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393Prologue: 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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388Persons, social agency, and constitutionSocial Philosophy and Policy 22 (2): 49-69. 2005.In her recent book Persons and Bodies1, Lynne Rudder Baker has defended what she calls the constitution view of persons. On this view, persons are constituted by their bodies, where “constitution” is a ubiquitous, general metaphysical relation distinct from more familiar relations, such as identity and part-whole composition
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384Extended VisionIn Nivedita Gangopadhyay, Michael Madary & Finn Spicer (eds.), Perception, Action and Consciousness, Oxford University Press.. 2010.Vision constitutes an interesting domain, or range of domains, for debate over the extended mind thesis, the idea that minds physically extend beyond the boundaries of the body. In part this is because vision and visual experience more particularly are sometimes presented as a kind of line in the sand for what we might call externalist creep about the mind: once all reasonable concessions have been made to externalists about the mind, visual experience marks a line beyond which lies a safe have…Read more
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357Continuing After Species: An AfterwordIn John S. Wilkins, Igor Pavlinov & Frank Zachos (eds.), Species Problems and Beyond: Contemporary Issues in Philosophy and Practice, Routledge. pp. 343-353. 2022.This afterword to Species and Beyond provides some reflections on species, with special attention to what I think the most significant developments have been in the thinking of biologists and philosophers working on species over the past 25 years, as well as some bad jokes.
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348Two views of realizationPhilosophical Studies 104 (1): 1-31. 2001.This paper examines the standard view of realization operative incontemporary philosophy of mind, and proposes an alternative, generalperspective on realization. The standard view can be expressed, insummary form, as the conjunction of two theses, the sufficiency thesis andthe constitutivity thesis. Physicalists of both reductionist and anti-reductionist persuasions share a conception of realization wherebyrealizations are determinative of the properties they realize and physically constitutiv…Read more
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345A puzzle about material constitution and how to solve it: Enriching constitution views in metaphysicsPhilosophers' Imprint 7 1-20. 2007.Are materially constituted entities, such as statues and glasses of liquid, something more than their material constituents? The puzzle that frames this paper stems from conflicting answers to this question. At the core of the paper is a distinctive way of thinking about material constitution that posits two concepts of constitution, compositional and ampliative constitution, with the bulk of the discussion devoted to developing distinct analyses for these concepts. Distinguishing these concepts…Read more
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343The 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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343Embodied cognitionStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2011.Cognition is embodied when it is deeply dependent upon features of the physical body of an agent, that is, when aspects of the agent's body beyond the brain play a significant causal or physically constitutive role in cognitive processing. In general, dominant views in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science have considered the body as peripheral to understanding the nature of mind and cognition. Proponents of embodied cognitive science view this as a serious mistake. Sometimes the nature …Read more
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335The Art of Medicine: From small beginnings: to build an anti-eugenic futureThe Lancet 10339 (399): 1934-1935. 2022.Short overview of the From Small Beginnings Project and its relevance for resisting eugenics in contemporary society.
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335Explaining ExplanationIn Robert A. Frank C. And Wilson Keil (ed.), Explanation and Cognition. 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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334Pluralism, entwinement, and the levels of selectionPhilosophy of Science 70 (3): 531-552. 2003.This paper distinguishes and critiques several forms of pluralism about the levels of selection, and introduces a novel way of thinking about the biological properties and processes typically conceptualized in terms of distinct levels. In particular, "levels" should be thought of as being entwined or fused. Since the pluralism discussed is held by divergent theorists, the argument has implications for many positions in the debate over the units of selection. And since the key points on which the…Read more
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325Group-level cognitionPhilosophy of Science 68 (3). 2001.David Sloan Wilson has recently revived the idea of a group mind as an application of group selectionist thinking to cognition. Central to my discussion of this idea is the distinction between the claim that groups have a psychology and what I call the social manifestation thesis-a thesis about the psychology of individuals. Contemporary work on this topic has confused these two theses. My discussion also points to research questions and issues that Wilson's work raises, as well as their connect…Read more
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320Material constitution and the many-many problemCanadian Journal of Philosophy 38 (2). 2008.This paper poses a problem of promiscuity for views that endorse material constitution as a metaphysic relation.
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310The primal path to kinship: A critical review of Bernard chapais, primeval kinship: How pair-bonding gave birth to human society (review)Biology and Philosophy 25 (1): 111-123. 2010.This is a critical discussion of Bernard Chapais' Primeval Kinship (Harvard, 2008).
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293Genes 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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292Eugenics as wrongfulEugenics Archives. 2014.In a landmark legal case in 1996, eugenics survivor Leilani Muir successfully sued the province of Alberta for wrongful confinement and sterilization. The legal finding implied that Ms. Muir should never have been institutionalized at the Provincial Training School of Alberta as a “moron” and sterilized under the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta. The trial itself revealed many unsettling features of the province’s practice of eugenics, raising questions about how a seemingly large number of p…Read more
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292How to Think with the Global South. Essay Review of Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science, Routledge, 2021. (review)Philosophy of Science 90 (1): 209-217. 2023.Extended Essay Review of the 26 chapters in the collection Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science, Routledge, 2021.
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289Test cases, resolvability, and group selection: A critical examination of the myxoma casePhilosophy of Science 71 (3): 380-401. 2004.The evolution of the myxoma virus in Australia has been presented for many years as a test case for the hypothesis that group selection can function effectively `in the wild.' This paper critically examines the myxoma case, and argues that its failure as a test case for this hypothesis has broader implications for debates over the levels of selection
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285Philosophy of psychologyIn Sahotra Sarkar & Jessica Pfeifer (eds.), The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia, Routledge. pp. 613-619. 2005.In the good old days, when general philosophy of science ruled the Earth, a simple division was often invoked to talk about philosophical issues specific to particular kinds of science: that between the natural sciences and the social sciences. Over the last 20 years, philosophical studies shaped around this dichotomy have given way to those organized by more fine-grained categories, corresponding to specific disciplines, as the literatures on the philosophy of physics, biology, economics and ps…Read more
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282Eugenic traitsEugenics Archives. 2014.Certain traits, such as intelligence and mental deficiency, have been the focus of eugenic research and propaganda. This focus on such eugenic traits builds on three commonsense ideas: (1) People differ with respect to some of their traits, such as eye-colour and height; (2) Many traits run in families, being passed on from parents to their children; (3) Some traits are desirable, while others are undesirable. These three ideas about traits—their variability, heritability, and desirability—fed t…Read more
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274The Mind Beyond ItselfIn Dan Sperber (ed.), Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, Oxford University Press. pp. 31-52. 2000.This paper argues that the metarepresentational systems we posses are wide or extended, rather than individualistic. There are two basic ideas. The first is that metarepresentation inherits its width from the mental representation of its objects. The second is that mental processing often operates on internal and external symbols, and this suggests that cognitive systems extend beyond the heads that house them.
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271Review 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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262Philosophical Silences: Race, Gender, Disability, and Philosophical PracticeJournal of Philosophy of Education 57 (4): 1004-1024. 2023.Who is recognised as a philosopher and what counts as philosophy influence both the content of a philosophical education and academic philosophy’s continuing demographic skew. The “philosophical who” and the “philosophical what” themselves are a partial function of matters that have been passed over in collective silence, even if that now feels to some like a silence belonging to the distant past. This paper discusses some philosophical silences regarding race, gender, and disability in the co…Read more
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261Roles of science in eugenicsEugenics Archives. 2014.The relationship of eugenics to science is intricate and many-layered, starting with Sir Francis Galton’s original definition of eugenics as “the science of improving stock”. Eugenics was originally conceived of not only as a science by many of its proponents, but as a new, meliorative science emerging from findings of a range of nascent sciences, including anthropology and criminology in the late 19th-century, and genetics and psychiatry in the early 20th-century. Although during the years betw…Read more
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258Recent work on individualism in the social, behavioural, and biological sciencesBiology and Philosophy 19 (3): 397-423. 2004.The social, behavioral, and a good chunk of the biological sciences concern the nature of individual agency, where our paradigm for an individual is a human being. Theories of economic behavior, of mental function and dysfunction, and of ontogenetic development, for example, are theories of how such individuals act, and of what internal and external factors are determinative of that action. Such theories construe individuals in distinctive ways
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250PsychologyEugenics Archive. 2014.Genetics and the biological sciences are the two contemporary scientific fields most readily called to mind in thinking about science and eugenics. Yet the history of another discipline, psychology, is enmeshed more intricately with eugenics than are the histories of either genetics or even the biological sciences more generally. This is true of the history of eugenics in Canada. Moreover, continuities in the roles that psychology plays in how we think about sorts of people and their ability and…Read more
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233Interrogating Incoherence and Prospects for a Trans-Positive PsychiatryAustralasian Philosophical Review. forthcoming.Invited commentary on Nicole A. Vincent and Emma A. Jane, “Interrogating Incongruence: Conceptual and Normative Problems with ICD-11’s and DSM-5’s Diagnostic Categories for Transgender People” Australasian Philosophical Review, in press. The core of Vincent and Jane’s Interrogating Incongruence is critical of the appeal to the concept of incongruence in DSM-5 and ICD-11 characterisations of trans people, a critique taken to be ground-clearing for more trans-positive, psychiatrically-infused medi…Read more
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228Realism, Essence, and Kind: Resuscitating Species Essentialism?In Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, . pp. 187-207. 1999.This paper offers an overview of "the species problem", arguing for a view of species as homeostatic property cluster kinds, positioning the resulting form of realism about species as an alternative to the claim that species are individuals and pluralistic views of species. It draws on taxonomic practice in the neurosciences, especially of neural crest cells and retinal ganglion cells, to motivate both the rejection of the species-as-individuals thesis and species pluralism.
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225ExternalismIn Lynn Nadel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, . pp. 92-97. 2003.Introduction to externalism in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.
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208Against A Priori arguments for individualismPacific Philosophical Quarterly 74 (1): 60-79. 1993.Argues against several influential a priori arguments for individualism in the philosophy of mind that were influential in the 1980s.
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Perth, Western Australia, Australia