Stephen Stich

Philosophers have argued that stakes affect knowledge: a given amount of evidence may suffice for knowledge if the stakes are low, but not if the stakes are high. By contrast, empirical work on the influence of stakes on ordinary knowledge ascriptions has been divided along methodological lines: “evidence‐fixed” prompts rarely find stakes effects, while “evidence‐seeking” prompts consistently find them. We present a cross‐cultural study using both evidence‐fixed and evidence‐seeking prompts with a diverse sample of 17 populations in 11 countries, speaking 14 languages. Our study is the first to use an evidence‐seeking prompt cross‐culturally, and includes several previously untested populations (including indigenous populations). Across cultures, we do not find evidence of a stakes effect with our evidence‐fixed prompt, but do with our evidence‐seeking prompt. We argue that the divergent results reveal a tension within folk epistemology: people's beliefs about when it is appropriate to ascribe knowledge differ significantly from their actual practice in ascribing knowledge.

This chapter focuses on arguments that derive philosophically significant conclusions from the assumption of one or another theory of reference—what are called “arguments from reference.” It first considers the structure of arguments from reference, and reviews a number of projects in several areas of philosophy that employ such arguments. It then shows that while intuitions about reference are central in the philosophy of language for finding the correct theory of reference, the recent empirical work of Machery and colleagues suggests that intuitions about reference vary both within and across cultures. Next, it takes the variation suggested by this empirical work for granted and considers its implications for arguments from reference. It concludes that arguments from reference ought to be relinquished.

This chapter examines the implications that the theories proposed by evolutionary psychologists might have for the classification of mental disorders. It begins with a brief overview of the account of the mind advanced by evolutionary psychologists. It then explains why issues of taxonomy are important and why the dominant approach to the classification of mental disorders is radically and alarmingly unsatisfactory. It illustrates some of the virtues of the evolutionary-psychological approach to classification and highlights a fundamental distinction between those disorders that arise from the malfunction of a component of the mind and those that can be traced to the fact that our minds must now function in environments that are very different from the environments in which they evolved. Next, the chapter describes the ways in which module malfunctions might arise and sketches two strategies for incorporating this etiological information in a system for classifying mental disorders. Finally, it explains why an evolutionary approach may lead to a radical revision in the classification of certain conditions. It argues that, from an evolutionary perspective, some of the disorders recognized in standard manuals like DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) may turn out not to be disorders at all. The people who have these conditions do not have problems; they just cause problems.

This chapter offers an account of what the grammarian is saying of an expression when he says it is grammatical, or a noun phrase, or ambiguous, or the subject of a certain sentence. More generally, it gives an account of the nature of a generative grammatical theory of a language—of the data for such a theory, the relation between the theory and the data, and the relation between the theory and a speaker of the language. It addresses two questions: Of what interest is a grammar? If a grammar is not, in any exciting sense, a theory of a language, why bother constructing it?

This chapter focuses on the dispute between evolutionary psychology and social constructionist approaches to the emotions. The emotions are a crucial case, both because they play a central role in discussions of other social and psychological phenomena. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 gives a brief overview of the social constructionist approach. Section 3 reviews work on emotions in the evolutionary psychology tradition and sets out a model of the psychological mechanisms. Section 4 answers yes to the question of whether social constructionists and evolutionary psychologists have anything left to disagree about. Section 5 discusses how social constructionists and evolutionary psychologists have a deep though largely hidden philosophical disagreement about the meaning and the reference of the emotion terms that ordinary folk use, words like “anger,” “fear,” and “song.” Section 6, begins by asking which account of the meaning and reference of emotion terms is correct, and goes on to suggest that no one really knows and that the question itself may not be clear enough to have a determinate answer. It also argues that it really doesn't matter which side is right since it is easy to see how this dispute can be bracketed and set aside.

Public reason theorists argue that coercive state action must be justified to those subject to such action. Doing so requires citizens to give only those reasons that all can accept. These reasons, the chapter argues, include scientific and social scientific considerations. One ineliminable and arguably salutary property of the modern administrative state is that the coercive policies it produces can be justified only on the basis of extremely complex scientific and social scientific considerations. Many of these considerations are neither understood by most ordinary citizens nor agreed upon by experts. This means that the overwhelming majority of citizens do not accept the reasons justifying coercive administrative policies. As a result, public reason is inconsistent with the administrative state. There are deep implications to this result: if public reason is inconsistent with the administrative state, then it is also inconsistent with forms of social organization that presuppose it. This, the chapter argues, includes egalitarianism, which many proponents of public reason also endorse. Public reason theorists thus must choose: justification through public reason, or distributive equality?

Gettier cases describe situations where an agent possesses a justified true belief that _p_, without, at least according to mainstream analytic epistemology, knowing that _p_, while the “Gettier intuition” is the judgment that a protagonist in a Gettier case does not know the relevant proposition. Our goal in this chapter is to show that we can make the Gettier intuition compelling or underwhelming by presenting it in different contexts. We report a surprising order effect whereby people find the Gettier intuition less compelling when a case describing a justified but false belief is presented before a Gettier case. We also report a surprising framing effect: two Gettier cases that differ only in their philosophically irrelevant narrative details elicit substantially different judgments. Finally, we discuss the metaphilosophical implications of these effects.

Theories of meaning and reference have been at the heart of analytic philosophy since the beginning of the twentieth century. Two views have dominated the field: the descriptivist view of reference and the causal-historical view of reference. The common wisdom in philosophy is that Kripke has refuted the traditional descriptivist theories of reference by producing some famous stories which elicit intuitions that are inconsistent with these theories. Recent work in cultural psychology has indicated the possibility that the intuitions that guide theorizing in this domain might differ between members of East Asian and Western cultures. This chapter presents evidence that intuition probes, closely modeled on Kripke's stories, elicit significantly different responses from East Asians (Hong Kong undergraduates) and Westerners (American undergraduates). It discusses the significance of this finding for the philosophical pursuit of a theory of reference.

This chapter first explains why folk psychology has played such an important role in recent philosophy of mind. It then distinguishes two different accounts of folk psychology, and argues that functionalists should prefer the mindreading account on which folk psychology is the rich body of information or theory that underlies people's skill in attributing mental states and in predicting and explaining behavior. It considers the challenge posed by simulation theory, that there is no such thing as folk psychology; and presents reasons for accepting a hybrid account of mindreading in which some aspects of that skill are explained by appeal to information- rich processes, while other aspects are explained by simulation.

A strategy called “the flight to reference” is commonly used by contemporary philosophers to resolve issues in the philosophy of science. The strategy involves making philosophical issues turn on questions of reference. This chapter defends the thesis that, whenever the flight to reference strategy is invoked there is a crucial step that is left undefended; and without a defense of this step, the flight to reference is a fatally flawed strategy for resolving philosophical issues. The chapter deals with arguments in two domains. The first is the debate about eliminative materialism, where the flight to reference is invoked by writers on both sides of the issue. The second is the debate over scientific realism, focusing on Philip Kitcher's attempt to use the flight to reference to defend a version of scientific realism.

This chapter explores various possible interpretations of the claim by eliminativists that “belief,” “desire,” and other familiar intentional state expressions are among the theoretical terms of a commonsense theory of the mind—a theory that is often called “folk psychology.” It considers both internal and external accounts of folk psychology as well as a view that is not compatible with the eliminativist argument, i.e. simulation theory. It argues that simulation theory does not put eliminativism out of business. Rather, if simulation theory is correct, then eliminativists must opt for an external account of folk psychology.

A satisfactory account of what it is to “naturalize the intentional”—an account that makes sense of what Fodor sees as “the deepest motivation for intentional irrealism”—must satisfy two constraints. First, it will have to sustain an argument from the premise that intentional notions can't be naturalized to the conclusion that intentional irrealism or some other deeply troubling doctrine is true. Second, there must be some reason to think that, when “naturalizing” is unpacked along the lines proposed, it is in fact the case that the intentional can't be naturalized. This chapter argues that, while various accounts will satisfy one or the other of these constraints, there is no account of what it is to naturalize the intentional that will satisfy both of them. To support this contention, it surveys a number of proposals on what “naturalization” comes to, and goes on to argue that none of these candidates will satisfy both of the constraints.

Robert Gordon and Alvin Goldman, along with other philosophers, have challenged the received view about the cognitive mechanisms underlying our ability to describe, predict, and explain people's behavior. They agree in denying that an internally represented folk-psychological theory plays a central role in the exercise of these abilities. They also believe that a special sort of mental _simulation_ in which we use ourselves as a model for the person we are describing or predicting, will play an important role in the correct account of the mechanisms subserving these abilities. This chapter focuses on Gordon and Goldman. It presents an account of the special sort of simulation that lies at the heart of the Gordon/Goldman proposal, focusing on the way simulation might be used to predict behavior. It explores how mental simulation might be used to explain the other two cognitive capacities that have been of special interest to philosophers: explaining behavior and producing intentional descriptions or interpretations. It explains why none of the arguments offered by Gordon and Goldman in support of their simulation theory are convincing. It then sets out two alternative arguments that show why, in light of currently available evidence, the simulation theory is very implausible.

This chapter begins with a quick overview of Fodor's account of narrow content. It provides a sketch of how Fodor proposes to construct the notion and sets out a pair of reasons for doubting that Fodor's notion of narrow content will do what he wants. It then argues that the real problem with narrow content is that the taxonomy of mental states it imposes is both too coarse and too ill behaved to exploit in a serious scientific psychology. It illustrates the coarseness of a narrow content taxonomy by comparing three taxonomic schemes: the one imposed by fat syntax, the one imposed by broad content, and the one imposed by narrow content.

This chapter explores the relation between connectionism and Chomsky's arguments for the existence of innate knowledge. Along the way, it proposes to defend a pair of interrelated conclusions. The first is that there are actually three versions of Chomsky's poverty of the stimulus argument, which make increasingly strong claims about the nature of the cognitive endowments required for learning language. The second conclusion is that the relation between connectionism and nativism is considerably more complex than many have assumed. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 sets out the three versions of Chomsky's poverty of the stimulus argument. Section 3 offers an introductory overview of recent connectionist research and a survey of ongoing efforts to get connectionist devices to learn aspects of natural language. Section 4 explores the ways in which the success of these efforts would bear upon the three versions of Chomsky's argument.

This chapter defends that the thesis that, if a certain family of connectionist hypotheses turn out to be right, they will surely count as revolutionary. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 gives a brief account of what eliminativism claims, and sketches a pair of premises that eliminativist arguments typically require. Section 3 discusses how we conceive of common sense psychology and the propositional attitudes that it posits. It also illustrates one sort of psychological model that exploits and builds upon the posits of folk psychology. Section 4 is devoted to connectionism. Models that have been called “connectionist” form a fuzzy and heterogeneous set whose members often share little more than a vague family resemblance. However, the present argument linking connectionism to eliminativism will work only for a restricted domain of connectionist models, interpreted in a particular way; the main job of Section 4 explains what that domain is and how the models in the domain are to be interpreted. Section 5 illustrates what a connectionist model of belief that comports with our strictures might look like, and goes on to argue that if models of this sort are correct, then things look bad for common sense psychology. Section 6 assembles some objections and replies.

Daniel Dennett has elaborated an interconnected—and increasingly influential—set of views on the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of psychology, and those parts of moral philosophy that deal with the notions of freedom, responsibility, and personhood. The central unifying theme is his concept of an intentional system, which he invokes to “legitimize” mentalistic predicates; to explain the theoretical strategy of cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence; and, ultimately, to attempt a reconciliation between “our vision of ourselves as responsible, free, rational agents, and our vision of ourselves as complex parts of the physical world of science.” This chapter raises some doubts about the “intentional coin” with which Dennett proposes to purchase his moral and “mental treasures.” It suggests that if we reconstruct his notion of an intentional system to eliminate its instrumentalism and its unfortunate infatuation with idealized rationality, the result can be used to give a better account of commonsense mentalistic notions as well as a clearer and more tenable account of the strategy of cognitive science. The outline of such a “derationalized” cousin to Dennett's idea of an intentional system is provided.

This chapter explores the tension between the belief-desire thesis and the principle of psychological autonomy. The belief-desire thesis refers to the expectation that psychological theory, which explains human behavior, will invoke the concepts of belief and desire in a substantive way. The principle of psychological autonomy is a widely held assumption about the nature of explanatory psychological theories, an assumption that serves as a fundamental regulative principle for much of contemporary psychological theorizing. The chapter first focuses on the principle of psychological autonomy. It then elaborates on how the belief-desire thesis is to be interpreted, and tries to extract from it a principle to serve as a premise in the argument to follow. Next, it sets out the argument that large numbers of belief-desire explanations of action are incompatible with the principle of autonomy. It fends off a possible objection to the argument and, in the process, attempts to clarify just why the argument works and what price should be paid in order to avoid its consequences.

This chapter explores the intuitive distinction between beliefs and subdoxastic states. It makes a plausible case for the claim that the intuitive distinction between beliefs and subdoxastic states marks a real and psychologically interesting boundary. Moreover, it is a boundary that has been largely overlooked by contemporary work in cognitive simulation. The chapter also presents a critique of Gilbert Harman's view, that may be viewed as an attack on the psychological significance of the distinction between beliefs and subdoxastic states. It suggests that, like Harman, many of those concerned with cognitive simulation have been so captivated with the promise of inferential accounts of the mechanisms underlying perception and thought that they have failed to note the rather special and largely isolated nature of the inferential processes between beliefs and subdoxastic states.

This chapter attempts to untangle the debate surrounding innate ideas and innate knowledge. The controversy is as follows: Some philosophers, as well as linguists, psychologists, and others, allege that human beings have innate knowledge or innate ideas. Others deny it. Advocates of the doctrines of innate ideas and innate knowledge commonly take the notion of innateness itself to be unproblematic. They explain it with a few near synonyms, “inborn” or “unlearned,” or with a metaphor or an allegory, and leave it at that. The doctrine's opponents often begin by puzzling over just what the doctrine could possibly mean. They go on to construct a variety of accounts, arguing against each in turn. The advocate's rejoinder, as often as not, is that he has been misunderstood.

Human social life is regulated by an extensive network of informal social rules and principles often called _norms_. This chapter offers an account of the psychological mechanisms and processes underlying norms that integrates findings from a number of disciplines, and can serve as a framework for future research. It begins by discussing a number of social-level and individual-level generalizations about norms that place constraints on possible accounts of norm psychology. After proposing its own model of the psychological processes by which norms are acquired and utilized, it discusses a number of open questions about the psychology of norms. These include questions about the role of social learning, emotions, and various reasoning processes in norm psychology.

This chapter compares two theories about the cognitive architecture underlying morality. One theory, proposed by Sripada and Stich (2006), posits an interlocking set of innate mechanisms that internalize moral norms from the surrounding community and generate intrinsic motivation to comply with these norms and to punish violators. The other theory, called the M/C model, was suggested by the widely discussed and influential work of Elliot Turiel, Larry Nucci, and others on the ‘ moral/conventional task’. This theory posits two distinct mental domains, the moral and the conventional, each of which gives rise to a characteristic suite of judgments about rules in that domain and about transgressions of those rules. An overview of both theories and of the data each was designed to explain is presented. A growing body of evidence suggesting that the M/C model is mistaken is considered. That same evidence, however, is consistent with the Sripada and Stich theory. Thus, the M/C model does not pose a serious challenge for the Sripada and Stich theory.

This chapter focuses on the two opposing sides of the current rationality wars with the “heuristics and biases” researchers on the one hand, and the evolutionary psychologists on the other. The former group cites decades of evidence that people have systematic deviations from rationality, as evidenced by their performance on certain types of formal reasoning tasks. The latter group asserts the implausibility of the human architecture evolving with an inaccurate sense of probability and offers evidence that a representation of various formal problems in more ecologically valid forms makes the so-called irrational response patterns disappear. It is argued that the illusion that evolutionary psychology and the heuristics and biases tradition have a deep disagreement about how rational human beings are should disappear. This is not to say, however, that there are _no_ genuine disagreements between these two research programs.

Psychological egoists maintain that all human action is ultimately self-interested; psychological altruists agree that much action is ultimately self-interested, but they insist that sometimes people behave altruistically—their actions are motivated by “ultimate” desires for the well-being of others. Firstly, this chapter explains why the debate between psychological egoists and psychologists is important for both moral theory and political philosophy. Secondly, it clarifies the debate by explaining two crucial notions: (i) _ultimate_ desire and (ii) desire _for the well being of others_. Next, the focus is on recent attempts to use evolutionary arguments to resolve the debate. Most of these arguments try to show that considerations drawn from evolutionary theory make it very unlikely that humans are psychological altruists. On the other side, Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson have argued that evolutionary considerations show that humans probably are sometimes motivated by ultimate desires for the well-being of others. It is argued that all of these arguments are unconvincing, and that evolutionary theory offers little prospect of advancing the debate between psychological egoism and psychological altruism. Finally, the chapter looks at research on the social psychology of altruism, focusing on the work of Daniel Batson and his colleagues. It offers detailed accounts and assessments of a number of Batson's studies. It argues that Batson and colleagues have shown conclusively that the methods of experimental psychology can move the debate forward.

Though empirical claims have always played a prominent role in theories advanced by moral philosophers, until recently, findings in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology have made very little impact on moral theory. Over the last decade, however, that situation has changed dramatically as a new generation of scientifically informed philosophers and philosophically sophisticated scientists have begun to transform the way moral philosophy is done. This chapter illustrates some of the ways in which empirical theories and findings can advance traditional debates in moral theory and contemporary debates in legal theory. A central theme of the discussion is that scientists who aspire to contribute to debates in moral theory must understand the issues that philosophers have been concerned with, how they are interconnected, and why they are thought to be important.