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37The language faculty and the interpretation of linguisticsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1): 18-19. 1980.
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52Haugeland on representation and intentionalityIn Hugh Clapin (ed.), Philosophy of Mental Representation, Oxford University Press Uk. 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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34Traits 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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100Representation and indicationIn Hugh Clapin (ed.), Representation in Mind: New Approaches to Mental Representation, 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
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119Why 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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105Meaning and Content in Cognitive ScienceIn Richard Schantz (ed.), Prospects for Meaning, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 365-382. 2012.What are the prospects for a cognitive science of meaning? As stated, we think this question is ill posed, for it invites the conflation of several importantly different semantic concepts. In this paper, we want to distinguish the sort of meaning that is an explanandum for cognitive science—something we are going to call meaning—from the sort of meaning that is an explanans in cognitive science—something we are not going to call meaning at all, but rather content. What we are going to call …Read more
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8Mind in Science: A History of Explanations in Psychology and Physics. Richard L. GregoryIsis 73 (3): 441-441. 1982.
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72Two troublesome claims about qualities in Locke's essayPhilosophical Review 84 (3): 401-418. 1975.In book two, Chapter eight of the essay, Locke claims that primary qualities, Unlike secondary qualities, Are really in objects and are resemblances of our ideas. The idioms of containment and of resemblance are explained as formulations of what jonathan bennett calls the analytic thesis and the causal thesis. It is argued that locke was concerned to distinguish primary qualities from what he calls secondary qualities because he thought the latter were not really qualities at all but mere powers…Read more
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60Analysis and subsumption in the behaviorism of HullPhilosophy of Science 50 (March): 96-111. 1983.The background hypothesis of this essay is that psychological phenomena are typically explained, not by subsuming them under psychological laws, but by functional analysis. Causal subsumption is an appropriate strategy for explaining changes of state, but not for explaining capacities, and it is capacities that are the central explananda of psychology. The contrast between functional analysis and causal subsumption is illustrated, and the background hypothesis supported, by a critical reassessme…Read more
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510States, causes, and the law of inertiaPhilosophical Studies 29 (1). 1976.I argue that Galileo regarded unaccelerated motion as requiring cause to sustain in. In an inclined plane experiment, the cause ceases when the incline ceases. When the incline ceases, what ceases is acceleration, not motion. Hence, unaccelerated motion requires no cause to sustain it.
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54On an Argument for Truth-FunctionalityAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 9 (3). 1972.Quine argued that any context allowing substitution of logical equivalents and coextensive terms is truth functional. We argue that Quine's proof for this claim is flawed.
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476Inexplicit informationIn Myles Brand (ed.), The Representation Of Knowledge And Belief, Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 1986.A discussion of a number of ways that information can be present in a computer program without being explicitly represented.
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153Conceptual role semantics and the explanatory role of contentPhilosophical Studies 65 (1-2): 103-127. 1992.I've tried to argue that there is more to representational content than CRS can acknowledge. CRS is attractive, I think, because of its rejection of atomism, and because it is a plausible theory of targets. But those are philosopher's concerns. Someone interested in building a person needs to understand representation, because, as AI researchers have urged for some time, good representation is the secret of good performance. I have just gestured in the direction I think a viable theory of repres…Read more
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31Biological preparedness and evolutionary explanationCognition 73 (3). 1999.It is commonly supposed that evolutionary explanations of cognitive phenomena involve the assumption that the capacities to be explained are both innate and modular. This is understandable: independent selection of a trait requires that it be both heritable and largely decoupled from other ”nearby’ traits. Cognitive capacities realized as innate modules would certainly satisfy these contraints. A viable evolutionary cognitive psychology, however, requires neither extreme nativism nor modularity,…Read more
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2The role of mental meaning in psychological explanationIn Brian P. McLaughlin (ed.), Dretske and his critics, Blackwell. 1991.
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 |