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46Mental Causation and Exclusion: Why the Difference-making Account of Causation is No HelpHumana Mente 8 (29). 2015.Peter Menzies has developed a novel version of the exclusion principle that he claims to be compatible with the possibility of mental causation. Menzies proposes to frame the exclusion principle in terms of a difference-making account of causation, understood in counterfactual terms. His new exclusion principle appears in two formulations: upwards exclusion — which is the familiar case in which a realizing event causally excludes the event that it realizes — and, more interestingly, downward exc…Read more
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14Self-Control, Decision Theory, and Rationality: New Essays (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1900.Thinking about self-control takes us to the heart of practical decision-making, human agency, motivation, and rational choice. Psychologists, philosophers, and decision theorists have all brought valuable insights and perspectives on how to model self-control, on different mechanisms for achieving and strengthening self-control, and on how self-control fits into the overall cognitive and affective economy. Yet these different literatures have remained relatively insulated from each other. Self-C…Read more
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111Yes, essential indexicals really are essentialAnalysis 77 (4): 690-694. 2017.In their recent book The Inessential Indexical Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever take issue with what has become close to philosophical orthodoxy – the view, most often associated with John Perry and David Lewis, that psychological explanations are essentially indexical. Cappelen and Dever claim that claims of essential indexicality are typically driven by intuitions rather than supported by arguments. They issue a challenge to supporters of essential indexicality: Produce an argument to back up th…Read more
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38Fenomenologia cielesnej percepcjiAvant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 2 (T): 25-36. 2011.[Phenomenology of Bodily Perception] Since this is colloquium on phenomenological and experimental approaches to cognition I’d like to set up te problem I want to address in terms of two of the different strands that we find in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking about the phenomenology of the body. One of these strands is profoundly insightful. The other one, however, seems to me to be lacking in plausibility – or rather, to put it less confrontationally and more in keeping with the spirit of the colloqui…Read more
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20Nonconceptual Self-Consciousness And Cognitive ScienceSynthese 129 (1): 129-149. 2001.This paper explores some of the areaswhere neuroscientific and philosophical issuesintersect in the study of self-consciousness. Taking aspoint of departure a paradox (the paradox ofself-consciousness) that appears to blockphilosophical elucidation of self-consciousness, thepaper illustrates how the highly conceptual forms ofself-consciousness emerge from a rich foundation ofnonconceptual forms of self-awareness. Attention ispaid in particular to the primitive forms ofnonconceptual self-consciou…Read more
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3Rational Decisions, Ken Binmore. Princeton University Press, 2009, x + 200 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 26 (1): 95-101. 2010.
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214Thinking Without WordsOxford University Press USA. 2003.Thinking without Words provides a challenging new theory of the nature of non-linguistic thought. Many scientific disciplines treat non-linguistic creatures as thinkers, explaining their behavior in terms of their thoughts about themselves and about the environment. But this theorizing has proceeded without any clear account of the types of thinking available to non-linguistic creatures. One consequence of this is that ascriptions of thoughts to non-linguistic creatures have frequently been held…Read more
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15Thought, Reference, and Experience: Themes From the Philosophy of Gareth Evans (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2005.Thought, Reference, and Experience is a collection of important new essays on topics at the intersection of philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and philosophical logic. The starting-point for the papers is the brilliant work of the British philosopher Gareth Evans before his untimely death in 1980 at the age of 34. Evans's work on reference and singular thought transformed the Fregean approach to the philosophy of thought and language, showing how seemingly technical issues in philosophi…Read more
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16Rational Decisions, Binmore Ken. Princeton University Press, 2009, x + 200 pages. (review)Economics and Philosophy 26 (1): 95-101. 2010.
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177Nonconceptual Self-Consciousness And Cognitive ScienceSynthese 129 (1): 129-149. 2001.This paper explores some of the areas where neuroscientific and philosophical issues intersect in the study of self-consciousness. Taking as point of departure a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) that appears to block philosophical elucidation of self-consciousness, the paper illustrates how the highly conceptual forms of self-consciousness emerge from a rich foundation of nonconceptual forms of self-awareness. Attention is paid in particular to the primitive forms of nonconceptual sel…Read more
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The domain of folk psychologyIn Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Minds and Persons, Cambridge University Press. 2001.
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43The 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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193The 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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Jaegwon Kim, "Supervenience and Mind" (review)International Journal of Philosophical Studies 3 (2): 366. 1995.
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146Rationality 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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16V-The Sources of Self-consciousnessProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102 (1): 87-107. 2002.
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15From Two Visual Systems to Two Forms of Content?PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 13. 2007.This commentary on Jacob and Jeannerod’s Ways of Seeing evaluates the conclusions that the authors draw from the two visual systems hypothesis about the nature and phenomenology of visual experience.
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492Personal 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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50Negation, Contrariety, and Practical Reasoning: Comments on Millikan’s Varieties of Meaning (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (3). 2007.
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92The Interface Problem and the Scope of Commonsense Psychology: Reply to PaternosterSWIF Philosophy of Mind Review 5 (3). 2006.
College Station, Texas, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |