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111Understanding when it is acceptable to interrupt a joint activity is an important part of understanding what cooperation entails. Philosophical analyses have suggested that we should release our partner from a joint activity anytime the activity conflicts with fulfilling a moral obligation. To probe young children’s understanding of this aspect, we investigated whether 3-year-old children (N = 60) are sensitive to the legitimacy of motives (selfish condition vs. moral condition) leading agents t…Read more
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13To Think or Not To Think: The apparent paradox of expert skill in music performanceEducational Philosophy and Theory 46 (6): 674-691. 2014.Expert skill in music performance involves an apparent paradox. On stage, expert musicians are required accurately to retrieve information that has been encoded over hours of practice. Yet they must also remain open to the demands of the ever-changing situational contingencies with which they are faced during performance. To further explore this apparent paradox and the way in which it is negotiated by expert musicians, this article profiles theories presented by Roger Chaffin, Hubert Dreyfus an…Read more
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17Book reviews (review)Philosophical Psychology 10 (1): 113-137. 1997.Kinds of minds, Daniel Dennett. New York: Basic Books, 1996. ISBN 0–465–07350–6Darwin's dangerous idea: evolution and the meanings of life, Daniel C. Dennett. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. ISBN 0–684–80290–2The cognitive neurosciences, Michael S. Gazzaniga (Ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. ISBN 0–262–07157–6Lessons from an optical illusion: on nature and nurture, knowledge and values, Edward M. Hundert. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. ISBN 0–674–52540‐XWittgenstein on mind…Read more
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6Marc De Mey, The Cognitive Paradigm: An Integrated Understanding of Scientific Development, reprint, with a new introduction (review)Minds and Machines 10 (1): 165-168. 2000.
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149Cognition in Skilled Action: Meshed Control and the Varieties of Skill ExperienceMind and Language 31 (1): 37-66. 2016.We present a synthetic theory of skilled action which proposes that cognitive processes make an important contribution to almost all skilled action, contrary to influential views that many skills are performed largely automatically. Cognitive control is focused on strategic aspects of performance, and plays a greater role as difficulty increases. We offer an analysis of various forms of skill experience and show that the theory provides a better explanation for the full set of these experiences …Read more
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313Cognitive control, intentions, and problem solving in skill learningSynthese 200 (6): 1-36. 2022.We investigate flexibility and problem solving in skilled action. We conducted a field study of mountain bike riding that required a learner rider to cope with major changes in technique and equipment. Our results indicate that relatively inexperienced individuals can be capable of fairly complex 'on-the-fly' problem solving which allows them to cope with new conditions. This problem solving is hard to explain for classical theories of skill because the adjustments are too large to be achieved b…Read more
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23The Skill of Translating Thought into Action: Framing The ProblemReview of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (3): 547-573. 2020.The nature of the cognition-motor interface has been brought to prominence by Butterfill & Sinigaglia, who argue that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other. Here I argue that recent empirical evidence concerning the interface contradicts several of the assumptions incorporated in Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s account, and I seek to develop a theoretical picture that will allow us to explain the structure of the interface presen…Read more
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18Correction to: The Skill of Translating Thought into Action: Framing The ProblemReview of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (3): 575-575. 2020.A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-020-00520-7
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487The Skill of Translating Thought into Action: Framing The ProblemReview of Philosophy and Psychology (3): 547-573. 2020.The nature of the cognition-motor interface has been brought to prominence by Butterfill & Sinigaglia, who argue that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other. Here I argue that recent empirical evidence concerning the interface contradicts several of the assumptions incorporated in Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s account, and I seek to develop a theoretical picture that will allow us to explain the structure of the interface presen…Read more
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122Skilled actionPhilosophy Compass 14 (11). 2019.I focus on problems defining skill and a core theoretical dispute over whether skilled action is largely automatic or consciously controlled. The dominant view in philosophy and psychology has been that skills are automatic, but an emerging body of work suggests that conscious cognition plays a significant role.
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17Using episodic memory to gauge implicit and/or indeterminate social commitments—ADDENDUMBehavioral and Brain Sciences 42. 2019.
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66Memory systems and the control of skilled actionPhilosophical Psychology 32 (5): 692-718. 2019.ABSTRACTIn keeping with the dominant view that skills are largely automatic, the standard view of memory systems distinguishes between a representational declarative system associated with cognitive processes and a performance-based procedural system. The procedural system is thought to be largely responsible for the performance of well-learned skilled actions. Here we argue that most skills do not fully automate, which entails that the declarative system should make a substantial contribution t…Read more
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16Churchland SymposiumThe Engine of Reason, the Seat of Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the BrainPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (4): 871. 1998.
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26Using episodic memory to gauge implicit and/or indeterminate social commitmentsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 41. 2018.
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43Autonomy and the emergence of intelligence: Organised interactive constructionCommunication and Cognition-Artificial Intelligence 17 (3-4): 133-157. 2000.
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M IIIII IIn Don Ross, David Spurrett, Harold Kincaid & G. Lynn Stephens (eds.), Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context, Mit Press. pp. 255. 2007.
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3797Applying Intelligence to the Reflexes: embodied skills and habits between Dreyfus and DescartesJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 42 (1): 78-103. 2011.‘There is no place in the phenomenology of fully absorbed coping’, writes Hubert Dreyfus, ‘for mindfulness. In flow, as Sartre sees, there are only attractive and repulsive forces drawing appropriate activity out of an active body’1. Among the many ways in which history animates dynamical systems at a range of distinctive timescales, the phenomena of embodied human habit, skilful movement, and absorbed coping are among the most pervasive and mundane, and the most philosophically puzzling. In thi…Read more
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78Natural sources of normativityStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (1): 104-112. 2012.
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Adaptiveness and adaptation: A new autonomy-theoretic analysis and critiqueBiology and Philosophy. forthcoming.
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64Towards a new science of the mind: Wide content and the metaphysics of organizational properties in nonlinear dynamic modelsMind and Language 13 (1): 98-109. 1998.Tim van Gelder, following Brandom, Collins and others, uses the so‐called wide content of capacities which support social, norm governed activities, such as language, to argue for their anti‐natural, abstract, but socially instituted nature and thence for the failure of the entire traditional mind‐body discussion as ill‐posed. We argue that his former conclusion is wrong, that such properties are naturalisable, complicated organisational properties of the complexly organised, non‐linearly intera…Read more
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4312 The Evolutionary Origins of VolitionIn Don Ross, David Spurrett, Harold Kincaid & G. Lynn Stephens (eds.), Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context, Mit Press. pp. 255. 2007.
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44In order to investigate cognition fundamental assumptions must be made about what, in general terms, it is. In cognitive science it is usually assumed that cognition is computational and representational. There have been well known disputes over these assumptions, with rival claims that cognition is dynamical, situated and embodied. In this paper I emphasize the relations between cognition and control. I present a model of cognition that makes the claim that it is a form of high-order control, a…Read more
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467Critical review of Chaffin, Imreh, and Crawford, Practicing Perfection: memory and piano performance.Empirical Musicology Review 3 (3): 163-172. 2008.How do concert pianists commit to memory the structure of a piece of music like Bach’s Italian Concerto, learning it well enough to remember it in the highly charged setting of a crowded performance venue, yet remaining open to the freshness of expression of the moment? Playing to this audience, in this state, now, requires openness to specificity, to interpretation, a working dynamicism that mere rote learning will not provide. Chaffin, Imreh and Crawford’s innovative and detailed research sugg…Read more
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141Self-directedness: A Process Approach to Cognition (review)Global Philosophy 14 (1-3): 157-175. 2004.Standard approaches to cognition emphasise structures (representations and rules) much more than processes, in part because this appears to be necessary to capture the normative features of cognition. However the resultant models are inflexible and face the problem of computational intractability. I argue that the ability of real world cognition to cope with complexity results from deep and subtle coupling between cognitive and non-cognitive processes. In order to capture this, theories of cogni…Read more
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35Neuroscience in Context: The New Flagship of the Cognitive SciencesBiological Theory 1 (1): 78-83. 2006.Cognitive neuroscience has come to be viewed as the flagship of the cognitive sciences and is transforming our understanding of the nature of mind. In this paper we survey several research fields in cognitive neuroscience (lateralization, neuroeconomics, and cognitive control) and note that they are making rapid progress on fundamental issues. Lateralization research is developing a comparative framework for evolutionary analysis, and is identifying individual- and population-level factors that …Read more
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129A complex systems theory of teleologyBiology and Philosophy 11 (3): 301-320. 1996.Part I [sections 2–4] draws out the conceptual links between modern conceptions of teleology and their Aristotelian predecessor, briefly outlines the mode of functional analysis employed to explicate teleology, and develops the notion of cybernetic organisation in order to distinguish teleonomic and teleomatic systems. Part II is concerned with arriving at a coherent notion of intentional control. Section 5 argues that intentionality is to be understood in terms of the representational propertie…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |