-
965Should damage to the machinery for social perception damage perceptionCognitive Neuroscience 2 (2): 116-17. 2011.We argue that Graziano and Kastner are mistaken to claim that neglect favors their self-directed social perception account of consciousness. For the latter should not predict that neglect would result from damage to mechanisms of social perception. Neglect is better explained in terms of damage to attentional mechanisms.
-
51Invertebrate concepts confront the generality constraint (and win)In Robert W. Lurz (ed.), The Philosophy of Animal Minds, Cambridge University Press. pp. 89--107. 2009.
-
139Animal subjectivityPSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 4. 1998.Carruthers, P. . Natural theories of consciousness. European Journal of Philosophy
-
202Human creativity: Its cognitive basis, its evolution, and its connections with childhood pretenceBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53 (2): 225-249. 2002.This paper defends two initial claims. First, it argues that essentially the same cognitive resources are shared by adult creative thinking and problem-solving, on the one hand, and by childhood pretend play, on the other—namely, capacities to generate and to reason with suppositions (or imagined possibilities). Second, it argues that the evolutionary function of childhood pretence is to practice and enhance adult forms of creativity. The paper goes on to show how these proposals can provide a s…Read more
-
23Assertion and ConditionalsPhilosophical Quarterly 36 (145): 566. 1986.This book develops in detail the simple idea that assertion is the expression of belief. In it the author puts forward a version of 'probabilistic semantics' which acknowledges that we are not perfectly rational, and which offers a significant advance in generality on theories of meaning couched in terms of truth conditions. It promises to challenge a number of entrenched and widespread views about the relations of language and mind. Part I presents a functionalist account of belief, worked thro…Read more
-
46Languages 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
-
14The Innate Mind, Volume 3: Foundations and the Future (edited book)Oup Usa. 2008.This book is the third of a three-volume set on the innate mind. It provides an assessment of nativist thought and definitive reference point for future inquiry. Nativists have long been interested in a variety of foundational topics relating to the study of cognitive development and the historical opposition between nativism and empiricism. Among the issues here are questions about what it is for something to be innate in the first place; how innateness is related to such things as heritability…Read more
-
215Moderately massive modularityIn Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Minds and Persons, Cambridge University Press. pp. 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.
-
Critical study: Baker and Hacker's WittgensteinIn Gordon P. Baker (ed.), Wittgenstein: understanding and meaning, Blackwell. 1980.
-
69This chapter argues that there are multiple adaptations underlying the distinctiveness of the human mind. Careful analysis of the capacities that are involved in the creation, acquisition, and transmission of culture and cultural products suggests that it is very unlikely that these could all be underlain by just one, or a few, novel cognitive systems. On the contrary, there are at least a handful of such systems, each of which is largely independent of the others.
-
35Precis of "Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory"SWIF Philosophy of Mind Review 2 (1). 2001.
-
179Cartesian Epistemology: Is the theory of the self-transparent mind innate?Journal of Consciousness Studies 15 (4): 28-53. 2008.This paper argues that a Cartesian belief in the self-transparency of minds might actually be an innate aspect of our mind-reading faculty. But it acknowledges that some crucial evidence needed to establish this claim hasn’t been looked for or collected. What we require is evidence that a belief in the self-transparency of mind is universal to the human species. The paper closes with a call to anthropologists (and perhaps also developmental psychologists), who are in a position to collect such e…Read more
-
22Human Knowledge and Human Nature: A New Introduction to an Ancient DebatePhilosophical Review 105 (4): 530. 1996.Based on lectures developed for an audience ignorant of analytic thought, Carruthers’s clearly and elegantly written book introduces many central issues in modern philosophy, including knowledge, justification, truth, the a priori, Platonism, learning, the evolution of mind, explanation. Its organizing principle being the rationalist-empiricist controversy from the 1700s onwards, it also offers an intriguing reinterpretation of that debate and mounts a lively defense of a hybrid position that es…Read more
-
149The Animals Issue: Moral Theory in PracticeCambridge University Press. 1992.Do animals have moral rights? In contrast to the philosophical gurus of the animal rights movement, whose opinion has held moral sway in recent years, Peter Carruthers here claims that they do not. He explores a variety of moral theories, arguing that animals lack direct moral significance. This provocative but judiciously argued book will appeal to all those interested in animal rights, whatever their initial standpoint. It will also serve as a lively introduction to ethics, demonstrating why t…Read more
-
122Is the mind a system of modules shaped by natural selection?In Christopher R. Hitchcock (ed.), Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. 2003.This chapter defends the positive thesis which constitutes its title. It argues first, that the mind has been shaped by natural selection; and second, that the result of that shaping process is a modular mental architecture. The arguments presented are all broadly empirical in character, drawing on evidence provided by biologists, neuroscientists and psychologists (evolutionary, cognitive, and developmental), as well as by researchers in artificial intelligence. Yet the conclusion is at odds wit…Read more
College Park, Maryland, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Cognitive Sciences |