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743How to situate cognition: Letting nature take its courseIn Murat Aydede & P. Robbins (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, Cambridge University Press. pp. 55--77. 2009.1. The Situation in Cognition 2. Situated Cognition: A Potted Recent History 3. Extensions in Biology, Computation, and Cognition 4. Articulating the Idea of Cognitive Extension 5. Are Some Resources Intrinsically Non-Cognitive? 6. Is Cognition Extended or Only Embedded? 7. Letting Nature Take Its Course
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723The Sound of Music: Externalist StyleAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2): 139-154. 2016.Philosophical exploration of individualism and externalism in the cognitive sciences most recently has been focused on general evaluations of these two views (Adams & Aizawa 2008, Rupert 2008, Wilson 2004, Clark 2008). Here we return to broaden an earlier phase of the debate between individualists and externalists about cognition, one that considered in detail particular theories, such as those in developmental psychology (Patterson 1991) and the computational theory of vision (Burge 1986, Sega…Read more
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706Locke'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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685The transitivity of material constitutionNoûs 43 (2): 363-377. 2009.In metaphysics, the view that material constitution is transitive is ubiquitous, an assumption expressed by both proponents and critics of constitution views. Likewise, it is typically assumed within the philosophy of mind that physical realization is a transitive relation. In both cases, this assumption of transitivity plays a role in discussion of the broader implications of a metaphysics that invokes either relation. Here I provide reasons for questioning this assumption and the uses to which…Read more
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653Ten questions concerning extended cognitionPhilosophical Psychology 27 (1): 19-33. 2014.This paper considers ten questions that those puzzled by or skeptical of extended cognition have posed. Discussion of these questions ranges across substantive, methodological, and dialectical issues in the ongoing debate over extended cognition, such as whether the issue between proponents and opponents of extended cognition is merely semantic or a matter of convention; whether extended cognition should be treated in the same way as extended biology; and whether conscious mental states pose a s…Read more
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607Eugenics in PhilosophyOxford Bibliographies Online. 2017.Annotated bibliography on eugenics and philosophy.
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590The shadows and shallows of explanationMinds and Machines 8 (1): 137-159. 1998.We introduce two notions–the shadows and the shallows of explanation–in opening up explanation to broader, interdisciplinary investigation. The shadows of explanation refer to past philosophical efforts to provide either a conceptual analysis of explanation or in some other way to pinpoint the essence of explanation. The shallows of explanation refer to the phenomenon of having surprisingly limited everyday, individual cognitive abilities when it comes to explanation. Explanations are ubiquito…Read more
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576Wide computationalismMind 103 (411): 351-72. 1994.The computational argument for individualism, which moves from computationalism to individualism about the mind, is problematic, not because computationalism is false, but because computational psychology is, at least sometimes, wide. The paper provides an early, or perhaps predecessor, version of the thesis of extended cognition.
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568RealizationIn P. Thagard (ed.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Elsevier. 2006.For the greater part of the last 50 years, it has been common for philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists to invoke the notion of realization in discussing the relationship between the mind and the brain. In traditional philosophy of mind, mental states are said to be realized, instantiated, or implemented in brain states. Artificial intelligence is sometimes described as the attempt either to model or to actually construct systems that realize some of the same psychological abilities that…Read more
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562Collective 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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557Eugenics OffendedMonash Bioethics Review 39 (2): 169-176. 2021.This commentary continues an exchange on eugenics in Monash Bioethics Review between Anomaly (2018), Wilson (2019), and Veit, Anomaly, Agar, Singer, Fleischman, and Minerva (2021). The eponymous question, “Can ‘Eugenics’ be Defended?”, is multiply ambiguous and does not receive a clear answer from Veit et al.. Despite their stated desire to move beyond mere semantics to matters of substance, Veit et al. concentrate on several uses of the term “eugenics” that pull in opposite directions. I arg…Read more
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551Biological 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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526Eugenic 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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520The Drink You Have When You’re Not Having a DrinkMind and Language 23 (3). 2008.The Architecture of the Mind is itself built on foundations that deserve probing. In this brief commentary I focus on these foundations—Carruthers’ conception of modularity, his arguments for thinking that the mind is massively modular in structure, and his view of human cognitive architecture
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519Critical Notice (review)Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (1): 117-132. 2006.In this initially daunting but ultimately enjoyable and informative book, Mohan Matthen argues that this tradition is mistaken about both the processes of perception or sensing and the relationship between sensation, perception, and cognition. Since this tradition is sufficiently alive and well in the contemporary literature to constitute something like the received view of perception and the role of sensation in it, Matthen’s challenge and the alternative view he proposes are potentially signif…Read more
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518The Role of Oral History in Surviving a Eugenic PastIn Steven C. High (ed.), Beyond Testimony and Trauma: Oral History in the Aftermath of Mass Violence, Ubc Press. pp. 119-138. 2015.Despite the fact that the history of eugenics in Canada is necessarily part of the larger history of eugenics, there is a special role for oral history to play in the telling of this story, a role that promises to shift us from the muddled middle of the story. Not only has the testimony of eugenics survivors already played perhaps the most important role in revealing much about the practice of eugenics in Canada, but the willingness and ability of survivors to share their own oral histories make…Read more
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516Meaning making and the mind of the externalistIn Richard Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind, Mit Press. pp. 167--188. 2010.This paper attempts to do two things. First, it recounts the problem of intentionality, as it has typically been conceptualized, and argues that it needs to be reconceptualized in light of the radical form of externalism most commonly referred to as the extended mind thesis. Second, it provides an explicit, novel argument for that thesis, what I call the argument from meaning making, and offers some defense of that argument. This second task occupies the core of the paper, and in completing it I…Read more
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503The 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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498Realization: Metaphysics, mind, and sciencePhilosophy of Science 71 (5): 985-996. 2004.This paper surveys some recent work on realization in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science
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489Ethnobiology, the Ontological Turn, and Human SocialityJournal of Ethnobiology 43 (3): 198-207. 2023.The ontological turn (OT) is a loose cluster of theoretical approaches within cultural anthropology that advocates a synthetic, overarching way forward for ethnographically oriented cultural anthropology. We argue that in order to contribute substantively to ethnobiology the OT needs to distance itself from a long-standing tradition of thinking within ethnography that assumes some kind of fundamental divide between the natural and the social sciences. This distancing seems especially unlikely in…Read more
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486Eugenic family studiesEugenic Archives. 2014.This short article provides an overview of the series of eugenic family studies that began in the 1870s in the United States and that were influential in establishing eugenics as a 20th-century movement and ideology.
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469Explanation and CognitionMIT Press. 2000.These essays draw on work in the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind and language, the development of concepts in children, conceptual..
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461Why kinship is progeneratively constrained: Extending anthropologySynthese 200 (2): 1-20. 2022.The conceptualisation of kinship and its study remain contested within anthropology. This paper draws on recent cognitive science, developmental cognitive psychology, and the philosophy of science to offer a novel argument for a view of kinship as progeneratively or reproductively constrained. I shall argue that kinship involves a form of extended cognition that incorporates progenerative facts, going on to show how the resulting articulation of kinship’s progenerative nature can be readily expr…Read more
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440This letter was submitted to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Government of Canada, on 29th January, 2021, as final debate over Bill C-7 was being undertaken in the Senate regarding MAiD and the strong opposition to the legislation expressed across the Canadian disability community. It draws on our individual and joint work on eugenics, well-being, and disability.
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434IndividualismIn Stephen P. Stich & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. pp. 256--287. 2002.An overview of individualism in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.
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420Kinmaking, Progeneration, and EthnographyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science 91 (C): 77-85. 2022.Philosophers of biology and biologists themselves for the most part assume that the concept of kin is progenerative: what makes two individuals kin is a direct or indirect function of reproduction. Derivatively, kinship might likewise be presumed to be progenerative in nature. Yet a prominent view of kinship in contemporary cultural anthropology is a kind of constructivism or performativism that rejects such progenerativist views. This paper critically examines an influential line of thinking…Read more
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407Some problems for alternative individualismPhilosophy of Science 67 (4): 671-679. 2000.This paper points to some problems for the position that D.M. Walsh calls "alternative individualism," and argues that in defending this view Walsh has omitted an important part of what separates individualists and externalists in psychology. Walsh's example of Hox gene complexes is discussed in detail to show why some sort of externalism about scientific taxonomy more generally is a more plausible view than any extant version of individualism
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405Causal depth, theoretical appropriateness, and individualism in psychologyPhilosophy of Science 61 (1): 55-75. 1994.Individualists claim that wide explanations in psychology are problematic. I argue that wide psychological explanations sometimes have greater explanatory power than individualistic explanations. The aspects of explanatory power I focus on are causal depth and theoretical appropriateness. Reflection on the depth and appropriateness of other wide explanations of behavior, such as evolutionary explanations, clarifies why wide psychological explanations sometimes have more causal depth and theoreti…Read more
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394Group-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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