically and in contemporary society, offering the kind of integrative and reflective perspective for which philosophy is often known. In particular, the text aims to shed some light on the relationship between collaborative memory and the other two topics in this title—group…Read more
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584Collective Intentionality in Non-Human AnimalsIn Marija Jankovic and Kirk Ludwig (ed.), Routledge Handbook on Collective Intentionality. pp. 420-432. 2017.I think there is something to be said in a positive and constructive vein about collective intentionality in non-human animals. Doing so involves probing at the concept of collective intentionality fairly directly (Section 2), considering the various forms that collective intentionality might take (Section 3), showing some sensitivity to the history of appeals to that concept and its close relatives (Section 4), and raising some broader questions about the relationships between sociality, cognit…Read more
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909Contemporary Forms of EugenicseLS Wiley Online. 2017.Eugenics is commonly thought of as having endured as science and social movement only until 1945. With the advance of both reproductive and enhancement technologies, however, concern has arisen that eugenics has resurfaced in new forms. In particular, the eugenic potential of the Human Genome Project led to talk of the rise of ‘newgenics’ and of a backdoor to eugenics. This article focuses on such concerns deriving from the practice of prenatal screening and technologies that increase our abilit…Read more
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600Eugenic ThinkingPhilosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 10. 2018.Projects of human improvement take both individual and intergenerational forms. The biosciences provide many technologies, including prenatal screening and the latest gene editing techniques, such as CRISPR, that have been viewed as providing the means to human improvement across generations. But who is fit to furnish the next generation? Historically, eugenics epitomizes the science-based attempt to improve human society through distinguishing kinds of people and then implementing social polici…Read more
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1795Eugenics Never Went AwayAeon 2018. 2018.Eugenics does not feel so distant from where I stand. This essay explains why.
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1542Well-being, Disability, and Choosing ChildrenMind 128 (510): 305-328. 2019.The view that it is better for life to be created free of disability is pervasive in both common sense and philosophy. We cast doubt on this view by focusing on an influential line of thinking that manifests it. That thinking begins with a widely-discussed principle, Procreative Beneficence, and draws conclusions about parental choice and disability. After reconstructing two versions of this argument, we critique the first by exploring the relationship between different understandings of well…Read more
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1Michael Wheeler, Reconstructing the Cognitive World: The Next Step (review)Philosophy in Review 26 (5): 386-388. 2006.
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584The Eugenic Mind ProjectMIT Press. 2018.The Eugenic Mind Project is a wide-ranging, philosophical book that explores and critiques both past and present eugenic thinking, drawing on the author’s intimate knowledge of eugenics in North America and his previous work on the cognitive, biological, and social sciences, the fragile sciences. Informed by the perspectives of Canadian eugenics survivors in the province of Alberta, The Eugenic Mind Project recounts the history of eugenics and the thinking that drove it, and critically engages c…Read more
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555Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences - CognitionCambridge University Press. 2004.Where does the mind begin and end? Most philosophers and cognitive scientists take the view that the mind is bounded by the skull or skin of the individual. Robert Wilson, in this provocative and challenging 2004 book, provides the foundations for the view that the mind extends beyond the boundary of the individual. The approach adopted offers a unique blend of traditional philosophical analysis, cognitive science, and the history of psychology and the human sciences. The companion volume, Genes…Read more
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26The Common Mind: An Essay on Psychology, Society, and Politics (review)Philosophical Review 103 (4): 715. 1994.
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274Genes and the Agents of Life: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences BiologyCambridge University Press. 2005.Genes and the Agents of Life undertakes to rethink the place of the individual in the biological sciences, drawing parallels with the cognitive and social sciences. Genes, organisms, and species are all agents of life but how are each of these conceptualized within genetics, developmental biology, evolutionary biology, and systematics? The 2005 book includes highly accessible discussions of genetic encoding, species and natural kinds, and pluralism above the levels of selection, drawing on work …Read more
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