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111Critical Discussion: Virtue Epistemology and Extended Cognition: A Reply to Kelp and Greco (review)Erkenntnis 78 (4): 963-970. 2013.Elsewhere, I have challenged virtue epistemology and argued that it doesn’t square with mundane cases of extended cognition. Kelp (forthcoming, this journal) and Greco (forthcoming) have responded to my charges, the former by questioning the force of my argument, the latter by developing a new virtue epistemology. Here I consider both responses. I show first that Kelp mischaracterizes my challenge. Subsequently, I identify two new problems for Greco’s new virtue epistemology
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659How norms in technology ought to be interpretedTechne 10 (1): 117-133. 2006.This paper defends the claim that there are — at least — two kinds of normativity in technological practice. The first concerns what engineers ought to do and the second concerns normative statements about artifacts. The claim is controversial, since the standard approach to normativity, namely normative realism, actually denies artifacts any kind of normativity; according to the normative realist, normativity applies exclusively to human agents. In other words, normative realists hold that only…Read more
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50What exists in the environment that motivates the emergence, transmission, and sophistication of tool use?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35 (4): 233. 2012.In his attempt to find cognitive traits that set humans apart from nonhuman primates with respect to tool use, Vaesen overlooks the primacy of the environment toward the use of which behavior evolves. The occurrence of a particular behavior is a result of how that behavior has evolved in a complex and changing environment selected by a unique population
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502The functional bias of the dual nature of technical artefacts programStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (1): 190-197. 2011.In 2006, in a special issue of this journal, several authors explored what they called the dual nature of artefacts. The core idea is simple, but attractive: to make sense of an artefact, one needs to consider both its physical nature—its being a material object—and its intentional nature—its being an entity designed to further human ends and needs. The authors construe the intentional component quite narrowly, though: it just refers to the artefact’s function, its being a means to realize a cer…Read more
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52Dewey on extended cognition and epistemologyPhilosophical Issues 24 (1): 426-438. 2014.There is a surge of attempts to draw out the epistemological consequences of views according to which cognition is deeply embedded, embodied and/or extended. The principal machinery used for doing so is that of analytic epistemology. Here I argue that Dewey's pragmatic epistemology may be better fit to the task. I start by pointing out the profound similarities between Dewey's view on cognition and that emerging from literature of more recent date. Crucially, the benefit of looking at Dewey is t…Read more
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867Modelling the truth of scientific beliefs with cultural evolutionary theorySynthese 191 (1). 2014.Evolutionary anthropologists and archaeologists have been considerably successful in modelling the cumulative evolution of culture, of technological skills and knowledge in particular. Recently, one of these models has been introduced in the philosophy of science by De Cruz and De Smedt (Philos Stud 157:411–429, 2012), in an attempt to demonstrate that scientists may collectively come to hold more truth-approximating beliefs, despite the cognitive biases which they individually are known to be s…Read more
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47How Norms in Technology Ought to Be InterpretedTechné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 10 (1): 95-108. 2006.This paper defends the claim that there are — at least — two kinds of normativity in technological practice. The first concerns what engineers ought to do and the second concerns normative statements about artifacts. The claim is controversial, since the standard approach to normativity, namely normative realism, actually denies artifacts any kind of normativity; according to the normative realist, normativity applies exclusively to human agents. In other words, normative realists hold that only…Read more
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17Chimpocentrism and reconstructions of human evolutionStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 45 (1): 12-21. 2014.Chimpanzees, but very few other animals, figure prominently in attempts to reconstruct the evolution of uniquely human traits. In particular, the chimpanzee is used to identify traits unique to humans, and thus in need of reconstruction; to initialize the reconstruction, by taking its state to reflect the state of the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees; as a baseline against which to test evolutionary hypotheses. Here I point out the flaws in this three-step procedure, and show how t…Read more
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35From individual cognition to populational cultureBehavioral and Brain Sciences 35 (4): 245-262. 2012.In my response to the commentaries from a collection of esteemed researchers, I reassess and eventually find largely intact my claim that human tool use evidences higher social and non-social cognitive ability. Nonetheless, I concede that my examination of individual-level cognitive traits does not offer a full explanation of cumulative culture yet. For that, one needs to incorporate them into population-dynamic models of cultural evolution. I briefly describe my current and future work on this.
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2993The cognitive bases of human tool useBehavioral and Brain Sciences 35 (4): 203-262. 2012.This article has two goals. First, it synthesizes and critically assesses current scientific knowledge about the cognitive bases of human tool use. Second, it shows how the cognitive traits reviewed help to explain why technological accumulation evolved so markedly in humans, and so modestly in apes.
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308Knowledge without credit, exhibit 4: Extended cognition (review)Synthese 181 (3): 515-529. 2011.The Credit Theory of Knowledge (CTK)—as expressed by such figures as John Greco, Wayne Riggs, and Ernest Sosa—holds that knowing that p implies deserving epistemic credit for truly believing that p . Opponents have presented three sorts of counterexamples to CTK: S might know that p without deserving credit in cases of (1) innate knowledge (Lackey, Kvanvig); (2) testimonial knowledge (Lackey); or (3) perceptual knowledge (Pritchard). The arguments of Lackey, Kvanvig and Pritchard, however, are e…Read more
Eindhoven, North Brabant, Netherlands
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |