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1The Architecture of the Mind: Massive Modularity and the Flexibility of ThoughtCritica 41 (122): 113-124. 2009.
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24Las heurísticas simples se encuentran con la modularidad masivaAnálisis Filosófico 28 (1): 113-138. 2008.Este artículo investiga la coherencia entre la propuesta de una organización modular masiva de la mente y el enfoque de las heurísticas simples. Se discute una serie de potenciales conflictos entre los dos programas, pero finalmente son desestimados. De todos modos, el programa de las heurísticas simples sí termina socavando uno de los muchos argumentos propuestos para apoyar la modularidad masiva, al menos en el modo en que esta última es comprendida por los filósofos. Así que un resultado de l…Read more
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110Consciousness: Essays From a Higher-Order PerspectiveOxford University Press UK. 2005.Peter Carruthers's essays on consciousness and related issues have had a substantial impact on the field, and many of his best are now collected here in revised form. The first half of the volume is devoted to developing, elaborating, and defending against competitors one particular sort of reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness, which Carruthers now refers to as 'dual-content theory'. Phenomenal consciousness - the feel of experience - is supposed to constitute the 'hard problem' for…Read more
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106Pretend playMind 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.
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115Simulation and the first-person (review)Philosophical Studies 144 (3). 2009.This article focuses on, and critiques, Goldman’s view that third-person mind-reading is grounded in first-person introspection. It argues, on the contrary, that first-person awareness of propositional attitude events is always interpretative, resulting from us turning our mind-reading abilities upon ourselves.
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348How we know our own minds: The relationship between mindreading and metacognitionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (2): 121-138. 2009.Four different accounts of the relationship between third-person mindreading and first-person metacognition are compared and evaluated. While three of them 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. Section 1 of this target article introduces the four accounts. Section 2 develops the “mindreading is prior” model in more detail, showing…Read more
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210Phenomenal 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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20The present paper elucidates, elaborates, and defends the main thesis advanced in the target article: namely, that natural-language sentences play a constitutive role in some human thought processes, and that they are responsible for some of the distinctive flexibility of human thinking, serving to integrate the outputs of a variety of conceptual modules. Section R1 clarifies and elaborates this main thesis, responding to a number of objections and misunderstandings. R2 considers three contrasti…Read more
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101Why Pretend?In Shaun Nichols (ed.), The Architecture of the Imagination: New Essays on Pretence, Possibility, and Fiction, Clarendon Press. 2006.
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5Human Consciousness By Alistair Hannay London: Routledge, 1990, 221 pp., No price given (review)Philosophy 66 (258): 535-536. 1991.
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79The Metaphysics of the TractatusCambridge University Press. 1990.In this remarkably clear and original study of the Tractatus Peter Carruthers has two principal aims. He seeks to make sense of Wittgenstein's metaphysical doctrines, showing how powerful arguments may be deployed in their support. He also aims to locate the crux of the conflict between Wittgenstein's early and late philosophies. This is shown to arise from his earlier commitment to the objectivity of logic and logical relations, which is the true target of attack of his later discussion of rule…Read more
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124Ruling-out realismPhilosophia 15 (1-2): 61-78. 1985.The case for anti-realism in the theory of meaning, as presented by Dummen and Wright, 1 is only partly convincing. There is, I shall suggest, a crucial lacuna in the argument, that can only be filled by the later Wittgenstein's following-a-rule considerations. So it is the latter that provides the strongest argument for the rejection of semantic realism.
By 'realism', throughout, I should be taken as referring to any conception of meaning that leaves open the possibility that a sentence may have…Read more -
27The Innate Mind: Culture and Cognition (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 2006.This book is the second of a three-volume set on the subject of innateness. The book is highly interdisciplinary, and addresses such question as: to what extent are mature cognitive capacities a reflection of particular cultures and to what extent are they a product of innate elements? How do innate elements interact with culture to achieve mature cognitive capacities? How do minds generate and shape cultures? How are cultures processed by minds?Concerned with the fundamental architecture of the…Read more
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64Modularity, language, and the flexibility of thoughtBehavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (6): 705-719. 2002.The present response elucidates, elaborates, and defends the main thesis advanced in the target article: namely, that natural-language sentences play a constitutive role in some human thought processes, and that they are responsible for some of the distinctive flexibility of human thinking, serving to integrate the outputs of a variety of conceptual modules. Section R1 clarifies and elaborates this main thesis, responding to a number of objections and misunderstandings. Section R2 considers thre…Read more
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16Robert Cummins, "Meaning and Mental Representation" (review)Philosophical Quarterly 40 (61): 527. 1990.
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76Conceptual pragmatismSynthese 73 (2). 1987.The paper puts forward the thesis of conceptual pragmatism: that there are pragmatic choices to be made between distinct but similar concepts within various contexts. It is argued that this thesis should be acceptable to all who believe in concepts, whether the believers are platonists, realists or anti-realists. It is argued that the truth of the thesis may help to resolve many long-standing debates, and that in any case it will lead to an extension of philosophical method. The paper then brief…Read more
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36The Centered Mind: What the Science of Working Memory Shows Us About the Nature of Human ThoughtOxford University Press UK. 2015.The Centered Mind offers a new view of the nature and causal determinants of both reflective thinking and, more generally, the stream of consciousness. Peter Carruthers argues that conscious thought is always sensory-based, relying on the resources of the working-memory system. This system enables sensory images to be sustained and manipulated through attentional signals directed at midlevel sensory areas of the brain. When abstract conceptual representations are bound into these images, we cons…Read more
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19Language, 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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91This 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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Consciousness: Essays from a Higher-Order PerspectivePhilosophical Quarterly 56 (225): 619-622. 2006.
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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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11II*—Frege's RegressProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 82 (1): 17-32. 1982.Peter Carruthers; II*—Frege's Regress, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 82, Issue 1, 1 June 1982, Pages 17–32, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristoteli.
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97Two Systems for Mindreading?Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (1): 141-162. 2016.A number of two-systems accounts have been proposed to explain the apparent discrepancy between infants’ early success in nonverbal mindreading tasks, on the one hand, and the failures of children younger than four to pass verbally-mediated false-belief tasks, on the other. Many of these accounts have not been empirically fruitful. This paper focuses, in contrast, on the two-systems proposal put forward by Ian Apperly and colleagues. This has issued in a number of new findings. The present paper…Read more
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Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Cognitive Sciences |