-
60When you fail to see what you were told to look for: Inattentional blindness and task instructionsConsciousness and Cognition 22 (1): 221-230. 2013.Inattentional blindness studies have shown that an unexpected object may go unnoticed if it does not share the property specified in the task instructions. Our aim was to demonstrate that observers develop an attentional set for a property not specified in the task instructions if it allows easier performance of the primary task. Three experiments were conducted using a dynamic selective-looking paradigm. Stimuli comprised four black squares and four white diamonds, so that shape and colour vari…Read more
-
64Externality, psychological explanation, and narrow contentAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 60 263-83. 1986.
-
246Pathologies of beliefMind and Language 15 (1): 1-46. 2000.In this book, psychologists and philosophers describe and discuss a range of case studies of delusional beliefs, drawing out general lessons both for the cognitive architecture of the mind and for the notion of rationality, and exploring connections between the delusional beliefs that occur in schizophrenia and the flawed understanding of beliefs that is characteristic of autism
-
65Tactile expectations and the perception of self-touch: An investigation using the rubber hand paradigmConsciousness and Cognition 19 (2): 505-519. 2010.The rubber hand paradigm is used to create the illusion of self-touch, by having the participant administer stimulation to a prosthetic hand while the Examiner, with an identical stimulus , administers stimulation to the participant’s hand. With synchronous stimulation, participants experience the compelling illusion that they are touching their own hand. In the current study, the robustness of this illusion was assessed using incongruent stimuli. The participant used the index finger of the rig…Read more
-
46Consciousness: psychological and philosophical essays (edited book)Blackwell. 1993.Consciousness is, perhaps, the aspect of our mental lives that is the most perplexing for both psychologists and philosophers. Daniel Dennett has described it as 'both the most obvious and the most mysterious feature of our minds' and attempts at definition often seem to move in circles. Thomas Nagel famously remarked that 'without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.'. These observations might suggest that consciousness - inde…Read more
-
1The philosophy of mindIn A. C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject, Oxford University Press. 1995.
-
19The problem of armchair knowledge arises when there are armchair warrants for believing the premises of a palpably valid argument, yet it is implausible that the question whether or not the conclusion of the argument is true can be settled from the armchair. In the first lecture, I presented three instances of the problem, arising from an architecturalist argument, (LOT), an externalist argument, (WATER), and an argument about colour concepts, (RED). Other instances could be presented; I shall m…Read more
-
231Epistemic Entitlement, Warrant Transmission and Easy KnowledgeAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 78 (1): 213-245. 2004.
-
3Tacit knowledge and subdoxastic statesIn A. George (ed.), Reflections on Chomsky, Blackwell. 1989.
-
97Pathologies of Belief (edited book)Blackwell. 1991.In this book, psychologists and philosophers describe and discuss a range of case studies of delusional beliefs, drawing out general lessons both for the cognitive architecture of the mind and for the notion of rationality, and exploring connections between the delusional beliefs that occur in schizophrenia and the flawed understanding of beliefs that is characteristic of autism.
-
174Folk psychology and mental simulationIn Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, Cambridge University Press. pp. 53-82. 1998.This paper is about the contemporary debate concerning folk psychology – the debate between the proponents of the theory theory of folk psychology and the friends of the simulation alternative.<sup>1</sup> At the outset, we need to ask: What should we mean by this term ‘folk psychology’?
-
238Reference, contingency, and the two-dimensional frameworkPhilosophical Studies 118 (1-2): 83-131. 2004.I review and reconsider some of the themes of ‘Two notions of necessity’ (Davies and Humberstone, 1980) and attempt to reach a deeper understanding and appreciation of Gareth Evans’s reflections (in ‘Reference and contingency’, 1979) on both modality and reference. My aim is to plot the relationships between the notions of necessity that Humberstone and I characterised in terms of operators in two-dimensional modal logic, the notions of superficial and deep necessity that Evans himself described, …Read more
-
12Ethics briefingsJournal of Medical Ethics 36 (11): 716-718. 2010.In August, Amnesty International and the World Medical Association expressed concern at reports that a judge in Saudi Arabia had asked several hospitals in the country whether they could perform an operation to damage a man's spinal cord as punishment for attacking another man and leaving him paralysed. The man had already been sentenced to seven months imprisonment for the crime, the injured victim requested the further sentence under Sharia Law, which is strictly enforced across Saudi Arabia. …Read more
-
283Folk psychology and mental simulationRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 43 53-82. 1998.This paper is about the contemporary debate concerning folk psychology – the debate between the proponents of the theory theory of folk psychology and the friends of the simulation alternative.<sup>1</sup> At the outset, we need to ask: What should we mean by this term ‘folk psychology’?
-
102Externalism and armchair knowledgeIn Paul Artin Boghossian & Christopher Peacocke (eds.), New Essays on the A Priori, Oxford University Press. pp. 384--414. 2000.[I]f you could know a priori that you are in a given mental state, and your being in that state conceptually or logically implies the existence of external objects, then you could know a priori that the external world exists. Since you obviously _can.
-
27Mental Simulation: Evaluations and Applications - Reading in Mind and Language (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 1995.Many philosophers and psychologists argue that out everyday ability to predict and explain the actions and mental states of others is grounded in out possession of a primitive 'folk' psychological theory. Recently however, this theory has come under challenge from the simulation alternative. This alternative view says that human beings are able to predict and explain each other's actions by using the resources of their own minds to simulate the psychological aetiology of the actions of the other…Read more
-
117Understanding Minds and Understanding Communicated Meanings in SchizophreniaMind and Language 17 (1‐2): 68-104. 2002.The work reported in this paper investigated the putative functional dependence of pragmatic language skills on general mind‐reading capacity by testing theory‐of‐mind abilities and understanding of non‐literal speech in patients with schizophrenia and in healthy controls. Patients showed difficulties with inferring mental states on a false‐belief picture‐sequencing task and with understanding metaphors and irony on a story‐comprehension task. These difficulties were independent of low verbal IQ…Read more
-
143Consciousness and the varieties of aboutnessIn C. Macdonald (ed.), Philosophy of Psychology: Debates on Psychological Explanation, Oxford University Press. pp. 2. 1995.Thinking is special. There is nothing quite like it. Thinking
-
24Klassische Aufklärung. Überlegungen zur Modernisierung der deutsch-jüdischen Kultur am Beispiel des Exlibris von David FriedländerZeitschrift für Religions- Und Geistesgeschichte 55 (1): 40-61. 2003.
-
23Thinking persons and cognitive scienceAI and Society 4 (1): 39-50. 1990.Cognitive psychology and cognitive science are concerned with a domain of cognition that is much broader than the realm of judgement, belief, and inference. The idea of states with semantic content is extended far beyond the space of reasons and justification. Within this broad class of states we should, however, differentiate between the states distinctive of thinking persons — centrally, beliefs, desires, and intentions — and other states. The idea of consciousness does not furnish a principle…Read more
-
28An approach to the philosophy of cognitive scienceIn Frank Jackson & Michael A. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Analytic Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2005.Expanded version of a chapter to appear in The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Analytic Philosophy, edited by Frank Jackson and Michael Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
-
29The question posed by Dunn and Kirsner (D&K) is an instance of a more general one: What can we infer from data? One answer, if we are talking about logically valid deductive inference, is that we cannot infer theories from data. A theory is supposed to explain the data and so cannot be a mere summary of the data to be explained. The truth of an explanatory theory goes beyond the data and so is never logically guaranteed by the data. This is not just a point about cognitive neuropsychology, or ev…Read more
-
87Consciousness without conflationBehavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2): 248-249. 1995.Although information-processing theories cannot provide a full explanatory account of P-consciousness, there is less conflation and confusion in cognitive psychology than Block suspects. Some of the reasoning that Block criticises can be interpreted plausibly in the light of a folk psychological view of the relation between P-consciousness and A-consciousness.
-
33Externalism, self-knowledge and transmission of warrantIn Maria J. Frapolli & E. Romero (eds.), Meaning, Basic Self-Knowledge, and Mind, Csli Publications. 2003.Externalism about some mental property, M, is the thesis that whether a person (or other physical being) has M depends, not only on conditions inside the person
-
48Philosophy of LanguageIn Nicholas Bunnin & E. P. Tsui‐James (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, BlackwellThis chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: Questions of Meaning Theories of Meaning Language, Mind and Metaphysics: Questions of Priority Semantic Theories: Davidson's Programme Analysing the Concept of Meaning: Grice's Programme Pragmatics: Conversational Implicature and Relevance Theory.