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60Information processing and dynamical systems approaches are complementaryBehavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (5): 639-640. 2002.Shanker & King (S&K) trumpet the adoption of a “new paradigm” in communication studies, exemplified by ape language research. Though cautiously sympathetic, I maintain that their argument relies on a false dichotomy between “information” and “dynamical systems” theory, and that the resulting confusion prevents them from recognizing the main chance their line of thinking suggests.
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60Lyotard and the Postmodern Misunderstanding of PhysicsTheoria 46 (93): 29-52. 1999.This paper is a critical, and fairly detailed, engagement with Lyotard's account of 'postmodern' science as it is found in his _The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge_.
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58Jack Ritchie,Understanding Naturalism(Acumen, 2008)Philosophical Papers 40 (3): 439-445. 2011.Philosophical Papers, Volume 40, Issue 3, Page 439-445, November 2011
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56The extended infant: utterance activity and distributed cognitionIn Richard Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind, Mit Press. 2010.This chapter applies the parity principle in discussing “active externalism,” which claims that the mind need not be confined within either the brain or body. Consequently, how one brain or body interacts with other brains and bodies must be explored, together with the problems that may arise out of this interaction. This chapter is not concerned with beliefs and desires as mental states but whether they play a role in controlling behavior. It argues the notion that any course of action consider…Read more
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53Hooray for babiesSouth African Journal of Philosophy 30 (2): 197-206. 2011.David Benatar has argued that the coming into existence of a sentient being is always a harm, and consequently that people who have children always do wrong. The most natural objection maintains that in many lives (at least) while there is some pain, there are also goods (including pleasures) that can outweigh the suffering. From Benatar’s perspective this move, while possibly useful in assessing the lives of those who actually exist, is not an effective defence of procreation. In the case of pe…Read more
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50Behavioral (pico)economics and the brain sciencesBehavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (5): 659-660. 2005.Supporters of Ainslie's model face questions about its integration with neuroscience. Although processes of value estimation may well turn out to be locally implemented, methodological reasons suggest this is less likely in the case of subpersonal “interests.”.
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50It's not just the subjects–there are too many WEIRD researchersBehavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3): 104-105. 2010.A literature in which most data are outliers is flawed, and the target article sounds a timely alarm call for the behavioural sciences. It also suggests remedies. We mostly concur, except for arguing that the importance of the fact that the researchers themselves are mostly outliers has been underplayed. Improving matters requires non-Western researchers, as well as research subjects
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46An eye for an eye: Reciprocity and the calibration of redressBehavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (1). 2013.General systems for reciprocity explain the same phenomena as the target article's proposed revenge system, and can explain other cooperative phenomena. We need more reason to hypothesise a specific revenge system. In addition, the proposed calculus of revenge is less sensitive to absolute magnitudes of revenge than it should be
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43Complexity and post-modernism: understanding complex systemsSouth African Journal of Philosophy 18 (2): 258-274. 1999.This is a review article of Paul Cillier's 1999 book _Complexity and Postmodernism_. The review article is generally encouraging and constructive, although isolates a number of areas in need of clarification or development in Cillier's work. The volume of the _South African Journal of Philosophy_ in which the review article appeared also printed a response by Cilliers.
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42Why 'Appeals to Intuitions' might not be so badSouth African Journal of Philosophy 29 (2): 156-166. 2010.There has been lively recent debate over the value of appeals to intuitions in philosophy. Some, especially ‘experimental philosophers’, have argued that such appeals can carry little or no evidential weight, and that standard analytic philosophy is consequently methodologically bankrupt. Various defences of intuitions, and analytic philosophy, have also been offered. In this paper I review the case against intuitions, in particular the claims that intuitions vary with culture, and are built by …Read more
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42Putting infants in their placeBehavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (4): 524-525. 2004.The interests of mother and infants do not exactly coincide. Further, infants are not merely objects of attempted control by mothers, but the sources of attempts to control what mothers do. Taking account of the ways in which this is so suggests an enriched perspective on mother-infant interaction and on the beginnings of conventionalized signaling.
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41A map of where? Problems with the “transparency” dimensionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (1): 100-101. 2014.
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39Reductionisms and physicalismsSouth African Journal of Philosophy 25 (2): 159-170. 2006.Causal exclusion arguments, especially as championed by Kim, have recently made life uncomfortable for would-be non-reductive physicalists. Non-reductive physicalism was itself, in turn, partly a response to earlier arguments against reductionism. The philosophy of science, though, distinguishes more forms of reduction than philosophy of mind generally cares to. In this paper I review four major families of reductionist thesis, and give reasons for keeping them more carefully separate than usual…Read more
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36Review of Burns, J. The Descent of Madness: Evolutionary Origins of Psychosis and the Social Brain (review)South African Journal of Philosophy 28 (2): 257-258. 2009.Review of Burns, J. The Descent of Madness: Evolutionary Origins of Psychosis and the Social Brain (London: Routledge, 2007)
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36Need there be a common currency for decision-making?South African Journal of Philosophy 28 (2): 210-221. 2009.According to various theorists and empirical scholars of behavior and decision, including economists, utility theorists, behavioral ecologists, behavioral economists and researchers in the new field of neuroeconomics the value (typically understood as utility) of competing choices must be represented on a common scale in order for them to count as competing at all, and in order for orderly comparison to lead to actual choices. For some neuroeconomists this means that expected (cardinal) utilitie…Read more
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31Evolutionary psychology and functionally empty metaphorsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (2): 192-193. 2006.Lea & Webley's (L&W's) non-exclusive distinction between tool-like and drug-like motivators is insufficiently discriminating to say much about money that is useful, as the distinction's equivocal application to sex, food, and drugs shows. Further, it appears as though the motivations of problem gamblers are non-metaphorically like those of drug addicts. (Published Online April 5 2006).
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30Inaugural lecture: Philosophy enoughSouth African Journal of Philosophy 28 (1): 43-64. 2009.This inaugural lecture was delivered at the Howard College Campus of UKZN on 2 April 2008. In it I do three things. First I sketch some arguments in favour of a naturalist conception of philosophy. The conclusions that I’m after are that philosophy is not an autonomous enterprise, so that it had better be continuous with scientific enquiry if it is to get anywhere. A supplementary claim I defend briefly is that the natural and social sciences should be viewed as more integrated than they usually…Read more
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29Reason is normative, and should be studied accordinglyBehavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (5): 267-268. 2011.Reason aims at truth, so normative considerations are a proper part of the study of reasoning. Excluding them means neglecting some of what we know or can discover about reasoning. Also, the normativist position we are asked to reject by Elqayam & Evans (E&E) is defined in attenuated and self-contradictory ways
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28“Very like a whale”: Analogies about the mind need salient similarity to convey informationBehavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (4): 350-351. 2010.Knobe relies on unhelpful analogies in stating his main thesis about the mind. It isn't clear what saying the mind works, or doesn't work, or means. We suggest he should say that some think that human cognition respects a ban on fallacies of relevance, where considerations actually irrelevant to truth are taken as evidence. His research shows that no such ban is respected
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28Cui bono? Selfish goals need to pay their wayBehavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (2): 155-156. 2014.
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24Abstracting rewardBehavioral and Brain Sciences 43. 2020.The costs of and returns from actions are varied and individually concrete dimensions, combined in heterogeneous ways. The many needs of the body also fluctuate. Making action selection efficiently track some ultimate goal, whether fitness or another utility function, itself requires representational abstraction. Therefore, predictive brains need abstract value representations.
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24Common Currencies, Multiple Systems and Risk Cognition: Evolutionary Trade-offs and the Problem of Efficient ChoicesJournal of Cognition and Culture 16 (5): 436-457. 2016.There is an enduring tension in thinking about the architecture of systems that select behaviours, including evolved organisms. One line of reasoning supports convergence in control systems and conversion of the values of all options into a common currency, in part because this seems the best or only way of trading off costs and benefits associated with outcomes of varying types. A competing consideration supports parallelism or other forms of fragmentation, because of inefficiencies associated …Read more
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22Lyotard and the Postmodern Misunderstanding of PhysicsTheoria 46 29-52. 1999.This paper is a critical, and fairly detailed, engagement with Lyotard's account of 'postmodern' science as it is found in his _The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge_.
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22Fashioning affordances: a critical approach to clothing as an affordance transforming technologyPhilosophical Psychology. forthcoming.“I don’t want to create painful shoes, but it is not my job to create something comfortable.” – Christian Louboutin. (in Alexander, 2012) Pain is an essential part of the grooming process, and that...
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20Complexity, Valence, and ConsciousnessBiological Theory 18 (3): 197-199. 2023.Veit’s central claims are, first, that the function of valenced consciousness is to deal with pathological complexity, and, second, that pathological complexity is a trade-off problem associated with maximizing fitness. I argue that Veit’s hints about what pathological complexity amounts to pull in conflicting directions, and that the specific contribution of consciousness to dealing with a computational problem is under-motivated.
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19Transcendental realism defended: a response to AllanSouth African Journal of Philosophy 17 (3): 198-210. 1998.
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15Robots in casinos: Distributed control and the problem of efficient action selectionSouth African Journal of Philosophy 35 (3): 325-335. 2016.
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11Текущая сессия контакты копирайтSouth African Journal of Philosophy 18 (2): 258-274. 1999.I don't know what this document is. I'm not aware of ever being translated into Russian, but the issue and pagination suggest it refers to my review article of Cilliers' "Complexity and Postmodernism". That article is correctly indexed elsewhere on this site.
University Of Natal, Durban
Alumnus, 2000
Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Biology |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
PhilPapers Editorships
Causal Closure of the Physical |