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1296Against aliefPhilosophical Studies 165 (1): 197-211. 2013.This essay attempts to clarify the nature and structure of aliefs. First I distinguish between a robust notion of aliefs and a deflated one. A robust notion of aliefs would introduce aliefs into our psychological ontology as a hitherto undiscovered kind, whereas a deflated notion of aliefs would identify aliefs as a set of pre-existing psychological states. I then propose the following dilemma: one the one hand, if aliefs have propositional content, then it is unclear exactly how aliefs differ f…Read more
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793Numerical ArchitectureTopics in Cognitive Science 5 (1): 367-386. 2013.The idea that there is a “Number Sense” (Dehaene, 1997) or “Core Knowledge” of number ensconced in a modular processing system (Carey, 2009) has gained popularity as the study of numerical cognition has matured. However, these claims are generally made with little, if any, detailed examination of which modular properties are instantiated in numerical processing. In this article, I aim to rectify this situation by detailing the modular properties on display in numerical cognitive processing. In t…Read more
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3586Attitude, Inference, Association: On the Propositional Structure of Implicit BiasNoûs 50 (3): 629-658. 2015.The overwhelming majority of those who theorize about implicit biases posit that these biases are caused by some sort of association. However, what exactly this claim amounts to is rarely specified. In this paper, I distinguish between different understandings of association, and I argue that the crucial senses of association for elucidating implicit bias are the cognitive structure and mental process senses. A hypothesis is subsequently derived: if associations really underpin implicit biases, …Read more
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2106Believing without Reason, or: Why Liberals Shouldn’t Watch Fox NewsThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 22 42-52. 2015.
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1396Seeing and Conceptualizing: Modularity and the Shallow Contents of PerceptionPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 97 (2): 267-283. 2017.After presenting evidence about categorization behavior, this paper argues for the following theses: 1) that there is a border between perception and cognition; 2) that the border is to be characterized by perception being modular (and cognition not being so); 3) that perception outputs conceptualized representations, so views that posit that the output of perception is solely non-conceptual are false; and 4) that perceptual content consists of basic-level categories and not richer contents.
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496Locke's Answer to Molyneux's Thought ExperimentHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 27 (2): 165-80. 2010.Philosophical discussions of Molyneux's problem within contemporary philosophy of mind tend to characterize the problem as primarily concerned with the role innately known principles, amodal spatial concepts, and rational cognitive faculties play in our perceptual lives. Indeed, for broadly similar reasons, rationalists have generally advocated an affirmative answer, while empiricists have generally advocated a negative one, to the question Molyneux posed after presenting his famous thought expe…Read more
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285Expectations and morality: A dilemmaBehavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (4): 346-346. 2010.We propose Knobe's explanation of his cases encounters a dilemma: Either his explanation works and, counterintuitively, morality is not at the heart of these effects; or morality is at the heart of the effects and Knobe's explanation does not succeed. This dilemma is then used to temper the use of the Knobe paradigm for discovering moral norms
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |