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36Davidson's Semantic ProgramCanadian Journal of Philosophy 6 (2): 201-227. 1976.Donald Davidson did it. He did it slowly, deliberately, in more than a half dozen widely noted essays. What he did was to elaborate a program for the study of empirical semantics. Nor did he stop there. He went on to apply his program to some of the problems that have long bedeviled semantics: action sentences, indirect discourse and propositional attitudes. My goal in this paper is to assess Davidson's achievement. The first step is to assemble the program from the sketches and hints scattered …Read more
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36Philosophy: asking questions--seeking answersOxford University Press. 2018.Featuring a remarkably clear writing style, Philosophy is a brief and accessible guide that is comprehensive enough to be used on its own or as a supplement to any introductory anthology. Focusing on the key issues in Western philosophy, this text presents balanced coverage of each issue andchallenges students to think critically.
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35Inferential competence: right you are, if you think you areBehavioral and Brain Sciences 4 (3): 353-354. 1981.
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34Editorial: Cultural Variation and CognitionReview of Philosophy and Psychology 14 (2): 339-347. 2023.
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34Stephen P. Stich: The Fragmentation of ReasonPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (1): 189-193. 1991.
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33Aaron Sloman, The Computer Revolution in Philosophy: Philosophy, Science and Models of Mind (review)Philosophical Review 90 (2): 300-307. 1981.
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32Collected Papers, Volume 2: Knowledge, Rationality, and Morality, 1978-2010Oxford University Press. 2012.This volume collects the best and most influential essays on knowledge, rationality and morality that Stephen Stich has published in the last 40 years. The volume includes a new introductory essay that offers an overview of the papers and traces the history of how they emerged
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31Introduction: What makes science possibleIn Peter Carruthers, Stephen Stich & Michael Siegal (eds.), The Cognitive Basis of Science, Cambridge University Press. 2002.
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30Some questions from the not-so-hostile worldi'm grateful to Kent Bach, Peter Godfrey-Smith, and Shaun Nichols for their helpful adviceAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (3). 2004.No abstract
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29Introduction: nativism past and presentIn Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents, Oxford University Press Usa. 2005.Elaborates some of the background assumptions made by the chapters that follow and situates the theory that the author espouses within a wider context and range of alternatives. More specifically, it distinguishes between creature consciousness and state consciousness, and between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. And it defends representationalist accounts of consciousness against brute physicalist accounts. The chapter also introduces the remaining 11 chapters.
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29Rethinking Rationality: From Bleak Implications to Darwinian ModulesIn Kepa Korta, Ernest Sosa & Xabier Arrazola (eds.), Cognition, Agency and Rationality, Springer Verlag. pp. 21-62. 1999.There is a venerable philosophical tradition that views human beings as intrinsically rational, though even the most ardent defender of this view would admit that under certain circumstances people’s decisions and thought processes can be very irrational indeed. When people are extremely tired, or drunk, or in the grip of rage, they sometimes reason and act in ways that no account of rationality would condone. About thirty years ago, Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman and a number of other psychologi…Read more
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27The Innate Mind, Volume 2: Culture and Cognition (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2005.This book is the second of a three-volume set on the subject of innateness. The book is highly interdisciplinary, and addresses such question as: to what extent are mature cognitive capacities a reflection of particular cultures and to what extent are they a product of innate elements? How do innate elements interact with culture to achieve mature cognitive capacities? How do minds generate and shape cultures? How are cultures processed by minds?
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26What every grammar does: A reply to prof. ArbiniPhilosophia 3 (1): 85-96. 1973.Prof. Arbini's attention is flattering; his conclusions rather less so. The issues over which Arbini and I divide are many. Yet fundamentally, I think, our differences may be traced to disagreement about the nature and promise of the theories produced by contemporary generative grammarians. It is here that I shall focus my attention. Some of the points at which Arbini aims his criticism are quite crucial if we are to appreciate what sort of theory a grammar is. At other points his critique can b…Read more
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25Are we really moralizing creatures through and through?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (4): 351-352. 2010.Knobe contends that in making judgments about a wide range of matters, moral considerations and scientific considerations are and thus that We argue that his own account of the mechanism underlying these judgments does not support this radical conclusion
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25Jerrold J. Katz, The Underlying Reality of Language and its Philosophical Import (review)Philosophical Review 83 (2): 259-263. 1974.
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25Do we really externalize or objectivize moral demands?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 41. 2018.Stanford's goal is to explain the uniquely human tendency to externalize or objectify “distinctively moral” demands, norms, and obligations. I maintain that there is no clear phenomenon to explain. Stanford's account of which norms are distinctively moral relies on Turiel's problematic work. Stanford's justification of the claim that we “objectify” moral demands ignores recent studies indicating that often we do not.
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22Moral parochialism misunderstood: a reply to Piazza and SousaProceedings of the Royal Society; B (Biological Sciences) 283. 2016.
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22Will the concepts of folk psychology find a place in cognitive science?In Scott M. Christensen & Dale R. Turner (eds.), Folk psychology and the philosophy of mind, L. Erlbaum. pp. 82--92. 1993.
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21Moral parochialism and contextual contingency across seven societiesProceedings of the Royal Society; B (Biological Sciences) 282 20150907. 2015.Human moral judgement may have evolved to maximize the individual's welfare given parochial culturally constructed moral systems. If so, then moral condemnation should be more severe when transgressions are recent and local, and should be sensitive to the pronouncements of authority figures (who are often arbiters of moral norms), as the fitness pay-offs of moral disapproval will primarily derive from the ramifications of condemning actions that occur within the immediate social arena. Correspon…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Meta-Ethics |
Cognitive Sciences |