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20On the relation between occurrents and contentful mental statesInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 24 (October): 353-358. 1981.It is argued that the relation between ‘occurrents’ as characterized by Honderich and familiar ‘contentful’ mental states like beliefs and thoughts is a very murky one. Occurrents are distinct when and only when they can be distinguished by consciousness. By contrast, the criteria of individuation for contentful mental states invoke factors that are not distinguishable by consciousness. It is also suggested that Honderich's strategy for individuating occurrents may sometimes be difficult to appl…Read more
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100Connectionism, eliminativism and the future of folk psychologyPhilosophical Perspectives 4 499-533. 1990.
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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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348Evolution, culture, and the irrationality of the emotionsIn Dylan Evans & Pierre Cruse (eds.), Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality, Oxford University Press. 2004.For about 2500 years, from Plato’s time until the closing decades of the 20th century, the dominant view was that the emotions are quite distinct from the processes of rational thinking and decision making, and are often a major impediment to those processes. But in recent years this orthodoxy has been challenged in a number of ways. Damasio (1994) has made a forceful case that the traditional view, which he has dubbed _Descartes’ Error_, is quite wrong, because emotions play a fundamental role …Read more
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69Moral philosophy and mental representationIn R. Michod, L. Nadel & M. Hechter (eds.), The Origin of Values, Aldine De Gruyer. pp. 215--228. 1993.Here is an overview of what is to come. In Sections I and II, I will sketch two of the projects frequently pursued by moral philosophers, and the methods typically invoked in those projects. I will argue that these projects presuppose (or at least suggest) a particular sort of account of the mental representation of human value systems, since the methods make sense only if we assume a certain kind of story about how the human mind stores information about values. The burden of my argument in Sec…Read more
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62You can't have it both ways: What is the relation between morality and fairness?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (1). 2013.Baumard and colleagues put forward a new hypothesis about the nature and evolution of fairness. In this commentary, we discuss the relation between morality and their views about fairness
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62Dissonant notes on the theory of referenceNoûs 4 (4): 385-397. 1970.I will contend that Quine's optimism about the theory of reference is incompatible with his pessimism about the theory of meaning. For, on Quine's own account, the problems that discourage him about the theory of meaning beset the theory of reference as well. And of the three arguments Quine advances to show the theory of reference better off than the theory of meaning, two are unsound and the third is in conflict with his further views on reference.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Meta-Ethics |
Cognitive Sciences |