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99Practical reasoning in a modular mindMind and Language 19 (3): 259-278. 2004.This paper starts from an assumption defended in the author's previous work. This is that distinctivelyhuman flexible and creative theoretical thinking can be explained in terms of the interactions of a variety of modular systems, with the addition of just a few amodular components and dispositions. On the basis of that assumption it is argued that distinctively human practical reasoning, too, can be understood in modular terms. The upshot is that there is nothing in the human psyche that requ…Read more
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256Sympathy and subjectivityAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 77 (4): 465-82. 1999.This paper shows that even if the mental states of non-human animals lack phenomenological properties, as some accounts of mental-state consciousness imply, this need not prevent those states from being appropriate objects of sympathy and moral concern. The paper argues that the most basic form of mental (as opposed to biological) harm lies in the existence of thwarted agency, or thwarted desire, rather than in anything phenomenological
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360""Banishing" I" and" we" from accounts of metacognitionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (2): 148. 2009.SHORT ABSTRACT: A number of accounts of the relationship between third-person mindreading and first-person metacognition are compared and evaluated. While three of these accounts endorse the existence of introspection for propositional attitudes, the fourth (defended here) claims that our knowledge of our own attitudes results from turning our mindreading capacities upon ourselves. The different types of theory are developed and evaluated, and multiple lines of evidence are reviewed, including e…Read more
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226Theories of Theories of Mind (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1996.Theories of Theories of Mind brings together contributions by a distinguished international team of philosophers, psychologists, and primatologists, who between them address such questions as: what is it to understand the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of other people? How does such an understanding develop in the normal child? Why, unusually, does it fail to develop? And is any such mentalistic understanding shared by members of other species? The volume's four parts together offer a state …Read more
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12Phenomenal Concepts and Higher‐Order ExperiencesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (2): 316-336. 2004.Relying on a range of now‐familiar thought‐experiments, it has seemed to many philosophers that phenomenal consciousness is beyond the scope of reductive explanation. (Phenomenal consciousness is a form of state‐consciousness, which contrasts with creature‐consciousness, or perceptual ‐consciousness. The different forms of state‐consciousness include various kinds of access‐consciousness, both first‐order and higher‐order–see Rosenthal, 1986; Block, 1995; Lycan, 1996; Carruthers, 2000. Phenomena…Read more
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12G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, "Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity" (review)Philosophical Quarterly 38 (50): 131. 1988.
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38The mind is a system of modules shaped by natural selectionIn Christopher Hitchcock (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. pp. 293--311. 2004.
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274Natural theories of consciousnessEuropean Journal of Philosophy 6 (2): 203-22. 1998.Many people have thought that consciousness
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153Animal minds are real, (distinctively) human minds are notAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 50 (3): 233-248. 2013.Everyone allows that human and animal minds are distinctively (indeed, massively) different in their manifest effects. Humans have been able to colonize nearly every corner of the planet, from the artic, to deserts, to rainforests (and they did so in the absence of modern technological aids); they live together in large cooperative groups of unrelated individuals; they communicate with one another using the open-ended expressive resources of natural language; they are capable of cultural learnin…Read more
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20Better tests of consciousness are needed, but skepticism about unconscious processes is unwarrantedBehavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (1): 36-37. 2014.
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Review of The Paradox of Self-Consciousness by José Luis Bermúdez (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 51 (3): 483-486. 2000.
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95Evolution and the Human Mind: Modularity, Language and Meta-Cognition (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2000.How did our minds evolve? Can evolutionary considerations illuminate the question of the basic architecture of the human mind? These are two of the main questions addressed in Evolution and the Human Mind by a distinguished interdisciplinary team of philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists and archaeologists. The essays focus especially on issues to do with modularity of mind, the evolution and significance of natural language, and the evolution of our capacity for meta-cognition, together w…Read more
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103Thinking in language?: Evolution and a modularist possibilityIn Peter Carruthers & Jill Boucher (eds.), [Book Chapter], Cambridge University Press. pp. 94-119. 1998.This chapter argues that our language faculty can both be a peripheral module of the mind and be crucially implicated in a variety of central cognitive functions, including conscious propositional thinking and reasoning. I also sketch arguments for the view that natural language representations (e.g. of Chomsky's Logical Form, or LF) might serve as a lingua franca for interactions (both conscious and non-conscious) between a number of quasi-modular central systems. The ideas presented are compar…Read more
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141Mindreading in InfancyMind and Language 28 (2): 141-172. 2013.Various dichotomies have been proposed to characterize the nature and development of human mindreading capacities, especially in light of recent evidence of mindreading in infants aged 7 to 18 months. This article will examine these suggestions, arguing that none is currently supported by the evidence. Rather, the data support a modular account of the domain-specific component of basic mindreading capacities. This core component is present in infants from a very young age and does not alter fund…Read more
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71The Philosophy of PsychologyCambridge University Press. 1999.What is the relationship between common-sense, or 'folk', psychology and contemporary scientific psychology? Are they in conflict with one another? Or do they perform quite different, though perhaps complementary, roles? George Botterill and Peter Carruthers discuss these questions, defending a robust form of realism about the commitments of folk psychology and about the prospects for integrating those commitments into natural science. Their focus throughout the book is on the ways in which cogn…Read more
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48Review 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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779The cognitive functions of languageBehavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (6): 657-674. 2002.This paper explores a variety of different versions of the thesis that natural language is involved in human thinking. It distinguishes amongst strong and weak forms of this thesis, dismissing some as implausibly strong and others as uninterestingly weak. Strong forms dismissed include the view that language is conceptually necessary for thought (endorsed by many philosophers) and the view that language is _de facto_ the medium of all human conceptual thinking (endorsed by many philosophers and …Read more
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260Language, thought, and consciousness: an essay in philosophical psychologyCambridge University Press. 1996.Do we think in natural language? Or is language only for communication? Much recent work in philosophy and cognitive science assumes the latter. In contrast, Peter Carruthers argues that much of human conscious thinking is conducted in the medium of natural language sentences. However, this does not commit him to any sort of Whorfian linguistic relativism, and the view is developed within a framework that is broadly nativist and modularist. His study will be essential reading for all those inter…Read more
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366Suffering without subjectivityPhilosophical Studies 121 (2): 99-125. 2004.This paper argues that it is possible for suffering to occur in the absence of phenomenal consciousness – in the absence of a certain sort of experiential subjectivity, that is. (Phenomenal consciousness is the property that some mental states possess, when it is like something to undergo them, or when they have subjective feels, or possess qualia.) So even if theories of phenomenal consciousness that would withhold such consciousness from most species of non-human animal are correct, this nee…Read more
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41Stimulating introduction to the most central and interesting issues in the philosophy of mind. Topics covered include dualism versus the various forms of materialism, personal identity and survival, and the problem of other minds
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83Précis of the architecture of the mind: Massive modularity and the flexibility of thoughtMind and Language 23 (3). 2008.This article outlines the main themes and motivations of Carruthers, 2006. Its purpose is to provide some background for the critical commentaries of Cowie, Machery, and Wilson (this volume).
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177Hop over FOR, HOT theoryIn Rocco J. Gennaro (ed.), Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness: An Anthology, John Benjamins. 2004.Following a short introduction, this chapter begins by contrasting two different forms of higher-order perception theory of phenomenal consciousness - inner sense theory versus a dispositionalist kind of higher-order thought theory - and by giving a brief statement of the superiority of the latter. Thereafter the chapter considers arguments in support of HOP theories in general. It develops two parallel objections against both first-order representationalist theories and actualist forms of HOT t…Read more
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113The Nature of the Mind: An IntroductionRoutledge. 2003._The Nature of the Mind_ is a comprehensive and lucid introduction to major themes in the philosophy of mind. It carefully explores the conflicting positions that have arisen within the debate and locates the arguments within their context. It is designed for newcomers to the subject and assumes no previous knowledge of the philosophy of mind. Clearly written and rigorously presented, this book is ideal for use in undergraduate courses in the philosophy of mind. Main topics covered include: * th…Read more
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Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Cognitive Sciences |