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55Review of Edward Stein: Without Good Reason: The Rationality Debate in Philosophy and Cognitive Science_; Jonathan St. B. T. Evans and David E. Over: _Rationality and Reasoning (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1): 189-193. 1998.
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52Perceptual awareness or phenomenal consciousness?A dilemmaBiology and Philosophy 36 (2): 1-5. 2021.We present Birch and colleagues with a dilemma. On one interpretation, they aim to chart the distribution of a sort of minimal perceptual awareness across the animal kingdom, where that awareness can be fully characterized in third-person psychological terms. On this interpretation, the project is worthy but dull, since it doesn’t touch the question that has excited most people: whether other animals are phenomenally conscious. On an alternative interpretation, in contrast, they hope to resolve …Read more
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52Relationships between implicit and explicit uncertainty monitoring and mindreading: Evidence from autism spectrum disorderConsciousness and Cognition 70 11-24. 2019.
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50Invertebrate concepts confront the generality constraint (and win)In Robert W. Lurz (ed.), The Philosophy of Animal Minds, Cambridge University Press. pp. 89--107. 2009.
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50Review EssayHuman Knowledge and Human Nature: A New Introduction to an Ancient Debate.Knowledge and the State of Nature: An Essay in Conceptual SynthesisPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (1): 205. 1997.
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47Review of Shaun Nichols, Stephen Stich, Mindreading: An Integrated Account of Pretence, Self-Awareness, and Understanding of Other Minds (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2004 (8). 2004.
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47Review of Gregory Currie, Ian Ravenscroft, Recreative Minds: Imagination in Philosophy and Psychology (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (11). 2003.
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46Distinctively human thinking: Modular precursors and componentsIn Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 69--88. 2005.
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45Consciousness: Explaining the PhenomenaRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 49 61-85. 2001.My topic in this chapter is whether phenomenal consciousness can be given a reductive natural explanation. I shall first say something about phenomenal—as opposed to other forms of—consciousness, and highlight what needs explaining. I shall then turn to issues concerning explanation in general, and the explanation of phenomenal consciousness in particular.
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44Languages of thought need to be distinguished from learning mechanisms, and nothing yet rules out multiple distinctively human learning systemsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (2): 148-149. 2008.We distinguish the question whether only human minds are equipped with a language of thought (LoT) from the question whether human minds employ a single uniquely human learning mechanism. Thus separated, our answer to both questions is negative. Even very simple minds employ a LoT. And the comparative data reviewed by Penn et al. actually suggest that there are many distinctively human learning mechanisms
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43Review of Alvin I. Goldman, Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (11). 2006.
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41Review of Edward Stein: Without Good Reason: The Rationality Debate in Philosophy and Cognitive Science_; Jonathan St. B. T. Evans and David E. Over: _Rationality and Reasoning (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1): 189-193. 1998.
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41BAIER, KURT, The Rational and the Moral Order: The Social Roots of Reason and Morality, reviewed by Sarah Stroud.. 577Philosophical Review 106 (4): 589. 1997.
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39Human knowledge and human nature: a new introduction to an ancient debateOxford University Press. 1992.Contemporary debates in epistemology devote much attention to the nature of knowledge, but neglect the question of its sources. This book focuses on the latter, especially on the question of innateness. Carruthers' aim is to transform and reinvigorate contemporary empiricism, while also providing an introduction to a range of issues in the theory of knowledge. He gives a lively presentation and assessment of the claims of classical empiricism, particularly its denial of substantive a priori know…Read more
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39In Defence of First-Order RepresentationalismJournal of Consciousness Studies 24 (5-6): 74-87. 2017.Carruthers (2000; 2005) provides a general defence of reductive representationalism about phenomenal consciousness while critiquing first-order theories of the sort proposed by Baars (1988), Tye (1995), Dennett (2001), and others (thereby motivating a form of higher-order account). The present paper defends first-order theories against that attack.
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39Stimulating introduction to the most central and interesting issues in the philosophy of mind. Topics covered include dualism versus the various forms of materialism, personal identity and survival, and the problem of other minds
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38Moderately Massive ModularityRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 53 67-89. 2003.This paper will sketch a model of the human mind according to which the mind's structure is massively, but by no means wholly, modular. Modularity views in general will be motivated, elucidated, and defended, before the thesis of moderately massive modularity is explained and elaborated.
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38The mind is a system of modules shaped by natural selectionIn Christopher Hitchcock (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. pp. 293--311. 2004.
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36Mechanisms for constrained stochasticitySynthese 197 (10): 4455-4473. 2020.Creativity is generally thought to be the production of things that are novel and valuable. Humans are unique in the extent of their creativity, which plays a central role in innovation and problem solving, as well as in the arts. But what are the cognitive sources of novelty? More particularly, what are the cognitive sources of stochasticity in creative production? I will argue that they belong to two broad categories. One is associative, enabling the selection of goal-relevant ideas that have …Read more
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35Precis of "Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory"SWIF Philosophy of Mind Review 2 (1). 2001.
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34Replies to critics: Explaining subjectivityPSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 6. 2000.This article replies to the main objections raised by the commentators on Carruthers . It discusses the question of what evidence is relevant to the assessment of dispositional higher-order thought theory; it explains how the actual properties of phenomenal consciousness can be dispositionally constituted; it discusses the case of pains and other bodily sensations in non-human animals and young children; it sketches the case for preferring higher-order to first-order theories of phenomenal consc…Read more
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34Stop Caring about ConsciousnessPhilosophical Topics 48 (1): 1-20. 2020.The best empirically grounded theory of first-personal phenomenal consciousness is global workspace theory. This, combined with the success of the phenomenal-concept strategy, means that consciousness can be fully reductively explained in terms of globally broadcast representational content. So there are no qualia. As a result, the question of which other creatures besides ourselves are phenomenally conscious is of no importance, and doesn’t admit of a factual answer in most cases. What is real,…Read more
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Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Cognitive Sciences |