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175Epistemological strata and the rules of right reasonSynthese 141 (3). 2004.It has been commonplace in epistemology since its inception to idealize away from computational resource constraints, i.e., from the constraints of time and memory. One thought is that a kind of ideal rationality can be specified that ignores the constraints imposed by limited time and memory, and that actual cognitive performance can be seen as an interaction between the norms of ideal rationality and the practicalities of time and memory limitations. But a cornerstone of naturalistic epistemol…Read more
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51The World in the HeadOxford University Press. 2010.Robert Cummins presents a series of essays motivated by the following question: Is the mind a collection of beliefs and desires that respond to and condition our feeling and perceptual experiences, or is this just a natural way to talk about it? What sort of conceptual framework do we need to understand what is really going on in our brains?
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253Biological 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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305Programs in the explanation of behaviorPhilosophy of Science 44 (June): 269-87. 1977.The purpose of this paper is to set forth a sense in which programs can and do explain behavior, and to distinguish from this a number of senses in which they do not. Once we are tolerably clear concerning the sort of explanatory strategy being employed, two rather interesting facts emerge; (1) though it is true that programs are "internally represented," this fact has no explanatory interest beyond the mere fact that the program is executed; (2) programs which are couched in information process…Read more
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The Mind of the Matter: Comments on Paul ChurchlandPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1984 791-798. 1984.
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84Intention, meaning and truth-conditionsPhilosophical Studies 35 (4). 1979.In this paper, I sketch a revision of jonathan bennett's "meaning-Nominalist strategy" for explaining the conventional meanings of utterance-Types. Bennett's strategy does not explain sentence-Meaning by appeal to sub-Sentential meanings, And hence cannot hope to yield a theory that assigns a meaning to every sentence. I revise the strategy to make it applicable to predication and identification. The meaning-Convention for a term can then be used to fix its satisfaction conditions. Adapting a fa…Read more
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1Inexplicit representationIn Myles Brand (ed.), The Representation Of Knowledge And Belief, Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 1986.
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282Reflection on Reflective EquilibriumIn Michael Raymond DePaul & William M. Ramsey (eds.), Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and its Role in Philosophical Inquiry, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 113-128. 1998.As a procedure, reflective equilibrium is simply a familiar kind of standard scientific method with a new name. A theory is constructed to account for a set of observations. Recalcitrant data may be rejected as noise or explained away as the effects of interference of some sort. Recalcitrant data that cannot be plausibly dismissed force emendations in theory. What counts as a plausible dismissal depends, among other things, on the going theory, as well as on background theory and on knowledge th…Read more
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100Two tales of functional explanationPhilosophical Psychology 27 (6): 773-788. 2014.This paper considers two ways functions figure into scientific explanations: (i) via laws?events are causally explained by subsuming those events under functional laws; and (ii) via designs?capacities are explained by specifying the functional design of a system. We argue that a proper understanding of how functions figure into design explanations of capacities makes it clear why such functions are ill-suited to figure into functional-cum-causal law explanations of events, as those explanations …Read more
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119Methodological reflections on beliefIn Radu J. Bogdan (ed.), Mind and Common Sense: Philosophical Essays on Common Sense Psychology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 53--70. 1991.
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Comments on Smith on CumminsIn Hugh Clapin (ed.), Philosophy of Mental Representation, Oxford University Press Uk. 2002.
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56Form, interpretation, and the uniqueness of content: A response to Morris (review)Minds and Machines 1 (1): 31-42. 1991.In response to Michael Morris, I attempt to refute the crucial second premise of the argument, which states that the formality condition cannot be satisfied “non-stipulatively” in computational systems. I defend the view of representation urged in Meaning and Mental Representation against the charge that it makes content stipulative and therefore irrelevant to the explanation of cognition. Some other reservations are expressed
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66Culpability and Mental DisorderCanadian Journal of Philosophy 10 (2). 1980.The "conservative" holds that mental disorder exculpates only if it is evidence of a standard excuse or justification, i.e., one that a mentally "normal" person could have. The Liberal holds that mental disorder sometimes exculpates in itself. I argue that moral culpability in the case of mental disorder is often moot, and that the real issue is what a court should be allowed to do with such individuals. This undermines the idea that culpability is a necessary condition for sentencing, but we al…Read more
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681Truth 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.), Representation: Readings In The Philosophy Of Mental Representation, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1988.
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277Innate 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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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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632Explanation 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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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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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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338Neo-teleologyIn André 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
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 |