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45The Domain of Folk PsychologyRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 53 25-48. 2003.My topic in this paper is social understanding. By this I mean the cognitive skills underlying social behaviour and social coordination. Normal, encultured, non-autistic and non-brain-damaged human beings are capable of an impressive degree of social coordination. We navigate the social world with a level of skill and dexterity fully comparable to that which we manifest in navigating the physical world. In neither sphere, one might think, would it be a trivial matter to identify the various comp…Read more
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Jaegwon Kim, "Supervenience and Mind" (review)International Journal of Philosophical Studies 3 (2): 366. 1995.
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115The Moral Significance of BirthEthics 106 (2). 1996.The author challenges the view that birth cannot be a morally relevant fact in the process of development from zygote to child. He reviews specific arguments against giving any moral significance to the fact of birth. Drawing on recent work in developmental psychology, he contends that the lives of neonates can have a level of self-consciousness that confers moral significance but can only be possessed after birth. He shows that the position he has argued for provides a framework within which th…Read more
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147Rationality and the backwards induction argumentAnalysis 59 (4). 1999.Many philosophers and game theorists have been struck by the thought that the backward induction argument (BIA) for the finite iterated pris- oner’s dilemma (FIPD) recommends a course of action which is grossly counter-intuitive and certainly contrary to the way in which people behave in real-life FIPD-situations (Luce and Raiffa 1957, Pettit and Sugden 1989, Bovens 1997).1 Yet the backwards induction argument puts itself forward as binding upon rational agents. What are we to conclude from this?…Read more
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17V-The Sources of Self-consciousnessProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102 (1): 87-107. 2002.
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1552Frege on thoughts and their structureHistory of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 4 87-105. 2001.The idea that thoughts are structured is essential to Frege's understanding of thoughts. A basic tenet of his thinking was that the structure of a sentence can serve as a model for the structure of a thought. Recent commentators have, however, identified tensions between that principle and certain other doctrines Frege held about thoughts. This paper suggests that the tensions identified by Dummett and Bell are not really tensions at all. In establishing the case against Dummett and Bell the pa…Read more
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410Personal and sub‐personal; A difference without a distinctionPhilosophical Explorations 3 (1): 63-82. 2000.This paper argues that, while there is a difference between personal and sub-personal explanation, claims of autonomy should be treated with scepticism. It distinguishes between horizontal and vertical explanatory relations that might hold between facts at the personal and facts at the sub-personal level. Noting that many philosophers are prepared to accept vertical explanatory relations between the two levels, I argue for the stronger claim that, in the case of at least three central personal l…Read more
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51Negation, Contrariety, and Practical Reasoning: Comments on Millikan’s Varieties of Meaning (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (3). 2007.
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91The Interface Problem and the Scope of Commonsense Psychology: Reply to PaternosterSWIF Philosophy of Mind Review 5 (3). 2006.
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188Bodily ownership, bodily awareness and knowledge without observationAnalysis 75 (1): 37-45. 2015.In a recent paper, Fredérique de Vignemont has argued that there is a positive quale of bodily ownership . She thinks that tactile and other forms of somatosensory phenomenology incorporate a distinctive feeling of myness and takes issue with my defense in Bermúdez of a deflationary approach to bodily ownership. That paper proposed an argument deriving from Elizabeth Anscombe’s various discussions of what she terms knowledge without observation . De Vignemont is not convinced and appeals to the …Read more
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82Locke, metaphysical dualism and property dualism1British Journal for the History of Philosophy 4 (2): 223-245. 1996.No abstract
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85Arguing for eliminativismIn Brian L. Keeley (ed.), Paul Churchland, Cambridge University Press. 2005.This paper considers how best an eliminativist might argue for the radical falsity of commonsense psychology. I will be arguing that Paul Churchland’s “official” arguments for eliminative materialism (in, e.g., Churchland 1981) are unsatisfactory, although much of the paper will be developing themes that are clearly present in Churchland’s writings. The eliminativist needs to argue that the representations that feed into action are fundamentally different from those invoked by propositional atti…Read more
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38Review of Mary Margaret McCabe, mark Textor (eds.), Perspectives on Perception (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (4). 2008.
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50Peacocke's Argument Against the Autonomy of Nonconceptual Representational ContentMind and Language 9 (4): 402-418. 1994.
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Phenomenology of Bodily PerceptionAvant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 2 (T): 25-36. 2011.Since this is colloquium on phenomenological and experimental approaches tocognition I’d like to set up te problem I want to address in terms of two of the differentstrands that we find in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking about the phenomenology of thebody. One of these strands is profoundly insightful. The other one, however, seemsto me to be lacking in plausibility – or rather, to put it less confrontationally and morein keeping with the spirit of the colloquium, the second strand seems to stand in th…Read more
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40Domain-generality and the relative pronounBehavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (6): 676-677. 2002.The hypothesis in the target paper is that the cognitive function of language lies in making possible the integration of different types of domain-specific information. The case for this hypothesis must consist, at least in part, of a constructive proposal as to what feature or features of natural language allows this integration to take place. This commentary suggests that the vital linguistic element is the relative pronoun and the possibility it affords of forming relative clauses.
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Nonconceptual self-awareness and the paradox of self-consciousnessIn Albert Newen & Kai Vogeley (eds.), Selbst und Gehirn. Menschliches Selbstbewusstsein und seine Neurobiologischen Grundlagen, Mentis. 2000.
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60The Originality of Cartesian Skepticism: Did It Have Ancient or Mediaeval Antecedents?History of Philosophy Quarterly 17 (4). 2000.
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240Normativity and rationality in delusional psychiatric disordersMind and Language 16 (5): 457-493. 2001.Psychiatric treatment and diagnosis rests upon a richer conception of normativity than, for example, cognitive neuropsychology. This paper explores the role that considerations of rationality can play in defining this richer conception of normativity. It distinguishes two types of rationality and considers how each type can break down in different ways in delusional psychiatric disorders
College Station, Texas, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |