•  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
  •  14
    The Cognitive Basis of Science (edited book)
    with Peter Carruthers, Stephen Stich, and Michael Siegal
    Cambridge University Press. 2002.
    The Cognitive Basis of Science concerns the question 'What makes science possible?' Specifically, what features of the human mind and of human culture and cognitive development permit and facilitate the conduct of science? The essays in this volume address these questions, which are inherently interdisciplinary, requiring co-operation between philosophers, psychologists, and others in the social and cognitive sciences. They concern the cognitive, social, and motivational underpinnings of scienti…Read more
  •  312
    Language in cognition
    In Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Oxford University Press. 2012.
    In E. Margolis, R. Samuels, and S. Stich (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science. Oxford University Press, 2008.
  •  109
    Pretend play
    with Chris Jarrold, Jill Boucher, and Peter K. Smith
    Mind and Language 9 (4): 445-468. 1994.
    Children’s ability to pretend, and the apparent lack of pretence in children with autism, have become important issues in current research on ‘theory of mind’, on the assumption that pretend play may be an early indicator of metarepresentational abilities.
  •  4
    Review (review)
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1). 1998.
  •  283
    Conscious experience versus conscious thought
    In Uriah Kriegel & Kenneth Williford (eds.), Consciousness and Self-Reference, Mit Press. 2006.
    Are there different constraints on theories of conscious experience as against theories of conscious propositional thought? Is what is problematic or puzzling about each of these phenomena of the same, or of different, types? And to what extent is it plausible to think that either or both conscious experience and conscious thought involve some sort of selfreference? In pursuing these questions I shall also explore the prospects for a defensible form of eliminativism concerning conscious thinking…Read more
  •  51
    Invertebrate concepts confront the generality constraint (and win)
    In Robert W. Lurz (ed.), The Philosophy of Animal Minds, Cambridge University Press. pp. 89--107. 2009.
  •  95
    Perceiving mental states
    Consciousness and Cognition 36 498-507. 2015.
  •  183
    Creative action in mind
    Philosophical Psychology 24 (4). 2011.
    The goal of this article is to display the attractiveness of a novel account of the place of creativity in the human mind. This is designed to supplement (and perhaps replace) the widespread assumption that creativity is thought-based, involving novel combinations of concepts to form creative thoughts, with the creativity of action being parasitic upon prior creative thinking. According to the proposed account, an additional (or perhaps alternative) locus of creativity lies in the assembly and a…Read more
  •  965
    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.
  •  202
    Human creativity: Its cognitive basis, its evolution, and its connections with childhood pretence
    British 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
  •  61
    On concept and object
    Theoria 49 (2): 49-86. 1983.
  •  139
    Animal subjectivity
    PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 4. 1998.
    Carruthers, P. . Natural theories of consciousness. European Journal of Philosophy
  • Reply to Levine
    Anthropology and Philosophy 6 (1-2): 68-73. 2005.
  •  14
    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
  •  215
    Moderately massive modularity
    In 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.
  •  23
    Assertion and Conditionals
    Philosophical 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
  •  3
    First page preview
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 12 (4). 2004.
  •  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.