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14Unconsciously 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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Review of John Dupre's Human Nature and the Limits of Science (review)Economics and Philosophy 18 (2): 357-362. 2002.
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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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10Some New Techniques for the Analysis Correlations of Point DistributionsIn R. J. Russell, N. Murphy & A. R. Peacocke (eds.), Chaos and Complexity, Vatican Observatory Publications. pp. 165. 1995.
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134Human nature and the limits of science, John Dupré. Clarendon press, 2001, 211 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 18 (2): 351-385. 2002.
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385Reductive explanation and the "explanatory gap"Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (2): 153-174. 2004.Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Exponents of an
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112Who is blind to blindsight?PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 7. 2001.This paper uses the explanation of blindsight generated by a two-systems theory of vision in order to set Siewert a dilemma. Either his blindsight examples are modelled on actual blindsight, in which case certain reductive theories of phenomenal consciousness will have no difficulty in accommodating them. Or they are intended to be purely imaginary, in which case they will have no force against a reductive naturalist
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199Valence and ValuePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 97 (3): 658-680. 2017.Valence is a central component of all affective states, including pains, pleasures, emotions, moods, and feelings of desire or repulsion.This paper has two main goals. One is to suggest that enough is now known about the causes, consequences, and properties of valence to indicate that it forms a unitary natural-psychological kind, one that seemingly plays a fundamental role in motivating all kinds of intentional action. If this turns out to be true, then the correct characterization of the natur…Read more
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61Reductive Explanation and the "Explanatory Gap"Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (2): 153-173. 2004.Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Exponents of an ‘explanatory gap’ between physical, functional and intentional facts, on the one hand, and the facts of phenomenal consciousness, on the other, argue that there are reasons of principle why phenomenal consciousness cannot be reductively explained: Jackson, ; Levine,, ; McGinn ; Sturgeon, ; Chalmers,. Some of these writers claim that the existence of such a gap would warrant a belief in some form of ontological…Read more
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5Introducing Persons: Theories and Arguments in the Philosophy of MindMind 97 (386): 310-312. 1986.
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75Implicit versus Explicit Attitudes: Differing Manifestations of the Same Representational Structures?Review of Philosophy and Psychology 9 (1): 51-72. 2018.Implicit and explicit attitudes manifest themselves as distinct and partly dissociable behavioral dispositions. It is natural to think that these differences reflect differing underlying representations. The present article argues that this may be a mistake. Although non-verbal and verbal measures of attitudes often dissociate, this may be because the two types of outcome-measure are differentially impacted by other factors, not because they are tapping into distinct kinds of representation or d…Read more
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Human Knowledge and Human Nature: A New Introduction to an Ancient DebatePhilosophy 67 (262): 567-569. 1992.
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180Basic questionsMind and Language 33 (2): 130-147. 2018.This paper argues that a set of questioning attitudes are among the foundations of human and animal minds. While both verbal questioning and states of curiosity are generally explained in terms of metacognitive desires for knowledge or true belief, I argue that each is better explained by a prelinguistic sui generis type of mental attitude of questioning. I review a range of considerations in support of such a proposal and improve on previous characterizations of the nature of these attitudes. I…Read more
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202Meta-cognition in animals: A skeptical lookMind and Language 22 (1). 2007.This paper examines the recent literature on meta-cognitive processes in non-human animals, arguing that in each case the data admit of a simpler, purely first-order, explanation. The topics discussed include the alleged monitoring of states of certainty and uncertainty, the capacity to know whether or not one has perceived something, and the capacity to know whether or not the information needed to solve some problem is stored in memory. The first-order explanations advanced all assume that bel…Read more
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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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248Distinctively human thinkingIn Peter Carruthers & Jill Boucher (eds.), Language and Thought, Cambridge University Press. pp. 69. 1998.This chapter takes up, and sketches an answer to, the main challenge facing massively modular theories of the architecture of the human mind. This is to account for the distinctively flexible, non-domain-specific, character of much human thinking. I shall show how the appearance of a modular language faculty within an evolving modular architecture might have led to these distinctive features of human thinking with only minor further additions and non-domain-specific adaptations
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81The emergence of metacognition: affect and uncertainty in animalsIn Michael J. Beran, Johannes Brandl, Josef Perner & Joëlle Proust (eds.), The foundations of metacognition, Oxford University Press. pp. 76. 2012.This chapter situates the dispute over the metacognitive capacities of non-human animals in the context of wider debates about the phylogeny of metarepresentational abilities. This chapter clarifies the nature of the dispute, before contrasting two different accounts of the evolution of metarepresentation. One is first-person-based, claiming that it emerged initially for purposes of metacognitive monitoring and control. The other is social in nature, claiming that metarepresentation evolved init…Read more
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24Las heurísticas simples se encuentran con la modularidad masivaAnálisis Filosófico 28 (1): 113-138. 2008.Este artículo investiga la coherencia entre la propuesta de una organización modular masiva de la mente y el enfoque de las heurísticas simples. Se discute una serie de potenciales conflictos entre los dos programas, pero finalmente son desestimados. De todos modos, el programa de las heurísticas simples sí termina socavando uno de los muchos argumentos propuestos para apoyar la modularidad masiva, al menos en el modo en que esta última es comprendida por los filósofos. Así que un resultado de l…Read more
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46Consciousness: 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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1The Architecture of the Mind: Massive Modularity and the Flexibility of ThoughtCritica 41 (122): 113-124. 2009.
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213Phenomenal concepts and higher-order experiencesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (2): 316-336. 2004.Relying on a range of now-familiar thought-experiments, it has seemed to many philosophers that phenomenal consciousness is beyond the scope of reductive explanation. (Phenomenal consciousness is a form of state-consciousness, which contrasts with creature-consciousness, or perceptual-consciousness. The different forms of state-consciousness include various kinds of access-consciousness, both first-order and higher-order--see Rosenthal, 1986; Block, 1995; Lycan, 1996; Carruthers, 2000. Phenomena…Read more
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Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Cognitive Sciences |