•  75
    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
  • Presents and develops what the author takes to be the main argument, both against the most plausible version of first-order representationalist theory of phenomenal consciousness, and in support of his own higher-order perception/dual-content account. The primary goal of the chapter is to lay out the case for saying that dual-content theory provides us with a successful reductive explanation of the various puzzling features of phenomenal consciousness. Also takes up the question whether a first-…Read more
  • Distinctively Human Thinking
    In Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents, Oxford University Press Usa. 2005.
    This chapter addresses 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. It shows 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.
  • Shifts focus from conscious experience to conscious thought. It develops a dilemma. Either the use of natural language sentences in ‘inner speech’ is constitutive of thinking, as opposed to being merely expressive of it. Or there may really be no such thing as conscious propositional thinking at all, and eliminativism about conscious thinking is true. While the author makes clear my preference for the first horn of this dilemma, and explains how such a claim could possibly be true, this is not r…Read more
  •  180
    Basic questions
    Mind 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
  •  69
    This 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.
  • Lycan, W. G., "Consciousness" (review)
    Mind 97 (n/a): 640. 1988.
  •  149
    The Animals Issue: Moral Theory in Practice
    Cambridge 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
  •  122
    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
  •  32
    Understanding names
    Philosophical Quarterly 33 (130): 19-36. 1983.
  •  179
    Cartesian 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
  •  244
    The Origins of Creativity
    In Elliot Samuel Paul & Scott Barry Kaufman (eds.), The Philosophy of Creativity, Oxford University Press. 2014.
    The goal of this chapter is to provide an integrated evolutionary and developmental account of the emergence of distinctively-human creative capacities. Our main thesis is that childhood pretend play is a uniquely human adaptation that functions in part to enhance adult forms of creativity. We review evidence that is consistent with such an account, and contrast our proposal favorably with a number of alternatives.
  •  156
    Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory
    Cambridge University Press. 2000.
    How can phenomenal consciousness exist as an integral part of a physical universe? How can the technicolour phenomenology of our inner lives be created out of the complex neural activities of our brains? Many have despaired of finding answers to these questions; and many have claimed that human consciousness is inherently mysterious. Peter Carruthers argues, on the contrary, that the subjective feel of our experience is fully explicable in naturalistic terms. Drawing on a variety of interdiscipl…Read more
  •  68
    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
  •  7
    Fragmentary Versus Reflexive Consciousness
    Mind and Language 12 (2): 181-195. 1997.
  •  573
    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.
  •  34
    Language, Thought and Consciousness: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology
    with Greg Jarrett
    Philosophical Review 107 (2): 315. 1998.
    Carruthers offers a refreshing piece of “substantive philosophy.” Going beyond the limitations of pure analysis, he adopts a methodology which is one part analysis, one part empirical data, and a heavy dose of inference to the best explanation. The overarching goal is to advance the commonsense—yet unfashionable—thesis that natural language is the primary medium of thought, and to defend the related cognitive conception of NL. In particular, Carruthers argues that imaginative phonological repres…Read more
  •  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
  •  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
  •  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