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161Telling talesPhilosophical Psychology 22 (2): 227-235. 2009.In the twenty-five or so years since Paul Churchland proposed its elimination, defenders of folk psychology have argued for the ubiquity of propositional attitude attribution in human social cognition. If we didn’t understand others in terms of their beliefs and desires, we would see others as ‘‘baffling ciphers’’ and it would be ‘‘the end of the world’’. Because the world continues, and we seem to predict and explain what others do with a remarkable degree of accuracy, the advocates of folk psy…Read more
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2707The study of animal cognition raises profound questions about the minds of animals and philosophy of mind itself. Aristotle argued that humans are the only animal to laugh, but in recent experiments rats have also been shown to laugh. In other experiments, dogs have been shown to respond appropriately to over two hundred words in human language. In this introduction to the philosophy of animal minds Kristin Andrews introduces and assesses the essential topics, problems and debates as they cut ac…Read more
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385Our understanding of other minds: theory of mind and the intentional stanceJournal of Consciousness Studies 7 (7): 12-24. 2000.Psychologists distinguish between intentional systems which have beliefs and those which are also able to attribute beliefs to others. The ability to do the latter is called having a 'theory of mind', and many cognitive ethologists are hoping to find evidence for this ability in animal behaviour. I argue that Dennett's theory entails that any intentional system that interacts with another intentional system (such as vervet monkeys and chess-playing computers) has a theory of mind, which would ma…Read more
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320Interpreting autism: A critique of Davidson on thought and languagePhilosophical Psychology 15 (3): 317-332. 2002.Donald Davidson's account of interpretation purports to be a priori , though I argue that the empirical facts about interpretation, theory of mind, and autism must be considered when examining the merits of Davidson's view. Developmental psychologists have made plausible claims about the existence of some people with autism who use language but who are unable to interpret the minds of others. This empirical claim undermines Davidson's theoretical claims that all speakers must be interpreters of …Read more
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74Chimpanzee mind reading: Don't stop believingPhilosophy Compass 12 (1). 2017.Since the question “Do chimpanzees have a theory of mind?” was raised in 1978, scientists have attempted to answer it, and philosophers have attempted to clarify what the question means and whether it has been, or could be, answered. Mindreading or theory of mind refers to the ability to attribute mental states to other individuals. Some versions of the question focus on whether chimpanzees engage in belief reasoning or can think about false belief, and chimpanzees have been given nonverbal vers…Read more
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100Innovation and the grain problemBehavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (4): 422-423. 2007.Our concern is with Ramsey et al.'s method for identifying innovation. We show that either it yields false positives or the authors offer insufficient guidance for its application. To avoid these results, the authors need to modify the key or offer better guidelines for delineating input. Either choice requires addressing the processes that generate a behavior
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98According to both the traditional model of folk psychology and the social intelligence hypothesis, our folk psychological notions of belief and desire developed in order to make better predictions of behavior, and the fundamental role for our folk psychological notions of belief and desire are for making more accurate predictions of behavior (than predictions made without appeal to folk psychological notions). My strategy in this paper is to show that these claims are false. I argue that we need…Read more
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4Scott Sehon, Teleological Realism: Mind, Agency, and Explanation Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 26 (4): 291-293. 2006.
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74Explaining TerrorismThe Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 9 167-171. 2006.The official explanations the US gave for the September 11th terrorist attacks are not in fact explanatory, and there has been popular condemnation of those who attempt to offer causal explanations for the attacks. This paper is an investigation of the difficulty people have with finding and accepting explanations for acts they strongly condemn. Using research in the philosophy of mind and moral psychology, I distinguish between explanations for actual immoral behavior and explanations for ficti…Read more
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Applied Ethics |
Asian Philosophy |
PhilPapers Editorships
Methodology in Animal Mind Sciences |