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17Representation from Bottom and TopCanadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (4): 523-542. 1996.I would like to nominate one more principle for initial inclusion in the science of teleonomy. This principle is that the nature of the stimuli that initiate and regulate a response may be no indication of the function of the response.George Williams could not have anticipated the special relevance his principle has for contemporary analyses of representational content. In particular, his principle provides both a concise statement of where a currently popular strategy for naturalizing represent…Read more
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15Review of R. A. Wilson, Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences--Cognition (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (2). 2005.
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14The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the Resurrection and the Supernatural is UnjustifiedColumbia University Press. 2016.There are many who believe Moses parted the Red Sea and Jesus came back from the dead. Others are certain that exorcisms occur, ghosts haunt attics, and the blessed can cure the terminally ill. Though miracles are immensely improbable, people have embraced them for millennia, seeing in them proof of a supernatural world that resists scientific explanation. Helping us to think more critically about our belief in the improbable, The Miracle Myth casts a skeptical eye on attempts to justify belief …Read more
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9A review of Frederick Adams and Kenneth Aizawa, The Bounds of Cognition: REVIEW OF: The Bounds of Cognition, Frederick Adams and Kenneth Aizawa, 2008, Malden: Blackwell Publishing (review)Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8 (2): 267-273. 2009.In The Bounds of Cognition, Fred Adams and Kenneth Aizawa treat the arguments for extended cognition to withering criticism. I summarize their main arguments and focus special attention on their distinction between the extended cognitive system hypothesis and the extended cognition hypothesis, as well as on their demand for a mark of the mental.
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8Saving the PhenomenalPSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 5. 1999.Qualitative states are no threat to physicalism. They have a causal effect upon the world in virtue of their qualitative nature. This effect is exploited in biological mechanisms for representing the world. Representation requires differential responsiveness to different perceived properties of things. Qualia are taken to be tagged properties of internal representation models. These properties are properties for-the-organism. Such for-the-organism properties are to be expected in beings which pe…Read more
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7A central controversy in philosophy of psychology pits reductionists against, for lack of a better term, autonomists. The reductionist’s burden is to show that psychology is, at best, merely a heuristic device for describing phenomena that are, when speaking more precisely, just physical. I say “at best,” because reductionists are prone to less conciliatory remarks, such as: “psychological property P just is physical property N, so scientific explanation might as well focus exclusively on N,” an…Read more
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7In every philosopher’s career, there comes a time to look back on accomplishments, assess achievements, evaluate one’s place in a canon that dates to an era when Ancient Greeks still roamed the Earth. Perhaps many of you have wondered when I’d finally get around to doing this. Sadly, this is not the night for that splendid occasion. Do not pretend to hide your disappointment. Also, do not hesitate to point fingers. Believe me when I tell you that I would take great delight in reporting to you my…Read more
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6Symbolism, embodied cognition and the broader debateIn Manuel de Vega, Arthur Glenberg & Arthur Graesser (eds.), Symbols and Embodiment: Debates on Meaning and Cognition, Oxford University Press. pp. 57. 2008.
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6Adapted MindsCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 27 85-104. 2001.Minds are obscure things. This is especially obvious and especially onerous to those interested in understanding the mind. One way to begin an investigation of mind, given its abstruseness, is to explore the implications of something we believe must be true of minds. This is the approach I take in this paper. Whatever uncertainties we have about the mind, it’s a safe bet that the mind is an adaptation. So, I begin with this truth about minds: minds are the product of evolution by natural selecti…Read more
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5The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition (edited book)Routledge. 2014.Embodied cognition is one of the foremost areas of study and research in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology and cognitive science. The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key philosophers, topics and debates in this exciting subject and essential reading for any student and scholar of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into six…Read more
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4Last year, as some of you may recall, I took it upon my chairly shoulders to solve the problem of causation, where this problem can be stated this way: What is causation? According to the analysis I offered, C is a cause of E if and only if C makes E happen. I am happy to report that, in the year since delivering this account of causation, no objections have arisen. The critics have been silenced. Indeed, my colleague Dan Hausman, the Herbert Simon Professor of Philosophy, reports that he is no …Read more
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2On this, the 97th anniversary of the year of his birth, thoughts turn naturally to Willard Van Orman Quine. Quine, known as ‚ÄòVan‚Äô to his friends but ‚ÄòThat putz with the beret‚Äô to everyone else, was one of the great systematists of the last century. The range of topics he addressed is awesome: epistemology, confirmation, philosophical logic, set theory, analyticity, modality, and, perhaps most familiarly, the indeterminacy of translation. My focus in this, my final and most challenging ad…Read more
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1PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 1992, Volume One: Contributed Papers. (1992), pp. 469-480.
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1Representational Content in Cognitive PsychologyDissertation, University of Pennsylvania. 1992.Against Stich's recommendation that we purge cognitive psychology of content I argue that ascriptions of representational content are both scientifically legitimate and essential to the continuing success of the cognitive sciences. Yet it is not the ordinary folk notion of content that informs many of these sciences, e.g. experimental cognitive psychology, cognitive ethology, and theory of perception. I develop an approach to representation that builds upon a Dretske-style analysis of representa…Read more
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Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition (edited book)Routledge. forthcoming.This chapter wades into the growing discussion surrounding embodied cognition and predictive processing. After surveying a recent debate between Jakob Hohwy and Andy Clark, it articulates two outstanding issues facing discussions of compatibility. It argues that headway on these issues can be made by drawing on the resources of philosophy of science.
Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |