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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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123On Valence: Imperative or Representation of Value?British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 74 (3): 533-553. 2023.Affective valence is increasingly thought to be the common currency underlying all forms of intuitive, non-discursive decision making, in both humans and other animals. And it is thought to constitute the good or bad (pleasant or unpleasant) aspects of all desires, emotions, and moods. This article contrasts two theories of valence. According to one, valence is an experience-directed imperative (‘more of this!’ or ‘less of this!’); according to the other, valence is a representation of adaptive …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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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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76How Mindreading Might Mislead Cognitive ScienceJournal of Consciousness Studies 27 (7-8): 195-219. 2020.This article explores three ways in which a cognitively entrenched mindreading (or 'theory of mind') system may bias our thinking as cognitive scientists. One issues in a form of tacit dualism, impacting scientific debates about phenomenal consciousness. Another leads us to think that our own minds are easier to know than they really are, influencing debates about self-knowledge, and about mindreading itself. And the third results in a bias in favour of empiricist over nativist accounts of cogni…Read more
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33Explaining the Empiricist Bias: Reply to BerentJournal of Consciousness Studies 27 (7-8): 230-235. 2020.Berent (this issue) critiques one of the three main proposals put forward by Carruthers (this issue), who suggests that cognitive scientists are biased against innateness-claims by the tacit assumptions of the mentalizing faculty. Berent proposes, instead, that the bias results from dissonance produced by a conflict between our innate dualism and our innate essentialism. The present response raises a number of difficulties for her argument.
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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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91Explicit nonconceptual metacognitionPhilosophical Studies 178 (7): 2337-2356. 2020.The goal of this paper is to explore forms of metacognition that have rarely been discussed in the extensive psychological and philosophical literatures on the topic. These would comprise explicit instances of meta-representation of some set of mental states or processes in oneself, but without those representations being embedded in anything remotely resembling a theory of mind, and independent of deployment of any sort of concept-like representation of the mental. Following a critique of some …Read more
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83Representing the Mind as Such in InfancyReview of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (4): 765-781. 2020.Tyler Burge claims in a recent high-profile publication that none of the existing evidence for mental-state attribution by children prior to the age of four or five really supports such a conclusion; and he makes this claim, not just for beliefs, but for mental states of all sorts. In its place, he offers an explanatory framework according to which infants and young children attribute mere information-registering states and teleologically-characterized motivational states, which are said to lack…Read more
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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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61Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Questions Laid to RestOxford University Press. 2019.Claims about consciousness in animals are often made in support of their moral standing. Peter Carruthers argues that there is no fact of the matter about animal consciousness and it is of no scientific or ethical significance. Sympathy for an animal can be grounded in its mental states, but should not rely on assumptions about its consciousness.
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33Theory of mindEncyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. 2017.Theory of mind” consists in the ability to use concepts of intentional mental states, such as beliefs, emotions, intentions, goals, and perceptual states, in order to predict and interpret behavior. Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have revealed a distinctive network of neural regions that is active during theory-of-mind tasks, including the temporal-parietal junction, the posterior superior temporal sulcus, the medial prefrontal cortex, the precuneus, and the temporal poles (Van Ov…Read more
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66The Illusion of Conscious ThoughtJournal of Consciousness Studies 24 (9-10): 228-252. 2017.This paper argues that episodic thoughts are always unconscious. Whether consciousness is understood in terms of global broadcasting/widespread accessibility or in terms of non-interpretive higher-order awareness, the conclusion is the same: there is no such thing as conscious thought. Arguments for this conclusion are reviewed. The challenge of explaining why we should all be under the illusion that our thoughts are often conscious is then taken up.
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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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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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8M. Hintikka and J. Hintikka, "Investigating Wittgenstein" (review)Philosophical Quarterly 38 (51): 244. 1988.
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13Unconsciously competing goals can collaborate or compromise as well as win or loseBehavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (2): 139-140. 2014.This commentary offers a friendly extension of Huang & Bargh's (H&B's) account. Not only do active goals sometimes operate unconsciously to dominate or preempt others, but simultaneously active goals can also collaborate or compromise in shaping behavior. Because neither goal wins complete control of behavior, the result may be that each is only partly satisfied.
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Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Cognitive Sciences |