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254 list of publications by Stephen StichIn Michael Bishop & Dominic Murphy (eds.), Stich and His Critics, Blackwell. pp. 14--17. 2009.
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11Review of Peter Carruthers and Andrew Chamberlain: Evolution and the Human Mind: Modularity, Language and Meta-Cognition (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (3): 623-628. 2001.
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154Simple heuristics meet massive modularityIn 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
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119Invertebrate Minds: A Challenge for Ethical TheoryThe 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
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104The roots of scientific reasoning: Infancy, modularity, and the art of trackingIn Peter Carruthers, Stephen P. Stich & Michael Siegal (eds.), [Book Chapter], Cambridge University Press. pp. 73--95. 2002.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
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75This 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
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41Human knowledge and human nature: a new introduction to an ancient debateOxford University Press. 1992.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
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27Introducing PersonsPhilosophical Quarterly 38 (150): 123. 1988.This is an elegant and clear tour through many of the issues in philosophy of mind that have occupied philosophers of this century. The topics covered include the problem of other minds, arguments for and against the existence of the soul, a discussion of the bundle theory of the mind, behaviorism, functionalism, mind/brain identity, the argument against the possibility of private language, personal identity and the possibility of after-life, and the question of whether animals and computers can…Read more
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171On central cognitionPhilosophical 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
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61Reply to Shriver and AllenPhilosophical 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
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73Frege's RegressProceedings 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.
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The Innate Mind: Health Disparities Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men in the United StatesOxford University Press USA. 2008.This is the third volume of a three-volume set on The Innate Mind. The extent to which cognitive structures, processes, and contents are innate is one of the central questions concerning the nature of the mind, with important implications for debates throughout the human sciences. By bringing together the top nativist scholars in philosophy, psychology, and allied disciplines these volumes provide a comprehensive assessment of nativist thought and a definitive reference point for future nativist…Read more
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58Descriptive Experience Sampling: What is it good for?Journal of Consciousness Studies 18 (1): 130-149. 2011.We defend the reliability of Hurlburt's Descriptive Experi-ence Sampling method against some of Schwitzgebel's attacks. But we agree with Schwitzgebel that the method could be used much more widely than it has been, helping to answer questions about the nature and structure of consciousness in addition to cataloguing the latter's contents. We sketch a number of potential lines of further enquiry.
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38Moderately Massive ModularityRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 53 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.
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163An architecture for dual reasoningIn Jonathan Evans & Keith Frankish (eds.), In Two Minds: Dual Processes and Beyond, Oxford University Press. 2008.In J. Evans and K. Frankish (eds.), In Two Minds: dual processes and beyond. Oxford University Press, 2008. (In draft.)
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282The evolution of consciousnessIn Peter Carruthers & A. Chamberlain (eds.), Evolution and the Human Mind: Modularity, Language and Meta-Cognition, Cambridge University Press. pp. 254. 2000.How might consciousness have evolved? Unfortunately for the prospects of providing a convincing answer to this question, there is no agreed account of what consciousness is. So any attempt at an answer will have to fragment along a number of different lines of enquiry. More fortunately, perhaps, there is general agreement that a number of distinct notions of consciousness need to be distinguished from one another; and there is also broad agreement as to which of these is particularly problematic…Read more
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43Review of Alvin I. Goldman, Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (11). 2006.
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333Conscious thinking: Language or elimination?Mind and Language 13 (4): 457-476. 1998.Do we conduct our conscious propositional thinking in natural language? Or is such language only peripherally related to human conscious thought-processes? In this paper I shall present a partial defence of the former view, by arguing that the only real alternative is eliminativism about conscious propositional thinking. Following some introductory remarks, I shall state the argument for this conclusion, and show how that conclusion can be true. Thereafter I shall defend each of the three main p…Read more
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268The Architecture of the Mind:Massive Modularity and the Flexibility of Thought: Massive Modularity and the Flexibility of ThoughtOxford University Press UK. 2006.This book is a comprehensive development and defense of one of the guiding assumptions of evolutionary psychology: that the human mind is composed of a large number of semi-independent modules. The Architecture of the Mind has three main goals. One is to argue for massive mental modularity. Another is to answer a 'How possibly?' challenge to any such approach. The first part of the book lays out the positive case supporting massive modularity. It also outlines how the thesis should best be devel…Read more
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146Language and Thought: Interdisciplinary Themes (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1998.What is the place of language in human cognition? Do we sometimes think in natural language? Or is language for purposes of interpersonal communication only? Although these questions have been much debated in the past, they have almost dropped from sight in recent decades amongst those interested in the cognitive sciences. Language and Thought is intended to persuade such people to think again. It brings together essays by a distinguished interdisciplinary team of philosophers and psychologists,…Read more
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96Practical 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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151Consciousness: Explaining the phenomenaIn D. Walsh (ed.), Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, Cambridge University Press. pp. 61-85. 2001.Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Many people argue not. They claim that there is an
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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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Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Cognitive Sciences |