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286Folk 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’?
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105Externalism 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.
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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.
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118Understanding 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
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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
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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
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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
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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)
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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
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90Consciousness 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.
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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.
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58Two hands are better than one: A new assessment method and a new interpretation of the non-visual illusion of self-touchConsciousness and Cognition 20 (3): 956-964. 2011.A simple experimental paradigm creates the powerful illusion that one is touching one’s own hand even when the two hands are separated by 15 cm. The participant uses her right hand to administer stimulation to a prosthetic hand while the Examiner provides identical stimulation to the participant’s receptive left hand. Change in felt position of the receptive hand toward the prosthetic hand has previously led to the interpretation that the participant experiences self-touch at the location of the…Read more
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19Ethics briefingsJournal of Medical Ethics 39 (7): 483-484. 2013.Ever so often in the UK, there is a flurry of activity around the information requirements of donor-conceived individuals. In April 2013, it was the launch of a report from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics that brought the issue back to public consciousness.1Since 1991, information about treatment with donor gametes or embryos has been collected by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. Since then, over 35 000 donor-conceived individuals have been born through treatment in licensed c…Read more
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191Monothematic delusions: Towards a two-factor accountPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 8 (2-3): 133-58. 2001.We provide a battery of examples of delusions against which theoretical accounts can be tested. Then, we identify neuropsychological anomalies that could produce the unusual experiences that may lead, in turn, to the delusions in our battery. However, we argue against Maher’s view that delusions are false beliefs that arise as normal responses to anomalous experiences. We propose, instead, that a second factor is required to account for the transition from unusual experience to delusional belief…Read more
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102Autonomous psychology and the moderate neuron doctrineBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (5): 849-850. 1999._Two notions of autonomy are distinguished. The respective_ _denials that psychology is autonomous from neurobiology are neuron_ _doctrines, moderate and radical. According to the moderate neuron_ _doctrine, inter-disciplinary interaction need not aim at reduction. It is_ _proposed that it is more plausible that there is slippage from the_ _moderate to the radical neuron doctrine than that there is confusion_ _between the radical neuron doctrine and the trivial version._.
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20Cognitive scienceIn Frank Jackson & Michael Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, Oxford University Press New York. 2005.The so-called ‘cognitive revolution’ (Gardner, 1985) in American psychology owed much to developments in adjacent disciplines, especially theoretical linguistics and computer science. Indeed, the cognitive revolution brought forth, not only a change in the conception of psychology, but also an inter-disciplinary approach to understanding the mind, involving philosophy, anthropology and neuroscience along with computer science, linguistics and psychology. Many commentators agree in dating the con…Read more
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5Identity Or History?: Marcus Herz and the End of the EnlightenmentWayne State University Press. 1995.Martin Davies draws parallels between Herz's personal life and Prussian politics and culture to make sense of the end of the eighteenth century when Enlightenment tradition and Romantic thought coincided.
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66Two purposes of arguing and two epistemic projectsIn Ian Ravenscroft (ed.), Minds, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank Jackson, Oxford University Press. pp. 337. 2009.
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13In the first lecture, I presented three instances of the problem of armchair knowledge arising from the (LOT), (RED), and (WATER) arguments. In each case, there are armchair warrants for believing the premises, but it is implausible that the question whether or not the conclusion of the argument is true could be settled from the armchair
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113Folk Psychology: The Theory of Mind Debate (edited book)Blackwell. 1995.Many philosophers and psychologists argue that normal adult human beings possess a primitive or 'folk' psychological theory. Recently, however, this theory has come under challenge from the simulation alternative. This alternative view says that human bings are able to predict and explain each others' actions by using the resources of their own minds to simuate the psychological etiology of the actions of others. The thirteen essays in this volume present the foundations of theory of mind debate…Read more
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171The mental simulation debatePhilosophical Issues 5 189-218. 1994.For philosophers, the current phase of the debate with which this volume is concerned can be taken to have begun in 1986, when Jane Heal and Robert Gordon published their seminal papers (Heal, 1986; Gordon, 1986; though see also, for example, Stich, 1981; Dennett, 1981). They raised a dissenting voice against what was becoming a philosophical orthodoxy: that our everyday, or folk, understanding of the mind should be thought of as theoretical. In opposition to this picture, Gordon and Heal argued…Read more
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12Aunty's argument and armchair knowledgeIn J.M. Larrazabal & L.A Perez Miranda (eds.), Language, Knowledge, and Representation, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2004.In my contribution to the Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on Cognitive Science, held in Donostia (San Sebasti.
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7Ethics briefingsJournal of Medical Ethics 36 (9): 574-576. 2010.Proponents of fetal rights argue that, from the moment of conception, a fetus has significant human rights. There are degrees of opinion, however, about the scope of those rights, with some arguing that, in certain circumstances, such as where the conception is the result of rape, the mother's rights predominate. Others argue that the fetus' rights are absolute and should override the woman's right to life and health so that pregnancies cannot be terminated, even to save women's lives. Various c…Read more
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80Persons and their underpinningsPhilosophical Explorations 3 (1): 43-62. 2000.I defend a conception of the relationship between the personal and sub-personal levels as interaction withoutreduction.There are downward inferences from the personal to the sub-personal level but we find upward explanatory gaps when we try to construct illuminating accounts of personal level conditions using just sub-personal level notions. This conception faces several serious challenges but the objection that I consider in this paper says that, when theories support downward inferences from t…Read more
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162The mental simulation debate: A progress reportIn Peter Carruthers & Peter K. Smith (eds.), Theories of Theories of Mind, Cambridge University Press. pp. 119--137. 1996.1. Introduction For philosophers, the current phase of the debate with which this volume is concerned can be taken to have begun in 1986, when Jane Heal and Robert Gordon published their seminal papers (Heal, 1986; Gordon, 1986; though see also, for example, Stich, 1981; Dennett, 1981). They raised a dissenting voice against what was becoming a philosophical orthodoxy: that our everyday, or folk, understanding of the mind should be thought of as theoretical. In opposition to this picture, Gordon…Read more
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78Externalism and experienceIn Ned Block & Owen J. Flanagan (eds.), The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates, Mit Press. pp. 244-250. 1997.In this paper, I shall defend externalism for the contents of perceptual experience. A perceptual experience has representational properties; it presents the world as being a certain way. A visual experience, for example, might present the world to a subject as containing a surface with a certain shape, lying at a certain distance, in a certain direction; perhaps a square with sides about 30 cm, lying about one metre in front of the subject, in a direction about 20 degrees to the left of straigh…Read more
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138Language, thought, and the language of thought (aunty's own argument revisited)In P. Carruthers & J. Boucher (eds.), Language and Thought: Interdisciplinary Themes, Cambridge University Press. pp. 226. 1998.In this chapter, I shall be examining an argument for the language of thought hypothesis
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6Multiple Review of Norton Nelkin's Consciousness and the Origins of Thought: IntroductionMind and Language 12 (2): 178-180. 1997.