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20Letters to the EditorProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 75 (2). 2001.
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92818 Ethical Issues in Chronic Pain ResearchIn B. L. Gant & M. E. Schatman (eds.), Ethical Issues in Chronic Pain Management, . pp. 295. 2006.As the above quote clearly highlights, it is the responsibility of researchers and research supervisors to be certain that their research staff and students assistants are very familiar with all of the ethical principles and current standards relevant to the research they are conducting. Indeed, they must take an active role in being certain that their research staff and students complete appropriate training in these ethical principles and standards, and how they apply them to the research cont…Read more
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229Machine morality: bottom-up and top-down approaches for modelling human moral faculties (review)AI and Society 22 (4): 565-582. 2008.The implementation of moral decision making abilities in artificial intelligence (AI) is a natural and necessary extension to the social mechanisms of autonomous software agents and robots. Engineers exploring design strategies for systems sensitive to moral considerations in their choices and actions will need to determine what role ethical theory should play in defining control architectures for such systems. The architectures for morally intelligent agents fall within two broad approaches: th…Read more
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259A Conceptual and Computational Model of Moral Decision Making in Human and Artificial AgentsTopics in Cognitive Science 2 (3): 454-485. 2010.Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in general, comprehensive models of human cognition. Such models aim to explain higher-order cognitive faculties, such as deliberation and planning. Given a computational representation, the validity of these models can be tested in computer simulations such as software agents or embodied robots. The push to implement computational models of this kind has created the field of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Moral decision making is arguabl…Read more
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293The close kinship between humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans is a central theme among participants in the debate about human treatment of the other apes. Empathy is probably the single most important determinant of actual human moral behavior, including the treatment of nonhuman animals. Given the applied nature of questions about the treatment of captive apes, it is entirely appropriate that the close relationship between us should be highlighted. But the role that relatedness should…Read more
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176Ethics and the science of animal mindsTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 27 (4): 375-394. 2006.Ethicists have commonly appealed to science to bolster their arguments for elevating the moral status of nonhuman animals. I describe a framework within which I take many ethicists to be making such appeals. I focus on an apparent gap in this framework between those properties of animals that are part of the scientific consensus, and those to which ethicists typically appeal in their arguments. I will describe two different ways of diminishing the appearance of the gap, and argue that both of th…Read more
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1Review of Peter Carruthers' Language, thought, and consciousness (review)Philosophical Psychology 11 91-94. 1998.
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706Mining Arguments From 19th Century Philosophical Texts Using Topic Based ModellingIn Nancy Green, Kevin Ashley, Diane Litman, Chris Reed & Vern Walker (eds.), Proceedings of the First Workshop on Argumentation Mining, . pp. 79-87. 2014.In this paper we look at the manual analysis of arguments and how this compares to the current state of automatic argument analysis. These considerations are used to develop a new approach combining a machine learning algorithm to extract propositions from text, with a topic model to determine argument structure. The results of this method are compared to a manual analysis.
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493We show how faceted search using a combination of traditional classification systems and mixed-membership topic models can go beyond keyword search to inform resource discovery, hypothesis formulation, and argument extraction for interdisciplinary research. Our test domain is the history and philosophy of scientific work on animal mind and cognition. The methods can be generalized to other research areas and ultimately support a system for semi-automatic identification of argument structures. We…Read more
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134A Perceptual Account of Symbolic ReasoningFrontiers in Psychology 5. 2014.People can be taught to manipulate symbols according to formal mathematical and logical rules. Cognitive scientists have traditionally viewed this capacity—the capacity for symbolic reasoning—as grounded in the ability to internally represent numbers, logical relationships, and mathematical rules in an abstract, amodal fashion. We present an alternative view, portraying symbolic reasoning as a special kind of embodied reasoning in which arithmetic and logical formulae, externally represented as …Read more
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94Models, Mechanisms, and Animal MindsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 52 (S1): 75-97. 2014.In this paper, I describe grounds for dissatisfaction with certain aspects of the sciences of animal cognition and argue that a turn toward mathematical modeling of animal cognition is warranted. I consider some objections to this call and argue that the implications of such a turn are not as drastic for ordinary, commonsense understanding of animal minds as they might seem
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135Recognizing group cognitionCognitive Systems Research 11 (4): 378-395. 2010.In this paper, we approach the idea of group cognition from the perspective of the “extended mind” thesis, as a special case of the more general claim that systems larger than the individual human, but containing that human, are capable of cognition (Clark, 2008; Clark & Chalmers, 1998). Instead of deliberating about “the mark of the cognitive” (Adams & Aizawa, 2008), our discussion of group cognition is tied to particular cognitive capacities. We review recent studies of group problem-solving a…Read more
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41Comparative cognitive studies, not folk phylogeny, pleaseBehavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (1): 122-123. 1996.Barresi & Moore (B&M) provide a useful tool for the comparative study of social cognition that could, however, be improved by more subtle analysis of first person information about intentional relations. Knowledge of misrepresentation also needs to be better handled within the theory. I urge skepticism about B&M's sweeping phylogenetic claims.
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68Cognitive ethology: Slayers, skeptics, and proponentsIn R. Mitchell, Nicholas S. Thompson & H. L. Miles (eds.), Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals, Suny Press. pp. 313--334. 1997.
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201Animal play and the evolution of morality: An ethological approachTopoi 24 (2): 125-135. 2005.In this paper we argue that there is much to learn about “wild justice” and the evolutionary origins of morality – behaving fairly – by studying social play behavior in group-living mammals. Because of its relatively wide distribution among the mammals, ethological investigation of play, informed by interdisciplinary cooperation, can provide a comparative perspective on the evolution of ethical behavior that is broader than is provided by the usual focus on primate sociality. Careful analysis …Read more
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170The discovery of animal consciousness: An optimistic assessment (review)Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 10 (3): 217-225. 1997.
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165Mental contentBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (4): 537-553. 1992.Daniel Dennett and Stephen Stich have independently, but similarly, argued that the contents of mental states cannot be specified precisely enough for the purposes of scientific prediction and explanation. Dennett takes this to support his view that the proper role for mentalistic terms in science is heuristic. Stich takes it to support his view that cognitive science should be done without reference to mental content at all. I defend a realist understanding of mental content against these attac…Read more
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46Does evidence from ethology support bicoded cognitive maps?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (5): 570-571. 2013.The presumption that navigation requires a cognitive map leads to its conception as an abstract computational problem. Instead of loading the question in favor of an inquiry into the metric structure and evolutionary origin of cognitive maps, the task should first be to establish that a map-like representation actually is operative in real animals navigating real environments
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810Animal painNoûs 38 (4): 617-643. 2004.Which nonhuman animals experience conscious pain?1 This question is central to the debate about animal welfare, as well as being of basic interest to scientists and philosophers of mind. Nociception—the capacity to sense noxious stimuli—is one of the most primitive sensory capacities. Neurons functionally specialized for nociception have been described in invertebrates such as the leech Hirudo medicinalis and the marine snail Aplysia californica (Walters 1996). Is all nociception accompanied by …Read more
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148Biological function, adaptation, and natural designPhilosophy of Science 62 (4): 609-622. 1995.Recently something close to a consensus about the best way to naturalize the notion of biological function appears to be emerging. Nonetheless, teleological notions in biology remain controversial. In this paper we provide a naturalistic analysis for the notion of natural design. Many authors assume that natural design should be assimilated directly to function. Others find the notion problematic because it suggests that evolution is a directed process. We argue that both of these views are mist…Read more
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186Teleological Notions in BiologyIn Ed Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2012.Teleological terms such as "function" and "design" appear frequently in the biological sciences. Examples of teleological claims include: A (biological) function of stotting by antelopes is to communicate to predators that they have been detected. Eagles' wings are (naturally) designed for soaring. Teleological notions were commonly associated with the pre-Darwinian view that the biological realm provides evidence of conscious design by a supernatural creator. Even after creationist viewpoints w…Read more
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221Animal Concepts Revisited: the use of Self- Monitoring as an Empirical Approach (review)Erkenntnis 51 (1): 537-544. 1999.Many psychologists and philosophers believe that the close correlation between human language and human concepts makes the attribution of concepts to nonhuman animals highly questionable. I argue for a three-part approach to attributing concepts to animals. The approach goes beyond the usual discrimination tests by seeking evidence for self-monitoring of discrimination errors. Such evidence can be collected without relying on language and, I argue, the capacity for error-detection can only be …Read more
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160Species of Mind: The Philosophy and Biology of Cognitive Ethology (edited book)MIT Press. 1997.The heart of this book is the reciprocal relationship between philosophical theories of mind and empirical studies of animal cognition.
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855Mirror, Mirror in the Brain, What's the Monkey Stand to Gain?Noûs 44 (2). 2010.Primatologists generally agree that monkeys lack higher-order intentional capacities related to theory of mind. Yet the discovery of the so-called "mirror neurons" in monkeys suggests to many neuroscientists that they have the rudiments of intentional understanding. Given a standard philosophical view about intentional understanding, which requires higher-order intentionahty, a paradox arises. Different ways of resolving the paradox are assessed, using evidence from neural, cognitive, and behavi…Read more
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114Intentionality, social play, and definitionBiology and Philosophy 9 (1): 63-74. 1994.Social play is naturally characterized in intentional terms. An evolutionary account of social play could help scientists to understand the evolution of cognition and intentionality. Alexander Rosenberg (1990) has argued that if play is characterized intentionally or functionally, it is not a behavioral phenotype suitable for evolutionary explanation. If he is right, his arguments would threaten many projects in cognitive ethology. We argue that Rosenberg's arguments are unsound and that intenti…Read more
UCLA
Department Of Philosophy
Alumnus
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Computing and Information |
PhilPapers Editorships
Animal Minds |
Animal Communication |
Animal Minds, Misc |