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62Pragmatic development explains the Theory-of-Mind ScaleCognition 158 (C): 165-176. 2017.Henry Wellman and colleagues have provided evidence of a robust developmental progression in theory-of-mind (or as we will say, “mindreading”) abilities, using verbal tasks. Understanding diverse desires is said to be easier than understanding diverse beliefs, which is easier than understanding that lack of perceptual access issues in ignorance, which is easier than understanding false belief, which is easier than understanding that people can hide their true emotions. These findings present a c…Read more
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75Introduction: Nativism past and presentIn Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents, Oxford University Press Usa. 2005.Elaborates some of the background assumptions made by the chapters that follow and situates the theory that the author espouses within a wider context and range of alternatives. More specifically, it distinguishes between creature consciousness and state consciousness, and between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. And it defends representationalist accounts of consciousness against brute physicalist accounts. The chapter also introduces the remaining 11 chapters.
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33Introduction: nativism past and presentIn Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents, Oxford University Press Usa. 2005.Elaborates some of the background assumptions made by the chapters that follow and situates the theory that the author espouses within a wider context and range of alternatives. More specifically, it distinguishes between creature consciousness and state consciousness, and between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. And it defends representationalist accounts of consciousness against brute physicalist accounts. The chapter also introduces the remaining 11 chapters.
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67Cognitive instincts versus cognitive gadgets: A fallacyMind and Language 34 (4): 540-550. 2019.The main thesis of Heyes' book is that all of the domain-specific learning mechanisms that make the human mind so different from the minds of other animals are culturally created and culturally acquired gadgets. The only innate differences are some motivational tweaks, enhanced capacities for associative learning, and enhanced executive function abilities. But Heyes' argument depends on contrasting cognitive gadgets with cognitive instincts, which are said to be innately specified. This ignores…Read more
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3The bodily sensesIn Mohan Matthen (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Perception, Oxford University Press Uk. 2015.
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134Can Panpsychism Bridge the Explanatory Gap?Journal of Consciousness Studies 13 (10-11): 32-39. 2006.
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20The Innate Mind, Volume 3: Foundations and the Future (edited book)Oxford University Press. 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
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25Pretend play: More imitative than imaginativeMind and Language 38 (2): 464-479. 2023.Pretense is generally thought to constitutively involve imagination. We argue that this is a mistake. Although pretense often involves imagination, it need not; nor is it a kind of imagination. The core nature of pretense is closer to imitation than it is to imagination, and likely shares some of its motivation with the former. Three main strands of argument are presented. One is from the best explanation of cross‐cultural data. Another is from task‐analysis of instances of pretend play. And the…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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126On 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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43In 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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54Perceptual 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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82How 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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41Explaining 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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30Review 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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94Explicit 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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88Representing 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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56Review 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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62Human 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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34Theory 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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70The 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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55Relationships between implicit and explicit uncertainty monitoring and mindreading: Evidence from autism spectrum disorderConsciousness and Cognition 70 11-24. 2019.
College Park, Maryland, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Cognitive Sciences |