•  129
    Block's Overflow Argument
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 65-70. 2017.
    This article challenges Block's ‘overflow argument’ for the conclusion that phenomenal consciousness and access-consciousness are distinct. It shows that the data can be explained just as well in terms of a distinction between contents that are made globally accessible through bottom–up sensory stimulation and those that are sustained and made available in working memory through top-down attention.
  •  212
    Simulation and self-knowledge: A defence of the theory-theory
    In Peter Carruthers & Peter K. Smith (eds.), Theories of Theories of Mind, Cambridge University Press. pp. 22--38. 1996.
    In this chapter I attempt to curb the pretensions of simulationism. I argue that it is, at best, an epistemological doctrine of limited scope. It may explain how we go about attributing beliefs and desires to others, and perhaps to ourselves, in some cases. But simulation cannot provide the fundamental basis of our conception of, or knowledge of, minded agency
  •  572
    The illusion of conscious will
    Synthese 159 (2). 2007.
    Wegner (Wegner, D. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. MIT Press) argues that conscious will is an illusion, citing a wide range of empirical evidence. I shall begin by surveying some of his arguments. Many are unsuccessful. But one—an argument from the ubiquity of self-interpretation—is more promising. Yet is suffers from an obvious lacuna, offered by so-called ‘dual process’ theories of reasoning and decision making (Evans, J., & Over, D. (1996). Rationality and reasoning. Psychology Press…Read more
  •  10
    No Title available: New Books (review)
    Philosophy 66 (258): 535-536. 1991.
  •  86
    Are epistemic emotions metacognitive?
    Philosophical Psychology 30 (1-2): 58-78. 2017.
    This article addresses the question whether epistemic emotions are in any sense inherently metacognitive. The paper begins with some critical discussion of a recent suggestion made by Joelle Proust, that these emotions might be implicitly or procedurally metacognitive. It then explores the theoretical resources that are needed to explain how such emotions arise and do their work. While there is a perennial temptation to think that epistemic emotions are somehow about the cognitive states of the …Read more
  •  7
    Fragmentary Versus Reflexive Consciousness
    Mind and Language 12 (2): 181-195. 1997.
  •  127
    Mindreading in adults: evaluating two-systems views
    Synthese 194 (3): 673-688. 2017.
    A number of convergent recent findings with adults have been interpreted as evidence of the existence of two distinct systems for mindreading that draw on separate conceptual resources: one that is fast, automatic, and inflexible; and one that is slower, controlled, and flexible. The present article argues that these findings admit of a more parsimonious explanation. This is that there is a single set of concepts made available by a mindreading system that operates automatically where it can, bu…Read more
  •  482
    Introspection: Divided and Partly Eliminated
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (1): 76-111. 2009.
    This paper will argue that there is no such thing as introspective access to judgments and decisions. It won't challenge the existence of introspective access to perceptual and imagistic states, nor to emotional feelings and bodily sensations. On the contrary, the model presented in Section 2 presumes such access. Hence introspection is here divided into two categories: introspection of propositional attitude events, on the one hand, and introspection of broadly perceptual events, on the other. …Read more
  •  96
    This article evaluates the scientific credentials of a distinction that is frequently endorsed by scientists who study human reasoning, between so-called “System 1” and “System 2”. The paper argues that one aspect of what is generally intended by this distinction is real. In particular, there is a real distinction between intuitive and reflective cognitive processes. But this distinction fails to line up with many of the other properties attributed to System 1 and System 2. Accordingly, the pape…Read more
  • 254 list of publications by Stephen Stich
    In Michael Bishop & Dominic Murphy (eds.), Stich and His Critics, Blackwell. pp. 14--17. 2009.
  •  46
    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
  •  11
    Review of Peter Carruthers and Andrew Chamberlain: Evolution and the Human Mind: Modularity, Language and Meta-Cognition (review)
    with Andrew Chamberlin and Jerry Fodor
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (3): 623-628. 2001.
  • Cowie, F.-What's Within?
    Philosophical Books 40 258-259. 1999.
  •  380
    My charge in this chapter is to set out the positive case supporting massively modular models of the human mind.1 Unfortunately, there is no generally accepted understanding of what a massively modular model of the mind is. So at least some of our discussion will have to be terminological. I shall begin by laying out the range of things that can be meant by ‘modularity’. I shall then adopt a pair of strategies. One will be to distinguish some things that ‘modularity’ definitely can’t mean, if th…Read more
  •  104
    The roots of scientific reasoning: Infancy, modularity, and the art of tracking
    In Peter Carruthers, Stephen P. Stich & Michael Siegal (eds.), [Book Chapter], Cambridge University Press. pp. 73--95. 2002.
    This chapter examines the extent to which there are continuities between the cognitive processes and epistemic practices engaged in by human hunter-gatherers, on the one hand, and those which are distinctive of science, on the other. It deploys anthropological evidence against any form of 'no-continuity' view, drawing especially on the cognitive skills involved in the art of tracking. It also argues against the 'child-as-scientist' accounts put forward by some developmental psychologists, which …Read more
  • Précis of Phenomenal Consciousness
    Anthropology and Philosophy 6 (1-2): 19-33. 2005.
  •  75
    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
  •  157
    Simple heuristics meet massive modularity
    In Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents, Oxford University Press Usa. 2005.
    This chapter investigates the extent to which claims of massive modular organization of the mind (espoused by some members of the evolutionary psychology research program) are consistent with the main elements of the simple heuristics research program. A number of potential sources of conflict between the two programs are investigated and defused. However, the simple heuristics program turns out to undermine one of the main arguments offered in support of massive modularity, at least as the latt…Read more
  •  120
    Invertebrate Minds: A Challenge for Ethical Theory
    The Journal of Ethics 11 (3): 275-297. 2007.
    This paper argues that navigating insects and spiders possess a degree of mindedness that makes them appropriate (in the sense of “possible”) objects of sympathy and moral concern. For the evidence suggests that many invertebrates possess a belief-desire-planning psychology that is in basic respects similar to our own. The challenge for ethical theory is find some principled way of demonstrating that individual insects do not make moral claims on us, given the widely held belief that some other …Read more
  •  66
    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
  •  172
    On central cognition
    Philosophical Studies 170 (1): 143-162. 2014.
    This article examines what is known about the cognitive science of working memory, and brings the findings to bear in evaluating philosophical accounts of central cognitive processes of thinking and reasoning. It is argued that central cognition is sensory based, depending on the activation and deployment of sensory images of various sorts. Contrary to a broad spectrum of philosophical opinion, the central mind does not contain any workspace within which goals, decisions, intentions, or non-sens…Read more
  •  103
    Baker and Hacker's Wittgenstein (review)
    Synthese 58 (3): 451-79. 1984.
  •  61
    Reply to Shriver and Allen
    Philosophical Psychology 18 (1): 113-122. 2005.
    Shriver and Allen (this volume, this journal; hereafter S&A) make three unconnected criticisms of my views concerning phenomenal consciousness and the question of animal consciousness. First, they claim that my dispositional higher-order thought theory of consciousness has much greater significance for ethics than I recognize. Second, they claim that, in the course of attempting to motivate that theory, I have presented inadequate criticisms of first-order theories (according to which phenomenal…Read more
  •  43
    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