• 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
  •  342
    Introspection: Divided and Partly Eliminated
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (1): 76-111. 2009.
    This paper will argue that there is no such thing as introspective access to judgments and decisions. It won't challenge the existence of introspective access to perceptual and imagistic states, nor to emotional feelings and bodily sensations. On the contrary, the model presented in Section 2 presumes such access. Hence introspection is here divided into two categories: introspection of propositional attitude events, on the one hand, and introspection of broadly perceptual events, on the other. …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
  •  57
    Massive modularity is consistent with most forms of neural reuse
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (4): 289-290. 2010.
    Anderson claims that the hypothesis of massive neural reuse is inconsistent with massive mental modularity. But much depends upon how each thesis is understood. We suggest that the thesis of massive modularity presented in Carruthers (2006) is consistent with the forms of neural reuse that are actually supported by the data cited, while being inconsistent with a stronger version of reuse that Anderson seems to support
  •  11
    Review of Peter Carruthers and Andrew Chamberlain: Evolution and the Human Mind: Modularity, Language and Meta-Cognition (review)
    with Andrew Chamberlin and Jerry Fodor
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (3): 623-628. 2001.
  • Cowie, F.-What's Within?
    Philosophical Books 40 258-259. 1999.
  •  380
    My charge in this chapter is to set out the positive case supporting massively modular models of the human mind.1 Unfortunately, there is no generally accepted understanding of what a massively modular model of the mind is. So at least some of our discussion will have to be terminological. I shall begin by laying out the range of things that can be meant by ‘modularity’. I shall then adopt a pair of strategies. One will be to distinguish some things that ‘modularity’ definitely can’t mean, if th…Read more
  • 254 list of publications by Stephen Stich
    In Dominic Murphy & Michael A. Bishop (eds.), Stich and His Critics, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 14--17. 2009.
  •  282
    Moral Responsibility and Consciousness
    with Matt King
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 9 (2): 200-228. 2012.
    Our aim in this paper is to raise a question about the relationship between theories of responsibility, on the one hand, and a commitment to conscious attitudes, on the other. Our question has rarely been raised previously. Among those who believe in the reality of human freedom, compatibilists have traditionally devoted their energies to providing an account that can avoid any commitment to the falsity of determinism while successfully accommodating a range of intuitive examples. Libertarians, …Read more
  •  75
    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
  •  157
    Simple heuristics meet massive modularity
    In Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents, Oxford University Press Usa. 2005.
    This chapter investigates the extent to which claims of massive modular organization of the mind (espoused by some members of the evolutionary psychology research program) are consistent with the main elements of the simple heuristics research program. A number of potential sources of conflict between the two programs are investigated and defused. However, the simple heuristics program turns out to undermine one of the main arguments offered in support of massive modularity, at least as the latt…Read more
  •  69
    Invertebrate Minds: A Challenge for Ethical Theory
    The Journal of Ethics 11 (3): 275-297. 2007.
    This paper argues that navigating insects and spiders possess a degree of mindedness that makes them appropriate (in the sense of “possible”) objects of sympathy and moral concern. For the evidence suggests that many invertebrates possess a belief-desire-planning psychology that is in basic respects similar to our own. The challenge for ethical theory is find some principled way of demonstrating that individual insects do not make moral claims on us, given the widely held belief that some other …Read more
  •  407
    Why the question of animal consciousness might not matter very much
    Philosophical Psychology 18 (1): 83-102. 2005.
    According to higher-order thought accounts of phenomenal consciousness it is unlikely that many non-human animals undergo phenomenally conscious experiences. Many people believe that this result would have deep and far-reaching consequences. More specifically, they believe that the absence of phenomenal consciousness from the rest of the animal kingdom must mark a radical and theoretically significant divide between ourselves and other animals, with important implications for comparative psychol…Read more
  •  104
    The roots of scientific reasoning: Infancy, modularity, and the art of tracking
    In Peter Carruthers & Jill Boucher (eds.), [Book Chapter], Cambridge University Press. pp. 73--95. 1998.
    This chapter examines the extent to which there are continuities between the cognitive processes and epistemic practices engaged in by human hunter-gatherers, on the one hand, and those which are distinctive of science, on the other. It deploys anthropological evidence against any form of 'no-continuity' view, drawing especially on the cognitive skills involved in the art of tracking. It also argues against the 'child-as-scientist' accounts put forward by some developmental psychologists, which …Read more
  • Précis of Phenomenal Consciousness
    Anthropology and Philosophy 6 (1-2): 19-33. 2005.
  •  103
    Baker and Hacker's Wittgenstein (review)
    Synthese 58 (3): 451-79. 1984.
  •  61
    Reply to Shriver and Allen
    Philosophical Psychology 18 (1): 113-122. 2005.
    Shriver and Allen (this volume, this journal; hereafter S&A) make three unconnected criticisms of my views concerning phenomenal consciousness and the question of animal consciousness. First, they claim that my dispositional higher-order thought theory of consciousness has much greater significance for ethics than I recognize. Second, they claim that, in the course of attempting to motivate that theory, I have presented inadequate criticisms of first-order theories (according to which phenomenal…Read more
  •  43
    Contemporary debates in epistemology devote much attention to the nature of knowledge, but neglect the question of its sources. This book focuses on the latter, especially on the question of innateness. Carruthers' aim is to transform and reinvigorate contemporary empiricism, while also providing an introduction to a range of issues in the theory of knowledge. He gives a lively presentation and assessment of the claims of classical empiricism, particularly its denial of substantive a priori know…Read more
  •  172
    On central cognition
    Philosophical Studies 170 (1): 143-162. 2014.
    This article examines what is known about the cognitive science of working memory, and brings the findings to bear in evaluating philosophical accounts of central cognitive processes of thinking and reasoning. It is argued that central cognition is sensory based, depending on the activation and deployment of sensory images of various sorts. Contrary to a broad spectrum of philosophical opinion, the central mind does not contain any workspace within which goals, decisions, intentions, or non-sens…Read more
  • Reply to Allen
    Anthropology and Philosophy 6 (1-2): 62-67. 2005.
  •  76
    Frege's Regress
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 82. 1982.
    In his essay 'Thoughts',' Frege is to be found employing a regress-argument against the correspondence theory of truth. He seems to have felt that the argument is not only completely destructive of the correspondence theory, but that it could be deployed equally well against any attempt to provide a general definition of the notion of truth. In my view neither conclusion is warranted. But Frege's Regress can, nevertheless, be developed into an argument of the greatest significance.