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156Editorial: Psychology and Experimental PhilosophyReview 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".
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27Why does explaining help learning? Insight from an explanation impairment effectIn S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Cognitive Science Society. 2010.
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123Effects of Manipulation on Attributions of Causation, Free Will, and Moral ResponsibilityCognitive Science 41 (2): 447-481. 2017.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
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27From conceptual representations to explanatory relationsBehavioral 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
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238Concept Possession, Experimental Semantics, and Hybrid Theories of ReferencePhilosophical Psychology 25 (5): 1-26. 2012.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
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174Depth and deference: When and why we attribute understandingPhilosophical Studies 173 (2): 373-393. 2016.Four experiments investigate the folk concept of “understanding,” in particular when and why it is deployed differently from the concept of knowledge. We argue for the positions that people have higher demands with respect to explanatory depth when it comes to attributing understanding, and that this is true, in part, because understanding attributions play a functional role in identifying experts who should be heeded with respect to the general field in question. These claims are supported by o…Read more
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21The Campaign for ConceptsDialogue 50 (1): 165-177. 2011.In his book Doing Without Concepts, Edouard Machery argues that cognitive scientists should reject the concept of “concept” as a natural, psychological kind. I review and critique several of Machery’s arguments, focusing on his definition of “concept” and on claims against the possibility and utility of a unified account of concepts. In particular, I suggest ways in which prototype, exemplar, and theory-theory approaches to concepts might be integrated.
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152Causal-explanatory pluralism: how intentions, functions, and mechanisms influence causal ascriptionsCognitive Psychology 61 (4): 303-332. 2010.Both philosophers and psychologists have argued for the existence of distinct kinds of explanations, including teleological explanations that cite functions or goals, and mechanistic explanations that cite causal mechanisms. Theories of causation, in contrast, have generally been unitary, with dominant theories focusing either on counterfactual dependence or on physical connections. This paper argues that both approaches to causation are psychologically real, with different modes of explanation …Read more
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