•  37
    Explaining prompts children to privilege inductively rich properties
    with Caren M. Walker, Cristine H. Legare, and Alison Gopnik
    Cognition 133 (2): 343-357. 2014.
    Two studies examined the specificity of effects of explanation on learning by prompting 3- to 6-year-old children to explain a mechanical toy and comparing what they learned about the toy’s causal and non-causal properties to children who only observed the toy, both with and without accompanying verbalization. In Study 1, children were experimentally assigned to either explain or observe the mechanical toy. In Study 2, children were classified according to whether the content of their response t…Read more
  •  20
    Putting normativity in its proper place
    with Kevin Uttich
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (4). 2010.
    Knobe considers two explanations for the influence of moral considerations on cognitive systems: the position, and the position. We suggest that this dichotomy conflates questions at computational and algorithmic levels, and suggest that distinguishing the issues at these levels reveals a third, viable option, which we call the position
  •  156
    Editorial: Psychology and Experimental Philosophy
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (2): 157-160. 2010.
    Recent years have seen an explosion of new work at the intersection of philosophy and experimental psychology. This work takes the concerns with moral and conceptual issues that have so long been associated with philosophy and connects them with the use of systematic and well-controlled empirical investigations that one more typically finds in psychology. Work in this new field often goes under the name "experimental philosophy".
  •  27
    Why does explaining help learning? Insight from an explanation impairment effect
    with Joseph Jay Williams and Bob Rehder
    In S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Cognitive Science Society. 2010.
  •  119
    If someone brings about an outcome without intending to, is she causally and morally responsible for it? What if she acts intentionally, but as the result of manipulation by another agent? Previous research has shown that an agent's mental states can affect attributions of causal and moral responsibility to that agent, but little is known about what effect one agent's mental states can have on attributions to another agent. In Experiment 1, we replicate findings that manipulation lowers attribut…Read more
  •  27
    From conceptual representations to explanatory relations
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3): 218-219. 2010.
    Machery emphasizes the centrality of explanation for theory-based approaches to concepts. I endorse Machery's emphasis on explanation and consider recent advances in psychology that point to the of explanation, with consequences for Machery's heterogeneity hypothesis about concepts
  •  233
    Contemporary debates about the nature of semantic reference have tended to focus on two competing approaches: theories which emphasize the importance of descriptive information associated with a referring term, and those which emphasize causal facts about the conditions under which the use of the term originated and was passed on. Recent empirical work by Machery and colleagues suggests that both causal and descriptive information can play a role in judgments about the reference of proper names,…Read more