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679Truth and meaningIn Joseph Keim-Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & David Shier (eds.), Meaning and Truth: Investigations in Philosophical Semantics., Seven Bridges Press. pp. 175-197. 2002.D O N A L D D AV I D S O N’S “ Meaning and Truth,” re vo l u t i o n i zed our conception of how truth and meaning are related (Davidson ). In that famous art i c l e , Davidson put forw a rd the bold conjecture that meanings are satisfaction conditions, and that a Tarskian theory of truth for a language is a theory of meaning for that language. In “Meaning and Truth,” Davidson proposed only that a Tarskian truth theory is a theory of meaning. But in “Theories of Me a n i n g and Learnabl…Read more
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30Representation and covariationIn Stuart Silvers (ed.), ReRepresentation, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1989.
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3Interpretational semanticsIn Stephen P. Stich & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), Mental Representation: A Reader, Blackwell. 1994.This is a condensed version of the material in chapters 8-10 in Meaning and Mental Representation (MIT, 1989). It is an explanation and defence of a theory of content for the mind considered as a symbolic computational process. It is a view i abandoned shortly thereafter when I abandoned symbolic computatioalism as a viable theory of cognition.
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275Innate modules vs innate learning biasesCognitive Processing. 2005.Proponents of the dominant paradigm in evolutionary psychology argue that a viable evolutionary cognitive psychology requires that specific cognitive capacities be heritable and “quasi-independent” from other heritable traits, and that these requirements are best satisfied by innate cognitive modules. We argue here that neither of these are required in order to describe and explain how evolution shaped the mind
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628Explanation and SubsumptionPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1978. 1978.The thesis that subsumption is sufficient for explanation is dying out, but the thesis that it is necessary is alive and well. It is difficult to attack this thesis: non-subsumptive counter-examples are declared incomplete, or mere promissory notes. No theory, it is thought, can be explanatory unless it resorts to subsumption at some point. In this paper I attack this thesis by describing a theory that (1) would explain every event it could describe, (2) does not explain by subsumption, and (3) …Read more
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280Functions: New Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology and Biology (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2002.But what are functions? Here, 15 leading scholars of philosophy of psychology and philosophy of biology present new essays on functions.
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39The Philosophical Problem of Truth-OfCanadian Journal of Philosophy 5 (1). 1975.There is a certain view abroad in the land concerning the philosophical problems raised by Tarskian semantics. This view has it that a Tarskian theory of truth in a language accomplishes nothing of interest beyond the definition of truth in terms of satisfaction, and, further, that what is missing — the only thing that would yield a solution to the philosophical problem of truth when added to Tarskian semantics — is a reduction of satisfaction to a non-semantic relation. It seems to me that this…Read more
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37The language faculty and the interpretation of linguisticsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1): 18-19. 1980.
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338Neo-teleologyIn Andre Ariew, Robert Cummins & Mark Perlman (eds.), Functions: New Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology and Biology, Oxford University Press. 2002.Neo-teleology is the two part thesis that, e.g., (i) we have hearts because of what hearts are for: Hearts are for blood circulation, not the production of a pulse, so hearts are there--animals have them--because their function is to circulate the blood, and (ii) that (i) is explained by natural selection: traits spread through populations because of their functions. This paper attacks this popular doctrine. The presence of a biological trait or structure is not explained by appeal to its functi…Read more
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52Haugeland on representation and intentionalityIn Hugh Clapin (ed.), Philosophy of Mental Representation, Oxford University Press. 2002.Haugeland doesn’t have what I would call a theory of mental representation. Indeed, it isn’t clear that he believes there is such a thing. But he does have a theory of intentionality and a correlative theory of objectivity, and it is this material that I will be discussing in what follows. It will facilitate the discussion that follows to have at hand some distinctions and accompanying terminology I introduced in Representations, Targets and Attitudes (Cummins, 1996; RTA hereafter). Couching the…Read more
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18Better total consequences: Utilitarianism and extrinsic valueMetaphilosophy 7 (3-4): 286-306. 1976.
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73Connectionism, computation, and cognitionIn Terence E. Horgan & John L. Tienson (eds.), Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 60--73. 1991.
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33Traits have not evolved to function the way they do because of a past advantageIn Francisco José Ayala & Robert Arp (eds.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of biology, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 72--88. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Functional Attribution: Meeting the Explanatory Constraint Functional Attribution: Normativity Postscript: Counterpoint Notes References.
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118Why it doesn’t matter to metaphysics what Mary learnsPhilosophical Studies 167 (3): 541-555. 2014.The Knowledge Argument of Frank Jackson has not persuaded physicalists, but their replies have not dispelled the intuition that someone raised in a black and white environment gains genuinely new knowledge when she sees colors for the first time. In what follows, we propose an explanation of this particular kind of knowledge gain that displays it as genuinely new, but orthogonal to both physicalism and phenomenology. We argue that Mary’s case is an instance of a common phenomenon in which someth…Read more
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100Representation and indicationIn Hugh Clapin (ed.), Representation in Mind, Elsevier. pp. 21--40. 2004.This paper is about two kinds of mental content and how they are related. We are going to call them representation and indication. We will begin with a rough characterization of each. The differences, and why they matter, will, hopefully, become clearer as the paper proceeds
Davis, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
17th/18th Century Philosophy |